Wright writes.....

[Mallard60022]

Really?

 

The top edge of the solebar.

 Now I'm even more confused than a confused person on a confusing day. The top edge looks, well, like an edge. 

Phil

[gr.king]

Based on reasoning above regarding twerps, it seems to me that just for once maybe I'm not a twerp.

[MikeTrice]

Oh boy! Excerpt from GA showing solebar section. This is described elsewhere as 10" * 3.5" * 45 degree bulb angle NBSBA.13

Edited August 1, 2016 by MikeTrice

[Mallard60022]

Based on reasoning above regarding twerps, it seems to me that just for once maybe I'm not a twerp.

If you ever met the late Malcolm, you'd understand...............................I dread to think what he said about me

Phil

[Headstock]

Oh boy! Excerpt from GA showing solebar section. This is described elsewhere as 10" * 3.5" * 45 degree bulb angle NBSBA.13

IMG_4584.JPG

 

The solebar in your photograph appears to be upside down compared to the drawing, am I correct in this? certainly, the writing is inverted. When I was a kid I saw these things being formed, from memory we were told that the bulb was the rounded naturally occurring shape (a pressure bulb) formed by pressure being applied to the horizontal surface. Further comments would be welcome.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Headstock

[shotover]

The attached should help if any further clarification is needed from Mikes replies.

[Tony Wright]

Can anyone point me in the right direction with regard to the LNER triplet dining sets, and the variations, please?

I'll do my best..................

 

The first catering triplets were built for the Flying Scotsman in 1924, the dimensions being 55 feet two and a half inches by 9 feet for the open cars and 41 feet by 9 feet for the kitchen. These probably had turnbuckle trussing. I think this is the one produced by Comet. 

 

The next were built in 1928, again for the Flying Scotsman (by this time non-stop). These were the same length, but the open cars were 3 inches wider (and had recessed doors?). Since angle trussing didn't appear until the early '30s, did these have turnbuckle trussing? Both the 1924 sets and the 1928 sets ran on 8' 6" HD bogies.

 

Then came the one-off catering triplet for the Silver Jubilee. The dimensions were 56 feet two and a half inches by 9 feet for the open cars and 45 feet eleven inches by 9 feet for the kitchen.  

 

The finest catering triplets (in my opinion) were those built for the 1938 Scotsman. These were the same length as the Silver Jubilee triplet, but three inches wider. Like the Silver Jubilee set, these had 8' 6" HD bogies on the outer ends and 10' HD bogies at the articulation. They were also pressure-ventilated and were carried on heavy, angle trussing, as was the SJ set (though the trussing was originally hidden behind the lower valances). 

 

Post-War, when new Thompson non-articulated sets of PV vehicles were built for the Scotsman, the triplet catering cars saw service mainly on Newcastle services, but at least one earlier set was in a Leeds train. The Silver Jubilee catering triplet was in a fast morning Newcastle-Kings Cross set for a decade and one of the 1938 FS catering triplets was in The Northumbrian, one of the Third/Second seating bays having been removed to form a standing bar. All were cut-up/scrapped by the early-'60s.

 

Comet makes the 1924 set (I don't think the doors are recessed), Mail Coach or Marc Models does the SJ set and Rupert Brown does the sides/ends for the 1938 Scotsman catering triplets (including the blanked off side portion for the standing bar).  

 

These were all terrific cars, unique to the LNER. The main problem was one of lack of flexibility - one bogie out/hot bearing, etc and three cars were out of action. I suppose that's why, post-War, catering was provided in the main by single cars (RF/RU) or by Kitchen Cars with open cars either side, as illustrated in the shot below. 

 

 

I hope this all helps. 

Edited August 3, 2016 by Tony Wright

[Headstock]

Thank you Shotover,

 

much clearer, I have a set of GA's but as usual, when you need them you can't find them. It would seem to go along  with my 1976 schoolboy drawing that I labeled from top to bottom as flange, web and bulb. The solebar in the original photo still looks inverted to my eyes with the flange at the bottom and the bulb at the top but is it even original? Is this a modification between turnbuckle and angle iron trussing?

