The Johnster

O dear. Well, I'm sticking to my decision and using the Staffords on the auto trailer and the K's, without footboards but with a tie bar added, on the E116 kit they are designed for, despite the length not being correct for W 207 W; any attempt to shorten the Staffords or the K's by a modeller of my ability is asking for trouble! Some A31s had Collett 7' bogies as Mike says, and I was at one time considering doing this using spare bogies from a withdrawn from service Airfix B set, but was seduced by the idea of having a different type of bogie on the layout and 207's plated toplights, a very 'BR 1950s' appearance that suits the already heavy appearance of these coaches. I could have gone for 204 with American bogies but it was an early withdrawal and had a 'Swindon' door that I bottled at cutting out. Another point against the Collett 7 footers is that they are pale shadows compared to the lovely ones on the new Hornby 57' Suburbans which will show up their shortcomings on the layout.

i'd forgotten them, because they were pretty forgettable, but yes they did. At Canton some idiot though 25s were suitable Hymek replacements, and the 31s, which were a little better than these pointless things at least, took a few more years to appear. 52s occasionally worked this job as well, especially in the Hymeks' latter days when reliability was not what it should have been.

I think Romford axles are a little longer and may be what you are looking for. It is worth upgrading to metal wheels if you can, as they run better and plastic spreads crud all over your layout. An alternative might be to superglue top hat brass bearings into the Dapol bogies which will then be the right 'gauge' for the Hornby wheelsets; you might have to drill some plastic out for them to fit. This will further improve the running.

One of the A40 tunnels is the original railway tunnel; the road is built on a widened alignment of the railway between Usk and Monmouth. The Wye Valley and Ross trackbeds can be walked, though.

Floyd charted with 'See Emily Play' in '67, and were billed as support band for Hendrix in Cardiff's Sophia Gardens Pavilion, now long gone; I was in the melee outside, 15 years old. Carnaby Street was about '64 or 5 I think.

No. The exposure is probably affected by the snow, but 6431 is in fully lined out BR passenger green which looks very dark. The coach is not an auto trailer, but a BR mk1 BSK, and LMR allocated at that! The train is signalled for the Ross road, via Mayhill and Symonds Yat. You up can just make out the difference between the green on the tank and the black of the footplate and splashers. There is a noticeable prevalence of brown overcoats, and it looks like a chilly day despite the bright sunlight!

Google Images has a few apparently showing a railtour with 6431 in the snow at the closure. Don’t get confused with colour images of the station as rebuilt on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway.

But where can you get one at this time of night...

Never heard it referred to as anything other than Aylestone Hill Sidings in the 70s. There was nurses' accommodation behind it, which was nice when they were topping up their tans on the grass in hot weather. The loco for the morning London stabled coupled to the stock overnight, a Hymek in those days followed by the 50s.

'Torpedo zwei, los!' Sorry to disappoint Mrs Spikey, but it wasn't quite like that, just as well given that the casualty rate in the U-boat services was higher than that among Kame Kaze squadrons in early 1945... You couldn't raise or rotate the periscopes, a major drawback for Wolf Pack Kapitan emulants, and there was no magnification or rangefinding; it was just a square piece of hollow trunking with a pair of angled mirrors and a piece of glass at the top to stop the rain coming in. The guard's compartment was walled off from the van space and the periscopes were on the inside of the walls. Also in there was a seat, desk, pigeon hole cabinet, and handbrake wheel, and on the wall opposite the seat the vacuum gauge and brake setter and a food warming cabinet. A visit to any 'heritage' railway running mk1s with a brake vehicle will elucidate, and be a nice day out!

And replacing buffers would have had an effect as well.

Men's hair was pretty dull and predictable underneath the hats as well; short back and sides, basin cut for kids, or no.1 for military and that was yer lot! Beards and moustaches came and went with fashion; beards were out in the 30s and moustaches were associated with lounge lizards and spivs in the 50s except for ex-RAF types with handlebars. Hair was mostly Brylcreemed if you could afford it, greased otherwise. Women were allowed to grow their hair but not to show it off; buns, pony tails, and pigtails on the kids. You are right about the Beatles, Simon; they didn't invent colour until Sergeant Pepper, 1967? The much derided mophead haircut was put on stage with smart suits. Brian Epstein would have been horrified at anything less. Even the Stones started off with suits and relatively short hair, and video of Eric Burdon singing Rising Sun looks like a Newcastle lad out on a Saturday night looking for trouble.

Depends on your exact period and it's best to work from photos if you can. Very roughly, locos; GW unlined green with G W R initials post war up to nationalisation 1948. 1948 Jan-May unlined green with 'BRITISH RAILWAYS' in GW 1920s style 'Egyptian Serif' lettering, May '48 unlined black with 'BRITISH RAILWAYS' in Gill Sans, and BR type smokebox number plates and shedcode plates from Jan 1948 until closure. 1949, unlined black with first BR totem, the 'unicycling lion', then 1958 introduction of the second totem, the 'ferret and dartboard'. From 1958, some locos especially 64xx and 14xx in fully lined out green livery. Coaches, equally roughly; GW chocolate and cream until 1948, then early 1948 ditto but with BR type numbers prefixed by W. May '48 crimson and cream for auto trailers, plain crimson for other non-gangwayed coaches such as B sets, then plain crimson for auto trailers as well from 1950. W suffixes to the numbers after 1951, then plain maroon livery from 1956 (darker than crimson). Lined maroon from 1958 until closure. But of course the liveries were ony introduced on those dates and all took years to find their way on to all the stock, and some liveries, especially the 'transition' 1948 liveries, were never carried by many locos or coaches. GW liveries could be seen commonly into the early '50s, and pre 1958 BR liveries lasted on some stock until closure. There are other variations such as red backed number plates in the early BR period and black austerity wartime liveried GW locos or brown liveried coaches. As you've already been inundated with photo suggestions, I'll limit mine to a couple in John Lewis' GW Auto Trailers book showing diagram A31 trailer W 207 W at Troy, with good detail shown for the awning and valance, footbridge, and brick platform facing.

