kitpw

I learned from reading "The English Dairy Industry 1860 to 1930" (David Taylor:The Agricultural History Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1974), pp. 153-159) [actually on the JSTOR site] that the Lawrence Cooler was shown at the Cardiff Royal Show in 1872 (getting closer to Traeth Mawr). The article says that "better refridgeration enabled the potential benefit of the railway sytem to be realized (sic) by the dairy farmer" and that the cheapness and efficiency of refridgeration caused its widespread adoption within a decade (presumably of the Cardiff show date). I had not appreciated how much effort went into the regulation of liquid milk production (as opposed to cheese etc) which in the second half of the C19th was identified as the cause of outbreaks of disease (typhoid particularly) throughout the UK. JSTOR had another article "Milking Science for its Worth: The Reform of the British Milk Trade in the Late Nineteenth Century" which describes these efforts. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2015.089.2.263?read-now=1&seq=22#page_scan_tab_contents) takes you to the article but a sign-in is required and the text cannot be copied and pasted. After all that, the old tv jingle "have-a-pint-of-milk-a-day" may be advisable.

https://www.bahs.org.uk/ is the British Agricultural History Society. I've had occasion to search their papers/minutes on agricultural history in the past but haven't looked at cold stores, milk production and distribution (yet!). My daughter still has milk delivered to her door step each morning in east London, except yesterday morning when it was stolen. As I was tasked with grandson school collection in the afternoon, I was also tasked with obtaining more milk: milkman elect for the day, no horse, no milk pram, just pack drill.

First glass milk bottle patented in 1874 in the US Gradually transferred to UK but until WW1 milk mainly delivered on horse-drawn "milk pram" - ladled into tin cans from a churn At that time, milk was delivered three times a day - "pudding round" later dropped due to WW1 constraints By 1920s and 1930s glass-bottled milk is the norm, but bottles had cardboard slips at the top, which children used to play "pogs" 1935 - slender-neck bottle introduced, giving the illusion of more cream and supposedly favoured by housewives Aluminium foil tops eventually replaces cardboard for hygiene concerns - but WW2 shortages mean experimentation with zinc, tin and lead-based alternatives Estimated 30 million lost glass bottles a year during WW2 - some return to tin can delivery using ladles 1980 - modern version of bottle introduced. Shorter and wider, initially it was nicknamed "dumpy" Source: Tom Phelps, author of The British Milkman...https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29327881: includes a picture of a very jolly milkman and a bird helping itself to the cream. In the early 1930s in Leatherhead, Surrey, the milk pram was horsedrawn and (I think I've told this story before on RMweb) my grandfather's parrot learned to tell the milkman's horse to "move on" leaving the milkman to run after the cart which was rapidly disappearing up the road. So no bottled delivery then. My only recollection of dairies and deliveries (early 1960s) was quart (not pint) bottles which were delivered from a near silent, slow moving EV. Cartons are fine with me but just don't tell the blue tits - did they follow the milk pram like seagulls follow the fishing boats?

The number/letter grading scale for pencils was introduced "by the beginning of the C20th" - that's the best date offered when I looked it up a while ago. Before that time a double letter system was in use HH, BB etc. The derivation of the H & B grading is uncertain - some say H for Haut (High hardness) and B for Bas (Low hardness) whilst other explanations are H for hard and B for black. If the drawing is earlier than 1900, I suspect 3B is not the pencil but could, I suppose, be some kind of revision designation. Graphite (from Cumbria/Derwent) was a protected material for a long time as it was used in making British canon balls which consequently had a longer range than anybody's else's balls - which this story probably is*. Anyway, in about 1795 Conte in France developed a formulation of graphite/clay which gave better control of hardness and that formulatiion is still used now. I agree about the revision "box" - that would have been helpful. My grandfather told me that in his drawing office (Vickers, Crayford, WW1 and before) technicians/engineers designed stuff in pencil (no H or B mentioned) and the drawing was handed to the "girl tracers" to be turned into ink drawings on linen. I imagine this practice was widespread in engineering drawing offices of the period (but maybe subject to another asterisk). *or maybe not... "The stories about graphite go back to about 1500 when an enormous deposit of graphite was discovered in the Borrowdale Parish in England. One of its first uses was as a refractory material to line molds for cannon balls, which resulted in rounder, smoother ammunition that could be fired farther. This better way of making the balls contributed to the growing superiority of the English Navy back then." https://egcgraphite.com.

...nice job!