 

Incidentally the solebar on the Hornby product is 12" deep in scale.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Headstock

[MikeTrice]

Does this help?

[Porcy Mane]

That image also shows nicely how on some Gresley coaches the coach floor was bracketed off the chassis giving a gab between the top of the solebar  the bottom of the body.

 

P

[Headstock]

Does this help?

Image983.jpg

 

Hi Mike,

 

thanks for your patience, what I am trying to get my head around is why the original picture appears to look like an inverted drawing. While the picture from the above post looks more like the drawings as supplied.

[MikeTrice]

Optical illusion.

[Mallard60022]

That last drawing demonstrates the 'bulb shape' as in a thermometer bulb. I'm going to go away now as this is all my fault for doing a Gresley conversion using a Hornby donor, the latest of which I am in the process of painting, ready for delivery (part finished) on Friday. (I always leave the glazing and interior, plus a bit of weathering of the UF and bits, to the new owner.)

Phil

[Mallard60022]

Hi Mike,

 

thanks for your patience, what I am trying to get my head around is why the original picture appears to look like an inverted drawing. While the picture from the above post looks more like the drawings as supplied.

I was going away but I must agree with Headstock. Those bars are not the same profile.

Phil

[MikeTrice]

Same solebar from a different viewpoint:

[Mallard60022]

Thanks Mike. I really admire your collection of detail pics of stuff. Pity you didn't like SR stuff 

Much appreciated your bothering as well despite my seeming failure to understand; good teaching experience I suspect.

Phil

[billbedford]

I was going away but I must agree with Headstock. Those bars are not the same profile.

 

 

 

It was because true bulb angle was obsolete by the 30s, so presumably the LNER, or one or more of their suppliers of coach underframes, had some special section roller that wasn't quite the same profile.

[Headstock]

Same solebar from a different viewpoint:

IMG_1428.JPG

 

Hi mike,

 

an optical illusion is good enough for me after all that is how I would expect them to look. Thanks for your photographs and time, they also demonstrate how much the body overhangs the solebars.

[Headstock]

It was because true bulb angle was obsolete by the 30s, so presumably the LNER, or one or more of their suppliers of coach underframes, had some special section roller that wasn't quite the same profile.

 

I was wondering about that. My own GA drawings are akin to that in the drawing taken at the needle beam in Shotover's post

Edited August 1, 2016 by Headstock

[Arthur]

Thanks Andrew, the juxtaposition of the profiles with the photos make it, almost!, clear.

 

There are obviously two or more different bulb profiles in use. I have to say that in Mikes first photo the bulb at the top of the solebar looks like a separate pipe running along the top edge so deep and sharp is the shadow at its lower edge. Happy to accept that it is a bulb though I'd never have guessed it.

 

Bulb sections are rolled in conventional section mills fitted with rolls of the appropriate profile. There's nothing about the bulb section, like a sharp undercut, that makes it impossible to roll. Some sections may require passes through another stand fitted with a second set of rolls to work the full profile.

 

Material just 'squeezed out' would be a poor, unconsolidated length of metal. A bit like the flash extruded from a moulding machine. For maximum strength the steel needs to be 'worked' on all of its finished surfaces.

 

Bulb section is certainly not obsolete and is still widely available from several stockholders. Some particular sections might have gone out of general use but that's true for countless other sections. And if somebody wants enough of it the mill will turn up suitable rolls.

 

Many of the larger mills rolled bulb sections as part of their range. Most of these closed several years ago and Skinningrove has survived as an operational mill partly because of its expertise in rolling bulb and other special sections. Whether or not they still do I have no idea.

 

 

.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Arthur

[jrg1]

Thanks Andrew, the juxtaposition of the profiles with the photos make it, almost!, clear.

 

There are obviously two or more different bulb profiles in use. I have to say that in Mikes first photo the bulb at the top of the solebar looks like a separate pipe running along the top edge so deep and sharp is the shadow at its lower edge. Happy to accept that it is a bulb though I'd never have guessed it.

