CKPR

i am still struggling to imagine a scenario where the green one and the red one might meet up, despite the Knotty’s extensive running powers.

If you want green and red engines side by side, then Linefoot Junction is just the ticket as it's where the  Cleator & Workington Junction Rly (mostly worked by nice red Furness Rly engines) met the Maryport & Carlisle and their idiosyncratic stock of nice green engines. Moreover, that's green as in 'Mid Quaker Green', which appears to have been pretty much the same as Mid Brunswick Green...

 

Back to P.O. coal wagons...

 

These could, and would, vary enormously in where they went to, depending on ownership.

 

Collieries had their own wagons, sometimes for specific purposes (e.g. East Midlands coal shipped out of Kings Lynn) but sometimes for hiring out to merchants who couldn’t afford to buy or rent a wagon dedicated to themselves. Thus, a Tredegar wagon was a common sight at New Radnor, but not in a train: it spent most of its time standing on a siding, whilst the merchant slowly sold off its contents about the town. (When it came to demurrage charges, the station staff looked the other way for this guy!)

 

Then there were the big suppliers, for example Stephenson Clarke, who amongst other things supplied coal to the LBSCRand other railways. This means that blocks of wagons, if not complete trains, would arrive from their pits, be transferred to the railway company, and then broken up into shorter sections for distribution about the system. Long trains of Manvers Main coal wagons trundling down the GCR to London were a common sight, but there would be wagons from different batches and makersin that train.

 

On from that, you might find wagons from contractors/factors, who would buy in bulk and ship to several stations within an area, possibly even storing some full wagons in their own yard for onward shipping to local depots as required. In a small way, the Old Radnor Trading Company did this on the lines around that area: nominally, they shipped out lime (and if dried, this was in wagons with a lid, like salt wagons) but they had other opens and would send them to collieries to collect coal orders.

 

Finally, you get the local trader, who may have only a single wagon. This may not always go to the same colliery, though. He would buy coal via perhaps a local coal agent, and buy different types of coal for stockpiling at various times of the year, trying to get the lowest price. So whilst his one and only wagon may have visited Little Snoring once a week, and been tripped in from Great Wastingthyme, how it got to and from that point could vary a lot.

 

And to top it all, some railways might offer lower rates for a slightly longer route, to make sure trains were running at full capacity.

 

Basically, there is no simple answer. You define your location, your era, and you does your reading up. As well as the pre-grouping maps, you need to get hold of a copy of such works as Len Tavender’s work, or those by Bill Hudson, and to look at photos of trains in service for your chosen era and locale.

Like inside valve gear on the GWR, the near absence of PO wagons on the North Eastern Railway is a  very good reason for modelling the NER. Or was until Coopercraft bought the moulds for the Slaters kit of the NER 20t hopper wagon. I'll get my coat...

I like the Brampton, which had a great variety of wonderful locos, including old long-boiler tender engines, and, as you say, an eastern connection with the Newcastle & Carlisle's Alston branch at Lambley.  I want to model Lambley, but from an unconventional viewpoint behind the station, so that you see the branch train crossing the viaduct in the distance before curving round to arrive at the front of the layout.  One day!

Brampton Town station is on the long list of places I'd like to model  one day...

Kitson built 73 4'6 wheel 0-6-0s (K and L class) for the Taff Vale. The wheelbase was 7'3 + 7'9, 4'3" boiler barell and 6'5in pitch. There's a nice photo here:

 

http://lightmoor.co.uk/books/railway-archive-issue-25/RARCH25

Which in turn are similar to the Beyer-Peacock engines bought by the M&CR (passim). I've previously mused on the utility (I won't say viability) of kits for the more common generic 0-6-0 designs of Sharp Stewart, Kitsons, Beyer-Peacock et al for us pre-group types.

A quick heads up in the case of the Cambrian and the various lines in West Cumberland, as in both cases the relevant societies (Welsh Railway Records Group and the Cumbrian Railways Association) have already collated a lot of information about PO wagon workings in the pre- and post-group eras in these areas of the countries.

Don't know if I've mentioned this publicly yet, but I'm currently doing up some CAD for S&DR No.25 'Derwent' for James' Daughter's project - It's certainly proving interesting!

