nomisd

As the author of one of the IRS (overseas) handbooks, I take that as a compliment ;-) It didn't occur to me to go and look in the Record but at the time of my original posting I didn't actually have a compete set. I do now so will go and have a look...

According to the IRS Handbook for Essex, it was sold for scrap to Thomas Ward at Grays. It moved in March 1966 and was scrapped at an unknown date after that. I believe that there are photos of it in the IRS collection, archivist@irsociety.co.uk

It is screwed into the stud work of the wall. On the rear wall (the one that is still drying as it was plastered this week) they are every 60cms. The shorter wall was built 8 years ago and used wood stud work and it is every 40cms. They used 55mm plaster board screws. They use exactly the same techniques they use for putting stud work up so I can't see why the screws won't stay tight. I believe it can be purchased in Wickes in the UK, this would suggest that there are other places that will sell it too.

It is galvanised. I should have added about the costs is that they are builders cost prices rather than retail prices.

It measures 6 metres by 80cms along the back wall and about 4 metres by 80 along the short wall. It is 90cms high. They had the whole framework built in about 1.5 hours. The top is not screwed down yet and we ran out of ply for the top but that is not really an issue yet (the missing to is the fiddle yard). From a cost point of view, the metal is 1.07 euro a linear metre against 1.27 euro for 2 x 2 (in reality 54mm x 54mm). They tell me that the metal is expensive at the moment and in a normal market is about 60 cents a metre. Strength wise I can’t see that it is any less strong than wood. The only thing is that we couldn’t work out a way of making legs so have gone with 2 x 2s for the legs. They are only at the front as the rail is screwed into back wall . I have looked and I can’t see that anyone else has used this material to build their bench work (not to say I have looked everywhere). Any comments are welcome.

I think this is the correct place to be posting this. One thing that I have never been particularly good at is wood working. I have good intentions but my execution is somewhat less than my design. This is of course a problem if one wants to build a model railway. Last year we had some new walls built in our house and I was talking to our builders about this impediment to getting my layout started. We have been using these builders for nearly a decade now and I have got to know them pretty well. When we started renovating our house nearly ten years ago, the way to build a new interior wall was the tried and tested wood frame work using 2 x 2 and 2 x 4 which the plaster board is then screwed to. A couple of years ago our builders stopped using this method and went to metal work to build the stud work. The metal work is three different sorts of U profile. It is cut using tin snips (or an angle grinder or is suppose a saw) and is fastened by either crimping it together of screwing it together. Last summer, I watched them putting up a stud wall using it and it occurred to me that in essence a layout board is just a stud wall turned on its side. We then had a long discussion about the pros and cons of using this material as the basis for base boards (it should be noted that neither of the builders are modellers). We couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work as a baseboard building material. Fast forward to last week when they came back to lower the ceiling in our loft from 5 metres to a more sensible 3 metres (and put some new insulation in at the same time). Part of the loft has been designated for my next layout. So, we decided to put this theory to the test. This morning the bench work for the for the layout was built.

