Mike 84C

Welcome Back Manna, I agree with all the sentiments posted above. That is quite a haul of goodies! lucky man Manna! Times all your own thats a good place to be in, I also thought like that six yrs ago but theres always a list of stuff to be done! Enjoy your time and I shall look forward to your posts. 😎

Micro Mark in the US still do a range of rivet transfers, which I have used but there range is much smaller than Archers was. I expect the postage from the US will be the killer with that supplier.

I noticed this week, on another forum I follow, that Archers rivet transfers will not be being made after this coming November. An expensive but useful product I thought . Lets hope someone else picks up the baton, so to speak!

From normal viewing distance those coach windows look much better than my diesel windows! I have found Narrow Planet very good for number plates, very extensive range and last time I bought some I thought the price was very fair. Just a happy customer.

Sorry its the only one of that diesel . They do have a certain ugly charm? It looks much better with lining and logos. But needs a heavy dose of weathering CIE took dirt and grime to gold medal standards. A cruel close up of a C class. I may one day redo the cab side windows, vac forming does not cut the mustard, but it looks ok on the layout. I have done signals, coaches , freight stock, locos. The memsahib now wants the bijou dwelling redecorating, a distraction from the main purpose in life! 🙄

I glazed a certain Irish diesel I picked up a kit for, with Ferro Rocher clear plastic boxes. There are 14 windows in this thing and it has a resin body so no two are quite the same size. I measured with calipers then marked , cut and filed to shape. Tedius in extreme and so happy when I finished. I had to wait till Mr Hardy was a director of the Festiniog Rly before I met him. No late running when Dick was driving! he just wanted to know if he was over doing it! Top man.

Re; storm sheets. I can only remember a row of hooks on the rib that supported the roof extension that the eyelets in the sheet hooked onto. The tender end of the sheet had stiffeners in it and two coil springs each side that hooked onto the tender uprights. And those springs could really bite ones hands. I seem to remember it being a real PITA to roll it over the cab roof and secure it but my experience of sheeting HGV loads says trying to furl the storm sheet would have been an even bigger PITA. 'Cos they were not light! Often they lived in the tender toolbox behind the drivers position with the tin tube of detonators. Feeders , oil bottles and spanners lived in the other tool box. When you come to paint the cab inside, see if you can find some pictures of the drivers side 'cos you may notice an odd shaped piece of dirty side window. That is where the ATC and its mounting bracket was, and you could'nt get a hand in there to clean the inside of the glass! Now I would guess your fathers older cousin worked at either Annesley or Woodford but probably the former? There are some guys on another RM web thread who cannot get their heads around 60mph loose coupled coal trains, but this due in my opinion to todays risk averse hse culture. Not that its all a bad thing buuuttt and I am of a certain age /generation! There is total truth in the speeds of the Annesley runners, Mr Dick Hardy, whom I knew was very proud of those trains! Worth looking at the Annesley shed website your relative may be on there in the personalities page.

