C126

Thank you all for your kind words. It is hardly a work worthy of the Model Railway Journal, but I was so surprised I managed to complete the modification without gougeing lumps out of the paint-work - let alone expecting the wagon to explode into a thousand shards of plastic - I had to share my excitement.

I wondered briefly why more model wagons are not made with removable or opening doors like the Hornby VIX, but then realised it would increase costs, and most modellers want to see their wagons moving in a train.  Would be a nice option though on the more complicated wagons, to have doors that clip on before running them...

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I should perhaps stress that the style of dress shown in the photo above would not be worn on the platform of a Welsh country station in 1908, let alone 1895. The intention was to illustrate Edwardian jadies! For full details, see here. 

I will give this my full attention when I have a bottle of lavender water nearby...

3 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

 

I hesitate to comment on Mikkel's thread about people, but I will.  They do kook good,  A word of advice, it is better to start with the faces and then work outwards as it is easier not to get paint on where you do not want it.  I am not sure the figures at the back are more Edwardian, they just do not have such a big crinoline.  I saw aphotograph recently of a lady, a titled lady, from the 1860s who had a very long dress that obviously was made to go over a crinoline, but she was not wearing it.  What is surprising is that she had her photograph taken like that.  I like it that you have a figure of yourself.  I have a couple, and of my wife, but neither look like me.

 

Mikkel has written in this blog an in his thread on how he paints his superb figures.  My technique is to use a large magnifying glass with built in lamp, then  putting both elbows on the table I hold the figure in one hand, the brush in the other and I touch at least my little fingers together.  This way if I shake, both hands shake together.

 

Keep up the good work.  You will just have to make a diorama, or have them in a corner looking lost.

Dear Chris, Thank you for your kind words and much-appreciated advice.  Figure-painting is something I have put off, but these were just too good to resist.  I assumed one did the 'big colours' first, and finished with the detail (the smaller the area the less likely one was to slip).  I have noticed both how my eye-sight would benefit from an illuminated magnifier and my hands from being steadier now I am past the half-century.

Another concern is trying to keep the layer of paint thin enough to maintain the exquisite detail.  I was sorry to see the primer 'reduced' some facial expressions.  Do people prefer slightly thinned enamels rather than acrylics?  Another aspect to explore...  Many thanks again.  Neil.

Unable to resist the allure of a well-dressed lady, I splashed out on Andrew Stadden's figures - who needs boring brick-work to finish a layout when you can feast your eyes on a crinoline or silk topper? - and they are stunning.

These are my favourites at the moment, with the fullest skirts.

The above is the full set, sorted by skirt size, three at the back being more of an Edwardian outline.  And here come the gentlemen, sorted into coat style (frock coat single-breasted, double-breasted, tail-coat, 'sack coat')...

I am the figure top row, 2d from right, to have a cane added.

My photography is hopeless, and adding a coat of primer does not enhance the detail, but as you can see I have started playing around with sample 'slabs' of colour, an acrylic set picked up during the virus confinement at Wilko's.  How you gents can get such precise detail on your figures I know not, but I hope with practice I can get some sort of decent finish.

My partner bought me this for my birthday:

... which goes into even more detail than the 'joint volume' I cited earlier.  If anyone has any queries they think might be answered by this book, please do not hesitate to ask me to check.

Quite where I am to put these figures when finished, on a 1970's B.R. (S.R.) Goods Yard, I have no idea.  But they were too good to resist when I had a few quid in my pocket.  Hope this is of interest.  Best wishes to you all.

'Take 2'.

The 'twilight' look above has been nagging, so I offer a second attempt.  If nothing else, it proves I should stop procrastinating, and get on with doing more scenery!

I still need to work on focussing, but I think it looks better.  Got distracted with another shot, below, as well.

Really must start those brick arches...

Looking at my homage on a monitor at work (in my lunch hour!), it looks rather darker than at home.  Perhaps it is dusk.  Sorry about this.  Will try another photo-shoot when I have time to un-box all the wagon-load stock again.

