BackRoomBoffin

Oh, and Dave is effectively now working as CME / Chief Draughtsman to a railway of roughly the period 1880 to 1900 that that never existed. (Hattonshire Union Railway?)

Judging by this, round-top panelling not unremeniscent of Metropolitan stock, or early Midland pullmans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_horse_in_Britain#/media/File:Anglo-Saxon_Chariot_10th_century.jpg

Unhelpful thought: I am reminded of the 'tea' on DOuglas' Adams Heart Of Gold. But better.

I apologise for the overly-combative use of 'deal with' which I shall remove. But I think my point is there is an untapped group of people who want to model pre-group, want to get something running as a priority, and then turn to kit- and scratch- modelling as an ornament to an existing viable layout. This option has been offered to grouping and BR- era modellers for, well, ever. Just because it's not been done with pre-grouping era stock, because of the much larger variation in pre-grouping era stock, does not mean it should not be done. I'm not saying I WON'T model my own now this option exists. I'm saying this option makes it easier for me to contemplate modelling my own. Some people seem to be assuming that the market for all pre-group rtr models is the sum-total of all people currently modelling pre-group, and therefore this project won't fly. I am saying that may be an error.

As I pointed out, there are stunning railways on the exhibition circuit with region- and railway-specific buildings repainted into other companies' liveries. I just don't see the difference. No one thinks it's 'perfect' or the ultimate goal. Loads of people think it's acceptable and good enough, to get started until eternal tinkering completes the picture with something more accurate.

a) I think there is a new breed of pre-grouping modellers, tempted in by the interest in light railways and -- as I said above -- limited space b) I think it's dismissive to say such people 'couldn't care less' c) I care, but having tried several abortive projects, I have little time d) I want enough affordable and plausible stock to get something running, and then I can ornament that core stock with stuff I have built myself and is prototype-accurate, as I improve. Also, I can research and specialise in things I particularly like, ... like, I don't know, parcels stock, or whatever, without feeling under pressure to make multiple kits before the whole thing looks halfway finished. e) I'm not going to start a new layout from scratch with handmaking every single item of my own stock for a pre-group era only to find it can't run. Baby steps, you know. f) that is a need the Ratio and Hornby stock could have previously met, but its 60s / 70s engineering is now getting far behind and jarring, it's getting harder to argue it's plausible behind any thing at all. g) Phil Parker and looooads of other people have talked about how they started out running and bashing airfix and Dapol and Hornby stock and locos, as they developed their skills, iteratively. h) this -in my view - may offer a possible modern answer to the same skills-development problem. I don't think people should be regarded negatively for taking the option. Again, people seem to think this is a zero-sum game -- either the 'purists' or the 'toy-train-fanciers' win. That's a ridiculous false dichotomy.

As I said above, I may be an oddball but I think we need to not lump 'generic'/'freelance' in with 'out of scale'/'toytrain'. Just because the two concepts have historically been combined, does not mean that they can't be detached from one another. Of course, there are plenty of situations where there would be no point in doing so (why, for eg design a 'generic' small-wheeled light-railway 0-6-0T, when there are 2-3 well-known prototypes that worked across a number of railways / post-group companies, eg J72, Terrier, P, the GER types, and maybe in future a Brighton 'E' or an LNWR 0-6-0ST). But most people who model pre-group, and might not be in a position to create their own beautiful kit-built locos (...yet!), are looking for stuff in the period 1900-1923, I'd reckon - or it's Grouping and BR-era modellers looking for some pre-group variety to represent minor lines or superseded types. ...and then there's the drive for small types with small wheelbases, led by the interest in microlayouts and, to be frank, changing demography and the housing crisis. The Hornby 'County' 4-4-0 was very attractive in regards to it's short wheelbase, but there's a very limited number of plausible scenarios you can use it in. When it comes to small tender locomotives specifically, stock of those types during that period was being reduced down so that there were multiple small non-standard classes. Creating a plausible, adaptable, wide-market rtr option for that (ignoring 'glamour' or 'quirky' types eg Caledonian 123) is unlikely to be viable. (Although to be fair the preponderance of ex-LNWR 0-6-0s on WD and ROD railways might offer another route). So I do think there might plausibly be an opening there. I really do. If done well.