So far the boiler, smokebox, dome, chimney, footplate and one piece of pipework are done, with the motionwork and cylinders being worked on separately.

 

Hopefully I can get this sorted by the end of the week to allow time to adjust, edit, fix, and generally iron out problems prior to James ordering the model and having time to build it!

Even older than 'Derwent' I know but there was an really informative article on the engineering of  'Puffing Billy' in Model Railways in 1978-79 (i.e. back in the days when model railway magazines were more than glorified toy train catalogues...)

If you can find or borrow one, the old Rivarossi "bourbonaise" 0-6-0 makes a passable S&DR 'long boiler' (article  by David Lloyd in the RM back in 1967-68 IIRC). 

I'm currently building the old Prototype Models kit of Chalford station and was wondering whether there any etched brass or lasercut windows that would be suitable as replacements for the printed clear plastic ones supplied with the kit. Chalford was a standard GWR design so I'm hoping that Swindon's usual approach standardisation might come to my rescue here.  

Just for the record, High Level have pretty much single-handedly made fine-scale locomotive building achievable for us mere mortals - thanks Chris ! 

Don't worry, I've wired the Admiralty and they tell me that they have matters in hand ....

An Edwardian sub-surface vessel of His Majesty's fleet - what could possibly go wrong ?!

Talking of KHAC, I don't think I've revealed my soi-distant claim to an old Anglo-Irish title.It's nothing, I won't mention it again...

  I assume that, with no Nationalisation, there was no Beeching; 

Back in the real world, rather than our pleasant pre-group arcadia, the newly formed LMS wielded a proto-Beeching Axe in West Cumberland quite soon after the Grouping, removing many and often all passenger services from the former WC&ER and C&WJR lines and the M&CR Mealsgate branch as well as closing the M&CR Derwent branch and would probably have withdrawn more services and abandoned more lines but for the onset of the war and the policy of  'shadow factories' and the dispersal of industry out of range of the Luftwaffe. Needless to say, talking of alternate histories, in my miniature make believe pre-grouping world, the Great War does not happen.   

The ones to beware of are those who affect an admiration for BR Blue, with the shambolic remains of steam-age infrastructure with undermaintained locomotives and rolling stock, all capped by that awful drab monotone "livery".  At least the "Transition " era was, to a degree, forward looking.  AND the locos were painted in the proper colour for locomotives!

 

Perhaps they should have stuck to Blood'n'Custard for coaches, rather than all over red......

That'll be me then, interested in the railways of West Cumberland c.1908-12 and West Cumbria c.1973-77 !

Has anyone done a cut and cut of the Ratio MR clerestories into say an MR brake composite? If so how did you do it? Also what companys’ stock can use the Ratio suburban as a basis apart from SR constituents?

Duncan

The Ratio MR suburban comp makes a very passable M&CR tri-compo with very little work bar new flat ends and new lamp tops.

Still haven't found any drawings for the NER Electric locos.

 

Any suggestions?

There was an S scale drawing of the steeple cab in 'Model Railways' in the mid-1970s (1975 or 76 IIRC) and also a rather basic Skinley print, which as luck would have it, I gave away at the weekend. 

On 25/01/2018 at 15:38, Guy Rixon said:

The Moresby hopper is a particularly fine-looking wagon. When did the LNWR get the steel hopper?

Thank you - the Moresby hopper is part of a rake of four, all of which are lettered on the other side for the C&WJR  as they used the same design, and are built to plans in an early edition of MRJ. The LNWR hopper, which forms part of a rake of five, was built nearly 30 years ago to  a Ross Pochin drawing in Beale's "Modelling the old-time railways" and I didn't know much about the history of the prototype when I made them. Since then, there was a series of articles in the CRA's "Cumbrian Railways" on the LNWR's West Cumberland wagon fleet that did furnish more details and I'll see if I can find the copies in question. I have  subsequently made most of the other LNWR wagons from those articles but they are easily the dullest  and least interesting wagons ever built ! 

Maybe I’m the only man in England who would say this, but I thoroughly enjoyed school, and it didn’t stand me in bad stead. To me, school was like a sort of cheery social club with the odd lesson thrown in. The worst that could be said of the teachers was that one or two were a bit burned-out; many were very good indeed, and had a sense of humour. I did rather annoy my father by leaving as soon as the law permitted, because I wanted to be ‘in the real world’. School was very good, but I sort of felt as if I’d grown out of it.

