Compound2632

I'm sceptical of the early 30s date ascribed to this photo - what little road traffic there is, is horse drawn and the carriages of the trains on the down fast and relief lines are all-over one shade of dark, suggesting the claret livery - so early 20s?

But this photo (which has been discussed before) simply oozes atmosphere... Who could resist? Or how about the tunnel under the GWR main line...

Guilty as charged - though in my defence that's a mash-up of the warehouse and factory kits rather than the brewery.

Folk will be wanting suitable rolling stock to go with the Huntley & Palmers Peckett. In my earlier post I pointed out that the Bachmann version of H&P wagon No. 21 was inauthentic, the model being an RCH standard 7-plank wagon whereas the real No. 21 was a Gloucester 10T 6-plank wagon of 1908. The former Slaters kit 4035 is spot on for this if you can get hold of it and POWsides do the transfers (#349) though the kit they offer is for a 7-plank wagon. Presumably No. 21 was one of a batch of several. There is a splendid photo on the Reading Museum Huntley & Palmers Collection website showing a train in H&P’s sidings behind engines A & B. Behind the engines we have: H&P wagons Nos. 10, 2? (obscured by shunter’s pole!), 1, and 6; MR 3-plank dropside wagon (pre-D305); W. H. Bowater Coal & Coke Merchant, Birmingham (?) 5-plank wagon No. 33 or 35?; another MR pre-D305 3-plank dropside wagon; MR 5-plank wagon (D299 – there’s one in every photo…); Stephenson Clarke 6-plank wagon No. 2168, Stephenson Clarke 7-plank wagon No. 24?? with dumb buffers, almost certainly a third Stephenson Clarke wagon also with dumb buffers; two more H&P wagons with single-digit numbers; an open wagon with curved ends and metal channel solebars – could be GW? – and a rather early-looking 4-wheel GW brake van. All the H&P wagons have 4 planks. No. 1 and the two wagons near the end of the train are dumb-buffered with straight ends. There’s a 5 and 9 models kit (are these still available?) that could be adapted by straightening the curved end top plank. The other three H&P wagons have sprung buffers, curved ends and iron or steel channel solebars and headstocks. Cambrian kit C53 might be a starting point for this, with a steel underframe. (The underframe in the kit is Cambrian’s standard Gloucester underframe anyway.) All these wagons have single-side brakes. The load appears to be rather large lumps of coal neatly stacked - although this has been disputed! The website gives the photo a date of around 1920 but I feel this must be wrong – the presence of dumb-buffered wagons and the double-armed slotted-post signal on the GWR main line in the background point to a much earlier date – perhaps it was taken to show off H&P locos A and B when they were new? 1890s?

The timely arrival of the H&P Peckett was an unexpected birthday present. Rather more anticipated was Vol. 1 of LNWR Wagons. This, of course, has distracted me from finishing the wagons already started… I had mentioned on Guy Rixon's LNWR wagon thread the temptation posed by spare Ratio solebars. Having solved the problem of not enough grease axleboxes (using the Coast Line Models 3D printed ones), the limiting factor to how many wagons I can squeeze out of the Ratio kits would appear to be the number of headstocks and buffer heads. What possible use are solebars without headstocks and buffers? Cue the D12 timber wagon. These were built with dumb buffers at least as late as 1897 – the date of the GA drawing in LNWR Wagons – and not fitted with sprung self-contained buffers until 1914 if the note dated January 1914 on the drawing is any guide. There’s a photo in the book showing a freshly repainted example – with LNWR between diamonds – dated August 1909. So these wagons were certainly in traffic with dumb buffers in the first decade of the 20th century. They were 12’0” long over headstocks and 14’7” over the dumb buffers, with 7’6” wheelbase. The sketch shows the key dimensions compared to a typical 16’0” or 15’6” long wagon per the Ratio kit: The 7’6” wheelbase can be got by cutting 6 mm out of the middle but the Ratio solebar ends aren’t quite long enough to make the dumb buffers. However, on the D12 wagon, the wooden solebars had a strengthening plate of 3/8” thick iron or steel that did not extend all the way to the end of the buffers – it extends about 7½” beyond the end of the body, having a total length of 13’3”. If you add 18” to this to allow for the difference between the 7’6” and 9’0” wheelbase, this gives 14’9” which is the length of the solebar of at 15’6” wagon (headstocks being 4½” thick). The end of the iron plate is very distinct in photographs, so I can use the Ratio solebar with a slightly thinner extension plus backing piece to build up the dumb buffer: I chose to use the ‘long’ solebar (for 16’0” wagons) from the Ratio kit and cut 1 mm from each end as well as 6 mmm from the middle, in order to get squarer ends – the mouldings are slightly rounded: The Ratio parts for the D48 twin rail wagons can be adapted – the sides are cut down to 48 mm long, the floor to 46 mm, and the plain ends without buffer housings are modified to fit over the solebars, with end pillars added: Progress so far – from sketches to the parts in the photos – took less time than writing up these notes. I should note my indebtedness to Guy Rixon’s work on a sprung-buffered D13 timber truck pair – if this single wagon works out I might be tempted into buying another Ratio kit 575 and making a dumb-buffered pair – after all a solitary short timber truck is no good for carrying a load. Mousa (Bill Bedford) is promising a resin kit – again for the sprung-buffered version – his website says D12 but the picture is the diagram for the D13 pair. The GA drawing of D13 in LNWR Wagons shows that the wagon bodies are asymmetrical – the bolster is on the centre-line of the wheelbase but the length of body from this centre-line to the conventional headstock at the fixed coupling is 9”greater than the length to the dumb-buffered end. Also at the back of my mind are the equivalent Midland timber trucks – short (7’ wheelbase) to D388 and long (9’ wheelbase) to D389.

