Edwardian

Oh, you've spoilt it for me now!

Before we get into the whole territory of 'if-it-bothers-you-that-the-14XX-doesn't-have-an-ashpan-it's-your-fault-for-looking-at-it-from-the-wrong-angle', it is black, it's obviously black, in the flesh it looks black. Whether that is (a) inaccurate or (b) subjectively that noticeable for you or (c) bothers you, are three distinct issues! I have said in the post above what appears to be the case to me, and what colour I'd expect it to be, while noting that one should not place too much reliance on how B&W pictures of the period appear to show colour differences. The further point in favour of black lower doors seems not so easy to overcome. On the model the lower portion of the door is flush with the black edged gold beading. In such circumstances, there would indeed be no division between the black border and the lower panel. In painting the lower doors, Kernow has actually treated the subject consistently with the physical tooling. Logically, the lower doors would be black on this basis. The problem is, of course, that the tooling here is wrong. There should be, and was on the prototype, the same step down from the beading line to the doors as there is on the lower body. The fact that the passenger doors are recessed does not change this, they are still treated as other doors and the sides in this regard. This can be seen on the drawings reproduced in Lewis and in numerous photographs, of Os and Rs and, indeed, all panelled standard diagrams of railmotor. The picture below is actually a Q, but I use it simply because it is a very clear view of the feature; the lower part of the double doors is not flush with the bottom of the waist beading. If one thinks of it in constructional terms, it is only to be expected that the lower doors would be flush with the waist panels above, not with the beading laid over it. On GWR panelled coaches, it's generally only in the case of oversheeting on ageing carriages where an area would become flush with the beading. As I say, a careful eye will reveal the passengers doors of the Os and Rs appear the same way, as do the official drawings. This tooling error is common to the double passenger doors on both the lined chocolate and cream No.61 and the all brown No. 63, and, I suspect, to the single passenger door on the lake No.85. The only difference is that the error does not create the same livery problem with all over brown and lake versions where the lining on the beading is not black. It is only by having the model in my hands that I have spotted the tooling error that is the explanation for what is almost certainly a livery error in the case of No.61. The choice would seem to be between leaving it or trying to fix it. Either is a valid response, but "don't look upism" in saying it isn't actually wrong is not a response I have much sympathy with. If fixing it, the most accurate fix would be to drill out the black lower doors, paint them chocolate and recess them. The less traumatic visual fix is to add a gold line to mark the bottom of the waist beading line and paint chocolate beneath it.

New arrival at Edwardian Towers today, and it only took nine years from its announcement! At least it means the financial pain has long since faded from memory. Ran very sweetly straight out of the box. Edwardian innovation, the Class O steam railmotor of 1906, it makes a useful addition to the 'modern traction' department: Though, at 70' it's very much the big brother. There are some minor inaccuracies, but I think this is probably likely to be the most accurate of the pre-Grouping liveried versions offered by Kernow. The strange GWR monogram - the 'prize monogram' - was the winning entry to a design competion. It was applied new to the first Class Os in 1906, but did not last long and was soon replaced with the Garter on carriage stock, as seen on the carriages below. The very much overscale lamps are a bit of a pain, but here accuracy was sacrificed for gimmickry; they work. The lamps are fixed at both ends and show white for the leading end and red for the trailing end, which means the colour of the lamps changes with the direction the model is running. As you all know, electricity is like unto magic for me, so this just puts me in mind of the themos flask; it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, but how does it know?!?

😊 Runs like a dream straight out of the box. At last, some more GWR branch fodder!

I love that Crampton, but why is it driven by Pablo Escobar?

"Your parcel from Kernow Model Rail Centre Ltd is due to be delivered: Today, Thursday, 1 February 2024 Between 09:49am and 11:49am" I will, naturally, be out during that slot, so....... I'm not sure about the lining, because it does not look as if there is any beading on the lower part of the door, but, yes, I cannot see why it should not be painted chocolate. Of course, the photograph record in B&W, but to my mind chocolate would have seemed the default assumption and, to my eyes, it does look odd in black. It's always hard to judge such things, but on the official view below, I see no change in tone between the waist panel on the passenger doors and the lower part, whereas the black of the solebar (albeit no doubt to different finish) is obviously a different tone.

Barbados in the Back Room I will be very disappointed if that is not the layout topic title in due course!

