The Johnster

Pengam Bridge? My usual spotting haunt a decade earlier! For the mid 70s almost entirely plain blue with full yellow ends, with some retaining their pre-TOPS numbers. Dmus in blue/grey with fye, possibly some plain blue remaining. A good variety of classes; 08, occasional 20, 25, 31, Hymek until 1975, 37, occasional 42 & 43 from Bristol direction, 45, 46, 47, 52. Dmus; 101, occasional 117 from Bristol, 119, 120. Apart from the last two all are readily available as RTR models. Sorry to hear about your tremor, mate. I live in Roath and would be happy to undertake any renumbering work for you, just PM me.

Excellent choice, well done Dapol, a sure-fire winner so long as the mech is reliable and gives good slow-running. I am a bit disappointed, because neither class was a feature of the Tondu Valleys in my layout’s timeframe, perhaps surprising since this looks on the face of it to be natural auto territory, but actually wasn’t until 1953. Tomparryharry, with his Llantrisant leanings, is going to be delighted! It does play in my direction to some extent, as the more interest in pre-grouping GW is generated by the 517, the better chance that someone will turn up with the 1854 or 2721 half-cab pannier I’ve been banging on about for years…

Might I suggest a range of 1/76 road vehicles, not necessarily die-cast, to a better standard than the traditional Oxford/Classix/Base &c fare we are used to, and possibly in a simple plastic kit form (definitely not cast whitemetal). What I am looking for is something that could be assembled with doors or windows ajar or open, and the ability to put drivers, passengers, and things on seats inside. Decent headlamps and tail lights/indicators as opposed to silver or red/yellow paint would be an improvement as well, as would steerable front wheels. Proper glazed destination panels on buses as well, please. A model 100E Ford Popular is a good thing on a 1950s layout, but one parked outside a Post Office with the door left open while the driver pops inside to buy stamps or fags tells a story and brings a cameo to life, as does a lorry with an open door outside an office or a van with the back doors open while it is being loaded or unloaded. These could sell well outside the model railway customer base of course.

Story about my chum Steffan, who learned Welsh in evening classes run in Cardiff by Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the Welsh Language Society. He was picking it up quite well (he is fluent now), and decided to visit the National Eisteddfod, which that year was in Caernarfon, to try out his newly-learned skills. As the Eisteddfod is in summer, and Caernarfon is prime tourist territory, there was no accommodation to be had in the town and he managed to find some in a pub in Bangor. Now, for those of you not familiar with this area, it is very Welsh-speaking. Now, the other bit of background I must impart is that, on the Eisteddfod Maes, where only Welsh is spoken, those learning the language wear 'D' (for dwsgyr, learner) badges, and natural speakers therefore know to take time and explain things to them. I've been to the National, as a monoglot English speaker, and managed perfectly well with the limited vocabulary I have; the atmosphere is generally inclusive and welcoming. Anyway, Steffan had had a day on the Maes and gone 'home' to the pub in Bangor in the evening, and was propping up the bar (a thing that comes very naturally to Steffan, when a local noticed his 'D' badge and began to speak to him. But all he could hear was gobbledegook; the local argot is performed at a breakneck pace in either language! So he asked the guy, in the best Welsh he could muster, if he'd mind slowing down a bit so he could follow what he was saying. The guy gave him a very strange look, and spake, slowly with a pause between each word, as if he was speaking to a child or an idiot, thusly; 'I, was, speaking, to, you, in, English!!!'. You can't make this stuff up!

