Compound2632

Dioramas (and panoramas) were quite the rage as tourist attractions - 12"/ft modelling, but exploiting all the illusions of perspective modelling etc. So it would be quite appropriate to have a 'bus so branded on your diorama...

"Moriah Carey Chapel" indeed. Those old nonconformists will be rotating in their graves...

Brilliant evocation of the place and period, as ever! Some good old-fashioned lethal playground equipment, with a nice hard tarmac surface, and kids making their best effort to abuse the swings and get grazed heads and limbs. No soft landing off the end of that slide! I definitely remember a multi-seater rocking horse like that one, but can't just think where.

First thought: unusually skinny tank.

Second thought: unusually fat boiler? No.

Third thought: unusually narrow engine, at least for a tank engine - perhaps no more than 7 ft over footplate?

Well. Bayswater, that's posh.

1 hour ago, ChrisN said:

That sounds about right.  I am sure that the compartment coaches that I used, which were of course much later, were 5 or 6 a side.  Stadden figures are a bit larger as I can never get five into a seat, but unlike real people they do not give.  Perhaps I should take a file to them.

A 4-VEP, such as I commuted on in the late 90s, was nominally 6-a-side - 3+2 with passageway; that would be about 17" per passenger. Those would generally fill up with first one at the window on each side, then one by the aisle on the 3 side, then the other aisle seat, then with great reluctance, the middle seat of the 3! Fortunately no-one ever took a file to me.

1 hour ago, Dave John said:

"Sixteen inches one bum, sixteen bums one ton" 

That makes the typical late 19th century third class compartment spacious - 8'0" wide over panels, 7'6" internal width, seating five-a-side, 18" per passenger. It also means that a fully-occupied five-compartment third 6-wheeler, tare weight around 13 tons, would have gross weight of about 16 tons. A first would give 30" per passenger but some of that width is taken up by arm-rests.

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

Now that I live in Yorkshire, nobody says a word!

But that's generally true. They're a taciturn lot who keep their thoughts to themselves.

1 hour ago, Mikkel said:

vehicle marked "The London Bridge Railways"

In other words, serves the London Bridge stations (I don't think it actually says "The".) At this date, London Bridge was really at least two separate stations, the through station of the South Eastern and the Brighton terminus. I've been reading Wikipedia and freely lift this verse:

Inside the station, everything's so old,
So inconvenient, of such manifold
Perplexity, and, as a mole might see,
So strictly what a station shouldn't be,
That no idea minifies its crude
And yet elaborate ineptitude.

John Davidson, Fleet Street and Other Poems (Grant Richards, 1909) - full poem (and an even bleaker one on Liverpool Street) here: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.95407/page/n41/mode/2up.

There are several other good ones on that Cornish site. At first I thought, ha! driver with bowler; then realised half the passengers are wearing them too - sensible move, in case of falling off and landing head-first. Did anybody travel inside on a sunny day?

https://photographs.museumofcornishlife.co.uk/Search/Detail/1274/?referrer=%2FThemes%2F%3FTransport

2 minutes ago, kitpw said:

Mr Bowler designed a tough, round topped hat

It was, in effect, an early example of PPE.

Incidentally, I've noticed the spelling "tire" here and also in Ahron's The British Steam Locomotive 1825-1925, published in to twenties, rather than the preferred modern British English spelling "tyre".

"The London General Omnibus Company are the greatest users of living horse power in London. They have, in round numbers, ten thousand horses, working a thousand omnibuses."

Now there's an interesting confirmatory statement. I have been looking at the Midland Railway's annual returns of working stock, which includes horses, carts etc., and motor vehicles. At its peak, before the Great War, the Midland had a little over 5,000 horses, all but 160 of which were for cartage and omnibus work. (The 160 were for shunting.) From about 1916, there was a steady acquisition of motor vehicles; first electric, then, after the war, petrol. (This wartime change may have been stimulated by the army's demand for horses.) It's clear from the figures that one motor vehicle replaced ten horses, more or less. 

On the other hand, the number of carts, drays, and other horse-drawn vehicles remained constant, at around 7,000, which suggests rather low utilisation - a lot of time spent standing around at depots waiting o be loaded or unloaded.

10 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

For example, I wonder who is the actual driver in this photo:

 

https://photographs.museumofcornishlife.co.uk/Search/Detail/1273/?referrer=%2FThemes%2F%3FTransport

 

Driver is still in the taproom. The portly yokel is just there to hold the ladder and give the young ladies a firm friendly push-up when the young gents aren't looking.

Hmm. Goods horses and passenger horses. Presumably a different tractive effort formula applied. Your high-stepping passenger horse certainly looks the thing!

7 minutes ago, Dave John said:

Hi Compound. I make the number plates myself. Drawings are available for the plate and the numerals. They are done with affinity, the plate is one layer, the numbers on subsequent layers. A bit of retouching then just printed out on to paper, cut out and stuck on.  Easy to make a range of custom numbers. 

 

Most of my later wagons have them, one day I'll go over the early stock and add them too. 

Much as I do to make my numberplates - Midland, LNWR, etc. I print onto photo paper at best quality, cut around the numberplate, and peel off the backing, leaving just the thin hard shiny layer.

Are the number plates CRA transfers too?

21 minutes ago, bgman said:

Probably a bit early in our timeframe but Stanhope Forbes's paintings certainly do capture the era for me

Plus having a good solid railway connection.

On 04/12/2021 at 08:16, Mikkel said:

Enjoyed and desired, but not accessible to all of course. I've been looking at Frank Holl's paintings recently, sombre stuff...

 

Frank Holl - The Song Of The Shirt [1874] by Gandalf's Gallery, on Flickr

Yes, that's almost certainly not her pale blue dress she's repairing, but milady's.

Re. the Vastern Road plane trees, a sign of the times: just around the corner on Forbury Road (alongside the former SER goods yard) the Borough Council have recently planted new trees along the central reservation. They're palm trees.

I suppose the larger than typical (for a coal wagon) wheels will have helped with the journal question, by reducing the rate of rotation.

I'm pondering the 12 ton capacity. Evidently the volumetric capacity of this wagon is greater than that of contemporary standard gauge wagons by about 40%, just on the basis of the internal width being 9'9" (measuring off Prior's drawing) compared no more than 7'0" for a standard gauge wagon. On the other hand, were the journal sizes much bigger than on an 8 ton standard gauge wagon?

Looking at Prior's drawing, I note the brake lever across the fixed end, in a style I'm more familiar with from 20th century NER hopper wagons. I think this may have been a typical early way of arranging the brake that simply survived in the North East by continuity from the primordial years!

Does your wagon want to sit a bit lower on its wheelsets?

I have now put the question of pre-Great War allocation lists elsewhere on the forum:

6 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

A very convenient date. Clearly an issue worth tracking down. 

I assumed you had it. I could PM you a scan of the relevant pages, if you're interested.

3 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

From what I can see, available publications showing GWR loco allocations include the three below. I have not yet come across compilations from earlier dates, more's the pity:

The data must be out there, since Locomotives Illustrated No. 157 provides allocations for all the Gooch, Armstrong, and Dean 0-6-0 goods engines at January 1902 (te-he!).