The Johnster

If anyone can pull this off it’s you, Rob. Here’s my attempt, showing the reason there’s more involved in cutting the top plank off than just cutting the top plank off, as the diagonal strapping, emphasised by the white line at one end, doesn’t come in to the top corner properly. Like you, I’ve decided to accept the compromise and leave them as they are, but look for a replacement chassis, perhaps kit. Mine have spiked wheels, btw.

This is a good idea, and the Ratio 4 wheel kits and recently re-introduced Hornby 'shortie' clerestories are perfect for it. The Hornby clerestories have incorrect BR standard bogies but these can be made to look better by cutting out the tiebars and adding footboards. The proper bogies are available from 247 developments. I have such workman's services on my layout, serving the local colliery. They were needed in the days before the NCB fulfilled it's promise to provide pithead baths at all pits, which took some, as the men went home dirty and washed in a tin bath at home in front of the fire; pithead baths were a major social reform. The trains were old stock with the upholstery removed so that the compartments could be hosed down easily. Some pits continued to have workmens services after the baths were built, because that was the only means of getting the men to the pit in the case of some of the more isolated places; North Rhondda was miles from anywhere even by valleys standards and didn't even have footpath access. The North Rhondda train propelled from Cwmmer Corrwg, and had a brake 3rd leading coach with a circular window cut in the end so that the guard could see the track ahead, and a bell that the sheep could ignore him ringing, a sort of ersatz auto coach. But I'd find it hard to resist the lure of Llantrisant's wonderful collection of oddball auto coaches! Recommend John Lewis's 'Great Western Auto Trailers Part 1' which has several photos of them at Llantrisant and on the Cowbridge branch.

I think you are probably best advised to use setrack, and stock that will negotiate minimum radius. This might have an impact on Annie and Clarabelle, but will save as much of your space as possible and keep the dead frogs short. Base the plan on Y points as much as you can. Length is your enemy, so keep Thomas as your largest loco, with Percy/Ben, Toby and Diesel, perhaps assisted by Smokey Joe and his chums, maybe Bachmann Junior stuff. As the kids grow up and Thomas becomes relegated to the back of the box, they can be replaced with more prototypical industrials and small shunters, like Pugs, Barclays, Pecketts, etc. The Hornby Troublesome Trucks for the Thomas range are based on a generic chassis which is quite long, and you might be better served with shorter wheelbase wagons such as Hornby's period 2/3 private owners and Bachmann or Oxford minerals; you need every millimetre of space you can get lengthways. It might be possible to have what would effectively two separate layouts on the board, one at the back at a higher level which could cover hidden sidings from the lower level. A high level passenger station with a run around and sidings for a foreground shunting problem, each around a foot wide which leaves room for some basic scenery behind the passenger station. Operating is up to you, but I would suggest a run around for the high level with maybe some stub sidings off it, and a 'reception/departure' road on the low level so that a short train (I can't see it being more than 3 wagons, with the loco that's 25% of the layout length) can be brought on to the visible section from the hidden sidings, the loco isolated, and a pilot shunts the traffic with the assistance of the train loco. This needs 3 operators but can be done with one though things take longer; ideal for kids and dad fun. Keep buildings small and basic, and try not to overcrowd the layout. High level; Thomas and the girls, maybe Daisy, with occasional tail traffic for the stub sidings (dairy, cattle dock?). Low level; 0-4-0s and short wheelbase opens. If you can. a loco road for the pilot to sit in with water for it; the train engine can take water whIle the pilot is working. Leave room for the kids to drive trucks and cars around the layout. Low level could have a factory, a warehouse, perhaps a canal or harbour wharf.

The Hornby Grange should fit, but will need a bit of fettling and jiggerypokery no doubt. as will the Large Prairie, which may or may not be more or less the same thing. My experience with Mainline chassis is that they have a limited life expectancy and once they start giving trouble, will find new ways of continuing to. The upcoming Dapol Mogul and Large Prairie are other possibilities.