Cwmdimbath is a short branch, and one of the Tondu area branchlines. This means that there is every reason to assume that any loco shedded at Tondu could have appeared there, as well as any of the passenger stock; it would not have been a self-contained operation, and it was part of a network. Running to time was important here because late running on any one of the branches north of Tondu, all single line except for the last half-mile in from Brynmenyn, would affect traffic on all the other branches for the rest of the day. It may have been one of the most intensely worked single-track networks in, well, the world, operating to very close to full capacity most of the day. There were spare paths on the branches, but they couldn't necessarily be slotted in at the junctions. Locos can be swapped around a bit. I have worked out loco diagrams, seven of them in total, and once allox to a diagram a loco stays on it for it's working day. I also keep a count of the days, as they need to be out of service for 2 working days every 10 working days for boiler washouts. One of these days can a Sunday, when nothing ran on the network. I realise that it is unusual for a railway modeller to have more engines than are needed to run the layout, but that's how we roll at Cwmdimbath. In fact there is a shortage of auto-fitted locos, which seems to be correct as the shed had the exact number, 5, of 4575s needed to run it's daily rota at any given time, with no spare to cover washouts or works visits. Photos of Abergwynfi show that auto stock hauled by non-autos that ran around it were not at all uncommon, and such trains are allowed for at Cwmdimbath. The 7 diagrams are covered by 11 locos, and this does not prevent me from wanting more... A feature of the Tondu Valleys passenger working was the operation at Bridgend, where they connected with the SWML. The island loop platform 3 was used, to the north of the up main line, and the trains would arrive from each Valley in sequence and would be called on into the already occupied platform. Then the loco of the first train would run around via the down main and couple to the rear of the last train in, the other locos coupling to the stock ahead of it and leaving in sequence for different destinations with different stock. Abergwnfi was considered the most important connection as it served the largest town, Maesteg, so that train was the last in and first out with a different engine. This is one of the features that makes modelling the area so attractive, and an influence on my choice of it. The termini would therefore see a variety of locos and stock in different combinations throughout the working day. Tondu had a good biodiversity for a nominally average run-of-the-mill Valleys shed as well; the usual panniers and 56xx, plus 42xx, 45xx, 4575s, 5101, 44xx at one time, 64xx later, 94xx, and 3100, a Collett 1938 large prairie rebuilt from a 3150 for the Porthcawl-Cardiff 'Residential' commuter train. This was worked in pre-war days by Bulldogs. 3100 was photographed at Abergwynfi, so is known to have penetrated the mountain fastnesses on occasion; good enough for me and there is a slow ongoing project to build it. I can't find any evidence of 44xx except on the Porthcawl branch, which had vicious curvature, but the upcoming Rapido is going to be very hard to resist; it would look perfect on the pickup! There's also a Rule 1 BR 3MT prairie, 82001, on loan from Barry who got it new from Swindon in 1951 but are in no rush to have it back (these engines were not liked at Barry, who preferred 5101s and their rebuilt TVR A class...). Plenty variety, all justifiable and mostly prototypical, at least plausible.

There are some, but not many. There are very many modellers who can open boxes of better locos, carriages, track, etc. nowadays, and some of us can improve them with extra details, weathering, passengers/loco crew, &c, and even build Comet/High Level &c chassis kits.

Whilst I enjoyed building Cwmdimbath, and occasionally enjoy altering it a bit, the purpose of it in my mind is to provide a railway service to the colliery, businesses, and community of the village. It is a real place, only small and in the 1950s. Trains run as far as is practicable to the 1955 Rule Book, and to a working timetable & sequence based on (but not slavishly following) the actual 1960 WTT for the Abergwynfi Branch two valleys over. On real 'traditional' railways, the traincrews liked to shunt and make movements in an established sequence even beyond the WTT, as it was proven to be the best way of going about the job and saved time in conferring with everybody involved, unless circumstances demanded that things proceeded 'off plan' The timetable is to real time and the trains move at realistic speeds, and time is allowed for shunters on the ground to move about and 'catch up'. It is governed by a battery analogue clock with an on/off switch, and the rule is that no movement takes place when the clock is switched off. If there is dead time between trains and no shunting to do at the colliery, it can be advanced, but any movement must be in real time. This is a huge part of my 'real but small and in the 1950s' philosophy, giving the movements a clear purpose and replicating the operation of real railways to a timetable; 'Once I built a railroad/made it run/made it race against time'. On real railways, the basic principle is that everybody wants to get on with the job so that they can have the next cup of tea (the fuel on which railways really run)/go home/up the pub, so there tend to be periods of apparently nothing happening (there is a seething mess of stuff going on out of sight of course) interspersed by intense action. Not so intense that you kill someone, though. Some movements, such as propelling wagons into private sidings where men not familiar with the niceties of railway work may be working on other wagons, take place under caution and slowly, otherwise the wagons can be banged about a bit. Colliery clearances and delivery of empties revolves around a continual supply of empties that the colliery has no room to store on site, as if the supply runs out and coal cannot be chuted into wagon, the whole thing comes to a stop, and the men underground start complaining about their bonuses. General merchandise on the pickup has to be positioned in the goods yard and private sidings, and mileage traffic may not be collected by the customer, who will be charged demurrage while the wagon/van is in everybody's way but that is still cheaper than paying to store the stuff himself, a common problem on the pre-Beeching railway where mileage rates were set by government. All part and parcel of the challenge of making it 'race against time'.

