Malcolm 0-6-0

If it were on mine I'd probably use it as an excuse to store another engine ready fro the fray. But as you say it's probably a more upmarket trap point. That overgrown siding at the far right really has me curious.

I suspected you were joking. However the concept puts me in mind of the slightly confused person who is always one step behind the action. The sort of person who in the early 19th century if presented with a sailing ship and a steam engine and asked to consider how the former might be improved by the latter, would go to a great deal of trouble inventing a mechanism to furl and unfurl the sails without ever quite seeing that replacing the sails with paddle wheels or a screw powered by the engine would render the sails obsolete and the ship more efficient.

Interesting. At the bottom right is a section of very overgrown track - I wonder where that led? While over at the left there's a wagon loaded with what looks like bales of sticks, I wonder what they were for. And over at the far left in that isolated siding are what look like makeshift dumps for coal. And is that a hay wagon towards the bottom left? Interesting how the line comes off to enter the siding on the left and then continues to rejoin the main line so the single line running can handle traffic from both directions. Another photo that has all sorts of modelling possibilities.

Disregarding the excellent model what strikes me as quite peculiar about the design itself is that it seems to completely misunderstand both the question and the potential of steam power. Now on the surface it is an attempt in mechanical form to duplicate the work of a horse or the work of a man pushing a wagon. Which is well and good and answers one question as to how to utilise steam power, but everyone else who was inspired by the harnessing of steam power saw the potential for completely replacing animal or human power in such a way that the result was something much more powerful*, much swifter, more economic and importantly realised the true potential of rails or other forms of properly constructed roads for transport use. So instead of offering a means to properly utilise the options becoming available it went off up a blind alley (so to speak ). That's what I was getting at. Looking at the way the model works I wonder if the real thing also functioned in that peculiar jerking motion of smooth movement interspersed with frequent jerks as would a horse or human stumbling or slowing to ease tiredness. The 19th century certainly was a period of creativity but this just doesn't properly address the problem. * another design that also falls into the category is the horse on a treadmill connected to wheels.

That's a nice bit of modelling, however in all honesty one can see why the original design didn't set the world on fire.

Now that just screams out to be modelled, what an interesting combination of features.

That Dean experimental 4-2-4 is an ill-proportioned looking beast.

Yep some sort of load is essential, those panniers have been getting away with lazing about for far too long. It's no wonder they were hanging around in gangs and it's no wonder that the chap on the platform with the cap was looking so serious. Such things weren't allowed in his day, he can tell you, and probably will if you don't escape quickly. On the subject of loads for the wagons, when in a complete quandary I usually apply a tarpaulin, they can effectively hide a multitude of indecision.

Newbottle explosion? Sounds a bit like when my mother decided to take up making ginger beer. As it matured in a darkened cupboard there was often the sound of a new bottle explosion. Mind you the ones that survived were delicious.

Well on all the ones I have the motive power is actually the tender, it pulls what's behind it and pushes the locomotive along on its freely revolving wheels, even if they cease to freely revolve like a certain long gone Lima Crab.

Splendid effort - give those layabout loutish panniers something to do rather than hanging about getting into mischief.

Indeed, the Wickham trolley is for its size a very expensive model and I certainly wouldn't buy one to hack up the little ballast cart that actually provides the motive power. And as I noted it isn't the most powerful of motors.

Yes, that's my thoughts on the subject as well. We're up against the perennial modelling problem that the detail of some things is just plain easier to capture in larger scales than smaller. OO scale is a convenient scale for most modellers and can be used to capture most of what we want relatively well. But it is by its nature suited best to the post 1840s railway world when the prototypes we are modelling are themselves much larger and more powerful than their ancestors. In the ancestral period the size of the motive power and the stock is pretty much geared to easy manipulation by sole humans or animals, and OO doesn't cope well with that from the modelling perspective no matter how developed are our skills. The idea of those magnetic systems where under the board systems provide the actual motive power and the visible model of whatever the object is simply a dummy is a solution I suppose but to my eye it isn't appealing. It's a bit like mounting motors in the tender, no matter how well done to me at least it just doesn't give the feeling that it is the locomotive that is doing the pulling. To a casual observer it might but to me I always feel just a little disappointed with the result in action. A horse "pulling" a chaldron or two by means of an under board magnetic system would still have depiction problems because horses don't glide, they move their legs and that cannot be easily depicted. Also the early locomotives with their vertical cylinders and modified beam engines are not only small but also remarkably complex structures to model in small scales. Perhaps so much so that they would be inherently too fragile for prolonged use. And then we come back to the rather dull nature of the actual process depicted - I suspect that one would have to be a completely obsessed by the idea of horses or small locomotives whose only task was moving chaldrons full of coal from one point to another with no complex movements or passenger traffic. It would be a bit like those layouts of small industrial railways with limited movements. They succeed because of the detail in the modelling of the environment in which they are set, which offers many opportunities for the modeller to express their skills. That isn't intended as a criticism of simple layouts - mine is pretty small and simple, but it is intended to be a scene in which I can just watch trains go by as a break from work, and occasionally do a bit of modelling. So if I was going to go for a layout depicting a proto railway theme then it would have to be in a larger scale.