The Wandle Valley Light Railway – Britain’s Last Light Railway Located in the north Midlands, the six mile long line from Winterstoke to Summersend was built by a locally formed company in 1856. From its opening it was operated by the Grand Central Railway (GCR) and originally ran from the GCR station in Winterstoke. This station eventually closed and operations were transferred to the joint GCR/Great North Western Railway (GNWR) station in the town. In 1921 the GCR and GNWR were amalgamated to become the London North Midland Railway, this in turn became the North Midland Region of the nationalised British Railways in 1948. The branch to Summersend became an early closure casualty after nationalisation and it closed in 1950. As recorded L T C Rolt’s seminal 1954 biography of the area, there was much local anger about this. Unfortunately Rolt’s history was published too early to detail the next and most interesting chapter of the Summersend branch. The anger did not subside and continued for the next three years. In March 1953 the cinema in Winterstoke began showing the latest release from the Ealing Studios, The Titfield Thunderbolt. Whilst watching it a Mr R M Kelling had an idea – why not campaign to reopen the Summersend line using a Light Railway Order? Despite having been closed for three years, the track had been left in place. Rather than leaving the cinema and heading for the loco shed in an attempt to re-create the film, Kelling wrote a letter to the local paper putting forward the idea and suggesting a public meeting to discuss it. This happened a couple of weeks later and was well attended. The snowball had begun its journey down the mountain. One of the things that gave the project impetus was the involvement of the Wandle Valley Farmers Co-operative (WVFC). The arable farmers in the area had begun investing in large-scale barley growing during the war years. They had been some of the loudest voices against the original closure. They put forward a plan to redevelop the basic goods shed that lay just beyond Summersend station. This involved the building of a grain silo, a petrol and diesel trans-shipment facility and a new goods shed. In addition to this the coal merchant would be relocated. The grain silos would have barley delivered by road from the farms and sent out by rail to the local brewery, Blenkinsop’s Entire, and to any other customers they could find further afield. The fuel facility would receive inward deliveries in tank wagons, which would be transferred to storage tanks; this could then be supplied to local farmers and other customers. The goods shed was for merchandise destined for WVFC, mainly fertilisers and agricultural equipment but any other customer could avail themselves of the facility. It was decided to form the Wandle Valley Light Railway (WVLR, although the Winterstoke Summersend Light Railway was also considered) and to apply for the reopening of the branch under a LRO, Much to everyone’s surprise, this was granted rather rapidly in June 1955. Building work began immediately on the new facilities at Summersend. Rolling stock would be leased from BR but operated by WVLR. The stock was made up of any life expired stock hat BR could muster up, mainly ex GCR and GNWR locos. These were maintained at the BR shed at Winterstoke by WVLR staff. The line was reopened to much pomp and circumstance in February 1956. To begin with they were operated by ex GNWR steam railmotors (Beyer, Peacock products similar to those supplied to the North Staffordshire Railway and the LBSCR). Occasional a push pull train operated by ex GCR locos similar to the ex L&YR Class 5 2-4-2Ts with ex GCR push pull sets was substituted. An interesting working was a morning outbound and evening return through carriage to London. This was worked by a single coach (sometimes strengthened to two) and attached/detached to/from a London train at Winterstoke. An evening London bound parcels/post working ran with a similar working arriving in the morning along with newspapers from London. Freight operations were operated by locos obtained from BR in the same way. These were mainly large tank engines, which were all similar to the LNWR 1185 class and Precursor Tanks class locos. As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, the reopening of the Summersend branch as the WVLR was turning out to be a good thing, with freight and passenger traffic growing year on year. Summersend was becoming something of a suburb of Winterstoke and the passenger trains between the two had become well patronised at all times of the day. The freight operations were strong with two harvests of barley a year. The main threat to the line came from the imminent withdrawal of steam from the British mainline system. BR had informed WVLR following the withdrawal of the steam from mainline services in August 1968, they could no longer use steam traction on the railway and would have to move to diesel traction. BR had also offered to maintain the current leasing agreement. However the board of the WVLR approached BR with a counter offer. They enquired as to whether it was possible that they could purchase their own locomotives that they could maintain and operate on the line. The WVLR suggested that the large number of shunting and Type 1 locos that were becoming surplus to BRs requirements would be ideal for their use. BR agreed and in the late 1960s and early 1970s WVLR purchased a surprisingly large number of redundant locos from BR (and other sources, mainly industrial users). This kept some interesting prototypes working long after their mainline demise. In the early 1980s the barley traffic remains strong, even after Blenkinsops has been purchased and become part of the Bass empire. There are still flows of traffic to Scottish distillers – even though this is often rumoured to be shifting to road, it is something that never actually seems came to fruition. The fuel terminal sees regular traffic. The passenger services have switched to ex BR DMUs but the daily through coach to and from London and the postal, parcels and papers service still run every weekday. The lines motive power is starting to get a bit long in the tooth but the large scale withdrawal from BR of the Type 2 locos promises a new supply of locos for the line. With the closure of the Derwent Light Railway in 1981, the WVLR became the last independently operated light railway in the country. Its future looks safe. Extract from the Railway World, April 1983

