webbcompound

With regard to whether either of the Joint Stock entities were companies, this is merely a terminological issue. They were unincorporated, as intially were all Joint Stock companies but by virtue of operating they were companies. They had boards, they had assets (funded by and apportioned apportioned to the companies which made up the board in a formal agreement which to all intents and purposes defined the relative stock holding), and they had potential liabilities.

Being unincorporated each of the participant companies had in principle unlimited liability, but in practice any situation in which a liability was likely to be incurred would be found to be the responsibility of the company constructing the rolling stock, or operating the locomotive, or the track and signalling. the only exception to this would have been if an item of rolling stock incurred an entry on the railway Clearing House Mileage Suspension Account by travelling on the rails of a company which was not a member of the relevant joint stock company.

The rolling stock was funded by the aforementioned apportionment, but in the case of the WCJS was all manufactured by the LNWR. Somewhere in the accounts of Wolverton will be the income from the Caledonian Company relating to the 36.54% cost of the stock. I am not familiar with the equivalent agreement between the three East Coast companies.

Mark Tatlow has made an etch for the bogies for these coaches. All you need to do is scratchbuild the rest! He said (back in 2016)  that they were available if you contacted him via www.highlandmiscellany.com. There is also a nice photo of an Atlantic pulling a rake of six twelve wheelers in the link  https://highlandmiscellany.com/2016/05/22/going-long-part-1-the-underframe/

I would say snap up any bits you see. When I was still employed and had money I failed to buy the kits for the entire LNWR Corridor twelve wheelers (Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen sections) which were available for a couple of years. Then, as these things do, things changed hands and the kits have disappearted from the face of the earth.

With regard to the ECJS stock this contemporary document describes the new six wheel carriages built in 1893, just before the arrival of twelve wheelers. So are these the six wheelers that are turning up in the 1905 ish trains? Maybe not as they all have side corridors.

1163187491_ecjr6wheelstock.pdf

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It was the more dramatic for being a step change, rather than part of a continuous development as on the West Coast. Patrick Stirling had been dead set against anything that increased the dead weight per passenger seat - he held out against bogie stock of any sort for longer than was good for passenger comfort. 

Although there are those who say that the weight and size of the ECJR stock was needed to compensate for the bumpy track, unlike the Premier line whose track was of high quality. The LNWR introduced quite comfortable 50ft corridor stock from 1897 and the marshalling instructions for 1906 show the 2.00pm from Euston having thirteen of these, whereas the the ECJS trains I have seen (not my area of particular knowledge I admit) don't appear to be of an equivalent length. A lot of the difference in approach I think though is down to the West coast having a single company running to the Scottish border, whereas on the East  side it was necessary for two companies to co-ordinate their efforts.

Progress so far on 1939 Broadway Limited. Head end cars PB70M and B70.

slow but steady progress on the Illinois Central commuter electric (pantographs just resting in place), plus the beginning of the first car in the 1939 Broadway Limited consist.

Not aware that he painted this subject but it is reminiscent of the style of Alan Sorrel (better known known for reconstruction illustrations of roman and mediaeval stuff).

On 06/11/2020 at 17:40, Compound2632 said:

 

 I don't know much about places where the GWR and LSWR met. They weren't really very friendly so I'm sure would have tried to keep traffic on their systems or those of their allies - the Midland routed traffic for the West Country via Bath and Templecombe, the LNWR via the Severn Tunnel. 

There was nevertheless an amount of pragmatism in play where necessary as they ran a passenger service to Birkenhead which alternated GWR and LSWR trains on different days. Presumably GWR hauled at the Northern end.

7 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

No. Do I need one? I take it that if I run wires from the battery to the wheels, it will test for life in the motor?

 

(I understand nothing about electrickery)

 

 

Well no-one has answered this yet so I will: With a 9v battery you just touch the battery contacts to the wheels as the are the right distance apart to use without wires

On 14/01/2021 at 22:00, Edwardian said:

Well, not much progress on the test track. I have run out of standard gauge track, and await a resupply from Marcway.  I have come up short on the OO9 too, so if anyone has a spare 6" or so of that!

