jjnewitt

To move it, to steam it maybe? There's a picture around somewhere of, I think, a Grange or a Hall at Swindon with a BR standard tender behind it. Justin

Yes, it is a bit odd isn't it. The loco looks very clean so perhaps this was taken at Swindon post overhaul and the tender temporarily borrowed for one reason or another? I haven't seen another picture of Earstoke in service with that tender. Justin

Are you sure that's a 3500 gallon tender? It doesn't look high enough. It looks like a 3000 gallon tender from a 2251 to me. I wonder if it actually ran in service like this? Justin

I've just had a look at a working timetable from 1959 for the Oswestry district. Interestingly it says that the Whitchurch to Aberystwyth line was officially a yellow route. However under permitted engines it lists 'uncloured', 'yellow', and 'blue' (except 2-8-0s) subject to certain restrictions and prohibitions. It then lists the restrictions all of which relate to speed or cylinder clearance restrictions on sidings only. There were no speed restrictions on the main line for blue route engines. Interesting that they didn't seem to have officially reclassified it as a blue route. The ban on 2-8-0s perhaps being the reason? Aside from that it might as well have been a blue route. Justin

What date is that map Mike? I understood that the Cambrian main line was reclasified as blue sometime around the war. Peto's register on the Manors has some information on the subject. It doesn't give a definative date for the main line but says it was reclaissifed from yellow to blue after the Manors had started to be built and also says that the engineers had been preparing to upgrade the line to a blue route in 1938. The book is a bit clearer about the coast line which it says was officially upgraded to blue in the summer of 57. It would be a bit of an operational nightmare if every other train was subject to restrictions wouldn't it? By the fifties were in full swing probably every other train on the Cambrian main line was hauled by a blue route enigine (Manor, Mogul, Std 4 4-6-0) and by the sixties that was probably 90%. Justin

Interesting choice of prototype. Looking at those prototype photos it's very noticable that no two hoods are the same. Can the model be done with each side different perhaps so that they don't all look identical? A rake would look fairly unrealistically if they were all exactly the same. Looking at the EP the bend in the hood at the side doesn't match where the impression of the tarp bar is which looks really odd to me. Justin

I can't find anything illustrative of the dates with a quick look online but if anyone's got David Larkin's Wagons of the Early British Railways Era on page 25 there's a great picture of a nearly new Shocopen and you can clearly see the two dates on the solebar. Both read 28-9-51. That would make sense. In context of the Shocopen mentioned above that would probably have been when the wheels were put in for the first time. The wagon was new that year and doesn't look like it's carried a lot of freight. Justin

I've seen markings with dates on the solebars of wagons in photos taken in the fifties. Not sure about I've seen any prefixed PE but definately prefixed P, usually accompanied by another date prefixed by an L. P for pads makes sense. Anyone have any idea what the L stood for? Justin

Or look through Paul Barlett's woderful website for odd axleboxes or 1960s BR platefront axleboxes or any pre-Nationalisation wagon with a BR era box. How long before it might happen though? Obviously that going to depend on the wagon but it would be interesting to get an idea, say for 12T vans or minerals rather than specials such as Lowmacs. Justin

Hi Pete. Did any of this maintainance require the boxes to be removed from the wagon? That's obviously the time when axleboxes could be changed to a different type or another set of boxes of the same type fitted. I had imagined that boxes got removed for inspection/work at whatever point it was necessary and another set got fitted simply because they were ready to go. A bit like steam loco boilers. Unless it was an oddball you didn't wait around until the one it came into the works with with got repaired. You got another one and sent it back out. That is of course in my head, hence why I asked the question. Justin

Thanks for the responses, interesting stuff. Justin

Just wondering if anyone knew how long a wagon axlebox might be expected to last before the journals needed attention? Specifically I was thinking about 1930s/40s/50 oil axleboxes rather than grease axleboxes or roller bearings. I'm curious as to how long a wagon might stay with the axleboxes it was built with. Justin

Thought these might make a reappearance. They should be out around the same time as my kit for the LMS/BR version. Might be make an interesting comparison. Justin

Ahh, yes it is 2. My eyes playing tricks on me. Found the vans in Larkin's Non-Pool Freight stock Volume 2. They're quite fun. The loaction in the first post on this thread is definately Pembridge not Kington. The captions on Archive Images are also incorrect. Thanks for the info on Ferry wagons. I thought there might be arrangements in place to prevent them being 'borrowed' but it's nice to get a sense of how they oporated. Justin

