Din

On 26/10/2022 at 12:57, 41516 said:

Going to finish the minor thread detour into Burton tramways with my little piece of the network.

 

From memory, it's from Corporation lines on Waterloo Street, collected under cover of night (by person or persons remaining nameless...) from a larger chunk removed when various holes were being dug for gas works about 25 years ago. It was then tidied up into a managable lump.

 

While we're still on the distractions....

I feel I'd be remiss to not post the bit of the network I get to play around with...

"The Great Survivor" Car 14. Happily at its home, the Statfold Barn Railway.

On 15/10/2022 at 22:19, ISW said:

Crickey, now you really have me searching.

 

In my mind (?) it was down the hill from the A511 down Midland Road and over the railway bridge, Leicester Line, (old tram depot on the left coming down the hill) and turn right at the High Street. By that reckoning, it was located somewhere just behind what is now Sharpe's Pottery Museum. The 'lay of the land' is correct, because the bus station was on a slope down to the High Street.

 

Scratch that! I've a nice original Midland Red bus timetable from 1970 (price: 1 Shilling) and, at the back, there is a nice map of Swadlincote showing the bus station:

 

You'd a hard pressed to even find many of the roads on that map these days such have been the changes.

 

Bus station is a bit of an exaggeration though. Back then it was simply a rectangle of tarmac with a few bus stop signs dotted around the perimeter. Plenty of Midland Red buses though, and 'proper' BMMO ones too. All single deck.

 

Ian

Looks like you saw the "Temporary" Bus station just prior to the installation of Civic Way. The planning for which took place in the mid 60s. Swad's had "three" bus stations to my knowledge. One was where the Fire & Ambulance Station currently stands, then the temporary one which was in preparation of Civic Way's construction, and then the current one between the library and council offices.

All those roads still exist, and a bunch of other roads simply aren't on there for the sake of the Midland Red Map. I don't see a load which definitely exist at this time, mostly because my family was living on them from the 50s onwards!

1 hour ago, ISW said:

A have fond memories of cycling to Swadlincote as a teenager to go bus spotting for Midland Red in the bus station that used to be on the High Street!

 

Ian

 

Would that be the one that's now where the Fire Station is? Or the later one on what used to be Engine Field?

17 minutes ago, ISW said:

You could well be right about the station being a 'joint effort'. I've not been able to establish that part of its history. I just refer to it as the Midland station for ease.

As far as I can tell the station building and overbridge located booking hall were brick built, at least up for the ground floor. 1st floor could well be timber. The canopies are a huge expanse of trussed steel and glass. That'll be fun to model.

 

Ian

I'll have a bit of a wander through my books, see if I can find it for definite.

It's piqued my interest as this is a rather brilliant layout of somewhere only a few miles away from me!

15 hours ago, ISW said:

Paul,

 

I have book including a photo dated 20th June 1971 that shows the magnificent Midland Station buildings under demolition, so a tad earlier than your 1972. That means I must have made those trainspotting trips with a few trainspotting friends in 1970 and the early part of 1971. I don't think I was old enough to go on train trips any earlier than 1970!

 

Of the original platform buildings, I think just the stairs down from the overbridge is all that's left.

 

Ian

I was always under the impression the Station was built not in the Midland Railway Style, but as an agreement between four companies using Burton. The LNWR, GNR, NSR and of course, Midland. Hence the English Retro styling of the station and the cream and brown. The whole thing was timber.

The first Burton Station, built by the Birmingham and Derby was in the early Midland/Trijunct style and looked very similar to Derby.

There's lots of references to the "North Staffordshire Railway Booking Hall" in both the Burton Mail and by locals alike.

It was a tragedy, what happened to it, as the building looked wonderful and I could see the old bus concourse being now enclosed in modern glass and turned into an arrivals area and small shopping promenade. But sadly the traffic that had justified such an enormous station had vanished nearly a decade ago, with traffic coming from all four compass points and many potential destinations to just two.

How'd you come about the R4 styling, Ruston?

One such loco worked local to me, and I'd quite like some form of it in my own collection.

This seems very short sighted to me. Heljan had a chance to help shape the direction of TT in the UK (Like they have done with modern RTR) and have decided to abandon it to Kohler and co.

There'll be some celebrations from Margate today.

