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I'd hazard a guess that resting horses were essentially spares, that inferred from Mikkel's quoting of Janet Russell.

Many thanks, Mikkel! I'm really glad you enjoyed it. Producing these blog entries is definitely time consuming, but it is rather nice to have a succint(ish!) entry comprising the entirety of one aspect of the layout, rather than a rambling topic which can make it hard to find posts you're looking for. It's also quite rewarding looking back from the early beginnings (i.e. a lump of wood) to the finished slender tower, and I'm hopeful that someone will find some inspiration and/or use for my ramblings! I will do my best to be more proactive with this blog; it is the kind of thing I push back and then further back again, but often when I've done it I'll feel a sense of accomplishment! Have a great Christmas and New Year! Many thanks, Simon! Having recently needed to bend a clear plastic roof for a shelter with a similar method, you are absolutely right about the plasticard window/door surrounds. Amazingly though, PVA seems to have stuck hard and fast. I do leave it for 24 hours to fully cure, which is likely why it's done so well. Come to think of it, I don't think I've used anything other than PVA or Revell Contacta (for plastic) in many, many years! As the layout build was documented entirely on NGRM-online, there actually have been multiple suggestions for the lighthouse light; even including motorised examples! Needless to say, there is a hole drilled through the entire tower for the wiring to go through, but it's not at all straight; which would make a mechanical option a little tricky without a lot of surgery to the tower! That said, it is the only "proper" way to produce the effect; so I'm not going to rule it out for future modifications, and indeed I believe it was Ted Polet who actually drew up a design for such a mechanism for me! Oh, and there are definitely some scale flashing beacons for vehicles, but sadly they are usually too big or too fast. Seasons greetings!

I have had a look in the books and found a bit of info on this. Rather than shifts, horses were "resting" - though what this exactly entails is still not clear to me. According to Tony Atkins "GWR Goods Cartage Vol 1", a GWR report of 1869 found that the GWR had an average of 7½% of its horse stock "resting". This was critiqued as being lower than other companies (a private cartage agency is quoted as having 29% resting at this time). In Janet Russel's "GWR Horsepower" these figures are given for selected London stables in 1877: And here again at a much later date when the GWR had started doing more cartage of its own, and greatly increased the number of horses. No date but from the wording of the text it sounds like the 1920s (edit: just found the same numbers quoted in Atkinson, he says the following is "just before WW1"). There is a now a "sick" category, but the number of resting horses is quite low. Returning to Chris' question about number of horsedrawn vehicles, I have oddly not been able so far to find any data on this for particular goods yards. However, as the years pass by Farthing is slowly growing in my mind, from a medium sized junction station to a fairly large one. So I hope there will be room for a few more horsedrawn vehicles. If not, I'll have to invent some sort of special industry as an excuse - such as the Witney blanket industry: http://witneyblanketstory.org.uk/WBP.asp?navigationPage=Transport https://www.steampicturelibrary.com/stations-halts/london-stations-paddington-station/paddington-goods-depot-6300310.html

Ah yes, I had forgotten about those. Here is one of them:

I think life for a working horse was quite hard, and littl3 to compare with today’s horses, which are, for 5he most part, hobby animals, in a far more caring society. apart from the wagon loads of horse manure that was shipped out of big cities daily, (which has been a previous discussion in these hallowed halls) I rather suspect a fair number of beasts turned their toes (or hooves) skyward each day. Of course, the railways could afford convalescent horses. Steptoe & son could not, and if the horse didn’t work, likely they didn’t eat. And within living memory too. I was born in 1958, so this is marginally before my time. “The horse was king, and almost everything grew around him: fodder, smithies, stables, paddocks, distances and the rhythm of our days. His eight miles an hour was the limit of our movements, as it had been since the days of the Romans. That eight miles an hour was life and death, the size of our world, our prison…Then, to the scream of the horse, the change began. The brass-lamped motor car came coughing up the road. Soon the village would break, dissolve and scatter, become no more than a place for pensioners.” (Laurie Lee's description of village life before the motor car - Cider with Rosie, 1959) There were about 3.5 million horses in the uk at the turn of the 1900’s. Assuming a twenty year life, that would suggest nigh on 500 dying each day. That’s around 200 tons of dead horse to dispose of, daily! atb Simon

No idea, but dealing with a significant number of sick animals does seem to have been the order of the day. At Paddington the GWR had two horse hospitals, with 32 and 30 loose boxes respectively. At Westbourne Park were a further 30 boxes for improving animals and cases of lameness. At Castle Bar there was a further "convalescent centre" which could accomodate 24 horses in winter and 40 in summer. Hmm, yes I see what you mean, the numbers don't tally. Maybe the term "resting" in the tables above means something else then. Janet Russell writes: "If a stableman felt that a horse was sick or injured, he reported the details to the foreman who had to make a decision as to whether the horse should just be rested for the day or ought to be seen by the vet. In either case, a 'resting' horse would be selected to replace the sick animal if necessary to make up the working quota." That doesn't help us much though, but I can't find further info on this matter.

Jam this looks good. I like the colours, and the green is particularly effective. I’m very surprised that you were able to stick plasticard to clay with PVA. I hope they don’t “pop off” but if they do, I’d suggest precurving the plasticard (tape it to a used food or beer can of the right sort of diameter, fill can with boiling water, wait a few moments, drop in sink full of cold water) and then restick using something like MEK, poly cement or uhu. I’m not aware of any easy solutions to your “unrealistic LED”, the real lights were permanently lit, and used a rotating lens & mirrors (with colour and black shades as required) to provide the “flash”, and the sectors of different colours. I just had a look at the latest chart for Spurn, the lighthouses don’t appear to have coloured sectors, (though they might have previously) so that’s one less thing to worry about. Maybe you can modify a flashing vehicle beacon, though it’s probably far too big! hth Season’s Greetings Simon

Hi Jam, well that to me captures all the best things about modelling in one single post. Ingenious, creative and combining different crafts and skills. The result is superb. I hope you'll keep posting here, even if it does take a long time to write up entries like this one. It's a whole magazine article in itself (in fact I increasingly read the blogs like a magazine). Happy christmas and best wishes for the new year!

All built (or being built) for a client and they will be seen on his layout at some point

Hi Chris, yes - but I had trouble finding out how many days a resting period was. Found it now, on page 197 of Great Western Horsepower: "Horses worked five days and then had one rest day before commencing another period of duty." From descriptions it seems horses worked more or less continously throughout their work days if necessary, though not longer than 10 hours a day. In the big cities, they often returned to the yard during the day for loading, before going out again.

Many thanks everyone for the encouraging comments! Although a small project it helped me stay sane through a stressful time at work. Interesting to see that LBSC wagon, dseagull. It looks similar to some of the large GWR lorries, though they didn't have protection for the driver (the parcels vehicles did). Good question Chris. The stable block at Farthing has 12 stalls, so still room for 5 more horses. Not sure whether there would be "extra" horses though, or whether they worked in shifts. Must check up on that!

I once joined a ship on Christmas eve. Being all heart, sailing was delayed an hour until 1pm so we could have Christmas dinner before stand-by! Bl**dy shipowners.... Good luck up North at this time of year - very grey.