Compound2632

The corridor side looks disturbingly Triangesque!

Liking the gaiters!

The transgender bovine looks the part, too.

Atmospheric!

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Perhaps the pollarded ones are those close to the buildings.

That is correct. Otherwise by now the canopy would be overshadowing the buildings. 

7 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

Bath initially (34040, 34041, 34042) then Bournemouth I think.

Hmm. I can see why they might have been transferred away from Bath. No doubt the fitters had a fit, being used to Midland/LMS machines!

4 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

They were introduced on the line in the very early fifties and saw use on everything from long-distance expresses such as the Pines to local services.

Thank you. I had been under the impression that they only appeared on summer Saturdays as a measure of desperation whilst the weekday traffic remained in the hands of indigenous types. These were all Bournemouth-shedded machines, I presume?

On 31/08/2021 at 14:17, MikeOxon said:

I recently had a 3D-printing disaster.  The model slipped on the printer bed in my absence and when I returned I found this.  A new way of building rampant undergrowth, birdsnest etc.

 

Looks like the creature from the Black Lagoon, to me.

Back, if I may be excused, to those Vastern Road trees. I'm afraid I cannot yet confirm the species but one point of note is that they are now pollarded, and have been for at least the last quarter-century. I can't quite decide whether they were already pollarded in those 1940s Britain from Above photos.

@AY Mod!

The first two shots rather looked like 1960s colour photos; the last, brighter, shot looks much more like a photo of a model railway...

Under what circumstances did these Bulleid pacifics work over the S&D?

4 hours ago, Regularity said:

“Big rear-end Road”?

That does pretty well describe Vastern Road's purpose in the scheme of Reading's "Inner Distribution Road" - a half-baked inner ring road scheme never completely seen through in the 60s/70s. Dual carriageway providing rear access to the railway station and avoiding the pedestrianised town centre.

But the name pre-dates that. I've not been able to find an explanation. Many Reading streets are named after prominent citizens from the 17th century, several of whom were regicides.

21 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

 

I remembered that you were local to the area, Stephen. Do you happen to recall what species the trees where? 

 

Here is a crop of the ca. 1905 photo of Vastern Rd. This is 40+ years prior to those heading this blog post. I'm assuming they are not the same, as they would have been much larger by then.

 

Apart from the trees alongside the Vastern Rd and King's Meadow yards, there were also trees alongside this Reading yard, the name of which evades me. It was on the other side of the mainline:

 

I'll have to consult with an expert...

That Vastern Road c. 1905 photo is very familiar - you may recall it was the reference for my GW opens with sheeted timber loads. I think these are the same trees but over the years they've been thinned out as the grew - something like every other tree removed in your 1940s photos and every other tree again by now (by late 1990s, in fact).

The second photo shows the South Eastern station. The prison is bottom left.

In neither of those two Vastern Road shots can you see our first house in Reading - it's between the two. But unlike the goods yard, the trees, or some of them, are still there:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4615045,-0.9732008,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQ1qtSldbLGTwm59FiFxX1Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Here's the house - the end of the terrace - externally it hasn't changed much since we moved out 20 years ago, though we did make an attempt to keep the hedge within bounds:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4616282,-0.972462,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1slSA68JT3W3pYMns7oj153Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

32 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Incidentally, I note in the Midland 5-plank drawing that the bar and hinges for the end door are above the planks. That also seems the logical position, but the Slaters' instructions aren't clear how exactly it should be positioned, and models show different arrangements (some fitting it one plank down). But perhaps the different builders did it differently.

All adds to the variety. From Montague's Gloucester book, Gloucester 7-plank 10 ton wagons of the 1890s/early 1900s seem to have consistently gone for the hinge bar being behind the top plank of the end door, held in a hole in the end knee, which is straight, not sticking up beyond the top of the sides and bent over as in the Midland drawing, but 6-plank wagons have the bar above the top of the sides, though the end knees are not bent over - i.e. the bar is behind the line of the door. Possibly the same end knees and door hinges were being used whether the wagon was 4'0" or 3'8" deep.

