Brassey

The Standard Goods is stalled whilst awaiting the restart of High Level to supply a gearbox. The standard 1.5mm bore RoadRunner should be an OK fit with a 1220 motor but I don't have one at the mo. In the meantime the Beyer Goods has progressed. I finally bit the bullett and the wheels were removed and the axles trimmed down by about 1/2 mm. I also repositioned the compensation beams to raise the running plate height and give more movement to the hornblox. It now clears the platforms and loading dock, just! Smokebox door fitted. The tenders are well on their way too: Test run:

As per the OP, Brassmasters sell a 2500 gal tender which is correct for the earlier DG

The CoT tender was 3000 gall whereas the earlier Dean Goods ran with 2500. However some RTR Dean Goods were coupled with 3000 gal tenders so, for example, the High Level Dean tender chassis is for the 3000 gal version.

Does the boiler have etched boiler bands? If so you should protect them with some paper from being squashed when rolling

I have successfully rolled a number of boilers, both kit and scratch, with my GW roller bars without annealing. I followed the practice of Geoff Holt as per his series of books on loco construction published by Wild Swan.

This is the reverse. Item is listed on ebay where I spotted it. Obviously the LNWR were into recycling

And back again...

Derek your pre-grouping Midland modelling is superb too and some of the best I've seen. It has been inspirational to me as has London Road. Peter

Received wisdom is to use a ruling pen angled almost flat against the panel. Easier to do than explain. I, and a number of others, use gloss yellow Humbrol 69 mixed with Humbrol 7 cream (recently I think I used Humbrol 9 Tan in the mix)

And they had a gold line surrounding them

Mikkel I’ve only ever seen one and it’s this one I bought off eBay. I’ve had it a few years and do seem to recall seeing it on a list somewhere. I’ve not seen it since so it could be withdrawn. I think it’s the only complete kit ShireScenes did. It is listed on the GWR.org.uk website! http://www.gwr.org.uk/kits4coacha.html

Continuing the construction of stock for my pre-grouping layout, focus has turned to coaching stock as I need something for the locos to pull. In the Summer of 1912, apart from the odd postal, parcel or fish van, the vehicles in the North to West expresses were all 8 wheel. The local trains that shuttled up and down, between Hereford and Shrewsbury and some of the intermediate junctions such as Craven Arms, were mainly 6 wheel trains. But the longer distance local services were 8 wheel non-corridor stock. There was a daily LNWR through carriage from Cardiff to Newcastle (and back) that was not attached to an express and returned on the down York mail. Must have been a tedious trip if you went all the way. There were only 6 GWR brake vans in the daily express roster of over 20 trains. But more were employed in the locals. So I need a few. I am currently trying to concentrate on building the local trains two of which will have an 8 wheel brake van. First on the list is a ShireScenes K15/16 which I will build as a non-corridor K16 which can also double up on the expresses. Currently under construction, from top: E17 compo (IKB Kit), K16 (ShireScenes), C4 all third (ancient Mallard kit): Bending over using bending bars: Forming tumblehome using a knife handle and a ruler: Box formed, underframe well underway and guards duckets added: I have deviated from the kit in that I am using Brassmaster torsion sprung 8' 6" bogies hence the 8BA screws. I'll also be using castings from the spares box. Everything, including the axleboxes, is on the etch for this kit. Strangely this ShireScenes kit did not make any provision for internal dividers so I have soldered a couple in to strengthen the whole as I thought handling may distort it otherwise. The E17 and C4 are on hold whilst I sort the bogies.

