Raised On Steam

Bodmin.

The K1 resting at Grosmont in 2004.

I'd been doing a similar thing but with weathering power which is less precise. I initially used cotton buds dipped in IPA for streaking but they started removing the paint! Next time I'd prefer to use paint along the rivet lines to get a similar look to your's but suspect it'd probably be easier with an airbrush. Which I don't have alas.

Slightly cheerier - I found these when I was rooting around the former TD track bed past the allotments between Washington station as was and what is now Asda's backyard. Any thoughts what they are?

Interesting piece on that site too about the reasons for the decline in UK shipbuilding. Basically the familiar sequence of mismanagement, rifts in industrial relations and indifference from successive governments that you can apply to most of Britain's long lost heavy industries.

This is as dirty as I like my engines, used but not too flea ridden. I love that effect you've got on the tender sides - the lines of dirt following the rivets. What method do you use to get that?

That IS an interesting site! It's easy for us younger folk to forget how much went on along the banks of the Tyne. Also spotted on that site (and further up river) is a nice pic of Dunston Co-op flour mill where my grandfather was chief accountant!

That reminds me of Gateshead MPD before they flattened it.

Wire wool and lighter fluid are the two little miracles of the tool box!

At least your fingernails will be in good fettle after using that…..

Dunston Staithes. Built by the North Eastern Railway.

Finally! I own the holy grail!

I forgot to add the rest from the Thompson/Peppercorn book that although Harrison didn't get the chance to built his massive East Coast monster he did get to build Duke Of Gloucester later at Derby and incorporate many of his ideas therein with Riddles' blessing. Apart from the Kylchap chimney of course (since rectified). So 71000 very much had LNE DNA and apparently had to be fired like an A4 and not like a Duchess which was the state of affairs on the West Coast. This is where it's dodgy reputation started to come from. It's been recorded that if it had been tried among the A4's on the ECML it might have been a different story……but we know this now fortunately! Thenabouts though of course came the first Deltic which changed everything on the Eastern seaboard! I've often thought it's a shame that none of the new build projects are a second Duke.

By chance today I happened on the writing I was trying to recollect earlier about 4-8-2's. It's in 'Thompson and Peppercorn Locomotive Engineers' by Col H Rogers: 'It is worth considering what would have happened in the LNER locomotive world if there had been no Nationalisation. JF Harrison would, of course, have succeeded Peppercorn as CME……... ……The locomotive that Harrison would have designed would have been a 4-8-2 with a round top boiler pressed at 275 psi, three cylinders 21in by 26 in stroke, driving wheels 6ft 4 in diameter, Caprotti valve gear ( independent to each cylinder), automatic stoker, single shot lubrication wherever possible and a corridor tender……. …..Harrison's three cylinder simple would have been a stage towards a much more revolutionary engine….another 4-8-2 but this would have been a four cylinder compound with the high pressure of 400 psi and a water tube firebox…..There is every possibility that Harrison's proposed compound would have developed more drawbar power than the 'Deltic' diesels.' What a beast that would have been!

Next it'll be the Churchward version of a Big Boy

This has jogged my memory. I think I read that when Peppercorn assumed the CME office he considered reviving Gresley's monster engine. But I could be getting mixed up with Bulleid here. CME's are like buses - three at once.

Just look at the length of those boilers!

Two words: Awe Some! I'll have that to go thanks

I'm sure I somewhere once saw an outline diagram of a proposed Peppercorn 4-8-2. Anybody attempted that leviathan?

You're right there. I've previously had a good look at that folder and you do think 'what's coming next'.

Now that IS a beast!

Merchant Navy's were originally going to be 2-8-2's. Imagine that! Or was it 4-8-2? Even bigger!

Somebody has GOT to build that 'pretty creature' austerity. That 'Marchioness' looks like a real beast too.

Now this I'm looking forward to seeing!

Daughter and me just spent a pleasant afternoon kicking around Bellingham and Redesmouth. Bellingham heritage centre (gift shop) is actually at the old railway station. So much of the earthworks and bridges remain up that way as ghostly monuments to the Border Counties line.