Annie

Well that's gone and done it.  This Broad Gauge cross sleepered track is the magic procedural kind that does moveable point blades with proper check rails and frogs, - I didn't know that when I chose it, but I'm not complaining about it.  This means that I'm going to have to level and adjust the track all over again, but I don't mind that much since the final result will be worth it.

The signal box will be getting properly furnished some time soon.  The job is on the list to be done.

(Picture snapped in Trainz Surveyor)

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Was baulk road used for new works in the early 1870s? I'd have thought by then the advantages of conventional cross sleepered track would have been well-understood and it was probably cheaper too. 

It seems likely Stephen.  Looking at the photo with a magnifying glass I can something that looks like an early  variety of flat bottomed rail with spikes going into cross sleepers.  I can see fishplates as well.  With Minehead station being opened in 1874 after the line was extended from Watchet I would imagine that the section between Minehead and Watchet would have cross sleeped track at least.  I know from photos taken at Watchet that the baulk road definitely went that far, - so I'll run the cross sleepered track out to Watchet from Minehead and reassess which variety of baulk road track I want to use after that. 

Minehead station in Broad Gauge times.  I've frowned over this photo on many occasions and no matter how I look at it the track looks like it's cross sleepered and not baulk road track.  I have got some cross sleeped Broad Gauge track of much the same age as the track I'm presently using.  It's not perfect in its details, but overall no worse than what I'm using.  I'm sorely tempted to make use of it instead of the baulk road track.

Not very much has happened over the past couple of days due to me having medical appointments.  Nothing dire, - in fact good news in that I seem to be getting past the effects of LongCOVID after putting up with it for close on a year and nine months.

I'd been a little puzzled over Blue Anchor and why I'd left off a wood lot, a stream and a bridge, a small brickworks and a hotel when I last worked on it almost two years ago.  The simple answer is that after checking against the OS map I discovered that this part of the layout had been compressed length ways so there simply wasn't any room for them.  I managed to put in Pill Copse and the Blue Anchor tavern and some of the nearby buildings, but after that there wasn't any room for anything else without making it all look impossibly crowded.  So I sorted the track alignment, changed the signal box and the signals and that was pretty much that.

4 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Sadly I don't have an easy way of converting them to jpeg format but I hope that they are of interest.

 

Jamie

Marvellous handwriting.  You don't see that kind of thing these days.

4 hours ago, Johnson044 said:

It was me, Annie- I got it for £18 - a bargain, I think.

 

Don't quite know what I'll do with it- if it IS 32mm gauge and 9mm scale then with 30" driving wheels in 7mm scale that's about 3'3". Hmm. Maybe if Dubs had built a slightly larger, standard gauge version? A new cab, lower boiler mountings, buffer beam and buffers? I think I see where this might be going....  Don't be cross Annie! TBH it will probably sit on my desk for a few years whilst I get through my other projects at a glacial pace.

 

 

 

 

Definitely still a bargain.  Lucky old you.  😀

What I find interesting is that a model of a very small class of early New Zealand locomotives built to a non-standard scale somehow ended up in the UK.

A good many years ago I went so far as to order a set of specially machined cast iron wheels for an 'A' class with the intention of building a model to suit Gauge 1 45mm track gauge.  Unfortunately far too much life happened and after I crawled out from the wreck of it all the last thing on my mind was what might have happened to a set of wheels for a model locomotive.

4 hours ago, Johnson044 said:

Hmm. Maybe if Dubs had built a slightly larger, standard gauge version? A new cab, lower boiler mountings, buffer beam and buffers? I think I see where this might be going....  Don't be cross Annie! TBH it will probably sit on my desk for a few years whilst I get through my other projects at a glacial pace.

No I'm not cross.  It's an interesting thought as to what a larger standard gauge version would be like.  They certainly were good locos, - not so useful once the NZ railways started to expand as their small size told against them, - and most of them ended up having far longer lives in industrial service that they ever did working for the NZ railways.

9 hours ago, Johnson044 said:

This one's for Annie, maybe. A rather sweet little 0-4-0T from the Land of my father. I think it's an A class? 