This close up of a brake van and horse box at Exeter in 1914 has answered some queries for me. The first was whether on the long-distance through trains, the corridor connections were made and remade every time the train was shunted and remarshalled. Well this proves they were maintained. The other is, I had the impression that the corridors were always on the same side of the train. This proves they weren't as the two LNWR coaches are orientated differently. It's odd that a GW brake van is connected to two LNWR carriages; so you travelled in an LNWR vehicle but your luggage went in a GW one. I guess this is because a GW guard is needed for that part of the journey. The other issue for me is that in my 1912 marshalling programmes, there are only 6 GW brake vans used per day on the North to West expresses. In modelling terms that's just 3 x 8 wheel brake vans to cover all the marshalling as they went down and came back up again. For 1912 in the diagrams, none of these are shown as corridor. By 1914 things had obviously changed. Why is this of relevance? Well I am currently building a ShireScenes K15/16 brake van. This can be built with corridor connections or without. The K16 was built with dummy ends for possible conversion (page 170 of Russell) so I am building it as such. (also in Crimson Lake as above)

I've used Mainly Trains underframes combined with the Brassmasters cleminson unit to produce 6 wheelers from Ratio bodies. The Mainly Trains uframe was designed for the Ratio kits and includes Buffer beams, cast springs and axleboxes (only 4), solebars. I've found the footboards to be too wide for my needs as they can foul the platform but that's easily solved with some tin snips in my case. The Mainly Trains range, designed by Iain Rice is now with Wizard/51L. No connection etc.

I see that the errant door has been bricked in and a post box added where it would have been.

That's highly likely. After Exeter who knows?

On page 101 of A Great Western Gallery there is a pic of signwriters at work in Swindon. 2 completed signs read "TORBAY EXPRESS" and "BRISTOL, SHREWSBURY & MANCHESTER (LONDON ROAD)". What the 3 signwriters are working on reads: "SWANSEA, CxxxxxxxEWxxxxxBRISTOL, EXExxxx". The last word is presumably Exeter, there is space on the board for one or two more. Don't know if this helps at all. Not all the coaches on the North to West Expresses ran to Plymouth. Some ran to Penzance and some to Kingswear. I have pics of LNWR stock at Penzance.

Not always true. I intend to run my layout to time and as there were on average less than 4 trains an hour I think I can cope with the fiddle yard demands. Others have clocks on display such as the awesome Southwark Bridge, also set in 1912 and based on traffic through Waterloo, This video is from the September 2020 virtual Scalefourm. This has more trains per hour and 3 clocks Southwark Bridge Scaleforum 2020 Part 2 - YouTube

On re-reading the appendix I was reminded that guards had to keep journals and record every train. That included foreign wagons both loaded and empty. If such a journal still exists then that would be a precise record of what actually happened.

Thanks for that and this may be true of other lines but I have no knowledge of them. However, the WTT of the Joint Line is quite specific in the notes for such goods trains as to which trains (every train was numbered) they are to shunt out of the way of and that was built into the timings. They were also allowed considerable time at some of the larger stations for work. For example the GW down local goods was allowed an hour and ten minutes at Leominster. This was a main line though, far from busy, they could not hold up traffic. So the instructions stated that if the work at a station would delay the train on its progress, for example, they should not marshall the stock but do that at a later station or they should leave it for a following train. Clearly local goods had to move out of the way of passenger expresses but some goods trains had priority too. Last night I managed to get to the end of the WTT and started on the appendix to the WTT (I only have a copy of the year 1917 and a much later LMS reprint) which runs to about 300 pages! I discovered that some up LNWR goods trains from Abergavenny Junction could run out of course and drop off wagons at Berrington & Eye and Woofferton but they had to inform various yard masters and signalmen in advance. There was a certain amount of sugar beet traffic from B&E for which a farmer would have to order a wagon in advance. If that was an LNWR wagon then I guess it would have to have come from Abergavenny. I had assumed that such wagons would have been left at Hereford for the local to drop off. So that does improve the operational possibilities a bit.

