Compound2632

They didn't just complain: they did the necessary leg-work to change the culture.

I'm sure there's at least one mirror involved here - to say nothing of smoke...

As a Midland modeller, with vast published resources to hand courtesy of members of the LMS Society and Midland Railway Society, backed up by the primary archive material held by the Midland Railway Study Centre, I'm sometimes shocked by how little material there seems to be on the Great Western prior to c. 1900. The situation is almost as good for a number of other companies that have active line societies: the LNWR, L&Y, Caledonian and Great Northern and indeed North Eastern. I'm sure entusiasts for other lines will be quick to point to the material available to support their interests.

And equally, for the 1921 Cowlairs 6-wheeled van, it might be a case of doing a special job in the "old style" for the sake of the photo. In the book, the latest date on a crescent is 24, one on a mineral wagon on hire to James Nimmo & Co, Slamannan - this also has the quaterfoil mark but one axlebox has N. B. RY cast on its front and the other LNE-B; the other on a Dia. 97 iron ore wagon - not by any means a full repaint; the only new paint appears to be the crescent itself! I suppose it's really "date of overhaul".

Railway room? Tidy?

In terms of wheelbase and wheel diameter, that's the same as the 1532 Class built from 1881 onwards (per the Bachmann model); the 6 Class of 1875 had a shorter bogie (5'0") though at the same centre, as did the 1252 Class of 1875/6, though these had 5'7" drivers. So the Avonside engines represent an intermediate stage in the evolution of the Johnson 0-4-4T; evidently sufficiently different (tank height? boiler pitch?) not to be a possible variant of the Bachmann model. Your official photo of No. 10 shows an intermediate "Deeley-fied" condition which, thankfully, the Midland engines were spared - a truly hideous chimney! Well, I think Great Western modellers are not guilty this time - but only on account of that company not having many 0-4-4Ts! I rather had in mind the threads on Hornby's SE&CR Class H and the TMC/Bachmann NER Class O 0-4-4Ts - the latter of which I'm guilty of having contributed to.

Isn't it interesting how little froth the Bachmann 1P 0-4-4T has generated compared to other RTR models of engines of this wheel arrangement? Just goes to show what sober, dignified and patient folk we Midland/LMR enthusiasts are.

Ian, thank you for this, and for reminding us that for many kit & bits manufacturers, what you do is as much a hobby as what we modellers do once we've got our hands on the kit. Reading some threads, ii seems to me that too many people expect one-person manufacturers to operate in the same way as Hornby or Bachmann! Now Eric Hutchinson was writing only three decades or so after Cowlairs last turned a van out in NBR livery; we're now twice as long again after he wrote. It is with some temerity therefore that I, as quite an ignoramus on matters North British, suggest his notes require some interpretation in the light of the photos in the John Hooper book. Firstly, the "medium grey" described as "much lighter than the lead colour" - I wonder what lead colour he was comparing with? The photos of newly painted vehicles in the Hooper book (wagons in general, not just brakes) give the impression of a rather dark grey - certainly much darker than the "lead" colour used by the Midland. For example, the photos of Dia. 88 6-wheel brake No. 601 on p.65 and of Dia. 70 brake No. 580 on p. 66. Certainly the Precision Paints NBR Freight Wagon Grey P679 is a dark grey - if you look back in this thread, you'll see I've been using it for LNWR wagons, for which it is perhaps too dark; the photos of your own builds of your kits on your website seem to me to be this same dark grey. "All ironwork, black" - except after 1914. It seems to me that black ironwork appears randomly on new or newly painted vehicles, irrespective of date. For example, of the two brakes just mentioned, No. 580, photographed in new in 1905, only has ironwork below solebar level painted black, whereas No. 601, with a 1914 paint-date crescent, has solebar ironwork and handrails painted black. Those prominent paint-date crescents enable NBR wagon photos to be dated much more reliably than many photos of other companies' stock; looking at other types of wagon in the Hooper book, one quickly realises that many of the photos were taken in 1923 - there must have been a semi-official campaign to record the old livery before new instructions were handed down from south of the border! Most of these don't have black ironwork; however, there are quite a few photos of newly built wagons with 1921 paint dates, that do have the black ironwork! (Several, but not all, of these are new from Hurst Nelson). On the other hand, there are examples of new mineral wagons with '96 and '06 paint dates that don't have the black ironwork; admittedly, both these appear to be Pickering official photos. However, there's also a photo of a new Cowlairs '04 6-wheel van without black ironwork, followed by a '21-built example with black ironwork. So as far as I can see there's no very hard-and-fast rule! "Duck-egg green": this begs the question, were the insides of the verandahs counted as inside or outside? In the photo mentioned of brake No. 580, the verandah door is open and one can see some detail of the interior partition. This seems to me to be painted a dark colour; the natural inference is that it is body colour. I would suggest that duck-egg green was used for the interior of the full-enclosed central section of the van - this would accord with other companies' practice. A light colour would be desirable where there wasn't much light getting in from outside. In both the brake van photos I've mentioned, red ends etc. are entirely credible - they look darker than the sides and the buffer guides in particular look "black", as one would expect with orthochromic photographic emulsion. Any other North British experts out there willing to comment? The Hooper book states the NBR wagon stock at grouping as 58,970, the fifth largest fleet after the North Eastern, Midland, Great Western and London & North Western - I think that's supposed to be in order of size, though does the L&NW total include the L&Y fleet? Even in pre-pooling days, a good few must have made their way onto the Midland system via Carlisle, so I ought to be able to justify the odd one in the Birmingham area c. 1903. Though this brake van is completely off-piste!

Yes, I've tried making that resolve too...

Which is indeed the direction Bill Bedford (Mousa) has taken.