58 minutes ago, hmrspaul said:

Ferry vans are very under represented on model railways. They may have moved in bloc from the docks but then dispersed far and wide. By the 1980s they could be parked in all sorts of places for individuals to come along and unload. I've seen vans stuffed with wine grapes, to make just that by the Italian residents of Luton and Bedford for example, and cane furniture in Guildford. But Guildford also handled fruit and veg https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/ferryitalianinterfrigo/e3af3e894    https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/ferryvtgvan/e37ce6d52

Guildford was an interesting, and accessible, yard. I'm surprised by this photo as it doesn't show many Special wagons as the engineers tended to use it as somewhere to park their large and very diverse fleet just a few show up in this selection (as does the odd Australian photo!) https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/?q=guildford

 

Paul

One reason why I hold this photograph so dear is that I had no idea Guildford Yard stayed open so long.  To my shame I was quite ignorant of it till I bought Hymans's book.  Thanks for the links, Paul.  I would dearly love models of those two ferry-vans you illustrate.  I remember the huge 'VTG's at Crawley New Yard as a child when we whizzed past 'up to Town', and struggled to start scrap-building a model of the Interfrigo IWA to fix to a Hornby VIX chassis as a crude representation.  Then I realised the roof would be a 'challenge'...  Which manufacturer must we bribe for models of these?!?  Like the 'Night Ferry', international wagons have such a romantic aura about them.

Thanks to you all for all your contributions, and best wishes.  Really must get back to the ironing now, or my colleagues will send me to Coventry for daring to appear in an un-ironed shirt.

14 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

I wonder what the ferry-van in front of the shed is? It seems to be one of the older designs.

 

It looks like a 2-door (from the two 'strips' along the cantrail) but wooden design.  I thought they usually moved 'en bloc', so it is good to see one alone in a yard in traffic.

Dear Mr Kazmierczak, Thank you for your kind comments and continued interest.  You raise some apposite points, of which I have only now started to experience the results.

The idea was for me to reach into the hidden yard 'head shunt' under the viaduct station to feed in wagons from a side table, and even have a parallel track beside it (not connected) to store a second train on.  Sadly, the house's waste down-pipe, against which the layout end abuts, makes this less accessable than hoped, and I am considering constructing a couple of four-foot 'cassettes' to store on a rack underneath.  Fearful of my lack of wood-working abilities and their ungainly nature, instead I might just store the wagons separately, and take longer to assemble a new train.

The lack of the run-round loop gives me an excuse to have a little shunter ('03'/'04'/'08'/'09') resident to 'flutter around' and assemble the wagons daily for the departure road: the fun bit I hope.  Only when the layout was built, did I realise it would need two shunters, plus the train loco, to extract the wagons: whoops!  Invoking more license, I will pretend there is a short (the shunter plus four wagons) run-round loop under the viaduct.  The 'Hand of God' will be swapping the loco between train ends.  I can just reach inelegantly into the viaduct with a card strip to uncouple the propelling loco.

Your suggestion of a run-round loop on the two 'forward' sidings on the left is good.  However, the plan was to have one of these occupied with a train ready for departure, and the nearest one for the 'arrival'.  The resident shunting loco would then nip out from the warehouse siding, and pull off the back of the arriving train, ready-marshalled for the warehouse and minerals siding.  The arriving loco would then shunt its remainder into the right-hand, general merchandise, sidings.  Would the new run-round loop thus be 'blocked'?  Does this sound 'realistic'?  One needs this arrival and departure capacity somewhere, I think.  I will have a ponder after posting this, needing some 'free space' to doodle the consequent operation of the yard.

The layout ends to the left.  The station's 'loop' on the viaduct is a fiction, again requiring the 'Hand of God' to reach over behind the warehouse (currently cardboard boxes of the estimated height) to swap locos to the correct end.  Not only did I make the layout protrude more into the garage than intended (it should really be only 2'2" width), nine-and-a-half feet is the maximum length without gross inconvenience to all.

I hope this answers all your questions.  Thanks again for your interest and advice.  With my best wishes, Neil.

I quite agree; the Shunter hanging off the side of the '73', silhouetted by the dark background, is just one such lovely detail.  I remember as a child watching a similar operation in Hove coal yard, with the Shunter 'riding side-saddle' on the 73's steps, as they propelled the HEAs into the sidings.  As usual, neither my father nor I had a camera with us...

16 hours ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Do you have a plan of the whole layout please?

 

Certainly.  Hope this link works:

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_2020_11/PICT2209.JPG.bb428003901aab64d5a69f25d5320736.JPG

The lower (East Yard) is laid and a start made on the scenery, the upper part on the viaduct - Atherington Victoria station - awaits the re-opening of the shops and more pay-days.  Do say if you have any questions/suggestions.  Best wishes.