Pretty much.

'Come home to a real fire, buy a cottage in Wales'... '🎵 In your holiday home In your holiday home We'll burn all your tables we'll burn all your chairs we'll burn all your children that's sleeping upstairs'.🎶 Nasty little period, Meibion Glyndwr, glad it seems to have subsided a bit. By far the biggest portion of new adult Welsh language learners are English incomers, and things have moved on a bit since 1282.

Second homes are a major political issue in Wales, and cause all sorts of problems as well as the nationalist/language issue, but apart from that issue the same can be said of areas in England such as the Peak and Lake Districts, and the North Norfolk coast. I am always a little surprised that people in these areas seem to protest less in general than us Welsh do at the imposition and the destruction of village life caused.

To the extent that, one night in 1973, working one of my link jobs, the 03.15 Cardiff (Long Dyke)-Carlisle Kingmoor, 7M49, we were told booking on that there was no loco for us on the shed and that Hereford men had earlier left one on the train at Long Dyke for us, shut down and handbrake on. Minibus ride out to Long Dyke, driver & 2man climb aboard loco, and I carry on with prepping the train and the van. Loco is a 40, Canton men don't sign 40s, but as you say the cab is identical inside as well as out to a 37. But drivers and especially 2men were still sensitive to manning issues in the early 70s in the wake of the 1969 single manning agreement, and if I was to mention this, there was a good chance that Traffic would be told to keep its nose out of Loco Dept, business, diplomacy would be needed... Van & train prepped, and the 40 started up, the familiar engine note must have alerted them, surely. Train is booked for a 47, but I've checked the load tables and we are within the load and brake force for a 40, so I hand the load slip to the driver, and comment that the loco has a water pickup scoop (a batch of 40s delivered to the LMR for WCML non-stop Euston-Glasgow trains had these). He looks at me as if I'd just landed in his cab from Mars, then the 2man pipes up 'he's right, there's the gauge to go with it'. It was at this point that the Loco Dept. realised that it wasn't driving a 37. 'Ferk it', says the driver, 'it's exactly the same as a 37, we'll go with it'. Fair enough, none of my business, and off we went to Hereford with me enjoying that lovely whistle all the way, without incident. In practice there wasn't much difference between the classes, the extra 37tons of the 40 cancelling out the extra 250hp. The handbrake worked properly on a 37, though...

Pristine anything on the railway lasted less than the first trip, especially when it was raining, and it was imperative that cattle vans where hosed out and disinfected after use, so occupant weathering was kept to a minimum, not that you wanted to be downwind on a hot day, but they were not allowed to get dirty. Cattle were expensive and their health needed looking after. In pre-WW1 days the vans were disinfected with lime, which stained the lower parts white, very prominent in period photos, but the practice was stopped because the lime irritated the beasts’ feet. A normal wash of general dirt should suffice for weathering, with perhaps some fibres teased out of string protruding from the drainage slats in the lower portions of the sides and ends representing straw, especially if there are occupants.

Well, he wouldn’t be much of a landlord if he didn’t have Tennants, would he?

Definitely an air of Triffid about it, the sort of thing I called 'man-eating cactaboogles' in my childhood!

