billbedford

The build date for these vans is 1892, so the extra 1" on the height could be caused by using 10A axleboxes rather than 8As.

Yep that's the one. I wonder by what circumstances S. Banks could legally lawfully claim copyright on a LNER diagram.

I wasn't too clear in my answer. Gloster built 57 of these horseboxes for the GCR, plus some for the CLC. Some were then hired from the GCR by several racehorse owners.

Based on later LNER practice, my understanding was that the GCR built the boxes and were then hired out to the racehorse owners. The axleboxes are a Gorton design which seems to date back to the mid-1880s.

That is one of the horseboxes built for the GCR and CLC between 1898 and 1902. There are drawings in Historic Carriage Drawings Vol 3. There maybe some kits available, D&S?

The buffers are a head plus ram and a guide with spring. A small jig is included to set the distance between the guide and the back of the bufferhead. It may be a few weeks before I get these organised as I am due for a fairly major operation soon.

Is there anyone interested in sprung buffers for pre-grouping wagons, and maybe coaches?

Yep, you really missed the point about the two sophisticated jigs. They were both designed to allow people with limited skills to assemble etched loco kits designed with separate horn guides and were intended to use some form of springing, at least on the drivers. Something none of the devices you wrote about were able to do.

It's a much more interesting phenomenon than that. At its most basic, people decide not to have children. It starts at different times in different countries. There is evidence* for a date of the mid-18th century in France, 1870s in Britain and 1945 in Japan. Economics probably has some influence, but not in the way described. * Particularly Case Studies #3 & # 4

The device was particularly usful for automatic writing, which, I believe, was in vogue at around the same time.

Ahh yes, but then you cheat and solder the bearings into the frames, not like on a real locomotive.

I've not made any number plates for nearly 20 years.

...and of course in Northern Europe, North America and Australia declining birthrate has been masked by immigration.

Yes, sort of. Twenty years ago, when I started producing sprung w-irons, there was much discussion on Efourum about finding the optimum wire size for the springs. The consensus was that 10-12 thou spring steel was roughly correct for a 30gm wagon, though heavier white-metal wagons would need thicker springs. So I bought a half-kilo coil of 11thou piano wire. Only about half of this coil has been used since then. I obtained another coil of piano wire when I started to produce the printed wagons, this time, 9-thou because the models were lighter. I've had no complaints about the wires, but railway modellers tend to a bolshie lot and will either accept what is in the box or replace parts with what is perceived as "better".

As a rule of thumb wooden wagon underframes were painted body colour, while steel ones were black. At least pre-grouping.

If you are going to do this, you might think about using a heavier wire for the springs. The wire supplied is 0.009" for the resin wagons and 0.011" for the etched ones.

The Atlantic frames were tapered by 3 inches in front of the smokebox. So by slightly exaggerating the taper and moving the bogie pivot back, you should be able to get enough movement in the bogie to clear the frames and cylinders.

That is inordinately precise for a model railway bodge. How about - The swing link has to be long enough to clear the bogie's leading axle or headstock and the fix pin should not foul the loco's buffer beam.

Every gale will soke the field with sea spray.

If your D7 bogie has a centre pin and stays on the track, then you can use the same arrangement on the Atlantic, though you may have to add some side play to the trailing wheelset.

If I remember correctly, the Atlantic was on the other side of the hill behind the farm, so they all had more than enough salt.

No, no, Orkney kine are smaller, but more friendly:

But these were managed by firemen throwing shovelfuls of hot clinker down the banks.

This is not true. Almost all woodland in England had been managed until WW1. When I was younger, we lived next to a remnant of Rockingham Forest. About half of what I played in was coppiced hazel, and the rest mixed hardwoods. One part stands out in my memory, a stand of maybe eight ash trees planted close together, which were straight and seemed much higher than the rest of the canopy. I learned later that they had likely been planted like that for long straight timber such as fence rails.

Elms were planted by farmers as a "pension" for their grandsons. The timber was in constant demand, especially for coffins. The fact that these planted trees were all rooted from cuttings meant that they were clones without much genetic variety, which explains why English elms all succumbed to Dutch Elm disease in a relatively short time.