That I do not know but possibly. Both these vehicles were used to carry small consignments that had been transferred (transhipped) in large depots. The most famous was the LNWR tranship shed at Crewe

Whilst on the subject of traffic, I've mentioned that there were about 90 trains a day timetabled, that's less than 4 an hour. If you eliminate the conditional goods trains, it’s down to 80. The traffic at Berrington & Eye was not exactly intensive. During daylight hours there was roughly one stopping passenger train an hour, 2 if you were lucky - one in each direction. The first of the day was the 06:47 but that only took you as far as one station, Woofferton, from where the train worked the Tenbury branch all day returning to Leominster at 21:05 but not stopping at Berrington & Eye on its return journey. The last down train to stop was at 21:08 almost two hours after the previous at 19:23 Stopping goods trains were far less. There were 4 local goods. A quirk of the timetable had the Down L&NWR local goods arriving within 14 minutes of the Up departing. One arrived at Woofferton as the other was leaving at 12:05. The Down GWR local goods left Shrewsbury at 07:20 and arrived at its final destination Hereford just after 5pm. That’s a ten hour stint. The purpose of all this was to establish how many locos I would need to run the local goods services. I had thought that rather work a straight 10 hour shift, the crews may have swapped over halfway and the locos may have been exchanged. However that was not the case. At no point were the local goods at the same station at the same time. The GWR local goods crossed in open country around 12pm and the LNWR just missed each other at Woofferton as stated. So what happened to the crew of the GWR down local goods when they got to Hereford late afternoon; there were no other goods services leaving to return to Shrewsbury so they may have serviced the loco and returned with a local passenger but that would have made a very long day. So maybe they went into digs overnight and returned the next day. The upshot is that I will need 4 locos to run the local goods and possibly it wasn’t the same loco everyday. I then took the opportunity to look at the local passenger schedule. The carriage marshalling programme shows the format of each train and which service it returned on. Some but not all shuttled back and forth all day. I have previously mentioned that I would need around 30 locos to run a full timetable. With 80 trains that’s less than 3 trains per loco. It is somewhat disheartening to have spent many hours building a loco that may only end up pulling one or two trains but that’s how it worked. To cut a long story short, my calculations on the local passenger programme showed that I have about the right amount of locos earmarked in the todo pile to run the services with a couple of spares. That’s 23 trains - 11 Up - 12 Down. Some did not stop at Berrington & Eye. For the local carriage stock, the vast majority were GWR composites. On the Express trains, the most prolific of vehicles were the GWR brake composites both corridor and non-corridor. If only the building was as easy as the research.

IIRC there was a severe drought in 1911

I have supplied information in that direction previously though one being a club layout I am led to believe that the members wish to run their stock whether appropriate or not. Bucks Hill is another that springs to mind which, whilst superb, also has a lot of guest appearances. Too much of a purist, I am probably quite rare in my adherence to a strict time frame though Martin Finney's Semley is also set in 1912 (July). I did point out to him once at Scaleforum that August 1912 was and still is the wettest, coldest and dullest August on record so would need to be modelled in the rain.

Yes it is the LNWR/GWR Joint Line. There were 4 local goods, one up and one down for each of the two companies. A quirk of the timetable had the Down L&NWR local goods arriving within 14 minutes of the Up departing Berrington & Eye. One arrived at Woofferton, he next station, as the other was leaving at 12:05. The Down LNWR was CR (call as required) at Berrington and Eye. So B&E only got 3 stopping goods trains a day. Only the GWR trains were allowed enough in the time table to shunt. The Down GWR local goods left Shrewsbury at 07:20 and was not scheduled to arrive at Hereford until gone 5pm almost 10 hours later. That's an average of 5mph. There was a lot of shunting out of the way for other trains on route but not all the local goods stopped at every station in every direction. In fact the LNWR Up local goods ran as Express from Craven Arms to Shrewsbury only stopping at Church Stretton and missing all intermediate stations. On checking, the requirement to pick up foreign wagons was only in the notes for the GWR Up service. For interest, in the Joint timetable notes, ST (station truck) is used on the GWR services whereas Tranship is used on the LNWR. There were also faster goods services that only stopped at the larger stations and some traffic destined for the branches such as the Tenbury branch goods. This ran in a triangle between Stourbridge Junction, Ludlow and Hereford and another train on the opposite circuit. There were also long-distance express goods services such as Manchester to South Wales. The majority of trains on the line in 1912 were goods.