 

Bulb sections are rolled in conventional section mills fitted with rolls of the appropriate profile. There's nothing about the bulb section, like a sharp undercut, that makes it impossible to roll. Some sections may require passes through another stand fitted with a second set of rolls to work the full profile.

 

Material just 'squeezed out' would be a poor, unconsolidated length of metal. A bit like the flash extruded from a moulding machine. For maximum strength the steel needs to be 'worked' on all of its finished surfaces.

 

Bulb section is certainly not obsolete and is still widely available from several stockholders. Some particular sections might have gone out of general use but that's true for countless other sections. And if somebody wants enough of it the mill will turn up suitable rolls.

 

Many of the larger mills rolled bulb sections as part of their range. Most of these closed several years ago and Skinningrove has survived as an operational mill partly because of its expertise in rolling bulb and other special sections. Whether or not they still do I have no idea.

 

 

.

Bulb section ribs are the main component in ships.  The bulb section is welded to the ship's side plates to form a girder-light and extremely strong compared to the use of H-section ribs rivetted to the plates in the past

[Bernard Lamb]

I was going away but I must agree with Headstock. Those bars are not the same profile.

Phil

I did point out some posts back that the shape of the bulb can vary.

I only know the sections from a general engineering angle rather than a specific coach building one.

The triangular version is one I have not seen before.

Bernard

[coachmann]

Steel rolling is fascinating to watch. We could see it while looking through the railings down onto the rolling floor where the process would start with a large ingot before it was deftly passed through ever smaller rollers until it was long wire or whatever was being produced. The men worked very fast for obvious reasons. Location ? Park Bridge Iron Works between Oldham and Ashton-U-Lyne in the mid 1950's.

Edited August 2, 2016 by coachmann

[Tony Wright]

I must say I've leaned a great deal over the last couple of days with regard to 'bulbs' and solebar profiles. Ignorance 'was' bliss, as down the decades I've just used whatever was provided in kits or the appropriate flat 'U'-shaped angle, turned on its side. 

 

Returning to the subject of Gresley catering triplets, the following pictures show the ones I run on my own layout. 

 

 

I built this from the Comet kit when it first came out, and it was reviewed in BRM. I note now I've numbered it as a 1928-built example, which could well be wrong because didn't they have recessed doors in the open cars? If so, nobody has ever commented, either after reading the magazine or seeing it at dozens of shows. The HD bogies are from old PC kits. Odd, that, because PC were the opposite of Comet, making just the HD bogie, whatever it went underneath. 

 

 

This is the Mailcoach ex-Silver Jubilee catering triplet, a report on which I wrote for BRM last year (or the year before). The 8' 6" HD bogies on this are from MJT and the 10' HD ones those provided in the kit (though beefed up with metal strips). This is definitely NOT a kit for the faint-hearted.

 

 

The 1938 ex-Scotsman catering triplet, being built for service in the Northumbrian. The blank rear wall of the bar can just be discerned at the nearer end (in the First Class car - I said Second yesterday; my apologies). Again, the 8' 6" HD bogies under this are PC, and the 10' HD ones MJT. John Houlden built most of this set for me from Rupert Brown, Kirk, Comet and MJT parts (as part of our horse-trading agreement) and I made it run. I've yet to fit the door furniture, then paint, line, letter and glaze it; I've also got to make the interiors. 

 

 

This is the Gresley Hornby/MJT conversion into an RF, mentioned earlier. The HD bogies on this are from BSL (another case of a manufacturer only making one sort of Gresley bogie). Apart from adding extra detail to the underframe, I didn't alter its width. From this sort of angle, I don't think it's too noticeable, especially running as a 'layout coach' in a 'layout train' on, obviously, a layout. By using transfer lining (I'm not at all in Larry G's class), the branding is squashed in a bit, but it does fit, just. If the branding goes over the central beading rib, the effect is poor. The same 'squeezing up' is apparent on the Comet triplet set, though, with care, it does fit. I've yet to alter this car's ownership to 'Sc'. 

