CKPR

9 hours ago, fezza said:

A few might still be green with yellow ends, but these would be very rare by the mid 70s (mainly a few 25s, 40s and 47s).

And very very dirty by the early-mid 1970s.

How about modelling the abandoned or at least proposed  commercial operations mooted in the late 1960s for such lines as the Hayling Island and the Waverley ?

5 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

I can wholly recommend the Southern Hemisphere,  we haven't  started a single world war and looking at  tripadvisor reviews, places south of the equator  generally get more stars.

 

And if you ignore much of Sth America and Africa, there are less dictators per  capita.

Yeah but enormous spiders...

On 23/04/2024 at 16:46, Nearholmer said:

Our other soft underbelly is Scots Nationalism, of course, with Welsh Nationalism waiting in the wings. Chisel us down into ever smaller pieces, until we have every individual standing in their own square foot (or tenth of a square metre) bit of soil, waving their personal flag.

My family background is Scottish on my Nordic-identifying mum's side, and Anglo-Dutch on my dad's side, the latter via a diversion into the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy. On top of which, we're Northern and there's nowt we can do about that. Given all of this, I therefore regard myself as British and that's the end of the matter.

Then again, there was the time when I worked at a northern university and my colleague and I, who both regarded ourselves as just British, were so fed up of the micro-identities the university was determined to map us on to that she put her ethnic origin as 'Cymric-Niger' and I put 'Brigantian'. You guessed it, we actually showed up in the published dataset and I was asked to sit on the ethnic minority staff consultation & advisory group as I was the first Brigantian who had ever worked there... I politely declined, saying that I was sure that there must be others.

6 hours ago, Northroader said:

The storage of mines explosives was usually done in a small isolated building, quite secure, brick built and with an iron door. Your idea of a second building for storage of high grade mineral ores (in sacks), seems very likely.

 Indeed and there are various other isolated small structures marked on the offical plan and visible in the distance in photographs that might fit the bill for an explosives store. I certainly wasn't thinking that the small goods shed, as marked on the plans, was for the storage of explosives.

I grew up in Keswick in the 1970s when it was still a mining and quarrying town and remember hearing the warning siren and subsequent explosions from the Coledale mine near Braithwaite.

Why were there two goods sheds at Mealsgate ? This is a long shot but I'm thinking that the one on the goods wharf, which is smaller and cruder than the goods shed proper adjacent to the carriage siding on the 'right side' of the tracks, was summat to do with mining. Not coal mining, as there was a short branch to the nearby colliery, but the mineral mining high up on the nearby Caldbeck fells. The M&CR apparently considered building a branchline to Caldbeck but sensibly thought better of it given the ups and downs of the various markets in the mid 19th century. They had  obviously identified Caldbeck as a potential source of traffic and without a direct line, this would have left Mealsgate as the nearest railhead. I'm therefore speculating that this shed was for the transhipment of valuable minerals (particularly barytes and copper) rather than general goods. I'm now wondering whether one of the other seemingly random sheds at Mealsgate might have been for the storage of mining stores, including explosives ? Given the various downturns in the fortunes of the Caldbeck mines, a couple of sheds at Mealsgate would probably have been sufficient to deal with the fluctuating and declining traffic.

Remember that the LNWR never identified their locomotives (OK, only the later big tank engines) as you already knew that you were travelling on The Premier Line so there was no need to tell you...only lesser lines had to advertise themselves !

Rw.LNWR trouser colours, if you look on Facebook at a site called "On Historical Lines", you'll find a lot of really useful  info about pre-grouping railway uniforms, much of it in this post:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/KNFMFyGn2vkGQjZk/

9 hours ago, brumtb said:

A bit off piste, but I'd quite like to know how Carlisle's Brunton Park got it's name as that's my surname.

Tony 

Looks like it is a Scottish Borders and Northumberland placename meaning a farmstead or enclosure by a stream (the maiden name of my friends, who is Welsh on her dad's side, was Bunton, which is probably the same derivation ?)

Probably still the best book on the railways of Carlisle is 'Carlisle - Rail Centres No.6' by Peter W Robinson published in 1986 (There's a more recent and excellent book, "Rails across Carlisle" by Steven & Jeff Davidson, focussing on the yards, depots and goods lines of Carlisle but it's pretty rare and I've only ever seen the copy I bought from C&M Models).

15 hours ago, brumtb said:

Thanks Mikkel, the food was good as well!

Tattie pot, Cumberland sausage and sticky toffee pudding ?!

The M&CR goods & coal depot adjacent to Carlisle Citadel was officially called Crown St. Goods, but was also known as Bog Goods ! This area of Carlisle was once known as Bogfield and there's a Bog Junction on the goods lines just to the south of Citadel.

As Phil @SteamAle might recall, No.30 runs like a smooth sewing machine on extra strength smooth oil thanks to a heavy  white metal body and a Comet double reduction gearbox with a rigid chassis but a 'free-bogie' tender.

There was a rumour that one of the 'Yorkshiremen', in this case No.30, had been seen working to Mealsgate and now photographic evidence has come to light...of course, the date of the supposed sighting was 1st April 1922 !

On 23/03/2024 at 19:32, F-UnitMad said:

An evening Transfer Run was brought to an unexpected halt on my American O Scale layout last summer.

"Someone should do something about the bugs around here" grumbled Tiny the Engineer as he and his Conductor inspected the dead moth....

Unless this is West Virginia and that is the infamous Mothman, in which case it is very realistic...

5 hours ago, Citadel said:

 

 

 

   Right, now to to do some research on the M&CR version...

PM me and I'll look up the extant drawing and photos for you.

7 hours ago, Dave John said:

Is it possible that they just bought it from metropolitan ? 

It's a possibility but comparison of the drawings of both vehicles [there is an HMRS drawing of the M&CR box] indicates that the M&CR box is different from the Caley boxes in several ways, not least in having an assymetrical wheelbase. It's also simpler in it's build with much less of the finesse or detail of the Caley vehicle. Taken together, we concluded it was either a copy or a substantial rebuild. Either way, it was a pig to make in 4mm !

We had some discussion on here a few years ago about whether the M&CR's older type of horsebox, seen here on the left, was a rebuilt ex-Caley horsebox or another instance of Maryport works copying their neighours.

Thank you Jim @Caley Jim that's really helpful - I was planning on using large sheets of thin card to form the forecourt/yard and platform [you can see the platform walls and some internal formers in the photos above] for 'Mealsgate' and will now try using thinned DAS on the card to integrate all of these surfaces with the rest of the scenery.

Very nice to see a tram on the workbench and I've found my thoughts wandering back to the topic after an abortive attempt some 30 years ago to model the Carlisle trams using the old Keil-Kraft kits.

I would endorse everything that Jim @Caley Jim says about DAS and it's also very pleasant to use and readily sandable without the nasty dust associated with polyfilla or plaster. I've been happily smoothing away lumps & bumps and making ditches & paths with nothing more than some old sandpaper and I think that there's definitely something more relaxing about working with 'natural' materials such as wood, card, metal and now clay. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of styrene in my model making (but definitely no resin ) and my wagons are all the better for it. That said, I do sometimes wish I'd gone down the old-school Pendon or S scale path and used card & ply from the start of my pre-group modelling in the mid-1980s (Mike Longridge's classic book on building 4mm rolling stock sits on my bookshelf to remind me of the path less chosen).