ChrisN

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

Re milk bottles, I remember when I was young that there were two shapes: the "dumpy" type, such as Peter delivers to us every day (except Sundays), and a type with a taller thinner stem which contained a different type of milk. Was it "sterilised" or something similar?

I have friends here who have lived in Newtown all their lives. I shall have to ask them about milk delivery.

Jonathan

Jonathan,

Before the 'dumpy' bottles we had taller bottles with a taper to them, but with a wide mouth and a foil closing.  The other type with the thinner stem were 'sterialised' and had a metal cap like a beer bottle.  Revolting stuff, but my Nan, liked her 'drop a ster' in her tea.

1 hour ago, kitpw said:

First glass milk bottle patented in 1874 in the US

Gradually transferred to UK but until WW1 milk mainly delivered on horse-drawn "milk pram" - ladled into tin cans from a churn

At that time, milk was delivered three times a day - "pudding round" later dropped due to WW1 constraints

By 1920s and 1930s glass-bottled milk is the norm, but bottles had cardboard slips at the top, which children used to play "pogs"

1935 - slender-neck bottle introduced, giving the illusion of more cream and supposedly favoured by housewives

Aluminium foil tops eventually replaces cardboard for hygiene concerns - but WW2 shortages mean experimentation with zinc, tin and lead-based alternatives

Estimated 30 million lost glass bottles a year during WW2 - some return to tin can delivery using ladles

1980 - modern version of bottle introduced. Shorter and wider, initially it was nicknamed "dumpy"

Source: Tom Phelps, author of The British Milkman...https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29327881: includes a picture of a very jolly milkman and a bird helping itself to the cream.

In the early 1930s in Leatherhead, Surrey, the milk pram was horsedrawn and (I think I've told this story before on RMweb) my grandfather's parrot learned to tell the milkman's horse to "move on" leaving the milkman to run after the cart which was rapidly disappearing up the road. So no bottled delivery then. My only recollection of dairies and deliveries (early 1960s) was quart (not pint) bottles which were delivered from a near silent, slow moving EV.

Cartons are fine with me but just don't tell the blue tits - did they follow the milk pram like seagulls follow the fishing boats?

 

Thank you, that is very interesting. I love the story about the parrot.

I am used to milk being delivered in bottles and arriving before breakfast, like the post, so more than one delivery is interesting.  It would explain how hotels were looked after.  

Where was the milk kept before a delivery?  It it arrive once a day by train, ot were there several deliveries.  (I would go for one.)  There must have been somewhere that the milk was collected from.  The cart in my picture came from 2.5 miles away so that there could have been a cold store on the farm, but what about the milk from the estate at Bala.  

I will do some more investigating.

6 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

I hadn't really thought about height variation too much before these posts but it's a great point - especially given how much of the station is platforms.

 

The foreground dock platform could slope up from the concourse height (2'4") to 3'6" with a 4' ramp at the end for the end-loading section. This would also give a step down in the surface for a cab stand in the foreground too. 

 

I think I would want to keep the island platform low, so as to block as little view as possible of the rear roads.

 

The rear platform then would be a contender for a raised surface - but I was planning on putting offices/store rooms/etc. on the rear wall - and presumably if the platform was raised these would have to be rebuilt? 

On the Cambrian I can tell you what happen.  (I know the Cambrian is not the LBSCR, but it had less money so it only did what it had to do.)

It built its platforms low, when constructed in the 1860s.  When I looked at Barmouth and other stations the platform surface went directly with no steps into the station building.  This gives the impression that it was originally built at the correct height.  When you stand on the platform, at Barmouth and Porthmadog there is a noticeable slope backwards from the platform edge so the front of the platform is at the correct modern height.  When you look at the platforms from the end, it is clear that there is a layer of stone at the bottom topped with a newer layer of brick.  When you look at photos from around the turn of the 19th century they have already begun to raise the height but not to where it is today.

New platforms would have been built to the latest correct height.

5 hours ago, brumtb said:

Hi Chris

I've been looking through my family records for a date of the photo.  it isn't dated but the boy with the first cart is, I believe, my great uncle Fred who was born in 1910. So I would imagine early post WW1, he doesn't look more than 8 or 9 to me.

The early milk industry merits more research, as you indicate, so many questions. Pasteurisation and Tuberculin testing had been developed before the turn of the century, I think, but milk was still being ladled out of churns into housewives jugs in the early 20th century.  Somewhere I have a leaflet produced by my Great grandfather when he modernised Blossomfield dairy in the late 1920s when a bottling plant was installed which describes how the raw milk was treated. I must find it.

Social history is fascinating and so much is lost already, more to come, I hope!