My all-time favourite diesel was the Hymek, and I was lucky enough to be able to work on them at Canton in the early 70s. The perfect combination of ride, quiet cab, cosiness, visibility, and they looked superb in the original two-tone green 'Deltic' livery with white window surrounds. Pocket rockets, they were initially used at Canton to replace Kings on top-link passenger jobs, and managed albeit with savage thrashing, and it is a shame that most enthusiasts never got to see (and hear), as I did, them lifting 900 tons of loaded presflos and vanfits up the slope out of Aberthaw Cement works, Maybach screaming and sanders blasting; awesome! Just as Beyer-Peacock went under, an order for a further 100 of these locos was in progress, presumably to be the D7101-D7200 series. These were to be lower geared for a top speed of 70mph and were intended to replace steam in the South Wales Valleys, work eventually done by 37s drafted in when the order collapsed, effectivly the death-blow to Swindon's hydraulic aspirations. My observations at Aberthaw suggest that they'd have been as capable as the 37s on Valleys work despite the loss of two powered axles, and they were at least a loaded hopper better on paper. A further 100 would probably have been needed to satisfy the traffic demands in South Wales in 1963, but the coal traffic was diminishing by 1964 and those would almost certainly have been cancelled. They might even have been better in some situations than the 37s. which cut out readily when overloaded (as did all EE locos except the 08s) and didn't give the driver the option of caning it a bit when he was up against it! The same weight and about the same size as a 25, but the similarity ends there. There replacement at Canton with 25s on passenger jobs was ill-advised, but there was nothing else available; their freight work was taken on by 37s. I never understood the WR's reluctance to use 37s on passenger work; they did eventually but that was well into the 80s with eth stock. The ER, NER, and ScR used them very effectively in this way and found them satisfactory, but the WR mindset was that they were freight engines, perhaps because the initial allocations were specifcally for Valleys work to replace steam. I liked the 37s, and the experience of riding on them double-heading the 1,600ton trailing Waterston-Albion bogie tanks up Stormy or Llanvihangel was a privilege, to be savoured window open and head hanging out listening to the NOYZE!!! Then there were the triple-headed Port Talbot-Llanwern iron ore tipplers, 27 of them @ 100tons a go + 315tons of locos, 9mph blowing 3 holes in the sky at the summit of Stormy Down from a standing start at Margam Moors. You could sit in the beer garden of the Angel in Mawdlam village overlooking Water Street Jc. on a summer evening and savour it, the heaviest freight train in the country at the time and the heaviest diesel-hauled working in Europe, and against that steelworks & mountain backdrop they looked perfect. Steelworks pollution makes for excellent sunsets...

And yet there is an entire magazine industry, profitable at that, predicated on what these wastes of skin and other similar oxygen-hoggers do.

Problem is that lorry drivers buy satnavs in motorway services, not taking account of the fact that they are designed for general use, not HGV. Those big motorhomes are vulnerable to this as well. The satnav knows how to get there, but not necessarily that it’s in a 15’ high vehicle. Of course, satnavs for commercial vehicles are available, but expensive and only available to commercial customers. Cardiff buses had them a few years ago, set to sound a warning when the bus was within a set distance of a low bridge. Sounds like a good idea, but the warnings were going off virtually continuously in the city centre as they were almost continuously with range of such a bridge, even though the bridge was not on the bus’s route…

And probably the worst for reliability because of the electronic complications, a poor clapped out bargain for the WR as replacements for Westerns. 110mph btw, in order to deliver timetable improvements on the WCML when the Weaver Jc.-Motherwell electrification was put back in 1966, but they had to be double-headed and thrashed to deliver it. They could go a bit, though, I’ll give you that; I once timed one at a sustained 114mph between Cholsey & Moulsford and Tilehurst, fastest I ever went in a mk1…

The 31s were lovely things to work aboard; rode like a Pullman, roomy warm draughtproof cab despite the gangway doors (which were starting to be sealed up when I worked on the railway) with nice armchairs to sit on, good all round view, good soundproofing, and a good cooker. But they seemed a lot of engine for not much pull, same weight as a Western and as big as a 47, and they always seemed to be breaking down or running out of fuel when I worked on them, which was mostly bad luck. A little more powerful than a 25, but the size and weight ate into the difference; feeble. But they were adaptable, able to take on ETH and airco, better when they were re-engined, and lasted a long time in service. You’d have to say they were a success by the standards of the 1955 Modernisation Plan locos, not that the bar was particularly high!

