Guy Rixon

For ambient sound, I suggest just running a track on a music player placed on the floor under the layout. I don't see the need to build a sound system into the baseboard.

If you player is some cheap old digital kit, then you can mix your ambient track digitally. You can get basic sound-mixing software for free, I think. Probably not much mixing is needed, but you would want to form your sounds into something that can be looped. By that, I mean fading the volume up from silent at the start of the track and down to silence at the end: this avoids an obtrusive glitch when the player restarts the track.

The big problem is choosing which sounds to play. Are you playing the sounds that would carry from the environment visible on the layout? That would be noises that carry some distance, maybe 100 feet or more. Alternatively, are you playing the quiet sounds that come from close to the observer's position, away from the railway. 

You might find that if you take your smartphone and record an ultra-boring video while sat next to a river then you can rip out the audio track to use with the layout. No mixing needed, and nobody can say it's not prototypical.

Further up this thread, there's an assertion that one can't solder to dirt. I'd like to qualify that. You shouldn't solder to dirt, but you can, sort of, and that's where some of the beginner's problems come from.

In a proper joint - a strong one that conducts electricity - the solder forms a thin layer of alloy with the metal on either side of the joint. If the surfaces are very dirty, then this alloy can't form. However, if  the dirt is crusty enough then the solder can congeal around and between the dirt particles. This gives a weak joint, which does not conduct much. Usually, the joint falls apart immediately. Sometimes, if the universe wishes to mock you, it holds until the part is removed from the jig for cleaning and then gives up. Sometimes it lasts a lot longer.

An important edge-case is where the joint is mechanically strong enough, but the dirt layer stops it conducting. This is the classic "dry" joint.

 You would need some local trade directory information from that date to understand what consignments might have moved in vans. It could have been largely inward consignments: the Cambrian vans dispatched empty to collect. This was a normal practise before the 'force majeure' of WWI initiated the general adoption of the common user principle, a process which took decades to complete.

Really? I'd always understood that the originating system provided the wagon and the receiving system had to return that wagon promptly, were it not common user. Never heard of doing the other way around. If you have citations for that it would be grand.

I have a lot of paperwork from the 1903 period; consignment notes and memo's chasing payment for parcels etc. One in particular is for a tin of polish from the Ronuk factory in Portslade to Wye in Kent. It shows the transhipment at Hastings. ...

Is this note passed directly between the LBSC and SECR or is it an RCH thing? I've never been clear on how far the RCH was involved in the day-to-day business.

Hmm. IIRC, the Cambrian used white and purple lights in its signals to avoid possible confusion with red and green lights on costal shipping. If that's accurate, maybe they also used odd colours for the signal arms?  

I wonder if this relates to control of liability for damage? That might be tricky to sort out if the load is transhipped. E.g. I send my less-than-wagon-load of writing slates from Wales to Ashford, say, it is collected by the Cambrian, handed over to the GWR, who tranship it to build up a full wagon-load and later hand over to the SECR, who eventually deliver broken slates to the consignee. Who's at fault? I guess as customer I seek compensation from the Cambrian, but perhaps it gets delayed while the Cambrian argues blame with the other two.

Alternatively, the service may be aimed at goods that are hard to replace in a timely way: e.g. any custom order of expensive stuff. The special conditions then would be to ensure that the load does not travel in a sheeted open (because sheets sometime leak and the risk of water damage is unacceptable, even if the railway pays for it). Excluding tranship is not fear of clumsy porters but to make sure that the load doesn't get moved to an open somewhere en route. Note that tranship inside the Cambrian network would be OK because the company could rule that loads under the special service had to go in vans. Tranship on other railways would be excluded.

Finally, does anyone know if the Cambrian operated "road vans" to pick up part loads of premium goods?

Bear in mind that people were shorter in the first quarter of the 20th century. In particular, urban, working-class men tended to be shorter than middle-class men. It was noted during WW1 that the junior officers were often taller than the men they led. Therefore, one might predict the heads behind first-class windows to be higher up than those behind third-class lights.

No reason not to have a tandem turnout in a running line if it helps. Compact layouts at principal stations often have them. 3-throw turnouts (where the two sets of blades but agains each other) are rarer and not usually seen in running lines.