All the best Tony

Tony,

That is great, thank you.  If that is your Great Uncle, I hope it is a Saturday as he should have been in school until at least the age of 12, if not 14.  🙂

I think you would need a local dairy for processing the milk, but maybe it was only in the cities at that period.  I still remember being able to buy untreated milk when we went on holiday when I was first married.  I thought it had stopped, but I think you can still buy it from tested herds and it has to be sold locally.

I need a lady with a jug.  

Was it jugs for hotels and lodging houses?  More research needed.  (I always say that history is finding out today what everybody yesterday knew without thinking about it.)

12 minutes ago, brumtb said:

Great work on the milk cart Chris, I really must get one to include in my great grandfather's model fleet.

Before bottling was introduced in the mid 1920s I don't think much infrastrucure was needed. Milk was produced on nearby farms and the milkman delivered it to customers from the churn. Similarly cheese and butter was very much farm produced and probably sold by the farmers' wives at Traeth Mawr weekly market.

Herbert Birchley's Blossomfield Dairy in Birmingham, obviously milk had to travel a little further to get to city customers.  Herbert obtained his supplies from a farm near Bidford on Avon, south Warwickshire.

Tony

Tony,

Thank you, what a brilliant picture.  Do you know when it was taken?  I love those carts that the boys have.  Are they twelve? 

Was the diary just a place to store milk?  When I did a milk round the milk floats came from a dairy but it was really only a distribution centre.

Looking further into it last night I found that 'BetFred' in Barmouth had an address of 'The Old Dairy'.  Looking at Google and at the National Library of Scotland map of Victorian Barmouth this dairy post dates that so was not there in 1895.

I wonder how the milk from the estate in Bala was managed?  Sent in churns by the first train so arrived about 7:30.  Where did they keep it?  Did they have a cart big enough to carry it all around.  A churn was 17 gallons so how many families/hotels would it supply.  Did hotels just get a churn?  So much history and so little time.

What a day to catch up!  Glad that you are alright and I hope it all works out well.

I think I have shown this picture before.

These however were not the first vehicle I built on our 'Fun and Friendship' mornings.  I had the Dart Castings milk cart for Christmas.

It went together quite well, apart from the fact that I thought the churn should go on the floor, but it did not fit.  That was easily sorted as I cut a bit of the floor underneath it off.  It was slightly more difficult to fix the extra bit back on again, it needed a supporting strip of card underneath it.  From the other side.

The shafts are a bit soft, as are the lamps so I had to be careful.  Finally with wheels, and a donkey.  As it is 4mm, a dinky donky.

I assumed that Traeth Mawr would have a dairy, but the 1901 Barmouth census did not show any.  It showed two 'Milk Dealers', one from London, and one from LLanaber, but I do not think these are the same thing though.  Kelly's Directory of 1895 showed an Isaac Jones of High Street Barmouth as a Dairyman.  Maybe what I wanted.

I have this picture of a milk round, but the gentleman on the cart comes from a Caravan Park north of Llanaber, which I assume was a farm at the time, and the lad comes from another farm.  It appears to be in Marine Road Barmouth outside the station so they have a round there.  It is further confused by the fact that when I was looking for papers to put on my Kiosk, (remember that, it is not gone just waiting for a coat of paint), I found an advert from an estate in Bala, asking for someone to deliver milk for them in Barmouth.

So several possible milk suppliers, which is probably right for a town of about 2000, and including a large number of hotels and lodging houses.  I have not seen a picture of a dairy in Barmouth, although I could trawl my through all the pictures on the site again to see if I can see one.  There is no dairy in Barmouth today.

So where did they get their cheese from, or butter?  Should there be a dairy in Traeth Mawr?  Should I get another milk cart from an opposition supplier.  (Remember it is market day, just off the board, Colonel Viscount Deudraeth is leading a parade through the square and is now going down station road, a sheep farmer from Harlech is just about the shepherd his sheep in the opposite direction, it is already pandemonium.)

If you have been, thanks for looking.

14 minutes ago, Nick Gough said:

What thickness plastikard were you trying to cut Chris?

10 Thou.  I checked that all the lines were at least 0.5 mm apart.

23 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

Your problem rang a faint bell with me.  It may be something completely different but I recall that back in 2014 I had a problem with rounded corners when using Silhouette Studio v.3.  When I reverted to Studio v.2, the problem disappeared.  If you still have a copy of the older version, you might like to try it.

 

 

Thank you Mike,

I have just checked and I am using 4.4, I am not sure I have ever had version 2.  I should have expected trouble with the square corners, but I am surprised about the rounded ones.