BR proved themselves ultimately right in the concept that fast frequent services could tempt people back out of their cars, but not until the (diesel) HSTs cut journey times at the same time that fuel prices and motorway congestion were beginning to bite. The railway saw itself as competing with motorways , and concentrated on improving timings and standards of comfort with air conditioning and better seats. The motorways were losing their edge and becoming stressful; rail advertising still promotes happy passengers relaxing, chatting, drinking coffee, reading papers, watching the scenery fly past... All this happened post Beeching. A sea change was the Arab-Israeli War in 1967, which is getting towards the end of what I think of as the Beeching era, and which caused a panic by closing the Suez Canal and exposing how dependent cheap oil supplies were on it; little has happened in the Middle East since to re-assure anybody concerned by this, though the canal is back in business. The fuel shortages and petrol rationing of the 70s meant that a single person in a car was paying nearly as much for his long, speed restricted, congested, delayed, and stressful journey as he could for a comfy seat on a fast train. All of which benefitted traffic on the main lines which had never really been under threat from Beeching and his acolytes. What Beeching closed were branches, and, to a much larger but now mostly forgotten extent, local stations on main lines, which were replaced by inadequate bus services and forced people into their cars whether they wanted to be there or not. The short termism of this has been demonstrated by the number of main line local stations not served by expresses that have re-opened over the last 2 or 3 decades; they should never have been closed in the first place, of course. Dmus were an established feature well before Beeching, the first major impact of the modernisation plan. They were very popular indeed when they were introduced, providing local services that were promoted as superior to the steam hauled stock they replaced. They were seldom faster, whatever the marketing people wanted you to think, but they were a lot cleaner, brighter, and generally pleasant than the antiquated and filthy compartment museum pieces they superceded, and were easier to keep clean. People liked the open saloon seating and being able to see out the front or rear. They often came with, or shortly enough after to be associated with, improved service regular interval timetables as well. They were well promoted and much better than the local bus, but in the late 50s car ownership was the aspiration for ordinary people, and it was becoming increasingly affordable. They were said to be capable of defraying their running costs with anything more than half a dozen passengers aboard, but this was seldom achieved if the cost of staffing stations on their routes was taken into account, one of the reasons Beeching targeted such stations. By the 70s, increasing maintenance and fuel costs had rendered many of the economies they had been intended to effect unachievable, and there was no money in the pot to replace them, so we had to struggle on with them and hope the public were fooled by the new seats and lighting of the refurbished sets. By this time they were fundamentally as unfit for purpose as the antediluvian steam stock they'd replaced, just as filthy and smelly, and often incapable of timing the services. Nobody liked them any more. Cars are more convenient than any form of public transport, and you don't have to mingle with people you don't know and probably don't want to. You can set your own climate and play your own music. They are also a lot cheaper IF the car's seats are full, but the huge majority of cars have only a driver sitting in them, an indication of (a) how seductive the dream of personal transport still is, and (b) the extent to which people do not like mixing with other people. It is illegal and contravenes your insurance conditions if you formally charge passengers anyway. This makes public transport only viable as an alternative in terms of cost, and sometimes journey time and comfort, but it depends on the public transport. I have a Welsh Assembly Government bus pass and a bus stop 50 yards from my front door with a 7 minute interval service, but If I lived out in the boonies, even the urban boonies, my perception of my need for a car (which I cannot afford to run) might be different. Public transport, bus, rail, or air, is increasingly overcrowded, unreliable, and unfit for purpose, as are roads. Some European nations seem to do it better than we do, and manage integration between transport modes better, but few have the population density that we do. The Japanese are famously good at it, despite population density similar to ours, but have never shied away from the investment needed, as well as putting up with being squeezed onto trains by manhandling.

It certainly is. I will now cut the top plank off all 4 of mine!

I have failed no less than 4 times to learn Welsh, and I live here and know how the dipthongs and pronunciation work! The mutations are fiendish. Branch termini with collieries beyond them worked from Llantrisant are Gilfach Goch and Penygraig, so something combining the features of both might suit your needs. For the sort of space you seem to be describing, though, how about Bleangarw for inspiration...

Bit more done today, more Milliput in in the plated over toplight reveals, smoothed down by wet finger and to be rubbed down to the best smooth surface I can get tomorrow. Then it's touching up and putting the glazing in (for the second time!).

I have 4 of these, overkill for Cwmdimbath. All have different numbers, one bought as an impulse buy and another 3 as a 'set of 3' at Lord & Butler', for what seemed a low price compared to 3 x Baccy 16tonners even 18 months ago. They were 'old stock' though, as illustrated by the large non-NEM couplings and the moulded brake handle. i've replaced the plastic wheels and weathered them to varying degrees, but they are really not up to scratch with those brake handles and will eventually be retired and replaced, probably with Parkside 21 tonners. None of them are the 'LOCO' livery and all are in BR grey, with numbers/weight at the left end and the tare information at the right. All have the 'V' hopper marking. I've 'distressed' the most weathered one with a missing top plank. I like them, though; they have a lot of character and, at that size, a feeling of bulk and 'presence'. There's little chance of me being able to do much about the brake handles, though, and they are ultimately doomed... AFAIK they are not in the current Hornby catalogue. Hopefully they'll re-appear one day with a decent chassis and NEMs. Internal detail is good, so they are useful for trains of empties.

