John_Miles

That looks really impressive, as good as his mine layout. If only he would go to exhibitions outside Wales, he would be famous. Top quality modelling.

1Fs were used on goods trains (they didn't become freight trains until quite late in the existence of the Midland) between Swansea and Brecon and Brecon and Hereford. They were also used on some of the passenger trains. So they did travel substantial distances, albeit, as mentioned above, with frequent stops for water.

This is a bit organised for Cardiff. I presume Mr Porter isn't Tom's new id.

I have only attended once, as an exhibitor, and I thought it was a brilliant exhibition, one of the best I have been to, better than Bracknell. The downside is I live in South Wales and I don't like the idea of spending most of my day travelling. Cardiff to Piccadilly by train is over 3 hours and you have to add in the time to get to the station and bus to the venue, By car there is the car park known as the M6.

Duck 6 is a general Midland's (not Midland Railway) term for any 0-6-0. See the latest Backtrack for confirmation of this.

For LMS2698, the information I have on lubricating oils is in Adrian Tester's book. It covers pages 151 - 161 so a lot of information to post here. He gives references as well. If you send me an email address, I'll scan what he has written and send it to you.

I answered this in this thread http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/133032-lms-locomotive-design-features-analysed/?hl=%2Badrian+%2Btester and as you posted after my answer, I presume you read it.

There is criticism above saying the 4F was basically a Victorian design. So would this same criticism apply to the GWR which was turning out what were fundamentally Victorian designs into the 1950s. Also with regard to E.S. Cox's books, these have been shown to be heavily biased by the writings of Adrian Tester. Cox came from the L&Y and detested all things Midland. Finally the axle boxes, again this came from Cox. They weren't great but, for instance, a lot better than those fitted to the Super Ds which had a much worse failure rate.

The LMS after Stamp was in charge collected statistics on just about everything including locomotive performance. Those that were liable to frequent breakdowns, expensive to run or spent a lot of time under repair were scrapped. Hence ex-LNWR types disappeared fairly quickly with the exception of the Super Ds. There were IIRC 772 4Fs. So not exactly a failure then and the LMS produced them over a large number of years. As stated above, on the S&D they were employed on passenger trains and expected to haul heavy loads (I think up to 9 carriages) at relatively high speeds and yet they only had the same boiler as the 2P so they just couldn't produce enough steam for high speed passenger working. The mistake made by the operating people seems to be that 4F = 4P. I remember 4Fs being used on excursions from Chesterfield to the Hope Valley on trains of 9 or 10 carriages. The climb up to Bradway tunnel was ok but by the time they reached the entrance to Totley tunnel the speed was definitely slow. There has been a lot of misinformation about 4Fs which has been discussed in length elsewhere on RMWeb so I am not going to repeat it here.

What is the siding near the Marks and Spencers depot for please. I had my first trip between Sheet Stores and Stenson (both ways) on Saturday, very interesting.

IIRC there are a couple of books of PW diagrams in the Study Centre from different time periods. I presume this is the one from the PW Engineer South District.

Won't they be stopping at Barnt Green? The platform is being lengthened so I suspect they will.

This would make them even slower. When I moved from Brum to Cardiff in 1980 the journey time was 2 hours and it is still that now and it's going to get worse with the Cross City trains running to Bromsgrove providing an additional source of delays.

The Belpaire version of the 3F didn't appear until 1916 when Fowler was CME so strictly it was a Fowler 3F. The Deeley 3F had a round topped firebox.

So amazingly, if this comes off, the Neath and Brecon which was one of the dodgiest of all the South Wales railways will be at the forefront of technology and this should guarantee its future for a few decades at least. Good news!

This is why things like momentum cannot be reproduced. Imagine a model train taking the same distance as the prototype to stop. It would be well of the end of most model railways if travelling at speed and when crashes occur on models, happily they don't destroy the PWay and other objects.

There are things in 4mm scale which cannot be accurately reproduced, for instance scale thickness footplates would be around 0.1 mm or about 3 thou. Much too flimsy.

I went through Yate a few weeks ago and the tracks on the branch were shiny.

I am often surprised by the layouts which get "Best in Show" and I take this as an indication that I am well out of touch with reality. A finding my wife is happy to confirm.

WRRC used to do a guide to colours, I suspect they will still have some.

I'm not sure about Caerleon but when stations at Magor and Fairoak are discussed, my sources tell me Notwork Rail brings up objections on the grounds of line capacity.

Typically 100mm are for house connections, main drainage (which is anything else) is 150 upwards. Pipe sizes increase in 75mm increments so the next size is 225. For a foul drain, a 150mm would serve quite a lot of houses, a 300mm would be quite large etc. Storm drains tend to be much larger but do start at 150. I remember years ago doing a sewer design for a project in Warwick. The largest storm drain was 1.8m whereas the largest foul was about 450mm.

Skewed doesn't necessarily imply girders of different lengths. Post #4 gets it right, girders of different lengths lead to large secondary moments (i.e. bending across the span rather than along it) which most bridge designers would prefer to avoid.

Quite a lot in the larger works although I have to admit, I'm not sure what they were used for. Some sewage works were huge. IIRC Minworth which serves most of Birmingham and part of the Black Country is around 800 acres. Just read the above post, sorry to duplicate Nearholmer's post. Another interesting thing about Minworth was it digested some of the sludge which produced, amongst other things, methane which was used to drive generators. In response to the Trawden post, my paternal grandmother came from Laneshaw Bridge, grandfather from Colne.

The above plan has Trawden Brook - is this near Laneshaw Bridge?