Miss Prism

In lined black and red plates and a Churchward 3500g, 2920 at Worcester just a few months before withdrawal. I doubt it had another tender in the remainder of its service life.

The date fits, but unfortunately 2931's tender is tantalisingly out of shot.

Hmmm, there might be beading on this early destination board, and the early boards do seem like they have rounded corners.

Even if you're not a fan of Betjeman's whimsy, there's some great BR period detail in this. TalkingPicsTV, 13:45 today.

I'm not convinced the destination boards should have a perimeter beading - I thought they were just a plain board.

6336 (in GREAT WESTERN), from the first Dapol batch, had the correct door, but all the first batch seem to have disappeared from the Dapol site. (Not even listed as 'sold out'.)

The pipe demographics are difficult to pin down. Not only were the new cylinder sets (for outside pipes) fitted very gradually (between 1928 and 1958), slightly less than half the class were so fitted.

The bump stops look wooden.

Yes. Actually, I'm questioning my Laira attribute. Offhand, I don't think the Singles went west of Newton, but I'm probably wrong about that as well!

My notes for this picture are 'Laira, c 1900'. Without checking the build dates of the wagons portrayed, I'm inclined to think the GWS date of c 1906 is more correct! I'll be back...

https://didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/shopimages/sections/normal/4 5322 in ROD livery 02.jpg Note the Going Loco article says, of the khaki, "The colour is not confirmed."

Not impressed by the colouring of the garter crest.

I was looking at the pics of W6265W (page 100) and W251W (page 124) of Harris 2nd edition, but most of the preserved examples do seem to be just numerals (followed by a strange yellow circle).

They always look like prison vans, don't they?

Hornby do/did one, for their Grange, but that's RTR of course. It looks decent enough though.

I did wonder about Falcon.

I don't think so.

I think the numerals are cast ones. Don't know when they first appeared - is it a Collett-ism? By Hawksworth days, they had a thin backing plate.

Much discussed in both (Dapol and Accurascale) Manor threads.

The wooden roof is canvas covered and the capping strips are thin (like the ones on goods vans). I assume they were painted black. The later metal roof has side strips. There's a definite difference in appearance in my opinion, but many people won't be bothered.

On the subject of rooves, I notice from the Dapol blurb that the roof is 'New cab with higher and shorter roof'. That's a new one on me, and I must check out previous discussions (this thread is very long!)

http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/drawings/loco/loco185.jpg (I can't comment about how accurate this weight diagram is, but it's probably close.)

It's probably misleading to describe them either as batch 1 or revised new tooling. To me, these are variations in the toolset as originally planned by Dapol. (Although it looks like the slidebars have been improved, as promised, which is very welcome.) 4321 represents the earliest prototype state (actually not quite, the short cab/short frame 4301-20 were never intended to be covered by Dapol). I feel Dapol has probably gone as far as it reasonably could without busting the tooling bank, and there are lots of excellent things about 4321 that make it good for the early period - portholes in the cab front, longitudinal vacuum cylinder on the tender, flush-riveted tender body, early pony truck cover, flush-riveted smokebox, small boss wheels, parallel chimney, tall vacuum pipe. What is not included in the Dapol tooling for the very early locos are: - a wooden roof for the cab (steel cab roofs started to appear c 1919 - the first loco so built is cited iirc somewhere on one of the RMweb Mogul threads); - an early style of lubricator pipe cover and/or smokebox damper; - light tender springs; - early brake hangars (on both loco and tender). Painting-wise, it should have polished splasher beading for the very early state (disappeared mostly during WWI I think), and I'm fairly certain wheelboss lining was not being applied to service paints by that stage (1911). Dapol probably got the notion from the works grey portraits of 4302 and 4331. My view is that wheel boss lining on service paints probably disappeared c 1906-7, but I could be wrong. It's one of those 'transitional' painting phases. The cab/tender handrails are too gaudy in my view. Overall though, Dapol has pushed the boat out for such an early style, and commendably so. It looks a cracker.

That's a Collett 3500g. I have not seen a pic of a Saint with a Collett 4000g. Some Saints (mainly Scotts) ran with Dean 4000g units in their early years.

Body wobble is a common phenomenon on many RTR bogie coaches. The cause of the oscillation is a combination of bogie hunting (more apparent on straight track) and the lack of secondary (i.e. bogie to body) springing. The interface between bogie and body at the bogie pivot point is also an important factor. 10 years ago, CLAG took some video comparisons to examine the issue, the guinea pig being a Bachmann MkI. The video confirmed the roll plane frequency of the oscillation reduced considerably when secondary springing was present. (Unfortunately, we never uploaded the video because we felt a more thorough examination was needed before publishing any quantified conclusions. And then time moved on.)