webbcompound

20 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Old vehicles are all right, provided you don’t actually want to use them for their intended purpose of providing transport. Once you have one, you quickly realise how far vehicle technology, safety and convenience have progressed in the past 50+ years. They’re time-consuming even on basic checks and maintenance in a way that modern ones aren’t.

Although it does make you wonder how they managed to do all that succesfull mechanised warfare in the 1940s

2 hours ago, Annie said:

With proper real older cars you could nearly always get them to go again on the side of the road with a basic kit of tools, a few lengths of wire and some of that decent insulation tape they used to sell before that plastic stuff usurped it from hardware store shelves.  I've only ever owned 1950s cars and I've never regretted that for a moment. 

Same thing applies to motorbikes as well. All part of the trend to make things more complex and expensive than they need to be.

Anyone on here know the dimensions of the Chicago Dearborn Station train shed roof? I've tried asking on an ATSF discussion board but got no reply. Or if not how about any of the Chicago train sheds?

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

 

Agree.

 

I had not planned for Brake Comps, but recognise that this is a necessary consequence of a through coach service.

 

The alternative is a pair of coaches, say a Composite and Brake Third or a Composite and Luggage Brake, but, assuming a single coach, it will be a Brake Tri-Comp, the WNR not having abolished Second.

 

That's a bit tight for a 31-32' 6W body. 3/3/2/1 plus a single guard's door and ducket  is possible (e.g. GWR U17), but ideally we'd have double doors for luggage.  The GW managed his with the U22, but with hardly any luggage space (drawings taken from http://penrhos.me.uk/Udiags.shtml).

 

 

 

Judging from the GW examples above (31') I think a 32'-33' body, might be required.  Since some of 6-wheelers in progress are in excess of 34', very much the upper limit for 6-wheelers, I think a , say, 32' or 32'6'' body would be uncontroversial.

 

A lot of the coaches in progress are 'cut and shut' and I can see this one as just such a case.

You could shorten the carriage by making the end compartment a coupe (one bank of seats, windows in end) first, second or third (depending on how you see the traffic flow). The LNWR had several of these type of carriage.

Very nice notices. These are quite old instructions as the external emergency cord referred to went out of use during the late 19th century (can't remember exactly when)

depends on the date you are representing.

Pre 1908 firsts blue, second dark red, third greenish yellowish brown

From 1908 firsts in new carriages were lovat green, but blue remained in use in some (mainly older) carriages (although the new Oerlikon stock immediately pre-grouping was fitted out with blue, so nothing is entirely guaranteed)

From 1912, with the abolition of second class thirds became dark red

Carpets in firsts matched the upholstry (blue or green), thirds had lino.

Woodwork in first was walnut with sycamore panels and red leather on the lower half of external doors.

Woodwork in second and third was mahogany or Burma teak

Surprised this atmospheric railway didn't feature in Flann O'Briens "Dalkey Archive"

The brass bearings oin the pickup side look suspiciously like the sort of thing that you would have if this was actually supposed to be live to the chassis. You can check if the pickup is on the wrong side quite easily.

- Bend the pickups so they don't touch the wheels

(if this is actually the live side the wheels should be able to draw power from the track)

- Put the chassis on the track

- Put a croc clip on the track on the side of the chassis that doesn't have the (now bent out of the way) pickups.

- touch the wire from the croc clip to the motor where the pickup wires join it

- fire up the controller

If the wheel sets are the wrong way round the chassis will move, then all you need to do is shift the pickups to the other side for the chassis to work

by the look of it this has a live chassis, with pickups on one insulated side. The contact point for the other side must be the axle bearings. They look pretty grimy to me. Maybe a clean up of the axles and bearings on the live side would improve the situation?

Very nice engine and good comparison with the Terrier. A bit of work with a couple of files would take the door space up to the roof line, which would be a pretty exact match for the Terrier height wise, and then there would be no crew size issue

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Good to have the black line on the panel side of the "gold" line confirmed, together with the lining on the beading adjacent to ventilator panels, which I never doubted.

 

Doesn't the GWR painting bible tell us that this was only really recorded on a post grouping instruction to a film company?