 

Looks to me to be made to run on 0 gauge track but to a larger scale to suit prototype 3'6"?

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/285724346700?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11051.m43.l1123&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=a72c3e1970854a1f87f667fce3069abd&bu=44854541524&osub=-1~1&crd=20240226095043&segname=11051

Yes definitely an 'A' class.  If it's been made for 'O' gauge track it will be to 9mm to the foot scale which is a standard sizing for NZGR models here in New Zealand.  Not a bad little model at all, - it's certainly caught the character of an 'A' class fairly well.  I see someone has got it already for ten quid which would have to be an absolute bargain.

I took some snaps of Blue Anchor as a record before I started work on doing anything to it.  I'm going to change the signal box for a model of the one from Helston as it's the earliest representation of a GWR signal box I have.

I've always found the emptiness of the 19th century coastal landscape between Minehead and Blue Anchor to be very appealing.

The original TS2004 layout had no representation of the road to the Blue Anchor tavern, the tavern itself, or the nearby farm buildings so I added those using the 1880s OS map as a general guide.  As a background piece it's not normally seen from this viewpoint.

The NLS site seemed to be wanting to be not very cooperative, but as you can see it wouldn't have been much help anyway since Blue Anchor is spread over four different maps.

The 1900 OS 6 inch to the mile maps are better than a poke in the eye.

2 hours ago, auldreekie said:

Long time no see.  I started a catch-up somewhere in August,  and life is too short today to run all through and get myself up to date.  I was very taken by "semi-itinerant shrubs".  It's a nice concept.  but I' don't think we have tumbleweed in East Anglia....

 

auldreekie

Hello, long time no see indeed.  Narcolepsy and recovery from LongCOVID mean that I don't get around the internet so much as I used to.  As you see I am still working on digital railway projects, but I've slowed down a bit now and I'm spending time on improving my older projects rather than running off and starting something new.

Oh yes the "semi-itinerant shrubs".  Patch updates and code changes to the Trainz software will cause things to shift and I've particularly noticed it with some vegetation models.  That's why I now tend to use the stable Trainz versions that are no longer receiving updates since it avoids a lot of problems.

Dunster again.  I'll more than likely come back and do some more here as I want to sort out the roads properly and put in the missing drainage ditches.  There's the farm buildings at either end of Station Road that could do with being improved as well.  The extra 20th century buildings that shouldn't be there are starting to annoy me so they will be going fairly soon.

The trackwork out to Blue Anchor needs levelling and adjusting, but apart from setting the track clearances in relation to station platform Blue Anchor doesn't need much doing to it since the whole area got a major overhaul a couple of years ago when all the 20th century buildings and trackwork were removed.

7 hours ago, Northroader said:

Don’t forget Acker Bilk….

How could I.  My Mum and Dad owned a lot of his records.

37 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

No hi-viz or bowler hats in those days 

A question for hat experts then.  Is the hat the foreman in the photo is wearing a bowler hat, - or is it some other species of hat?

15 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Adorable

Thanks very much James.  As 'what-if' Broad Gauge engines they are entirely plausible in that E.B. Wilson could have built well tanks just like these if someone had paid them to do it.

Afternoon Broad Gauge Cheer Up Picture:  Neilson Box Tank from circa the 1860s.  It's history is very confused, but this photo is known to have been taken by a German enthusiast at Ponta Delgada harbour in the Azores.  Possibly suggested that it was originally built for the Holyhead Breakwater.  Whatever it's history I wouldn't mind owning a model of it.

One of my 'possibly could have been' Broad Gauge E.B. Wilson well tanks at Dunster.  I paid for these well tanks to be specially modified for me from a standard gauge model, - only they turned out to have three small errors, - which while they aren't blindingly obvious are a bit on the disappointing side.  This is why I'd love to be able to make my own digital models.  That way if there are mistakes at least they would be my own.  I'd love to have a go at one of the Severn & Wye's Fletcher Jennings Broad Gauge 0-6-0T's.

