sandra

I don’t think it’s a Flower, they had deeper frames and the brake rigging was inside the wheels. I know this because I am building a model of a Flower.This is a photo of the nearly finished but unpainted loco.

I’m not convinced that this is a Bulldog. It looks like one of the 6’ 8” 4-4-0s. Certainly 3361 was a Bulldog with 5’ 8” wheels but the wheels on this model look too large. To me it looks like an Atbara for it has the high-stepping appearance of these locos. The distinguishing feature is the height of the splashers. In a Bulldog the springs rise above the top of the splashers but on this model the top of the splashers are clearly above the springs because of the need to clear the larger wheels The model is painted in the post first-war livery of plain green but it still has the small circular cab windows which I think may have disappeared pre-war. I wonder what others think?

Tony, I did think of putting a B1 on the up train but I don’t think this occurred very often and I will therefore stick with my idea of building another B17. I suppose I could simply remove Clumber from the down train and attach it to the up train but this would involve too much handling of the locomotive which I try to avoid. I intend to build “Doncaster Rovers” as I understand that this was the only B17 with a group standard tender shedded at March and I do have a photo of it on the boat train. I believe the B17 which ran through Retford came on at March and ran through to Sheffield where it was replaced by an EM2 electric. I will build the B17 using the old Hornby tender drive body and tender using a Comet underframe. I don’t know what hauled the train between Harwich and March but I presume it was another B17, or was it a Britannia? The EM2 came off at Guide Bridge and the train was taken to Manchester Central by another loco and finally it was taken to Liverpool Central by yet another loco, possibly a tank engine. So the train had five different locos during its journey, is this a record? Sandra

Thanks for posting that Robert. I think I must mention that in reality the two trains would never have been seen passing each other. The down train to Liverpool ran in the morning and the up train to Harwich ran in the afternoon. In fact the buffet car and one other coach were removed from the down train at Sheffield and returned to Harwich on the up train. The B17 was also removed from the down train and then worked the up train so at Retford both trains were hauled by the same engine. The down train at Retford is hauled by Tony Wright’s B17 Clumber so the up train should really have a model of the same engine. I don’t think I could bring myself to a second model of the same engine so I will build a second B17 but this will be Doncaster Rovers.

Thank you Tony. This came about by accident because running smoke box first this loco derailed a number of times. It is compensated and even though the curves on Retford are not sharp it did take exception to one particular curve coming out of the fiddle yard. That is a problem I’ve found before with compensated locos. Another compensated locomotive on Retford is 60018 Sparrow Hawk and this locomotive has been a source of endless problems as it repeatedly derails at one point in the down line and it was not capable of pulling any of the main expresses in the up direction so it’s now been relegated to an up fitted freight. I rather like to a see a locomotive running tender first as it makes a change to normal and my memory of steam days is that it was more common than is depicted in photographs. I suppose photographers saw a loco running tender first and didn’t bother to take a photograph.

Tony, The fitting of signals at Retford is continuing although there five or six still to go. Yesterday Andrew Hartshorne installed the latest signal which has four somersault arms which allow exit from the goods yard to the up main or to the up platform line. Here is the new signal which is signalled to allow the J39 to leave the yard on to the up main line. The signal was built by Graham Nicholas who has made a marvellous job of its construction and it works beautifully having been installed by Andrew Hartshorne of Wizard Models. The four arms all work and are powered by servos. This is a view of the signal from the other side. I believe that the original of this signal was the last surviving somersault signal at Retford for it was still there after the flat crossing was abolished and the underpass built. Robert Carroll and me ran the full sequence of trains today and whilst there were a couple of glitches the railway worked quite well. The major problems were caused by operator errors, particularly by me. I will eventually get the hang of the layout’s many foibles. I wish to thank both Graham and Andrew for all their hard work in building and installing the somersault signal which I think is a great piece of work. Sandra

You don’t say what you think is unusual about it. To me it looks like an ordinary member of the 4575 series of prairie tanks in lined green with large early crest. These locos had larger side tanks with slopping fronts. They were common on the Kingsbridge branch.

