Martin S-C

By golly, you have got it bad up there. The Mechanical Engineer magazine was well established by 1905 so there certainly were well-informed gentleman abroad who had the bent of a mechanical and railway engineering persuasion. I feel sure a local body of them would meet to discuss matters of interest to them as well as covering the goings-on at the local railway company. The CAMES (Castle Aching Mechanical Engineering Society). Might there be a walking or cycling club? I might suggest the Aching Feet or the Aching Legs but I think its probably best not to.

After a few days of weathering wagons for a friend and other non-modelling goings-on that distracted me, I have picked up a couple of projects. First, I realised I had no period brake vans that were usable. I had bought three Bachmann brakes at the beginning of the year but these were all too late for my chosen period - like so many others I began buying rolling stock I liked before my focus on what I really wanted and needed had narrowed. Those three vans have gone into my "for resale" box. Some months ago I bought a set of S&DJR and MR wagons on e-Bay with about 6 or 7 wagons in each set. The S&DJR 3-planks, the S&DJR cattle wagon and the MR cattle wagon and box vans that I've shown before on this thread were in these sets. The wagons are mainly Ratio or Slaters kits pre-built. Kit construction is sound but the paint jobs were a little wanting. There were three brake vans. A Midland 10 tonner, an S&DJR 10 tonner and the very nice D&S brass and white metal S&DJR 6-wheel 20 tonner. I dug these out of their boxes the other day and took a look. The Midland Railway 10 tonner came with moulded-on plastic handrails so all these had to come off. I've been adding brass wire handrails and have also added metal wheels, some under-body weight and Bachmann couplings. I plan to add some wire linkages under the chassis to represent the rather complex and visible brake gear. For the Nether Madder railway version I have added a full width handrail at the verandah end (the Midland vans had only a short rail in front of the door which I always thought looked strange). As bought Current state of progress The Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway 4-wheel 10-ton van came with some rather grim and over-scale handrail knobs holding the hand rails on so all this had to be removed. New brass wire handrails have been added, as well as wheels, weight and couplings same as the Midland van. The handbrake rod and hand wheel were very over scale so I cut these down and moved them a little. I also moved the stove chimney more to one side because I can! As bought Current state of progress Both these vans are absolutely tiny at just under 70mm over buffers which makes them very useful on the NM&GSR where sidings and passing loops are short. Finally a really nice model, the D&S brass kit with its white metal framing overlay, the S&DJR 20-ton 6-wheel brake. This van will be allocated exclusively to coal trains running between Deep Shafting Colliery and Nether Madder terminus, and between the colliery and the Madder Valley Railway exchange sidings, both these runs involving heavy gradients. The model had been well built and painted but no detail work had been done on it. Fortunately the builder made a good job of the delicate and complex brake gubbins under the floor. Once again metal wheels and tension hook couplings were added as well as all the necessary handrails and door handles from brass wire. As bought Current state of progress I need to source some lamp iron castings or brass etches to fit to all three vans as each carried no less than ten of these fairly large lumps of iron. I've had a recommendation to use cut-up 'bambi' small staples so will go in search of a box in the week. After the lamp irons its painting time. The two S&D vans will be painted in the GSR (Great Shafting Railway) freight livery of a bauxite shade with white lettering. The Midland van will carry the slate grey livery of the NMR (Nether Madder Railway) again with white lettering. I have two Slaters North Eastern Dia.V1 brake van kits to build; the nice ones with the birdcage roof lookouts which will also be GSR vans. I then have three more Midland van kits to build which will be NM&GSR. Along with my single WELR van (a brass kit of a diminutive Pontnewynedd GWR van) this will complete the fleet - for now at least... there's plenty more in the box of kits that need building.

Statements like this always make me wary. Can you support this assertion with evidence? Private owner wagons were often hired from wagon building companies and a part of the hire agreement would be a contract to keep them painted every 3 years on average and of course to keep them repaired. Even wagons bought outright would carry a repairs and maintenance agreement because the Board of Trade required railway vehicles to be in safe condition. Even a single wagon owned by a coal merchant resident at a single rural station would, included in the lease agreement, have the costs of repairs and repaints covered in the monthly payments. As long as the lessee maintained payments his wagon would be kept in good repair. If he did not maintain payments, it could be seized by the lessor. I see no technical reason how or why any PO wagon might go around in a condition more shabby or poorly maintained than any other, be the owner rich or poor, successful or struggling in his business. I have great difficulty buying into statements that small companies that were not financially secure would be more inclined to operate a shabbier fleet. The process of leasing argues convincingly against that. Why? The owner isn't doing the maintenance. He is paying a third party to do it. Unless you can support your statement with any evidence I am inclined to dismiss such assertions. We are not discussing photos of brand new wagons, but wagons that are clearly in service. Have you fully read through the foregoing discussions?