I've just realised that 'Genesis' is a pun on 'generic'. Cor, I'm slow. However, I had been wondering if the name had been chosen as it's an attempt to find a common (possibly mythical) ancestor for multiple divided warring tribes, and people will be debating for years to come what the original intention was, and whether those who revere the end-product are ignoring certain problematic elements in its composition. (I speak as one who is currently supposed to be writing a sermon/homily thing for usage under live-fire conditions this coming Sunday)

Apologies for wondering through and niggling at something the assembled honourable gentlefolk were discussing a few days before... But with regard to Adams, a) it seems that some of the (arguable / debatable) ugliness got left behind with Massey Bromley and b) although Beyers were unarguably involved in his LSWR work, the Sharp Stewart 348 class commissioned by the LSWR prior to his arrival and then nobbled by him, seemed to somewhat set the tone for what he did next. Overall, I've always found it interesting to put Brittain's CR locomotives, Sinclair's GER locomotives, and Adams' LSWR locomotives next to each other and compare...

I'm coming at this from a very low skills base (and finances). I'm totally up for the idea that kit and scratchbuilding is more fun than plonking rtr. But I want something that runs and looks sufficiently plausible for my project, whilst I'm waiting for the result of my trial and error modelling to rise, like Frankenstein's monster, from the table. I built a Ratio 4-wheeler as a child, with intense support from my father. I always felt it looked a bit rubbish next to the rtr stock (which given this is the late 80s doesn't say much for my skills). Certainly, it stood out to me. This is not a zero-sum game. Many people want to expand their skills base. But many of those people don't trust their skill-base sufficiently to be the sole source of stock for an entire layout. As I've said before, above, this is the norm with regards to buildings. And frankly, I could cope with 'generic' pre-group locos, (but not with badly detailed out of scale 'toy train ones, which is what we've had before -- that's the difference!) but maybe I'm not very classy. I'll have an 0-6-0 with 19mm wheels, an 0-4-2 with 22mm wheels and a 2-4-0 with 25mm wheels please (this being OO). Roundtop firebox, Ramsbottom safety valves, dome, unsuperheated, round spectacles on a short cab (not bothered about side profile). ...In black with three lining options (red / green / blue), no numbering or lettering.

If I were to buy and use these, in whatever livery, I'd be sorely tempted to take the self-justifying approach that these are (on what would almost certainly be a fictional branchline to a fictional location) coaches produced by a fictional railway that folded and whose stock was sold off to various other companies. In the same way that the LNWR sold off the ex-NLR stock to various other companies. The GWR, too, absorbed a huuuge amount of stock from its various constituents (and in some cases sold it on, and then acquired it back with the next absorption). There was an enormous second-hand trickledown market. OK, it's a cover-story to justify modeller's license, but I have a well-reputed magazine at home published this year with a several-page article explaining how they've repainted GWR building kits into NER colours for an exhibition layout set in the North East. In fact, given that a certain manufacturer maintains the sales-blurb fiction that its model buildings are all in the same village, I could even look to Hattons to produce these coaches in the livery of the fictional 'original' company (presumably c1890s?) ... drum me out of town now...

Stand by for infinite 'how I adapted my Genesis coaches to have a more prototypical roof profile / duckets / windows / brakegear / whatever it is for X railway' articles over every magazine for 5 years to come.

...Wandering through and found this --- stunned and impressed! Fletcher Jennings did actually make their own 'coffee pots' (ie VBTs) by the way; and of course there were the Bamford locomotives being used at Piel and Walney gravel co on the bottom end of the Furness peninsular. (This is all in Rowland Abbott's book on Vertical boiler locos). It's all amazing stuff anyway and a great concept.

This could be a red herring, but the struts connecting the boiler to the frame forcibly remind me of 'Lion' ... made by that other early Leeds manufacturer, Todd, Kitson & Laird. You probably know already (I had to look it up) that Todd, K & L basically split into 1) Shepherd and Todd and 2) Kitson and Laird. Shepherd and Todd were eventually taken over by Wilsons, and Kitsons became Kitsons. Are you sure (assuming its a tender engine as built) it doesn't predate Wilsons existing as a company (or it could be a very early Kitson)?

Well, I'm not sure why (possibly the influence of Hobbs' Bridge) but that plan and the idea of a truncated line screamed 'Uxbridge High Street' to me. Put the railway on an old viaduct (that used to be dual) that ends harshly. Put a manky BR bus-stop on the platform, and possible relics of something greater. Then I thought... Make the jarringly modern warehouse on the kickback siding two level, with a concrete lorry ramp running down into the area in front of the old viaduct. Possibly fill the area in front of the station with a wholesale fruit market which is gradually becoming lorry-served, not rail-served? Run Transfesa and other fruit van stock on your Speedlink service? Ta-da, minimalist railway, urban 1980s style, but landscape not that of Shell Island... Call it Pineapple Lane?

Your skills are in excess of mine, and Rule One always applys… ...But entirely personally I'd go for something darker and more Late Victorian: either green on the upper parts with red or vermillion on the lower parts, or possibly cream-chocolate-cream on the upper and chocolate-red-chocolate on the lower?

