Compound2632

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.

Anybody else getting adverts for "Mr Muck" in the sidebar?

Ingenious modelling based on close observation* as ever!

*Thankfully of archival material rather than of the prototype in the field.

"Let's see the Midland beat that!" - noted. But you saw @Tricky's 7 mm scale horse droppings?

10 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Some railways, the Midland was one I think, who had manure wagons specifically made, for transferring dung from cities to the countryside.

I believe* these were for night soil contracts - not specifically horse manure. As the wagons were built in four batches of 20 - 32 wagons, I suspect four different contracts, one of which was with the City of Nottingham.

*On no firm evidence but inference from the Glasgow Police Department wagons mentioned by @Caley Jim or @Dave John.

10 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Good point about the cattle docks, they do tend to look very clean. Of course the cleaning of cattle wagons was taken quite seriously, so I assume also the cattle docks? 

8 hours ago, Regularity said:

They were disinfected (with lime wash originally) and presumably a stiff broom. Whilst not pristine, I imagine that they were fairly clean for both hygienic and olfactory reasons.

I have an idea this was discussed quite recently and I think it was established that railway employees were responsible for the cleaning of railway cattle docks as well as wagons.

I would expect the surface to make a difference to the decay modes of the dung. On setts or other hard surface - such as a London street? - the dung would not bind with the surface and so could be easily swept away. On an earth surface such as a village street, the dung would bind with the loose surface material, be harder to remove, and so just become part of the surface. But that's just Compound's Special Theory of Horse Manure.

It seems to have taken locomotive engineers about 30 years and any number of catastrophic failures to appreciate that treating the boiler as the main structural element of the locomotive wasn't such a good idea. But in mitigation it has to be recognised that they were using wrought iron boilerplates which corrode much less quickly than steel, so the boiler was expected to have as long a life as the rest of the engine, in contrast to the practice from the 1880s onwards where boilers were standardised interchangeable components.

In the 1860s, Matthew Kirtley had some 'Jenny Lind'-type 2-2-2s of late 1840s vintage "rebuilt" as 0-6-0WTs, which sounds rather unlikely until you learn that it was the iron boiler that was the main part re-used from the old engines.

1 minute ago, ChrisN said:

This may be true for the GWR.  When the GWR took over the Cambrian, (or was it the other way round?), they immediately condemned some four wheel coaches as they had rot in their corner posts.

But were those carriages that were in regular service? They may have been out of use anyway and only condemned because there was motivation for a stock-take. There may have been some financial advantage to writing down assets to reduce the Cambrian's value on amalgamation. 

1 hour ago, Mikkel said:

By period, do you mean the 1900s?  I suppose most things rust lightly in some places when left unsheltered, but the question is whether it would have been noticeable. 

I think I mean any period when stock was subject to routine use and maintenance. The purpose of paint was to protect the materials from which the wagon was built from decay - rot in the case of wood, rust in the case of iron and especially steel. And anything anywhere near a moving part would have been coated in grease - buffer shanks, axleguards where they guide the box, springs, hinges, etc. 

Also, looking back at those Didcot photos, I'd be very wary of taking any of the unpainted woodwork in their buildings or permanent way as a guide. Timber used in such places would have been treated with creosote, which isn't allowed nowadays.

Another thing that I've seen overdone is brake block dust. The hand-operated brakes on ordinary wagons could not be applied with anything like the force of a vacuum or air brake.

I realise I've been dragging a very old set of posts out into the open, scraping off the rust and greasing them up! Not sure how I chanced on it...

But should one take the condition of those 90 - 120+ year old wagons left standing around without turning a wheel at Didcot as a guide to the condition of the same wagons in everyday service when they were somewhere between new and 30 years old? 

I'm not a believer in period rust.

Lengthening the stroke of the cylinders would also have involved forging a new crank axle.

56 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

GWR photos seem to show gas lamps for your period Rich, but I don't know about the Midland.

The official photographer took a set of photos of Derby station illuminated by gas in April 1908, DY 8842-5, also Derby No. 4 Engine Shed in March 1910, DY 9231. I've taken a close look at the Midland period interior views of the Lawley Street and Central warehouses, which are very similar - dating from 1895 and 1890 respectively. I can't see any sign of artificial lighting on the top floor of either, with large skylights. The light fitting in this photo looks like gas to me.

5 hours ago, MerseyMan said:

Thats a lovely shade of glossy carriage crimson, Would you mind telling me which paint you used? many Thanks

Erm, he posted that over six years ago and hasn't visited RMWeb since 2016...

I suspect the odd window is where there is a staircase.

Do you have sheet ties at the corners? I think the usual (i.e. Midland*) arrangement was 16 eyelets along the perimeter (3 on each side plus the 4 corners) plus 3 on each side on flaps sewn into the first seam.

*but I'd expect there was an RCH standard.

Absolutely. More sheets! Here, for example, on the Great Northern:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-queensbury-tunnel-1898-online

But I despaired when I saw this:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-railway-traffic-1900-online

- see how they flap.