I think you may be confusing company vehicles with private owners? On company vehicles yes, the end door markers were in use in the 20s and 30s. On PO wagons, no. The introduction of painting the side strapping irons white on PO wagons to indicate an end door is a WWII thing. Reference Nick Holliday's post #14 on this. There is a difference in livery practice between what the railway companies did and what private owners did. Conversely I have several photos in my collection of LNER and LMS wagons running in the 1930s with unpainted replaced planks. As to bottom door markings the same applies.

Going off on a light-hearted tangent, what struck me a page or three back is that some My Layout threads really need to be their own sub-forums so that the thread owner can set up additional threads. It seems we need several here: 1) Edwardian military uniforms and regimental histories 2) Timber trestles 3) Locomotives 4) Architecture 5) Rolling stock 6) Freight traffics 7) Denizens of Castle Aching, their social status and bibliographies 8) mid-Victorian marching music 9) and so on... Some days I log onto this thread and feel my brain is being stretched around like rubber as the subject matter bounces back and forth like Tigger on amphetamines.

Thank you gents for all your input. It seems that for years I've been working under the misunderstanding that around the start of 1940 an organised programme to mark up the ex-PO wagons was undertaken. That didn't happen, or if it did happen it happened very slowly with many ex-PO wagons running in increasingly battered condition before being so marked and some even being scrapped before the BR marks were applied. I think the main result of my error was that I inferred that "no pool markings must equal pre-1940" and that assumption was false. This old dog has learned a new trick. Thanks all.

Jim John Hayes himself mentions "wartime pool lettering" and this is on the ISBN page of "The 4mm Coal Wagon". It was clearly done, and other examples of DENABY wagons on the same page directly contradict your statement that it wasn't. I do however accept the point that with hundreds of thousands of wooden pooled wagons on the system it would have taken a considerable time to "P" number them all, but its clear from the wartime photographic evidence that a programme to undertake this was put into action, regardless of condition of the wagon. However I find its also true that some wagons lasted a decade or more after the start of the war without ever receiving these markings. Thanks for your input however, I have learned something new (or it's more likely I forgot something I once knew!)

Jim I have not come across this before. Have you a source for this please?

Hi John The Bachmann wagons are not post WWII because they have no BR or pool markings - which are very obvious things (per your correct example). The wagons are in pre-1939 livery. This is exactly my issue. Yes, I'm aware of the wartime pooling markings. There was an early style that involved re-marking the owners details and wagon number in small lettering on the lower left planks. This didn't last long and I've never seen it modelled. The later "P" markings on black panels replaced this system and we all know it later became the BR standard. While wooden wagons were scrapped in their tens of thousands in the 50s and 60s many lasted to the end of steam. They are common in photos until 1968. Certain wooden opens lasted into the 1970s and 1980s in departmental service and in specialist traffics such as China clay. I have this photograph that shows loading of pit props during wartime but which bears no exact date. You can see that the WOMBWELL of Barnsley PO wagon in which the man is standing has unpainted planks yet does NOT carry any wartime pool markings. Interestingly the third plank down to the right of the door has been replaced with the lettering repainted on it in a simple form without shading. The planks above and below it show the original shaded lettering, so this wagon bears the marks of some attempt at keeping it looking respectable plus new wood unpainted planks elsewhere. The top plank is also new but painted. This photo would prove me wrong if it were undated but the person who sent it to me stated it was taken during wartime. We also know it's wartime because the diagonal strap towards the end-door has been painted white - a wartime marking. Perhaps it does carry pool markings but the three damaged planks on the lower left were replaced and the markings were on there and have yet to be redone, and the tare weight mark is obscured by the young man throwing the piece of timber. Or possibly so many wagons required re-lettering with pool markings in late 1939 and early 1940 that many ran for months without them and received damage during that time. Note the A(?).H.DEWEY wagon of Portsmouth to the left also carries no pool markings yet although its in poor condition it has no replaced planks either, at least not on the area we can see. This one photo is tantalising in that it seems to break the rules yet it may not. Even so this only gives the modeller a window of perhaps 12 to 18 months of the early war period when a livery such as Bachmann supply might be called accurate (and even then, no white painted end door mark).