I am much obliged for the commendation from one I esteem highly, and thanks for the trap point tip.  I had not thought of this.  Thank you for taking the time to give this your consideration, and so promptly.  Just need the shops to open to get laying the track...  Best wishes.

Thanks as always @Rivercider for your comments and suggestions, not to mention your inspirational photographs over the years.  Having got to grips with Freight Working Time Tables, I have only just discovered the 'hidden world' of trip-workings and Carriage Working Notices.  Sadly there appear to be few available for sale from the usual vendors, so I am not quite sure how these worked, compared to freight trains in the W.T.T. with a 'head-code'.  Indeed, were there any on the Southern, without its own marshalling yard?

Bridgewater is a name I keep coming across in collections of photographs; there are other smaller yards as well whose names I forget as I type, but wonder if more pictures were taken when busy (e.g., Shrewsbury?  Did this have a general yard until late into the Speedlink era?).

I will invoke Rule 1 where necessary, but not, I hope to an excessive extent.  Must stop larking around with the camera and do some more scenery!

I just wished to post a revised map, as the result of the above suggestions and improvements, for completeness's sake.  Hope of interest.

May I just take my hats off to you gents at your abilities to modify your figures.  As one struggling to paint my two 1970's ModelU figures, endlessly touching-up errant spots from previous colours, I have no idea how Mikkel manages to manipulate facial hair as well! 

Sorry I have missed the above postings.  I will try and reset my 'notifications' and return to read the contributions in more detail a.s.a.p.  Best wishes and thanks in haste.

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

My late uncle was in charge of maintenance at Crowborough Camp - he ran his own small building and painting firm for many years, but took employment as a way of ‘easing down’ before retirement, which seems odd now I write it down!

 

I don’t remember any Indian Army there, but I do have a set of photos I took at Uckfield and Crowborough of a troop train, double-headed Cromptons, that would fit nicely into your emerging backstory.

I have not looked into the history of Crowborough Camp, and assume there were no imperial troops stationed there; my colleague and I thought we could 'stretch reality' a little in line with the Indian troops given care at the temporary war hospitals at Brighton Pavilion, etc., and their memorial at the Patcham Chhatri.  Any excuse for a few Bengal Lancers on parade!

Thanks as always for your kind words.  I need to work out a few tales of the shunter and Yard Foreman's cars, but the creative spirit has left me for the day now.  The viaduct level is the next phase of the project, to which I am not looking forward: painting and gluing eight arches to the sides, track laying (which I have yet to buy), and wrestling with brick sheet, let alone trying to stop it all cracking when I lift the assembly off.  I also need to make up a couple of four-foot 'casettes', as access to the feeder track is not as easy as planned.

However, I must keep reminding myself this is a long term  project.  Next is the purchase of figures, and wondering how to make it all look less 'smooth'.  I need some grass and foliage as well.  Best wishes.

Further to comments here and elsewhere, I like the idea of freight traffic being concentrated in this yard to justify its 'optimistic' intensity.  West Yard, on the electrified main line, could have been 'rationalised' into a few Civil Engineer's sidings, as East Yard is nearer the industrial part of town.

A colleague at work made a suggestion I like of there having been an Indian Army regiment or two camped on the Weald over the Great War, and retaining an Indian presence.  Rather like the army camp at Crowborough we used to pass on the 'bus through the Ashdown Forest when visiting Royal Tunbridge Wells (the Bristol VRT grinding up the hill at walking pace!), this gives me an excuse to use the end-loading ramp for the occasional military vehicle, especially the Alvis Scorpion, with some 8x4 Fodens in attendance.  Also, I can have a couple of splendid Indian Cavalry officers visiting father's old barracks with accompanying family.  I will have to take lessons in moulding saarees with modelling clay for Mummiji.

3 hours ago, Rivercider said:

I don't know whether it has been mentioned before, but the Southern Region was one of the first to go fully fitted, in about 1975/76? So after that date all trains would be fully fitted, air or vacuum, so brake vans would only appear on dangerous goods trains (nuclear flask, and sometimes on a Dover Speedlink if there was a tank of something nasty).

Thanks as always for your advice, @Rivercider .  I had a mental note to make sure the Accurascale 21T coal wagons would be pukka, bauxite, MDVs, so not need a brake van (the cause of your concern?).