One thing that has surprised me is they didn't reveal all of this at GETS... Wonder why?

Just now, JSpencer said:

 

Probably as compatible as old Triang stuff is with modern OO. Not much! Maybe worse as I vaguely remember it might have been 1:100 scale.

1:104.6 according to the video announcement, if I remember right.

10 minutes ago, Legend said:

One thing that hasn't been covered. What is the control system?  Are these models compatible with DCC, you would assume so.

 

I must admit being pretty excited by this. Was contemplating bringing OO layout out of loft and into home office when I retire, but now thinking maybe I'll keep layout in loft and start a fresh on TT. While I would never contemplate DCC for my existing set up. Too many locos, many very old, I would contemplate it for a brand-new TT layout. A new start is very exciting 

I'm in a similar boat, have a lot of older/kits etc for certain Midland Railway prototypes and dont want to invest that much into trying to chip and sound them all!

But a new scale...

Just now, farren said:

There’s a thing called the internet, you may have hard of it. All the youngsters bang on about it. You want young blood in the hobby you go where they are. 
 

 

This range will also get aimed very squarely at the kind of people that follow the "Big stars" on the internet that, again, don't necessarily "do" model railways due to space.

Think Francis Bourgoise (2.6m followers on Tiktok, 1.6m Instagram) Geoff Marshall etc etc.

2 minutes ago, tommyliam021 said:

Interesting that the 66, which is the least detailed of the TT releases that they have in 00, is the cheapest. I wonder if they’ve simply shrunk the ex Lima model.

Stuck it in a tumble dryer on high for 20 minutes.

14 minutes ago, TomE said:

What new customer base? I don't recall seeing a massive groundswell of frustrated TT modellers constantly posting around the web demanding models. And only selling to those who happen to look on the Hornby website? You make a massive investment in a new range for a scale that all but died out, and then immediately limit its sales potential by not moving it through the trade. It's all even more bonkers than I already thought it was! 

Anyway, I'm sure they'll flog a few sets then it'll die quietly in the inevitable fire sale (or catch fire followed by an insurance claim.....)

Tom. 

You won't because they didn't necessarily exist until this morning. Kohler is right, as is Heljan and PECO by saying that houses are smaller and for 1/3rd less space you can put in so much more. N's way too fiddly having dabbled in it myself back in my 20s!

They key is 1:120 is the same as every other TT manufacturer across the world, meaning there's no more "awkward" sales to europeans or Americans with oversized locomotives lolloping around H0 layouts. All of this will be nice, neat and unified.

Also, online only means I can now order this in a half dozen clicks without getting up off my backside from the sofa. No wandering to the shops to find "oh no, it don't sell mate" or "Oh I don't have a trade account with them any more" or anything else awkward. Or in my case a 40 minute drive to park on a street I have to keep one eye out of so I dont get a ticket to my nearest brick and mortar store.

It also means Hornby no longer loses 40% with the discount to shop sale. Meaning more money directly into Hornby's pocket.

The range is exactly what the non-railway-modeller buys because they "like trains", they recognise the locos and rolling stock as either stuff they see on the railway they walk past or travel on. They know Scotsman and A4. Others know the Princess and Duchess. Everyone knows the 66 and HST.

It also means they're betting big, meaning they smelt something from the way PECO and Heljan were making noises.

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

I had another spare Peckett body to play with so hacked it up yesterday. My local model shop have some tins of discontinued Humbrol paints for sale and No.36, Pastel Green seemed like a good idea.

It doesn't seem such a good idea now.

Back in the 1970s my mother had a mini this colour, my dad bought it her.

She had it a week.

As to the "rise of the different name". Could it have had something to do with the War? A number of artillery peices were named "Big Bertha" during the Great War, and the name has certainly stuck about in the general cultural lexicon, so a similar "big weapon" could've become known as such by veterans from the War who went back to train spotting?

21 minutes ago, Obsidian Quarry said:

Interesting, so an indication they do have two types of tender tooling maybe? Although the livery is still highly questionable whether they call it MR or LMS Crimson Lake.

Isn't that just generally controversial anyway? The LNWR certainly didn't seem the happiest having to slap red on a lot of their locomotives and it seemed to fade quickly as a practise for the LMS.