Well someone clearly wanted the LNWR wagon to go to Hassocks! I can't see anything to identify the third wagon. Looks like a 4-plank. The light coloured squiggle upper left is probably another chalked Hassocks instruction and there's a light coloured blob below that which could be anything. It looks too low to be an LNWR illiterate marking. I too await input from more knowledgable quarters.

I've been away from the small scale railway hobby for a couple of decades and on my return at the start of this year found a lot of changes. One of these is manufacturers now providing factory weathered wagons and locos. I've taken a look at a few of the wagons and one thing that struck me at once is the number of PO coal wagon models offered with unpainted replaced planks (URP for short, and because I'm not going to type it out over and over!). As soon as I saw these models I wondered how correct they might be and so started several months of checking photos in various wagon books (Turton, etc) and Wild Swan and Lightmoor Press titles on various railways. I haven't turned up one single example of a pre-WWII PO coal wagon in such a condition. I raised the subject on two Facebook groups (UK Freight Wagons and Realistic Railway Modelling) and no-one there could comment either way. Does anyone else think manufacturers like Bachmann and Hornby are doing the modelling hobby a dis-service by producing incorrect wagons? I have come across some beautiful quality modelling work showing distressed wagons but in pre-WWII livery and it bothers me that otherwise very skilled modellers might be being led astray by poor examples from the industry. Or does anyone have photographs that indicate that such wagons running in this condition were more common than my research has indicated? Of course during and after WWII such sights were commonplace - but then every wagon carried either wartime pool markings or, post 01/01/1948 BR markings.

Blimey, Thomas looks way too happy. Did his crew pick some mushrooms to fry on the shovel and then feed him some?

For a heart-stoppingly grand British march you cannot do better than this. As a bonus we get the wonderful Leonard Rossiter doing some splendid over-acting. And later on in the film is the brisk Liliburlero

Might that be a portrait of Captain Flint-Knapp? Perhaps the Captain is an officer in the West Norfolks?

Whenever discussion comes around to small military units based in little towns the immortal line "Don't tell him Pike!" pops into my head.

The M&SWJ Dubs 2-4-0 was a beautiful engine - it was despoiled by the GWR with the conversion to a Belpaire firebox and Swindon chimney, but in it's original guise had a certain daintiness and poise that makes it one of my favourite steam engines. The Nether Madder railway intends to purchase a Dubs 2-4-0 when funds allow.

What are those little trackside upright widgets?

Wow. What an edifice. I had never heard of it. That second photo could easily be the wide open prairies of Montana.

There still seems to be an awkward gap between the cab side and the rear splasher, and between the tender body and frame. The black lines revealed at those two points detract from your exquisite weathering and crew addition.

I was going to mention that but you beat me to it. IIRC the viaduct crossed a shallow valley which was slowly filled with tip spoil to the point where they had to build a brick arch over the viaduct track. The spoil was then tipped over the brick arch until the viaduct in effect became a tunnel (on legs). Tony Robinson et al had to use a pretty hefty mechanical digger and the brick arch was finally located some 9m (or it may even have been 13m) below the modern ground surface. What used to be a significant valley feature was now a flat area of waste ground with all trace of the original geography deeply buried. It gave a good sense of how much material early- to mid 19th C industry dug out to get at what they wanted.

And not a van in sight.

James, your link to the Fakenham/Barsham images revealed a little known photo of my track laying circa 1970...

How do you get such deep depth of field - I am looking at the train on the viaduct pic. Do you use a huge aperture or a long exposure, or both? Or is there some digital shenanigans going on?

A few years ago I had my entire model railways magazine collection destroyed by floodwater in a garage where they were stored, MRNs and RMs and MRCs dating from the 1950s to the 2000s all ruined. That was bad enough (they proved to be easy to replace once I made the effort) but for wrecked plans, papers and books I can't imagine how distressing that is. I hope you can recover at least some of them.

Kevin, that last picture looking up the yard to the stop blocks is superb. The colours you've used in the whole model work so well. ...and is there actually a designed fall in the engine shed guttering? If so, I don't think I've ever seen that modelled - and if its not meant to be like that then you are very fortunate in your accidents!