Many years ago I worked at the Observatoire de Paris, which hosted meetings of the International Earth Rotation Service. I did enquire, if they were meeting, who kept the Earth turning? I was told it was only the directors who were meeting, the workers were still hard at it.

Of course the Peckett isn't going to appear in a 7-year-old's train set - so yes a different market. But how many Pecketts are being sold to folk who started out with Nellie? Mine runs very sweetly - as I said above, on a circle of track on the dining-room table with a dozen kit-built wagons. (What was that about train sets?)

Half a century of progress in industrial 0-4-0 design:

Mine was a pre-order directly from Hornby, I guess those ordered through the shops need a couple of days more. Patience! It's worth the wait! A sweet little runner - pulled a dozen mostly kit-built wagons round a circle of third-radius track on the dining-room table at a nice slow pace without a murmur - Nellie this isn't!

An un-looked-for birthday present: Please excuse the less than perfect lighting conditions. Here's a photo taken c1903 when H&P D was on temporary loan to Bingley, Gardiner & Co's biscuit works near Kympton, Derbyshire - I believe the firm (and the famous Longbourn Tea Biscuit) had just been taken over by Huntley & Palmers: And here's another, evidently taken after 1923 - aren't those 12T RCH wagons enormous? The real H&P wagon No. 21 was a Gloucester 10T 6-plank wagon of 1908...

Sorry I wasn't very helpful in my comment about the bay. I then had a look through my books and found a passenger bay at Gloucester that was arranged as yours - but this could only be used for departures; not only from the layout but also the provision of FPLs and signalling, a passenger train couldn't run into it - only empty stock. I like your latest plan - can you squeeze in the trailing connection for the loading dock that you had before (using the 3-way that also gives access to the goods shed)? And also the lay-by siding on the other side? Then you'd have something completely Midland. Were there any stations in the Aire valley with buildings on the overbridge? Quite a few examples further south - you could always invoke rebuilding c. 1910.

If the bay is for passenger trains, then I think the layout should probably be revised. It would be in-Midlandish for this road to be a passenger line; it's more typically for end-loading of NPCS.

The first plan with the trailing crossover and single slip looked the nearest to being convincingly Midland to my mind. What's also highly characteristic is for the goods shed to be on a loop accessible from both ends, as in ejstubb's posting above. For the modeller, this has the drawback of being rather long - to be convincing, the goods yard loop (this is of course not a running loop) needs to be at least twice the length of the platforms. There was a high degree of uniformity to the layout of smaller Midland through stations, almost to the point of blandness - although of course exceptions can always be found. The attached sketch shows two highly typical versions: For a medium-sized through station, a trailing crossing with single slip leading to a pair of 3-ways, one of which gives a trailing connection into the nearside running line for access to the loading dock sidings next to the main station building (think of attaching or detaching horseboxes or milk vans from a passenger train); this layout also has a trailing connection to a lay-by on the off-side running line (the goods loop could be used as a lay-bye for the nearside running line - but the train setting back would run beyond the far end of the loop to set back - so ideally the visible section of layout wants to be three times the length of the goods or mineral trains you want to run). For a small through station, a double slip takes the place of the pair of 3-ways and there are no lay-by sidings. The 25" maps as found on the National Library of Scotland website are a mine of information - I've found the depiction of the track layouts at stations is pretty accurate, where they can be compared with other sources. In N you ought to be able to do justice to the spaciousness of these layouts.