Most South Wales bus stations seem to be open air affairs, and while not being particularly lovely, are at least better than this Swansea/Doncaster/Bull Ring sort of affair. So Swansea was a bit of a culture shock in these parts. Cardiff hasn't got a bus station at all at the present time, the coach services using a car park just outside the city centre and the local buses just circumnavigating it with a variety of on-street stops. This seems to work reasonably well, but a new coach station is being built, underneath an office block, which does not bode well! The rest will, apparently, stay out on the streets.

Most edumacational. I never really understood what was happening inside the Fell, and had some notion that each engine had it's own independent transmission which fed a final drive (not sure that's even possible), and the complication is enough to make the wreckage of what was once my brain go all squirly, so I don't bother analysing it.

'But Prime Minister, it runs through five marginal constituencies...' (to really appreciate this you have to have been familiar with Harold Wilson's Secretary Of State For Wales, George Thomas, later Lord Tonypandy, and his particularly whining voice. I used to deliver papers to his mam). A separate GW line between Llandovery and Llandeilo would indeed enable the gradient to be eased, and avoided the issue of running rights and pathing between those places as well, but the second Llandovery station would have been well outside town and up the hill. Mind you, so would Brecon (Cardiff Road)! Some gradient easing could be achieved by a tunnel at Glasfynydd as well. Perhaps the cost of it was why the nascent railway went bust and had to be bailed out by the GW, but it would have made things easier for those dmus! I rather like the thought of a heavily laden up train of oil tanks, double headed by 43xx and banked by a Pantyfynnon pannier all blasting holes in the sky through Halfway, on the climb from Llandovery on it's way to the Midlands, though...

No idea. Couldn't have been balancing or it would have been messed up when the centre rods were taken out. Relieving stress on some of that internal gearing, perhaps?

Sloped back tenders were used for yard shunting in order to give good visibility from the cab of what was going on while stock was being coupled; the reduction in water capacity was less of an issue with plenty being available in the vicinity to top up whenever needed. I'd expect 2-6-0 and 2-6-2 versions to have square backed tenders and be regarded as 'road' loco rather than yard switchers.

Jennys were very popular and most railways of the period had a few of them, sometimes acquired from absorbed railways or second hand. They were sturdy and reliable little things (actually not so little in 1850s terms) and could handle a good variety of jobs; one could be easily adapted to all sorts of prototypes. Same goes for Sharp, Stewart & Co, Stephenson's, and Bury. Bloomers, and 'Allan' types with the slide bars mounted in the outside frames, were particularly associated with the LNW, while Crompton long boiler types tended to be used on faster services and were not so common on smaller or secondary lines. Quite a few railways were not big or wealthy enough to have their own loco or stock building facilities, and some of the above are suitable for such applications. Coaches from the likes of Ashbury were equally common. David Joy, the valve gear bloke, published diaries which are worth a read; he's an entertaining writer who knew what he was talking about and captures well the atmosphere, and some of the methods of working, of what were still pioneering days. He was involved in the design of the Jenny Lind.

IPA will be fine, Spikey. If you want to make a posh job of it, a piece of batten cut at an angle with the hardboard glued to the angle will make a handle. I usually cut mine in a triangular shape, about 2 and a half inches wide, which can be manipulated to get into most crooks and nannies. I use the aerosol for other things besides track cleaning, and, like your IPA, have it handy. A £5.30 can will last me about 2 years; I used to use Maplin's but my latest can is from an electrical supplier in Cardiff's indoor market.

The textured side of hardboard is too soft for the job, and will leave debris which will be picked up and cause a nuisance elsewhere, such as mechs and flangeways. The smooth side will absorb the fluid more slowly, and hence release it more slowly; it is finely textured and will pick up dirt from the railhead, at the same time being soft enough to shape itself to the railhead profile. IMHO it’s the only thing hardboard is any good for, because it’s useless for any of the other purposes one sees it put to... You will see how well it works from the amount of crud on it after a wipe over the track. It’s a tip from a magazine long, long ago, no idea which one but probably ‘Constructor’. CTC is a viable alternative to switch cleaner. Another area to to keep an eye on is pointwork, with carbon building up where the switch rails, the ‘blades’, close on to the stock rails. This is quite awkward to get at. and fairly vigorous rubbing is needed in a delicate area. I use a rat tail file with the end wrapped in soaked cotton cloth (old sock). I have a set of pound shop children’s paint brushes, for pound shop children of course, which have stiff nylon bristles and are useless for painting with. One of the jobs they are perfect for, however, is sweeping debris out of the flangeways on points or anywhere you have a check rail.