Well in a fit of enthusiasm I acquired a Bachmann Wickham Trolley for my layout. The only reason being that I liked the idea of it. In service it has been a rather delicate beast seeming to be uncertain of slight gradients at times and prone to slippage unless the rails are quite clean. In short (and it is), it isn't the most powerful source of traction. Which brings us back to the problem of reliable and strong motive in small scale representations of the very early engines. The cost of coal, or hay and oats, required that the engines, or horses of the proto-railway period were expected to pull a reasonable load of wagons as were their successors. If you wanted to increase the haulage rate of wagons then you had to add horses which can mean adding extra people to control them so costs go up while increases in haulage rates are minimal. But the very earliest locomotives, even at their most primitive were capable of better haulage capacity and could still be worked by minimal numbers of drivers. But that aside I can't see (at least in OO) that the Bachmann engine would be capable of being a source of power for a rake of chaldrons. I did try one short experiment to see if it could push a standard open 4 wheel wagon - it found it difficult, and two would be beyond it. I would expect if I was modelling such a proto system that whatever the power source it could pull a proper rake of chaldrons or whatever as the historical operators would expect it to do. That was why I suggested that larger scales represent a better alternative for realistic depiction (or as realistic as our individual modelling skills allow) rather than the smaller ones. But that still ignores the realistic modelling of non locomotive power like draft animals or humans. Probably the least realistic thing in conventional modelling are our human and animal figures which despite the best efforts of our best modellers still remain plainly static in a world where our trains run pretty realistically and the static scenery and buildings sit as if they are meant to be there.

As I see it the greater impediment to the objective of the thread is not the discussion of the political and economic background of these proto-railways, nor is the polarisation of any discussion that occurs. All interesting discussions will have polarisation because that's the nature of free opinion. And the sad truth is that if a disparate crowd of people are all in polite agreement then they're probably wrong. Politeness while protective of the crockery is the enemy of understanding. There is a much more apparent problem and that is in the nature of the modelling itself. Leaving out live steam, by and large electricity provides the motive power in the popular scales, and within the constraints created by motor size we can achieve largely accurate representations of our chosen subjects. Mostly by off the shelf RTR, and for braver souls in kits and scratch built working models of the motive power. However some of the first steam locos are rather difficult if not impossible to depict in the smaller scales simply because of their size and the fact that they were pretty slow moving - all of which makes sourcing appropriately sized motors difficult. Taking that a step, pardon the pun, further if we go back further then our motive power is either animal or human, and motorised examples of those motive sources depicting operating in a convincing fashion are damned, if not impossibly, elusive. The answer to that of course is to move to the larger scales but if that happens the difficulty of achieving passing realism remains while the size of the layout would either be beyond most modellers, or so truncated as to be not worth the bother. Modelled human figures pushing small carts or leading a horse and chaldron would be have to be masterpieces of micro engineering or else they would wind up as caricatures. Then we have the undeniable truth that most of what these proto-railways did whether powered by slow moving rather tiny and complex locomotives, or by humans or horses, was not much more than move odd shaped simple wagons from one point to another on primitive tracks which had the most basic of controlling systems or none at all, and little in the way of complex points to direct the flow. There was some minor carriage of passengers but their real reason for existence was mainly to carry coal. So there isn't that much scope in their depiction for interesting stock movements or mimicking scheduled services which is the basis of most railway modelling. From what I've observed the depiction of these simple systems is often as a background to a more complex layout using conventional modelling to depict what happens after the particular commodity is delivered to the rail head. In those cases modelling the proto-railway can be quite convincing if it is just left static. Just as in the same way we people our landscape or fill our fields with farm animals, or our roads with motor vehicles. The observer doesn't really expect these to be mobile but they do expect the railways to be. So is the discussion really about whether the depiction of these early proto-railways is possible within the general availability of the supporting technology and our skills? To finish I would suggest that for most the depiction of these would be as detailed static models where one's modelling skills are concentrated on the landscape in which they operated, rather than upon the depiction of movement in that landscape. However having said that, I am sure that someone will pop up with an example of skilfully modelled layouts or dioramas where the use of animal and human motive power has been depicted in an interesting way that steps beyond just being a small repetitious museum vignette. An operating miniature of the real thing in other words, in which the motive power is not just pushed along by a concealed motor in a wagon, but in itself provides the power as in the real thing. It's an interesting goal in modelling but beyond my skills.