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Hi Chris, that's annoying. Also odd. Normally I get better results with four separate lines, whereas the rectangle/rounded corners option makes for poorer results, not unlike those in your photo. But as we have come to know, every cutting situation is different with the Silhouette!

 

42 minutes ago, Nick Gough said:

Since starting to use my Silhouette I have also drawn up the rectangles with four lines because I had previously heard that this was a problem. I understand that the problem is that the cutter does one continuous cut for the whole shape, changing direction at the corners, so doesn't do this neatly.

 

I had thought that the rounded rectangle shape would avoid this and have just started trying to draw up toplight coach sides using them. I will have to rethink this in view of your unfortunate experience.

Mikkel and Nick,

Yes, I have a rounded corner rectangle at the top of the window, with a bottom half of a rectangle at the bottom.  I shall have to erase the line between the rounded corners and draw a new separate line, same for the sides and the bottom.  The rectangles at the bottom of the sheet are drawn with separate lines and are fine.

My thought is that I shall copy a window, I think the panels are alright, paste it elsewhere and do the surgery.  I shall then change the colour of all the windows that are the same as it to a previously unused colour and copy and paste the changed window onto them.  I can then chose the new colour and delete all the old window shapes.  Hopefully, this means I will not have to spend so much time aligning things.

It is annoying as I did not do my previous drawings this way, but this time I decided to use the automatic shapes, 'as it would save me time'!  I am not sure when I will get to do it though.

This is not a horsey update.

A few weeks ago when I was doing extra 'slates' for the station roof, I decided to cut some more coaches.

Can you see what it is yet?

I thought as I knew this worked I would cut another one, well you need two.

Now, the ladies of the Dolgelley Temperance Society, (kindly supplied by @corneliuslundie), have been on at me that they have hired a Third Class Saloon to get to TRaeth Mawr Market, and 'Where is it?'  So I cut that as well.

Not a pretty sight.  I looked at the drawing as previous cuts have worked.  I realised that I used the 'draw rectangle' function and the draw 'rounded corner rectangle' function, and it appears not to work.  The squares at the bottom are actually, four separate lines.  It means I shall have to edit my drawing.  I am working on a way to do this without having to redraw it all again.

This is even more annoying as when I was ill recently I finished the drawing of an E25, (well I need something to go on the bogies).  That will need redrawing as well.

Finally. after my visit to Kew I realised that my Slater's E37 will never reach Traeth Mawr as it is not a brake tri-composite, but it will be in the 10:02 train to Birkenhead, if it ever gets modelled.

If you have been, thanks for looking.

I agree with what others have said about posting, but the advantage of doing the way you are at the moment is as has been said it shows your thought processes, which may help others, and if you are halfway through something someone might say, 'No, that will not work!', or similar.  To post just when things are done, is neither interesting to those who read nor helpful to them or you.

I know posting takes time though.

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

On Saturday I picked up a copy of Great Western Railway Journal No. 69, Winter 2009. It has two articles, the longer one being a detailed description of Newtown station and the train workings in the 1950s and 1960s. Lots of information from staff who worked there or drove locos which worked through. Far too modern for you, of course, but fascinating.

One thing it did confirm is that the Down platform shelter at that time had glazing in the openings in the front which are now just openings. Does this mean that you have to alter your shelter or had you already picked that up?

Jonathan

Thank you Jonathan,

I had to go and check, but yes, I did put glazing in my Down platform shelter windows.  

Maybe I should think of buying that journal.

Life has been a trifle busy recently, (yes making lots of deserts 🙂), and I have been tangled up in point wire so actual modelling has been a little scarce.  I did however manage to get to Kew National Archive last Wednesday, by taking my wife to work at lunch time, and picking her up on the way back as she might not have been able to park where she works.  I finally, finally got to view Rail 938/1, 'Great Western Railway: through coach programmes bank holidays and summer division notices, 1892- 1898'  At the start of Covid I emailed them and asked how many pages from this were titled, 'Northern Expresses', and got the reply, 'None'.  When I finally managed to get there, I found that they were right, the relevant pages were titled, 'Northern Trains'.  (Sigh).  I thought as they were summer notes I would photograph any relevant pages from 1894 and 1895 summers.  Having done July and August 1894 I turned the page and found, 'Through Coaches from October 1894 until further notice'.  (Hooray!) 

Bradshaws for that period has the train to catch for Barmouth Traeth Mawr as the 9: 50 am, but I could never understand that as any through coach would have been waiting at Ruabon for about an hour, whereas if it was attached to the 10:02 am it would be about five minutes.  The through coach pages were of course highly informative, as the 9:50 am had a through coach, a brake Tri Composite, for Aberystwyth, and written in red ink, on the list for the 10:02 Brk Tri Comp Barmouth.  Success!  There are two coaches crossed out on that train for Trowbridge, and dated 18/2/95, so it was in use on 21/3/95, Mr Price's Groundhog day.  (I assume that prior to this coach you had to get the Aberystwyth coach and change at Dovey Junction.)