Etched brass does seem such a perverse choice of material for a kit for a wooden open wagon - lack of chunkiness. I've nothing against etched brass in general but having read your build I'll continue to avoid such kits.

Beyer-Garratt; Meyer; Mallett - all very confusing. A Meyer seems to be somewhere between a single and a double Fairlie?

This talk of Colin Ashby and Ian Kirk has prompted me to dig out the Ian Kirk L&Y Diagram 5 loco coal wagon I built as a teenager. I showed a photo a while ago: This isn't as crisp as the NBR brake van; like the Ian Kirk outside-framed Great Western van I rebuilt last autumn, it's moulded in a rather buttery plastic, black in this case. The body does look very like the photo of a D5 in N. Coates, Lancashire & Yorkshire Wagons Vol. 1 (Wild Swan, 1990) - plate 50. The solebars and running gear, however, are rather generic - perhaps designed for an RCH 1923 standard wagon. So, I've cut away everything below the solebars and removed some of the solebar detail. I've used MJT W-irons and Attock axlebox/spring castings - the LH looks a bit wonky; this is just a trial fitting: The wooden end pillars are a bit weedy-looking and don't extend down to the bottom of the headstock, so the next move will be to scrape these off and replace with 60 thou square microstrip. The ribbed buffers are quite like the ones in the reference photo, so I'm keeping them for now but they are a bit vulnerable. The brake gear should be of the unusual L&Y type with two brake blocks on one side but only one on the other, with both brake levers facing the same end. Pondering how to do that with the bits and pieces to hand!

Says it all. He really has taken to this pre-Grouping lark, hook, line, and sinker... There's a lot of Norse influence in your part of the world but I didn't realise it still went as far as sacrificing your children on the altar of Brokkr.

Indeed, I took it for a T9 at first glace!

When I said "the Master", I meant Ian Kirk himself, not the master for the model! I have indeed seen his posts on various threads. Having assembled the remaining solebar and popped some wheels in, I can make some assessment of what's needed to finish the job: I'm not sure whether the lower step board was supposed to be mounted on wire brackets or whether that was my improvement - I'd carved slots in the solebar and notches in the underside of the step-board to locate the wire. The side in the photo is the one with the solebar I'd fixed in place 30 years ago; there are plastic moulded bits of ironwork stuck over the wires; if I have those for the other side, I've yet to find them! Anyway, they look too chunky. I'm minded to replace them with bits of microstrip. The handrails are a source of angst, as usual with brake vans! I'd made the end handrails and the vertical ones either side of the doors - the easy ones. There should be short horizontal sections of handrail at the same height as the end handrails. These form a butt joint with the vertical handrails. The photos of the NBR 4mm Developments model illustrate this. The way to do this would be to solder them, but how to do that within 0.5 mm of the plastic? I'm minded to make some sort of jig. Both the photos of the brass model and the ones in the Hooper book also show that the vertical handrails didn't stick straight out as I'd made them, but are folded back at an angle of 45 degrees or so. I think there should be another brake gear moulding for the other side - I wouldn't expect a brake van to have the brakes acting on one side only! As there is a cross-shaft, the push-rods will appear opposite-handed when viewed from the other side. (Does that make any sense? I know what I mean...) The brake gear moulding is a bit on the chunky side so I may replace it with spare Slaters or Coopercraft gear. I'm also reminded that the Colin Ashby range included the two diagrams of Midland Railway Stores Sleepers wagons...

In the 1992 Colin Ashby list reported in this old thread, I see the NBR brake van is reported as being ex-Kirk. If the Master is about, can he confirm or deny?

I'd say it's a considerable advance on the horrible Hornby thing.

A Precedent has been set...

James has just let slip that he has a model of a NER Class A 2-4-2T. Really, now that he has some track down, we really do need to see a beauty pageant of whatever else he's got up his sleeve.

Sorry, missed Larry's comment. The teak finished GNoSR carriages I mentioned include some in photos taken at Boat of Garten, dated 1935. These bogie carriages and a 6-wheel third (built 1914) are lined out on the round-cornered panels.

I was idly leafing through A.E. Glen, I.A. Glen and A.G. Dunbar, Great North of Scotland Railway Album (2e, Fraser Stewart, 1994) and though of this thread. There are several photos of GNoS carriages in LNER condition. While some could be in plain brown, the majority do appear to have a simulated teak finish. The GNoS carriage livery was lake and cream right up to grouping. Of course there could be regional as well as date variations in the way pre-Grouping carriages were treated. Did ex-GNoS carriages continue to be painted at Inverurie?

The LNER encyclopedia mentions the As being used on lighter branch passenger duties such as the Hawes line post-Grouping; the photo of the A near Bolton Castle could be mid-20s notwithstanding the full NER livery.

Thanks - to the best of my knowledge, it's the only Colin Ashby kit I have. The parts are very crisp - quite as good as Slater's or the more modern Parkside kits. What else did he produce and what happened to the masters or moulds? I've found the book: John Hooper, Wagons on the LNER: North British No. 1 (Irwell Press, 1991) - I take it No. 1 refers to a projected series on LNER wagons, rather than NBR ones - were there subsequent volumes? Anyway, the brake van in question appears to be NBR Diagram 69 (LNER SSA Diagram 34B), built 1902-1909. It looks as if it would be reasonably straightforward to convert it to the single-verandah'd Diagram 70 (SSA Diagram 35B) vans; There's also a photo showing one of these Diagram 69 vans, No. 458, alongside a very similar van without the central ducket, No. 526 - Diagram 21 (SSA Diagram 33B) according to NBR 4mm Developments. To do these variants in brass, one needs a separate etch master for each. Anyway, some useful signposts on livery there - though I'm not convinced by the off-yellow verandah interior!

To be cascaded to CA once it's served its purpose in the North East?