Edwardian

Ah,

Great idea, though rather a bare board. Is your fictional development going to include a run of contemporary warehouses as a back drop? Alternatively, you may be able to work something with the pumping station.

Oh my prophetic soul! Mind you, if people keep working out the answers for themselves, they won't need lawyers, which we be a truly terrible thing.

I think quid pro quo is the way to go. There must be something that Mrs Nearholmer wants more than a semi-redundant broom cupboard. With the Mem, it's usually something to do with horses. Mind you, I would not suggest to the Party of the Second Part that this tall item of furniture is redundant qua broom cupboard, because that was your wife's idea, and, suggesting that it is no longer needed as a broom cupboard, though true and accurate, would probably not be the way to go. Rather, you might make the theme of your submissions the great sacrifice she would endure as a result of the loss of her broom cupboard, and how nothing short of a [insert bribe here] would suffice to make it up to her. Even better, you could offer her the alternative between alternative broom storage and something she really wants. Alternatively, you could simply adopt my fall-back position of never being worth enough to be worth divorcing. Nothing in this post is intended to be relied upon, and does not constitute legal advice. Further no retainer arises between the poster and any reader of the post. By reading this post, the reader agrees to hold harmless the poster and indemnify in relation to any loss or damage howsoever arising from this post. If in doubt the reader should seek independent legal advice concerning the content of this post.

At least you've got baseboards!

Thank you! I had not gone back far enough. I am considering a prototype with an even small, lower, boiler, so if anyone can tell me the height the motor sits above the rails, I'd be most grateful.

Has anyone a shot of the Hornby Radial 'naked', showing where the motor and gubbins fits? Crucially, does anyone know the height above the rails reached by the 'inards'?

Interesting. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that one might appear back-dated on Castle Aching, in the far off future. Unlined goods black for 1905, I would think, but with the option of an air-braked one in Prussian Blue, which brings us back to JC's question about the side sheets.

Regrettably I agree with your assessment, but at least the H wasn't rebuilt post-Grouping, so, like the C Class, LBSC E4 and LSW M7, they are of use to pre-Groupers, even if not made with them in mind! I'm grateful for small mercies. It is the older, Victorian, types where we are apt to have less luck, like the Terrier model, which tries to be both the original A1 and the rebuilt A1X at the same time, thus, of course, being neither! And, as you say, rather crude. I don't care who makes a new one as long as we get an A1 as well as an A1X!

Well let me know in time to join if it does! Birchgrove was not persuasive!

If Castle Aching ever achieves a flavour of such a scene, I shall be more than content!

Hope however it is going, it's going well!

Agree - space (length) does not presently permit, but a subject I'd like to tackle is the LBSC Quarry Line and the SE&CR/LBSC old mainline running parallel down to Redhill. This gives the chance for both express and stopping trains. Of course, at the time I had not realised that Bachmann intended only an ex-LBSC Atlantic! Nevertheless, I wonder if such a layout gives the excuse to run an H and an E4 in parallel, so to speak? I did not get round to investigating SECR services to and via Redhill (I believe some went on to Reading, giving the excuse for some GW stock!) but it does not seem improbable that H Class tanks could take an outer suburban/stopper that far in SECR days, or was that not the case? Anyway, we are certainly approaching the day when a prototype or plausibly fictional scenario that allowed both LBSC and SE&CR might be within the reach of the RTR modeller. An exciting development! Of course, you'd still need to build yourself a Billington block set somehow!

That certainly should be the case.

Grahame wanting the last word? Don't accept your casting decision that I'm the bad guy. An unwelcome return off topic; I'd already moved on. I just want to view the beautiful models here and give them the thumbs up they deserve. Very impressive, and I look forward to seeing it develop.

Now you're getting personal. And typically, having done so, "it's time to move on". Courtesy is this quite clever idea whereby, if you like something, you can say so, and if you don't, you don't have to say anything. The happy result being that your prejudices are not aired and your fellow man not offended. It is the easiest thing in the world to retreat behind the "only joking" excuse. The fact that GW is a perennial target means that there is rather more to it than that. I frequently joke about the GW - it's engines all looking the same - but so many of the "jokes" carry a sense of actual or apparent animus. As I say, it's easy to retreat behind the line: "Only a bit of harmless fun" "Where's your sense of humour?" "Some of my best friends model the Great Western ..." I suggest merely, that for those who cannot let a reference to the Great Western and its undoubted merits pass without an instinctive negative reaction, it is, indeed, time to move on.

And there you go, proving the point. I fail to understand why people are still, more than half a century after its demise, so obviously chippy about the GW. Pass it off as banter if you will (you'll be telling me next you didn't mean what you wrote), but no other railway company gets that kind of stick. All railways 'bigged themselves up'. It's called publicity. I find all pre-Grouping and Grouping companies more or less fascinating, so perhaps I struggle to understand this tribal nonsense. I accept that the GW is seemingly unique in its ability to attract derisive detractors, but it was not the only railway that blew it's own trumpet so brashly. For instance, few companies can have been more 'up themselves' than the self-styled "Premier Line", and I suspect that the demise of those fine North Western traditions on the advent of the Midland-dominated LMS has prevented it from suffering similar opprobrium all these years later, whereas Western Region men were still hacking people off with their "Swindon knows best ..." attitudes well within living memory. But really, it's faintly ridiculous to be taking hostile partisan stances against a commercial entity wiped out over 70 years ago. Time to get over it, surely.

Some people are easily pleased ... !

For post 1928 green? Is it the pre-1906 green that is the very dark one?

Anyone who has not yet viewed the Little Muddle gallery should not neglect to do so. I am afraid that I could not resist re-posting one of the gallery images. Sheer poetry:

Certainly nothing that should single it out for sniping, either, one might have thought.

If so, can I get them over the counter, or do I need a prescription?

Well, passion soon leads to polemic, but, for my part, I don't have a 'downer' on the Transition Era. I take great pleasure in viewing Transition Era layouts at exhibitions and in magazines - there is rarely a layout that does not offer some reward in return for studying it - though, it must be said, I have little choice because 90% + of steam-outline layouts do, indeed, appear to be Transition Era! I think we are intelligent enough not to fall prey to a binary approach whereby "I like A, so I must dislike B", or "if I support more of A, I must want less of B". No one is sniping. I don't think defensiveness need creep in, John. The Transition Era modeller has had it his own way to a great extent for a very long time now. I think the Era's place in the hobby is pretty well established, don't you? It therefore isn't necessary to resist calls for better coverage of earlier periods, though to us, it can sound as if, having got what you want, you are now intent upon pulling up the RTR ladder. There is, though, absolutely no need for advocates of different periods to quarrel. I do not see our aims and wishes as inimical to yours. I am not saying "don't tool for the BR modeller" - why would I? - simply "don't tool just for the BR modeller". Why that statement should upset a Transition modeller, I am unsure. While I welcome this model, I am only too aware that, if the BR state of the loco had been materially different from its pre-Grouping condition, Hornby would have produced an "as preserved", rather than accurate, pre-Grouping liveried model. I hope that this class, like the M7, is one of the relatively rare examples of a model that we can use to represent a pre-Grouping locomotive. I welcome it on that basis.

You see, it might not be a popular sentiment in some quarters, but these were demonstrably true statements. Where better to high-light an appetite for earlier periods to be better represented than in topics discussing wished-for or announced models that have the potential to do just that? Think about the main reason why the late steam and transition era is the most commercially popular; it ain't going to last. The sub 55ers interested pre-1947 periods are the future of steam outline modelling, so, Oi, Red and Blue Box, stop ignoring us!