PW engineers would not design a full-size layout with a tandem unless they were short of space, so you need a cover story for your layout to be plausible. That could be a site cramped by the landscape - e.g. hemmed in by steep hills, or by water ways, or by roads that can't easily be bridged. Alternatively, the original layout of the station might have used up all the spare space and then more sidings were added at a later date forcing the use of a tandem.

An illusion, I think, arising from (i) the fact that the traverser track is about a rail height below the rails on the traverser and (ii) the traverser is further from the track behind than you first think. For a while I thought the traverser track sloped away from the camera but I think that's another illusion. 

 

That's a very distinctive maker's plate, but whose?

The traverser has two rails above rail height of the siding, to carry the flanged wheels and two outer ones matching the siding rail-height and carrying flangeless wheels. It neatly avoids having to cut the siding rails, building a pit for the traverser substructure, and having to make the traverser n+1 roads wide to serve n sidings.

I expect to build a traverser on a restricted site and I'd quite like to model this kind. Does anybody know of any drawings?

I expect to 

Most 19th-century coaches had lower footboards level with the axleboxes. Most railways removed these in the early 20th century, certainly before 1940. Lower footboards were typically only kept below guard's compartments, and occasionally on coaches for light railways where there were low platforms.

Do you know if your coach was still air-braked in your period? Could it have been converted to vacuum brake by the LNER? This would radically change the underframe equipment.

I have some detail photos of GER coach underframes, taken last year at the East Anglian Railway Museum. These show coaches restored to roughly the condition of the early 20th century. I could dig these out and post them if they help.

I've never been sure about the unpainted interiors. I've seen a few references to early wagon being creosoted rather than painted. I speculate that this was done both inside and out, but customers started complaining about contamination of the load and orders went out not to treat the interiors. This custom continued, perhaps, after the switch to painted exteriors.

Rotting of the floors of timber-carrying wagons, and of OCTs and their like, seems to have been a recognised problem.  Some companies left gaps between the planks to improve drainage. That said, I've never heard that the floors were painted.

Googling suggests that cattle actually like the taste of lead and will seek it out. Leaded paint on cattle wagons may have been recognized as a hazard quite early on. Wikipedia suggest that most of the serious research on lead toxicity happened in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; the primary citation for lead poisoning of cattle seems to be a 1975 paper. It's possible that the effects of  high doses of lead were known historically and the 20th-century research brought out the dangers of light doses, as in fumes from petrol. I suspect that the cattle wagons were not painted inside.

Re siting of AA batteries: remember that there had to be coordination between the guns and fighter command to avoid "friendly fire" and that was seriously difficult with 1940s communications and command structures. IIRC, 11 Group of Fighter Command had a "no-fly" zone in a belt south of London and the AA batteries in the belt could fire at any aircraft. I would expect that this was repeated around other cites. This, IMHO, makes it less likely to find single AA guns in rural locations.

Re AA rockets: Churchill was extremely keen on these. Either he dreamed up the idea, or promoted its development (can't remember which) and would not let it go. The rockets appear frequently in his war memoirs as "unrotated projectiles".

I've been painting interior ironwork black. The logic is that it needs some paint to protect it from corrosion and black-leading was a standard finish for metalwork. I would expect all the ironwork to get painted when it was made and put into stock, possibly some time before fitting to the wagon.

The external ironwork typically got painted over in body colour, but I would not expect the painters to do the internal ironwork. It would be extra work for no real gain.

BTW, I sometimes use black ink in a drawing ("Rotring", but mine's a cheaper brand) pen to colour the internal ironwork. I find it easier to get a neat edge to the black with a pen than with a brush. This is particularly helpful when colouring the side knees, where I need to blacken the parts on three faces. The pen is also good for dotting in bolt heads on the inside of the wagon.

Side knees: what Spitfire said. Note also that the knees are substantial bits of forged metal, unlike the thin washer-plates on the outside. They would be 2 to 3 inches thick at the bend (where they disappear into the floor) and maybe an inch thick at the top. Below floor-level, they are bent through 90 degrees and have a leg pointing towards the centre of the wagon. These legs are bolted to the middle bearers and the floor planks are rebated on the underside to accommodate them. Nothing of the horizontal part shows above floor level.