You want bleak, try the 1970s Swansea Bus Station, now happily as the snows of yesteryear and not missed. A warren of concrete tunnels with a permanent cold wind howling through them, poorly lit, with a plethora of shadowed corners hiding who knew what threats, and a general odour of p*ss and chips mixing with the diesel fumes. Horrible.

The mistake the long term forward planners made back in the Beeching era was that road usage would increase at the expense of rail for both passenger and freight. They were dead right of course, it did, but they completely failed to see that it would increase to the extent that traffic congestion, journey times, rising fuel costs, pollution in urban areas, and parking costs would become problematic to the extent that there would ever be the very considerable increase in rail passenger traffic that there has been since about 1980; infrastructure investment has failed hopelessly to keep up with this, and getting about by road is not much faster now than it was before the motorways were built. The Post Office made a similar error when most businesses became computerised in the 80s and 90s. Foreseeing a drop in demand for paper mail because of the new methods, and that email would replace personal correspondence, they cut investment and were caught out when traffic increased by about 50% in less than a decade, because the computers generated more paper mail than they replaced. All those transactions required a paper back up with a signature, and the computers meant there were a lot more of them; also the computers generated sales literature, junk mail, on a monumental scale. Easily foreseen with 20/20 hindsight... They still haven't devised a mechanised system for packets or handwritten addresses, so it's a waste of time putting postcodes on those; they have to be manually sorted. Drifting a bit, but it's an illustration that long term forward planning isn't as easy as it looks, and rail planning has to be long term. This doesn't sit well with the get rich quick short termist investment culture prevalent in the UK; people want returns for themselves, not their kids.

If you can, eliminate plastic wheels and rubber traction tyres. Ensure that your track is laid smoothly, especially over baseboard joins which must be dead level, as arcing occurs when your pickup wheels break contact with the railhead, and carbon deposits build up. My layout out is used on most days, and there is no doubt in my mind that this assists cleanliness considerably, unintuitive though that seems (surely, the more you use something the dirtier it gets, right?). My running is pretty good, but I pounce on any problem as it occurs; track cleaning is done with the shiny side of a hardboard soaked in aerosol switch cleaner, and wheels/pickups with switch cleaner on a cotton bud, take care not to get cotton in the mech. Stubborn dirt like carbon buildup is dealt with using a fibreglass pen, gently so as not to roughen the surface. I find that my Hornby locos are more sensitive to dirt problems than Bachmanns, which I think is probably down to the particular alloy used for the wheel pickup surfaces. Such Lima locos as I’ve had back in the day were very poor performers in this respect. Don’t use abrasive track cleaners as they will roughen the railhead surface, making it more susceptible to picking up dirt in the first place.

My decision is to build a new SE Finecast chassis for this loco, which will have new pickups and a new motor.

Bogies arrived, painted, and wheels fitted; Americans attached to Siphon H which looks very good with them and runs nicely, and fishbellies with footboards cut off to the A31, which also runs well. Photo of the Siphon when I've renumbered it, but I'm not doing any more tonight! A friend has presented me with some dark green Woodland Scenics foliage, or foilage as Marge Simpson calls it, so this will be appearing in various crooks and nannies soon, and the splitting home has been relocated closer to the loop turnout on the station side of the bridge, with a Bachmann Scenecraft banner repeater assisting the drivers who now can't sight it properly if they're too close to the bridge. I've also ordered some Parkside Dundas kits from Rails/Sheffield, a couple of opens (BR and GW 5 plankers) to help redress the dominance of vans for my general merchandise traffic and a 21ton BR all steel mineral, which will release a coal wagon for general duties.

Bogies on and the coach has been road tested successfully; like the E116 it will not negotiate no.3 curves but doesn't have to. I'd been concerned about propelling such a heavy coach with a Hornby intemediate trailer but the thing runs fine and smooth and the now very heavy train is no problem for the 4575 in charge of it.

Important I think to remember that the country had just gone through a war that had not only left it broke and unable to fund major investment in diesel or electric power but had emphasised that we were vulnerable to a U-boat blockade of imports. We had effectively no native oil resources that we were yet aware of, and there was a lot of political and economic sense in retaining coal as a major source of power, or at least there was in 1951 when the Britannias were produced. This had changed radically by 1955 when the Modernisation Plan was published. I'd guess ECML diesel electrics to have followed the practice established by the Ivatt twins, twin power units of about 1,600hp each that could do 8P or 9F work, or 5MT work as single units. Stylistically, something like the Sheffield scheme EM1/EM2 look. Fun speculation.

