Artless Bodger

C1059 at Embsay, what was the orange object / device labelled 'Clockwork Orange' in the bottom right corner - diesel shunter? 

Thanks.

48 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

My former manager knows, or knew, the victim in that case.  It's worth reading the RAIB report if you think he was "leaning out"; I think it suggested that the clearance between coach body and the signal post at that speed (so allowing for the dynamic envelope) was no more than a few inches.  Anyone with their head out enough for just one eye to be able to see forward, would have been fatally injured.  Just like the fatality of a young woman between Bristol and Cardiff (is this the one you're referring to?), there was a suggestion she was completely inside the coach, but was struck by something fouling the loading gauge and which came through the open window.

Yes, I'm sure these are the ones I had in mind - thanks for the correction. 

WRT leaning out of windows - I think there have been two at least fatalities in the UK recently from just that. Lady fatally injured leaning out of an HST droplight between Bath and Bristol, and a man (regarded as a railway enthusiast and therefore probably more knowledgable of the risks) leaning out of a 5WES droplight.

I travelled a lot on Mk1s, often on my way to / from work. Not something I get misty eyed about enough to want to reprise.

Progress with the narrow gauge side of things. My first attempts at scratch building for a long while. The loco is intended to represent a battery electric loco, inspired by various standard and narrow gauge examples, notably the 3rd rail electric locos used at Highstead chalk pits as photographed by Gordon Edgar ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/12a_kingmoor_klickr/5752243793 ). It sits on a Kato pocket line N gauge chassis (which also fits under a Dapol N gauge Fruit D body to power a demotored GF pannier). I've learned a few things in its construction, as usually I put a model together then wonder how I can paint or glaze it.  In this case the body is 20 thou (60 thou bonnet tops), 2 sheets glued at the edge, marked out, window corners drilled then cut and filed to shape before cutting the body side out. It has a false floor above the motor to hold the body square. The driver is a cut off Dapol workman on a drop in base. By luck I had left over N gauge factory kit glazing - thick crystal PS rectangles, which with a bit of sanding was just about the right size for side and end glazing. It makes a box which pushes down into the painted body. The roof just sort of plugs in. 

So, I've learned to make things in modules so they can be painted separately before final assembly.

One lesson to carry forward is to drill holes for handrails while the sides are in the flat state - I decided not to try drilling the completed body and use wire, so it has glued on plastic rod handrails - sufficient considering some of my RTR locos are no better, and I'm not dissatisfied with them.

I want to buy some of the PECO V skip wagons, but until the budget is up to that I've made the first attempt at scratchbuilding on a spare N gauge wagon chassis. Based loosely on the side tip wagons used at Scaldwell ironstone quarries, I used the drawings on the IRS website as a base.

Oil Keep? vs grease?

The apparent movement of the other loco could be done by masking most of the photo in the printing frame and racking the enlarger up or down while exposing the loco. That might also effectively double expose part of the track it is on making the blur around the chairs.

A quick search, if you blow up the photo linked here on Boxley's Flickr site, you can see the white painted buffer beam and buffers at Maidstone West.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/boxley/219288118

Interesting also how the bullhead track on which the buffer stops are mounted has been retained and is connected to what looks like newer flat bottom rail in the bay. There was something similar in platforms 1 and 2 at Reading (don't know if it is still like that). Using buffers mounted on the beams, the bay road at Maidstone West, originally used for the Paddock Wood trains, had a pair of chunky bodied, self contained buffers mounted on a wooden beam, one buffer had a cracked casing - maybe due to a bump? I never thought to photograph it.

J657, a really nice photo with the incidental details - the car, open boot and bonnet, garage door windows etc. And the dog on the lawn.

Dawlish Warren? Looking across / up the Exe estuary?

This photo from wikipedia illustrates the sort of arm I think is used, the lower one with the lamp and spectacle to the left of the post. It's all I can find at the moment.

On 29/03/2024 at 23:02, melmerby said:

In this picture

 

What sort of signals are those?

They look as though the spectacle plate and lamp is located to the left of the post, to reduce the spacing between adjacent dolls. The spectacle plate is inverted. I've seen pictures of vaguely similar GWR signals, centre pivoted to save space of for restricted clearances, e.g. gallows signals under platform awnings. These Saxby signals appear to have repeater arms visible under the bridge arch too.

The drawback I can see with placing the spectacle plate to the left of the pivot is that it no longer provides a counterbalance weight tending to return the arm to danger in the case of a linkage failure.

My train set locos were in order:

Triang clockwork saddletank loco in black and green

Triang Transcontinental diesel shunter (the most my parents could afford that Christmas)

Triang 3MT tank loco in lined green, I remember this was 63/-, the big Christmas present was limited to £3, but it was bought because my birthday was in January so it was a sort of joint present.

