The Johnster

You haven’t even scratched the surface, as the pooling of general merchandise wagons in 1938 meant that they were all well and truly dispersed from their original territories by BR days; everything everwhere. Including ex GW and Southern wagons and all sorts of pre-grouping survivors, and the wartime Ministry of Supply Ashford-built vans delivered to all of the Big Four in order to use up a large stack of pre-cut timber before the Luftwaffe got to it with incendiaries; Ashford was vsible from 12,000 feet over the French coast on a clear day… Go, 34, go, go like the wind, and buy more wagons. You know you want to!

2021s were the origin of the later 54xx, in fact the original 5400 was a rebiuld of a 2021 with 5’4” drivers & auto gear, replaced by a ‘production’ 54xx. The 64xx was even more 2021-like, with the driving wheel size reduced back to 4’7”. I would doubt there was much difference in backhead detail between a 2021 with a Belpaire boiler and pannier tanks and the 64xx asproduced in RTR by Bachmann, which couldseeve as a guide. Of course, 2021s were orginally fitted with round-topped fireboxes and saddle tanks, and some may have reverted to this form at works visits after reviouslyrunnng with Belpaires and pannier tanks. Boilers were swaped around because it took about two more weeks to overhaul and test a boiler than it did the rest of the loco, so once the loco was ready the next suitable boiler from stores was fitted so that the loco could return to revenue and free up the workshop bay. I am unable to comment on the layout of saddle tank 2021s’ bachheads. The Belpaire backheads were taller and wider at the top.

Most certainly not; the British were hiding in their mountains beyond Offa's Dyke and hoping that Godwinson was not about to embark on another murderous attack to it's west. Not saying that we didn't do a bit of reaving ourselves, but as Lord of Wessex Godwinson turned the southern Marches into a bloodfest. I think what you meant, Kieth, is that it wasn't a regular army made up of Englishmen... At Senlac, Godwinson still had the house-ceorls, sworn by blood-oath to defend him to the death, which they duly and honourably did. Their destruction probably put paid to any hope of effective English resistance to the Normans, they were a highly skilled and competent elite force to be reckoned with. The Bastard planned his invasion well, and brought a group of knights from Britanny and the western borders of Normandy with him, These were familiar with the Breton tongue, probably still understandable without too much difficulty by the Welsh in those days, and he promptly set them up in castles along the Dyke or near it as Marcher Lords, with rights to impose taxes and raise armies without the King's permission in order to defend the border, the March. This worked reasonably well, but over time quite often backfired against the Anglo-Norman crown as these semi-independents joined in the warlord game with the Welsh, sometimes against the crown, or provoked the Welsh to the extent that the crown had to impose justice on the Welsh side against them. But it was all over bar the shouting by the turn of the 1300s. There was a lot more shouting during that century by Hugh Despenser, Roger Mortimer, and Isabella, though, and some in the 1400s by Owain Glyndwr and the Scudamores.

