MikeOxon

1 hour ago, ChrisN said:

I may have even finished something,

Steady on, there!!!

28 minutes ago, Annie said:

Fell down a rabbit hole..... 😎

A long way from NZ to Moscow 🙂

2 hours ago, Mikkel said:

I didn't realize the locos had idiosynchrasies like that, I thought it was more standard

I wonder how many of the real loco idiosyncrasies are captured by the software?  Some engines suffered from poor valve events or badly laid out steam passages.  In some, the problem was in the firebox, such as a tendency to collect clinker, leading to fall-off in performance on long runs.  Any comments, Annie?

45 minutes ago, Annie said:

I took Steve Flanders beautiful steam railcar out for a run this morning.  It's constructed from layered meshes similar to the classic method of constructing panelled coaches from cardboard that's been treated with shellac and I know that Steve had quite the struggle to get it to fit together.

I know the problem of fitting layers together from having used layers cut with a Silhouette Cutter.  Yours looks splendid.  There's a steam railcar at Didcot (Railmotor No. 93, built 1908 to Diagram R, Lot 1142), which I've had the pleasure of riding in a few times

4 hours ago, Annie said:

I also discovered that with the way it was set up it was capable of taking the numbering past the 75 members of the class and into imaginary numbering territory.

Are imaginary numbers appropriate for imaginary lines?

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

An interesting Saloon Chris, I didn't realize that there were variants with servant's compartments (typical middle class ignoramus).

The class divisions between servants in pre-WW2 British society were almost more marked than those between their masters!  There's a flavour of it in Eveleyn Waugh's 'Brdeshead Revisited',  when Lord Marchmain returns from Italy and his retinue of servants have to be amalgamated with those already at the English estate: "Plender and Wilcox became Joint Grooms of the Chambers, like Blues and Life Guards with equal precedence, ... the senior footman was given a black coat and promoted butler, the nondescript Swiss, on arrival, was to have full valet’s status; there was a general increase in wages to meet the new dignities, and all were content." 

When Lord Wilcote ordered his special train then, in addition to the Family Saloon, he required a tri-composite, to ensure that the divisions could be carefully maintained.  In my blog post, I commented that "I expect the greatest fun was enjoyed in the 3rd class section, where the young maids would be making their first trip to London."

Mike

10 minutes ago, Annie said:

And after further rebuilding and frowning at things I can now tell you that Daere Steel Co. uses an open hearth furnace so is a much smaller kind of operation compared to steelworks that use blast furnaces.

Yet another skill for railway modelling 🙂  - steel making methods.

Mike

4 hours ago, Annie said:

... though I haven't much of a clue as to what a steelworks should look like.

My impression from driving through South Wales is of rather messy structures full of smoke and steam and with lots of tall towers and chimneys.

Attribution:

Chris Shaw / Port Talbot Steelworks /https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

On 11/01/2024 at 05:59, Annie said:

After doing some further reading about GWR Autocoaches (thanks Wikipedia) I decided to try out the piggy locomotive in the middle method of operating two autocoaches in company with my naughty now well behaved 14xx's.

On interesting variant of GWR autotrains was the use of some 517 class engines encased in 'coach-like' cladding, as seen in a photo at Trumpers Crossing halt.  Could make an unusual model!

Apparently, some auto-fitted engines were painted brown, as a less complex method for making them 'blend in'

Mike

41 minutes ago, Annie said:

Have a glass for me Mike since I don't drink these days.

Done!

It's hard to see how we are going to get out of the various messes the human race is in but we can only hope for some pleasant surprises.

Happy New Year!

26 minutes ago, Annie said:

Well here it kicked off just like it did with 2023 with thunderstorms and heavy downpours of rain.  Seems to be our standard Summer, - two or three tantilising fine days just before Christmas and then grey skies and rain all the way through to Autumn.  At least there's no tropical cyclones, - yet.

4 hours to go here still but it does seem to have stopped raining.  Fireworks crackling all around and upsetting our neighbour's dogs.  Just started on a bottle of Cloudy Bay Pelorus which, in my opinion, beats most Champagne 😀

It's the track-building that has held me back from a proper broad gauge layout.  It's not just the style of baulks and bridge rail but the fact that the early GWR liked 6-wheel (or even rigid 8-wheel) vehicles - both wagons and coaches -  which create difficulties as soon as you have any curves!

I've created a couple of track types, one based on real timber baulks and another on 3D printed bases but both only for use in small display cases

The Broad Gauge Society (BGS) supply bridge rail and have investigated the possibility of supplying baulk road bases, although I'm not sure if that has progressed.