I have had through data from a document sent me by @Donw which is for a later year, and has through coaches to Pwllheli.  These do not appear on these sheets, so I have removed them from my timetable, and it means less coaches to build.  (It also casts doubts on the other through coaches, but they shall remain unless I get evidence to the opposite, and why not?)

I did love looking at this document as it was obviously a working document as it was covered in red ink.

Next, update, horse drawn vehicles, probably.

If you have been, thanks for looking.

This appears to be a Tattoo class type loco, the standard gauge version of Peter Sam , er, I mean, Sir Andrew, no sorry, Edward Thomas.  The 1921 build makes it a bit late for CA, but one will appear eventually, if it ever gets built in 1895 on the Twll Du railway.

1 hour ago, Schooner said:

Are Achingham goods trains made up off-scene to the North, at BM or CA?

 

If not the latter, is CA goods traffic run as a portion or as a separate train?

 

If combined, there good be quite a nice, visually distinct, way of running some really long trains if desired. Cassette-max goods trains from the coast/rest of the world (!) meet cassette-max goods trains from the AC/rest of the country at BM. Combine at BM for the run from BM to CA. Split at CA for local yard and forwarding to AM.

 

Can't think the reason/excuse for such a train would come up very often but when it did you'd be sure to notice it!

 

PS. Sorry @ChrisN, couldn't follow that. Would you mind explaining once again for we hard of thinking types?

James said that the way he wanted to run the station was the horse, and the track plan was the cart.

If the railway was being sensible, and they were not always so, then they would arrange for a branch passenger train to arrive before the main line train, and then leave after that.  This is so that passengers for the main line train off the branch, get there in time, and passengers off the main line for the branch do not have to wait around.  (The classic mis-connection is the train from Twickenham which arrives at Teddington as the Reading train pulls out.  It is so close in time if you are on the Teddington train, you see the Reading train leaving.)

If there are two platform faces then the trains can be there at the same time, and passengers will know, Platform 1 for main, platform 2 for branch.  If there is one platform face then if the branch train arrives before the  main, as it hopefully would do, then the train will need to be moved to allow the main line train in.  After the main line train has left, it would have to be brought back to collect passengers before leaving.  This leaves the possibility of passengers running for a train and getting on the wrong one.

This means that the two platform faces achieve what is required, and that there is not a necessity for the outer crossover.

It would seem reasonable to me that the company would want to have one platform for the main line, and one for the branch, that is a perfectly reasonable horse, and the track plan would, work towards that, the limit being the actual site where the station was built.  I assume that there might be a branch train in the station, just before and after a main line train, so the use of a single platform for both would not really work.

Just a quick update to show how my tiles slates actually look.

Almost flat, but with a slight raised bit.

Magpies, nasty vicious animals.  They used to attack our tom cat, He was a big cat and able to defend himself, so it was always a draw, but I think they just enjoyed it.  He did not.

However, the other day when I was out for a walk with my wife in the local park, there were two magpies on the path and a rat ran out of the bushes to attack them.  They immediately turned and chased it back, then went after it.  'Good for them', I thought, 'more power to your elbow'.  ( I know they do not actually have elbows, but you know what I mean.)

Unfortunately these are too late and too far away for me.  If you moved into LC&DR territory, or had that old LB&SCR horse box................... 🙂

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

Well, the GWR Fruit van with DC 3 vacuum fitted brake gear is complete except for weathering. I had to make some compromises with the rodding to allow for the S&W couplings but they don't show. The return to has to be Worcester as that is the only likely destination on the transfer sheet. The number was chosen so that the condition was correct for 1912.

 

I have also been building a Slaters Gloucester coal wagon for the local coal merchant. A good way to use up the J and Z on the transfer sheet. And no, I am not going to put the town on the side. Nantcwmdu uses just too many letter Ns.

 

 

The "tin tab" mentioned previously is nearly complete, though I still need to finish painting the gutters, downpipes and door. "Research" (ie asking some questions) indicates that it would most likely have been a Congregational chapel, so it will be Welsh language Congregational. It needs notices on the very small noticeboard beside the front door.