Me too. Gildas was scathing in his assessement of the man; greedy, power-hungry, unprincipled, a rapist, murderer, and enthusiastic committer of , a warlord in a world of warlords but bad enough to attract comment and the ultimate condemnation from Gildas; he singled him out by name. Has to be said that the Romano-British nobility, left to their own devices after the Empire pulled out, could have organised an effective defence against the Saxons and history would have been different. Instead they succumbed to infighting as they tried each to fill the power vacuum on his own, and ended up fracturing it within a generation, warlordism being the result. In that world of made and broken alliances and casual treachery, Gwytheryn stood out and was remarked on. Gildas was more or less a standard Brythonic saint, monastic and a christian hardliner, threatening hellfire on anyone he didn't like the look of, which was pretty much everyone. Gwytheryn had, apparently, no redeeming qualities as a leader, not even success in battle until Hengist and Horsa provided it for him, and that opened the floodgates. The Britons were outnumbered within a few decades and lost their previous hold on the island of Britain between Strathclyde and the English Channel (which name shows just how much they were eliminated by the new order). A possible Arthur might have stemmed the tide for a generation or so, but the Britons, even those descended from Scythian cavalry, had no answer to the shield-wall and the seax, which remained undefeated until 1066 and William the Bastard's heavy armoured cavalry. The Britons were evenutally pushed back to remnants in what is now Wales and Cornwall, where they still are or at least what remains of their culture still is, because the geography of these hilly and (in those days) heavily wooded areas favours hit & run guerilla tactics from small groups of archers; had it not been so, the Britons would have ceased to exist. And all of that can be laid directly at Gwytheryn's door, though it has to be said that if you read Gildas, not many of the others were much better. Universally despised even by that despicable bunch, he fled his original territory of Kent and holed up in Gwynedd, in the valley of the stream that still bears his name. Nant Gwytheryn, where eventually he was run to earth and killed by none other than Uther Pendragon according to some versions of the story; we are getting into misty mythical mist territory now. Nobody missed him. By that time the Saxons had a secure foothold and had been joined by their Angle and Jutish cousins; as far as we were concerned the island was lost. It remains so. The arrival of the Bastard in 1066 was eventually to result in our losing the ability to govern the few bits that were left to us.

I'm not saying that that is in any way a bit creepy but BURN IT, BURN IT NOW, SEND IT BACK TO HELL, BURN IT IN THE PURIFYING FLAMES, BURN IT!!!

Absolutely, and the above mentioned description of Cardiff's Ferry Road trips is a case in point. So long as the distance on running lines was not too great, as the speed of these locos and the time it took the trains to clear sections made them unpopular with signalmen. 08s were 'interesting' when it came to ride quality; they rode like Pullmans until you attempted to move them, at which point things deteriorated rapidly. A high centre of gravity and a short coupled wheelbase are not good starting points, but the locos also had leaf springs which acted as shock amplifiers rather than absorbers, and square wheels, which from the cab seemed not to necessarily be of the same size. 15mph was plenty fast enough! Ferry Road, and a similar Cardiff locality East Moors Road, would make interesting models, consisting as they did of a branch/long siding worked 'one engine in steam' that ran along the side of the road with sharply curved sidings into just about any sort of small factory, workshop, oil depot, scrappies, cold store, or warehouse you can imagine. Cars would park on these and have to be manhandled out of the way, which is why our travelling shunters tended to be solidy constructed gentlemen that could handle this sort of thing without demur. Another Cardiff example was Collingdon Road. I'm sure there were similar locations elsewhere but they seemed to be a Cardiff speciality, and the sidings off the Clarence Road branch serving the Glamorgan Canal businesses were of a similar form, but they had their own loco.

08 territory give you plenty of scope; on top of what has already been mentioned and 08s either hired in to steelworks and collieries or sold out of service and not repainted (like D3000 at Mountain Ash), BTDB docks were prime 08 country as well. London, Avonmouth/Bristol, the Manchester ship canal and Trafford Park docks, and many others had port/dock authority systems with their own locos, but all the South Wales ports were Docks Board (later British Ports) owned and the default loco was the 08. Docks are huge, but that does not mean that corners of them do not make highly interesting small shunting layouts! And, to add to the fun, by the 60s and certainly the 70s they were pretty run down and neglected. A Cardiff docks driver once told me that he knew when he was off the road at night in some of the darker recesses because the ride got better... We had an 08 on the docks that ran continually for three years because it had a duff dynamo and was not a reliable starter, the last thing you want at an outstation that consists of a bit of siding and a phone to book on with. It evenutally failed with a completely blocked fuel filter and had to be towed back to Canton. It was another world down there, and the same could be said of Newport or Swansea, especially Swansea where the boundary between the town and main roads and the dock area was blurred at best and flyovers/duckunders were the order of the day.