An interesting viewpoint, and very much a trainspotters’ one IMHO. They were common, 509 in service in the 70s, and perhaps looked a bit dull; they were - are - a well proportioned and neat design and not unattractive in the original two-tone green livery, at least when it was clean (again, IMHO). But they didn’t have the brutal presence of a Deltic or the elan of a Western. But some the other classes you mention were also pretty ubiquitous; over 300 37s and nearly 500 Rats if you include the 24s and the 25s as all Rats. There were 200 40s and nearly 200 Peaks (44/5/6, three classes that looked more or less identical). Come to that there were well over 200 20s. Perhaps the outline of the 37s, 40s, and the Peaks, with noses, was more inspiring; by the 70s noses were out of fashion and ‘classic’ or perhaps ‘retro’. The 40s and 20s made interesting noises, and the 37s growled nicely. The Rats rattled, failed to pull the skin off the driver’s milk, were spectacularly uninspiring lookers, and utterly horrible to work on; we used to reckon the 56 miles between Cardiff and Gloucester with the 00.35 Peterborough parcels, 4E11, at an attempted 90 mph would shorten your spine by at least an inch. Which leaves the 50s, and the popularity of these amongst spotters has always baffled me. A class of 50 long-distance express engines used specifically on the WCML initially and later on specific routes further southwest becomes a very common sight on those routes, and one would have thought they were only really excitement-generators to spotters from outside their area. They were probably the dullest example of loco styling in their era, like a 47 (not the most inspired looker) but even boxier and plainer, boredom personified. I hated them for finally killing steam in 1968 and then my beloved Westerns, but in general the spotters went nuts over them. My opinion of 47s was that they deserved more respect than they ever got from the numbertakers; once they were made to run reliably by derating the engines by 100horses, they were the best all-round mixed traffic general purpose locomotive ever devised for use on Britain’s railways. The cabs were draughty and the ride was horrible, too soft and rolling, but they could pull anything that was coupled to them, and pull it to time; 95mph passenger, long-distance Motorail (with double fuel tanks), Freightliners, TEAs, block coal trains, MGRs. They could be dual-braked, fitted with ETH, and they were probably signed for traction knowledge at most depots throughout the country, so they were pretty much operable anywhere at a moment’s notice, a true workhorse, Control’s favourites. And the horns sounded nice.

The original M4 Severn Bridge was a disaster for South Wales. It enabled the development of industry and warehouse/distribution hubs in the North Bristol area, later developed into Cribb's Causeway, and the imported car distribution network based on Portbury Docks, which were easily able to serve supermarkets and industries in South Wales, to the detriment of jobs in South Waies. It was the death of car imports and exports from Cardiff and Newport. It also promoted the use of Bristol Airport at Lulsgate for South Walians at the expense of Cardiff (Rhoose). Both airports are very badly situated and poorly served by road and public transport, the 'wrong' side of the cities they are named for, and for some years there was talk of a 'Severnside International' airport to replace both of them and tap into traffic from the Midlands as well. An airport built out over the esturary close to the bridges and Severn Tunnel would be very stategically placed at the crossroads of both motorways (Almondsbury) and railways (Bristol Parkway), but it never happened.