All long gone....

I've looked at the GF N gauge green 3MT tank several times but never bought one when it was available and I was doing N. Now I'm back in OO in a small way and have recently seen a Bachmann OO one available, but should I spend my limited funds on it? I'm very tempted but it would be purely for nostalgic reasons, and would probably only grace my display case.

The one toy I still have is a Dinky Toys Coles crane, much played with, restrung and paint chipped (cranes were always my first love as a child). I'd pointed it out every day as we passed a shop on our way to the beach on a holiday in Broadstairs. M & D said 'Yes, you can have it at the end of the week.' thinking I was wanting a smaller, cheaper crane next to it. When the day came they were in an awkward position, but did buy the Dinky for me. I didn't know it at the time but money was tight and they must have made sacrifices to afford it, it makes me sad to think of it now, I cherish it even more.

Nothing since or in future will have the same meaning for me. 

Thanks for the nice Swiss photos. Have just watched a cab ride video of the St Gallen to Arth Goldau route - phenominal gradients after Pfaeffikon, 1 in 20 I think, the unit just romps up them.

C8097 - Kilchurn Castle in the background? Years ago Head Gardener and I visited the Cruachan pumped storage power station on Loch Awe. We had a while to wait before the next tour, so wandered off up a footpath opposite the site, climbing a little way up the mountain side we crossed the railway line close by a short platform, saw the rock fall protection wires and double armed signals, then continued uphill until our way was blocked by a very large and very dead sheep. 

I'm surprised that Mk1 carriages are allowed on the mainline at all, given all the slam door /  body on chassis emus were condemned years ago etc. Do the Mk1s in railtour service have any over-riding protection? (Have not noticed any of the interlocking plates or extra vertical bracing on those I used to see at BTM). Mk1s at premium prices on railtours? - no thanks.

An employee where I worked (not known to me personally) was fatally injured by being thrown from an emu, the reason was apparently he unlatched the door which was only on the first catch, in order to close it fully, with the train in motion, slipstream opened the door with fatal results.

One evening travelling to London on a VEP as we stood at West Malling station the down train (another VEP) entering the other platform had an open door banging along the side of our train. After some discussion between the crews and presumably control, we set off at walking pace, expecting to find a body on the track. Thankfully we did not, but it was a sobering experience.

Have also seen a down train leave Guildford with the inward opening vestibule door behind the driver's cab in the middle of 2 units open - so anyone walking through the gangways would be at risk.

On 03/07/2023 at 04:03, SRman said:

I had similar problems but on track where no other trains or vehicles were having problems. My solution had to be with the brake vans only. As mentioned in my layout topic, I removed the metal bearings from the centre axles on each of my brake vans (one single and one double veranda type). This mostly sorted the running, except the double veranda van was still derailing at one single location on a plain curve. Checking the back to backs on both vehicles showed all but one axle (which was on the double veranda van) were at just on 14.5mm, with the exception being slightly over that. A bit of a squeeze with my fingers on the offending axle's wheels fixed the problem once and for all, and both vans have now been trundling around at some speed on the tail of my (somewhat weird!) test train.

I've recently bought the late SR brown one, trying some shunting I found it derailed over my set-track points on the curved route. I thought it was the track at first, then the b2bs. I couldn't work out how to get the wheels out, but thanks to comments on this thread, with a lump in my throat, managed to get the rigging removed and the wheels out. I found I needed considerable pressure to close them up to the axle shoulders, but the van now runs and does not derail - at the expense of a bit of the rigging! Better a usable van minus a little bit of hidden detail than a perfectly detailed hangar queen in the display case. Thanks to all the useful commenters above. 👍 

Going round in circles - a severe case of coupling incompatability amongst my stock led to many derailments. Somehwat disheartened I sorted stock into two groups. 1. Stock with more modern narrow couplings or ones I could easily swap. 2. Old Triang type long hook / old Dapol and Lima.

Group 1 now converted or still on short hook Bachmann seem to work togethe rok and I've released some locos from the display case, cleaned the sticky grease (12+ years old and little used sonce I went over to N) and reoiled. 

Group 2 kept as an alternative stud, old Hornby / Dapol / Mainline and Lima from the nephews.

Then, not happy with the short platform which though uncompleted had developed an anticline, I decided to make a new one. Started to cut the foamboard, then opted to extend and remake the exisiting one - it has sandpaper glued to the top, when painted grey two things happened, the anticline became a severe syncline and the sand paper bubbled. To cap it all the extra length caused some stock to foul the ramps when entering the loop - BAH!

Back to rethinking the new platform - this time a 1mm card top and front wall with a 3x5mm foam board support. Coming on ok at present but still risks going banana shaped when painted.