This picture is on the archive images website. They suggest 25th April 1964 which sounds a bit better. Maybe a little late going by the trees but it looks like the hedges might be coming back to life so maybe not far out. There are also a couple of other images on the site of this train. Same picture as above just from a different angle. This one suggests that there may have been 4 of the wagons. Quite a consignment. The wagons are interesting. Could they be horse boxes or cattle wagons? They seem to have doors at towards each end with drop down flaps reminiscent of our horse boxes. Could the consignment be livestock of some sort? Specialist agricultural equipment could be a possibility. Another thought I had was that these vans may have been unloaded somewhere else on the line. There was major gas pipeline work that used Presteign as a railhead in 1964. It could possibly be equipment connected with that? I don’t know anything about how international wagons worked. We’re they returned home ASAP or could they be used for traffic by a different country, i.e the goods came from somewhere other than Italy? Justin

The caption on the photo says September, that’s not right either. Look at the trees. The photo looks to be taken some point between December and April which ties in with when 1458 was at Hereford. Given the time of year the photo was actually taken I’d suggest inwards goods rather than local produce unless it was stored cider apples. Was there that much in the way of hops grown in that part of Herefordshire, feels a bit too far west? I don’t recall seeing any hop fields when I lived in the area, though that was well after the sixties. Further east definitely but none west of Leominster. Justin

I like independent braked one 6th from front. Looks like a completely different grey on the centre third of it! Justin

I didn’t know you were a legal person. You’re not working for Trump are you? The manufacturers will no doubt be relieved that with the benefit of your wisdom and others on here the job of dealing with the Chinese will be a whole lot easier...

Well they shouldn't. Accurascale seem to have a good team in place and my impression is that there isn't a huge amount wrong with the artwork they produce. I don't need feedback from RMweb in order to get the stuff I produce right. Admittedly I don't have the Chinese factor to contend with. I don't have to work with a team on the other side of the planet who speak a different language and have very little familiarity with the prototype in order to produce models. I suspect that has as much as anything to do with major errors being present on RTR models. That and the cost of correcting things. Justin

I think 12 is the magic number. If an RTR manufacturer can't be reasonably sure of getting a product to the market within 12 months then they shouldn't announce it. Any longer than that and it can start to get silly, especially if delays creep in which they frequently seem to do and perhaps can only be expected in these odd times? Certain maufacturers have suffered, at least in the eyes of those who populate RMweb, because of lead times that keep slipping and have run into several years and counting. Others will as well if they can't deliver on their announcements. It is, after all, not about announcements or shiny CAD models but product on shelves that people can buy today, not tomorrow or at some point in 202X. I think Bachmann's new approach is a good one and I hope it changes the dynamics of the market a bit. There have been too many things that have taken an age to reach release (anything over 2 years in my book) and in these cases you find things turning up long after the excitement and impact of any announcement has passed. The world moves on to the next big announcement pretty quickly. This doesn't stike me as a particularly good marketing ploy. Accurascale are starting to creep that way with certain items such as the Deltic which is fast approaching 2 years since announcement... I'm not particularly bothered about showing early CADs. Most the time it seems all you get is number of 'experts' crop up and tell the manufacturer things that they know are wrong and have already been altered. The rest of the time nothing changes anyway so what's the point... If you've got a decent team leading the development of a model you shouldn't really need feedback from RMweb in order to get things 'right'. Justin

Yes, I know the difference between the Central Wales and the Mid Wales. Very different railways. My point is the same. I’ve never seen any evidence of a standard 2 on the Mid Wales (save the trains used to lift the track after closure), only wall to wall Ivatts from the mid fifties. Justin

I’ve never seen an picture of a standard 2 working service trains on the Mid Wales. Would love to see one. I was under the impression that they were too heavy being RA3 as opposed to the RA2 of the Ivatts. The only standard 2 I know of that made it on the line was 78004 which went to Llanelly in early 64 to work trains taking up the Mid Wales. Justin

Not entirely sure they have. The likes of Accurascale and Cavalex have done a lot of announcing and there's been a lot of jumping up and down and clapping but they've produced very little product that you can actually get your hands on. Accurascale have yet to bring any of their British outline locos to the market place... It all looks very promising but proof is in finished models on shelves that people can buy not in nice looking CAD files. Who knows with Bachmann's new approach to delivering product maybe some of those models announced will appear in a blue box on a shelf before others have completed their tooling... Justin

Someone very kindly posted chapter and verse on the GWR ATC system on this very forum, including a drawing of the shoe fitted to locos: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=953953 Justin

Link to the latest Masokits catalogue: https://traders.scalefour.org/masokits/ Justin