Compound2632

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?

5 minutes ago, Tricky said:

Uckfield!

It's evidently going to be the place to be!

Curiously, I see that Taff Vale Models do what they say is an R2 as well as this what they say is a U9 and from the rather small photos on the website I am struggling to spot any difference.

1 hour ago, drduncan said:

Very nice Dave, but are you sure it’s a U9? I seem to remember that the drawing on Penhros’s wonderful site shows a flat end with no tumble home…

Duncan

It seems to me as someone who claims not to know much about Great Western things but does claim to know about carriages generically, that, given the equal-sized panels between the compartments, it's an all-first, or at least was built as such. Reference to Penrhos does suggest that if it's 28 ft over the body, it's an R1 - 8 built in 1875 - (but was a 4-wheeler) or if 29 ft, the rather more numerous R2, 110 built 1871-4, as 6-wheelers. A few of both diagrams were converted to composites - R1 to U7 and U8 but rather fleetingly - a bit of quantum fluctuation perhaps? and R2 to U14. 

What are the sticky-out things on the ends of both carriages?

48 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

The roof details in the photo of no.20 in Colin Maggs' Highbridge in its Heyday, show a gas lamp top centrally on the centre line of each passenger compartment, with a smaller cylindrical fitting on the centre line just to one side - which side depends on which side you are looking from. 

When these carriages had oil lamps, there was a bung that went in the lamp hole during daylight hours and this fitting held the bung when it was taken out to put the oil lamp in. The bung was anchored by a bit of chain to stop it falling off the roof. See Maggs Plates 55-57, 60, 62. I don't know whether the fitting still served a purpose once the carriage was converted to gas lighting; they are still in place on at least some Midland arc-roof carriages converted to gas lighting. (Midland and S&DJR arc-roof carriages of the 1880s-90s are generally identical in details.) Looking closely though, I think there may be a difference in this fitting for oil and gas lamps. For oil lamps, the fitting is a sort of stool or 4-legged trivet, whereas for gas lamps it appears to be a plain cylinder, and slightly taller.

Here's the roof of my Connoisseur Midland D418 milk van, showing the early type stools and oil-lamp bungs in their holes:

Are you lining on the beading or on the panelling?

[Andrew Bone from Weymouth, England, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons]

I bought some of these chiefly to use the sheet rail parts to improve Coopercraft O4s. I've built two up as O11 and O15 in 1950s condition; the sacktruck door modification may send me back to the others. Parkside kits are generally superb but on this one I couldn't really get on with the buffer heads and the spring door-stops, components that are victims of a slight mis-registration between the two halves of the mold. You seem to have made a good job of the buffers but the step on the door-bangers is still very obvious. After much scraping and filing, on the second one I built I gave up and made some from brass strip.

1 hour ago, Dave John said:

given that it was only a medium sized railway

Bigger than that upstart Lincolnshire potato railway, though. 

I've been reading R.M. Casserley and P.A. Millard, A Register of West Coast Joint Stock (HMRS, 1980), in which it is suggested that the celebrated 65'6" 12-wheeled carriages built at Wolverton in 1909 for the 2pm West Coast Corridor Euston - Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen express were built in response to the Caledonian's Grampian stock, which put the existing WCJS 50 ft arc-roof corridor carriages built at the turn of the century quite in the shade.

In fact, the Caledonian repeatedly appears as the progressive partner in the West Coast Conference, with a sharp eye on what Derby was up to: in February 1876 proposing 47 ft bogie sleeping saloons - from which the LNWR recoiled in horror, insisting on 32 ft six-wheelers for another decade; in 1889, calling for 47'6" bogie tricomposites with lavatories to every compartment - the LNWR baulked at anything longer than 42 ft and insisted on persisting with radial underframes, though relenting so far as to allow the Caledonian to build some with bogies; and of course adopting the Westinghouse brake while still being forced to work the Anglo-Scottish expresses with the Clark and Webb chain brake, until it was able to put its foot down heavily (with the full weight of the Board of Trade behind it) following an accident at Lockerbie in 1883.

Vivat St Rollox!

1 hour ago, Dave John said:

Well I'm sure magnets will end up in the build, been playing with an idea. 

 

Years ago when I still played with N gauge I had a rake of minitrix coaches which I modified so that the corridor connection acted as the coupling. Just a bit of black rubber with a hole through it and holes on the end of the coaches. A bit of cotton went all the way through the rake and attached to a spring at one end. A bit of a hassle, since you couldn't uncouple it, but it gave the impression of a properly working set of gangways. 

I've been conducting thought experiments on how to model a set of close-coupled 6-wheelers. With bogie vehicles, the cam mechanism as used by Hornby and Bachmann is effective but requires the bogie rotation to make it work. I've been toying with the idea of a sprung coupling but there needs to be the right balance between enough force to close the carriages up on the straight and not so much as to cause the set to keel over on the curve...

13 hours ago, Jack Benson said:

Any idea the livery of these vehicles at nationalisation in the late '40s? did they survive into BR?

