Compound2632

"Restore images"!

The OWW nearly fell into the hands of the LNWR - hence the Yarnton curve onto the Bletchley-Oxford line - and during the period when it was on worst terms with the GWR, worked a Eurston - Worcester - Wolverhampton service, The W&H was largely backed by the LNWR and MR. What with MR interest in the B&E and lines west of that, the GWR was really rather fortunate not to end up confined to London to Bristol and Birmingham. 

On 10/11/2023 at 20:43, Miss Prism said:

106, apparently ex-Birkenhead Railway. Date unknown. I don't know the original loco builder - the body as updated here is mostly Wolverhampton, but the frame front end is a dead ringer for a Metro tank. The tender is strange, springs mounted low, Swindon-looking toolboxes, but it doesn't have a footplate. Looks more LNWR than GWR to me. (The Birkenhead Railway had feet in both camps.)

Southern Division (McConnell) rather than Northern Division (Ramsbottom) - curious.

43 minutes ago, JimC said:

But correct me if wrong.

No. on reflection, you're right about that. It's the conversion of linear to circular motion that creates the uneven vertical force through each cycle. 

On 01/11/2023 at 15:13, Miss Prism said:

I think what probably did for the 2-2-2s was their high middle axle weight (and the hammer blow).

There's no coupling rods flailing around. Is there a 2-4-0 class with the same cylinders and boiler that one compare weight diagrams with?

Is this for 3D printing, or for virtual modelling?

There's a discussion of Fowler's ghost and other related early Metropolitan Railway matters in @Schooner's topic, starting here and going on over several pages:

On 13/10/2023 at 20:17, Compound2632 said:

That photo of wagon No. 141 is square on so one can't see whether it has the simple catch or the semi-circular guide.

I had overlooked the photo of No. 334, p. 61 of Stephen Austin's Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway A View from the Past. It's a partial view in a photo of the very pretty little 2-4-0 No. 16A; it has flitched frames and Ellis 10A axleboxes, so could well be one of the renewals of 1903 authorised to have the sheet supports. The outside of the end isn't visible but the trapezoidal plate is in evidence.

23 minutes ago, magmouse said:

 “South Western Company” is the LSWR? I also assume you have worked through all the minutes for the intervening years, so we know there were no further orders for sheet supporters in between these two?

Correct on both counts.  That photo of wagon No. 141 is square on so one can't see whether it has the simple catch or the semi-circular guide.

A footnote on Williams' patent sheet supports:

Somerset [& Dorset] Joint Committee minutes, TNA RAIL 626/5:

5 August 1903

2721      Fitting Goods Wagons with Williams’ Patent Sheet Supports

                              It was agreed that, in carrying out renewals, 50 wagons be fitted with Williams’ patent sheet supports, at an estimated cost of £181.5.0 as recommended by the Officers by their minute No. 5507.

This would seem to imply that the sheet support was added to newly-built wagons only. Renewals were probably at the rate of 50 - 60 per year at this time, the rate being based on a nominal 20-year lifetime. Wagons built as renewals were built at Highbridge.

Then:

2 May 1906

2935      Sheet Supports for Goods Wagons

                              The recommendation of the Officers by minute No. 5865 that fifty additional patent sheet supports for goods wagons be obtained through the South Western Company at an estimated cost of £140, was approved.

... which I think suggests these were to be retrofitted to existing wagons, as they came through the works. 

This suggests that by 1907-ish, 100 S&DJR high-side wagons, out of about 700, were fitted with the LSWR version of the sheet supporter. There is one official photo of a standard 8-ton wagon so fitted; the wagon is No. 141, built at Highbridge in 1886 and sporting the Midland type 8A axleboxes of that period [DY8581, plate 70 in Colin Maggs' Highbridge in its Heyday].

These things seem to be all the rage. 

All the photos I've seen of furniture vans or containers on wagons show them unsheeted, including on trains, not just in yards. On the other hand, I don't know how many sheeted ones have gone unrecognised for what they were!

46 minutes ago, Donw said:

Regarding the SECR bridge at Reading

According to the 1914 RCH Junction Diagram, the line under the bridge was GW up to the junction with the line down the south side of the GW embankment but curiously, the line from there to the SE line was LSW:

[Embedded link].

