Brassey

Possible candidates to have appeared on the Shrewsbury to Hereford GWR/LNWR joint line in 1912

Inside a ruling pen...

364 Henry Pease, 864 Pilot, 869 Llewellyn, 512 Lazonby, 861 Amazon, 1517 Princess Helena, 1677 Badajos, 1685 Gladiator, 2185 Alma

I’ve had bespoke carriage sides successfully etched by Worsley Works so I think that’s your best option. No connection etc.

This might prove quite interesting...I wonder if something similar exists at the LNWR Society Study Centre. 56 invoices is less than 2 deliveries a day which gives a rough idea of the volume

Very nice indeed. Any chance of some colour pics?

From the Railway Magazine November 1960: "For many years the wagons for Knights Hill have been collected from Lillie Bridge Sidings on the West London Extension Railway. (It is probable that this arrangement goes back to L.B.S.C.R. days as that company's Appendix for 1922 gives instructions for the working of the yard by " Brighton " locomotives.) The " foreign " depot at Peckham Rye, opened in 1891, was of unusual interest, because it represented an unlikely partnership of the L.N.W. and Midland companies. At this point, the L.B.S.C.R. is on a viaduct, and arrival and departure roads each accommodating 20 wagons were provided. at viaduct level. Access at the station end was controlled by Pcckham Road " A " Box, and at the Queens Road end by a ground frame. It would have been quite possible to follow the pattern of the Midland yards of the 1870s, and to have provided coal drops from viaduct level, but instead a turntable was used to place wagons on a hoist which lowered them to ground level. This was worked hydraulically, the water pressure of 750 lb. per sq. in. being generated by a steam engine. The last boiler to be provided was of the locomotive type. and was overhauled at Crewe before being sent to Peckham in 1908. About 1925, the steam engine was replaced by an electric motor. Down in the yard, there were five more turntables and four sidings to accommodate 73 wagons. Peckham Rye handled coal only…As mentioned above, the coal from the L.N.W.R. was worked by the daily train from Lillie Bridge. The Midland coal was collected from Battersea, which it reached either via the Metropolitan Widened Lines or via Kew and Barnes. "

Having to build my locos in P4 helps to concentrate the mind. Analysis of the working timetable shows that approx 90 trains passed through the station I am building on a week day. So a max of 45 loco would cover all uses though some made the trip more than once so I am planning to build fewer. I acquired a DCC system a couple of years ago and all locos thus far are chipped but DC enabled. I have a couple of sound chips but have come to the conclusion that here is little point in sound on an express that does not stop; for me the benefit of sound is in the starting and stopping. For the record you don't need to programme the sound decoder to do this - it does it straight out the box. So my investment in sound decoders will be limited.

C = crippled?

Given the LNWR covered both Manchester and Liverpool it would not be surprising that it sent wagons to another major City such as Bristol. The GWR also had a presence in Manchester and Crewe so the wagons may well have come down on GWR goods trains. Having looked at the North to West timetables, I can see no LNWR named goods trains destined for Bristol but some GWR for example: 8.25 p.m. G.W. Manchester & Bristol Vacuum Goods. (This train also carried the station trucks from Chester and Shrewsbury to Bristol). The Central Wales line ran to Swansea. The LNWR also ran throughout South Wales to Newport and Merthyr via Abergavenny Junction so goods may well have been sent to Bristol too from those locations; transferred to GWR trains at Pontypool Road.

In pre-grouping times A lot of goods trains missed the camera because they ran at night particularly fast through trains. The vacuum fitted stock would have been almost exclusively from the named company such as the LNWR and would have avoided the transship shed being fully laden at source.

Why not make a brass footplate. even without the damage, I would do that on a white metal kit unless it had a wavy footplate and valance.

London Road standard hornblocks are lost wax castings not etches so these are probably radial trucks. I will have one somewhere in a kit and will look it out sometime.

I reused the original M&L (now Gibson) frames when I made my short wheelbase 517 no 835 and that works fine. IIRC when building the High Level chassis compensated, the beams rest on the rear axle too so all of that will need shortening too. In doing that you will be shortening the beams and putting more weight on the carrying axle which could affect the balance. I would not see much point in getting the High Level chassis and not building it compensated as that is a major benefit of the chassis. if you look at my 835 build, I put beams in that so every wheel can move too and possibly due to the weight, it is one of my best runners. So on balance, i think the Gibson frames should suffice.

I reused the original M&L (now Gibson) frames

I am sure the joints between my P4 baseboards have moved over the years and/or as the wood has dried and the layout has been moved around the house. The levels may not be the same meaning slight variances in the heights between boards since they were built. However, stock still negotiates the joins with no problems; everything being compensated and some sprung. I did use the old dodge of soldering the rail to brass screws at the joins firstly to make them more robust but also to give me the option to realign if required. So far I've not found that necessary.

my track is on a transition curve which at the tightest is 1.5m. The baseboard edge is about 10cm in from that giving a radius of 1.4m I’d planned to make this a roundy with 1m curves so 0.9m inner radius would be possibly required

I cribed my woodwork from Gordon S’s ET thread on here. He may well have built some to tighter radii. Have a look how he does it.

I agree. I built my first kit in 00 converted it immediately to EM and then went straight to P4 and have never looked back and I am as ham-fisted as the best. The challenges of building a prototypical model are not just about wheel standards but the overall look including the colours; painting and lining and transfers etc. too In my opinion 00 track on "scale" sleepers (9ft pre-grouping) would look completely wrong.

Yes as I said I am not a novice on eBay. They would not have known my maximum bid. But whatever they bid, it is more than the thing is worth as you can buy it online now for £3.

Seems to be missing the point or am I in the minority of 1 as per usual. I am not a novice having been on eBay for 17 years. Over those years it has become more of a marketplace than an auction with far more buy-it-now items which I do for most commodities. I rarely bid for things nowadays. The item in question had a starting bid of £3.00 and went for £3.20. £3 is the price of the item on retailers websites so was a fair price. We are all fellow modellers bidding on these items; it is the petty last minute sniping that I object to. If someone wanted to pay over the odds for this item, then why not put a bid in earlier and give me a chance to respond which I probably would no have and left them to it. They probably think they were really clever outbidding me by 20p but the item was described as Nickel Silver but all the others I have bought direct from the manufacturer were brass so the are in for some disappointment.

It doesn’t say much for the modelling fraternity. I spot something I need and hard to get hold of, not necessarily at a bargain price, but a reasonable one and I put a bid down early. Then someone comes along and snipes me for 20p at the last minute. Not very gentlemanly...

I used finally a laminate of 2 layers of 6mm ply on the curved sides of my boards. I thought one layer was too thin when I first built it so added a second layer outside. They are screwed to 44mm x 44mm blocks which pulled them into shape.

GWR 517 No. 1425, still a work in progress. I must finish some LNWR locos:

Yes; I just need to finish some more wagons! Edit PS: not to mention the missing dummy chairs on all the track!