 

As it happens my son recently gave me  a low relief chapel. It is brick rather than stone, but then so are some in this area. It has so far only had a coat of brown paint to blend the bright red plastic brickwork making up the extended sides with the front facade. It has had the name of the chapel added in the circular opening above the door, which I gather was originally intended as a window. SOAR was the shortest I could think of. This one will be Welsh Presbyterian (English language). My silly thought is to have recordings of hymns in the appropriate languages playing to a speaker underneath the board.

 

I have managed to sort out the brake gear of 1196 and have also added lamp irons and touched up the paintwork.

 

And at last I have started on the scenic work on the "country" board. I decided that I wanted a steam appearing out from under the road which runs along the back, flowing into a pond and then down some rapids to disappear under the two railway lines. BUT of course once again my lack of planning ahead has caused problems. So I am now in the process of hacking at the girders which (of course!) run under the main line so that I can insert a bridge under the line. Here is the state of things so far. A lot still to do, even after all the foamboard substrate for the scenery is in place.

 

 

You can see where I have cut back the ply supporting the track to allow for the bridge girders.

One day the mock-up terraces will be replaced by proper models but don't hold your breath.

Jonathan

Jonathan,

Nice modelling as ever.  Your downpipes seem to fit, whereas mine do not seem to, so I am waiting until I get, either some different ones, or inspiration as to what to use instead.

I do like your other chapel, but it is not as close to the one(s) I might build.  (I shall probably take a redundant one and bring it back into use,)

Notices.  I should have thought more about them when I was doing my newspaper headlines, and front pages, but perhaps I shall have to do them with the timetables, to put on the wall of the station building, so as not to use an inch on the top of some A4.  The Tin Tab notice board is not very big, so it may just get, Sunday 11am, Always open for prayer.

Did you put the name on, if so what did you use?

There seems so much space around.  It is all sky and no buildings.  Look forward to more posts.

10 hours ago, Schooner said:

and/or

 

Already delightful.

So what is the locomotive?  It looks like a Sharp Stewart 0-6-0, a Queen class on the Cambrian.  (A couple went to the LD&CR as well.)

7 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

First off these are marvellous photos, particularly the first, colourised, one; what a train! A very modellable 5-coach train of 6-wheelers hauled by - judging from what looks like a Sharps 4-wheel tender - a Little Passenger 2-4-0.

 

Second, the garden in the first photograph - dated with what accuracy I could not say as 1904 - looks to me to be for produce, an allotment type garden on railway property and doubtless for the staff. 

 

I love the row of tumbril carts lined up for luggage.

 

The second, black and white, picture - dated with what accuracy I could not say as 1906 - shows the allotment garden grubbed up and the wall pierced in two places to form in and out gates. So we now have a carriage drop-off road to the platform with the shelter. I do not think we feature in and out gates enough in period modelling, but they would have been useful wherever turning a horse-drawn carriage was inconvenient. Be that as it may, two little greenswards are left by the carriage drive, and these appear newly planted with saplings and with incomplete fencing, with just the posts installed.

 

Later in this series of pictures is another, also stated as 1906, in which the wall around the allotment garden remains intact Link}. This is captioned for its view of the police station, which appears, from a picture of the date stone also in the series, to date from 1906 (Link). Anyway, for at least some period the 1906 police station and the allotment garden seem to have existed at the same time.  

 

 

James,

Yes the images are amazing.  Hugh Roberts has catalogued a whole community, and it is very interesting to see how it has changed over time.  The train is typical and has a 5 compartment third,  two which appear to have seven compartments but the Cambrian  only had 6 compartment six wheelers,a full brake, and I am not sure what the other is without looking it up, probably a luggage composite.  They have gas tops so either they are 'modrrn stock', 1894-1895 or later, or the artist got it wrong.

After I posted the two pictures I wondered whether the two way entrance was new, as the shrubs are quite small, and probably new.  There is another of the same view later that shows the shrubs much bigger.  On the picture you posted I convinced myself that the cart was backed into one of the openings, but of course it is not.  THe building which is in front of that is the Down Shelter, although the sign on it appears to say 'Refreshment Room'.  So there is something I have never seen modelled, an allotment directly behind a station building.  Carriages and tumbrils could have gone in there to pick up passengers as tickets would have been checked at, I think, Barmouth Junction.

Just to prove how trustworthy postcards are, in the postcard earlier, there is a garden behind the down platform shelter.  That is interesting I thought so I had a look through some more photos, and found this one.  A small garden, probably a municipal one not a house garden.

What is interesting is the line of carts.  Tumbrils?  They appear to be there to take passengers luggage away.  The hotels are not very far, and perhaps it is luggage that has been forwarded.  These carts also appear in photographs as well, so they are actually there.  I am getting a collection of horse drawn vehicles, all so far just made up from kits and not modified, and perhaps I will need a few more.