Compound2632

I've commented recently on shows at which I was unable to buy any wagon kits. ExpoEM at Bracknell this weekend most definitely did not fall into this category! I have come way with quite a haul, including purchases of new kits from London Road Models and Pre-Grouping Models and samples of the new Meon Valley Models Midland wagons available through Brassmasters. Unfortunately any work on all these will have to wait until I've finished setting the next edition of Modelling the Midland... I also took delivery of a couple of boxes of second-hand wagons and kits and bits, a private purchase from an estate sale. All sorts of goodies there, including a large number of bits from Ratio LNWR wagons, mostly capable of being sorted out and reunited into complete wagons. As a taster from this treasure trove, a mystery wagon, iron-bodied but apparently timber-underframed: There's another of the same, unbuilt, so I know it's from a Woodham Wagon Works whitemetal kit, described as "Robert Heath & Son Iron Open". I bit of Googling reveals that this firm were coal owners and ironmasters in Biddulph and Kidsgrove, fitting with the North Staffs orientation of a lot of the material from this estate sale, and indeed their home-built 0-4-0ST No. 6 is now preserved at Foxfield: https://knottycoachtrust.org.uk/robert-heath-no-6/. There is no entry for this firm in the Lightmoor Index and as far as I can see the kit is not one now with either Roxey or @5&9Models (where's Chris' website gone?). So I wonder if anyone can supply any prototype information - maybe @burgundy himself; it's a bit out-of-area for his Brighton interests.

Chris, I have to apologise that when we spoke at ExpoEM yesterday I didn't immediately cotton on to who you were - my slight deafness and the ambient noise level - so I apologise for my vagueness and apparent lack of awareness of what you are modelling!

The Midland Railway Society's stand at ExpoEM over the weekend was, I think, a great success: many interesting conversations, several enquiriers assisted - mostly by being directed to the Study Centre, although it was a pleasure to get the two Stephenson Clarke enthusiasts in the room talking to each other! Very pleased to welcome two new members to the Society. Our thanks to Exhibition Manager Tony Sullivan (a Society member) for the invitation; we look to being back in two years' time. MRS Journal Editor Andrew Surry with the MRS stand on Saturday morning.

The Midland Railway Society was very happy to be invited, very pleased with the outcome, and is looking forward to coming again the year after next. Our thanks to outgoing Exhibition Manager Tony Sullivan - who happens to be a Society member!

I believe similar logic applied on the WCML, at least in pre-grouping and early LMS days, when the principal Anglo-Scottish expresses ran mostly in the afternoon (10 am and 2 pm departures) so with the sun to the west. The train was arranged with the corridor on the west side not so much to preserve the upholstery* as to protect passengers from the glare of the afternoon and evening sun. *Probably made of better quality stuff than the GW was using, anyway. I don't see how one could have a handed third, since they were generally symmetrical in plan, but handed composites were needed because it mattered where the first class end was in relation to the dining car, etc. To complicate matters, when corridor carriages first became widespread on principal trains, they had to cater for first, second, and third, which added to the possible permutations of handedness! (Not, though, the case on the West Coast Anglo-Scottish trains, since the Caledonian was among the group of companies that abolished second class in 1893, consequently the WCJS was first and third only.)

Not research - no primary sources involved. Simply librarianship.

It's a bang plate, to protect the woodwork when the door hits the end of the brakeshaft. I'm sure you've worked out that the dimensions given on the info boards in Gloucester officials are internal dimensions, so add 6" to get the length over headstocks and width over sides. If you are at an exhibition at which Lightmoor Press or Bill Hudson Books have a stand, seek out Ian Pope - he will, I'm sure, be happy to talk about PO wagons on the 7&Y!

The 'interesting' bits of the photo: I'm sure that cast iron pillar with disc on top is well-known to GW cogniscenti.

I have to share this, from @Dave John's blog. Click through to the post for the punchline!

A most salutary answer!

Full-width vent - looks Mica-ish? Even more so the wagon in front of it, with straps instead of corner-plates.

G.F. Chadwick, North Staffordshire Wagons (Wild Swan, 1995) has but one short paragraph on livery: "The North Stafford goods livery seems yo have been more or less constant throughout the company's history, and like that of several other concerns, was based upon red oxide. However, descriptions of the exact shade used vary from dark red-brown (like the Caledonian and Highland Railways) to purplish red oxide; solebars, headstocks, and corner plates were usually black. Lettering (6 inch to 1912, 14 inch thereafter) was white, originally shaded black; the knot was also white, but had some variation in size and shape." Most photos in the book show wagons in service, where the gloss has dimmed and it is impossible to detect any differences in colour. However, there are a couple of photos of 3-plank wagons and one of a covered goods, all shinely fresh out of the paint-shop, that do look to support black solebars and headstocks, along with black ironwork generally, not only corner plates. Sorry to have taken so long to get round to looking that up!

Bet they all waggled like a duck.