I totally agree with your response to that claim, of course they did - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_watermills for even the most basic coverage. As I said despite it being called a classicist view whatever that is, early to mid-18th century European technology was essentially not very different to that which was in existence in Roman times. The major advances in the post-Roman world had been until then essentially philosophical and artistic. The main building materials were still wood, stone and brick, power was still mainly human, animal, wind or water and consequently not capable of yielding the raw strength that steam and subsequent forms of machine derived power did. Agriculture was still practised in much the same seasonal labour way as it was in the classical world, which meant long idle periods with no actual monetary income, which in turn impacted on the growth of consumer goods production which was the driving force of the wealth created by the industrial revolution. People in general did not live very mobile lives unless in military service or the maritime trades, and literacy was really only within the access of a few. As for the matter of slavery, much of the initial wealth derived from the nascent industrial culture of late 18th century Britain rode on the back of slavery, by which I don't mean the low paid industrial mill workers but the volume of products directed at supplying cheap goods to support the trade in slavery going to the New World. It was the hidden evil so to speak - Britain might have been moving towards abolishing slavery at home but it didn't stop the factory owners earning tidy profits supplying the trade at arms length. And of course the cheap raw cotton had to come from somewhere and where better than the slave run plantations of the southern United States. The collapse of slavery in America was formalised by the Civil War but it was slowly dying before then as the new American industrial centres in the north eastern states were able to mass produce consumer goods using steam powered machinery and steam powered transport at a fraction of the cost that any southern enterprise using slave labour. The other factor was of course the payment of regular wages which fuelled the growth of consumer economies - something that a slave based economy couldn't do because slaves weren't paid with anything they could spend. The only advance in the technology of the southern states had been the cotton gin and even that was the invention of a northerner. The view might be dismissed as classicist but remains correct. The harnessing of steam and all that grew from that transformed the industrial revolution into a social revolution. And those lovely little engines and the interesting rolling stock were things of wonder then and to my mind still are, given the speed with which they helped end the old sluggish traditional economy. In any case, lest the Miss Marples amongst us begin complaining that this just isn't what we say in St Mary Mead, what I am saying is not political (heaven forfend), or even a lecture in economic history (heaven even more forfend), but a comment on the background of what created the railways of which we are all enamoured. It's a wonderful and exciting period in history and well worth the discussion.

The railways were part of that great change called the Industrial Revolution. And it was a revolution because up until the late 18th century, apart from relatively minor advances in things like ship construction (e.g. wooden ships got larger with better sail technology, and things like firearms) Europe was essentially, as far as technology went, not much advanced over the way the Romans had left things. During the intervening 1300 odd years our major social and intellectual changes were essentially in non-technological areas and so the large majority of working people were still bound to the land, or trades and crafts not much changed for thousands of years. Jobs with little or no chance of personal advancement. The harnessing of steam to power machinery and the factories that used that machinery to make their products gave us the need for both efficient transport but, more importantly, the need to sell the products and those sales depended upon a working class with some discretionary income. And the best source of that income was not the old rural trades and labour but the specialised skills needed to run new factories and their machines. Machines that first powered the factories that used the coal, that was from mines drained by steam power and was transported to the factories by trains which in a very short time evolved into transport efficiently carry the factory produce and the workers, as well as the factory owners. It was a grand time for any enterprising person who wanted to break the cycle of seasonal farm labour or escape the old Guild bound trades in the cities. It was essentially a time when ordinary people discovered that their labour had a real value if they took the opportunity to learn the skills needed to work in manufacturing industry. And they found that the opportunities these skills opened up, if not all well paid, were at least pretty boundless. No more tugging the forelock to the local land owner to whom you were tied by being a farm labourer doing a seasonal job that had been unchanged since the Neolithic period; or no more frantically scrambling for a living in the old city based economies with their rigid trade based hierarchies and apprenticeships. People began to find that the economic system needed them just as much as they needed to work and that was something altogether new for most people and why there was the great migrations to the new industrial centres. Of course there would be activism to get better pay and conditions because both sides needed each other, and that more importantly led to collectivism amongst the workers and pretty quickly to unions and the muscle to flex the power of being an essential part of the aspiring magnates plans. Basically the mood was "Oi sunshine you ain't going nowhere unless we come too!!". So it wasn't just an industrial revolution it was something much more; a social revolution. Certainly there was a lot of kicking and screaming along the way but the pre industrial revolution world would be pretty alien to a modern observer transported back in the TARDIS.