I all honesty I only did 3 1/2 yrs firing so my little pot of yarns is not so deep! But I could tell you of trips on Austerities from Tysley back to Banbury Ironstone sidings where the only time we had more than 80psi was when it was stood still! Lumps of brickarch in the fire, holes in what was left of the arch so most of the tubes were visible and a lubricator that was not very adjustable so the valves moaned and groaned for 42 miles! But those Monitor type injectors kept on working! Tried firing light and bright after pulling the lumps of arch back under the door, that method did'nt work. So "boxed her up", that method made little more steam but at least I was not stood in front of the firedoor all the time. Put the loco on Banbury ashpit and my driver failed the engine on the repair cards and off home we went. Blow me we book on to work OIC to Brymbo as far as Tysley and that same Austerity was our booked engine. No repairs done to the arch so it got failed again! and I think we took an 8f instead. Austerities were not very popular at Western depots, get rid of it quick was the plan . They seemed to be wandering nomads that little was done too keep them in fair nick. On the LMR and ER the fires were cleaned by taking out some firebars then pushing the fire out through the ashpan. All good till the cleaner of fires could not get all the bars back in place so they got spread a bit. But those engines were so rough riding the fire could get shaken into the ashpan and make it glow dull red! I have arrived at Woodford like that several times. The crew had a little padded seat to sit on, quite comfy, well they were fixed to the cab side with a hinge pin and on the other a metal support arm that fitted into a bracket on the cab side. We have just passed Bletchington Cement sidings big crash and bang from my mates side of the cab and he is flat on his back on the cab floor! this engine was so rough it had sheared the seat pin and the bits bounced over the side! he was not happy! This was the same engine that the boiler water looked like mushroom soup and any more than a 1/4 glass when running it just bobbed up and down from top to bottom of the glass. Night mare! I suppose I know lots of silly tales but I didnt keep a diary in those days, now I wish I had, hindsight eh! My regular driver was a lot of a drinker so I worked harder than some others. One job in our link was get two engines ready for other crews, then prep your own for the York- Bournemouth which we worked to Oxford, relief by SR men then walk across Oxford sta; relief the Oxford men on our train, which was all stations back to Banbury. Carriages to sidings, engine to shed not one minutes overtime allowed and as it was passenger work no bonus! I think that was a 6 day week with no rest day. Very tiring week for bare time! My only real claim to fame is I fired the last steam hauled TRPS special with Clun Castle back from Salop to Banbury. Last Castle I ever fired! Pat Whitehouse gave me and Dick Powell the driver a bottle of beer each and 10/- each! When I see Clun now I get severe footplate envy! But I did it when it was "real"! Time for bed. Sorry Mr Wolf I seem to have hijacked your thread blame John Besley. Psssst where is Banjo country?

Why not make your own fireirons? Whitemetal look a bit fat and chunky, etched ones look flat and ; just etched! Wire about a scale 2 1/4" dia would look ok the chisel bar a bit thicker 'cos they were b---- heavy! after they have been in a fire a few times they will not be so straight! WR fireirons were much better quality than those from the Ell of a Mess which seemed to be made of toffee or spaghetti. The tunnel on he L/H side of WR engines usually held the long bar and long pricker. Much easier and safer than waving it about over the side of the engine when its red hot! My avtar shows a 9f I think one of the best things about all BR standards was the rocking grate, why the WR never fitted them is a mystery to me . Fire cleaning was such a b----- awful, awful job and men did it day in day out for years. One of ours at Banbury, Jack Rakestrawe had biceps bigger than my thighs! And such a nice man.

Looking good Mr Wolf, Dont forget the two uprights for the storm sheet springs to atatch to. When you make the fireirons the pricker has a triangular handle, the chisel bar and clinker shovel had circular handles. I believe it was so the fireman knew what he was picking up at night or in dark engine sheds.

Ah ,yes that was Horace, Mr Williams, he could get very shouty, excited! Blowing down a 9f on the long pit which was right by his office usually enraged him. Looking back on things that happened I wonder how much was designed to wind him up!? 9f blowing its head off then blow down a full boiler! it was very loud but the amount of sludge that was in the pit after, always several inch's deep. Very hard water at Banbury which is why our 9f's soon looked as if they had been lime washed, which they had.

I recieved a form one for making black smoke! I was a on a 9f at the shed departure signal at Banbury and this engine had really not got as much steam as was needed, maybe a 100psi, so I got out the bar stuck in the fire and gave it a good stir up, got the doors closed to stop me being scorched and this huge cloud of smoke just rolled across the tracks into Friswells engineering shop on the up side. Men soon appeared rubbing their eyes and coughing! even opening the doors did'nt help much. Very careful after that! I thought it was three form 1's and you were dismissed.

That little brass cock is not a trip cock or a water valve its to admit air to the top side of the vaccum cylinder so releasing the tender the tender brake. Yes sandbox lids but not all tenders had sandboxes. If they did I cannot for the life of me remember where the handle to work the tender sanders was. We often kept the bucket in that area between the tender side and the handbrake standard, with a few inch's of water in it and the handbrush was then damp for sweeping the footplate. Nearest brush I have found was a small brush sold as a "dairy brush". Water for washing the footplate come from the "pep" pipe which is that rubber hose often seen dangling over the side on Western engines. It worked off the RH live steam injector with the control valve in the area of the firemans seat, boy could it shoot out a lot of b---- hot water! All this engine prep I'm getting a sweat on, time for tea. And do not forget to stow the fireirons properly with the loop end of the iron over the upright. Not sitting in the bottom of the uprights vee. Why? think about stopping very suddenly or being hit hard by moving wagons in a yard.

