Brassey

http://www.lnwrs.org.uk/Mystery/index.php?display_large_photo_desktop=233 Apparently this is on the GER with the two LNWR carriages damaged.

Well the High Level RoadRunner and Mashima 1224 fit. This is the short wheelbase version 517 with inside bearings to the trailing axle.

In July 1909 the GWR painted County Tank 2225 Crimson Lake "like Midland Railway engines but a little lighter" RCTS. The was 3 years before the colour was supposedly adopted for coaching stock in 1912.

Well you might as well take some shots of the Station building too which was extended by digging out another storey below the existing building. This is why you have to go up to the platforms.

Here is the 517 boiler assembly complete with round top firebox. The design of this owes much to Guy Williams' article on building a 517 in MRJ a long while ago. Ignore the jaunty angle of the motor cutout, this will be hidden by the tank sides. It is posed on the footplate and chassis for number 835. There is method in this; it is so that I can assess how to fit a motor and High Level gearbox into that version which is using anything I can salvage from an old M&L 517 including the chassis. More on that later. There now follows an extensive period of testing for clearances etc. on the layout. This is a real chicken and egg situation as, in order to test stock you need a layout and in order to test a layout, you need stock. Progress on the layout has ground to a halt whilst I build stock. I have now gone back to bug fixing track. Pic shows one of the Dean Goods currently under test.

IIRC in my experience as a fare paying passenger, you can't go beyond the end of the platforms where most of them are located. No idea of access outside the station area. However, I have seen groups being shown around whilst I've been there so you may be able to get permission.

I guess I should really start this thread at the very beginning, a very good place to start as the song goes. But where is the beginning. Well the first train through Berrington & Eye (the station I am building) in the Summer of 1912 was the 23:40 Ludlow to Hereford GWR Goods train passing Berrington & Eye just after midnight. According to the Great Western working time table this was a “Stone Train”; pretty atypical and it arrived at Ludlow from Hereford less than an hour earlier so not necessarily the first train of the day but the last of the previous. I have made a start on this train as the stone would have been from Clee Hill (well I’ve bought a wagon kit). Thereafter followed a procession of mail trains and express freights all with specialist vehicles that would be again quite atypical and require the building of vehicles of limited use at this stage.. So the decision was to start with the first passenger train of the day which was the Leominster to Woofferton GWR circuit train which stopped at 06:47. It then proceeded to Woofferton from whence it worked the Tenbury and Bewdley line until it returned at 20:59 terminating at Leominster at 21:05. So that’s the beginning and where this thread is going back to. Ludlow, Leominster, Kidderminster all had a number of 517’s tanks on shed in 1912 for this kind of local passenger work and, as these are amongst my favourite Great Western locos along with the Dean Goods, it was the excuse I needed to build a few. The train also gives me the opportunity to build a rake of GWR 4 wheelers as these seem to make up the majority of stock used on that branch. For the 517 I had hoarded away a vintage Mallard kit to use along with an M&L (now Gibson) whitemetal version too I’d built from equally as long ago. However, I think it was Miss P of this Parish who pointed out that the Mallard kit was too wide and only suitable for a much later version. The M&L version suffers from similar width problems. Undeterred, I set about narrowing the Mallard footplate and the side tanks and shortening the length. Again I have cheated as I have a Malcolm Mitchell 517 kit to use as a template. As stated earlier above, I had also acquired some spare Mallard etches from way back and these included some from the 517 along with the DG and a Duke! So these spare etches will be used as a basis to relaunch the M&L 517. So that will make 3 x 517’s in total including the Mitchell version I am building. This first one will be the early enclosed cab version with the “armchair” bunker and longer wheelbase with outside axle boxes. Here is the current state of play. It features a modified High Level 14xx chassis and an old Sagami motor, which just fits, rescued from the now partly dismantled M&L model. And it all seems to come together. I've tightened up the crankpin nut since.

Thanks Mikkel. I did not know that Nucast did one so I will look out for that. And Duncan yes PeterK's was the only etched brass one with the River class that I know of. I have an old Jidenco Armstrong Goods for which I have pinched the 2500 gal Dean tender for this Dean Goods. The Broad Gauge Rover class has an older type of sandwich frame tender which I am planning convert and use on the Armstrong and should look like this: And here's one behind a Dean Goods and I am tempted: http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrls817.htm

Quite likely, though the source of this is long lost as it was in a plain plastic bag. It was the only one I could find that I could just plonk on for purpose of the photo without drilling a hole. The safety valve is PeterK. I've been collecting this stuff for a while!

Boilerbands, washout plugs and handrail knobs added. Boiler yet to be secured as well as the fittings. Roof, handrail and sandboxes next. Plus a lot of cleaning up...

"There were two entrances to the station from the entrance side, one possibly for first class passengers and the other for the peasantry! At least, that is my interpretation." Excellent layout and very inspiring. For the station I am building, the land was originally acquired from the local gentry who had their own waiting room within the station building as part of the deal. No other facilities were provided and I guess that when railways first started (mine was built in the 1860's too) that it was ever conceived the peasantry would use them. A separate booking hall with waiting rooms was added on later. The house is now in private use and I have this from the owner. The occupiers of Berrington Hall's exclusive waiting room is now his sitting room.

