Compound2632

That's like Polish, in which Sunday is "No work day" and Monday is "After no work day".

1920s?

Rowsley, up to Peak Forest. I'm wondering if it would be quicker to list the sheds that never had any banking duties?

Probably three. One to go with the Oxford crane, one to go with my D&S crane "when" I get round to building it, and one to use the jib support in a shorter match wagon for a 5-ton hand crane.

"Six wheels on my carriage"?

They might be a bit outré from ExpoEM! But otherwise, they're always a great talking-point.

I don't know yet! Certainly those built for c. 1902 are mostly not straight out of the paint shop. What would be really impressive would be the same display but in 5" gauge - more space for explanatory text - though we'd have to book a bigger stand!

I see the drawing you are using is by Simon Turner. Is there an HMRS Journal article on these wagons? Or where else is the info?

In addition to shelves of shame, I have a display unit that I'm starting to take to exhibitions and Midland Railway Society events. This has prompted me to work towards a representative set of models showing the historical development of Midland wagons, even though doing so includes building a few that are out of period for me. Fortunately @billbedford's Mousa Models range makes this an easy task, at least as far as opens go. Here's his D663A 10-ton goods and coal wagon (with wooden end pillars) and D607 12-ton mineral wagon in progress: The MR letters are from an HMRS Methfix sheet (thanks to @WFPettigrew) and this time they went on like a dream. Builders plates (mostly hidden by the brake levers) and tare weights are from the Slaters waterslide sheet that comes with the current issue of their kits - I never got on with the tare weights on the old Pressfix or Methfix version of this, finding it difficult to get good alignment. With the waterslide version, one has a bit more time for adjustment, and it's easier to see what one is doing. I need to make myself the artwork (in CorelDraw) to print some D-shaped numberplates. I've got on order the D352 end door 12-ton mineral wagon, which was the Midland's first step into 12-ton wagons for general mineral use, and the D204 12-ton loco coal wagon, which apart from its cupboard doors, set the pattern for the D607 / D673 / D663A family of wagons.

You are very welcome. A starting point is the Derby C&W Drawing Register, on the Midland Railway Study Centre website: https://www.midlandrailwaystudycentre.org.uk/CW/ Many of the drawings in the collection have been scanned at high resolution. I'm looking now at the scan of Drg. 1861 of 1 Oct 1903, "Underframe for 54ft Gangway Carriages", MRSC item 88-C0868; this is the underframe for the square-light 54 ft carriages and the first generation of round-light carriages; it seems to have been superseded by Drgs. 2955 & 3000 in 1908, but copies of these do not survive in the collection. Anyway, Drg. 1861 shows the truss rods to be 1½" diameter but where they overlap the outside of the solebar (which is U-section steel) they are forged flat with a series of bolts at 6" intervals. The queenposts are indeed attached to the underside of the solebars. The end of the queenpost rests on the truss rod, rather than having a hole through which the truss rod passes. Here's a compressed version of the scan: [Compressed scan of MRSC 88-C0868, Drg. 1861]. If you would like a high-res version of this scan or of any of the other drawings in the collection, please contact the Study Centre Coordinator, details via the link above. (If you do find more items of interest, please consider a donation to the Study Centre running costs, or better still, joining the Midland Railway Society.)

In practice that would mean fitting Saltley's entire allocation of three dozen 3Fs (at 1945), since, according to Terry Essery, they were used for banking in rotation as an effective way of getting them some TLC.

"Six Inches of Soil to be shown at centre" - that's an instruction.

Some fine plastic rod - Slater's, bought late 1980s, I think, and finally finding a use, wound tightly round a 0.65 mm drill bit and held under a hot tap for as long as fingers could stand, then loops sliced off the resulting coil, not always with perfect 360° accuracy: Unlike Bill's 3D print, non functional, and lacking the eyebolts securing them to the headstock, but at least comparable to the moulded versions on some plastic kits.