I think the biggest impact (mentally and physically) is the speed and volume at which information is transmitted, which has increased exponentially in the last decade or so. All this impacts on us mentally in ways we never evolved to handle. As for the speed of transmission in the physical world: it took five years for the Black Death to reach Scotland from its origin in central Asia. Flight time from Wuhan to Edinburgh is apparently 11 hours and 20 minutes. This also impacts us mentally in ways we never evolved to handle. Apparently everyone on Elizabeth Is Privvy Council had killed at least one man face to face. Our own government has only made killings on things like the derivatives casino. Which probably leads to far more deaths wordlwide. Hmm.

So are there any houses for sale or rent in 1905 West Norfolk? I may be interested in moving there.

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Branchlines split axles are available in a standard two part, but also a three part axle, where the gearbox can be mounted on the center portion.

I'm sure they have been mentioned before, but Mech Models of Burton on Trent provide an excellent service for US outline stuff. I have bought (by phone), and also ordered, paints, parts, transfers and rolling stock from them at various times and the service has always been excellent.

The LNWR marshalling instructions show quite a few through coaches going to  Welsh destinations from Manchester and Liverpool, but apart from its own line to Swansea and destinations via the Cambrian there isn't a lot going to South Wales. In fact mostly the through coaches listed on these routes seem to be GW..

In 1910

 9.25am from Mcr LNW break van with a GW break composite to Cardiff GW;

10.40am from Lpool  joined at Crewe to two 45ft break compos to Pembroke Dock from Mcr;

There appear to be several break vans from Lpool and Mcr goiung through to Cardiff RR and Pembroke Dock

The Head of the Valleys  line could only be reached over GWR metal and the 3.30am Shrewsbury to Hereford includes a 42ft break tricompo for Merthyr, and a break van for Cardiff RR.

The trains to Newcastle through Leeds carry GWR vehicles to and from Newcastle

I have a couple of locos already fitted with DCC and I'm thinking of adding sound. they are a Proto 2000 ATSF E3 (powered A unit, unpowered B unit) and a Bachmann PRR K4. I would like the A and B units to start and shut down in sequence: would this require two decoders, or is there a decoder scheme that will simulate the two locos? Any recommendations to avoid or go for? 

21 hours ago, Guy Rixon said:

 

Well that is very nice!

Something to be aware of is that early refereces to "chocolate" as a colour are clearly linked to "purple". Earlier still statues of emperors in Rome were made in a stone called "porphyry" (meaning purple) because purple was  the colour associated with the emperor, but if you look at them (the statrue of the tetrarchs looted from Constantinople and now in St Mark's Venice is a good example) you would have to say that many are a decidely "brown" shade, rather than a bluish shade, of red.

The other issue is that lake is not a soluble pigment, but is a powder held in suspension in a medium. Clearly (!) the type of medium, proprtion of pigment, fine-ness of particles, and underlying colour all impact on it. In comparing two versions all these factors would need to be known at the same level of detail and accuracy. To provide a consistent colour they would also have to be provided at a consistent level. Within one workshop, under the control of a single overseer this might be true (dependent on supply), but across several workshops it is unlikely. Even sending out colour swatches to match does not help because of the range of variants involved, and matching to a swatch (as anyone who has used a munsell chart is aware) is dependent on a very wide variety of variables.

So would colours turn out similar? Yes. Would they be exactly the same? Extremely unlikely. As for descripitions of colours using language we only have to look at Improved Engine Green, or (perhaps) less controversially Invisible Green, or Dark Green Locomotive Enamel  to know that this is a minefield.

So unless you work for the company and an inspector checks and approves your work in the end the only question is "Does it like good to me?". and unless you are in an intimate relationship with them an opinion from someone else can be taken with a pinch of finely ground lake pigment.

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I think that's a misunderstanding of the market in unmade D&S kits. They're bought as objets d'art not as models in potentia.

It may even be worse. Perhaps they have become speculative currency.

I'm finding this discussion of reddish brown fascinating, not because I intend modelling the SER or SECR (my LNWR stuff is getting PP Lake and it will have to like it), but because I am foolishly about to start making some coaches for another railway in a difficult to achieve scheme and want to be happy with the colour I end up with.  The relevance to this discussion is that the scheme ran in (just about) living memory, and was illustrated in photography and art, and the main colour was variously described as "redder than it was later". The colour is used by  Pennsylvania Railroad and officially described as Light Tuscan, or Tuscan Red, or Light Tuscan Red and manufactured with relatively modern paint technology  (1935-52). Here are four images. The scheme of the locos in the first two are the same which places them in a close date range. the painting is I believe official publicity, and the carriage at the bottom is on show when new at a state fair, and the baggage car to the left is from the same railroad and should be the same body colour. In my view your hopes of resolving the SER/SECR issue are not good but I wish you all well.