My memory of this is that the tugs started to be painted yellow around 1967, but I am happy to be corrected on this point. It happened quite quickly, and the maroon 'early BR' steam-era liveried tugs had all gone by 1970. The maroon applied whatever region they were allox to, btw, there were no regional colours and the livery was from the road fleet. There were Post Office tugs as well, in Post Office red but these were also repainted yellow, at around the same time as the older Post Office red livery was replaced by a brighter red colour on the road vehicles. Any station busy enough to have BR tugs would have Post Office ones as well! I would suspect that regulations appertaining to visibility of vehicles working in public areas of this sort is probably the reason for the change to yellow livery by both BR and the Post Office, and I'm sure somebody more knowledgeable about this will be along shortly to confirm or not confirm this. I should know, as I held a Post Office tug licence for Cardiff Central at one time...

Colour, even on freshly painted ex-works locos or coaches, is a slippery little fella to pin down exactly, never mind reproduce, and one can easily disappear in a puff of confused smoke up one's own fundament from trying to model it correctly. Because:- .One's perception of it is dependent on the ambient light. The ambient light, outdoors, is predicated on weather conditions, reflected light from the surrounding area, and atmospheric pollution (not the least important factor around steam engines). .One's perception of it is also dependent on the amount of the colour in one's field of vision. .One's perception of it is also dependent on the finish, high gloss/semi-gloss/semi-matt/flat matt, and whether the surface is wet or dry. .If one is looking at a painting or colour/colourised photograph, especially one dating from the Edwardian era, one is observing an artist's or a photographic printer's impression of the colour, which has been further compromised by whatever printing/reproduction process has been used in whatever publication one is using as refererence. .Further to that, if one is referencing the image on a smartphone, tablet, or computer display, further compromises are incurred in the electronic processes and background to the screen, plus the ambient lighting in the room the screen is placed in. There are far too many and various variables variably variously affecting each other to ever manage more than an approximation, IMHO, and I am happy with my model liveries on an 'if it looks like my memory of it in real life under my layout lighting, that's fine by me' basis. Anything else is tail-chasing and pointless, as I say IMHO, there are other HOs available, but mine works for me. The weathering covers a multitude of sins anyway... We do our best to get it right, manufacturers and modellers alike, and don't always succeed; remember Airfix's purple BR B sets? At least they tried, which I think it is fair to say is more than Hornby were doing at that time...

Otherwise known as 'a normal day at Cardiff Arms Park' lately. No, the worst day in Welsh history was when Hengist and Horsa had a chat to Gwytheryn (Vortigern). We're Celts, happiest when there's something to grumble about, but that was a bit much! There may have been Welsh who were glad that Godwinson got an eyeful at Hastings, he was hated here even by diwl Saes standards, and for good reason, but the illusion was soon shattered...

It'll work, in the sense that if you attach power leads to the track the locos will move when you turn the knob on the controller. But where do the trains come from or go to, where's the fiddle yard or even the track leading to a scenic break to suggest that there is a world beyond this otherwise isolated piece of railway? Sorry, praps I'm missing the point but it doesn't make any sense to me without an offstage area. I think some sort of run-around facility would be useful as well unless there are two locomotives, unlikely at such a small location. It satisfies the need for shunting operations well enough, but I'm not sure that i can think of any real trackplans that even remote resemble it without extending the lower line off the board to a fiddle yard at one or both ends, which is what happens on the real track plan. The fiddle yard(s) don't need to be anything more complex than single road removable fiddle sticks, but it/they is/are essential IMHO to make visual and operational sense of the layout.

It doesn't quite look like the sort of environment that would endear itself to posh lasses naming boats to me, but then, what would I know about posh lasses except that they say they are arriving.

Because it was in your line of sight? To paraphrase the immortal Spike Milligna, the well-known typing error, 'everything got to be somewhere'.

