Fat Controller

Just a thought. Might the Cambrian BDA kit  be a bit easier as a starting point?

That's beautiful work; I especially like the gouged tyres. My French friends have one that serves as a reserve to a 1964 Fordson;. The French ones were built under licence by Hotchkiss, who also built Jeeps (and machine-guns}

2 hours ago, BR traction instructor said:

The tanks with provision for heating of product usually had the flame tubes on the barrel ends, as against ordinary class B tanks that didn’t and were just painted black.

 

BeRTIe

I would have thought flame-tubes would have been used for the heavier fractions, such as bitumen. Fuel oils, often sharing terminal space with Class A tanks, (and their attendant risk of fire) would have used steam coils inside the tank, with  an inlet valve for the steam on the bottom of the  dished end.

I grew up in Llanelly from the mid-1950s, until going off to study in 1973. The strike was still within living memory for my grand-parents' generation, and there was no great liking for Churchill.  Years after, I was talking to a historian, whose speciality was the various Left groupings in the early 20th century; on hearing where I was from, he asked me if I'd heard of the 'Industrial Workers of the World' AKA the Wobblies. These were originally from the West Coast of the USA, moving in to South America. Some of their members worked on the ships bringing various non-ferrous ores to the smelting works of S W Wales. If they were seeking to establish a presence in the area, it becomes easier to understand the level of Churchill's reaction.

You seem to have captured that elusive metallic sheen of a coke load very well.

I've seen it on newly-cut trees in French forests, where a number of companies are extracting trees side-by side. As different colours are used, I've always thought it indicated who each tree belonged to.

The Burry Port and Gwendreath Valley was well known for its restrictive loading gauge; many will have heard of the cut-down cabs of the Class 03 and 08s that worked the line in BR days. Less well known were the width limits, which meant a pool of brake vans were specifically allocated. They had narrow step boards, with the edges used by the guard picked out in white paint. One or two also had 'Caution; narrow foot-boards' painted on the body-sides.

20 minutes ago, C126 said:

Thank you all for your kind words. It is hardly a work worthy of the Model Railway Journal, but I was so surprised I managed to complete the modification without gougeing lumps out of the paint-work - let alone expecting the wagon to explode into a thousand shards of plastic - I had to share my excitement.

 

I wondered briefly why more model wagons are not made with removable or opening doors like the Hornby VIX, but then realised it would increase costs, and most modellers want to see their wagons moving in a train.  Would be a nice option though on the more complicated wagons, to have doors that clip on before running them...

There is the issue that doors have to be unfeasibly thick, and have to have either large hinges or runners, depending whether they are hinged or sliding doors. That said, I did build a Roy Gould VGA kit with an open door and a load of palletised sacks.

You could try a VWV or VEA with doors open; at the centre, a single case, or perhaps a filing cabinet, braced with some serious sized bits of timber. I saw several like this at locations like Hexham and Morpeth; loaded, no matter how likely, with material for Otterburn Ranges.

9 hours ago, Methuselah said:

The Sabre was problematic at any height, and in the early days, the Typhoon's airframe also gave many problems - all very stressful for the MAP at the time. The Whirlwind's airframe was built around the Peregrine, which was a much smaller engine than the Merlin - so the Merlin was never an option, they were simply to big and heavy. All the time and effort went into developing the Merlins, so the Peregrine and the Whirlwind both withered on the vine. The Typhoon never made the grade as a fighter, because, quite apart from the problems with the Sabre's reliability, the Typhoon's wing was very thick. Great for strength and housing cannons, but it had a very low Critical Mach Number - a problem many other types of that period suffered from, such as the P38. The similar-looking Tempest had an entirely new, and much thinner wing, and was a much better machine that used the Sabre and the Centaurus. The Tempest was developed into Centaurus-powered the Fury and Sea Fury, both excellent machines, though the Centaurus was also not without it's problems.

 

Thanks for explaining that; presumably the thinner wing was the 'laminar flow' one?

12 hours ago, sigtech said:

Lovely model, This is my favorite aircraft. only two squadrons were operational during the war,and  no.137  sqdn flew from RAF Manston  in Kent - which was my local airfield for many years.

As you said if only they had fitted them with Merlins... They were however good for ground attack and at low level, very well armed.  Replaced by the HawkerTyphoon.

Regards,Sigtech'

 

I still have a 1/72 scale one (Airfix) to make one day!!

The Typhoon was also troubled by its power plant at altitude, IIRC,  but came into its own at treetop height. I wonder what a Whirlwind might have been like with two Merlins? It would have been pretty nippy, I'd imagine, given the Peregine-engined one could manage 360 mph.

34 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

that - the best way to muck out stables is to encourage small girls with the promise of a chance to ride the beasts.

 

I'm told that horse muck is now classed as "hazardous waste", so stables are only too happy to have you take it away for your allotment relieving them of the problem of disposal.

Oddly, a lot of places around us, in S E Kent, no longer have sacks of manure available at the roadside. It's been quite difficult to get any over the last couple of years.

