Compound2632

Your two Railway Magazine chaps never did write up their piece, more's the pity! They're both too young to be Charles Rous-Marten; I did think the fellow in the yellow suit looked raffishly colonial. The chap in the brown suit could well be C.J. Allen, though, on day release from the Great Eastern.

As I'm sure you're aware, your colourisation of Henley is a screen-grab from this film:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-arrival-of-train-load-of-visitors-at-henley-station-1899-online

which does depict the opening day of the Henley Regatta, so the passengers are not typical in that they are (a) overwhelmingly first-class and (b) done up for a day out.

The Slough crowd is, I feel, much more typical for a town station in the south of England. (Though I doubt they are commuters - they'll have bought singles or returns, rather than being season-ticket holders.) As you've no doubt noticed, they're all in muted shades of grey...

There are a number of Parkside kits that rank as the very best plastic wagon kits I have had the enjoyment of building - notably their RCH 1923 specification mineral wagons. I've no experience of their kits for what I think of as "modern" wagons; there are some of the older kits - I recall an LNER van in particular - that were less satisfactory to build but by no means beyond my skill at the time. So I find @ardbealach's sweeping condemnation unreasonable.

Now you know for the next one. Nothing like experience!

It'll be interesting to see where this goes. I did toy with 1:36 scale, in which 16.5 mm gauge track represents 1' 11½" gauge with an error of less than 0.5%. I have a steel rule marked in 1/12" divisions! That, like S, would be an all-imperial scale unlike your sensible all-metric scale but I was contemplating prototypes designed in feet and inches. A problem with any esoteric scale is the lack of commercially-available figures. 

I don't believe I've seen a primary source reference to the axlebox-protecting flaps being made of canvas. I've wondered whether they could be leather, having seen wear holes in some. But different railways may have used different materials.

The ballast plough brake you say is bashed from a Cambrian kit - for the Shark, I presume. are the overall dimensions a good match?

2 minutes ago, Brassey said:

in both instances the gold/ochre lining is on the quadrant. The shape of the quadrant on a plastic kit is different to that on an etched kit. Some have commented that the Slaters kits are more of a challenge to line. 

I think you are referring to this:

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

In the full late-Victorian / Edwardian chocolate and cream livery, the raised moldings were painted black, with the edges lined - in the manner of Midland carriage livery. In the lake livery, the raised moldings were painted body colour, with the edges lined - in the manner of North Eastern carriage livery, or North Western, barring the white upper panels. 

rather than the text quoted.

Yes, for all the instances mentioned. The edges of the moldings are more prototypically rounded on most injection-moulded kits than on etched brass kits, by virtue of the manufacturing process. 

3 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

In Harris' defence, he does describe that livery in som detail and provides the detailed painting diagram of the 1903 livery that was prepared at Swindon in 1952. 

That has, by its omission of lining around the door eves panel, led to confusion, as I gather.

16 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Lining and insignia much the same as before,

That's a difficult statement. In the full late-Victorian / Edwardian chocolate and cream livery, the raised moldings were painted black, with the edges lined - in the manner of Midland carriage livery. In the lake livery, the raised moldings were painted body colour, with the edges lined - in the manner of North Eastern carriage livery, or North Western, barring the white upper panels. That, to me, is hardly "lining much the same as before".

Looks sufficiently primitive and decrepit to pass for North British, to my eyes!

2 hours ago, Brassey said:

So despite this being a homage to the brown livery, in conclusion Mikkel, you too are now coming round to the opinion that the "brown" period never actually existed and is fake news.

 

The fact is that you have researched but found no mention of a change in 1912 in the Railway Magazine ,  I have found nothing in The Locomotive Magazine of the time.  And GWW confirms that it was totally missed by the Great Western Magazine too.  And the reason why it was not reported is the change in 1912 NEVER HAPPENED; the colour was red from 1908.

Absence of evidence to the contrary is not proof. Although I might agree with your conclusion as a working hypothesis.

56 minutes ago, Brassey said:

but 2 of the magazines reported on ONE County Tank being turned out in Crimson Lake in 1909 but none of them noticed a change to the entire carriage fleet in 1912?

Exceptions are always more news-worthy; locomotives are always more newsworthy. If the SVR had painted all its carriages purple do you thing it would have gained the media attention it has got by painting one locomotive purple?

56 minutes ago, Brassey said:

As I’ve said before, the only way to resolve this would be to go through the minutes of the various paint committees at the GWR to see if there is a mention. 

Do such things exist, for rolling stock? "Various" strikes me as improbable. I note the reference to a "GWR Paint Committee 1912-1927" - I haven't dug very deeply into TNA catalogue or NRM searchengine for this; can anyone give me the reference? 

49 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Re. 1908-1922 liveries. The issue of how different shades and varnish practices appear in daily operation has reminded me of the DSB "Maroon" livery (sic, the English term was used), which was known to enthusiasts as "Wine Red".