I have the impression that you are thinking of modelling later broad gauge days, so remember that most of the broad gauge had gone by 1872, when all the lines West of Gloucester into Wales were narrowed,  and almost all the rest was mixed-gauge. By the time Joseph Armstrong arrived at Swindon in 1864, the writing was on the wall for the broad gauge. 

Very little broad gauge stock was produced in later years and what there was had narrow bodies designed to be easily converted to run on standard gauge. In the final years before 1892, the only broad gauge trains were the West of England expresses. 

Mike

perhaps Annie can give the rest of us a sneak preview of how 2024 is feeling?

Mike

26 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

I am not sure if they could answer these particular questions but @MikeOxon has a Broad Gauge blog

Thank you for the reference, Chris. 

I'm always happy to help if I can.  Like so many things, the Broad Gauge spans many different periods and styles - the early years were very different from anything else but gradually styles converged towards standard gauge practice and, in the later years, almost all the stock was designed for conversion to standard gauge. 

In the early period, stations were very different, in that several 'through' stations were single-sided, with separate 'up' and 'down' platforms on the same side of the running lines.  The first Paddington station was to the West of the current terminus.  You'll find some information in my blog post: 'In the Beginning'

I strongly recommend you join the Broad Gauge Society (BGS).  Their magazine 'Broadsheet' is a splendid publication, currently edited by Brian Arman, and a memory stick containing back-issues is available to members.  There is also a collection of Data Sheets, covering many items of rolling stock and lineside features.  I have learned a tremendous amount from these publications and from attending BGS meetings.

Mike

5 hours ago, Annie said:

because I thought it was pretty.

nothing wrong with that 🙂

3 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

Looks like Sir Jon has already been snowballed as his top hat has a deposit on it already. May be that's Blanche's second shot.

You could be right - she does nothing by halves!  Seems that Sgt Roberts has a lucky escape 🤪

If Sir John is from Wilcote, you'd better warn the good people of Traeth Mawr. If his daughter, Blanche, is with him, she is very liable to paint the town red 🙂

It looks rather as if the flighty young Blanche has just got the idea of making a snowball but Sir John has sternly admonished her to "desist now, young lady - most unseemly".

2 hours ago, Mikkel said:

A much cropped scene from Hemyock

I tried even more cropping and 'enhancement', although the printing screen is intrusive. 

With a little imagination, I can see the 'To carry 8(?) Tons' legend and, even more tentatively, a '9' digit but, as Mikkel said, there is a leafy twig across most of the number.

53 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

King's Meadow Yard, some time not long after 1904

I noticed the 'forest' of telegraph poles alongside the main lines on the right of the photo - looking not that different from the electrification infrastructure that has sprouted relatively recently 🙂

The change of the name of this thread has prompted me to restore my posts about building a GWR 3-plank wagon from the David Geen kit (NLA).  As well as restoring the images, I have also changed the names of these posts to reflect their contents more clearly.

Mike

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

the high round-ended wagon, with GWR sheet, that has all the appearance of a tilt wagon of the 1840s!

This is very interesting to me since I modelled a standard gauge tilt wagon on rather scanty evidence.

'Somewhere', I read that a few broad gauge tilt wagons were 'narrowed' by removing the central section of the ends, which resulted in a pointed Gothic arch.  The photo shows that this was not necessarily the case as this wagon has retained a rounded profile, like my model 🙂

18 hours ago, magmouse said:

There is a drawing of a 3-plank wagon in "Proceedings of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers" 1884 Plate 68, online here: https://archive.org/details/proceedings1884inst/page/n727/mode/2up 

I had not found this link before and found the whole article about South Wales wagons of considerable interest, since it also refers to some aspects of GWR wagon design. 

I have extracted the relevant pages from the 'Proceedings' and attach them here, since I believe that they may be of interest to others

Mineral Wagons_IME-1884.pdf

Mike

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

i did see this recently, in a copy of the Great Western Society's magazine that I had borrowed for the sake of an article on a 517 Class 0-4-2T in Wolverhampton livery but which also had an article on the provender store, brining together several photos that have been seen upthread or elsewhere [GW Echo No. 236 (Winter 2022)].

The version on Facebook is over-exposed and, on my screen at least, does not include the front row of wagons, all with small right-hand G.W.R  What is clear from the over-exposed version ( when copied to show the whole image) is that the wagon frames and undergear are the same shade as the wagon bodies.  Of course, the next question is "are they red?"

8 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I take your point about the Golden Age being less than golden for railway employees,

We have to place railway employment conditions within the context of their time.

It looks as though I shall have to call myself a 'pioneering' modeller from the 'era' definitions.  I'm relieved I'm not a 'primitive' modeller as in some 'epoch' definitions that I have seen 🙂