Despite everything I like my 'what-if' E.B. Wilson well tanks and they do run well and are generally useful.  Edit:  I figured out how to reset the environmental lighting so the pictures of Dunster look better now.

Looking towards Blue Anchor.

42 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Apologies if this has been posted already,

No apology needed, - that was wonderful!

20 minutes ago, figworthy said:

 

Some lovely work, as usual.

 

Please don't take this as a criticism.  Is that signal too close to the track, or is it a perspective thing ?

 

Adrian

Thanks Adrian.  And yes the signal is too close to the track.  For some reason the set distance to the track centreline has been measured incorrectly.  It would be fine for standard gauge, but it's too close for the Broad Gauge.  I've had to edit the distance in the config files on some of the other signals and it looks like I'll have to do this one too.

I was able to do some work on Dunster late this afternoon.  It turned out that a lot more work than I thought needed doing as the station platform needed lowering, - which meant that everything attached to and on the platform needed lowering as well.  All those milk cans and platform trolleys, lamps, fences, seats, station staff and passengers look very nice and set the scene very nicely, but having to lower them all eight or so scale inches got to be a little tedious.

Sorting out the track in the yard as well as repositioning the cattle dock, goods shed and loading dock was fairly simple to do then it was just the signals left to do.  Which as it happens I've got all wrong, but I can come back to sorting those out tomorrow. 

Very little changed at Dunster station during the pre-grouping era.  The original Trainz TS2004 layout I've been reworking for the past couple of years was built on a BR era version of the West Somerset Railway which simply had its track changed for Broad Gauge track and all the people and vehicles changed out for 19th century equivalents.  As you can imagine the result was not the Broad Gauge era railway and I've had to delete a lot of things that simply shouldn't be there.  Dunster as it stands at present has a couple of cottages and houses that shouldn't be there, but I'm tempted to just leave them as they are for no better reason than they've always been there and I happen to like them.

A first look at Dunster for a long while.  Most of what needs to be done is some work here and there with aligning and leveling the track correctly and once that is done the split post semaphore signals need to be changed for disc and crossbar signals.  Like Minehead Dunster received a general overhaul with reference to the 1880s OS maps when I was still working in Trainz TS2019 around two years ago so I don't think I'm going to find very much that will need attending to.

When I was a teenager I used to look out for Crescent signals in model shop second hand bins.  I thought they were wonderful things.

24 minutes ago, Annie said:

(sigh) By the time I've answered my emails, read Radio NZ's online news and caught up with forum posts I'm too tired to read books and I just want to go to sleep.

Actually if I make a sign saying, 'Don't bother it's all terrible', - and hang it on my monitor instead of reading the online news I could save a lot of time and use it for reading books instead.

2 hours ago, Mikkel said:

I know what you mean, the pile of books by my bed just grows and grows. I blame all this internet stuff.

(sigh) By the time I've answered my emails, read Radio NZ's online news and caught up with forum posts I'm too tired to read books and I just want to go to sleep.

On 16/02/2024 at 06:38, Compound2632 said:

As a break from the numerology, in the course of putting together my talk for Saturday I was staring again at a photo I've looked at often enough before, of the LNWR Windsor Street goods station in 1903: 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwra3633.htm.

I also paid more attention to the caption.

 

Now, for far too long now I've been faffing about a slate load for my Cambrian 2-plank wagon - which way round the slates were loaded, etc. There seemed to be a lack of photos of loaded wagons taken from an angle where one can see the load. 

 

 

[Crop from Warwickshire Railways lnwra3633.]

 

The Warwickshire Railways caption, based on impeccable sources, says: "a Cambrian Railways three-plank wagon with slates" - where I think the curb rail has been mistaken for a plank.

 

Anyway, to my eyes, the slates are stacked in rows leaning on the sides of the wagon, not the ends, with a gap for access in the middle. Larger slates at the far end?

 

Either that or they're bricks, as in the GW round-ended 3-plank to the left.

Book Corner:

I've just ordered this one.  It was on discount, - so I hope it's worth the candle.

I'm supposed to be not buying any more books until I've read the hundred or so I've already got that I haven't read yet.  I'm such a failure. 📚