How absolutely brilliant, in both conception and execution. Truly magnificent, sir! A pity that the WNR of 1905 has yet to adopt the internal combustion engine.

Yes, I don't think it's a case of simply making buildings to a smaller scale than advertised. In some cases doors, for example the larger than domestic double doors of Bachmann's St Saviours, might be a little underscale, but in general features such as doors, windows, chimney pots, drain pipes and bricks themselves are likely to be scale or very close to it. What manufacturers seem to have done, in what I can only see as an exercise of great art and skill egregiously misapplied, is somehow to shrink a building round such scale or near to scale features. This renders them mere caricatures of real buildings, but the level of detail often lavished on kits and ready-to-plants helps to disguise just how toylike the proportions have become. These are often very charismatic models, yet one can sometimes be left with a vague sense that something does not look quite right. Why is this done? Well, I think it's train set thinking. If the expectation of the "average enthusiast" is that he jack-knives Mark I coaches round set-track on a 6'x4', he is going to need buildings that are similarly compromised, otherwise they will not fit and might snap the thin skein of illusion. While people will have views of the compromises of N or OO gauge track, I have seen less discussion on other immersion-breaking issues. For instance, arguably the worst problem with OO track is the sleeper length and spacing of the traditional FB "OO/HO" track and the geometry that sets parallel tracks too far apart. This means that, even using generous radius curves and long turnouts, things will still look off. Then there is the fact that many figures sold for 4mm scale are too large, and then there is this issue of these trainset buildings. I suspect there are other pitfalls, resulting from some long-forgotten compromise, waiting out there to trap us! Real tin tabernacles were sold as prefabs to standard sizes. William Cooper of the Old Kent Road, for instance, would bang them out at a variety of sizes starting at 30' x 20' and rising to 60' x 25'. Judging from the catalogue for Humphrey's Iron Churches, a modest 3-bay church would have an interior measurement of 40' x 20'. So, what about the Bachmann effort? It's very much of this compromised, trainset, mentality. The main body of the church scales at 26'6" x 14'. While a tin tabernacle might be this small, I doubt St Saviour's is, or anything of such an appearance would be. In this case, the illusion is helped by keeping the window size reasonably proportionate to the reduced size of the building, and the doors a little underscale. Also, Bachmann has lopped off a bay; the rear of the real St Saviours has 4 windows, not Bachmann's 3. EDIT: Thanks to the Honourable Member from Sydney, we do know how long the real St Saviour's main body is, about 40'. It's hard to get an impression of size from a photograph, but in terms of overall size - dimensions and sense of mass - this "OO gauge" church looks like a 2mm scale model, mainly becaue the main body of the church looks so small. Because the detailing is to a larger scale than 2mm, it cannot be used for that. Because it is absurdly small, it cannot be used as 4mm scale. I suspect that its best use is as part of carefully arranged forced perspective modelling, treated as 3mm or 1/100 scale. EDIT: given we have the length measurement of the prototype, we can say that the model is two thirds the length it should be, suggesting that, although still smaller than that, 3mm scale is, indeed, the nearest we can get to a standard scale it might suit. Other such compromised models will need different treatment, if they can be used at all.

Indeed, but I bet I could cross the threshold of that porch before needing to remove my topper! The Bachmann model appears to be based on St Saviour's Church, Westhouses, Nottinghamshire, which is now apparently at Butterley museum. Thus it seems that Bachmann probably had access to the protoype and just decided to make it smaller! If someone cares to take some measurements, we can see if I'm wrong and it was, in fact, built for a congregation of Oompa Loompas. One of my favourite tin tabernacles of this ilk is Blackgang Mission Church, Chale, Isle of Wight. It is now holiday accommodation, I believe.

By that reckoning, Isambard must have been more high church.

Sounds like it. Poor you! Of course there has traditionally been a tendency to make model railway buildings somewhat underscale or out of proportion to make them smaller, the better to fit layouts. I'd hoped we'd got past these architectural equivalents of Triang Shorty Coaches. I was disappointed. If I'd paid anything like full price I'd be like Gerald the Gorilla, "wild? I was absolutely livid!" Yes, they and Fair Price Models are well-worth mining. The ability to add a covering/texture of one's choosing is a boon. Wee Reduced Price Kirk in my case!

