Ozexpatriate

Found it! I thought we did one ... GWR & BR(WR) Era poll (which era do you model in?) There's probably no need for a new poll. Perhaps just a bump for newcomers to vote. Lately I've seen a couple of new RMwebbers who have identified themselves as GWR fans.

The recent Castle livery discussion here put me in mind of this old thread on preferences for GWR livery periods. Did we ever do that old thread in poll form with automated questions? (I don't remember.) Is this worth doing? I didn't want to start a thread that was essentially a rehash.

I don't have the suitable reference works to verify running numbers, but presumably they did so during the post war period up to nationalisation.

Would that be the 0-6-0 tender Collett goods you are referring to? 32-310 is the only one I am aware of that is listed in a current catalogue. It clearly looks post-war (Hawksworth era) to me. 32-304 had a shirtbutton livery. There was also an prior model, but I'd have to trawl through catalogues. I don't recall any being offered lined out but might be remembering it wrong. I have no idea if this locomotive class, being primarily freight was ever lined out in revenue service. We had a significant amount of discussion on the small details for this batch of Castles long ago. It starts around here. We did discuss No. 5011 sometime back then. There's some specific comments here. Pre-1935 GWR is my favourite period. While, it's not fair to say this period is ignored, early-Collett, late-Collett and Hawksworth periods do seem to take turns. For locomotives manufactured before 1935, if anything, it feels to me like the RTR models produced seem to congregate into early-Collett express engines, Hawksworth freight engines, each leavened with random shirtbutton releases.

The choice of livery is impacted by the specific tooling implemented for this Castle. The tooling applies to Castles that were built starting very late during the "GREAT <arms> WESTERN" livery, so the set of accurate running numbers in this livery is small.

Rob, My Tintagel Castle did not have a smokebox number or glue stains. It did arrive broken - chimney and separately fitted detail on the tender busted off. Nothing major that couldn't be glued back on, though there were some fine detail plastic parts I haven't identified yet that were also broken. The Argos Hornby Legends verion of Nunney Castle is in the Collett "GREAT <arms> WESTERN" livery, but this is the old tooling.

It's quite clearly the old Castle tooling, as one would expect, but it is nice to see Hornby do a "GREAT <arms> WESTERN" livery. It is interesting that Hornby do significantly more grouping liveries in their lower end offererings. This is very evident in the Railroad Range. Roughly, Grouping v. Nationalization DC steam engine liveries are: Railroad: ~13 v. 7 = 65% (not counting all the Holden tank etc variants) Regular: 28 v. 45 = 38%

Right you are. Sorry I missed it in all the noise and confusion. A worthy choice indeed.

If we're going Pennsy (and I do like those choices, particularly the T1), surely the GG1 has to get an honourable mention? They look fast and powerful, and they were exactly that. But most importantly they were unstoppable and had a service life spanning 48 years. Here's Lowey himself in a publicity shot with a new GG1.

Churchward's 4-6-0 designs set the standard 'look' for British express steam locomotives. The Collett-designed Castle (just to make sure no one is confused about which Castle ) is the pinnacle of this design ethos. I do have to confess a fondness for the industrial design aspect of streamliners, including the semi-streamliners. I've had plenty of opportunity to see this one up close and personal (it is magnificent even if you don't like red and orange) and I love the art deco look of this one. The late 1930s where whole trains, including locomotives were designed as a coherent entity with streamlining is my ideal as "best looking". A short list of examples includes: LNER Coronation LMSR Coronation Scot NYC 20th Century Limited VR Sprit of Progress SP Daylight

HM's blue clay hopper - the perfect rake for the proportedly purple Thomas (missing two wheels) shown here if only they were the same gauge and scale!

The MREmag & RMweb 00 wishlist poll results certainly confirm that the 'Yank' tank is a great choice. Congratulations ModelRail and Dapol.

Actually, I never thought there was a crossing at all.

I think most of the aerial photographs are older than that. I live in a town some miles upstream and Bing imagery with the same datestamp shows leveled dirt where a restaurant was constructed and operating before February 2008 (Google Streetview shows the restaurant under construction in 2007). The tree in the traffic management island in the intersection of Main St and 6th appears in two and disappears in one of the three Google map views. The Steetview data showing the tree is marked as 2009.

Attached below is a sketch of my interpretation based on what I made out (separately from the observations above), though largely with the same bing imagery. I couldn't really "see" the south end of the runaround, so the approximate alignment I have drawn could well be wrong. Please feel free to make suggestions/corrections. Incidentally, I live reasonably close to Oregon City. If someone wants to go ahead and actually model this location, it is possible for me to drive down there and take photographs.

I'm a bit confused about the notional 90° crossing. There is a 90° curve inside the mill - but this is a spur into a shed. This is the end of the shunt (Main and 6th Street) where the google aerial view shows fresh ashphalt.