1 hour ago, Mikkel said:

The more I learn, the more fascinating this topic is. Scatologists unite!

 

I'm trying to work out how much manure a 12-stall stable block such as the one at Farthing would produce daily - and thus how many wagon loads that would amount to over time.  So I found the following data for "a 1000 pound horse" on this website.

 

 

Now to get the calculator out. And to look up stuff in rule books. Good grief, this is growing!

 

One might say it was mushrooming..

In my home town in South Wales, a centre of the tinplating industry, not only was horse-muck was reused.. Urine was collected from local pubs (of which there were an awful lot) and despatched to the tinplate works to use in the pickling of sheet steel before coating with tin. 

I remember reading a book about market gardeners in Paris in the 19th and 20th centuries. Apparently, after delivering in Central Paris, they would backload horse manure to their gardens in the outskirts. Rather than simply composting the manure, they stacked it in 'hot beds', where the heat from decomposition enable them to get a head-start with the the more cold-sensitive crops. Apparently, this meant they could harvest up to seven times in a normal year. The rotted-down manure would be used to enrich the soil.

There was another use for horse manure; as a component of the moulds for casting. It would serve to bind the moulding sand together. More recently, molasses has been used.

My grandfather used to horrify us when were young, by collecting sheep droppings in his cloth cap (which had a plastic liner); after he'd transferred them to a hessian sack in the water butt, he'd simply shake his hat 'clean', and put it back on. He used to claim it made his hair grow..

I've noticed that the British Asparagus in Tesco and Sainsbury's isn't bundled with 'rubber' bands as usual, but rather with  white/ beige elasticated cord. I haven't measured it, but to my eye, it looks as though it could be used for 4mm rope.

3 minutes ago, C126 said:

 

It looks like a 2-door (from the two 'strips' along the cantrail) but wooden design.  I thought they usually moved 'en bloc', so it is good to see one alone in a yard in traffic.

They did turn up at various locations around the country in ones and twos.

I wonder what the ferry-van in front of the shed is? It seems to be one of the older designs.

4 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Love the effect created with these, especially the tea chests.

 

We move house every couple of years when I was little, and the humble tea chest was the standard way of packing up smaller items prior to moving day, rather than the stout cardboard boxes now favoured.  You could expect to see them on any Pickfords van, so they probably also got carried in the conflat-type containers.  We generally had half a dozen old tea chests in the loft.

They're still the preferred means of transporting china for market traders. You used to be able to pick them up from the Co-Op's blending and packing depot in Crewe, conveniently located for the Potteries.

54 minutes ago, Magdalen Bridge said:

Thanks all! 

 

my N8 Horsebox kit arrived today, wrapped in white tissue paper. This looks ideal for printing tarpaulins on.

 

Forgive my ignorance, but are the numbers on the tarpaulin independent from that of the wagon? That is, would wagon 65815, for example,  have a tarpaulin with the same number on it?

 

 

I believe the numbers were in a different series, but had to be recorded in daily returns. Any discrepancy in the number of sheets had to be accounted for. 

There were some examples where all but the top end-vent had been removed, and the apertures plated over.

If you buy one of the Parkside 12t standard vans, I believe you get a spare set of doors.

31 minutes ago, wenlock said:

 A midnight raid of the sewing box secured some more thread, I hope Stubby approves of the additional rope!  Reprimands have been sent to all the goods porters involved and assurances have been provided that it won't happen again

 

 

 

 

 

Looks good to me. Have you seen this book?

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780860931553/Freight-Wagons-Loads-Service-GWR-0860931552/plp

It has quite a lot of photos of things like securing loads, both 'normal' and out-of-gauge. Curiously, the photos of things being done the wrong way always seem to feature wagons from other railways.....

The wagon was from the Chemin du Fer d'Etat, to a standard design from the French equivalent of the RCH.

The Covenanter was not a great success, and most spent their time as home-based training vehicles. They had been designed and built by the LMS Apart from a few used as bridgelayers, the majority were withdrawn in late 1943.

44 minutes ago, Tony Cane said:

The picture of the empty warflat is a screen capture from a video. The Army film unit did a series of training films on the loading and unloading of tanks to and from warflats. The films were shot at Longmoor and used Covenanter and Churchill tanks. Some years ago a video tape compilation of these films was produced by the Heritage magazine. Fortunately 3 of them were on the internet at one time, but I can no longer trace the source. I have downloaded copies of these and have uploaded the most relevant one to Youtube. The description is Tanks by Train End loading dock, the URL is

https://youtu.be/ZvUdYcE3tT4

This shows all aspects of the process, the other two I have are on the preparation of the Covenanter tanks for loading and the procedure for using the ramp wagon.

Fascinating stuff, Tony- thanks for posting that link. There wasn't much margin for error, was there?

The accompanying vehicles  were interesting, notably the ex-PLM ot SNCF ferryvan; presumably this was a wartime film? 

The signal-box/control centre at Longmoor looks as though it's been sent back in time from the 1960s.

Given the Great British tradition of oil-dribbling machinery, I wonder if there should be a few oil-stains where the tank has stood?