I shall experiment with the weathered red. I have a wagon to do in SER red that could be finished that way.

After a busy weekend of exhibitions I finally got around to finishing these off (I think).

Final details added: the opening bars above the doors.

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Brake pipes and couplings.

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The last bits added were the internal partitions, handily you get two in a kit.

 

And now for some photos of the two together.

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Can you remind us how the weathering was done, please? I ask because the weathered colour in the photos is looking much, much better than the basic primer-colour in the previous pics.

Nice that they're getting built at last. That's about £70-worth of kits at current (eBay) prices!

If one is using the floor that comes with the kit, it rides a bit high if the headstocks are shimmed. I chose to reduce the height of the solebars. But your floor is thinner, so the shims are right.

Will you simulate the side knees on the inside? It's trivial to do at the stage shown in your last photo.

LSWR axleboxes are back on sale. I have thickened the problematic detail along the axis parallel to the axle; I think this will not be very visible. I have not test-printed this version, so we still don't know if Shapeways will print it. I will try a test in my next batch of prints.

The new prices for FUD and FXD are now in force. My buffers and axleboxes have come down in price by 35-40%.

The buffers and axleboxes in my shop are down 35-40%.

I've had a look at a sample of 4 of my models - 

 

a) Open wagon body with underframe in situ, printed 'right way up' - 16% cheaper

 

b) Tank loco body, printed 'right way up' - 37% more expensive

 

c) Carriage body without roof or floor, printed 'right way up' - 67% cheaper

 

d) Van body without roof or floor, printed on it's side - 37% cheaper

And the carriage (MSLR tri-composite) is now attractively priced and I shall get one in my next order. Thanks!

The advice about applying the solder directly to the joint is really important when using cored solder without liquid flux. If you carry the solder to the joint on the bit, then the flux from the core is gone, or already reacted, by the time the solder reaches the joint. If you put liquid flux on the joint first, then carrying the solder on the bit does work.

Holding the work in one hand is not ideal. I find that if I jig an assembly (such that I could wield solder in one hand and the iron in the other, but I don't), then I get better joints.

There exist devices that clamp to a soldering iron and dispense solder from a reel as the iron is applied. I saw one used in a demonstration but have never seen the like on sale.

More cylinders allow better balancing of the motion and less hammer-blow to the track. Hammer-blow increases significantly the load that a locomotive puts on the track and, from c. 1900 if not earlier, designers were keen to reduce it. Hence, Churchward designed the 4-series "Star" class for the fastest trains, even though most of his standard designs had two cylinders.

The wagon with rounded ends on the second standard-gauge road from the left possibly belongs to the LSWR. The LCDR had wagons with a similar end-profile, but those had a framing member across the end level with the top of the sides.

SER CCT of 1870 on HMRS site: http://www.hmrs.org.uk/drawings/drawinginfo.php?id=22395. HMRS 5482 looks like it might be a later drawing of the same vehicle.

Nickel silver is in my experience a bit easier/nicer to work with than brass when it comes to loco and other kits [...] Lead-free solder is useless.

Nickel silver is definitely easier. Ordinary brass quickly forms mucky oxides and these stop the solder from bonding. I've had cases where the joint mucked up before the solder melted! Nickel silver is less prone to this.

Using the right flux helps. Years ago, I started building stock in 2FS where the wagon chassis are usually etched in nickel silver. I used cored solder and Carr's Red flux as that was all I had available. For the NS, this turned out to work really well. Later, I moved back to brass kits in 4mm scale and found that the same solder/flux combination was a bit pants. For ordinary brass, I think one needs a stronger flux. Carr's green works well for me.

One of the problems with lead-free solder is that the replacements for 145-degree solder melt at a higher temperature and the leaded version and are not so good at filling gaps. If one gets a close fit in the metal to be joined then it works; if one tried to bodge it across gap then it won't play.

As for the Exactoscale parts, Phil is hoping to do as many as he can, certainly the coach and wagon wheels. As for the drivers this as of yet is unknown, as down to cost

The C & W wheels are, IMHO, excellent, but they are hard to assemble into wheelsets unless one has the Exactoscale back-2back gauge; and those have been out of stock for ages. I predict that the wheels would sell much better if the gauges were made available again.