Artless Bodger

Proved that more is not always better.

The LSWR had a few 4 cylinder locomotives too.

Interesting thread, having worked in the paper industry and with family currently working at a D.S. Smith site. Digging around I found a little bit on the CornwallRailway Society site which had a further link to Colin Burges site, https://www.teignrail.co.uk/scouting/64-silverton/ this has recent photos. The BAPH site has a link which contains some history of the buildings on the site, but unfortunately little about the operation of the mill, http://www.devonbuildingsgroup.org.uk/uploads/documents/Newsletters/Newsletter 8 October 1989.pdf

There was a single German experimental express loco with 8 cylinders, but uncoupled wheels, so a 1'Do1', no 19 1001. It was built as a steam analogue to the 1'Do1' electric express locomotives of classes E18 and E19. Each driving wheel set was powered by a 2 cylinder V steam motor. It was not particularly succesful afaik but given it was completed in 1942 was probably not able to be tested in ideal conditions.

The Essoldo? As a family, after visiting Gran, we used to wait for the 7 or 33 bus outside the station on a Sunday afternoon, and could hear the them, the line crossed under the road nearby and the exhaust plume made me think it was a steam engine once. A later holiday in Hastings we stayed in a BB&EM backing onto the post office building at the station and from our bedroom could see, hear and smell the trains as they emerged onto the road bridge, the final power car at full chat. Being pretty well coeval with the 6S I feel a bond with them, and share some characteristics, slow, overweight and noisy.

I have been questioning where my N gauge layout was going for a while, and getting a bit frustrated with tiny bits and pieces, needing to clean the track every time I wanted to run anything and the palaver to remove the scenery over the tunnel to clean track and recover wayward stock. I bought a couple of Dapol OO kits to make and found them refreshingly handleable (the diesel crane being one of the first kits I ever bought, 3/6d in Woolworths when I got only 6d a week pocket money). A Parkside plate wagon followed bodged up to make a jib runner, then a Parkside cupboard door 'French' mineral wagon (like the internal ones we had at Aylesford*). The dockside crane kit got chopped about and married to an old Ratio wagon chassis to make a rail mounted crane, thanks to some comments read elsewhere on RMweb. This was enjoyable. From other threads on RMweb I became aware just how unrealistic and cliche ridden the layout was. Mind made up, it was so easy to pull up the whole terminus, simplify the roundy roundy part and make room for a small OO layout. I still have an N layout but it is just a train set to run trains round, no fancy stuff. (See photos). Things I've learned and need to keep in mind. 1. Make it all accessible. 2. Try not to glue stuff down - I'll want to change it all sooner or later, digging up stuff usually needs a paint scraper and a 1" wood chisel. 3. I don't really mind no ballast, it's a chore and a nuisance (see 2) when I change plans. What I now have is approx 66" x 18", with a narrow strip 27" long across the end of the N gauge to accomodate a rudimentary fiddle yard. Much of what I've done since is trying out plans in SCARM, including reliving some schemes I'd tinkered with in OO previously before going to N, though these are unlikely to be realised as it would mean blocking out access to the window once more, and thought experiments along the lines of a small independent railway serving primarily local industries. *One of which was involved in the construction of a contraption which was funny at the time.

Not a Clayton, but details of a Sentinel 3 car set, post war, in Egypt that is, or was, at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. I saw it there some 20 years ago. https://www.brc-stockbook.co.uk/smu.htm

I read recently that Northiam, 2-4-0T outside cylinders, was driven from the K&ESR to Basingstoke to star as Gladstone in the film Oh Mr Porter, that's quite a way on the main line. Was it Captain Smith, who owned a J52 saddle tank, that was used to haul an excursion to the Bluebell Railway in its early years?

