RJS1977

Another fine half hour of TV that doesn't involve some kind of bizarre contest with a dozen numpties chasing around after a cash prize and a glimmer of "fame". Excellent stuff. I'm probably the only one that thought the "realistic chuffing sound" was actually quite good at low speed. Certainly innovative and would have enhanced the "play" value. DCC sound is wasted on me, isn't it..?

Yes, now we need a £100 sound chip to do what a piece of sandpaper could do in the 70s!

 

I think I've found the earliest wagons. They did indeed come from Birmingham and were again 10-tons. Nos 1-5 were financed by the wagon co too and were dispatched on 29 April 1873. Registration was by the GWR that same month. Birmingham repaired them for £3 5s per wagon per year, rising to £3 17s 6d from May 1876, but it doesn't seem to say how much the 'rental' was. The order book recorded their name as "George Palmer, Samuel Palmer and William Isaac Palmer trading as Huntley & Palmers of Reading". So who was Huntley? 

 

Oops, just found the answer to that question http://www.huntleyandpalmers.org.uk/ixbin/hixclient.exe?a=query&p=huntley&f=generic_theme.htm&_IXFIRST_=1&_IXMAXHITS_=1&%3dtheme_record_id=rm-rm-factory_content1&s=7FKeelTMttB

I hope this is not too much information!

 

Another member of the Huntley family was involved in the firm Huntley Bourne and Stephens, who made the tins for H&P.

Any tips on how to get the body off?

I picked one up secondhand a few years ago which has similar performance 'issues'. Again, usual checks such as wheel cleaning etc don't seem to have made much of a difference, so any other suggestions anyone can come up with would be much appreciated.

I feel for your situation D5541 - having not preordered as I always wait to see what other peoples' experiences of a loco are before buying, I now find I'll be taking a big pay cut in the New Year :-( Glad to hear you got one in the end, though!

I asked earlier on the thread but I don't think I received an answer, but what would the 1:1 scale version of a W4 be expected to handle in reality?

 

I have bought Dodo to make up the industrial contingent of my future Moretonhampstead branch as if preserved layout (which station is as yet undecided but I'm hoping to make a start in the Summer, most likely with Lustleigh). The storyline is that the Peckett was an early arrival on the line and heavily involved in the early years, before a period on the sidelines, returning to steam in the 2000s or 2010s as a pet/curiosity for pilot duties and odd outings on demonstration goods.

 

I see photos of similar classes at embryonic preserved railways and the common formation seems to be 1 mk1 + brake van, but this may be due to other operational constraints. Whilst I am interested in terms of Mk1 haulage, I'm sure most on here would be more interested in terms of 16t/equivalent wagon haulage!

Northern Gas Board No1 (Peckett W6) normally hauls at least two Mark 1 coaches on the CWR but can manage a third if passenger loadings demand it, ditto Peckett 1435(?) (Ivor!). Ride quality, whilst perhaps not as smooth as with Pannier 6430, is not unreasonable.

Are we talking about modellers or collectors though?

 

I'm sure a modeller would easy change the identity if they really deemed it necessary.

 

 

I reckon if somebody did the research then almost every colour under the rainbow could appear, probably including yellow. A bit of T Cut and you can already have two shades of green and blue.

 

 

It's the idea of Kit Kat, Weetabix and Yorkshire Tea versions that are worrying me.

 

 

Jason

What about LoadHaul?

Just tear up their driving licence...

 

Our express passenger fleet includes several more Castles, a few Stars and it will include a King when Mr DJM Dave finishes his good works... We might need to start with a loco shed model!

 

 

If only there was some GWR loco shed still in existence somewhere you could make a model of....

 

 

Somewhat perversely considering the issue number the centrepiece is a three page fold-out of drawings and a photo; not of No.100 but of No.111   

Does that mean I have to stand on one leg whilst reading it?

Note the underside of the board in the 2nd photo.  Its the trackbed of Franks old Borchester Town layout I believe.  Frank never wasted anything, he just turned the boards upside down and re-used them.

He's not alone in that. Several of 'Buckingham's' baseboards have imprints of other layouts on them including Crispin and Stephen's TT gauge layout which 'disappeared' while they were at University when Peter Denny wanted to extend his layout!

Likewise, many of the layouts Stuart Robinson has built for the North Downs Model Railway Circle have imprints of other layouts underneath!

