Compound2632

... they were not legally entitled to do so.

Commentary on the Giant Pike (or some such Winter Olympic event): "you don't have to be a rocket surgeon to..."

That looks a nice kit to cut one's teeth on without risking too many tears. I believe the GEM Belpaire was sold as buildable either as a Belpaire or a 999 and was designed to fit the Triang L1 chassis, so wasn't that close to either. David Jenkinson wrote an article in the July & August 1968 issues of Model Railway News on making a scale model of an LMS-condition Belpaire out of the kit. I hope you will excuse and not take offence at a little Midland pedantry: the GEM kit gives you a superheated engine, with smokebox extended forwards. The first Belpaire was superheated in 1913. Also, I think around 1912 most Belpaires retained their original 8 or 6 wheel tenders with flared tops, the rebuild to the "Deeley" straight-sided form coming with superheating - at least I can't find a photo with both together. So, ironically, your model is better for 1920! Actually, I'd be inclined to stick with 1920 for now - it's a much easier period to get going with - there are even RTR engines!* (And by 1912 goods engines were going black anyway.) Also the well-known Ratio kits for Midland clerestory coaches are suitable for that date but need a fair deal of fiddly work to make them suitable for pre-Great War condition. On the other hand, anything you build in genuinely c. 1912 condition is likely to still be good for c. 1920. Trouble is, the further back you push your date, the more finnecky you'll find yourself becoming. Look out for second-hand books, especially Lacy & Dow, Midland Carriages; Jenkinson & Essery An Illustrated Review of Midland Locomotives; Essery, Midland Wagons, and, if you can find it, Dow & Lacy, Midland Style - that's the backbone of a Midland enthusiast's library. Have you considered joining the Midland Railway Society? Be warned, though, you could end up spending more time doing research than actual modelling! *Though the Bachmann 1000 is in 1950s condition...

You might say that James Clayton and Richard Maunsell did.

There were add-on controller units that plugged into the uncontrolled 12V DC by means of brass pins and then had a further uncontrolled 12V DC output so you could line them up - I think I had a couple of the add-on units. These days I've advanced to the sophistication of the Bachmann train set controllers!

The Midland certainly had a service to Victoria in the 19th century. I'm sure I've seen a photo of a Kirtley back-tank there but can't track it down just now. EDIT: apologies for the lack of rigorous referencing in this and the previous post. A heavy cold is discouraging me from sifting through piles of books and urgently encouraging me to go to bed.

St Pancras was the Great Eastern's West End terminus for Cambridge expresses for many years, apparently much preferred to the Great Northern to Kings Cross by the well-heeled such as the Benson family. I think there was a piece in Midland Record or the Midland Railway Society Journal about this.

All the Midland carriages in these two photos are Clayton-era arc roofed carriages, built in the 1880s and upgraded with one compartment converted to a pair of lavatories in he 1890s. I think they may all be 45' composites to D513 or 45' brake composites to D536, both of which were relatively numerous. Seeing three together tallies with the idea of a through train (or portion) originating from various Midland centres - Bradford/Leeds and Manchester certainly. (I can't see why someone questioned Manchester Central?) They certainly aren't the 20th century arc roofed carriages built for suburban services northwards from St Pancras/Moorgate - those were 9' wide and had six end panels rather than the five seen here. The standard Midland clerestory carriages were too tall for the Metropolitan lines. Lacy & Dow record 47 carriages built to a reduced height of 12'8" in 1907-11. This was done by flattening the profile of the roof of the clerestory section. These included eight 50' brake composites to D471, then 27 54' carriages - 10 brake composites, D472, 8 thirds, D547, 5 brake thirds, D477 and a pair each of vestibuled thirds and firsts, D541 and D540 - around the same time the 6-wheeled kitchen carriages built for the original Bristol-Bradford clerestory sets of 1897 were modified to clear the Metropolitan gauge, so clearly there was at least the idea of running through dining trains onto the SE&CR. The final lot of Metropolitan gauge carriages were twelve 50' third class carriages - one end having three third class compartments in the usual way but the other end arranged as a picnic saloon. The LMS clearly got fed up with trying to find work for these so passed them on (off?) to the M&GN in 1936, where they survived until the 50s. I've seen a couple of photos dated to the early 20s showing a Metropolitan gauge brake composite at the head of a Scotch express leaving Carlisle - one heading south behind a compound, the other northbound behind a Manson 4-6-0. Is there any evidence for a through carriage between the SE&CR / Southern Eastern Division and Glasgow / West of Scotland? Or is it just a question of needing to press every available brake composite into use to meet the need for through coaches? I like the improbable idea of a Dover Western Docks-Greenock Princes Pier through carriage for that all-important Menton-Rothesay traffic.