The tank engine appears also to be interesting for the fact of it being what you might call a "half cab", except that instead of the half being front to back it is side to side, with consequently only one window on the spectacle plate.

The Crusader was interesting from a US streamliner point of view in that it had an observation car at both ends of the consist which meant that the train did not need turning for a return journey. As the models correctly show the tender was designed to streamline ontio the curved end of the observation car.

I don't think we need ascribe everything to malign foreign influence, but when you add it to the existing poisonous environment it can help to tilt things, and this is precisely where the expertise lies.

As far as military strategy goes the proposal in  the US Military's 2001 Document "Understanding Infomation Age Conflict" succesful strategy is defined by a requirement to dominate three sectors: the kinetic terrain, the information domain, and the cognitive domain. In practice all major national players accept that they need to dominate all three sectors.

The cognitive domain incorporates all those earlier fumbling attempts to influence populations (psy ops, feeding information to sympathetic organisations and so on) but makes use of the information domain to do this much more easily. The American military has already accepted the existence of Russian activity in the cognitive terrain surrounding US elections. It isn't necessary for an opponent to originate a viewpoint, merely to assist and accentuate that viewpoint. Those on the receiving end who are in agreement will welcome such interference and be selectively blind to it. Once things are injected into the cognitive domain the rate of dissemination is rapid, and the original insertion ceases to be visible or indeed necessary, though it might beneficially recieve top ups to maintain momentum. So the stories in the media might originate from a cognitive domain presence, but once they are picked up and run they have a life of their own. It would of course be a mistake to imagine that the old superpowers, whose dominance relied on the perceived ability to dominate the kinetic domain, are the only players in this game. Israel is an example of a nation punching well above its weight in this area, as, in the context of the Middle East theatre, is Iran. 

Which leads to a fascinating model railway project stymied by a lack of international co-operation. Throughout WW2 the Trans-Iranian railway. run initially by the British and Soviets, and then by the US and Soviets, ran stock from Britain, the US, Germany, Russia and Austria. Modelling this is stymied because US/continental H0 and British 00 are clearly not compatible even if they use the same track gauge, and the same applies to British and US/continental N. Co-operation not competition, that is what is required, but the competing systems are too deeply engrained that even Thomas the Tank Engine is pulled both ways.

Unfortunately much discussion around contemporary politics assumes that largely the agent, actors and audience are still constrained and defined by control of physical  geographic borders. For many years now, and with accelerated impact in the last decade military strategy has taken account of there being other ways to succesfully carry out warfare than on the kinetic battlefield (that is the one where people and things hitting people and things decide outcome). This was an area of my research till I gave up and retired. The traditional view of military intelligence has been one of observation, direct personal contact, and of course killing people and installations. This has not really been the case for a long time. Sattelite technology a long time ago gave the military the ability to read your newspaper from space, and pretty well everything you want to find out these days can be done very rapidly by watching data flows online.

In response to this situation the military innovated and moved onto the cyber battlefield. Want to disrupt your biggest threat (as, say, Russia might in relation to the EU)? It is easy, if you have the personell resources to, say hypothetically, massively influence a vote causing the withdrawal of one of the three biggest influencers within the EU.

Russia and China have massive military units engaged in this, in the case of China more than 10,000 military personnel. America has, although apparently much less efficient due to the fissile nature of the US military. Britain has, but, as befits the British way and our post war status, ours (77 Brigade) is stitched together from pre-existing units and not up to strength. The mission of 77 Brigade, as publicly stated is "... to challenge the difficulties of modern warfare using non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of the opposing forces and adversaries." and "77th Brigade is an agent of change; through targeted Information Activity and Outreach we contribute to the success of military objectives" On the public website this is framed as being primarily in support of the kinetic battlefield, but this has always been a fuzzy concept as demonstrated by General Kitson's book "Low Intensity Operations" published in 1971.

So the question of who is "left behind" and what they believe, and why, is these days not as straightforward as it used to be. We all like to think our views are our own, independently arrived at, sensibly thought out and often immutable. (and the other chaps' are not) Unfortunately even the most cursory view of the current political scene shows that for the most part that cannot be the case.

Distracting ourselves with model railways and historic warfare; or knitting socks, and hats with furry ears for babies,  is one way we have of distracting ourselves from the aweful reality of our 21st Century world.