"Finding information on the web where GWR made their bricks has been very sketchy, but from several sources I have established that the company had it's own brickworks located within it's rail works at Swindon & it was located on Kiln Lane. Also found that the brickworks used the local Kimmeridge clay which is found in abundance around Swindon, producing their distinct red coloured bricks. The brickworks is also recorded on an Ordnance Survey map dated 1900 & then there is a Britain From Above photograph* dated 1946 showing the rail works complex with the brickworks on Kiln Lane marked in the distance on the photo, which can be seen at this link." quoted from https://uknamedbricks.blogspot.com/2015/04/ . *http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw003329

The tank wagon has the look of something engineered from first principles which is nice to see and will make for a convincing model. Have you started planning a 1:50 layout? Kit PW

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/658721882970201795/. Pinterest "cards" which include the Rolles Quay access swing bridge (Pottington). I believe it was originally an iron drawbridge before installation of the swing bridge but have no reference for that. There is better reference for the swing bridge at Hayle which looks to be broadly similar to your sketch for Coastguard Creek - but now replaced. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Hayle_wharves_swing_bridge.jpg

I looked up Metcal - I can see what you mean... and why I'd never heard of them before!

...maybe, but we learn a lot about a lot of things that way! Thanks all for all the info. I've been soldering stuff for many years but only in the last few months delved into some of the more exotic aspects of the art/tech. My most recent excursion has been 700 deg solder paste which is a great deal easier than the traditional silver solder in wire form: when I place it on a joint, it sticks where balancing a tiny piece of solid nearly aways fell off. That's a good point and also @Chas Levin's cleaning regime which I try to follow (I don't always remember tho'). Kit PW

Off topic, sort of, I followed the link you posted on the D299 thread to magmouse.co.uk - very nice photos, some of them of familar scenes in the south west of London and of Bude and the coast up towards Hartland which I know well. I meant to post about it weeks ago but have been working, (not full time nowadays) and travelling and I can't seem to write more than a couple of (misspelt) words on a mobile phone. The Mink roof is challenging and I'll look forward to seeing how you get on - I've never used the Archer type rivet transfers but it sounds the right way to go with those paired rows of rivets. Kit PW

Thanks Chas for the recommendation. I have an ancient Weller iron which I've used for larger assembly/fabrication and it's certainly proved its worth in terms of longevity. The 40W iron I have is a Draper item, maybe 10 years old, used for smaller stuff and I also inherited a 25W iron of unkown make from my father which is used for electronics and small parts. It's only recently that I've got into using different temperature solders which is what raised the question of a temperature controlled iron - I'll take another look at the Weller unit as I'm getting to the point where I will need to assemble some white metal castings.

Not the easiest of things to put together but it seems to be turning out pretty well. Getting the doors into the right relationship to the sides looks to be worth the effort and all nicely detailed too. What have you got up your sleeve for the roof ? And the underframe - as you know, I've been working on the underframe and braking gear of the N5 horsebox with the externally linked clasp brake system: I did one end first and learnt a lot, in particular, to put the draw hook and buffers in before assembling the brakes as fitting them after proved near impossible with the brake rigging in the way. Kit PW

In case of kneed, consult Skeat's Etymological Dictionary... which advises under the word "knee" going to "pentagon" which I thought unlikely but, consulting the entry for "pentagon" gives us the Greek "γωνια", an angle (gonia as in pentagon) which itself derives from "γονυ", a knee. But of course "the bees' angles" doesn't rhyme so it (k)needed to be knees.

Shoolbred, not the caption's 'Schoolbred': (credited with being) London's first department store on what my mother-in-law always described as the Tottering Court Road.

...and all in French too. Still, on this thread, we're all on the wagon.

My layout Swan Hill is on castors. I've tried to photo the set up - see below. The layout is two sections of 1850 x 600mm carried on 4 frames, each with castors. There are short 600 x 600 sections each end, at least one of which needs to be removed before the layout can be shunted about on its castors - plus removing shelves and general accumulation of stuff! Caastors are from Hafele https://www.hafele.co.uk/en/product/single-wheel-castor-swivel-with-or-without-brake-wheel-50-75-mm-plate-fixing/P-00869467, swivel type with brake. Height djustment is at the top of the frame so that I can see the straight edge/spirit level whilst I'm adjusting things. The frames are slotted to allow for the fixings bolts to be moved up and down (only a small amount). The short end sections are only necessary because the layout is tight between walls each end and it can only be moved safely by pulling out one end, then the other - thus the swivel castors. I wish I'd seen @Dave John's arrangement before I built Swan Hill, the lift up top would be a real bonus - I hate soldering upside down for those repairs or extras that need doing 5 minutes after running everything back into place,

Hmmm...Ethyl Smith - there was a recent article in the Times about whether transliteration in or between words (or names) is called a pun or something else - I don't recall that the Times had an answer beyond Spoonerism. But you have highlighted something interesting about the Suffragette movement. By accident (see case of "E.Lloyd"), women were admitted to the Royal Institute of Chemistry from the early 1890s where they were denied access to other scientific and professional organisations. For this reason, (not forgetting Newnham College Cambridge) there were a relatively large number of analytical chemists in the suffragette movement - but probably only one world class woman composer. As for Ethyl Smith, well...

