Compound2632

Thanks - I need to go back and read through from the beginning!

If I wanted to get to where you want to get - archaic carriages for an impoverished light railway - I wouldn't start from here. I accept that these little monstrosities can be picked up very cheaply - £3 - £4 - but that's for a reason... I'd be tempted to go for something like the North Staffs 4-wheelers - bodies available as a 3D print to fit a GWR brake van underframe. Another possibility might be the imported Bachmann Thomas coaches which have found favour in LBSC quarters.

Indeed, there was a thread a while back which focused on the wagon traverser (front left) that led to someone building a demo example! And I've distracted Mikkel by linking to it elsewhere today...

The Slater's ones look a lot better than the Smith's ones to my eyes but I confess coupling up is a challenge and I've been getting some stick at the Club for the time it takes to set a train up on the test track! It helps to have something worth listening to on the radio while making these up.

Great Western experts - having tweaked you re. corridor carriages, are you willing or able to tell me anything about the wagon (No. 25637 I think) front left in this photo, taken in Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory, Reading, c. 1900. Springs inside the W-irons, W-iron slightly behind the outside face of the solebars - iron frame? Self-contained buffers? - this and the non-full-width headstocks, suggests conversion from dumb buffers? EDIT: @Chrisbr, who has examined the GW wagon registers at the NRM, conforms that this is a conversion from a broad gauge wagon:

Not much modelling just at present but a few evenings ago I did make up another set of 3-link couplings – good for another dozen wagons! These are a Slater’s product – one of a few 4 mm scale products still in their catalogue (Part No. 4151) though this batch are from a pack I found lurking in the back of a box and I think were bought twenty years ago. The links are of a softer wire than the last batch I made, which were from a recently-purchased packet! That certainly made assembly quicker than last time. The hooks are a brass etching. This was polished up with Cif using an old electric toothbrush. After cutting from the fret and fettling, each hook was dunked in Carr’s metal black for brass (Part No. C1062). Once the couplings were assembled, the links were blackened by heating to a red heat in the flame of a gas ring and then quenching in oil (Tesco olive oil – other oils may be suitable). The coupling is held in a pair of pliers to avoid getting too close to the flame! When the end of the hook gets in the flame, green and blue flames are observed – chemistry students will recognise the characteristic colours for zinc and copper. This is supposed to be a scratch- and kit-building thread; I have posted pictures of things I’ve merely bought but as I’ve posted a photo of my recently arrived batch of wagon sheets from Thomas Petith I’ll send you there.

Arrived in the post a few days ago: Thanks to Tom for the prompt service (and the bonus LSWR sheet - I now have a plan for that) and to RMwebbers for helping find the cause of the contact problem - to confirm, the address is: wagonsheets@hotmail.com. I'll be getting to grips with the LNWR ones first but have plans for the rest. The SER ones are because I can't get this picture out of my head - lovely line-up of antique SER wagons, such a shame SERKits are 7 mm scale only. Note also the SER sheet 'borrowed' for factory purposes in this view - behind the horse-drawn wagon and the telegraph post - presumably demurrage charges were mounting up!

It's a good-looking collection - with a variety of brake vans. Also, 'early grouping' is very much 'late pre-grouping' - so good to see a good number of vehicles that haven't yet been through the paint shop. As I recall, the layout is a small goods yard, so the relatively low proportion of private owner coal wagons doesn't signify. It would be good to have a beauty parade - for instance, I'm curious as to the van middle back, behind the ex-LNWR D88(?) - it seems to have vertical wooden framing and possibly a roof hatch?

I know this is an old thread that has just had one recent comment but I couldn't resist the temptation to subvert the Great Western-ness of things by agreeing with Londontram - from diagrams and photos in Jenkinson's LNWR Carriages, it's clear that both the original 42' bogie stock of 1893 and the luxury 12-wheelers of 1908, for the 2pm - the original 'Corridor' and the country's premier express passenger service - were built to have the corridor down one side, including 'handed' brake carriages. As far as I can work out, the corridor seems to have been on the eastern side of the train.

I've got one somewhere too - original chassis married to the tender off an Airfix 4F - slightly more like the real thing than the original Hornby offering. But this does just go to show how basically good and largely dimensionally correct from running plate up many of the older Hornby models can be.

So many shades of brown! Almost as much nostalgia as pair of 20s nose-to-nose...

It is, apparently, obligatory to include a picture of Jenny Agutter in every 1,263rd post on this thread. Manure, however, comes round more frequently.

Well, I was interested but didn't get round to asking: is it known where the Cannock company got them from? Home-made, main-line cast-offs or new from one of the rolling-stock manufacturing companies?