In my experience, 60's to the end of WR steam, those planks had gone missing yrs ago! and an old firebar did not work very well. Just imagine having a tender full of small ovoids and where they got to! Large ones were bad enough

You could also add the feed valves for the injectors that were always adjacent to the coal space on Western engines. A simple handle but a photo is needed for accuracy of placement.

I thought heavily weathered.

Modern cars disappoint? Not my 15yr old Skoda Octavia diesel, its like a pair of trousers you get in them and they go, always!

Thanks for posting that link Grovenor very interesting. I did read more stuff on the site and now swing between "were all dooomed" and maybe hopeful! And ASLEF think we need drivers in Trains?

I find government policy counter productive regards solar energy generation by the domestic market. The FIT tariffs seem have disappeared, Vat at 20% for some installations and a lack of grants. Now if I was a farmer things are very different. It seems to me that in a decade there is no way GB can generate enough power to allow the population to live as we live now, even if we are educated about reducing power consumption, the increasing national fleet of vehicles of all kinds will soon mop up any increase in generation and the ever growing number of devices needing charging that we cannot live without. Just as an aside I read a few months ago the Navy has approx; 19/21 nuclear subs awaiting decommissioning, some even have fueled up reactors. So reading of Rolls Royces plans for mini reactors for power generation I wrote to my MP suggesting that it may be worth looking at connecting these resting power plants to the National Grid. I do realise its not so easy as plug and play but these seem to be desparate times so worth a look? Did I get a reply from my MP? Nahhh. I hope she is a better doctor than she is an MP. Any views?

I know that in this safety orientated world things happened in the past that are not acceptable today. Yes, those unfitted coal trains did run that fast, I'm not sure there were accidents but I don't know. Dick Hardy was a fan of those trains and I think rather proud of them. Maybe they were the product of LNE/ER competition with the LMS/LMR for freight traffic ? at this distance in time will we ever know. As regards fast running on the WR/LMR B.ham div; the Point to Point (PPS) bonus Scheme was a big incentive. After leaving the railway I was involved with agricultural /milling industries and road haulage, neither compare today with the conditions of the 1970's. One thing leaps to mind, unloading of hgv's by hand 2 1/4 cwt sacks of grain , 1 cwt bags of fertilizer, 300 on a 15t load x3 or 4 for a days work and often no help at the customer. Today's times are very different. Rant over! All we have to do is accept these things happened, most men had a pride in the job and probably a few egos were massaged. Good for a bit of cabin banter! I'm 75 now, would I do it all again? absolutely but only a young me!

I believe hot boxes were common. The track on the GC was in the main FB and after leaving Nottingham there were no severe curves except at Leicester through the station area, so fast running with any sort of train would be quite easy. Plus a tradition of fast running on the GC. I know I was only in on the last four yrs of steam in the B/ham area but loose coupled trains did not always creep about at 20/25mph.

There was a press shop at Cowley in the early 1970's because I used to run baled scrap from there in a 32t artic tipper. It went mainly to Sheffield/Rotherham/Port Talbot. That was after BR made me redundant again!

I knew some of the Woodford drivers who worked the "runners" and speeds in the high 50 mph were regular. Not just coal but trains of steel as well. Windcutters sells more magazines, a GC man would scratch his head at the term! I do believe most runners were worked by Annesley men on an out and back basis.

I am so glad 6911has gone to a good home, I agonised for too long, shall I shan't I, hearing that siren song, the shriek of a Western whistle and youthful memories of 84C back in the day! 🥲

6911 a Banbury engine and a good one too! Wish I had a £ for every shovel of coal I put into its firebox and cleaned it! I thought it had a welded tender in the '60's as I do not remember cleaning around rivets. I expect to be proved wrong! It was 60yrs ago! It was one of a little group of Halls at Banbury kept fairly clean for the Bournmouth's 6906,6911,6951,6952 and 7912 were the ones I recall. The improved draughting ones always seemed a bit better steaming than the earlier Halls.