Compound2632

Surely the absence of doors would allow the wagon to be fairly well sealed.  You wouldn't want this precious load leaking out along the tracks.  And who would volunteer to open the door, to be confronted by a wall of slurry?

We've been here before - as recently as January - over on Castle Aching, where they're currently discussing the difference between a Norse and a Viking.

Sorry, it's really annoying when people point out obvious typos, but, presumably, a "midified" interior is one full of sh1te! 

That'll be the one I'm converting to a D344 manure wagon...

Thanks to Tricky's pioneering work in this field, we can look forward to a protypical load. Scale odour is an area for further development...

Model them loaded...

 

Andy

Quite. The problem has to do with the wrong relationship between the floor, headstocks and solebars - essentially the solebars are too deep. The way I deal with this results in the wagon being too shallow on the inside. I'm preparing a photo-tutorial on how I build a D299 wagon... 

At the York Show I allowed myself a few little indulgences, including these, to which I have now applied my brush:

They definitely look as if they come from the next village...

"Scuse us, chorley guy! You tollerday donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty anglease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! 'Tis a Jute."

- Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce.

Hopefully that clears up the mystery of the Jutes.

 Ha, got me there!  And I thought I'd done quite well for an extempore response.  Must make more of an effort to master the English language; it's course scale-gate all over again [sigh] !

But having seen your buildings I believe your courses are to scale...

people you don't want to find yourselves involuntarily ruled by.   

Ah well, there's the rub...  

O what mighty Delusion, do you, who are the powers of England live in! That while you pretend to throw down that Norman yoke, and Babylonish power, and have promised to make the groaning people of England a Free People; yet you still lift up that Norman yoke, and slavish Tyranny, and holds the People as much in bondage, as the Bastard Conquerour himself, and his Councel of War.

 

The True Levellers Standard Advanced, Gerrard Winstanley

O dear that's dangerously close to being highly relevant to our current political situation - better ease off before the Mods move in on us. Better still, divert their attention with a few more home-made explosions...

Looks good.

Cant wait to see the Slaters kits built up. Batchbuilding them might make adding internals a little more bearable.

There's a fundamental reason why internals are a no-go on Slater's MR opens as will be revealed in due course...

Brilliant, and good to see in the pre-1908 livery, which, I find, is not so commonly modelled.  I must try to emulate you. 

Very kind of you. Now, if anyone's modelling post-Great War and wants LNWR lettering without diamonds, I might be able to help you out...

North Western round-up – or Earlestown rodeo?

The imminent arrival of Aston shed’s Coal Tank No. 1054 has got me back on track with my small fleet of LNWR wagons, half-a-dozen of which have finally emerged from the paint shop. First, the D53 four-plank 8 ton coal wagon, converted from the Ratio D54 five-plank 10 ton wagon, along with the D4 four-plank 7 ton open, the latter directly from the Ratio kit:

The two D3 two-plank dropside wagons – on the left, my second attempt with correct square-ended headstocks and cranked brake lever:

The D12 timber wagon and the D2 two-plank wagon with scratchbuilt sides and ends, started last July:

These close-ups show some wonky tare weights and one or two numberplates that need a bit more bedding down – Microsol? I need to crack on with the D16 brake van!

I still have material for another ten more LNW wagons! First up should be three Mousa Models resin kits, as previously advertised: D1, D2 and D32.The hold-up here is getting the top off my bottle of Roket Max thick cyanoacrylate… There’s a D1 single-plank wagon already assembled from parts of the Ratio 575 kit that yielded the D2 two-plank wagon with scratchbuilt body and the two D3 dropside wagons featured above – this D1 is intended to be fully sheeted over, hiding the bodywork (such as it is) but I’ve not sourced a suitable sheet yet.

I picked up another Ratio Permanent Way set from a local second-hand model and militaria shop for just £8 – that’s £2 per wagon including wheels an bearings! It must be a very early example as it’s numbered 755 rather than 575 (see posts #123 and #130) and comes with lengths of bullhead rail as load for the bolster wagons rather than the plastic moulded girder sections in the current kit. Also, what I’m sure I’ve not seen before, two sets of Pressfix transfers rather than the usual waterslide transfers – but identical in layout and content. These have already been pressed into service for numberplates and the “TONS COAL WAGON” on the D53 – the “8” along with the diamonds came from the HMRS Pressfix sheet.

My plan for this kit is to build a dumb-buffered D13 twin timber wagon pair (is that two wagons or one?) to join my D12 singleton. The D12 used the longer solebars; the D13 pair will use one pair of long solebars for the dumb-buffered end and one pair of short solebars for the inner ends, which have conventional headstocks. The wagon body (such as it is) is asymmetrical about the centre-line of the wheelbase and bolster:

This will leave solebars for one 15’6” wagon and one 16’0” wagon but sides and ends for two 16’0” D62 ballast wagons (or more conversions to D3 dropside wagons). I’m mulling a plan to modify one set of sides and ends as another way of making a 15’6” D2 wagon.

Finally, I’ve been making up for my recent lack of modelling time by indulging in the dangerously compulsive game of ebay bidding, which has resulted in a stockpile of Slater’s MR wagon kits. (I intend to re-assert my credentials as a Midland modeller!) However, I couldn’t resist Ratio kit 753 – another D54 5-plank coal wagon (to be converted to D53) and a D64 4-plank loco coal wagon, which takes me back to where I started this excursion into Ratio LNWR wagon kits back in post #123.

Ha-ha.

You're pushing the boundaries there... The curtain wall BLOCKS the view.

Itd be a shame if he wasnt. I ordered from him about a year and a half ago and I was very happy with the sheets.

By mail to the address on the website? 

enceinte de ? mois  = ? months pregnant - so you knew where to put it! Just where did the Norman Yoke come into play?

