Chas Levin

A very railway-themed weekend spent in York, the main purpose being to do some research at the NRM: I walked back through York Station, as I never tire of looking at the curve of the roof and the platforms: We also discovered that the hotel we stayed at started out life as the Head Office of the NER: It's been done up inside of course, but very much in keeping with its age - 1906 - with woodwork in chocolate brown and walls in dark cream. One ground floor door was a massive safe - presumably for the payroll, as everyone received wages in cash in those days. We stopped off for a quick trot round the York Model Railway Show too, which was at York Racecourse: It was *very* busy, reassuringly so, in light of recent laments for the poor health of our hobby. There were not only a lot more people but also, I thought, a much better atmosphere - more genuine excitement in the air - than at Ally Pally earlier this month. I'm not sure if that's a North/South thing, or an Easter thing, or just a random difference. Great to see 'Grantham - The Streamliner Years', especially having just learned that the layout's to be retired next year…

Superb! Custom-built clamps are a step up...

I thought for a split second that you'd modelled Mrs Poncenby actually using the facilities... but then realised not. I too was relieved...

No need to apologise! That story's typical of the kinds of things that happen so often with the paint colour question, where peoples' memories are pitted against physical evidence; it does make it complicated...

Nothing I'd disagree with there Mick. My impression from reading however is that locos and coaches - particularly mainline express locos and the fancier coaches - were seen at the time as important publicity tools and considerable care was taken over their appearance, more so than freight stock, which was seen as more utilitarian. I think they took a little more care over colours where it was seen as part of the corporate identity - the LNER and their green locos, the Midland and their... red/crimson/lake/maroon? (sorry Stephen!). I agree about Precision and am hoping to speak to them, but current health difficulties there make contact less easy than usual.

All of that should be true of course... but I'm sure we've all worked with colleagues who had varying ideas of what 'exact' actually meant, or whose eyesight or understanding were differently constituted from some others', perhaps through age? I mean no disrespect to anyone there, either current colleagues or historic GNR or LNER employees. Part of the problem is that we look at this from the viewpoint of historical researchers and modellers, investing these details with considerable importance; at the time however, it was basically just a job, in a busy, possibly over-worked and under-manned environment, subject to pressures of money and time, where green was green and the next loco needed to have a start made on it before the weekend. Again, I'm not suggesting any unprofessional behaviour - there was clearly an extremely high degree of consistency - but perhaps the key term in your post Stephen is 'gross deviation'. I'm sure you're right that any gross deviation would be rejected, but the kind of colour deviation we sometimes look at - the kind that I myself have spent probably far too long obsessing over! - might very well have been considered acceptable in a busy working environment and in fact we have anecdotal evidence that this was certainly the case...

Fully agreed, plus differences in eyesight, weathering, ageing, undercoats, batches, phases of the moon and many other things! I'm not trying to pin down anything 'exactly' necessarily, but I am keen to look at one or two specific questions about whether certain colours were or were not the same as certain others. For instance, in the 1860s, were the terms 'Brunswick Green' and Great Western Green' taken to be the same thing at the GNR? Also, the question of whether the LNER specifically decided at the Grouping to use LNER Apple Green (whether Doncaster or Darlington!) or not. Another point: there seems - to my eye - to be a warmer / more yellow / less blue tint on modern preserved GNR locos than on LNER ones: where did that difference come from? Who first started using that slightly different shade and what were their sources for the information? If nothing else, it's an opportunity to have a round-up of some of the available sources, both primary, in the sense of Painting Diagrams and Tender documents, and secondary, in the sense of well-known books such as Carter, Digby and Groves (the well-known transport solicitors!). When I was learning about GNR livery while building the C2 a while back, I found locating this information difficult and confusing - there are quite a lot of contradictions - so I think there's scope there for a review of the information we have, without trying to ascertain anything definite which as you say is at this distance of time surely impossible. And asking these questions in print might provoke some interesting answers...

Indeed; I was just reading a section on these questions in Steve Barnfield's 1994 book on Painting and Lining and after referencing the long-running Lake/Crimson Lake/Maroon debate as an example of how difficult a subject this can be, he quotes Bob Forster as telling him that "the shade of Crimson Lake ordered from the manufacturer by the LMS was always matched to a 1913 Midland Railway sample. The perceived difference of shade which resulted derived from the way in which this paint was applied, not in the actual paint itself. It is well known that the Midland were very keen on finish of the highest quality, but that the LMS, although still desiring a lasting result did cheapen the process by cutting down the number of top coats and varnishes." This should be read in context though: his wider point is that the kind of certainty sought in such traditions is simply impossible to achieve and was so at the time, let alone over a century later and at small modelling scales. Ian Rathbone makes the same points in his book. None of which alters for me the charming image of senior gents at the LMS carefully unwrapping a foot-square piece of painted carriage side for comparison purposes each time a new order of paint was being prepared, returning it to an enormous Crimson Lake-coloured office safe afterwards...

