Adam

Another lorry, this time a United Dairies Scammell, again from Road Transport Images parts. I've made a start on the tractor unit but until I've primed it, the white resin is impossible to take a decent picture of, so here we have the important bit, the tank. So the trailer started out as item T11 sold as a bitumen tank but readily convertible to something more lactic. So here is was after the first phase of assembly/filling (the casting is reasonable, bit with a fair number of pin holes which mostly showed up after first contact with primer) with band and nameboards on the side, scaled to suit the accompanying transfers. I've beefed up the tops of the mudguards with some 10 thou' superglued in place and blended. They weren't as thick as the curves which they should have been! The current state of play following a dose of Halford's filler primer, showing the filling of pin holes (most really very tiny but opened up slightly to give the Milliput a chance) but also a start on detailing - you can see the mudguard stays and spare wheel here and also the toolbox (if that’s what it was): Back to the tractor unit... Adam

It was also at Yeovil Junction for a bit - with another 20 or so locos - as dad and I photographed it there, along with a number of the Thomas Hills, at least one Hudswell and a couple of Fowlers (the latter now over the way at the Yeovil Railway Centre). Adam

Sounds a perfectly normal method of manufacture. I imagine it was on the solebar - probably at the left hand end where the internal user number has been daubed. I’m not sure when BR imposed their internal numbering series beginning 0xxxx but I suspect this is a probable date for the removal of these particular plates. Going on the information provided above I suspect after 1960! Adam

So one of these: https://zenfolio.page.link/5JCRU, the longevity would explain the survival, no doubt. Adam

This one - an Austin FF - has been on the bench (but mostly off) for years now. It's a bit of an experiment. The cab and wheels are from Road Transport Images (albeit under Frank Waller's ownership) while the chassis and body are from scratch just to see if I could, and whether the chassis themselves were worth the money.* I need to add the prop shaft and diff on the rear axle but it's otherwise done. Adam * Broadly, yes. That said, they're not cheap...

You make a perfectly valid point, but see: https://zenfolio.page.link/kC8ks and https://zenfolio.page.link/YEYKE I'll chock it with a sleeper. Or maybe a second van, with parking brake on as I quite like pre-grouping vans and have precious little excuse for building them, though this would almost certainly mean an additional siding. Thank you! What with one thing and another, notably the arrival of a small person, there hasn't been much in the way of activity. The only thing I've completed is a simple repaint (paid for by delay repay payments from the commute as it happens...) of this Series 2 Land Rover. You don't see many in pastel green... So far as minerals are concerned, it depends on the effect you're after. For a more rust than paint vehicle, the logical thing to do is to paint the thing rust coloured and then add some livery over the top. For a well-scuffed and chipped wagon then there are lots of ways of doing that (and there are probably some in this thread, but the last site rebuild broke the index I'd created so the best I can do at present is to suggest having a look (a thread search for 'mineral' might do it?). Adam

Splendid work, David - which is doing nothing for my desire to shamelessly copy your efforts! The mesh is very fine, can you remember where you got it from? Adam

Exceptionally common in even quite good railway books - and especially true of wagon publications - it's poor form, yes, and frustrating as it's then incredibly difficult to check working and reasoning from original documents. An honourable mention to Mike King, however, who does provide a handful of references (all that are really necessary, in fairness) in his Southern Wagons Pictorial, not that this is relevant to this particular topic, but he stands alone in the work I've seen.* Adam * He may not be alone, of course, but that's my observation. [And pity those of us who have to cite this stuff for works put out by academic presses who cannot just take this material on trust - yours, a grumpy editor]

The problem, of course, is that I know I have one of these wagons knocking around and I now want to do one, too. The likelihood of one appearing in Somerset in the early '60s is, er, slim... Adam

Happy to help (and it's something to do while trying to persuade the baby to sleep!). This view is probably, if anything, more helpful: I wouldn't have guessed that the walkway went quite that far down the tank, for example. And this shows more clearly how its bracketed. Which is useful. Adam

You mean this one? I must say, I wouldn't have expected the ladder to go like this: Adam