Strikes and other forms of collective action was difficult to undertake regardless of the conditions that caused it because of the Masters and Servants Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_and_Servant_Act which was a blatant means of making sure that workers remained at work and didn't disrupt the profits of their betters. Of course these sorts of reactionary laws came unstuck because with the exception of the most unskilled jobs, like that done by the navvies, it was difficult if not impossible for the employers to find substitute skilled labour if their workers had struck for better pay and conditions. After all the lives of paying passengers would be put in danger if unskilled driving staff were employed, not to mention the risk of damage to complex machinery if unskilled or scab mechanics were employed. Plus the industrial age saw the ideals and monopolies of the old medieval trade guilds embraced by people who up until then were regarded as simply disposable labour to be used at will by the entrepreneurs. For the workers, either skilled or unskilled, the early industrial period was one of grinding hard work for longs hours but it did ultimately drive home the point that a company's profits depended upon a reasonably compliant and contented work force. That didn't stop industrial action but it certainly lessened hours and, ultimately, profits lost.

I see that your work is getting a very critical going over.

Well it was a failed joint railway initiative created in the pre-grouping days by a syndicate of utopian socialist mill owners in the mould of Robert Owen, who discovered that while Anarchy was to them an acceptable political goal it was of little use when attempting to direct a team of Irish navvies to excavate a tunnel.

I bet that farrier will be in for a surprise if it blows its whistle.

At my age? I think that if that occurred I'd need urgent application of a defibrillator. I suppose it would help if I made more use of emoticons but if people can't understand the subtleties of straight faced humorous irony then I can't be blamed for that, or can I ......... However as satire has just about died in the face of the ever increasing tendency of people to be offended by anything, no matter how innocuous, I fear that irony is the only thing we have left. Cue complaints by those who feel that their sense of irony is just fine thank you very much, but they demand that irony should only be used in conjunction with the recognition that the use of free speech doesn't mean that we can just say what we honestly feel ...........

At last someone got it I tend to think that absolute statements concerning contentious subjects should always be tested, when everyone is in virtuous agreement then history has plenty of examples showing us that this could be hiding a more serious problem. As a character in a book I read once said "When do you ever see a mob rushing across town to do some good?"

But then if you cannot be satirical about the weak and the helpless where has the essence of democracy gone. After all most of what we find funny about Monty Python is directed at very ordinary people. It's a two way street, satire should encompass both ends of the spectrum. Otherwise someone or other is going to complain they've been left out and therefore are considered unworthy of notice. And then they'll demand that their unworthiness is something that is their right and should be celebrated as such and subject to satire just as are the rich and powerful etc. ..... well you can see what will happen. Then the rich and powerful will demand that they must be treated like the poor and helpless and not be made the subject of satire and then what will we chuckle at. Leading us in the end to the question "if an person unworthy of satire falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" or even worse "if satire dies in a forest and no one is notice it, will anyone mourn".

I wasn't offended, why on Earth would I be? If some self-seeking celeb sees a chance to enrich themselves by adopting some cause then, as you say, it is simply par for the course (pardon the pun) and is something everyone with both feet planted firmly on the ground will simply recognise as such. I was commented on the matter because it, like LoTR and the behaviour of the more committed fans back when it first appeared, is the type of subject that is worthy of satire as several posts have demonstrated. It is an example of something that, if you examine the issue closely, is so nakedly aimed at self publicity that it demands satire. And satire only fails when it fails to enrage the extremes at both ends of the debate. We chuckle at those now ancient Monty Python sketches or Tom Lehrer's songs because they mercilessly skewer delicate sensitivities, but in 2019 how much of that freewheeling spirit would go unchallenged if we first vet something to make sure that someone won't be offended? I've not led a sheltered life and quickly discovered that if I didn't want my delicate sensitivities hurt then I shouldn't trail them around where they'd get stepped on. And sometimes satire is so prescient that it becomes timeless as Banksy's painting Devolved Parliament although painted in 2009 has become uncannily relevant to 2019. In any case in these times the issue is something that is neither impossible to resolve nor one that shouldn't be resolved - that's up to the individual. Making it a matter of public debate as this celeb has done is the surest way of it becoming controversial when it doesn't need to be as it is a simple private decision which can be resolved without any legislative requirement. The search for public notoriety is just a symptom of the behaviour pioneered by people like the Kardashians which can lead to a whole line of philosophical enquiry along the lines of "if a Kardashian falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" or like the classic problem in quantum physics of Schrödinger's Kardashian. So if the controversy rebounds upon its creator then that is also par for the course.