I see what you did there... 🤣

Well, we supposedly live in a post-truth world, don't we? 😉 I'm very aware of how difficult a subject it is, but a look at what the original sources are and what wording they actually contain, along with how that information has been treated by later writers, is of some use and might hopefully stimulate further debate and enquiries or even - touch wood (teak) - lead to some previously unknown original sources being re-discovered.

Yep - that's one of the things I wanted to know more about: where was that originally said and where have other interpretations been taken on board. Interesting subject, controversial of course. If nothing else, a round-up of sources is useful...

G'Day Terry, you're very observant! I do indeed have a DJH kit in the pile and it'll probably be my next white-metal loco build, though there'll likely be a brass one before that too. Actually though, I lingered on it (and took quite a lot more photos) in pursuit of the shade of green: I'm currently researching an article for the Great Northern News (the GNR Society journal) on the various shades of green used by the GNR, a thorny subject!

Well, I'm no expert on this - I've lived in London most of my life - but I'd say that's a pretty clear case of Friendly Northern Hospitality (™️). I didn't have the chance to try the cafe but we're back there next month so I'll have to try the cheese on toast. Useful info on portion size, thank you Graeme: I could have one when we first arrive and keep going for the rest of the day too!

It's been a rather more railway-oriented weekend than usual. Yesterday was spent in Doncaster at a GNRS meeting which was at the Danum Gallery, Library and Museum and that meant that I could spend a little time afterwards looking at these two magnificent machines - apologies for the less than fabulous shots but they're not well placed for photography: Today was spent at the BRM National Festival of Railway Modelling show at Ally Pally, where - unusually for me - I took no photos at all! I've never been to this show on a Sunday before - in fact I don't think I've ever been to a railway show on a Sunday - and it was noticeably quieter than Saturdays typically are, though one or two sporting fixtures may have affected things... 😉

Hooray! 👏 Lovely looking model as it is! I don't weather anything either (though not for the same reasons) and always feel we're in a very small minority...

Wow - that's made my day, great start to the morning!!

Thanks Rich! I also learnt a lot about what you can get away with when soldering, in terms of keeping the heat fairly local. Soldering close to previous work - less than a centimetre in some cases - you can 'see' the heat moving along the metal. Its surface appearance changes slightly, even more so in the case of solder. You can quickly remove the iron when the change has just started to affect nearby solder, in time to stop it actually re-melting. Quite exciting, like a challenge to get in and out before you're 'spotted'... 👀