 

My elder daughter had A Bad Experience of secondary school, though. The particular one that she attended was just too unstructured for her, and her confidence suffered.

 

Young son and daughter seem to be being very well served by primary school, so far. Although small daughter is not a fast reader, that isn’t for want of kind and careful trying by the teachers. I do ever-so-slightly dread their Secondary Years, though. We have some very good schools, and some distinctly average ones, locally, and a school can flip from one to the other with a change of staff.

 

Besides massive variability, amounting to a postcode lottery, the other fault with state education right now, IMHO, is the Gove English Curriculum. For anyone not closely acquainted with it, it puts huge, disproportionate, emphasis on formal grammar. For the life of me I cannot see the point of it. Yes, writing logically and clearly is good, and writing clearly fosters thinking clearly, but the Country is short of qualified engineers, not qualified split-infinitive pedants.

 

(For the avoidance of doubt, this rant is not over ........ just temporarily suspended.)

Well, you and me both  as I really enjoyed school (state grammar then comprehensive 6th Form ) in the 1970s and early 1980s - having an inspirational physics teacher who had had a hand in inventing laser technology certainly helped !

Confused: I read your comment as implying that ‘Minories’ was an exception to prototypicality, but suspect you meant that aside from Minories - which are ipso facto prototypical - the “Deane” style layouts were generally closer to prototype.

Is that correct?

Yes, you're right as I meant to infer that 'Minories' is the other exception to the general lack of prototypicality in CJF's track plans. That and the recurring 'Tregunna'  design, which is pretty obviously St. Ives.  

But ‘Minories’ was based on a prototype.

Exactly !

Well, my stealthy assignation yesterday took me via Scotch Corner, which boasts a WH Smith's. 

 

I have merely glanced, but it is a good, well-proven plan that shows what can be done with the old 6' x 4' format, and it does make an attractive layout when presented in the Edwardian period. 

 

While I, too, immediately thought, 'but why not expand it around an operating well, thus increasing the run, easing the curves and getting side by side to the station'.  But, there is an advantage in viewing the depth of scene across the layout that would be lost if the tracks were expanded around a central well.  After all, not many 4mil layouts have the benefit of 4' wide baseboards, permitting such a depth of scene.  Also, when you think where the fiddle yard is, there is not much advantage to being able to stand on the other side of the station. 

 

I like the look of it and look forward to reading the article in full.

There are several 'Deane fiddle yard' designs in CJF's "60 plans for small railways" (currently 20p from Hereford Model Centre or your local swopmeet) and, interestingly, they tend to be the more prototypical of CJF's designs ('Minories' excepted). If your RMs go back that far, check out Maurice Deanes' classic Culm Valley layout in January or February 1952. 

If you want to see a real Triang system in action , catenary and everything , have a look at Oscar Paisleys YouTube channel. A great layout with very evocative scenes of all things Triang

Damn, now I'm going to have to watch ALL of these Tri-ang-tastic  videos !

Bought the current RM yesterday for the journey home from Birmingham to Ludlow via Hereford (if only the line via Tenbury Wells was still open...) and was pleasantly surprised at so much pre-grouping content. There was a reprint and update of W.D.Stewart's article on Smellie's GSWR 4-4-0 (still no mention of his stint on the M&CR) and a really nice LBSCR layout based on the old but effective  'Deane fiddle yard' design and using mostly r-t-r track and stock with excellent scenics. It included a photo of the layout treated to look like an Edwardian sepia print in a very convincing manner. All this and the pre-group stock from Hornby - SECR coaches, NBR C class (yes, I know it's really a J36), etc. 

It's a bit of an affection on my part, but when I'm building an etched kit or scratch-building in metal, I try to avoid using plastic to represent wood unless it's necessary for insulation. Hence, my engines have wooden footplates, etched rolling stock has wooden floors. It's not exactly going to solve our plastic and oil addictions but it is rather satisfying.

Quote: "Ah the invisible green debate"  from post #2 on down...

"enjoy"

(how I despise amateur waiters who plonk the plate down saying this)

dh

Was the invisible green of the Cambrian different from the invisible green of the Hull & Barnsley ?