Compound2632

I've answered my own question about brakes for the LNW D62 ballast wagon - close inspection of Penlan's ancient faded photo shows the chunky wooden brake-block in silhouette (RH wagon). I've fabricated one from 60 thou plasticard, with 10 thou overlay for the (slightly over-scale) ironwork: My main reference for the wooden brake block is the well-known photo of D2 No. 42024, built in 1 hr 41 mins in 1878. That was built from a kit too; I've yet to beat that time with a Ratio LNW wagon kit... The canvas flaps over the springs and axleboxes are also from 10 thou plasticard. I've also added sprung door bangers from the Ratio kit at either end, in line with the drop-side hinge ironwork. For these details I've followed another photo posted by Penlan, though the door bangers from the kit are more curved. The brake lever for the wooden flap brake is longer than that for the single push rod brake as supplied in the kit, so I've butted two together. A view of the underside shows how I've added strengthening lumps of plasticard in the hopes of stopping all this bodgery disintegrating: I intend to finish this one lettered B D for the Birmingham and Walsall Division, if I can track down a 15" B - the Ratio transfer sheet only has the later 12" lettering IIRC.

Good as the Lightmoor Press books are, I find they don't have quite the quality of design and layout that has always characterised the Wild Swan imprint. If it's just information you're after I can appreciate that's not a factor and hence the price differential is frustrating; for myself, I do like the quality of presentation. Of course, they've got completists such as myself over a barrel. (I bought the hardback re-issue of Vol. 2 rather than the softback!) However, I shouldn't be so cynical: I expect the price reflects the current cost of producing this volume to a uniform standard with Vols. 1 and 2. £40 is pretty good going for a top-end RTR carriage these days!

looking at photos of W&LLR cattle wagons, it's clear floor level was rather lower than either the dock surface or the floor of a standard gauge wagon - both about 4' above rail level? Cattle must have had to walk uphill out of the narrow gauge wagon. Looking at the tall drop flap door, I started wondering if the narrow gauge wagons actually used the standard gauge rail furthest from the dock but it's clear that the nearer pair of rails are the ones to 2'6" gauge.

As Barry O says. An opportunity to create a silk purse out of a sow's ear - I'm sure there were modellers managing to do that back in the day!

There are five photos of the class in K. Hoole, An Illustrated History of NER Locomotives (OPC, 1988), a standard work which I expect TMC have consulted, along with North Eastern Record. No. 1783, LHS in works grey photographic livery so presumably taken when built (June 1894), broadside view so front of tanks not visible. No Westinghouse pump visible. No cab doors; lining carried round cab cut out. Two coal rails. EDIT: this is the photo Edwardian posted, though of course a rather better print. No. 441, RHS broadside view so front of tanks not visible, undated - I think the bottom of the pump would be visible under the boiler if it was fitted to the front of the LH tank. Cab doors, unlined, also lining not carried round cab cut-out. Three coal rails. No. 1779. RHS view, undated, with front of tank visible and unlined. Can't say whether or not the pump has been moved to the front of the LH tank. No cab door; lining carried round cab cut-out. Two coal rails. No. 2089. LHS front three-quarter view taken at Richmond in 1922 (W.L. Good photo). Westinghouse pump, front of tank unlined - front of splasher sandbox is lined (white/black on edge as splasher side). Stay to front footstep (absent from the other photos). Cab door, possibly lined; cab cut-out lined. Two coal rails with hopper. No. 1884, LHS broadside view undated, with pump on front of tank. Stay to front footstep. Cab door and cab cut-out lined. Two coal rails with hopper with additional rails. These photos aren't very conclusive but my inference would be that tank fronts were lined but the practice was dropped, on both sides, when the pump was moved to the LH tank front. Good evidence that the tank fronts were usually lined is provided by a photo of Class A No. 1580, another W.L. Good photo from 1922. This engine also has the cab door and cutout lined. Of course practice may have varied not only over time but between the NER's various works. EDIT: TMC, if you produced an as-built version* you'd clearly sell two, one to me (I'd want to change my pre-order) and one to Edwardian. *Oh dear: early batch w/o cab doors or later batches with; does anybody know which engines were built with and without? Even without this, will the NER green version have the front step stay or not?

Why does the down main have a platform face on both sides? I'm aware there are locations where this was done, though am still puzzled why. Ascot, for instance.

As a teenager I used to go to Birmingham Town Hall to hear the CBSO. I usually* had a cheap seat in the upper balcony; you could guarantee that the starlings would very noisily settle to roost in the quietest passage of the music. Then some work was done that blocked out the noise but made the building insufferably stuffy. I left Brum soon after Rattle arrived so am a stranger to Symphony Hall. *My biggest mistake was taking a student ticket for the choir benches at a performance of Mahler's First Symphony and sitting right behind the horns. I learnt to keep at a cautious distance from that composer's works.

But, equally, the written word tells us that pumps were moved to this position from c. 1912 onwards, having previously been tucked away (rather noisily) in a cupboard in the cab; and that as built the front of the tanks were lined out. As I wrote earlier, not a problem so long as the pump can be cleanly removed without damaging the model. But then I'm happy to take the RTR model as a starting point for my modelling, rather than waiting for the manufacturer to produce exactly the engine I want. Of course there's an element of hypocrisy in this attitude - I'm ordering this now that you've made it available; I've not already bought the LMR/George Norton kit...

Surely not. I've got Precision Midland Crimson Lake similarly described.

Can I ask, just to cross-check with what Penlan's suggesting, which sheet from the Archer range you're using?