Can I point out at this juncture that BP had been building locomotives with flat-angle outside cylinders (particularly 2-4-0s and 2-4-0WTs) in the style of Sinclair and Beattie through the 1850s (eg Swedish railways Prins August here http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/sweden10.htm) Adams would have been familiar with the Sinclair types he inherited at the GER and the Beattie types at the LSWR. Also, I note with interest that this beastie, Sinclair's last design, his 2-4-2WT of 1864, includes a Bissell truck at the front (apparently)? Taking the front end in isolation, it's not a million miles from this to a locomotive with inclined cylinders and a 4-wheel Bissell truck. All of this suggests to me that a lot of people were having similar thoughts whilst tackling similar problems in around 1864-6, as they strove to make the established types that had got them through the last decade, do more, go faster, and corner better.

Wow, thanks. I found the museum's website and this picture shows the end of the train with pilot cabin visible... https://www.marqueze.fr/home/galeries-photos/5-patrimoine/detail/35-les-charpentiers.html And a nice survey of various types of motive power and stock here: http://reseau-train-ho-de-paquito40.e-monsite.com/pages/les-lignes-vfl/train-touristique-de-marqueze.html

I accept that I'm not helping, but this is what happened when South Hetton Coal Company radically rebuilt a Metropolitan 4-4-0T into an 0-6-0T https://rcts.zenfolio.com/industrial-and-light/industrial-steam/other/hA8764F12#ha8764f12

Sorry for intruding, but that 0-4-0 is charming, and couldn't be more Scottish if it's name was Hamish and it was playing the bagpipes in a bath of whisky during an Old Firm derby match. What colours do you intend to line the grey with?

Thanks 298. I think the concept is workable, it's just finding the railway that would do this. I've found another single-railcar and trailer example, in Hungary (which yes, isn't quite what I meant but proves the technology existed). Intriguingly the cars seem to have been rebuilt 3 times over a 60-80 year period of operation before preservation, moving from being wooden bodied petrol-electric, to steel-bodied diesel-electric, in the process. http://hampage.hu/kozlekedes/eletkep47/e_index4.html I note the Belgian vicinal appears to have avoided the DVT, sticking with turning or top-and-tailing its railcars.

Ah, I may be confusing different systems. NER autotrains had a speaking tube. Probably by BR era, we're talking bells. Either way my tendentious and controversial point being, on a hypothetical railway outside (or ignoring) the British health and safety jurisdiction, these steam-era methods might in theory prove replicable in the diesel era, if you really are determined to spend the extra money on staff.

I've done some further research overnight, and the only further things I can throw at this are: - basically, are'nt the WAGR class 280 mid-engine Walker railcars a dieselised version of the GWR autotrain with the locomotive in mid-train? (OK, not terribly light-rail) - I've seen some Japanese 2ft 6in gauge diesel-locomotive-and-trailer pictures online, but I'm not sure whether that's really a trailer or a single-car railcar, yoked together for tourist purposes, and whether the locomotive is the main motive unit or just banking over a steep bit of lightly laid line. And I can't read Japanese. The issue seems to be transmission / actuation between footplate and DVT. Presumably if you work the steam-era model, where there's a staff member on the footplate and one in the DVT / autocoach, that's one consideration, but if you work it like a railcar and have only one person in control of the whole train, that's another whole set of mechanical and economic considerations. (Intriguingly, I note that the Japanese term for railcar / autotrain working appears to be 'wanman' which seems to be a transliteration of 'one-man'). I did read somewhere (railway bylines I think) that on some lines, lazy staff on BR would connect up the speaking tube on an autotrain, but not the mechanical linkages because they have a tendency to seize, but inspectors believed they seized because staff weren't using them. This left the whole train in the effective control of the fireman, and probably broke the law!!!

Yes, that's it! There is a prototype for everything. I note with intense interest that at times the Planet locomotive has run sandwiched between a passenger driving trailer and a luggage driving trailer. (and I can see why, there's about 1ft difference in the driving position headroom). Thank you, Isle of Man.

Thanks WG. I had forgotten about those pier railways, and have a book on Hythe on the shelf somewhere. Southend was electric in the period I'm most interested in (post war) and I love the look of their stock. I guess a diesel-electric could use hypothetically the same control system? Now I think about it, I also think the Ramsgate Tunnel Railway used push/pull (also electric). What I most was interested in was single-carriage operation, on exactly the same lines as the GWR etc autocoach, but without steam. By and large this seems to have been replaced by railcars, but I was just wondering if some cash-strapped operation continued with 1920s era conventional single-car push/pull due to still needing the option of switching the locomotives between passenger and freight operation. I can justify it in my head, I was wondering if it had any purchase in real life?