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Could part of the problem be that at some time between the 1920s and 1960s the way monochrome film recorded red and blue changed? It seems the programme can identify blue in Victorian photos: It's definitely NOT a tool for historical research into colours. But thanks for pointing it out anyway; it is a great displacement activity!

I thought normal GW practice was that it was all down to the frames, if it has the original frames then it is still the same engine, everything else was interchangeable.

Any colour you like, so long as it's brown.

I agree, Mikkel. I don't think 'rail blue' fans would be impressed by the following 'restoration', although the software does seem to know something about yellow ends: (This photo originally appeared in Stoker's blog 'Rosevear') I regard this as strictly a 'fun' program that can create some charming 'olde worlde' scenes: Mike

Just completed the SE Finecast kit of the long wheelbase 517. I hope you find the pictures of interest.

Surely Mikkel the old broom handle was never discarded but used for something else! And so it continues - In these days of austerity/lockdown/80% salary furlough, I have become even more mean than usual and have looked to reusing things that I once discarded but never actually got rid of. OK I'm a hoarder. So this Wills Metro kit may have a London Road Models gearbox which I abandoned some time ago in favour of High Level boxes. I've so many of the LRM versions, I thought I'd put them to use. This Frankenstein's monster will also have the bunker from an M&L 633 kit that I decided long ago was surplus to requirements (the front sandboxes of that are on my Beyer Goods, the chimney went elsewhere long ago). The jury is still out on the EM Ultrascale wheels and whether they will run on my dodgy P4 track. If that fails, I do have a couple of axles of Gibson 5' 2" P4 wheels left over after I broke a set trying to get them off a Dean Goods! Anyway I seem to enjoy trying to make silk purses out of these pigs ears rather than attacking the pristine newer kits in their boxes. I must build some carriages though!

Kevin Robertson (who else) and Roger Simmonds can help us here, with the following quote in their superb The Lambourn Branch (Wild Swan 1984 p. 108, not to be confused with later publications by Robertson on the same branch): "Being in a prime agricultural area, a considerable amount of general farm produce was also sent from the station, hay and straw accounting for a large proportion of this. Some was destined for the GWR's own provender store at Didcot, although most went for sale at market. There was also some inward traffic of this nature, some of the local trainers purchasing fodder from elsewhere. Some barley was also despatched for malting, but in comparison with the other cereal traffic, this was small." So if your station is not too far from Didcot, you could have wagons loaded with hay etc departing for the Didcot provender store (Farthing is on the Berks & Hants extension line, so that could work). This of course raises further questions: Would a place like Lambourn really send off provender to Didcot, only to have it returned later? There was processing taking place at Didcot, but still! Can't find any direct mention of this in the two books I have on the branch. The description of outgoing goods does not distinguish between LVR and GWR days. But I would have thought so. Incidentally, at some point goods included pit props for South Wales, which is interesting as I had considered such a load for one of my wagons, but initially discarded the idea as I did not think timber for the mines would come from Wiltshire. The LVR had 18 wagons. My mention of these yesterday was based on the very pleasing Lambourn Valley Railway website, but there seem to be a few typos when compared with the appendices in Robertson & Simmonds. According to the latter, 12 of the wagons were purchased from the Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon Co. in Feb. 1898 at a cost of £189, while another 6 came from the GER (not GWR) purchased for £91 10s, all including delivery and painting. The quaint LVR locos and coaches were sold in 1904 before the GWR took over, but on the wagons Robertson and Simmonds have only this to say: "No information regarding the disposal of the goods stock formerly owned by the LVR has been discovered." Oooh, intriguing! That could be, but as the 1898 photo is from pre-GWR days it would mean that the GWR supplied farmers with sheets for their carts, which seems a bit unlikely? On the other hand it's known that a local farmer was appointed by the GWR as cartage agent at Lambourn in 1904 when it took over the line.

I like the Dawlish scene, more the beach details than the train. A 2 wheeled pram is something I must make. I wish I could afford as many cigars as IKB. Seems like fun software, I'll have a go .

I suspect it's very like the old hand-tinted postcards, especially in accuracy of colour!