As always, "the feel" here is important. While I interpreted the comment above to refer to the types of rolling stock, which really is quite mixed, there's also the surrounding environmental aspect. A big part of the "feel" here is flora - particularly trees. The ubiqutous tree is the Douglas Fir. This is not a generic conifer as might be modeled by a European manufacturer. Other aspects are rainy grey skies with green vegetation in winter or sunny, blue skies and dull brown grasses and muddy dark greens in the firs in the short but wonderful summer. As an illustration of local mainline "feel", the lead video here is a commercial GE is running on TV here right now: Click on the link on this page that says "On TV". There are a sequence of videos that quickly get tedious, but since the exterior scenes are local, they represent the area well. The lineside setting is in the Columbia River gorge east of the Portland area on the BNSF mainline (the north shore of the river in Washington). The two bridges are over the Klickitat River, which flows into the Columbia. I think the tunnel featured is Cape Horn, west of the Bonneville Dam, first the west then the east portal. There are many other tunnels east of this point between Stevenson and the Dalles in the gorge.

Maybe not today. I believe that the Milwaukee Road mainline from the Cascades and into Seattle ran down Houser Way in Renton, WA - not that you're wanting to model the Olympian Hiawatha! There are lots of places in the NW where navigable water is close to street running (Oregon City is certainly one) but not that magnificent Seattle skyline across Elliot Bay.

Not much of a "claim" there! It's pretty close to reality. The Portland Railway Light and Power Company ran interurban streetcars to Oregon City in the first half of the 20th century starting in 1893. Their westside competitor was the Oregon Electic Railway which was a true electric interurban and operated from Portland to Eugene. Hydroelectric power was plentiful and there was an explosion in street cars that helped Portland grow rapidly. These variably lasted until about the second world war. Oregon City is the destination point for the Oregon Trail from the pioneering era. It was founded by the former "chief factor" (head) of the Hudson's Bay Company "Factory" or trading post in nearby Fort Vancouver (Washington) in 1829 at the falls of the Willamette. At one point it was a close call as to whether the area would be considered British and eventually part of the Dominion of Canada or belong to the United States. This was more or less settled in the Oregon Treaty of 1846.

I agree. The mill itself is on a very small parcel of land between the cliff and the Willamette River. The cliff is extraordinarily vertical and is a natural backdrop - though a photo mural of the river would be more scenic. When accurately modelled, I suspect that critics unfamiliar with the area would claim the cliff is too vertical. Adjacent to the cliff is Hwy 99E, which curves under the adjacent ex-SP mainline south. With some selective compression of the mill, it can be made to fit.

That's a very plausible idea.

Does anyone kwow if Earl Cawdor was one of those grumpy peers who didn't like their titles applied to the brand new Victorian Frankentiques lovingly made or perhaps remade, (I presume) in Swindon? It's too bad there was no such thing as 'steam punk' in 1936.

According to Bachmann Branch-Lines website, the running number is 3203. If I may direct you to that wonderful online resource, "The Great Western Archive" you will see the following: 1936 - built as 3203 Earl Cawdor 1937 - name removed 1946 - renumbered 9003 Your livery question is understandable, but managable. With the number 3203, I assume the following plausible alternatives: - named with shirtbutton - unnamed with shirtbutton** - unnamed in Hawksworth livery - improbable as 3203. ** The most likely candidate. Aren't Bachmann's Collett coaches being produced with shirtbutton liveries right now? I had the same issue with Hornby over their initial announcement of Tintagel Castle. Like Bachmann Branch Line's online description here: Hornby declared that Tintagel Castle would be "GWR Green" and unhelpfully included a black and white photograph of Earl Cairns (I think) in BR livery in their catalogue (on-line and in print). Was it going to be shirtbutton or Hawksworth "G crest W" or the Collett livery that I wanted? Who knew? I asked Hornby on their customer care email but they declined to answer me. At long last, in it's second appearance in a catalogue, there was a representative illustration. While I haven't personally asked Bachmann Branch-Line for more details, essentially the same thing is happening with the Earl. The 2012/13 Bachmann Branch-Line catalogue might not be much more than a month or so away and hopefully we will find the definitive answers you seek there. Either I saw it stated, or I assumed (based on when the Earl's were outshopped) that this would be a shirtbutton version. I did see somewhere that the DCC decoder would be one that senses whether the applied voltage is DC or DCC and behaves accordingly. It would be nice to have that confirmed too.

I am surprised that you got a response at all - if you used their 'contact us' page on their website. I have never heard back from them on catalogue related questions and have since given up. I have seen many people report that Hornby are very responsive to emails and calls regarding problems with a purchased model.

The Hobby Smith in the Hollywood district is my regular haunt for North American items. I am very happy to give Ron (the owner) my custom and I usually pre-order my North American items from him. The current location (next to the Baskin Robbins) is much nicer than the old one in the basement of the Rite Aid building (formerly Fred Meyers). I haven't visited the site of the old Laurelwood brewpub (now Columbia River Brewing) since it transformed into Laurelwood Pizza (it still looks that way on Google maps streetview) when the Laurelwood label moved up Sandy Blvd and opened new locations - including two outlets at the airport.