Mikkel, be aware that on all the photos of the earlier DGs that Craig posted on your thread here, there are only 3 washout plugs per side on the firebox. On the Finney kit with a later S4 boilers there were another 2 lower down on the firebox and another 2 per side on top of the boiler.

London Road Models produce various LNWR 6 wheel Cleminson chassis that would be correct for this vehicle depending on wheelbase. IIRC these limited edition Mallard kits came without castings, I have at least 2 in my unmade kit pile.

In 1912 the 1.25am from Crewe to Bristol carried a Fish Van from Aberdeen to Bristol (and also a Fish Truck from Hull to Bristol). This is probably the same Fish Van that left Aberdeen at 2pm bound for Crewe from where it went down the joint line. Source: LNWR Marshalling Circular Jul - Sep 1912. I do not have the GWR equivalent to see where it went from Bristol but maybe there was a big fish market there at the time.

I thought that but the ends are different. The CCT has opening end doors whereas in the OP you can just see the louvres in the fixed ends making it the fish van http://lnwrs.zenfolio.com/p909960545/h4867611A#h67200d93 Edit to add link

This looks like a D107 6 wheel Fish Van. Mallard issued these as a limited edition I think. In LNWR/WCJS days it would have been all brown with yellow lining. Pre WW1, once a day such fish trucks left Aberdeen bound for the North to West line running via Shrewsbury to Bristol and one could well have gone further onwards on the GWR network. I have no knowledge of the LMS period

Unfortunately my Mac won't play the video file. I have one of these to build with the same gearbox configuration. Which motor is that and does the gearbox rest on the compensation pivot beam please?

Here's one I made earlier. In common with a number of etched kits, on the Mallard kit the splashers bend up from the lower footplate. They may not be in precisely the correct position but as my P4 wheels clear them I was not going to the effort of moving them. It's also narrow enough for the narrow footplate version of the Dean Goods. Jumping about a bit but readers might find this interesting, this shows how the Martin Finney footplate overlay etch fits on the Mallard lower etch with minimal fettling. It also shows how little room there is to get a motor in the MF version (the gap is just over 12mm and was designed to fit a Portescap). This shows how I plan to get at least two locos out of the Finney DG kit, this one being a wide footplate with B4 boiler number 2524. So back to the round top S4 , here are the front splashers fitted, complete with cutout. Beginning to come together.

Coach, I guess it is the sound that makes the stopping and starting of trains so realistic and disciplined; it must require superb driving to achieve that. That alone would be sufficient for me without anymore facilities at the station. However, I do keep looking at the big bare piece of baseboard in front and wondering...

This cruel closeup illustrates why the boiler wrapper cutout had to be filled as it did not line up with the splasher top. To be fair to the Mallard kit, I acquired a number of etches many moons ago and don't know whether these were test etches or rejects so they may not be representative of the full kit. Below is what remains of one of them. When you are kit mingling including Finney in this case and cobbling together parts from various other sources including scratch, then there are bound to be times when the fit is less than perfect. I acquired these etches to test out kit building before I let myself loose on more expensive options such as the LRM locos or Malcolm Mitchell 517; more of which later.

Fantastic videos Coach so full of atmosphere both visual and audio. I can see how this would never had worked for you in 7mm. Inspirational.

Darwinian, this is splendid and shows what can be achieved from the kit and especially as your first build. Shame it does not get much use. I have a couple of the belpaire versions on the go too. One, a really early version (2306) with the narrow footplate and the other a much later one (2524) with fluted rods. These use left overs from the Finney kit which I incidentally intend to build as another round top: 2439 received an S4 boiler in July 1912 which gives me an excuse to produce it in just outshopped condition with the post 1908 livery.

Mikkel, herewith boiler assembly. The Mallard smokebox wrapper has a cutout which I have filled with some scrap from the etch as it is not prototypical and they are in the wrong position for my purposes. Doesn't look too pretty but will be hidden mainly by the sand boxes. I will use cut-outs on the splasher tops (as per Finney) mainly because I need them to butt up against the smoke box and the "inner splashers" on the chassis and obscure these. This is not prototypical as you state, I think these are straight at the front. However, kits designed primarily for OO have deeper splasher tops and the splashers are positioned accordingly to clear the wheels. So as I am using the kit footplate there will have to be some compromise. Scratchbuilding the whole thing is beyond my capability. Will post more progress when these are fitted.

Both the High Level and Comet DG chassis have projections that mimic the shape of the splashers above the frames. You can see that in the High Level version, in P4, they extend beyond the wheels. These make it hard to get hold of the wheels to remove them particularly in P4 with the knife edge flanges. To remove some wheels they need a twist first. I actually broke an Alan Gibson wheel trying to get it off the fixed back axle. On the High Level version, all the wheels have hornblocks and all wheelsets can drop out; less of a problem. The next Comet chassis I build I will make all wheels unfixed. For this build, if the splashers are too narrow, then these "inner splashers" will be visible. I don't think this will be a problem with the Finney DG which is also on my build list.