Thanks yes - I like knobhead's version that you point to (and his 2-2-2 from a Triang Lord of the Isles); I've also just reminded myself that I had seen Wenlock's superb 7mm example.

Not being very well-informed on Great Western matters, I assume that by 'back-dating' you have in mind conversion to round-topped firebox? What isn't very clear if one doesn't have access to the authoritative literature (I assume such exists...) is when they received Belpaire boilers? I'm interested to know what would be involved in producing an engine in 1903-ish condition such as might possibly have worked transfer freight to the Midland anywhere in the West Midlands. Were they Wolverhampton-built? Or do I need to find out about Armstrong Goods engines for this?

I agree - the junction between the old and new lines to which I was referring is a few hundred yards to the east.

It's simply a trailing connection into the up (?) line, just that that immediately converges with the down for the single section to the junction - see http://maps.nls.uk/view/104192289. The layout at Braintree presumably grew like that at Rowsley - the original terminus became a goods-only station when the extension was built, with a new passenger station on the new line - but in this case resulting in a single-line junction that is a single point - not something the BOT liked - preferring junctions to be laid as double, which in this case would have meant extending the station loop beyond the junction.

That looks very like one of the wagons I've been given by my GW friends which I plan to refurbish - Graham456 and Brassey identified it as an old Ian Kirk kit. Brassy suggested it should have grease axleboxes, certainly I'd go that way for my 1903-ish period. I'll be painting mine red of course. Thanks wagonman for the additional data posted here.

Just arrived, as compensation for not having time to get to the Warley show this year, a wagon kit so simple I might even get it built in between lesson planning! The Mousa resin kit for the LNW D1 one-plank open wagon, with choice of primitive or even more primitive brake block (singular…): Note the MJT waisted bearings - hoping for a better fit this time. I see Bill has just got his D2 and D3 out as 3D printed resin – so there will be many about before I get my Ratio kit-bashed D2 finished! My Ratio-based LNW wagon-building bout is really being overtaken by technological developments what with these, London Road Models w-irons and Coast Line Models 3D printed and etched parts. Though I think I did mention splashing out on some Coast Line grease axleboxes – here they are fitted to my D53 conversion: The 3D printed parts are rather brittle – I snapped one spring so had to graft on part of a spare oil axlebox spring from the Ratio kits – this bodge is tucked away out of sight under the brake lever. Note the profound lack of interior detail – waiting for a load of coal. (There is a hole in the floor to avoid warping.)

Yes, but not also at the sea-side - the beach at Borth being the other big draw. So somehow we never did the W&L.

Ah yes, Bridgnorth - when I was little we lived first in Shrewsbury and then Birmingham, so the SVR was our nearest steam railway; the next nearest (or so it seemed) bring the Talyllyn and Vale of Rheidol - the latter being a 'proper' railway with engines and carriages in BR blue. While on the theme of blue remembered hills... Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? ... but no, the Midland was a coal railway. Any other traffic was incidental.

The high class station building seems to be a model of Haworth on the K&WVR - with this early Midland influence, I do wonder how Edwardian got distracted onto 1935 GWR alongside his pre-group interests! I see that (following mullie's hint) this was a Builder Plus kit of the mid-to-late 70s.

I like the coal mine - evidently you already knew what railways were really about! That's a very high-class station building... Very early 80s judging by the rolling stock and your collar?

At age 7, I asked for the Nellie goods set as my first train set (per the 1971 catalogue with Terence Cuneo's painting of Evening Star on the cover) but she was out of stock at the shop (bicycles and model railways?) on Wyle Cop in Shrewsbury so I had to settle for a set with 47606 - and I've never looked back...

Thanks Andy - sounds a promising technique; hope you can post some photos! My conversion to D53 is just waiting for the paintshop - or rather waiting for the final touches to my D2 so both can go in together - but my coursework comes first at the moment...