I suppose the obvious thing is that all the main letting should be in caps. That aside, the Lloyd photo is fascinating - I’ve been looking for an excuse to build a dumb buffered wagon for years and as a BR-era modeller hadn’t, until now. Adam

Some fascinating insights in this thread. Being a historian in the day job, I saw @Stationmaster's comment and his first hand memories and immediately thought to take a look at the catalogue of The National Archives to see what the contemporary official records might say. The official board type documents can often be quite revealing (they were for the sale of the West Somerset Railway trackbed which I had to check or work purposes relatively recently) and they are indeed at Kew: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11185333 https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10929474 https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10958959 If you can wait a few weeks, @Captain Kernow I can call them up when I'm next there in the New Year and take some pictures. There are other files looking at the application of the model to other locations which might be of interest. I would not be at all surprised if BR had a very clear idea off what it thought was and was not a parkway model at the higher echelons and I wonder how that developed? Adam

Given that - apparently - they've been runnign a Tonbridge-Edenbridge shuttle, I guess that the answer is yes, but I'm away from home at the mo' so can't bike down the hill to check! Adam

But in this case, I suspect the owner was this outfit: https://www.scottishshale.co.uk/GazBeyond/BSEnglandCoal/BSEC_Works/BradwellOilWorks.html Adam

Even without the railway connection it's worth noting that Alford was not alone in the area - RNAS Yeovilton was (like Puriton) entirely missing from the OS until the '80s despite being plainly visible from the main road. Adam PS - Nice to see the products of the day job - the Victoria County History - as cited on British History Online and on used on Wikipedia in use here.

Hi Graham, I don't know whether you've looked out the MRJ article. I've now found my copy and can confirm that it's invaluable with a number of close ups including survivors as late as '63. That does mean that I should at least consider getting one... The photo above appears in it too, attributed to D.G. Thomas and the HMRS. Adam

It's brass, so it must be Branchlines or Gibson (my money is on the former). Adam

If you click on it, you will end up on Flickr - I meant only to post the URL. Where the original image came from, I'm not sure, but it's rather lovely (if daunting - imagine building 8 or 9 of the things and the accompanying Herrings!). Adam

Or this: Adam

If you think it's tricky in 7mm, remember that it started life in 4mm! It is - thanks to the GWR's conservative approach to constructing a ballast wagon of a decent size with any consideration for user convenience or safety* - always going to be tricky if it's to be accurate (is yours the fitted version?). If so there's a decent close-up on the RCTS collection: https://rcts.zenfolio.com/rolling-stock/gwr/ea0fca025 Hope that helps a little? Adam EDIT - I think there's an image or two to accompany Geoff Kent's article on the type in MRJ 257. He certainly built one of these, but from a conversion of the Cambrian plastic kit for the Herring. * The Leeds Forge design that became the BR Trout and provided the design template for Catfish/Dogfish came about at roughly the same time and was bought by the SECR, among others.

Very nice indeed - and so quickly done! I wonder whether the smokebox dart could be finer though. For small locos like this make them up from N Gauge handrail knobs - which are shoulderless - and it makes a significant difference. I have some somewhere f you'd like? Adam

Eventually! It's destined to be a stores van on the layout, parked at the end of a siding. To this end it has an internal user number and branding. Of course the layout doesn't exist yet and the associated clutter will take a bit of work, but the van is done. Adam

I'm sure it was a product of the pit signwriter (who was quite good, on this evidence). Something approaching Gill sans and everything. For those unfamiliar with Caernarfon, Shirehall Street (where the assizes met, among other things) is, in Welsh, called 'Stryd y Jel', literally, jail street... Adam

I’m not certain of the photo’s date, and that’s certainly not an official sign, but it’s probably - going on the rest of the collection - late ‘60s. Maybe early ‘70s. As ever in Wales, there’s a difference between what the Anglophone owners (and their market) called a thing and what the Welsh-speaking workers or community called a thing. Some of the differences are quite revealing (look up the Welsh name for Shirehall street in Caernarfon for good example). Adam