According to R. Garner, The Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway Locomotive and Rolling Stock Registers 1886 – 1930 (The Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust, 2000), half of these 22 vehicles were withdrawn in 1934 with the remainder going in dribs and drabs, the last survivor going in November 1946. I would very much doubt that the early withdrawals got either Southern green or LMS red but who can say for the longer lingerers? I doubt they saw much service by then, apart from the three converted to SR service stock, two of which became mess and tool vans. I suppose they are likely to have been repainted into whatever livery the Southern was using for such vehicles in the mid 30s.

That's a lot of wheels for a four coach train! For a moment I thought you were building one of those 100 ton naval gun transporters: https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/misc/miscfr006.htm.

On a more humanitarian (equinarian?) note, Midland Railway Study Centre Item 21060.

The Midland had 3,384 horses at the end of 1889, well up from 2,698 in 1877. I assume there was a single number series for horses, not separate series for brown, grey, etc. No doubt there was some local naming.

2 hours ago, ChrisN said:

it was thought that there was not enough farming land to feed both the horses and the people.

"meat" pies.

32 minutes ago, PaternosterRow said:

Given that we are all experts on this subject in Ireland, and believe me it’s everywhere over here, the color and consistency of your version is exactly right.  

Surely it's like wagon grey - there are infinite degrees of variation, so almost anything will be right for some horse, somewhere, sometime. The difficulty is ascertaining the right look for your horse in your location at your time period; this must depend on factors including the type and age of the horse, its feed, and the work it has been doing. As usually, we've both hands tied behind our backs due to having to rely on monochrome photographs.

I don't think we've yet touched on scale smell.

It is, also, about the right size of box to put your head in, so long as the cat hasn't got there first.

Or perhaps one per cubic foot.

1 minute ago, ChrisN said:

As I type this there is an advert popping up at the bottom of the page asking if I have enough horseshoes.  

Disturbing, isn't it? How many does one need?

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

There are quite centrally located tanneries in Fez, Morocco - or at least there was in the 1980s. I remember wondering at the time why it had originally been placed so centrally.

Surely there's no beer drinking in Fez?

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Comparing that to the Penn State University data, it looks like it would take 12 horses 8.9 days to fill an O5 4-planker to the top of the wagon (or 1 horse 106.7 days!). We know that wagons were often loaded well above their height, so 1-3 days more would not be unlikely. And I assume the volume of the manure would decrease somewhat during storage in the manure pit. So a wagon every fortnight then, more or less - but again this is a large 12-stall stable, most GWR stable blocks only had a few stalls.

I do think you have to allow for the volume of straw mixed in - which would be old bedding. How much straw would a 12-stall stable get through? That might come in by rail.

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Edit: The intention of all this escapism is to calculate how often I could run a wagon loaded with manure out of Farthing. That is based on a scenario that a 12-stall stable would merit such outgoing traffic. I am not at all certain that this would have been the case in reality. It does not seem to be a well documented theme.

1 hour ago, Simond said:

Well, once the stationmaster, signalman and head porter had sorted out their roses, allotment and the station flowerbeds, I reckon there would still be enough for a wagon or two every so often.  Presumably they had a pit or midden, and emptied it every month or two?

I'm not convinced that sending the stuff out by rail would be common - except maybe at Paddington or other large city depots - I'd have thought there would be enough of a local market for it at most stations. Are there any surviving station legers that might record sales?

The Midland Railway Study Centre has two items. I only have the catalogue descriptions:

Item Number: 27542

Date: 1 January 1879
Category: Goods Department Document

Letter from Derby to Mr Allcock, Station Master, Settle regarding the sale of stable manure. The rates are confirmed as 2s-6d per month per horse and 1s-8d per month for yard sweepings.

Item Number: 21127

Date: 16 December 1909
Category: Goods Department Document

Duplicated circular letter from District Goods Manager Derby dated 16 December 1909 regarding correspondence and clerical work; wrong sending and diversion of traffic; monthly return of special facilities rendered; goods received unentered; washing of drays; frost studs (for horses); traffic for Manchester Ship Canal; caretakers in charge of heavy machinery; LNW, L&Y and Midland working agreement - continental traffic via Grimsby; G.C., G.E., & G.N. working agreement; road motor competition; manure sales; loading of wagons; sheets in empty wagons and wagons under load to be released promptly.

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Also, cubic feet do my head in.

There's nothing like modelling British railways for encouraging mental agility! 

... and of course also used in tanning. Right up to the late 19th century, having the menfolk of the town drinking in the pubs every evening was essential to the economy.

17 minutes ago, Simond said:

btw, rabbits emit about 7W as heat.  Handy to know if you’re planning rabbit powered central heating.

A bad idea. You'd be overheated rather rapidly. We've all seen Father Ted.

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

This photo supposedly shows a GWR open used for manure - although as the caption mentions, I wonder if that is what it actually is. A bit too much straw? Unless straw was added to make it easier to handle:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrc872a.htm

I believe it is or was usual to combine straw with dung to produce manure - the straw being another waste product that could be recycled once it had decomposed. The manure has to be well composted to kill off bacteria in the dung.

As an aside, I hadn't noticed before how interesting the wagon under that load of manure is - axleguards mounted outside the solebars and self-contained buffers point to it being a conversion from broad gauge. By comparison with the adjacent wagons, it looks to be four planks rather than three; my notes from Atkins indicate 201 such conversions, all numbered in the 11xxx block.