I've been building an N gauge layout for a few years - what was maybe going to be 'the last great project', though it wasn't a great example. My model making is very off / on but the great thing is I can pick it up or not as I wish (compared to Mrs Bodger who is Head Gardener - it has to be done regardless). Two things have happened recently. Firstly dissatisfaction creeping in with N - too fiddly, not easy to do shunting (standard Rapido type couplings), a host of other minor issues. Then I read the "In real life I've never seen...." thread, and also bits of the modelling cliches thread. The first change was to remove the 'churchyard on a slice of plywood' tunnel covering one corner curve - it was always a nuissance to dismantle to clean track or retrieve wayward stock. Secondly my sister in law and husband visited and brought two large boxes containing my nephews' OO stuff (they had moved house and wanted the room, nephews had moved on etc). Most had been mine anyway, passed on when I went to N. I had been tinkering with minimal ideas for OO for a while (built a Dapol diesel crane kit, adapted a Parkside plate wagon as jib runner), enjoyed the bigger parts of the kits compared to N. Now I had two reasons to query the N layout and what I really wanted (probably to mess about with plastic kits). The RMweb threads and new found stock pushed me over the edge. The whole terminus got taken up and the N reduced to 2 ovals and a goods yard (a layout to just run trains from my collection). I now have a roughly 5'3" x 18" space, with a further single track FY space of 27" end on to play with. Plenty of ideas revolving around a minor independent railway (Colonel Stephens style), mainly to serve off scene industry from a wharf. I even have a 'justification' in a putative Len Valley line to serve wharves on the Medway and industries up the Len. That 'history' making is as much fun as the prospective layout building. I'm already getting expansionist ideas, and haven't chosen a plan yet! It will be all sectional track, probably not ballasted in the usual way - I tend to rethink track plans too often but, train set or not, I intend to enjoy myself. Terrier tanks, open wagons and an old Triang clerestory coach. I'm already part way through the wharfside crane build.

I think so, the setts in the road suggest it is deliberate. The large building adjacent was a maltings for the brewery, it has been converted into flats. I think several of the old industrial buildings in the area have been converted likewise. There's a series of information boards along that stretch of the Kennet, it's part of a tourist trail.

Thank you for that info. I have not yet tried Google Earth - something to look at. Agreed. The flat Head Gardener lived in had a bay window with views both up river and down to the mouth, watching the ships pass was interesting. One winter when I visited we saw a small container ship leave, once clear of the piers it was pitching alarmingly, glad I wasn't a mariner. Waves breaking over north pier were obscuring it from view.

One example I learned of through the Berkshire Industrial Archaeology Group is in Fobney Street in Reading, originally a spur off the Coley Goods branch and now all redeveloped as housing. Screengrabs from Google Maps and Streetview

Head Gardener (Mrs Bodger) lived in North Shields for a few years around 2010 and we can remember seeing both rails at the low level and the rail along the top of the outer wall of the pier as seen in the crane photo. The actual railway siding used to continue across the road and into the glen where the car park is now (left of the white building in the distance), this was the pier yard - presumably where the materials and equipment to firstly build, then later maintain the pier were stored. The yard was on an extended siding descending from the original Tynemouth station goods yard. See the OS 6" map 1888-1913 on NLS site, https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/swipe/#zoom=16.9&lat=55.0151&lon=-1.4234&layers=6&right=BingHyb This Flikr site shows the double crane rail along the outer wall and the lower pier edge, with the siding between, https://www.flickr.com/photos/8050359@N07/51316765908 Iirc there was a similar set up on the south pier, but I only walked that once, and have no clear memory, though I saw other sidings near the landward end, maybe originally associated with the Marsden line.

Having had my thoughts provoked - why not replace the single axles with Brill trucks (aiui 1 powered & 1 carrying of smaller wheel diameter). The trucks would be lighter than normal bogies, give better tracking and ride, but still only 2 moderately powered motors. Speed might be restricted, but if used on lines with multiple stops then speed would not rise too high between them anyway. A 1/2SUB anyone? KPEV built some rather odd looking battery railcars, with 1 axle at one end and a short bogie under the battery box end, ran coupled in pairs in some cases, with 4 classes of accomodation and appropriate livery for each class, they looked, well, striking.

Probably not as it does not appear to have any form of continuous brake, despite screw drawgear. I think fitting a comprssor or exhauster might be difficult in the space available?

There's a photo of a trolley wire powered crane at the L&Y Liverpool, North Mersey Goods Depot. I cannot remember on which website I saw it - quite possibly on RMweb. It looks like the crane had a short jib, fixed elevation below the trolley wire level so no chance of contact with it. Dockside cranes were also often powered from trolley wires strung along the adjacent buildings - certainly the Stothert and Pitt ones at APM were, in East Mill the wires were bracketed off the coal bunkers fed by the cranes from lighters or railway wagons, and in West Mill (non dockside) along the boiler house wall. Main thing to avoid was swinging the grab into them as the trolley arms were attached to the portal structure. East Mill wharf, river Medway to left, bunkers ahead, structure extreme right is part of the coal hopper feed and ash plant for the East Mill Stirling boilerhouse. Trolley wires (400V DC iirc) along upper bunker wall. The cranes could run beyond the trolley wires using an umbilical cable.