Like a boxer who is punch drunk and doesn’t know when to give up, I have decided to try (yet) again. Into my sixth decade I am still yet to finish one of my model railways. My last one got near but not quite. I can’t leave it though. Having had a few goes at this, this time I come prepared…. First things first – what are the things that I really enjoy about this hobby? I came up with coming up with back stories and building plastic kits. I do love a good structure kit. Trouble is that many of these are usually of German and American origin and out of scale for building a UK layout. Thing is though, if you go big you can sort of get away with it. So go big. Fortunately there are a lot of really good plastic rolling stock kits so that is a route that can be gone down. I also really enjoy dirtying up those kits. However what I can’t do is build brass. I have tried and I have failed. This is a shame as there are a lot of locos that I desire that only come in brass (including a couple I have had flat packed for more than a decade now). So why so many brass locos? Well my penchant for the prototype sort of dictates it – industrial railways. Obviously the last decade has seen RTR locos for this come on in leaps and bounds. No longer do you have to use an 03 as a an ex BR loco that has been sold into industry (although there were many of these so it is prototypical). However, the manufacturer who does a RTR 165DE Ruston can have my money now. Like so many others I have been having a home sort out recently and have come across some wagons that I have had but never used in anger for around two decades now. They are three Bachmann Blue Grain wagons, a Bass box van and open made by Dapol as a special edition for the Tutbury Jinny in the 2000s, a Hornby box van and a couple of Dapol 16T open kits. It was all for a brewery that never left the drawing board. Its not like they were forgotten about but actually opening the boxes and looking at them started the cogs a whirring. What I also still have are the four baseboards, all about 4ft by 2ft designed to go together in a line giving a 16ft by 2ft board. I had these built about 15 years ago by someone in Kent who advertised in the small ads of Railway Modeller – if I am honest, they are possibly the best thing I have ever invested money in as far as modelling goes. They are beautiful, solid and bullet proof. I will probably put new tops on them, the sundela has already had two layouts of it and is starting get a bit ropey and uneven. I also rescued the points from the last attempt and have a fair bit of flex track left unused (perhaps the second best thing I have ever purchased a whole box of Peco Code 75 flex track). I started looking around at what I could do. It had to check the industrial box, grain wagon box and use big buildings. I started idly looking at kits on the web. I kept being drawn back to Walthers grain silo kits. They do two nice looking kits – what you could describe as the typical wooden prairie style and a concrete twin silo. I decided to pull a book off the shelf which I knew had some reference material in it – Modelling BR Blue Era by xxxxx. This is an all round excellent book with a lot of good reference material on it. The freight operation chapter has a very good part about grain traffic. A small detail in it caught my attention – one of the places with grain traffic was the Derwent Valley Light Railway. Hmmm, a light railway…admittedly its not industrial but its adjacent. This set a whole new set of ideas pinging around. One of which was motive power. As already stated, the choice of industrial diesel locos has become much more broad over the last few years. If you are going to operate a light railway you would need something fairly substantial – whilst the Hornby 48DS Ruston is a beautiful model, it wouldn’t really be a “mainline” loco, something with a bit more heft would be needed. The Hornby Sentinel would work and the Golden Valley Janus would definitely work. Whilst looking at the online sellers websites, I saw a loco that made me stop in my tracks and completely rethink – the Heljan Class 15. The thing about was its shape – BTH had almost copied the US designs of 1000hp locos like the Fairbanks Morse H-12-44s and the Baldwin RS-12s. The American locos had been extensive used on their equivalent of the UK light railway, the shortline. Had Britain had more independent light railways around the time BR was divesting itself of its unwanted Type 1 locos, they would have almost found a home on them. So along with the grain silo and a class 15, various other wagon kits and buildings have been ordered and delivery is imminent. I haven't got a track plan yet (but have a rough one on my head) but I can’t see any track laying occurring this winter however plenty of kit building, painting and weathering will be happening. So here is the back story…comments are of course welcome.

Oh yes. This is about 10km from where I live and I drive past the entire line on my way to and from my haircut. The line has been reinstated from Gouraec station to a new station at Bon Repos. It is dual gauge (600/1000mm) throughout. One of the joys of my trip to the haidressers is "what is new at Gouraec this time?" Almost every time I go past there is something new there. My trip a couple of weeks ago did not disappoint as a 1000mm gauge Schoma has arrived a couple of days previously. The line was supposed to be open to the public this summer but unsurprisingly it has been postponed until next year. A rail bike has operated the last two summers.

What a difference a nights sleep (and time to dry) makes. It looked so much better this morning. I plumped the static grass up with a clean paint brush, filled in some of the bare gaps with some weed clumps from DioDumps (a Dutch military modelling supplier), filled the corner in with a combination of field scatter, dark earth with field debris over the top (again DioDumps products). I put some brambles and gorse at the back, can't remember off the top of my head who made these but I got them at an exhibition in the UK. Then took it outside for pictures - everything always looks so much better in real sunlight Next I think I am going to make a fence for the field. I have also started to thing about a back scene I may also do some light ballasting on some of the track but haven't decided yet.