After another rather longer gap than is my habit - other things taking up time and energy - I now have the chassis on two bogies: The frame for the Black Beetle bogie - the one on the left in the photo above - is what's been taking shape since the last posting. I wanted to build something robust, that could be removed for maintenance or replacement and thanks to various suggestions and ideas from readers further back on this thread, I'd decided to go for a rectangular brass frame made from U-section, with a thin brass bracket at each end, held in place by being sandwiched between the top and body of the Beetle. This is where I got to just before Christmas, before being diverted by other parts of the build, a mock-up in plastic and paper: I started by filing notches in a piece of 2x4x0.5mm brass U-section: Then, the longer side sections were carefully filed flat; laborious, but I was keen to have a one-piece fold-up: I then paused further work on the main frame to make the guard irons, as I wanted to drill and pin them with 0.3mm brass wire and I thought it would be easier to arrange that before folding up the frame. I soldered two pieces of 1x1.5mm right-angle brass together and attempted to bend them into a right-angle... which didn't go quite according to plan: each attempt resulted in the piece on one side breaking: I was about to work out another way to do it, until I realised that I could salvage one curved section from each partly broken pair: I drilled out the 0.3mm holes in them - and the frame - before trimming, because the extra material made them easy to handle: Here's a trial fit with the wire pins and the main frame still in the flat - rather rough, but with filing, soldering and filling... Next, the flat brackets, using the top and body of the Beetle as a template, one for each end, to go where the pieces of yellow paper are in the mock-up photo above: The fitting of the cosmetic white-metal sides to the outsides of the brass was also something best done before folding the frame, stage one being to file the white-metal backs flat and thin them as much as I dared without weakening them: I probably left them thicker than I could have done and I can already see I'll have issues clearing the steps that hang down from the body, but we know from photos that those steps were sometimes angled outwards on the prototypes for the same reason. I drilled out what were originally intended as axle holes in the white-metal sides and inserted brass wire stubs, drilling corresponding holes in the flat sides of the main brass frame for the stubs to locate into: The frame was then folded up and with one of the brass brackets fitted, I checked for ride height, viewing the axle centres of the wheelsets through the holes in the frame sides: I realised at this point I'd made the same mistake as on previous builds, intending to use 188 degree solder for the earlier structural sections, but then just plunged in with my usual 145! Very annoying and quite embarrassing: I must find a way of avoiding this happening in future! It meant I was nervous about dislodging the brackets or the corners, so much so that I contemplated scrapping the whole thing and starting again, given that I was going to have sweat on the white-metal sides. Folding up the corners hadn't gone smoothly either, as I found I'd work-hardened the brass more than I'd realised and two of the corners came within a gnat's whisker of fracturing, needing soldered reinforcement, another thing that might fall apart with too much heat. I thought I might as well carry on though, partly just to see whether I could get away with it! I strengthened the corners with some 0.7mm brass wire: I was also worried about the sweated on brackets dislodging during later soldering, so I decided to drill and insert tiny plugs of brass wire in a square pattern, to look like bolted or riveted plates, of which the prototype had plenty. I don't have photographic evidence that there was one of these plates in the middle of the front bogie stretcher, but I plead modellers' license here... The inner sections were then clipped off, to give this effect from the outside: Now came the most delicate part, sweating on the white-metal sides. It all worked very well in the end, by going very slowly, with a very hot iron, 'lashings of flux' (as the late Iain Rice said), not lingering and letting the whole thing cool down fully in between each bit of work. I also took the precaution of holding one corner in a Coffman clamp, with a clothes peg further along the side: This arrangement allowed careful access with the iron to solder the inside ends of those brass locating stubs that poke through from the white-metal axle holes to the insides of the brass frames, using 145 degree brass solder. Then, having previously tinned the outsides of the brass frames with 145 degree solder and the insides of the white-metal sides with 70 degree solder, I could hold the frames in ceramic tweezers and go along the inside of the sandwich to sweat the two metals together, slowly and carefully, as noted above, filling in along the join with more 70 degree solder afterwards: Here's the result after some cleaning up: And here it is, mounted on the bogie: It was very pleasing to be able to mount the chassis - well, floorpan, that this point - on the two bogies at last:

Good morning Tony, a great idea to put those clips on here, it makes them easily accessible and in a logical place - on your own thread! I was told about them a few years; I couldn't get a copy on DVD so I found them on YouTube... but as one 5 hours+ long film! I couldn't watch the whole thing at once (I mean it was a scheduling issue at the time, not due to lack of interest!) so I had to leave the browser window open with the film paused at the point I'd reached, returning to it the next day, watching it in half-hours sections that way. I didn't trust my computer to keep the page/place/time without crashing or resetting to the start or doing something else digital and mysterious, so I also jotted down the hours and minutes on a post-it, which I stuck to the computer monitor! It was worth it though - as others have said, they're very instructive and helpful. I think the fact that you're so calm and matter-of-fact about things is very good for less experienced people like me. Perhaps that's partly your experience as a teacher, as well as your modelling experience? Anyway, thank you for going to the trouble of linking all those separate clips on here.

Fine looking loco Mick!

Yes, sorry, I should have been clearer. The H&F is an American-made product: I too bought mine from a UK retailer (I can't remember which one) but going to their website just now, I found this note: "Effective December 31, 2023 the Small Shop has closed. We have retired! You may be able to find some of our products at our Authorized Dealers. Please check the list - link is at the bottom of each page. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Hopefully soon, the Small Shop will be back under new ownership!" So if you can find any still in the retail channel I'd snap them up... Very sorry to be the bearer of bad news and to have whetted anyone's appetite, only to frustrate it.

Morning Tony, this story stuck in my mind; it's an odd combination of being interested enough in a fairly specialised item - a kit-built loco - to commission one to be built, but so ill-informed about the charateristics of it that something as intrinsic as its noise destroys the interest. Young people 🙄. If only we had the knowledge when we're young that we gain by the time we're old... 😉

Interesting! I have to admit I'm not too keen on the whole 3D printing thing so I don't think I'd be keen to get involved at the moment. I have a couple of kits that I intend modifying into something suitable in due course but once they're used up, I might dip a toe...

Nice work - and happy to see you like them too! I wish I had more projects on the go on which to use them - I expect I'll get over the novelty but at the moment, they're a favourite new toy. Like you, after struggling for so long with metal bars, mouse mats and so froth, these things are like magic! You should be able to avoid curve compromise during tab folding by holding those areas not intended to be folded really flat... which was going to lead me neatly on to my next recommendation, a Hold-and-Fold, but looking online it looks like they might be discontinued...?

They look very good to my eye! I have something similar in mind - there are so few kits for very early rolling stock, aren't there? Are the sides / bodies ones you printed yourself?