I noticed after drawing the map above, it would be more 'realistic' to have the other station's line to the west to branch off southwards, so trains could go through the electrified station straight to London (e.g., Horsham - Three Bridges).  Please consider this a 'revision'.

16 hours ago, 5&9Models said:

 

I think you should always have older styles. People could only have up-to-date fashion if they could afford it and the vast majority of them couldn’t. Most clothing was as you say third, fourth even fifth hand, either hand-me-downs or bought from second hand shops. There are some fabulous and inspiring photos of what most folks wore in ‘Dickens’s Victorian London’ by Werner and Williams, ISBN 978-0-09-194373-8 and ‘Images of Lost London’ by Philip Davies, ISBN 978-1-909242-04-3. But these  fascinating books come with a health warning, you will be up ‘til the small hours as once opened they are almost impossible to put down!

I am much obliged to both of you for the 'Grandfather's...' and 'Dickens's...' refs., and heartily recommend both 'Images of Lost London' and 'Panoramas of Lost London' - neither cheap but worth every penny.  Clothes took a long time to die: the toffs passed them on to their staff, who sold them on to clothes merchants, which ended up in Petticoat Lane, and eventually they were worn in the slums of St Giles, or shipped out to the Empire.  Most women of all classes wore both corsets and crinolines (and later bustles instead of the latter).  I am rushing this at work, but can recommend several yards of books of contemporary accounts, and especially the wonderful 'London In The Nineteenth Century' by Jerry White.  There are refs in the latter that will keep you reading for the rest of your life, should you be so distracted.

Sorry, can post more inspiring titles later if of interest.

I am much obliged for your kind hints as to the Victorian figures.  The more I do of the basic scenery on my layout, the more it needs its own figures, but I have not the courage yet to try any modifying.  I have an idea for a 'micro-layout' when the competing OO 19th-C. carriages are released and an attempt with Miliput clay to model ladies in full crinolines.  I had seen Andrew Stadden's range, and have them in mind...

Instead of droning on till your eyes bleed about frock-coats, may I recommend to you the 'bible' of 19th C. costume: Cunnington & Cunnington's 'Handbook of English costume in the nineteenth century', Lond.: Faber & Faber, 1959.  The 2d ed. is a reprint, the 3d has an additonal chapter on children's clothing, if you are interested.  They wrote volumes on the 20th C., as well, which might be if use.  With all good wishes.

Hurrah!  Put that juice rail to good use...  Look forward to seeing a '33' next.

Please forgive my coming to this particular story a decade late - I have just discovered these posts, and am working my way through - but it is a delight to see a railway scene with beautifully dressed ladies and gentlemen.  As one who goes weak-kneed at a crinoline, and flounces round in a frock coat at any opportunity, it is a shame there are not more layouts thus.

As a useless piece of information, I believe the (otherwise wonderful) Charles Frederick Worth of Paris decided the 'full' (round, bell) crinoline passe in 1862, his designs moving towards one with a flatter front and more Edwardian 'bustle' shape.  And do not get me started on the replacement of 'white tie' evening dress with casual 'black' by the Prince of Wales/Edward vii. in the '80's...

Wonderful blogs, and I look forward to reading more as time allows.

Please permit me the honour of presenting my compliments to your mother, and expressing the hope she would have enjoyed travelling in a 2H to Town occasionally, and perhaps home in a nice Mk. I. during the peak hours!  I have not forgotten your and others' kind words of advice over the years, and these are no exception.  Looking forward to purchasing a triple of Accurascale MDVs in the summer for my coal yard very much.  Still got the idea of a canning factory rattling around at the back of my mind; I need to find out what sort of sheet coils to buy, but am having a bit of a crisis with the pointwork in the passenger station to-day, redesigning it so the loco platform can 'release' onto a loop directly, instead of needing part of the other platform as well.  A post to follow soon, I hope!

@Compound2632 Thanks for your kind remarks.  Yes, the B.W. packs are white, although perhaps they could receive a satin varnish to represent the plastic's gloss, and you are quite correct in voicing concern about the 'end loading' in the Opens.  It is the only way I can get them to fill the wagon neatly.  The 'narrowest' way lying flat is to have two packs side-by-side giving a scale 'load width' of 32mm., 2 mm. too wide.  No wonder they went by lorry.  If anyone can shed light on any wagons used 'in reality' for these packs, I would be interested.  Some sort of sheeted 'Timber open'-style wagon, with bolsters?