 

Also, I need to get hold of a controller for the NG circuit.

 

Supplies have rather dried up here generally due to snow. Some bean counter at some stage decided that rural Posties could do without Landrovers and so now they can't get through the snow.

 

I can get through the snow, as I proved this evening when I went to the supermarket on behalf of my neighbour, the Postie, who can't get his van through the snow! 

 

It snowed heavily last night, so I woke up to about 6" of cover and a continuous light fall of snow this morning.  it is set to freeze tonight, so there should still be plenty of the white stuff around tomorrow.

 

My old Lab loves the snow.  He rolls around in it and buries the ball so he can dig it out again. It is all rather magical. 

 

Hope everyone is keeping well.

 

For your 009 track I recommend the controllers made by Mark Clark at Locos n Stuff.  link here They are designed to work with the small motors that will sit in your (inevitably growing) stud of NG locos (but are also fine with any size of motor). I made the mistake of using a Gaugemaster controller which burnt out the motor on a power bogie which I had just built. Mark explains why this happens on his site, apparently they are "only half rectified and have no inbuilt power restrictions", and this may be a problem with other controllers, although old Hornby and H&M are fine.

10 hours ago, Schooner said:

Saw this and thought of you:

 

this is very nice, although as with my layout there is an amount of speculation needed to finish many of the details. My rolling stock is better though!

9 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Yes, though all tracks look wide to the OO modeller, are we not seeing Spanish gauge in the opening scene of OUATITW I posted?

 

Although lots of US railroads were broad gauge initially (6ft, and 5ft6inches were popular). Gauge standardisation wasn't finally completed in the South, (where most of the lines were 5ft gauge) till 1886  (just before the GWR finally converted).

considering where we are I'm surprised there has been no discussion of railroading (to force something to happen or force someone to do something, especially quickly or unfairly)

I think the mistake inherent in our hobby is imagining we can be competent in all aspects of layout delivery. research, planning, scenics, rolling stock building, ditto painting, building locos, track, electrics. Logically the answer is do what you are good at and like, and buy the rest off the shelf, or accept a less than perfect result in some areas which nevertheless satisfies the owner. More difficult with electrics, but the answer there is bribe someone else with some of the stuff you are good at to do it for you. As for wargaming, most armies I am aware of spend most of their time on the shelf or in the box, with rare outings to fight. It will all be perfect in the end, but if it isn;'t perfect it just means you havn't reached the end yet.

33 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

To last, books need to be sewn together, and probably ideally printed on vellum, although that might be a bit OTT for the sort of material you mention.

In the post armageddon world of "A Canticle for Liebowitz" technical knowledge is kept alive through the dark ages in monastries where surviving blueprints and circuit diagrams are carefully hand transcribed onto vellum, (with of course the addition of marginalia and illuminated capitals). Wait a few months and we might yet get there.

39 minutes ago, rocor said:

EM gauge has been a subject that has cropped up in recent postings on this forum, but does anybody else remember EEM gauge?. I recall many years ago reading an article in a model railway magazine from either the late 1950's or early 1960's about a group of railway modellers in 4mm/ft scale, that wished to work to a more exacting standard as far as gauge went, than even EM. The EEM gauge was a reference to 18.8mm gauge. This was before the Protofour Society was formed.

From Scalefour Soc:

In the early 1960's a group of modellers formed, interested in creating more accurate scale models than the then available commercial options. Initially calling themsleves the Model Standards Study Group, they became known as the Model Railway Study Group (MRSG) as they formalised their work. Comprising: J.S. Brook Smith, D.E. Jones, M.S. Cross, W.L. Kidston, B. Morgan and Dr. B. Weller, they acted to create new, more accurate, standards to build models to.

An initial proposal was called EEM, and then the Protofour and related 'Proto' standards were developed. Formalised by the MRSG, these were promoted in a pair of articles in Model Railway News, published in August and September 1966.

A further thirteen part series in Model Railway Constructor started the following year, and became a seminal introduction to their ideas and the Protofour and other Proto standards.

The group went on to form the Protofour Society, founded in 1969.