 

• Councillors - especially in urban areas - are often these days professional or semi-professional politicians, who obey "Rule 1" of politics (as opposed to railway modelling!) which is, of course, "Get elected; then get re-elected".  There are very few votes in being seen to support a model railway club; sadly it is not - in most peoples' eyes - a 'valued community asset'.
• In the latter context, most MRCs are "low profile" for 51 weeks and 5 days of the year, only really registering in public consciousness for the one weekend they hold their Annual Show.  In such straitened financial times as we have these days, it is therefore perhaps a legitimate question to ask whether it is fair and justifiable to, in effect, subsidise the hobby of a couple of dozen local residents which puts little back into its community (because frankly there's not a lot it can put back, however willing in principle), and where the 'profile' of participants would probably show a majority of middle-aged and older white males.

It's hard, and I'm sad to say it, but I suspect this is the most likely way the future will look.

The exception to the last two points is the model engineering model railway club with a ride-on track as well as indoor layouts. The Reading club for example has high takings on its monthly public running days, and is open on other occasions for birthday parties, other community groups (schools, Scouts, Brownies etc) and charity fundraisers. Consequently we do have a relatively good relationship with the Council (our landlords) and are viewed as an amenity rather than just (mostly) "old men playing trains". That said, there are still a lot of people in Reading who are surprised to find out we exist! 

If it was concrete, it would be Carnforth ;-)

Dependent on transport costs, consider this an open invitation to bring it to the Kenavon (East Reading) show when done. We could have 'Little Didcot' and my 'Little Wallingford' next to each other!

Half a century of progress in industrial 0-4-0 design:

 

H&P Peckett W4 D and Nellie.JPG

As stated previously, two different locos for two different markets. That said, I don't think the Peckett will sell in anywhere near the numbers that Nellie did, and I would be pleasantly surprised if many Pecketts are still in working order in fifty years' time.

Talking of which - has anybody actually run theirs yet? I didn;t pre-order as I wanted to hear people's experiences of the loco before purchasing.

Have you been steaming open your Christmas crackers, Peanuts.  The owl one is awful!

That one actually did turn up in a Christmas cracker at my work 'do' last night!

Which reminds me in turn of someone I know who recently missed a letter out of 'Aberdeen Angus'. He's gone to bottom of the class!

Just for clarity, it didn't actually link the two cities, Manchester and Liverpool, there was no continuous MSC line between the two.

 

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I think by major cities, he meant Manchester and Salford...

 

 

I'm sorry but I am not going down the route of CBUS just for bells. This is a DC layout and the only electronics are MERG SERVO4 boards for the servos. I like simple/old school. Similarly Arduino and PIC Processors that count beats etc are very clever and would be great as a virtual second operator (automatic Crispin huh Tony!), but part of the fun here is for the operator to deal with the bells. The timetable already says what to expect when.

 

 

And I wouldn't have expected you to. I couldn't remember whether you were using CBUS already (it's not just for DCC) and I know from various ideas I've sketched out that the number of outputs required to be worked from MERG kits rarely matches the number of channels available, so most CBUS applications wind up with some channels left over.

But I'm working on exactly those lines for having a CBUS-operated 'Digital Crispin' on my own layout once it's been resurrected.

Whilst it probably wouldn't be worth doing it just for the block bells, if you had sufficient CBUS units with spare inputs (CANACE8C) and outputs (CANACC8), you could operate the block system that way:

Box A tapper making contact - ON event Box B LED and bell. OFF event for box A LED

Box A tapper breaking contact - OFF event for Box B bell but LED remains lit

Box B tapper making contact ON event for Box A LED and bell. OFF event for box B LED

Box B tapper breaking contact - OFF event for Box A bell but LED remains lit.

One of the 800s has been undergoing test runs on the main line between Reading and Didcot this afternoon - I must have seen it about 7 or 8 times today!

Me! Think RJS1977 :-)

This programme looks as if it may have some 'Railroad Teak' content....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2016/52/christmas-reassembler

I didn't know you could get them anymore. So to Google...

 

 

Found their website but not much choice unfortunately.

 

 

 

Jason

Also available from the shop in Reading Museum.

The first couple of years I held the Kenavon show we bought H&P biscuits from the museum and sold them at  the show as we were raising funds for an abortive effort to restore HP1 (proceeds from the show now go to the Cholsey & Wallingford Railway Station Development Fund).

(Edited for clarity as I realised it could be read that Reading Museum were selling the biscuits to raise money for the C&WR - which is definitely not the case!)