Apologies to those outside the UK who can't access BFI Free.

2 hours ago, Mikkel said:

I like the look of Nottingham Goods, there's a nice 4mm model by Dave Barrett  here: https://www.scalefour.org/layouts/exhibnottingham.html

Yes, I've seen that in the flesh some years ago - very well done.

23 minutes ago, MarshLane said:

However, it was the new shed that I was thinking of.  Would the building style / operational detail have changed much from 5-10 years previously?

The new shed was very much in the style of Midland straight sheds built in the 1880s/90s - Hellifield, Ilkley, Keighley, Mansfield, and on the grand scale, Westhouses (1890) and Sheffield Millhouses (1901) - but with rather plainer brickwork and some false economies such as the use of old rails for the rafters. The Metcalfe two-road engine shed is (or was*) a pretty good representation of this style, certainly in 00. Another useful book to get hold of second hand: C. Hawkins and G. Reeve, LMS Engine Sheds Vol. 2 - The Midland Railway (Wild Swan, 1981).

*It's had a make-over in the last couple of years - it's become ever so slightly twee to appeal to GWR types.

Midland Railway Study Centre Item 23473. (And others.)

1 minute ago, MarshLane said:

one of the other Midland Shed's that I had on the radar as a possible basis for this fictional location, is Rowsley. 

Old or new shed? Do you have G. Waite and L. Knighton, Rowsley: a rural railway centre (Midland Railway Society, 2003)?

This sounds very interesting. 

I imagine you have gone through the pages on both Lawley Street and Central Goods on Warwickshire Railways?

I hope you have also had a trawl through the Derby Registers and the Midland Railway Study Centre catalogue. 

I'm afraid I have to point out that although the first two Class 4 goods engines were built in 1911, it wasn't until 1917 that any more were built. But if you were to choose a post-Great War setting, you could have a much greater variety of wagons, thanks to the introduction of pooling during the war. This becomes evident when you start checking the dates of some of the photos.

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

Pouncing is also a technique used, I believe, by tailors.

Also by our cat, leaving small holes in material or skin.

6 hours ago, Adam88 said:

 

Don't anyone tell Airnimal (S7).

Mike chamfers correctly.

29 minutes ago, Nick Holliday said:

Is that a bang plate along the top of the door?  

OK not a bang plate as such, protecting the woodwork on contact with the doorstop (the middle vertical ironwork does that) but a wrap-around piece of steel sheet that protects the top plank of the door when it's dropped onto a loading bank or similar, or just from the wear and tear of having barrows etc. hitting it. 

It all depends what "bang" you have in mind!

1 hour ago, Nick Holliday said:

That's a good picture showing how the tops of the planks forming the sides have been chamfered on the top outside edge, and are square on the bottom, so that water drains off, and doesn't sit in the joint.  3D printers please note!

There's all sorts to see, such as the angled brackets supporting the side rail of these 8'0" wide (?) wagons, the angled plank at the bottom of the door to give a smooth passage for sack barrows, the bang plate along the top of the door, and the lack of chamfer along the top of the side-rail*, or along the bottom of the side rail. On older wagons, the latter was quite prominent; I've assumed it was a weight-reducing feature. Altogether a highly sophisticated modern wagon.

*but there is a chamfer on the end floor plank - also daylight between that and the bottom end plank, showing that the weight of these is being taken by the end stanchions.

No sign of marking-out in the Ferndale photo. I suppose if you were at it all day every day you'd not need such. I wonder if these men specialised and whether there was any seniority? From my own experience, I'd say that doing Ns was a step up* from Es. I bet there was much muttering about de-skilling when the lettering was changed from N.E.R. to N E! I recently did a back of the envelope calculation for the Midland, based on a 7-year repainting cycle, that 120 sets of M R initials were painted every day, counting each side of a wagon separately.

Note the key piece of equipment, the signwriter's Mahl stick,  and the way they've painted up to the diagonal ironwork, then on it, finishing off with the final bit below.

*literally so, in this case!

35 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

There were transfers for loco and carriage, 

Yes, but those were complex multi-colour designs with serifs to the letters. Also they were varnished over - on the Midland at least, a carriage was sent in for re-varnishing at the first hint of wear to the transfers or lining. Nobody varnished goods wagons (apart from the varnished wood ones). PO wagons with much more complex lettering than any GW wagon were hand-lettered by signwriters. 

On 01/04/2020 at 19:57, Miss Prism said:

 

No it's too bold and too condensed

 

The wagon G and W was never an actual font. Those letters were, I believe, on a drawing, from which transfers were made.

 

Transfers? Surely they were marked out in chalk and painted in by hand, maybe all with the aid of a stencil.

But you are in very good company...

My gut feeling is that while the black beading with gold lining would be very noticeable on an ex-works vehicle, on a well-worn carriage viewed from a distance, the black would appear toned down and the highlights off the edges of the beading would be more prominent than the actual gold lining. The eye fills in the rest, even the thin brown line around the cream panel. 

If you're still getting stick, just post monochrome photos.