Edwardians projects are fasciniting and his approach erudite. They are one of the few sources of light in the current darkness. This has been a long year of isolation and it was perhaps stupid of me to imagine that online communities would provide support, however everything has to end and that includes Webbcompound.

Regularity. Do you make this kind of picky crappy response to everyone, or is it just me?

7 hours ago, Regularity said:

Surely 4½ feet is EM?

And hence why I said "it was an early (failed) attempt to make railways conform to 00/H0 instead of EM or P4"". All the information is there, it just needs to be read.

1 hour ago, TurboSnail said:

Wondering what the origins of 4 1/2 ft gauge were - perhaps an attempt to rationalise standard gauge to a nice round number?

It was an early (failed) attempt to make railways conform to 00/H0 instead of EM or P4. In the end only the Redruth and Chasewater, and the Padarn got it right at 4ft

On 09/12/2020 at 14:50, TheQ said:

Saying that, much more has been pushed up the line to suppliers in the UK, with the last UK radar I worked on, GEC started running the avionics bays on the airfields, the flight line guys just changed boxes.

The GEC staff got less pay, didn't require military accommodation, didn't require military training.. and it meant the flight line guys got stuck with more military duties, and needed less training..

In the 18th Century a lot of countries had civilian artillery drivers. Of course they couldn't be relied on when fighting started. Can't help feeling that we have been here before

1 hour ago, CKPR said:

I have a sense that the relative distribution and proportions of wagons in the pre-grouping era might have been very localised and influenced by  major traffic flows.

 

This is also my perception. This leads to the conclusion that by and large macro scale generalisations about traffic are relatively pointless, and attempts to draw on "foreign" (ie just down the road) examples are similarly problematic. This means that without detailed research on the particular location it is not possible to say what is happening, (for example a major flow might exist, but it might simply bypass a particular location) and in many cases very little actually exists to suit the fine detail we (mostly) require. After a lot of searching, and after locating very few photos, I can be confident I know which mines were operational at my chosen date (1906-7), in my chosen location (Connah's Quay). I cannot be confident about what wagons they were using. Some wagons "probably" got repainted whilst others didn't, some wagon orders give an indication of numbers of wagons bought, but not necessarily how many were in service, some references to coal factors and merchants may indicate which of their wagons were present, but these are rarely date specific enough to be sure, so I have a spread that suits my own ideas, and anyone else looking at them is probably not in possession of sufficient data to disagree.

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

Indeed, a blanket statement is unwise here. ....... the LNWR had around 7,000 wagons specifically for coal traffic (lettered as such) by the early 20th century - around 8% of total wagon stock.

 

Agree that a blanket statement is unwise. I would be surprised however if coal was travelling beyond the LNWR system in LNWR wagons at this point simply because of the way coal was ordered and purchased, either direct from the colliery, or through a merchant. The use of an LNWR wagon would to me imply coal bought to be delivered within the LNWR system, which could easily soak far more than 7000 wagons.

The coal, wherever it came from is unlikely to be in Railway Company wagons. My own (admittedly limited) look at Connah's Quay suggests that coal would mostly arrive in Colliery wagons, or in coal merchant wagons (the latter can be misleading as some merchants were not just local single wagon operations but could rival the biggest collieries in wagion fleet size). Interestingly the contracts held by these merchants could lead to coal from strange (to us) sources, probably as a result of either competitive bidding, or of surpluses in an existing contract..

I think the young person response to this discussion is OMFG. I have relatives in the medical professions in hospitals. They are pretty clear how close we have sailed, and are sailing to public health disaster. They live it and work it every day. The problem is caused by pitifully low levels of medical facilities for a civilised country but it is too late to do anything about that at short notice. The issue of businesses suffering is not that restrictions should be eased, but that support for businesses should be provided (we manage it for finance with "quantitative easing" which has been authorised this month at the level of £875 billion, or over £13,000 for every adult and child in the UK). My current view as a humane liberal sort of chap is that those who consider precautions too strict should be allowed to enjoy their freedom in special holiday camps for everyone else's safety, and those who deliberately flout mask requirements should be shot.