The Great Western had to abandon its misappropriation of the arms of London and Bristol after giving its use of them too much publicity in celebrating the centenary of the incorporation of the company - cue the shirtbutton. Most companies seem to have got away with such goings-on at least in the Victorian era - the Midland is a case in point, with arms cobbled together from the six cities served by the original constituents and the Bristol line constituents. I believe the Great Central got a proper grant of arms when it reinvented itself from the M&SL - did the LNER follow suit? The LMS was more cautious and simply used the national badges - in a manner that had already started to be used in the internal decoration of some Midland & Glasgow & South Western Joint Stock dining carriages. In Scotland, the Caledonian boldly appropriated the Royal Arms of Scotland and stuck the company name underneath - if Lyon King of Arms was so hot on such matters, how did the Caley get away with it? Nemo me impune lacessit...

My feeling is that one may get away without the lighter coloured lining - whether it be gold, imitation gold, or straw - next to a white or cream coloured panel but against a dark panel its absence does leave the carriage looking rather drab. The gold lining brings out the colour! An unlined claret carriage looks very dull alongside a fully lined one.

May I offer another of my teenage efforts as encouragement? A Midland D522 4-compartment bogie brake third from the Ratio kit: EDIT for more info (I hit the post button inadvertently): In my youth I was innocent of such things as undercoats and varnish. This is probably Humbrol No. 20 brushed directly onto the plastic, lining with gold marker and Humbrol gloss black with a fine brush! Bolections in Humbrol gloss tan. Life was made easier with many fixed windows, as the gold lining is only on one side of the black and the tan went on last. I can't remember whether I'd also tried a Rotring pen with black drawing ink by then - I used this with some success on a pair of LNWR coaches, mixing black and blue ink to match the plum colour. My techniques were developing and had I persisted I might have got to a result I'd be happy with now, so it's another project to return to. I say: keep practicing; keep trying different techniques; don't despair - we're much more aware of the defects of our models than anyone else! Prototype notes (rant/moan): The D522 4-compartment bogie brake third seems to be a favourite with many modellers - it was in fact the very first Ratio kit I attempted at age 12 (not the one in the photo!) but it was actually the rarest of the four Bain suburbans in the Ratio range - just 12 were built with the 10ft wheelbase bogies per the kit, for four-coach sets for services down the Gloucestershire loop from Birmingham via Redditch and Evesham to Alvechurch. These close-coupled sets were formed: D552 brake third / D551 composite / D487 third / D552 brake third - the composites being identical to the D481 first except for having three compartments at one end reduced in size internally with additional partitions, so either can be built from the Ratio kit. Superb photo here. There were however a further 58 built for Sheffield district services, but with 8ft wheelbase bogies. The Birmingham area services made much more use of the D501 6-compartment brake third, 34 being built and used at either end of six-coach sets (BT/T/F/F/T/BT) and four coach sets (BT/F/T/BT) for services round the Camp Hill and West Suburban lines and to Walsall and Wolverhampton, along with some three-coach sets (BT/F/BT) used for peak-time strengthening. The design originated in sets built for the Manchester area, six nine-coach sets (BT/T/T/F/F/F/F/T/BT). After the Sheffield area sets with 8ft bogies, similar carriages were 9ft wide rather than 8ft 6in, with sides bowed out at the waist rather than vertical from waist to eves. Please excuse my Midland Carriages pedantry again - it is my obsession.

Not clear from the photo but I did crudely carve the ends to a single arc profile which does mean the panelling looks a bit odd but if there's a roof overhang I doubt it would show except on the end carriage of a rake. As you say, it ought to be finished but that goes for a lot of my modelling!

In my teenage carriage-building days, I did the usual thing of butting up two Ratio T47 brake ends to make a cod GW 4-wheel brake van. I put the passenger ends together on the second underframe to make a centre-brake third: I remember at the time deciding it was a Maryport & Carlisle coach but realise now I may actually have inadvertently built a West Norfolk vehicle. It's perhaps more olive and spilt milk than green and cream - in fact I think the upper panels are Precision LNWR white - and I think isn't far off the actual M&C livery which was carefully differentiated from its neighbours' plum and spilt milk (LNW) and blue and ditto (Furness). Somehow this was as far as it got - roofless, interior-less, and without the green or black lining over the gold or mahogany bolections. The gold lining was one of those gold marker pens - I think one snag may have been to get any other paint to adhere to it. I have some notes that I made from one of Coachman's threads (now deleted I think) which I hope he won't mind being quoted here: "Railways were fond of using the word gold when in fact it was a paint mixed to resemble gold. A bright colour it wasn't. On the modelling front, you could use Humbrol Cream No.7 and Humbrol yellow No.69 mixed 50/50. If you are using a draughtsman's ruling pen, let the new tins of paint settle before pouring off the oil into a spare container. Then stir the 'putty' that is left and pour in small amounts of the oil until the paint flows out of your bow pen and stays put without spreading out of control. Then mix the two colours together. Finally add a very small touch of black to distress the colour. This same lining colour can also be used for BR maroon. I happen to used cellulose paint mixed to match the above colour." I haven't tried this yet but Coachman said he'd been doing it for fifty years, so who's to quarrel with that?