The French enceinte is in this sense roughly equivalent to the obsolete English sense of confined as pregnant and therefore not let out of the house. The enceinte wall is thus the outer wall of the castle, confining the occupants.

Years ago I bought some excellent 4mm scale MR wagon sheets at an exhibition. The maker, Thomas Petith of Cardiff, still has a website www.wagonsheets.co.uk/ but I've had no response to email - does anyone know if he's still trading? I confess I've not yet tried good-fashioned post.

I wonder if RTR will ever get around to Webb Compounds, 

Correctly sequenced the locos could pull very well on starts, and were said to be smooth running due to lack of side rods. Webb came in for a lot of flack on the design but it worked in experienced hands.

Dreadnought anybody?

 

Stephen.

The Teutonics were apparently superb engines for their intended task - Jeanie Deans was a "show" engine like the Jumbo "Charles Dickens" - rostered to the same high-profile express day-in-day-out.

I'd have though a Jumbo would be a much more likely RTR proposition - a class surviving well into the grouping era and represented by "Hardwicke" at the NRM.  

Exquisite excreta! Your method certainly does the job...

Today I will mostly be making horse poo...

 

And some other stuff maybe.

I'll be looking forward to a detailed description... How did you do the straw, btw?

Some progress, and a trip out!

 

I have now made the 2 rear, purely scenic, frames for CA.  The first frame was modified so that one end is narrower. This is the better to incorporate a point leading the goods yard. Also now visible on the first board are Edwardian's Patent Leg Pockets, into which the rear legs will slot in due course.  The first board is now ready for scenification. 

 

Yesterday,however, I spent a jolly day out at the York show.  One of the layouts I was taken with was St Martins Wharf, a Light Railway in East Anglia, in 7 mil.  I know I keep saying that the West Norfolk isn't a Light Railway (because it isn't), but I thought something of Colonel Stephens out of the East wouldn't go amiss here.

How had the Colonel come to have abducted a Midland Railway Stores Sleepers wagon? Maybe not so light a railway after all but a cunning Derby plan to push a finger deeper into the Great Eastern's pie?

Powsides have the Slaters PO wagon 4mm kits undecorated. I recieved a couple from them recently, speedy delivery:

http://www.powsides.co.uk/www.powsides.co.uk/info.php?p=8&cat=471393

Great minds think alike once again - it dawned on me last week that this is the way forward for my Huntley & Palmers 6-plank wagons so have a couple on the way!

Railway books aimed at the lineside observer are full of remarks about elegance, harmonious artistry and the like when it comes to steam locomotives, but I judge them on their metalwork. Remove the exotic liveries and some classes of loco look dire. Stroudleys locos for instance. Johnson's slim boiler 4-4-0s and 2-4-0s could barely be described as elegant in lined black or less. Even the Compounds never looked right once their red garb had been removed and who would look twice at a Robinson GCR passenger engine or Caley Cardean or Dunalastair once black had replaced green or blue. Yay, and even GWR locos never looked right in anything other than their traditional dark green. Yet the basic simplicity of LNWR engines looked right even in bare metal and they never had to rely on exotic liveries to liven them up.

Elegance is of course in the eye of the beholder. The outlines and proportions of Johnson's engines seem to me to be particularly harmonious; as far as I'm aware there's no evidence that they were unsatisfactory for the work they were designed to do. What I will say in favour of Crewe is that I have yet to see a photo of any locomotive in LNWR lined livery (call it BR mixed traffic livery if you will) where that livery looked out of place.

 

Why? Well why not!

Alex

Well, that's hardly like-for-like - Deeley-fied Compound v. George V would be more reasonable. My post that started off this little round of comment on Midland engines was rather specifically comparing Johnson's engines with Webb's - i.e. up to 1903, before the heyday of double-heading on either line, brought on by increasing passenger train weight per passenger with the proliferation of corridor carriages and dining cars.

Size: the characteristic Webb 0-6-0 / 2-4-0 wheelbase was 7'3" + 8'3" as against 8'0" + 8'6" on the Midland - both inherited from their predecessors, Ramsbottom and Kirtley.

More elegant: well, that's in the eye of the beholder. I'll admit that Webb's engines have a certain appeal - the Teutonics especially for me - but not the harmonious artistry of a slim-boilered Johnson 4-4-0. The Belpaires and the Smith-Johnson compounds in their original form moved on to a new plane of big-engine elegance where the Precursors were just big Jumbos.

Better engineered: the dubious features of Webb's engines in general have been overshadowed by the arguments surrounding the compounds - Whale, who as running superintendent knew all about these had had his work cut out to sort them out. Johnson was at the fore-front of technical development as an early adopter of piston valves and, of course, collaborating with his friend W M Smith to produce an effective compound locomotive.

I for one think it is time we set aside this ancient feud. MR & LNWR fans should unite and work together to annoy fans of any other pre-grouping companies by proving how massively, and blatantly, superior they were to all the others!

 

 

Alex

Hum - we both got "funny" from The Stationmaster - I can't think why. You don't suppose he has some other railway in mind?

As to double heading on the LNWR...

I should change my name to Midland & LNWR Mole, but then I lose the alliteration.

Alex

No, the true Midland enthusiast's justification for having a LNWR engine on hand is to have a reminder of just how much larger, more elegant and better engineered Johnson's engines were than Webb's...

They aren't variants; that is a main line railway way of thinking.

 

That little lot are differences that I have seen in various photos of W4 Pecketts then who knows how many permutations there were of those? Who knows how many other differences there were in the locos that I haven't seen?

 

There's also no need to classify them.

In other words, classification fails because each Peckett is a class unto itself - with the occasional exception where a firm bought two or more in one go (consecutive works nos.) like H&P C and D.