It provides time to re-set and see your frustrations in proportion. Of course it will have somewhere to run.

This is the moment at which you should go build a wagon.

Ah! Maybe that's it - you have to watch it with a period attitude.

Interesting - looks as if they were being used on in-house new works - contractors' locomotives in all but name. That would explain why they never appeared as part of the revenue-earning locomotive stock. I wonder if they were painted in Midland colours (green at this date) or in some MW default livery.

That's looking to become a beautiful little engine. That's new to me - never come across a reference to these before. Where they perhaps among the engines inherited from the Butterley Company when the Midland took on provision of engines for that company's internal system?

I supposed the old unit might be the foot but the pedant in me objected that that's based on a false etymology. Rivet counting is easier to deal with. If the provocation produced by a rivet counter is proportional to the rate at which the rivets are being counted, then any of the units used for stochastic count rates can be commandeered, becquerel for instance.

These Carette/Bing/Bassett-Lowke wagons can provide useful contemporary evidence but one thing I wouldn't trust is the ironwork picked out in black, which I assume was done to give it better contrast on the flat tinplate surface. Here's a LNWR example, which is clearly at variance with what is known about LNWR wagon livery from photos and other sources. But the lettering is spot on. I'm sure I've seen more extreme examples: Midland in such pale grey that the lettering is in black - but I can't trace a photo just now.

I was disappointed to find, on a visit last August, that the preserved wagons at Beamish are in a poor state compared to most of the other exhibits there.

Really, gentlemen, all I was doing was admiring the red stockings worn by the lady in the painting...

Observation, not experience...

We went round all this last summer both on this thread and your workbench thread, Mikkel. I had homed in on 2390 for various reasons, though possibly at that point there wasn't clarity on the footplate width of the Oxford model; Edwardian had given the boiler change dates for this engine. My desideratum is a Wolverhampton-shedded engine with S2 boiler, c. 1902. But, I don't think fluted v. plain con rods had been taken into account. I really must download all the info from these two threads to build my own reference file!

Hooped skirts not ideal for sitting on a stile.

Glad to see your trip to that austere temple of pagan engineering had a positive side! I hope you had sight of Scott's masterpiece of Christian architecture next door rather than disappearing straight down the hole in the concourse. Presumably it was Vol. 1 of Ahrons you had with you, to suit your route?

It is true that my S2 boiler engine would be compromised by the footplate width - 3" difference IIRC - but (whisper it not) I might live with that...

So the rise of consumerism is a result of the changed social circumstances after the Great War, starting earlier than I think is usually proposed - the rise of home ownership and the suburban middle classes usually being thought of as Stanley Baldwin's response to universal suffrage: keep just enough of the voters sufficiently prosperous to have a vested interest in keeping the Tories in power. The usual post-war story we're told is that the survivors came home and displaced the women from the jobs they'd been doing while the men were away - which is probably broadly true on the railways but not in other areas, particularly, agriculture, which was in desperate straights before the outbreak of the second war. Quite a few morals for today there but rather off-topic for Edwardian Castle Aching, though I don't think agriculture was flourishing then either.

At that scale, the island will be renamed "One and a third millimetres".

Etaient-ils vraiment nombreux? Combien de dizaines de milliers?