Michael Hodgson

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

 

that - the best way to muck out stables is to encourage small girls with the promise of a chance to ride the beasts.

I'm told that horse muck is now classed as "hazardous waste", so stables are only too happy to have you take it away for your allotment relieving them of the problem of disposal.

Doorways to houses and shops used to have an iron boot scraper by the front door so that you could scrape off whatever you'd trodden in.

6 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

He used to claim it made his hair grow..

If it works for roses, why not for hair!  Perhaps mine will come back if I try it?

"After The Lord Mayor's Show"
 

When the parade's moved on
After the crowds have gone
After the last hurrah
The last ta-ran-ta-ran-ta-ra!
When the glory boys depart
That's when the real work starts
After the Lord Mayor's show comes the donkey cart

I watched the marching bands
I saw the children wave
Now on this street I stand
And it's as silent as the grave
And it's time to do my dance
Time to perfect my art
After the Lord Mayor's show comes the donkey cart

Parades will come and go
Every year a new star of the show
Girls scream as they go past
But they, they never seem to last
When the glory boys depart
That's when the real work starts
After the Lord Mayor's show
After the Lord Mayor's show
After the Lord Mayor's show comes the donkey cart

2 hours ago, Mikkel said:

 As mentioned I did stop short of studying GWR manure specifically. I mean, that would be so niche 

 

Not necessarily ...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/GWR-Signal-Box-Cats-Allocations/dp/1906419868

and not just historically ...

https://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/blog/days-out-uk/train-station-cats-of-the-uk

There was a series of books published a good many years ago on various railway companies entitled "A Pictorial Record of ..... Stations".  Have you considered writing one with the title of this thread ?  

Seriously, I am most impressed.  It's a very convincing representation of the reality of the way things really looked in the "good old days" when we used "green energy" to power local transport.

34 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

Thank you 5&9.  Ultra-short wheelbases seem to have featured on several early BG vehicles, including the Horse Box that is on my to-do list.  Even passenger carriages were not exempt:

 

The ride must have been dreadful.  I suppose it was OK if the horse box was for rocking horses!

With local circuit breakers, it is important that the power district ones act faster than the one in the command station/booster.

Otherwise a dead short still trips the master cut-out before the local one has had time to act causing the whole layout to shut down.  If they are all from the same vendor, this shouldn't occur as it ought to have been a design consideration, but if you are using equipment from different families you might need to check.

The tea chests I remember certainly weren't varnished, although I suppose that may have been desirable if there was a risk of water damage in a ship's hold.  They were made as cheaply as possible in the tea-growing countries (though the wood may well have been imported) and only intended as single use packaging, a bit like our modern expanded polystyrene fast food packaging.  The same was true of orange boxes, so they were generally available for nothing once they had been used.  I do remember they were often lined inside with foil which I suppose must have been necessary to protect the tea.  One of the oldest photos I have is of myself and my brother aged about 5 & 3 inside one.

Love the effect created with these, especially the tea chests.

We move house every couple of years when I was little, and the humble tea chest was the standard way of packing up smaller items prior to moving day, rather than the stout cardboard boxes now favoured.  You could expect to see them on any Pickfords van, so they probably also got carried in the conflat-type containers.  We generally had half a dozen old tea chests in the loft.

51 minutes ago, Dave John said:

Real creosote would be interesting, though unfortunately long gone.

Yes and no.  They decided it was probably carcinogenic and though it was banned under the EU Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR) for use on your garden shed, it is still allowed in UK for professional use for the next couple of months, and that might well be extended for another 5 years.  Nowt else preserves timber as effectively.   So it is still used in practice in well controlled conditions for certain purposes including wooden railway sleepers, safety critical highway fencing       .... and telegraph/power supply poles!

So the only way an amateur could get hold of any is to find somebody who's got an old pot of the the stuff stashed away somewhere. 

Painting them?  Shouldn't that be creosoting?  Love the braced poles.

The "robotic pole planter" reminds me of a cherry picker.

A certain gentleman on this site does railway archaeology on the track bed of long-gone lines by counting insulators on what's left of the poles.  Even if the ceramic pots have been shot off with an airgun their  J iron supports often still there or lying down the bank.  In the middle of nowhere, there is one insulator for every block wire between boxes (the Caley tended to use 1-wire instruments, though 3-wire F type instruments came in later on more important routes) plus one for every phone/telegraph circuit.  However as you get closer to a station, an extra insulator would tell you that the distant etc had an arm and/or lamp repeater in the box.  There was usually a particularly substantial or complex pole behind the box (or on the opposite side of the line), as many wires from both directions needed to turn through 90 degrees to go to the box.

Very impressive.  I think the stable block looks a bit too clean though.  If the place has just been swept, you need a tired looking bloke with a shovel standing by a big heap, perhaps fitted with smoke unit to give off steam!

I like your use of magnets.  The plumbers' hemp looks convincing.

1 hour ago, Ramrig said:

Brave man. It looks a powerful beast. I could see it as a banking engine. A replacement for Big Bertha?

An 0-10-0 carries its entire weight on driven axles.  You would get inferior adhesion from a 2-10-4.

It doesn't need to carry vast amounts of water and coal as it's not going to wander very far from shed for long and could refill between turns.

How about making it an 0-10-0PT with a copper rim to the chimney?

You can get strips of lights like that direct from China on Ebay for next to nothing - just a 3-month postal wait.

They often run on 12v so if you've got an old spare controller kicking around you dont even to to buy a PSU.

I've got some in the ktichen under the wall cabinets, does a great job of lighting the worktops.  I used strong double sided tape to improve on the sticky.

Would probably be useful above a workbench too.

Both sides of the wagon have the lever to the right as you stand looking at it.

This means the lever on one side has to turn the rod the same direction as pressing down on the lever, but the other side has to rotate it in the opposite dircetion to its lever.  There's a linkage on one of the levers to do this, so it matters which side you fit the levers to.  If I recollect correctly, that's shown in the kit instructions.

On 10/12/2020 at 11:18, 5&9Models said:

Thanks Ian, no pens just a 00000 (5x0) brush. The tartan paint is straight out of the tin, mustn’t stir it though...! 

I wish I could paint to that standard - even before I had arthritis that was beyond my skills

But how long did that take you?