Hmmmm, I am not sure - maybe the cold light of day (and it drying throughly) will make it look different.

Once the track was laid, I then went over the whole board with Vallejo Brown Earth textured ground cover (I should say that I don't own shares in Vallejo, just really like their products!). Once I did it I looked at the board and thought that the sides and back where the track finished needed something so found some off cuts of foam and stuck them down. Waited for them to dry and then went over them with the brown gloop Which brings us to now. Todays task is try and put in some ground cover, using for the first time ever the static grass applicator....

This is the first time that I have ever tried the dark art of track laying. Whilst this certainly isn't some highly engineered P4 double slip, its still not as straightforward as it first seems. I started by gluing the template onto a piece of primed thin foam board. This was my first mistake - I didn't chose a thick enough piece of foam board. The way the track works is that the sleepers are glued down and the track is held in place by pushing specially bent track pins into pre-drilled holes in the sleepers. The problem was the ends of the pins stuck out of the bard by a couple of mms. I found a off cut piece of thick foam board and stuck the original to this to overcome the problem. The actual process of track laying, once you work out a system, is easy. The thing was it wasn't until the fourth and last length of rail I got my system - basically putting all the pins in and sliding the rail into the gap and pushing the pins home but making sure the pin head is to the side. If I were going to actually build a working layout, there would probably be some glue involved once the track was laid and the gauge had been run over it to ensure that the track stayed where it was supposed to be. I was pleased that I could tilt the board and the wagon would run from one end to the other with out derailing. As this is a diorama I haven't thought about powering the track. I would imagine that you end up with lots of dropper wires that create lovely spaghetti under your board!

I started by taking the plastic parts and painting them. Everything was undercoated. The metal parts (sleepers and wagon frame) were given a coat of Vallejo Light Rust. They were all then given a coat of Vallejo Chipping Medium, an utterly genius product. They were then all gone over with a coat of Vallejo Metallic Steel. Once this is dry, take a whetted implement (toothpick, paint brush, cotton bud, tissue) and slowly remove the last painted layer to reveal the layer below it. Instant rust weathering. Its the first time I have ever used this and an very happy with the results The wagon top I just went over with some faded wood like colours And the rails I painted the sides of with an enamel rust colour. Next step - track laying

I have always been intrigued by O14 scale. I like the idea that someone went "No. This 2ft 3in gauge/16.5mm track compromise has gone on long enough - we must have exact 7mm scale 2ft gauge track and rolling stock". I also like it because I do like the idea of Hudson pre-fabricated track panels. Oh and the locos that you can get for it are nice too. The one thing about it though the last few years it hasn't been the easiest thing to get hold of. I am not sure (and care even less) about the machinations that went on, suffice to say that the nascent Roy Link products that were taken over KB Scale have for a couple of years been available through the Narrow Planets website. I occasionally look on the NP website to see what is in stock. A couple of weeks ago the stars wee obviously in alignment as the Ruston LBT kit and the track starter pack were both in stock. So I ordered them and less than a week later they had arrived in France - good job Narrow Planets and the Royal Mail and La Poste For the moment, let us put aside the Ruston as that is going to be a whole different project. What I am going to do with this starter kit? I decided that the best thing to do would be make it up. put it down on some sort of surface and essentially knock up a small diorama. So that is what I have starting doing over the last couple of days.

1. I think that big ports are my favourite place to go and look for railways. You can spend days in places like Antwerp and Portland, just driving around public roads finding both mainline and industrial locos at work. 9/11 has meant that some areas that were once easily accessible are now less so but in general no-one will be that bothered by your presence. This is shot is one Peninsular Terminal's (essentially a shunting contractor) EMD SW1200s shunting at a Rhodia Chemicals site in the north of the port of Portland in November 2012. Despite appearances this was taken about 1 o'clock in the afternoon and not just before dusk. 2. Technically not a great photo but its my only Howard Carter moment. An Orenstein & Koppel broad gauge fireless loco at a jute factory in Howrah, West Bengal. It had been last used in the early 1980s, put in its shed and forgotten about. I found out it was there and got permission to go and see it. Just after this it was moved to an engineering works in Calcutta and converted to be operated from compressed air rather than steam. As far as I know it is still at work there. It taken from outside the shed is what my avatar is. November 2008.