It seems it was, at least in 2017, as in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdiWwlV52ek

Weren't some industrial locos 'licensed' (if that's the right word) to run over certain stretches of mainline? Locos so licensed were fitted with plates to identify them, issued by the mainline company over whose tracks they could run. I can't think of any off the top of my head but I'm sure there are examples in issues of Railway Bylines. As these locos were probably outside cylindered and 0-4-0 or 0-6-0 tanks I would have thought the principle might be extended to tender from tank conversions. Adding a tender would possibly reduce the waggle factor too, the drawbar would be more stable than typical loco - wagon drawgear.

I was surprised years ago to see photos of German railway lines with unfenced adjacent roads, including one with a young family cycling along mere metres from passing trains. On mentioning to a colleague with Austrian roots, his response was in the nature of, 'well who'd be stupid enough to go onto a railway line anyway, people don't wander in the middle of the road.'

I seem to remember a photo of one on the metropolitan widened lines, on a hospital train from the kent ports - was this possible?

The Midland coal yard at Maidstone East had its own road weighbridge near the entrance, I helped a school friend in the Kent Archaeological Society to photograph the station goods yard and coal yard around 1970 when the coal yard was disused. Iirc the equipment was marked Butterley on the castings. https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=18.7&lat=51.27857&lon=0.51967&layers=173&right=BingHyb The adjacent LCDR goods yard had its own weighbridge evident in the maps linked.

I remember them being quite firm at Maidenhead in the morning peak at the entrance to the subway, physically blocking a 'smart gent' who cut it fine (he was after joining the fast I'd just descended from) and would not stop to show his ticket. He missed his train and used quite ungentlemanly language - the sort of thing that would have got him arrested these days. I'd never had to remove a network card to show both sides before - usually showing the front in the wallet window (the wallet issued with the card). From memory they were not photocards though, unlike the one I had to have for my monthly Reading - Maidenhead season. At an earlier time, on a SR service from Reading to Waterloo I had my ticket inspected, and punched, 3 times en-route by the same inspector - ended up like a lace doily. Being younger then I was presumably obviously a 'wrong 'un'.

Quite a change from an experience I had in the late 80s. I travelled from Maidenhead to Paddington after work one evening, and used a Network card (I think that's what it was) to buy my ticket at MHD. Not the usual guard but a revenue protection inspector (gold braid on hat) came along soon after MHD, I handed him ticket, showed card in plastic wallet, he insisted I take the card out and hand it to him. OK, on he went. Later he came back through the train, asked for my ticket again which I showed in the plastic wallet beside the card. He insisted I take both out and hand to him. I remarked that he had already checked both. As a consequence on each pass though the unit he insisted I remove both ticket and card and hand to him. The train (3 car unit) wasn't particularly full either, he must have had a very bad memory, or a very good opinion of his position.

I had an inkling it was somewhere around the north bank of the Tyne - the blue and yellow concrete benches look just like the ones in the centre of North Shields. Head Gardener (Mrs Bodger) lived in North Shields for a few years when working in Newcastle. Annoyingly for a lot of the time North Shields metro station was under redevelopment (no shelter, temporary access stairs etc) and no service at weekends when I went up to stay, we never did get to see it completed before her job moved to Bristol. Her flat had a view up river to the Tyne Commisioners quay, and down river to the mouth. We used to see the DFDS ferry pass each morning and evening. A favourite evening walk in the early days, before the station redevelopment started, was along the river bank from Fish Quay (vicious gulls) to Tynemouth, then back on the metro.

I travelled to work regularly 1985-1989 from Reading and recall watching the 47 run round a cross country service in platform 8, using the middle siding, more than once. However I did also see a 33 back onto the country end of a train in platform 9 on one evening, the shunter had to raise the buckeye on the carriage and push the buffers back, so possibly the loco was changed that time, train departed across the junction onto the B&H. (Must have been a 33/1?). I think on occasion there was a 47 in one end spur off the middle siding but perhaps this was station pilot rather than one awaiting a loco change? Never took any photos unfortunately - having a camera at work was a sackable offence.