The rebuild TVR railmotor auto trailers would need scratch building; they were quite a distinctive looking pair. Hauled by a rebuilt 'A', they could not be used in auto mode and would have had to have been run around by the loco for each journey in each direction. Railcar 18 was the streamlined type produced by Dapol, and may have been temporary on the Cowbridge branch in January 1948, though several photos show it there at different times, with various engine or gearbox cover panels missing; it was a 'spare' to cover several workings in what was then the Newport Division. The regular Cowbridge loco for most of the branch's final years was 1421. I doubt if two more seminally different branches than Cowbridge and Penygraig were ever worked by the same depot from the same main line junction. Cowbridge was the very epitome of rural bucolic, set in rolling agricultural country. Even then it was probably the wealthiest town in Wales. Penygraig was a rough and tumble valleys outpost, with the line continuing to Clydach Vale colliery and hugging a precipitous mountain slope, through an industry-blasted landscape where all the trees had disappeared years ago for pit props and ragged sheep rooted among spoil heaps; it was a declining and deprived community that despite having seen better (and worse) days had never been wealthy. It was also several hundred feet above sea level and notably bleak in an area where bleakness was the default... Pit props are important. It is the nature of mining that the workings are extended continually by the action of winning coal, as long as the pit is making money, and in an areas of faulted sedimentary rocks in layered strata the roof had to be held up. Wooden pit props were the traditional method, though steel ones had been developed by the 1950s and were in use at some pits. Opinion among miners was divided; a wooden prop would creak and let you know if something bad was about to happen, and you had a few seconds to try to get out, whereas the steel ones, although reckoned to be stronger, gave up without warning. Some men appreciated the warning, and some would have preferred not to know; if the roof came down on you it was pretty instantaneous, but if you were trapped behind a fall, your end could be long and agonising. Many pits used wooden props for various reasons well into the 80s, and there was a huge depot for them at Marshfield on the SWML between Newport and Cardiff. They were pine or elm, imported pre cut to a standard 6' length which was trimmed on site to fit the location in the mining gallery, from Canada, Scandinavia, France (the forests in the Bordeaux region), Belgium, (the Ardennes), Portugal and, even at the height of the cold war, Russia. They were stored to mature at Marshfield, and tripped out to the collieries in 5 plank or steel opens. The depot was destroyed by a huge fire in the 80s. There was another one at Lletty Brongu near Bridgend which I know less about. If your layout feeds a coal mine, and this is South Wales after all, an occasional wagon of props can be delivered to it. These can be modelled from various sources; I found my attempts using cocktail or kebab sticks always looked a bit thin and flimsy compared to photos and my memory of them, and was lucky to find some preformed resin ones at last year's Bristol show in an 'everything £1' box on a trade stand, and now wish i'd bought more than the one! I think it was designed as a timber load for a H0 continental wagon or modern image 00, but a bit of cutting produced this... Passenger workings apart from the autos mentioned were the main line stoppers, and included the daily Porthcawl-Cardiff commuter train. Motive power for this was habitually 3100, a large prairie with smaller driving wheels and a bigger boiler than the one Hornby and Dapol are about to produce. The other stopping trains would have been Cardiff-Swansea stoppers, hauled by 43xx moguls or possibly a Grange or 2251 in 1952. The expresses, sweeping majestically through at 70 or so, would have been behind Castles, 10xx Counties or maybe a surviving Canton or Landore Star, or one of Canton's new Britannias. The named trains, Red Dragon and Pembroke Coast Express, would have had new Hawksworth stock in BR crimson and cream, the others a mix of Colletts in BR crimson/cream with some chocolate and cream GW/early BR transition survivors. Restaurant Cars were Hawkworth-refurbished Colletts, and Comet do them. If you are going to include the main line, then as well as a good amount of mineral traffic and general merchandise goods, you will need to represent the daily milk and fish workings from West Wales, parcels workings, steel traffic, and trains of oil tankers from the refineries and tank farms down line at Milford Haven/Pembroke Dock and Llandarcy near Neath. Locos are everything GW except Kings and 47xx, plus the new Brits. The other BR standards did not come on the scene in any quantity by 1952, but you might include a Standard 5MT. Of course, as soon as you are away from the main line, none of this is necessary. but if you actually intend to model Llantrisant station, a sizeable project, it will be.