@Mikkel, there are 1887 spec drawings in A.J. Watts, Private Owner Wagons from the Ince Waggon & Ironworks Co. - still available at just £7 from the HMRS, I believe (although no doubt more in the EU, for which I can only apologise on behalf of my mis-led and lied-to countrymen). These are for 8 ton 5-plank wagons with and without end doors, and for 8 ton hopper-bottomed wagons. The inside ironwork is very like that on Midland 8 ton 5-plank wagons - hardly surprising since the chairman of the RCH Wagon Superintendents' Committee at the time was T.G. Clayton, the Midland's Carriage & Wagon Superintendent. So, in addition to the side knees, there is a horizontal corner plate at the top of the corners and four vertical plates inside the corner, as washer plates for the bolts visible on the external corner plates. The principal difference is that the RCH drawings show diagonal ironwork on the outside; there is no ironwork mirroring these on the inside, so I presume coach bolts were to be used there.

@Crag15, perhaps it should be pointed out that buffalo hasn't been seen on this site since June 2015. Click on his avatar for this information.

That moves beautifully - as a single unit, as it should. 

There should be more antimacassars than macassars, allowing for pair annihilation.

I should perhaps stress that the style of dress shown in the photo above would not be worn on the platform of a Welsh country station in 1908, let alone 1895. The intention was to illustrate Edwardian jadies! For full details, see here. 

1 minute ago, JimC said:

Don't forget the "Felix Pole" mineral wagons.

True, I had, as they're well after my period!

1 hour ago, ChrisN said:

the jadies carried on as much as they do now. 

That's no thing to say about respectable young women, though from what one reads there was certainly at least the usual proportion of jades and jezebels:

For those who like a good bit of scandal, here's the original version of Abraham Solomon's First Class, as mentioned by @5&9Models back in March:

Notice that in this version the young man is a Sporting Gentleman; in the revised version he has become a Naval Officer and therefore of unimpeachable good character. 

21 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Crack on with it, to get it finished by if not Christmas, the New Year’s Day.

Uxbridge?

54 minutes ago, wenlock said:

Ooo tell me more! Any idea which numbers the couple had that were converted into composites? A little strategic numbering will stop me having to build another coach and let me get on with building the River class!

http://www.penrhos.me.uk/Udiags.shtml

45 minutes ago, Regularity said:

R2?

What would be a D2, to run next to it?

A rather nice 40 ft bogie clerestory centre-brake third of early 1880s vintage - built as broad gauge convertibles. It would make rather a nice branch train ensemble! 

Rather better than a 46 ft clerestory bogie third coupled up to some trader's wagon...

If before 1912, then I'm afraid you do need some second class accommodation.

One thing to consider is the proportion of each class. I've looked at this a bit for the Midland and LNWR but not GWR. On suburban services in the Birmingham area, the Midland had around 20% (1883) to 25% (1908) first class compartments and the LNWR about equal numbers of first, second, and third compartments (1900); that's probably too high a proportion of the higher classes for a country branch line - on the Gloucester loop out through Evesham the Midland provided 17% first class compartments (1909). Your two bogies provide 12 thirds, so as it stands you've got 25% firsts, which looks reasonable if it weren't for the lack of second. The E37 composite has two firsts, three seconds, and two thirds; with just the two third class bogies that gives 10% first and 16 % second, i.e. 26 % of the upper classes. 

If I were a first class passenger on the through train to Sherton Abbas in 1905/6 I think I would be writing to Paddington to complain about being obliged to travel in a four-wheeled antique from the 1870s when third class passengers were being provided with modern (mid-90s) bogie carriages.

12 minutes ago, Penrhos1920 said:

It’s all in the compartment sizes.  U9 had a pair of 6’6 compartments and a pair of 7’ compartments, give or take a fraction of an inch.  The R2 was 1’ longer with four 7’ compartments.  R2s can easily be distinguished as the 3 panels between compartments are the same size.

Yes indeed, it was the apparently equal-sized panels that lead me to doubt the model is a composite.

13 minutes ago, Penrhos1920 said:

The later R2s had turn-under ends which makes soldering the butt joints even harder!

So you imply that the same diagram covered flat end and turn-under-ended carriages of the same basic dimensions - which is reasonable enough. The diagram book was introduced for the convenience of the operating department, not future modellers! But any idea which lots?