You see to have persuaded it to produce some more intense colours than I have managed so far. As you say, it's a pleasant displacement activity

I think either would be a decent machine and be a good first printer. I don't have experience of the Ender 3 v2 but have been happy with my Ender 5. I like how I have been able to make modifications to it to add automatic bed leveling with a BLtouch probe and change out the cooling fans to something a little quieter (not that the original were too bad). The amount of support and information online is excellent, folks like kersey fabrications and teaching tech on Youtube are particularly good. Have fun David

I think this problem affects all aspects of modelling that with which we are not familiar, certainly industrial subjects. We model what we see, or what we think we see, or even what we would like to think we can see, often with only a basic understanding of what 'it' is nevermind how it works or even why it's there. The example given of signals plonked in random positions is a good one, it winds me up too but I'm an ex-signalman. But the station car park on the same layout will be fine because everyone knows how car parks work even if they don't drive. Collieries, distilleries and dairies suffer the same problem. At one time it seemed like every Scottish layout had a white painted distillery in the corner where a quaint 0-4-0 (usually of a type never seen in the highlands) shuttled a couple of grain hoppers and some opens full of casks about. There were small distilleries, it's true, and some if them are very pretty. But most distillery traffic was coal in / empties out. This was Dewars in Perth - lots of rail traffic in evidence but not very pretty. Or quaint: https://canmore.org.uk/collection/1246412 And here's a quaint scene at Balmenach on Speyside. I bet nobody models the buildings on the right as derelict (which they were by this date) or the 7 story corrugated asbestos granary in the background ! https://www.railscot.co.uk/img/29/344/ Threads like this and the several now running on milk trains and dairies go a long way to addressing this :-)

The Huntley & Palmer shot is quite convincing. Although of course that can be dangerously misleading! I have been trying out some other free sites that claim to do the same, but yours are much better.

Second-hand, as the website says. Very second-hand, judging by the photo of the Met C&W Co. ones (4th photo down) - though they do appear to be all of the same type so they may have been sold off from Met's hire fleet rather than simply being old wagons for which the company was acting as broker. This photo (9th photo down) gives the best view of the ex-GER wagons, two of them, from which it's clear they are this antique type, dating back to the 1860s in design, if not necessarily construction. Plus of course there's the inevitable Midland wagon - not a D299 but a 3-plank dropside, D305, of 1880s vintage (Drg. 213). Rather more surprisingly, what I first assumed was a SER or LCDR covered goods wagon (Kentish van or van of Kent) is in fact lettered H&BR!

Nice to see the old Finecast Metro again. Or the box at least! This adds a whole new dimension to the philosophical discussion of the fisherman's knife/old broom: If you replace all the parts and then use the replaced parts to make a second identical object, then which is which and what is still the same? I need to lie down

Hi Dave Many thanks - look forward to catching up again. The lever frame is made from the DCC Concepts levers which are quite nice to use, if not 100% reliable.

An excellent synopsis, Stoker. Although not on my modelling agenda, I find it very interesting to learn how this industry worked.