 

Above all else, as mentioned, every carriage/set I make is designed to run on a layout; not as big as Carlisle or Retford, but still a fair size. They're also made to run in scale-length trains, not just to be viewed as individual cars. To take that latter approach would require carriage-building capabilities beyond mine; more the province of Larry Goddard or Andrew Teale. 

 

What's most important to me, as I've said many times, is I've made them in the main, I've painted and finished them and I can tell their stories to visitors.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Tony Wright

[Mallard60022]

I must say I've leaned a great deal over the last couple of days with regard to 'bulbs' and solebar profiles. Ignorance 'was' bliss, as down the decades I've just used whatever was provided in kits or the appropriate flat 'U'-shaped angle, turned on its side. 

 

Returning to the subject of Gresley catering triplets, the following pictures show the ones I run on my own layout. 

 

Comet catering triplet.jpg

 

I built this from the Comet kit when it first came out, and it was reviewed in BRM. I note now I've numbered it as a 1928-built example, which could well be wrong because didn't they have recessed doors in the open cars? If so, nobody has ever commented, either after reading the magazine or seeing it at dozens of shows. The HD bogies are from old PC kits. Odd, that, because PC were the opposite of Comet, making just the HD bogie, whatever it went underneath. 

 

Silver Jubilee catering triplet.jpg

 

This is the ex-Silver Jubilee catering triplet, a report on which I wrote for BRM last year (or the year before). The 8' 6" HD bogies on this are from MJT and the 10' HD ones those provided in the kit (though beefed up with metal strips). This is definitely NOT a kit for the faint-hearted.

 

1938 Scotsman triplet.jpg

 

The 1938 ex-Scotsman catering triplet, being built for service in the Northumbrian. The blank rear wall of the bar can just be discerned at the nearer end (in the First Class car - I said Second yesterday; my apologies). Again, the 8' 6" HD bogies under this are PC, and the 10' HD ones MJT. John Houlden built most of this set for me from Rupert Brown, Kirk, Comet and MJT parts (as part of our horse-trading agreement) and I made it run. I've yet to fit the door furniture, then paint, line, letter and glaze it; I've also got to make the interiors. 

 

Gresley RK.jpg

 

This is the Gresley Hornby/MJT conversion into an RF, mentioned earlier. The HD bogies on this are from BSL (another case of a manufacturer only making one sort of Gresley bogie). Apart from adding extra detail to the underframe, I didn't alter its width. From this sort of angle, I don't think it's too noticeable, especially running as a 'layout coach' in a 'layout train' on, obviously, a layout. By using transfer lining (I'm not at all in Larry G's class), the branding is squashed in a bit, but it does fit, just. If the branding goes over the central beading rib, the effect is poor. The same 'squeezing up' is apparent on the Comet triplet set, though, with care, it does fit. I've yet to alter this car's ownership to 'Sc'. 

 

Above all else, as mentioned, every carriage/set I make is designed to run on a layout; not as big as Carlisle or Retford, but still a fair size. They're also made to run in scale-length trains, not just to be viewed as individual cars. To take that latter approach would require carriage-building capabilities beyond mine; more the province of Larry Goddard or Andrew Teale. 

 

What's most important to me, as I've said many times, is I've made them in the main, I've painted and finished them and I can tell their stories to visitors.

Excellent Tony. Not a 'bulb' in site thank goodness. Damn fine sets that inspired and still inspire me on occasion to do something; right, out to the garage to do some spraying. I have to say that I enjoy building the Comet sets despite their 'compromises'. I have misplaced my Isinglass drawings for the 24/28 sets but I seem to remember that there was mention of doors but I can't say that I remember the '28 Opens having recessed doors. I await correction.

There is certainly some sort of beauty in these artics.

I'd like to have a closer look at the GWR ones on Robert's lovely layout Kingstorre. My tiny claim to fame is that I actually part built an ex Artic GWR coach for Robert (along with a few other standard GWR Comet coaches) and it was an interesting mix of kit parts from various sources. At the time he was busy upgrading his 'fleet'.   

Phil