Because no stock anywhere* had headlamps in the 70s until the arrival of the HST, which only had both headlamps lit when running at over 100mph. *Exceptions; the 'Heart of Wales' line and possibly Glasgow-Fort William and the Far North line, which had stretches of unfenced railway running across open country. The headlamps for the Central Wales line, fitted to some class 120 powertwin dmus and 37s, were Lucas car rallying spotlights, purchased by a Landore fitter from a local Lucas stockist with money from the shed's petty cash. I was once on one of the powertwins working the 23.05 Bristol TM-Cardiff, one of my link jobs, and the driver switched the light on in the Severn Tunnel, an illuminating experience on several levels when the normal lighting gave you a vague impression of half-a-dozen sleepers or so in front of the cab. The Lucas was a very powerful lamp, and showed the interior of the tunnel in detail not many people have ever seen I suspect. And the more nervous ones would not want to; the amount of water cascading in from the river was quite alarming!!! That's right, trains on the ECML and WCML were running at booked speeds of 110mph at night without their drivers being able to see more than a few yards ahead. I did it at 90mph myself on the Peterborough Parcels. One had complete faith that the line ahead was clear, because it was fenced and because the signals told you so, backed up by the AWS. Most of us would have argued against hi-intensity headlamps on trains on the grounds that nobody needed to see where they were going and that it was more than likely to dazzle oncoming drivers and others about the railway. Working at night depended to a considerable extent on 'getting your night vison in', and modern generations used to urban life would be surprised at how much can be discerned on even the darkest nights so long as there is no fog or mist.

I would think that the 'rail blue, late steam' concept is not impossible as an early to mid 70s scenario, based on the idea that the actual demise of service steam was driven by political and image considerations within BR to a certain extent, and there seems little doubt that it was. I would imagine it happening in two ways, firstly the retention of some express steam engines (Britannias being the obvious choice) as reserve motive power to cover failures or booked maintenance of OHLE on the WCML (ISTR the Norwegians did this on the Kiruna-Narvik line), and the retention of double-chimneyed 9Fs as general reserve motive power at main depots everywhere. The locos are redacted by the 70s and cost little to keep in service. Air braking would have to be provided, and 4-character headcode boxes fitted, contained between the smoke deflectors at the front, where they can provide a platform for accessing the smokebox, and split on the tenders. The withdrawal of water troughs might be a case for rebuilding the tenders on 6-wheel bogies and extending the lengths by cut'n'shutting. Livery, 1966 unlined rail blue, coach chassis brown for smokebox and below running plates, arrows of indecision on tender sides, cabside and smokebox numbers in standard 1966 font, and yellow hi-viz buffer beams. Running numbers to be retained post-TOPS as for preserved locos, ships, and hotels... Locos to be equipped with electric lighting and backlighing for headcode panels and all bearings to be replaced by roller-bearings. I would expect the Britannias to be limited to 90mph, and the 9Fs to 75mph, adequate for 1970s work. A number of ETHELs would need to be provided to work with the Britannias. There may also be a case for using retained steam on goods sevices that run only occasionally, say weekly. This means not having to find a loco from your diesel or electric fleet, which you should have a little difficulty with if you have the correctly efficient level of stock, and with the steam engine available at any time the customer requires on 8-hour firing-up-from-cold notice, you can provide a much more flexible service.

I'd say your options are limited if you want a domino 47 with a rake of unfitted minerals, but there are other options. 47s in the 70s were frequently used on class 7 and class 8 trains with fitted heads but with unfitted rear portions consisting mostly or completely of such wagons, and a brake van at the rear, and some of these were block coal trains. So, you can justifyably use your domino 47 with unfitted 16ton minerals, so long as you don't couple unfitted wagons to the loco; you need a fitted head. It is possibly to run a train as class 8 without a fitted head if it is light enough and the loco on its own can provide sufficient brake force (58tons for a 47) for the load, so long as the instanter couplings are all in the shortened position, but this would be unusual and modelling the unusual is never good practice. I do not recall any completely unfitted class 9 trains in South Wales in the 70s hauled by 47s; the standard horse for these was a 37, though the Newport Docks-Llanwern unfitted iron ore hoppers were worked by double-headed 25s and occasionally by 1200 Falcon. All the class 9 work was local in nature and did not venture beyond Cardiff Area, or very far within it. Class 8 block trains were mostly composed of 16ton minerals, but bogie bolster steel rod or bar traffic between South Wales and the Midlands via Gloucester was quite common, hauled by 47s or 45/6s, and some coal and coke hopper traffic was of this sort as well. The South Wales-Acton coal trains were class 8 and hauled by 47s or Westerns.

Yeah, but a series of photos that do not show the loco outside the box and from other angles shouts 'chiseller getting rid of faulty item' pretty loud to my ears! I'd be very wary of this item.