That is the really weird thing - if you watch footage from England games up to Euro 96, there are more union flags in the crowd than St Georges crosses. 1966 world cup footage and there is nary a St George cross to be seen. You can even see this in NIck's 1980s shirt - its red white and blue not red and white. So he would be more likely to have a union flag in his cab.

The front of that RH bothers me. What I am especially bothered about is this, what the arrows are pointing to As far as I can tell this shouldn't actually be here. Its obviously the product of whatever caused the grill etching to be stuck over it with blutac. The thing is I don't think that it had anything to do with the orginal kit. Checking the 48DS drawing in @Ruston 48DS & 88DS book, it shouldn't be there. Looking at every photo I have ever found, it shouldn't be there. Its obviously a bodge. And its all bent and isn't going to look right. So I think that its going. Removing it shouldn't be too problematic. This means that the grill that came off won't fit now so a replacement will have to be made. I don't think I have anything suitable so I think that the old sieve that I have just found in the kitchen may become a donor. Its not the correct pattern but then I found the photo on page 31 of said book of RH 212653 at Brown Bayley in Sheffield for all the world looking like someone has taken a sieve mesh and put it into as a new radiator grill.

Nice. All three of those are examples of the word timeless. Ignore the motive power or the fashion and any of them could have been taken at any point in about the last 80ish years. The Tangmere photo reminds me of the Southern Railway "Summer comes the soonest on the Southern" poster.

A liberal application of acetone was all that it took to get the glued in lead out and to leave a cavity I have had a test fit of the grill and it is going to work fine. Everything needs a good clean up, including straightening out the surround as best as I can and a good cleaning of the grill. I will have to take a break - I need to get some sanding and cleaning wheels for the dremel-a-like and I haven't got any suitable glue to fix the grill with. Deconfinement starts here on Tuesday which includes the reopening of DIY shops, where I can get such things. It'll be nice to go out without my filled in form - I am actually disappointed that I haven't actually been asked for my papers, in a mid-century sort of way, whilst out.

I am not sure if this is the worst looking loco ever but I would contend that it is possibly the most uninspired design ever. The one off Hunslet Barclay loco at Hope Cement Works The original inspiration - a cereal box or a brick?

1. Taken from the cab of an Indian Railways WAM4 (IRC) between Howrah and Kharagpur. It was very difficult to get a decent photograph of anything between the window bars so the fact that the on coming train, the overhead structures and the signal have all managed to frame themselves into gaps was a stroke of very good fortune. Possibly the most cramped journey of my life - driver, 2nd man, traction inspector, me, my wife and a friend squeezed into a fairly small space; but what an experience. November 2008 2. A 1940s 25 ton General Electric built loco that spends its day shuttling pairs of loaded wood chip cars from the automatic loader (just visible in the distance) to a holding siding until a whole train is made up and can be collected by the mainline company (NS off the top of my head but don't quote me). A wonderful idyllic working industrial railway which is almost an anachronism in the early 21st century. North Carolina, USA, August 2011

I have eased some of the lead out of the way to see if I can make room for sliding the grill up in side. If it were completely clean inside it would probably be possible but there is just too much lead to make it viable without completely creasing and mangaling the grill. The remains of the original grill (the brighter square in the picture with the blutac above) need to go as well so I will need to get the Dremel like tool out to deal with those. A solution I thought of of the top of my head is to build a frame (from plastic section, perhaps L section?), put the grill on the back of that and then glue that in the hole. Another idea that occurs to me is any examples of oddly re-radiatored 48DSs? Any suggestions on how to close the hole convincingly and easily are very welcome.

I had a closer look at the offending grill to see what was actually holding on. It didn't look like it had been soldered and looked like it had been glued. So I got a scalpel to see if I could use that to "undo" the glue. As I put it on the seam it suspiciously went between the two piece of metal very easily. Yeah it turns out that the grill was attached by erm, a very large blob of blutac. In fairness I suppose until I took it off the paint was probably also assisting to. So I have stripped this out but there is now another impediment the cavity under the bonnet is filled with lead (the bottom of the photo is the front of the loco). It looks like I will be able to take some of this out so I can get the grill where it is supposed to be. I haven't quite worked out what I am going to hack the lead out with yet but I am sure I will find something....

Stupid question time - I have approximately zero experience of brass. I have no variable temp soldering iron but do have a bog standard electrical one. What is the easiest way of doing this?