Ready to plant buildings ... I have nothing against them, indeed, I often gaze admiringly at them. Nevertheless, there are many reasons why I do not buy them as a rule. First, they cost a lot of money. I am not saying they are overpriced, but they are the most expensive way of creating the built environment on a model railway. Even now purse strings are a little looser than when I started, I have only finite resources to devote to the hobby and they are best applied elsewhere. Second, they are, for someone like me, the least satisfying. I enjoy trying to model buildings. Third, the textured resin buildings are not a great match for my card and paper efforts. Fourth, most of what I want is a specific building, often a prototype, related to a specific location. Mostly this is West Norfolk! Lastly, there is the risk of just having the same buildings as everyone else, though this is less a concern with these resin models than with Metcalfe Land. Some months ago, however, Rails was flogging off a very nice looking Bachmann tin tabernacle for 9 squid something. It is well attested that I have an almost Betjemaniac weakness for such things. So, I indulged. Very attractive, though I need not have bothered. It's tiny. I had to triple check the box, yes, it purports to be "OO". Frankly, it would do better as 2mm scale model. The doors could just about pass as 4mm scale, but here, pictured with one of Andrew Stadden's figures, which. as true scale people of the past, tend to be smaller than most figures sold as 1/76th, we see that it even the main door is pushing its luck with a 4mm scale gent. So, this building will sit on a distant hill, where it will not offend and where, frankly, any building not scratch-built belongs! The experience was enough to make me swear off my ill-advised foray into ready-to-plant land, but then, for a similarly modest sum, I spotted something in the Hattons' Death Sale. Hornby this time, and a great example of how easy one makes life by just plonking these down, for example, here:

The brown lined version does look very good. I do ponder if this livery is not best applied to the version with the narrower window and side tank filler? Perhaps there is a picture of No.63 in this livery with the original window arrangement. I would hope so. But, with only Lewis to go on, the examples pictured in brown livery suggest the retrofitting of narrow windows and filler cap may have already taken place.

Why an Edwardian one of course! The lined chocolate and cream with the prize monogram

I was out today, so was pleased to come back just now to a very welcome email sent earlier in the day by those tireless folks at Kernow saying "Your order has been shipped". 🙂

Donald Trump. That's something worrying on social media. This announcement, not so much! Anyway, it's a genuine pre-order offer, they took my money!

I understood that! I simply meant that the other side of the story to public railway decline was private railway endurance, perhaps worth including for completeness

It's the colliery systems and private mineral railways in the NE where the chaldrons persisted. The Stella and South Hetton systems, for instance, were using them into NCB days, although on the other hand there was the Pontop & Jarrow, which was very go-ahead in developing conventional wagon fleets, burning their remaining "black waggons" in, IIRC, 1911.

You could probably take that as read, yes!

As it should be Hurrah! Fingers crossed

Along with the time it took you to share that gratuitously negative sentiment. Sometimes manufacturers must wonder why they bother.

In the news: Quote: Shortly after the New Year, we put out a post on our Social Media pages. It was meant to be a bit of fun, but suffice it to say, it got a bit more attention than we expected. As a homage to the absolutely stunning blue livery that the Bluebell Railway has painted on SECR P Class 323 Bluebell, we thought we would have a crack at replicating it onto our upcoming O1, and in keeping with the railway's fleet of flora and fauna-based loco names we would pick an appropriate shrubbery (cue a few moments of Monty Python quotes in the office) to name it. With the various extensions the railway has seen over the years, we are sure the staff are very familiar with brambles. The community reaction to this was unexpected: you absolutely loved it! We mulled it over and had a word with the folks at the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society to ensure we could reproduce their crest on the side of the loco. We are pleased to say they agreed, and we are excited to announce that SECR O1 No.65 Bramble in ‘what if’ Bluebell Railway blue livery is now available to pre-order. All I can really say to that is...

Rapido had kindly already updated us that a nice flush smokebox would be included - I pre-ordered a 373 immediately on learning this - but it's nice to have some interesting insight on the decision. Thanks again Rapido. Oh, and, yes, I've just pre-ordered a Bramble and I'd encourage all those interested in this stunning what-if to do likewise; it's a conditional release, we are told, so only voting with your wallets will count. Celebrate the unlikely!

Yes, I've often thought you might well benefit from it.