There was still a traincrew signing on point in the 70s, 37s and slow control 47s for the MGR traffic to Aberthaw CEGB. There was also some imported coal from Barry Docks to Didcot CEGB.

Cowbridge (Glamorgan) is a very good general goods example, and pretty bucolic.

I assume they were used on the Southern, but were in practice a complete waste of time anywhere else as they were never cleaned and you couldn’t see owt through them. I was a guard at Canton from 1970-78, and if I wanted to see a signal from a mk1 coach (IIRC no other types except ex SR had them), I stuck my head out of the window. Mk2s and dmus, even those based on mk1 stock, did not have these periscopes but AFAIK all mk1s with guard’s accommodation did.

Sorry, those jerky mechanical movements don’t cut it for me, and having figures in motionless poses looks far more realistic no matter how long it’s taking to unload that crate. This sort of thing only draws attention to itself.

Another convert to South Wales modelling, one of us, one of us... If you are basing the stock on RTR, you will find it very restrictive in terms of auto trailers, as a good variety featured here. Even at the end of the passenger service, A38s and A44s were being used.

I would say that for most working class and to a large extend middle class people up to the mid 60s, clothes were pretty dowdy and faded and strong colours were not only rare but discouraged because they were not hard wearing. Clothes were a practical item, not an expression of one's personality, and were expected to last years before wearing out. Working class folks would probably have 3 outfits, a Sunday best, 'smart going out', and work clothes, rigorously washed and mended. Everybody wore hats or scarves, even in warm weather. Men's clothing was dark grey, dark blue, dark brown, or black, with maybe a check pattern jacket or flat cap. Shirts were white, and only white. Blazers would be though of as a bit flash. Women wore ¾ length dresses or skirts with blouses, a little less dowdy than men's clothing and a summer dress might be quite flowery and even paired with a straw hat, but never, seriously never, red! If it wasn't summer (summer seems to have been a pre-war phenomenon that rarely happened in the 50s), everybody wore massive ¾ length overcoats and carried umbrellas; hoods are not really apparent until the 1970s except for fishermen wearing sou'westers. Men at work usually wore overalls or bib'n'brace over their ordinary clothes, or dust coats which were either mid blue, grey, or brown. Women's working clothes tended to be blue check smocks. A foreman is often identified by a dust coat and a clip board, and has a pencil behind his ear; supervisors have waistcoats and watches on chains. Teenagers were invented in about 1956 and were a bit more style conscious; the girls sometimes wore 'slacks' and brightly coloured sweaters. Denim was still a work material and not a fashion item. The Beatles invented colour in 1964, but it took a couple of years to catch on. But the 15 years between 1965 and 1980 changed everything in terms of clothing and fashion became something available to all levels of society, not necessarily to any beneficial effect (remember shell suits?).

Well, somebody's gonna mention Wenford Bridge, so I'll get that out of the way. Freight branches come in many forms, but I guess you are talking about the minimalist railway Ian Rice type for modelling purposes. In practice, and quoting from my own vicinity of South Wales, the East Usk and Cardiff Tidal branches are at the top of the tree, fully signalled even if permissively blocked double track and very busy. At the other end of the scale, Ferry Road in Cardiff, a long siding operated one engine in steam occupying it shut in from a ground frame shunting it once a day. Despite this, it was very interesting operationally, serving a variety of private sidings and an oil terminal at Ely Harbour. I would say that the lack of need for passenger facilities is an advantage when you are building a minimum space layout. Curzon Street is of course originally a passenger terminus, that of the London and Birmingham Railway and accessed through a duplicate of the Euston Arch. A rural version of this would be Cowbridge in South Wales, where the original passenger terminus of the branch from Llantrisant was bypassed by the extension of the branch to Aberthaw, and became the goods depot. Something similar happened when the Whitney Branch was extended to Fairford in the Cotswolds. Merthyr Tydfil is another one, the Plymouth Street goods depot was the original Taff Vale passenger terminus and later High Street station that is still used today and was once the joint terminus of the Taff Vale, Rhymney, GW Vale of Neath, LNWR, and Brecon & Merthyr services was the original terminus of the Vale of Neath broad gauge route into the town. This offers scope for modelling very run down passenger stations used as goods depots, with boarded up waiting rooms and abandoned booking halls.

Quite right, officer.

I’ve used ‘Liquid Gravity’ sealed with PVA on several projects without problems, but in view of this warning will no longer recommend it. It is possible that Liquid Gravity does not contain lead which might be why I’ve got away with it, but anyone proposing to emulate my example might benefit from checking the composition of these substances. Thank you for your warning, St Enodoc!

Yes, it’s probably for the best...

Ah. In that case I think it needs a chimney at the bunker end and smaller driving wheels to clear whatever that trunking beneath the cab is (steam pipes?) on the Western Valleys’ bendy bits.

Nah, rigid wheelbase is too long.