....+ capstan and ropes? There must have been a solution as carriages by rail and lower platforms lived happily together for years... and will do again at Traeth Mawr.

The locomotive (which seems to be the same word in Javanese) makes wonderful progress until it reaches the heaps of straw, then the wheels slip. Wrong sort of straw, I guess. The level road crossing is something to see... Thanks for posting, as Mikkel says, fascinating stuff.

Further study and I've changed my mind about the tilt on the vacuum cylinder - I think it's tilted when brakes are off with the cyclinder dropped down so I've amended the drawing (again). The pecked line shows "brake off" cyclinder position.

I've updated my drawing of the horsebox underframe to show the approx 1.5 degree tilt on the vacuum cylinder when in the "brake on" position. The pivot point is guessed at about 1" or so below the vehicle floor. Kit PW

I notice that in several photos of various vehicles of the Dean era, the vaccuum cylinder is not vertical which is logical if the cylinder moves and there is no other provision for the radial nature of the movement: the anchorage must be articulated. I don't think I'll model that! If I've understood it correctly, the "brake off" location of the top of the cyclinder is about level with the underside of the underframe - the drawings from WT seem to show that. The drawings show the cylinder as vertical and I assume that is in the "brake off" position. If modelled "brake on" then it would be out of vertical - now which to do? I hadn't really thought that through as you have. It looks as if there are a few mysteries still to be resolved as far as the provision of handbraking on the horsebox is concerned: the action of the lever seems to be the opposite of the action of the vac - when the long lever is pushed down, the rods are pushed against the inner swing arms, pushing the h/b side, inner brake blocks against the wheels. The h/b rods are quite short and I guess didn't buckle, at least not before the braking action was initiated sufficiently to hold the vehicle: it looks pretty crude and under-engineered when compared with the rest of the braking arrangement which is rather over-engineered - perhaps that's why it was superseded. How the h/b system was separated from the vac actuated system is unclear and unless somebody knows the answer, I can't work it out from the drawings and photo references I have. At least now I'm clearer about the vacuum itself - althought I thought I understood it, I had a nagging feeling that maybe I hadn't which is disconcerting and the references on the web are all about centre plunger type vacuum cylinders. Thanks again for your input on this rather abstruse subject! Kit PW

Thanks for your response Nick, very helpful. I do have vol 1 of Russell and read the description of the Dean brake action (cylinder moves rather than piston): your confirmation of which way is "on" and which way is "off" is critical to whether the linkages get pulled, which they should, or pushed, which they shouldn't - so particular thanks for that. So far so good! But yes, the horse box (famous No 88) does appear to have a handbrake. Although Russell (vol 1 again) has a good side view of the 'box (fig 52, page 49), it's not the handbrake side but you can just make out the h/b links to the inner swing arms from the photo. The white metal casting you've pictured above is also very helpful as it shows the general arrangement in 3D - essentially the same as the Slater's version on their clerestory carriages, one of which I have. It confirms that the cranks are a) a pair and b) not T shaped, which I thought was the case but not certain. The difference arises with the little crank arms which are attached to the cylinder and actuate the braking - on the Slater's coach, there is a slotted radius piece - I call them quadrants but I don't know if that's the correct term - which is the same as the illustration of the Dean brake in Russell. That doesn't show up under 'box No 88. Are they something to do with there being a handbrake, allowing the handbrake to move the brake linkages when the cylinder doesn't move? If that is the case, why isn't there something like that under No 88? Or maybe there is - the Russell photo isn't quite clear enough (or my eyes too dim) to make it out but it looks like a straight version of the quadrant on the side of the cylinder...or maybe not! I stripped down the 'box underframe this morning as, apart from the brake rack/guard, soldering is completed and it needs (a good deal of) cleaning up and priming. The stripped down u/f is below. The pillars and struts come from the illustrations in Russell vol 1 (page 46) as I don't see how the thing could work without them but are historically a bit "dubious" for the horsebox: the rest is from the drawings I referenced on Western Thunder. Kit PW

There has been discussion/clarification on RMweb in the past of what Dean era vacuum brake cylinders (as fitted to vans, horseboxes etc) looked like and how they worked. The "Dean dustbin" seems to be the particular item I'm interested in where, as far as I can make out, the whole cylinder moves rather than a plunger moving in and out of a fixed cylinder. The links to illustrations in one thread looked hopeful but are broken and web searches under "Dean dustbin" takes me to waste collection in the Forest of Dean - well, it would wouldn't it? Any information would be very helpful - having sweated over the arrangement (and fabrication) of outside linked clasp brakes on a horsebox, it would be a pity to end up with the wrong vacuum cylinder doing the wrong thing - worst of all, pushing when it should be pulling the brake linkages.