I was at GETS yesterday and got to have a natter with Micheal a couple of times. KR Models was swarmed with happy looking punters who'd come to see the EPs of the Leader, DHP and the Shay.

They're working with the MR Study Centre, so it likely will have as much "accurate" data as humanly possible more directly from the source. Published books are second hand sources, somewhat, while iirc the MSC has drawings and plenty of more direct first hand materials and photographs.

Though as someone else pointed out at the show. The drawings really are not the be all and end all of a design, while it may be from the draughtsman's table there's no telling if its the "correct" or even "final" version which went out into the wild world. It's a perpetual issue for a lot of model manufacturers when you haven't got an extant example to scan. They have a set of drawings which is what they're using as the basis.

The more "weird and wonderful" liveries tend to be produced in smaller numbers as a bit of a novelty... and its a novelty which sells. Only 500 GT3's came out in the BR Corporate Blue and all of them sold.

So a Bertha in BR Railfreight Sector sounds like a good novelty to me...

Glad to see you're still at it.

What sort of chassis do you use, Eddy?

What an utterly superb bit of modelling, So much of it 3D printed and utterly inspired use of failed prints.

On 15/06/2022 at 10:36, Ian Morgan said:

@Din Any updates on your progress? Your website home page is still there, but there has been no news since March.

 

I'm still alive.

Barely.

Development of the further sprockets, guts and gears has been interesting as initially my partner was having to justify spending time on this away from juggling family life and his own general work committments, but by chance he happens to know somebody that also required a similar e-commerce platform for his own business.

Since then he's been busy surprising himself with how well this system scales:

• There's currently a Beta version running a staggering 250,000+ listings without breaking a sweat.
• He built the security side of it, and it temporarily locked him out, so the security is going to be pretty good.
• We're now on the "how should this look on the front end" part of the discussion which means we're getting closer.
• It also means we intend to promote and push this system to anybody of pretty much any scale of business requiring an ecommerce platform which will hopefully be easy and intiuitive to use.
• His own estimation will be a basic site up and running sometime during August/September. 

So, to whit:

What does it mean by "basic"? Likely it will be various fantasy minature files I hold the rights to for sale and for those who will trust me to handle their files for them directly initially. We will then increasingly roll out all the other gizmos and gadgets we're promising and hoping to see.

This will probably mean me doing the listings for everyone initially and then we can slowly move to just final approval of a listing being done manually to ensure nobody's pilfering stuff/selling copyrighted materials etc.

On 06/07/2022 at 13:19, Sir TophamHatt said:

As a development idea, wonder if the website could allow those who have 3D printers to offer to print.

Website creator takes a small cut for helping match the buyer and seller.

This may be something to be considered and to keep things simple we'd probably just flip the commission prices around and take 25%. But this would put us in eBay territory and I'm not sure on that for the time being.

On 25/02/2022 at 16:02, Blandford1969 said:

Hopefully though the price will not go up by over £10 between what it shows on the original page and then checkout which it does on Shapeways

God no! I'd never do that. Our aim's flat postage and packaging (£4 as of writing this post). Obviously 1) I'd quite like to live please and 2) I want the creators to get a good chunk of change from each print. Considering Shapeways kickbacks pennies, we're talking pounds.

Randomly jacking prices up during checkout is one of the things I hate the most.

Why is it the small producers are going to be the ones to drive me to bankruptcy this year?

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

7739? 

 

I was taken aback by that and had to look it up. I was surprised how many 57xx were built by the trade rather than at Swindon. One learns something new every day. 

There was always something close to 900 Panniers on the GWR's metals at any given time. 

Suspect even Swindon didn't have that much capacity!

Any chance you can dig through the archives about the first loco to arrive?

More! More!

Brings the whole layout to life in a lovely different way.

Certainly no logical reason for it to not have happened.

However, there's also a logical reason it wasn't so widespread.

Generally your post/parcels arrived in one van or wagon on a morning train in branchline situations.

Mainline terminii had their own dedicated parcels platforms due to the sheer and utter weight of traffic arriving.

Most places had dedicated goods yards, and goods sheds, for the reason of keeping the potentially "dirty" nature of goods away from passengers. As well as them keeping people safer by providing lifting facilities and protecting the mainline from any issues.