Maybe the LSW had thought it had more to gain from through traffic to the GW than did the SE?

8 minutes ago, Nick Holliday said:

I thought this suburban house near me showed a triumph of money over good taste(?) might be of interest. 

Perhaps advertising the family business - which might have been supply of ornamental architectural details, or possibly Turkish baths.

5 minutes ago, Nick Holliday said:

Sorry if I came over rather too strongly. The first time I was aware of the style, over fifty years ago, it was described as polychromatic, and the term obviously got lodged in my brain and, since then, I must have been using autocorrect whenever I saw the word polychrome. I did check online before posting, and, although the two words are synonymous, it was only in the polychromatic meanings that Oxford actually quoted “polychromatic brickwork “.

Being married to the dictionary I'm alert to these things!

23 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

The usual term when applied to brickwork is polychromatic. 

Curious. In the various readily-accessible online articles I've looked at [W...] the term used is polychrome brickwork or polychromy; certainly in relation to Ruskin's advocacy and Butterfield's use of it. For a non-W instance, see:

https://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/about/architecture-gardens/.

1 hour ago, Mikkel said:

Also at Reading, a row in a style that seems very widespread in that town, though I can't quite identify period and style:

 

Just round the corner is our first house, which being on a side-street is less grand - no attic rooms, bay window to ground floor only, and flat rather than arched porch lintels. As Kit says, late 19th / very early 20th century. Reading's terraced housing is very distinctive through its use of polychrome brickwork - making great use of a grey brick made locally, at Tilehurst. (Though from the place-name, I suppose bricks came second.) 

[From various Estate Agents' websites. The last one is Lynmouth Road, where we lived.]

The same fancy brickwork can be seen in the town centre, if one raises one's gaze above the shop-fronts and the grey brick was used for Waterhouse's Town Hall:

[Embedded link.]

Newbury didn't have the 19th century industrialisation of Reading so much of its architecture is older - as Kit says, likely medieval or 16th/17th century buildings behind 18th century facades. I imagine Farthing to be more like that - unless there's some Farthing biscuit factory we've yet to hear of?

On 11/08/2023 at 12:45, Camperdown said:

Fantastic work.  Maybe you could post a picture of it next to a more modern vehicle (16T mineral, say) for a size comparison?

I was happy enough until I saw the thumb!

In Small Talk at Wreyland (3 Vols., 1918-21), Cecil Torr recounts a dream in which he was frustrated to discover that the Penzance dining carriage did not run through to Brindisi.

I'm an Earley bird now but yes, used to live in the Lynmouth Road, backing onto what was still at the time the SSE site - formerly the power station.

I always slow down for the biscuit tunnel on my way to and from Kings Meadow Tesco as it gives straight onto a zebra crossing so I'm fearful a child on a scooter will come hurtling out!

Fully mechanical interlocking? Given that electrical switching is needed, to drive the point and signal motors (and control power to track sections?) sticking with electronic interlocking makes sense.

12 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

It seems that Dean showed no enthusiasm for the idea - perhaps he saw it as another potential 'atmospheric railway' type of disaster - and the correspondence fizzled out. 

Well, electrifying the railway through the Severn Tunnel is a challenge that has only very recently been met.

1 hour ago, Dunalastair said:

Or a high pressure steam engine over a Newcomen engine?

But the limit remains the same - the maximum differential pressure across the piston is one atmosphere - in practice rather less. 

Brunel, as, usual, was a head of his time in attempting to realise what everyone (i.e. the Stephensons) knew, that a major limitation of the railway was the need to generate the motive power on board the train. Even then, it was foreseen that electricity was the ultimate solution (I'm sure I've read a comment by one of the Stephensons to this effect). This was the Age of Michael Faraday!

A really significant problem with the principle of the atmospheric railway is that the force available to move the train is limited to something less than one atmosphere times the surface area of the piston. I've no idea if the technology of the day would have coped any better with a positive pressure system! (Which, in principle, would have the same advantage as that of air brakes over vacuum brakes.)