I'd like to think so... I never worked aboard these vans, they were withdrawn from service in 1963 because of safety issues (there was no easy means of egress for the guard in the event of a collision blocking the main exit through the balcony, but I never understood why a female bird of prey would be any use in an accident anyway). They were liked, especially by locomen who would appreciate the long benches as a good place to 'rest your eyes' if opportunity arose, and well built, double-skinned planking sealing the draughts pretty effectively. From a guard's pov, less so perhaps, and while the old-timers remembered them fondly they may have been remembering the good old days associated with them. They spent half their time with the balcony end leading, and the brake handle was out on the balcony, and going out there in a 60mph headwind on freezing sleety night couldn't have been much fun! The other regions hated them, and sent them home as fast as they could.

Worst year in English history, and the second worst in Welsh.

'I do verb' is perfect Welsh grammar, only in the medium of the English language. You get some of the same sort of thing in Irish spoken English as well; 'I'm after going to the shops' equates to the Welsh 'Dwy'n wedi mynd i'r siopau'. 'Come you from over by there to over by here now just/now in a minute' is also perfectly grammatically cromulent in Welsh, and is the result of a direct translation into English, often spoken by people who lost their Welsh four or five generations ago...

Well, I don't like it and can't use it, it just feels wrong. I am not in the game of decreeing what other people do, though, and accept that this has become accepted usage over the last 30 years or so, and nobody's going to listen to me. I have never had any problem making myself understood using he or she for individual people, and will continue to do so.

This is true. Tondu provided locos and stock for five branches, Porthcawl, Abergwynfi, Blaengarw, Nantymoel, and, until 1933, Gilfach Goch (reversal at Hendreforgan and it still wasn't an auto service), as well as work on the Bryncethin-Llanharan and OVE routes, and through work as far as Cardiff and Llandeilo Jc. The allocation varied but after the Gilfach Goch closure was usually around 50 locos, but it would be far too simplistic to suggest that each branch had 10 locos, or even 5, to handle it's work. That said, the Tondu Valleys branches were probably the most intensely worked single track network in the world, being close to capacity except for the few hours between half past midnight and about 5am when nothing ran and the boxes were closed (nothing ran on Sundays either). I think it is probably reasonable to say that another 5 engines would have had to have been found from somewhere had there ever been a branch to Cwmdimbath, but that is not the same as saying that any of those engines would appear there on any working day, never mind all of them. I am considering the Taff A and Rhymney R as eventually fulfilling this role, engines close to the ends of their working lives that other sheds might be willing to release, but any more than this would be pushing it I feel. 44xx? All gone from 1953, and less evidence than for 3100, the shed's Collett 1938 large prairie, 3150 rebuild, no.4 boiler, 5'3" wheels, 220psi boiler pressure, bit of a thug, used on the Porthcawl-Cardiff 'residential' commuter train becasue of it's ability to get away from the main line stops rapidly and keep clear of other traffic. There is a photo of this on Google in 1951 at Abergwynfi, good enough for me and a kitbash is in progress, albeit at plate tectonic pace... I keep lobbying for an 1854 or a 2721 half-cab pannier, and have done well over the last decade or so with wishlisting, so my fingers are crossed, perhaps from Accurascale using their new pannier chassis. In practice, though, not all the locos worked all the branches all the time. 57xx/8750s did, as did 1854/2721s before them, I have seen photos of 94xx on Abergwynfi and Nantymoel passenger jobs (they were considered to be passenger engines at Tondu for some reason), 4575s worked on the Abergwynfi and Nantymoel auto trains but Blaengarw was closed to passenger just before they arrived, TTBOMK the 44xx were strictly Porthcawl engines, 56xx were only used on the Abergwynfi branch, and 42xx were used on Abergwynfi and Blaengarw coal trains. A real Cwmdimbath might well have been wall-to-wall 57xx/8750 prior to 1953 and those engines pluse 4575s on autos afterwards. But not on my layout. Cwmdimbath is likely to be considered the least important of the branches surviving into BR days. The 'big towns' were Maesteg, on the Abergwynfi Branch, and Ogmore Vale on the Nantymoel (closed to passengers 1958). My mum's definition of towns and cities, as valid as any I contend, was that a town had a Woolworths and a city had a Woolworths and a Marks & Spencer; Maesteg and Ogmore Vale had Woolworths'. Cwmdimbath so far has a pub, a Post Office, a cafe, and 17 houses, even Gilfach Goch could beat that. The branch has remained open mostly because the extra cost of providing a passenger service on a line that has to be kept open for the colliery is not high over such a short distance, and the road access is steep and narrow. So locos and stock provided to it by Tondu will be the bottom of the heap, locos that are not in the best condition as would be needed for Abergwynfi, the bottom link stuff. This plays both to the possibility of Rule 1 Taff A & Rhymney R transfers and to locos appearing having missed their booked job for some fault or other now repaired and taking on what was originally a 57xx turn. I have decided arbitrarily that the steepness of the branch needs 56xx on the colliery trip though, and that if a 42xx works it it is not allowed on to the exchange loop, which complicates the shunting.