I am having difficulty parsing this sentence - the conjunction 'and' appears to be out of place. From an engineering rather than a grammatical stand-point, there are sound reasons for using inside cylinders on a single or four-coupled express passenger engine, as I'm sure you know. One thing one can note about that GER 4-2-2 is that the cylinders are quite steeply inclined.

While we're still on set track geometry, the length of the standard straight, usually quoted as 167.5 mm, is dictated by the geometry of the standard second-radius points to be: second radius x sine (1/16th of a circle) = 438.15 mm x sin(22.5°) = 167.673 mm; which is just 1.2 thou over 6.6", so I strongly suspect this decimal inch dimension is what was originally used.

The basic geometry and dimensions go back to Triang's Super 4, introduced in 1962; System 6 was introduced in 1970, along with the rebranding to Triang-Hornby. Simply because the metric dimensions usually quoted are conversions of the original imperial dimensions, rounded to the nearest millimetre: track spacing 2⅝" = 66.675 mm ~ 67 mm 1st radius 14⅝" = 371.475 ~ 371 mm 2nd radius = 17¼" = 438.150 mm ~ 438 mm hence 3rd radius 19⅞" = 504.825 mm ~ 505 mm 4th radius 22½" = 571.500 mm In the late 70s Hornby had a range of, I think battery-operated, play-trains that came with a circle of grey plastic moulded track that looked like System 6 and fitted the geometry, being effectively 0th radius, 12" = 304.8 mm. NB. 1" = 25.4 mm by definition.

No, the link was only for the sake of elucidating PGW.

By you-know-who!

P.G.W. - and with the name GREBE. Port Glasgow: https://fishingboatheritage.co.uk/countries/scotland/

Hence the G.W.W. previously noted.

Look closely at the angles of the spokes and you'll soon conclude they have nine spoke wheels - a Great North idosyncrasy!

It helps to have invested (a good while ago now) in a good set of reference books. Just don't ask about GER or GNR engines!

Crunching the numbers, if one assumes that the body of the model, and hence the cylinder block, is on the same fixed centre-line as the drivers (i.e. middle coupled axle has side-play but the others are fixed), then the transverse displacement of the bogie centre from the cylinder block centre, on second-radius curves, is 4.2 mm for the HR Big Goods but 5.7 mm for the S3. If the rear coupled axle of the S3 is given sideplay, the effective centre moves forward 13.5 mm which makes a big difference, reducing the bogie displacement to just 3.7 mm; doing the same thing for the Big Goods, the displacement comes down to 2.3 mm. Rapido haven't been able to take advantage of this, though, as the Big Goods' centre divers are flangeless. For third radius, 5.7 mm comes down to 4.9 mm and 3.7 mm to 3.2 mm. The foumula is: transverse displacement equals distance from bogie centre to fixed wheelbase centre, squared, divided by twice the track curve radius.

NER S3: 6' 6" wb bogie, centre 10' 11" ahead of leading axle; 6' 9" + 6' 9" coupled wb. 5' 8" dia drivers and 3' 1.25" dia bogie wheels; 18.5" x 26" cylinders inclined at 1:24 - so at the bogie centres, the cylinder centre line is about 2" above the tops of the bogie wheels (disregarding flanges). HR 'Big goods': 6' 6" wb bogie, centre 8' 6" ahead of leading axle; 5' 6" + 7' 9" coupled wb. 5' 3.5" drivers, 3' 2.5" bogie wheels; 20" x 26" cylinders inclined at 1:24 - so cylinder centre 2.5" below the tops of the bogie wheels. So at first sight, the Highland engine looks a greater challenge - bigger cylinders lower down relative to the bogie wheels - and probably at slightly closer centres (don't have that measurement marked on the drawings I'm looking at). But it's that extra 29" further forward that the North Eastern engine's bogie is that is, I think, the real problem. This of course is driven by having all three cylinders in line and driving on the leading axle. To my mind, it makes the S3 the most ungainly-looking of all North Eastern engines; the S2 is a much better-proportioned 4-6-0, to my eyes. K. Hoole, An Illustrated History of NER Locomotives (OPC, 1988) P. Tatlow, An Illustrated History of Highland Locomotives (OPC, 1979)

Interesting to see that although the trailing crossover between the running lines is a true mixed-gauge side-swapping mind-boggler, the down side siding has separate broad and standard gauge crossovers. Unfortunately the earliest editions of the OS 25" map on the NLS website are post-quadrupling but from the position of the loading gauge, one infers that there was a standard gauge-only wharf below the camera and the broad gauge siding is (by this time) only a short lie-bye, if in use at all. Which does beg the question, what was Malan standing on to get this elevated view? Edit: I am confused by this photo: which shows a bit more of the same mixed-gauge siding. But it also shows work well-advanced on the extension of the Waltham Road bridge in preparation for the quadrupling. This implies that the date of 14 May 1892 for Malan's photo of the Dutchman must be wrong.