Hummm... Thinks... Those raised number transfers suggest a way forward for the cast number plates for Great Western wagons. And the next video up was some fine footage of Millwall Goods, with some rather splendid 7 mm scale Webb compounds, including Adriatic and Greater Britain along with the fourth compound tank and one of those gloriously pot-bellied 0-8-0s - though quite what those express passenger engines were doing slumming it in the East End might be open to question! (And there was a D299 at 4:22...)

Except it says out of stock... I've been impressed by Paul Gallon's recent use of these which is making me think I should invest in some - my difficulty before has been working out which of the multifarious sheets is the right one to get for 4 mm scale wagons.

Further thought on the LNWR train, in particular the choice of John Ramsbottom and the high proportion of first class accommodation including that unusual saloon. I suspect this working is a jolly for members of the Crewe section of the IMechE, out to inspect the NNR's interesting selection of motive power, along with the covert opportunity to fraternise with their colleagues from Stratford.

I can't let the 1,000th post pass by without an example of our eponymous wagon. So here's a work-in-progress towards one with the additional end ironwork that was being discussed just a few posts back: Rather crude: a piece of microstrip with the bolt-heads embossed - and hardly visible in the photo. I may have to drill through and insert some plastic rod instead.

I've started assembling the last LNWR wagon from my pile of Ratio parts - I'm doing it as a D62 ballast wagon, as Ratio intended. There was a very informative discussion about these on LNWR lives on's workbench thread just over a year ago - I'm linking to it here primarily so I can find it again easily! The historic photos posted there don't help much with brakes. Roll on LNWR Wagons Vol. 3; for now I'm looking at the info on brakes in Vol. 1; this suggests ballast and permanent way wagons were built with the primitive single wooden brake block. Does anyone know if they ever got iron brakes of any sort before c. 1903?

... and management wasn't so foolish as to try anything on the Western Region men!

Somebody else must have thought so too since the standard locomotive livery one saw in Poland in the early-mid 1990s was a very similar two-tone green.

Very nice - but I can't make out the numberplate? Snowed up here too, so I'll show off by identifying a D385 brake; what looks like a 42' D106 lavatory first - one of the pair of club saloons that we discussed a while back but with a single large window to the central smoking saloon rather than the compartment-style droplight and quarter-lights shown on the diagram; my very favourite 42' carriage of all, one of those D160 lavatory tri-composites with end-windowed coupe compartment (effectively a five-class carriage: first coupe, ordinary first, second, third, and third w/o lavatory); and at the rear a 50' lavatory brake third that looks like D326 - it's not quite clear if the model has an arc or cove roof [Refs. P.A. Millard and I. Tattersall, L&NWR non-corridor carriages (L&NWR Society, 2006); P.A. Millard, L&NWR 30 ft 1 in six-wheeled carriages (L&NWR Society, 2008)]. I do like short bogie coaches - I cannot understand why, when the RTR manufacturers have ventured into pre-Grouping carriages, they have insisted on picking the longest examples (I have the Bachmann 60' SECR carriages in mind of course) - one gets more carriages for the length of train you can accommodate and they don't look so daft on tight curves. Triang had the right idea with their GWR clerestories all those years ago...

A thread like this is invaluable for those such as myself who have pre-ordered the TMC G5* or have the J72* and really want to understand what these engines should look like - kit designing and kit-building evidently force you to think hard about all these details. You're performing a public service! *I try to insist on saying Classes O and E1 but as you're modelling BR condition I'll go with the flow!

Those are seriously good-looking carriages. You have revealed an unsuspected penchant for the Premier Line - odd how it gets under one's skin, isn't it, despite being an avowed devotee of iron horses of a different colour.

As Dante came to understand, even Beatrice was but an antetype of the Beatific Vision.

The Sligo Leitrim & Northern Counties was Irish standard gauge, as were the LNWR lines in Ireland, so quite likely no break of gauge. The SL&NCR survived as long as it did because the roads couldn't handle the volume of cattle traffic; it was killed off not by its own financial state (though that can't have been good) but the closure of the Great Northern's Derry line (the Irish North Western Railway) - the latter a victim of the Belfast government's "hard border" policy.

PO wagons: does the South Yorkshire coalfield provide all the necessary types of coal for North Norfolk domestic and industrial use? This type of question is one I'm still trying to get my head round. Any call for anthracite - might come via the Great Western and Great Eastern via London, or Midland and M&GN via Birmingham and Peterborough, or LNWR and ...? Or North Warwickshire / Cannock Chase coal?

Interesting. I thought the LDEC was one of those smaller lines that the Midland was rather happy about, like the Hull & Barnsley and the M&SWJR.

I can't let that pass! I think things were a good deal less clear-cut than that as far as West Coast main line express passenger power was concerned. The Hughes 4-6-0s, together with the virtually post-grouping final developments of the Prince of Wales class, were the early LMS's best shot at grappling with that difficult problem - not withstanding the Claughtons, it inherited a problem. It was, after all, a 'Tishy' not a Compound the LMS chose to exhibit at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition. It wasn't until 1927 that Compounds, and 1928 that 2Ps were built in quantity; those that didn't go to the Midland Division mostly replaced the 4-4-0s of the smaller constituents, especially in Scotland - replacing many small classes. The LNWR classes went once the Stanier designs began to appear - the Black 5 was explicitly a replacement for the Prince of Wales class; you'd hardly describe a Black 5 as a small engine. As to goods engines, the ex-Midland fleet was dominated by new superheated 4Fs and 3Fs that were effectively new engines. The LNWR 0-8-0s were also mostly fairly new (or recently rebuilt) whereas the ex-LNWR 0-6-0s all dated from the nineteenth-century - and were smaller engines than the surviving ex-Midland 2Fs. Genuine LMS design begins with the 4P 2-6-4T - generally regarded as a great success, building on the best elements of the Derby drawing office's traditions. Apologies to those enjoying the green engines for this red v. black outburst .