More time on the job before having to return to shed for coaling? Though at Bromsgrove, engines could be coaled at the bank engine siding. Bromsgrove was provided with 0-6-0Ts for banking for most of its history in steam days; the Lickey Banker was something of an anomaly and generally equal to two, not four, 0-6-0Ts - there are photographs of it being assisted by a 0-6-0T. But in the other direction, from Saltley up to Kings Heath, a much longer stretch than the Lickey incline, tender engines were used for banking goods trains - latterly 3F 0-6-0s - these had to run back tender first. Why not use tank engines for that job?

How would you suggest doing those in 4 mm scale?

More Wessery: the two whitemetal LNWR cattle wagon kits that a started after ExpoEM last May have been looking at me accusingly for some time. The small wagon, diagram D20, is the London Road Models kit; the medium, diagram D21, a second-hand D&S kit. After close study of LNWR Wagons Vol. 1, they have gained identities, as Nos. 46786 and 15223 respectively: The numberplates are home made, the numbers on the ends are Pressfix from an old Ratio transfer sheet, the diamonds are rub-down from Coast Line Models - I'm not sure Alan @Quarryscapes has these available at present - and the tare weights are from the Slaters waterslide transfer sheet that comes with their Midland wagon kits - there are a couple of tares that are spot on! This is what is called mixed media modelling. I was all set to get lime-washing but found my tin of Humbrol No. 34 had gone solid. (The white areas on the D21 are primer!) I have endless trouble with Humbrol Nos. 33 and 34, matt black and matt white, though other Humbrol matt colours are entirely satisfactory.

You would be amazed at some of the correspondence lexicographers receive. Just the other day Lexi was having to reply to someone who complained about Apple's use of the word "disable" in the sense of a software feature being made inoperative, as being offensive to disabled people. As if a lexicographer could have any control over a third party's use of language! Of course the standard answer is that English dictionaries (unlike technical lexicons) are descriptive, not prescriptive. They merely report how the language is used - if you don't like the way the language is used then it's up to you, not the lexicographical profession, to exert societal pressure for change. From an Oxford Learners' Dictionary:

Another Facebook photo from the depths of LNWR territory, Friezland on the Micklehurst loop line: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/109619289726001] This station closed to passengers on 1 Jan 1917 [http://disused-stations.org.uk/f/friezland/index.shtml]. There's a L&Y long open wagon, just to the left of the passenger carriages; these, along with the large LY lettering, were introduced in 1903, so the photo presumably dates from sometime in the decade before the Great War. The point of reposting this here is that on one of the rear lines there is a rake of four Midland D299 opens, all loaded about 2/3rds full with something light coloured, which might be bricks or possibly limestone - both of which, being denser than coal, would overload the wagon if loaded to the rave. I suspect limestone since further along the same line are what look from their light tone to be PO lime wagons, the nearest of which has dumb buffers (which helps confirm that the photo is pre-Great War).

https://www.lambournvalleyrailway.info/motivepower.html https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=Great_Britain&wheel=0-6-0&railroad=lv#20361 No drawings, but I wonder what the Locomotive Magazine article referenced contains? (Seems a bit circular as that was a loco history of the Cambrian...)

Am I right in thinking that it blocks a large part of the port?

The postman has just delivered my G.W. Models 10" rollers. So, ready to roll!

Or, depending on period, one of the composites downgraded to third?

I should perhaps clarify that after aerosol primer, I'm always brush painting.

It might be worth mentioning how I fit the bearings. With a 2 mm dia bit, I drill out the plastic bearing from the rear face of the moulding and cut away any excess from the front. The MJT shouldered bearings won't quite go through this hole until a dab of MekPak is applied, so one ends up with a nice tight fit. I leave the moulded rim on the inside of the axleguard; this puts the bearings in just the right position for a splay-free snug fit to the Alan Gibson pin-point axles: The axlebox mouldings are a snug fit over the bearings.

What white primer did you use? I have found that the coverage of Precision paint is rather dependent on the primer - not that I've found a good white primer for this; Halfords grey plastic primer and red primer are OK but I've not been so satisfied using Acid 8 etch primer, which is a light grey. In other words, I think the issue may be paint chemistry rather than colour.