I found these photos on the NRM website where they're dated 1903.

Found it! Leicestershire and Rutland Railway Stations on old picture postcards, Brian Lund (Yesterday's Leicestershire series No. 2, Reflections of a Bygone age, Keyworth, Nottingham, 1996). On 7 January 1907, His Majesty, travelling from Rowsley (i.e. Chatsworth) had to wait nine minutes on the platform at Saxby (not Syston) for his connection on to St Pancras, while the Queen had gone on to Wolferton (that sounds a more likely state of affairs...). In the first photo, he's walking away from a clerestory carriage that has a rather Great Eastern-ish air to my eyes, in greatcoat and bowler hat and with a stick, there's a taller middl-aged chap similarilt attired and a couple of younger attendants with top hats - the younger one stands at a greater distance (he looks like the junior security man) while the elder talks to someone in the carriage. In the second photo, the same group are alone on the platform with addition of a white terrier. The King does look to be a rather tired old man. A train is drawing out from the opposite platform - several the droplights are down with passengers leaning out and waving.

Now, apropos of saloon carriages, somewhere - I think in a slim book of Leicestershire Railways from Old Postcards I can't just find - I've seen a photo of His Majesty on the platform at some lesser junction - possibly Syston - awaiting his connection onward to Wolferton having left Queen Alexandra to travel on to London - I think they'd been at Chatsworth. As the caption says, 'almost a ordinary passenger'. It was a postcard, taken from a distance - paparazzi are nothing new! Read Mr American by the late George MacDonald Fraser - or even his more scandalous representation of Bertie in The Subtleties of Baccarat (Flashman and the Tiger)!

I think it has an air of push-along charm. I imagine many a child in 1890s Crewe had a toy like this on the scullery floor.

Agree. These are in the picnic saloon category - the interior layout (at least for a six-wheeler) hardly varied from company to company except for the position of the loo - longitudinal seating with a table down the middle - usually with drop-flap sides. The Midland ones came in first and third class variants with just the upholstery to distinguish. Scroll down a bit here for some magnificent Midland square-light clerestory picnic saloons being prepared for a Cadbury's works outing.

Does your Lordship wish to travel with your Lordship's servants or your Lordship's luggage? Either can be sent in advance but which will be more convenient? Reading the G37 text, which mentions that it seats 12 first and 6 third class passengers, I realise that the compartment off the side corridor, next to the loo, is the servants' compartment - it's only 5'6" between partitions. The one-off G35 saloon seats 10 non-smoking first class and 4 smoking in the compartment off the corridor - 6'6" between partitions - and I suppose 5 or 6 servants being given a rough ride on the bench seat at the end - not a high enough proportion of servants? Midland Railway Summer 1903 timetable book (as previously cited): "Saloon, Family, and Invalid Carriages: ... can usually be provided on prior application, the minimum charges being four full first class and four full third class ordinary or tourist tickets, or fares equivalent thereto. Each passenger travelling must hold a ticket corresponding with the class of carriage used, and if the party in any case exceeds the number named above, an additional fare must be paid for each additional passenger." Not bad, considering that to reserve the exclusive use of a first class compartment required the purchase of a minimum of four first class tickets (six fares to reserve a third-class compartment). I suppose it must have been a profitable business but it does seem extravagant in terms of tons deadweight per passenger to say nothing of the empty mileage, maintenance and clerical costs involved. Still on saloons but drifting off a bit... I'm rather taken by the LNWR 4-coach sets of 42' radials built in 1884 - the centre two coaches of which were first class gentlemen's and ladies' saloons: the gentlemen's saloon is laid out rather like dining car at one end, then has a side-corridor section with smoking compartment and lavatory, while the ladies' carriage is more like a family carriage with a longitudinal chaise-longue seat and loose armchairs in the saloon and two more private compartments plus lavatory off the side-corridor.

I suspect all these rather grand bogie saloons might be a bit much for the WNR to handle! 6-wheelers will be more the thing. There are etched brass kits about - e.g. LRM for a L&Y family carriage or LNWR invalid saloon.