How difficult is it to remove the 'solid piece' cylinders/chassis/wheels/motion' piece?

Been around for years it may have been, but it's still nonsense. e.g. Who are those people hanging round the bins? What are they doing? There is more than one person by the bins, so 'they' is correct and describes the situation accurately. Who's that hanging round the bins? What is he or she doing? There is only one person by the bins, so he or she is correct and describes the situation accurately. Language is, or should be, a commonly understood and evolving means by which information is conveyed between people by the spoken or written word, and in this instance 'they' does not indicate that there is only one person by the bins, whereas 'he or she' stipulates that there is in fact only one person by the bins which is the reason 'they' is not as comprehensive or foolproof a method of conveying the information that there is only one person by the bins; there could be one, or two, or any number. Imagine the possibility of confusion in an emergency, say building on fire; he or she is still in the photocopier room, and you tell the fireman that they are in the photocopier room. Fireman rescues Bob, then goes back for the other person... Getting it right is important sometimes, so best practice is to get it right all the time so you don't get it wrong, or even questionable, under pressure when the building is burning down. He or she, not they. Sinking ships, mine collapses, classroom gunman, terrorist bomb in an airport; similar situations as far as this goes...

My soapbox is 'organic'. Can I have 5lbs of non-organic potatoes, please; but potatoes are by definition organic, they are organisms or at least the roots of organisms. What is meant is 'organically grown/produced', which I'm fine with, but if that's what's meant then why isn't that what's said... Oh, and 'they', referring to an individual person. I think it comes from the use of he/she, which feels awkward in spoken form, but there is only one person, he, she, or he/she. I would prefer a new word, 'heesh', but the misleading obscurfaction of 'they' had become accepted. Not with my approval, I wasn't asked, and it rankles. Rankles are what join the letter R's feet to it's legs, of course.

Can’t be done, lofty, they’re the old Triang rivetted mounts. There is also the risk of the flanges fouling on the coach floor. I’ll wait until the Staffords arrive and work out what to do then; they’ll prolly need the floor cutting out and crossbar mounting plates let in.

...small blue thing like a marble or an eye I am smooth and cool and curious I never blink I am turning in your hand, turning in...

Sitrep; ersatz 8’6” Dean bogies, actually the original Triang B1s, wheelbase is pretty accurate, with the tiebars removed and coffee-stirrer footboards. Work in prgress. Fitted to the coach. They’ll do for now. I’ve hit a problem, though, with the ride height. Aware that Triang stock sits 2mm too high at the buffers, I’ve altered the bogie pivot brass eye-bearings to be glued to the interior floor. But there is still a big disparity in buffer heights. So I’ve tried a cheat of subsituting wagon wheels for coach wheels to drop the height a bit further, as shown with this… … which tbh doesn’t seem to make a lot of dfference. So I’ve decided that, like the bogies it’ll do for now; this was never going to be scale modelling of any sort anyway. That’s it pretty much, apart from couplings, NEM t/ls superglued to the bogies, then inserted into proper pockets when the Stafford road bogies arrive.

I’d hang on to it, and the tac, somewhere safe like the loco box, then forget about it. Then, if you ever do get it identified, you can then glue it back on.