As a stop gap I've cut out part of the extension to the old platform and have to accept the lumpy surface for the time being.

As an aside, everything I paint ends up worse than before I start - the loco shed is going that way unfortunately. Loco shed made from bits-box items some OO some N. At least it is partly modular to allow me to paint it without too much contortion.

I had made a scenic end piece to represent the approach slope to the bridge, supposedly passing behind the warehouse. Cobbled from bits including some N gauge bridge arches it made the end look too enclosed so it has gone for the time being and I prefer the idea of a closed level crossing, hinting at an original continuation of the branch, now disused - will need a 'gap in the buildings' type backscene.

Had some issues with my Rapido 6w SECR brake van derailing but luckily the appropriate thread on here provided the answer, now it runs ok, if at the expense of some of the delicate hidden brake rigging detailing.

Lastly the NG battery loco body for the Kato N chassis is under construction - going as well as I could expect at present, but the opportunity to mess it up looms - need to work out sequence of construction and modules so I can paint the inside and glase and detail it. 

Basingstoke, junction and 2 diverging roads - squalid, pigeon poo ridden last time I walked under there.

Something speed related? The black cab taxis round here seem to have a passenger door lock initiated once the cab starts to move, it routinely unlocks anytime the cab stops, at traffic lights for example.

Wasn't there an issue with commutator glazing (or something) when unpowered power car motors were run for long distances at high speed too, better to power the motors to prevent this?

4 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

The Great Bear, suspended between two cranes, somewhere at Swindon Works. But why?

 

 

Running in without a rolling road?

17 hours ago, Tumut said:

 

Hello All, what I think is bizarre is that railway wagons are transported on low loader semi trailers, when they should be running on the rails, Regards Tumut

Dft answer to WCML freight path congestion?

On 15/03/2024 at 17:08, montyburns56 said:

This 70s picture shows just how much parcel traffic there was at Forster Square back then.

 

 

The overbridge looks as though it was made from whatever was in the bits box.

Was the stone section original for a narrow station site and the station widened later, requiring the metal extension? 

6 hours ago, Purnu said:

Following on from the thread in the Prototype Questions section, a variation on the 03 and conflat theme.

 

Photo linked from Loose_Grip_99 on his Flickr pages.

 

 

Interesting trap point within the essentially scissors crossover.

8 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

It's in Crystal Palace Park - there's actually two of them.  The mistake was made by Gideon Mantell, the discoverer of the first, incomplete, iguanodon fossils.  In his defence, he was working with the specimens he had at the time; it was only when more complete specimens were found later that the mistake was recognised.  Bear in mind that he made his first skeletal reconstruction in 1834, and the Crystal Palace iguanodons, which were built nearly 20 years later, were still constructed with the erroneous nose spike or horn which they retain to this day*.

 

What's probably more egregiously wrong about the Crystal Palace iguanodons is that they are depicted as heavy, pachyderm-like creatures, contrary to what Mantell had worked out about them five years earlier.  This error was based on the views of another paleontologist Richard Owen, who still clung to creationist ideas and believed that the iguanodon was fundamentally mammalian, and could not have "transmuted" from a reptilian form into modern mammal-like species.   (Owen became the Superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum in 1856, which gained their own premises in 1880 in what we now know as the Natural History Museum.  His rather forbidding statue stood at the midway point of the main staircase until 2009, when it was replaced by a statue of Charles Darwin having a nice sit down - but no cup of tea 🙁.  Owen was widely regarded as being not a very nice person, to put it mildly.)

 

* They were retained during the 2001 renovation programme, thankfully, preserving the original mistake.  All the models in the Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park were kept as as close to original condition during the renovations as was practically possible, given the state of deterioration of some of them.  Some had actually gone missing, and had to replaced with fibre-glass replicas.  As of 2007 the site is Grade I listed, and quite right too.  When I was a nipper and my family lived in Bromley, we used to visit the dinosaurs quite regularly.  They were looking pretty care-worn even back then.  I was very pleased to find them lovingly restored when I visited the park again in the early 2000s, more than 40 years after I'd last been there, despite it being a bitingly cold day (we eventually retired to the nearby indoor cafe for a restorative cuppa and fish finger sandwiches - the latter being a delicacy I had not previously experienced but which proved to be eminently sustaining in such weather)..

OT, the first reasonably complete iguanadon skeleton was found in Benstead's quarry in Maidstone. Consequently, Maidstone is unique in having a dinosaur in its coat of arms.

 https://museum.maidstone.gov.uk/explore/collections/geology/maidstone-and-the-iguanodon/

From this website I find that there is now a sculpture of an iguanadon outside the refurbished Maidstone East station (I haven't been back to Maidstone for a few years now, but we used to walk past the quarry some Sunday afternoons in my childhood).