That was taken at the west end of Burngullow sidings, at the old slurry loading area. This was abandoned in 1990 when it was replaced with the new slurry plant, which consisted of a covered slurry loading shed and a covered tank wagon washing shed. 'Images of Industrial & Narrow Gauge Railways - Cornwall' is a different book. Maurice produced another book titled Cornwall Narrow Gauge through the middleton press. You might be able to find a copy through amazon or ebay. With regards to how the dries operated, I have attached a photo of a scale drawing of a cross-section through a typical dry as a visual aid. As you can see, the dry was built into a hillside, with the settling tanks at a higher level on the right, and the tracks at a lower level on the left. This was not the absolute rule as some were built differently, and there were variations in the difference of height, but this is generally the way it was done. The area with the piled clay was known as the "linhay", pronounced linney, and the raised section beside it was known as the pan. The total section width of the building would typically be in the region of 35' to 55', with a total length (for standard gauge rail served kilns) of 210' to 350', however non rail served and narrow gauge served kilns were typically smaller, sometimes only 100' to 150' in length. The settling tanks "behind" the dry would be approx 7' deep, circa 40' wide, and as much as 100' in length, their length being perpendicular to the long axis of the dry. Note that "dry" and "kiln" can be used interchangeably, with their official name being "pan kiln". A "hypocaust" style heated floor ran the length of the dry, made up of brick flues on 18" centres spanned by special porous pan tiles - this was the "pan" and it would usually be some 9' to 18' in width, 18" to 24" in depth, and usually approx 12' shorter in length than the building. A furnace house at the "fire end" would consist of one grate per 4 flues, and this was usually housed in either a lean-to or gabled structure, it's floor often being level with the linhay floor, but sometimes slightly higher depending on the steepness of the hillside the dry was built on. At the opposite end was the chimney, generally 10 feet in width at the bottom, tapering to 5 feet at the top, and around 75' in total height, with two thirds of it's structure being of stone, one third brick. Between the chimney and the pan flues would be a damper, simply a large steel sheet operated by a lever or counterbalanced rope. The damper would be used to strike a balance between keeping heat in the pan and drawing draft for the fires. Too much damper and the fire burns weak, too little damper and you end up with entrained ash dropping out of suspension in the flues. A periodic maintenance task with dries was to lift up the pan tiles to shovel out ash, not a pleasant task. Clay slurry would be piped to the feed end of the settling tanks, which was the end furthest from the dry, and allowed to settle. The doorways between the settling tanks and the dry would be boarded with so called button boards, which possessed holes for placing corks. The cork holes would remain unplugged as the tank filled, allowing clarified water to flow out into the drain gutter inside the dry. As the tank filled, the cork 'buttons' would be placed in the holes, and so the next board up would allow the clear water to discharge, thus the tank would build with settled clay. Once this process finished, tracks in the settling tank allowed settled clay to be trammed into the dry from the settling tanks in the small wagon pictured in the diagram, which would be positioned on the travelling bridge and moved to the appropriate spot along the pan. Here it would be dumped out and allowed to dry. Moisture would typically be drawn through the pan tile, such that both steam and smoke emerged from the chimney. Once dry, the pan would be shovelled off into the linhay below, where it would sit in piles to await loading for onward transit. The drop-off between the linhay and the rails was usually known as the loading edge or wharf, and it's depth generally depended on the type of wagon or type of packaging being used. For instance with casks or bags, it was usually preferable to have a loading edge height of 4' above the railhead, as this put the linhay floor level with the wagon floor. But in the case of lump clay, a loading edge height of 6' to 7'6" was preferable, as this put the linhay floor level with the top of the wagon. By the 1930s many of these pan kilns had been adapted to work with filter presses. The process of shoveling wet clay into wagons and then tramming them into the dry was known as a "muck wagon kiln", but when a press was used they were known as "press kilns" or "press house kilns". These presses, usually a pair contained within a structure called the "press house" generally located centrally among the settling tanks and against the back wall of the dry, consisted of circa 100 approx 4' square cast iron recessed plates hung on an I-beam girder suspended between two cast iron bulkheads. The plates, dressed with filter cloths, would be mechanically or hydraulically pressed together to form a watertight seal. Clay slurry would then be pumped in to the press plates by electric centrifugal pumps from the settling tanks at pressure. Each plate had a hole in the centre through which the slurry could move from plate to plate until the entire press was full. Clay would then build up in the space between the two cloths as pressure increased, with filtered water on the other side of the cloth leaving the plate through drain holes at their bottom corners. Once pressure reached a certain point indicating that the press was full, the pump would be stopped and the feed valve closed. A drain valve would then be opened, allowing the unfiltered slurry in the centre of the press to escape and return to the settling tanks. Once this cycle had been completed, the press would be opened, and the "filter cakes" would be dropped down onto wagons waiting beneath the press. These wagons would be run inside the dry onto the traversing bridge and dumped onto the pan, with the cakes to be broken up into smaller lumps. The former doorways leading into each settling tank would be bricked up, and pipes would run from them inside the dry to bring settled clay to the press house. The clarified water would be skimmed from the tank using a contraption known as a "banjo", this consisted of a pipe in a T shape, with the head of the T having a slot through which water could enter. The banjo was fitted on a pivot so that it could be raised and lowered using a rope on a spool, and the operator would watch for the colour of the water exiting into the gutter to make sure he hadn't lowered it too far. Since the clay tended to settle uniformly across the floor of the settling tank, men would be tasked with "shyvering" or "poling" the tanks - this task involved using a long pole with a flat blade at the end to "push" the settled clay toward the drain. This was an arduous task which had to be conducted in all weathers. This settled clay was usually pumped to a smaller tank immediately next to the press house, and it was from this tank that the presses would draw their feed. Within the linhay, by the 1950s sometimes small front end loaders were employed. Usually this would be a Muir Hill LH1. Some dries had a conveyor belt bringing dried clay up to a bagging machine, which was a big hopper with a screw conveyor beneath it - a bag could be slid over the end of the screw conveyor, which could be run until the bag was full, greatly reducing the amount of time it took to shovel clay into a bag. This stuff is possibly a bit ahead of your intended era. I would strongly recommend looking into the Gothers Tramway (pictured below) and the Hendra Tramway, the details for which can be found in Maurice's books. The dry in the picture is 250' x 45', but a much smaller one existed at the Gothers complex a mere 150' x 38'. There were several rail served dries in the Bodmin area apart from just Wenford. You are correct that they are not well documented, but I do believe Maurice Dart mentions them in his East Cornwall Mineral Railways book.