So no doubt the colour known to 19th century railway directors as "claret". We can be sure the knew what colour claret is.

42 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

the word "pounce" is familiar.

Derived from the action of a domestic cat, leaving small holes in one's clothes and skin?

32 minutes ago, Brassey said:

Chocolate Red?  I think RCTS has this loco painted "Crimson Lake".  Are they the same colour?

Undoubtedly. But what colour?

2 hours ago, kitpw said:

the paint shop is an absolute mess where the fabriaction shop is relatively clean

The wagon shop foreman had notice the photographer was coming; the paint shop foreman was caught unawares. 

None of those approach what I'd call crimson lake but I'm a Midland man:

[Embedded link to Midland Railway Trust website.]

It's a lot of cochineal beetles, though, isn't it? I haven't found any evidence of a synthetic substitute, at the period.

5 hours ago, Dave John said:

But split spoke wheels ? Are these recycled wheelsets, 

Possibly recycled and retyred centres. 

I think one needs to do a bit of a check against contemporary descriptions of liveries over which there is less doubt. For example, how is the plum of the LNWR's plum and spilt milk described - the famous "black and white" trains? there has been some debate about the colour of carriage ends, sometimes described as chocolate brown, which has been interpreted as either the undercoat to the plum or the plum unvarnished. LNWR Liveries takes a very clear line: "The ends of the carriage were painted lake in exactly the same manner as the sides, but without any lining." The presence or absense of lining can have a marked effect on the perception of colour. As to the colour itself: "The lower panels and all raised moldings above the waist were painted alazarine carmine lake, or 'dark claret' as it was called in earlier days. The colour was also sometimes referred to as 'chocolate', although a Wolverton painting specification published in the Railway Magazine for November 1897 makes it clear that 'chocolate' and 'lake' are synonymous."

The naive reader might conclude that LNWR and GWR carriage liveries were similar.

Transit of Animals Order 1927.

Engine and brake depart into the sunset...

(Or maybe off east; I can't remember what the orientation of the layout is supposed to be.)

There will be some complaints by tomorrow morning, about that wagon blocking the barrow crossing.

"Nature imitates art", to paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

"The lion design itself was extracted from the crest of the BTC’s coat of arms, which had been registered with the College of Arms in 1956, and designed in consultation with armorial expert C. A. H. Franklyn...". 

The thing about heraldry is that a coat of arms is defined by the blazon: the written description, which uses technical vocabulary to identify the shape, position, and colour of each item; however, the actual coat of arms drawn will depend on the style adopted by the artist. So my lion rampant gules armed and langued azure can look significantly different from yours but still be heraldically correct.

1 hour ago, kitpw said:

There is still the problem of printing white on to clear transfer film.  I see that there are now some products which (claim) to enable this but a colour printer would be needed if both white letters (which are more or less the norm) and letter shading are both required.  I've been experimenting with home grown transfers - see "Thorpe's trial and error" on my Swan Hill blog -  but haven't fully researched the white laser printing. I'd be interested to learn if anyone has tried it and how they got on.

IIRC @Corbs and possibly @TurboSnail have done this. For myself, I'd be tempted apply a transfer in the body and shading colours over a white-painted base - a sort of negative transfer - as I have in the past done when hand-lettering.

46 minutes ago, Stephen Freeman said:

Actually CAD skills needed are pretty minimal , just the need to type a few letters, more useful is the acquisition of a colour laser printer.

I would say that there is rather more to it than that - characters need to be re-shaped, since there is no typeface that I'm aware of that has the same proportions as signwritten lettering. One significant difference is that block type invariably has thinner horizontals than verticals, where signwritten lettering generally has equal width. The POWSides transfers are well-observed in this respect, as are the PO wagons from the major RTR manufacturers, but there are some PO wagons from the cottage industry end of the business where the use of a commercial typeface sticks out like a sore thumb.

Then there's the questions of spacing and shading.

I'm not afraid of this myself - I've quite a bit of experience with CorelDraw and am happy with converting type characters to objects and then manipulating them, or drawing lettering out from scratch - possibly the more satisfactory method. but I've yet to make the technological leap to printing transfers.

1 hour ago, Stephen Freeman said:

Part of the problem is the method of production of the transfers, they are dry print. 

One can get good, sharp results with them. I am in two minds as to whether I prefer the "pre-printed" sides ("factory" (!) -applied might be a better term) or applying them myself. The former save a good deal of squinting and cursing but the main drawback is that POWSides don't gloss varnish the surface to which the transfer is to be applied, which I do, with, I think, better results at least in terms of adhesion. Plus one has a choice of numbers. 

Whilst waterslide decals may be technologically superior, no firm has yet to make a wide range available, so they remain the preserve of those with the requisite CAD skills. POWSides enable anyone willing to assemble a plastic wagon kit to build up a good (and with care, appropriate) fleet of PO wagons.

Indeed, Graham's post should form the basis of a Foreword in any future edition!