Tony, I had a similar experience with a K’s 44XX 2-6-2. The kit was complete with motor, gears and wheels and it was, I recall, relatively cheap. However assembly proved seriously challenging. I’d only built one kit before which was a Wills 2251 class body kit to go on a Triang under frame but the 44XX was much more complicated. The most difficult part was trying to get the motor to mesh with the wheels because there was no gearbox or motor mount, you just had to screw the motor to a frame spacer and then try to adjust it so that it stayed in mesh which it didn’t for very long. Eventually I realised the only way to do this was to get the adjustment right and then glue it in place. I did eventually get it to run properly and it didn’t look too bad. So it turned out to be worth all the effort in the end. The point being I learned an enormous amount about building such a kit and enabled me to build a lot more models so I was less dependant on RTR. There was also the sheer pleasure in overcoming the difficulties and in making the thing actually work and to see it move along the track and haul its first train. I did subsequently change the wheels to Romfords and I fitted another motor with a motor mount. I still have it but it certainly not going to appear on Retford any time soon. Sandra

By 2121 will anyone be modelling the East Coast Main Line in 1958 in 00, or any other scale? If any of our models do survive by then I expect they will just be regarded as rather quaint anachronisms and that technology will have moved on to such an extent that there will be such things as immersive holo programs in which you can actually experience the real steam era railway. I certainly don’t expect Retford, Little Bytham or indeed any other model railway to still exist, if only because the technology involved will seem to be primitive in the extreme and few will understand how to repair anything that breaks. Indeed you could argue that we are half way there as many modellers don’t seem to dare touch any RTR model that fails.

Yes Robert, it’s on the up Heart of Midlothian replacing 60108 Gay Crusader. I ran her several more times around Retford and no further problems occurred. She’s not going to replace 60108 on this train, in fact I haven’t decided on which train I will place her but it will be on one of the principal expresses. 60108 is one of the best engines on Retford and a credit to Roy who built her so I want her to stay on the Heart of Midlothian. 60073 St Gatien is beautifully finished but I would like to know her provenance. She has probably been built by a professional builder but there’s no indication on the loco of the identity of that builder. I suspect the loco is probably quite old as she has a Portescap motor but a very quiet one which would seem to indicate that it was an early Portescap. Does anyone know when Portescaps were first introduced?

I must admit that in building my EM layout, Andover Junction, the most time consuming part was building the track in the storage sidings. How I envied people like Tony Wright who could just buy Peco point-work for the non-visible parts of the layout. I know that RTR EM points are now available but when I started in 2013, they weren’t. Andover Junction uses mostly, but not all, RTR stock but it does all have to be converted to EM gauge. Strangely the conversion of stock was probably the easiest part of building the layout. This shows some of the point work at one end of the storage sidings. It’s all copper clad which is quite easy to build after you’ve built a few and got the hang of it. I would estimate that it takes about 3 hours to build a point in copper clad. There are about 120 points on the layout which have all been hand built. There are still further points to build. This is some of the point work on the visual part of the railway which has mostly been built with Exactoscale parts. These points take much longer to build but I do think that it is worth the effort. I think each takes about five hours to build. As you can see the layout is very far from completion but I haven’t had the time recently to work on it.

If your referring to the before the First World War then photographic evidence seems to show that all locomotives were kept very clean, even spotless. However it changed after WW1 as labour became more expensive and hours worked were shorter. Photographs seem to show that express locomotives and passenger locos generally were generally kept pretty clean but standards had fallen for lessor engines such as freight locos or shunters and these could be quite dirty. However overall locos were kept cleaner than in BR steam days and never reached the terrible state some locos reached towards the end of BR steam. Of course everything changed during the war when everything was painted black and very little if any cleaning was done. In BR steam days at Chester I remember that the passenger locos were kept reasonably clean but the few freights I saw were hauled by absolutely filthy 28XX 2-8-0s. I know this is irrelevant but this is the state some locos got into at he end of BR steam. This is a photo of a 57XX pannier tank I took at Croes Newydd in 1965. The GWR would never have let an engine get into this condition before WW2.

The locomotive would be in BR green. All the Jubilees acquired this livery after nationalisation. In early BR days some were painted lined black but I think they were all green by 1958. I think Hattons would be a good place to start but you could always look on eBay.

I see it’s exactly 83 years today she broke the world speed record for steam.

The problem is that nearly all photos of steam locos are taken from a three quarter viewpoint so they all appear to show the vertical lines as being narrower due to perspective. However there are a few taken from the side and I’m afraid they show no evidence that the vertical lines are narrower. For example on page 87 of “The Book of the A4 Pacifics” there is a clear photo of the side of the cab of 60033 “Seagull” and the lines are the same width all the way round. I’ve looked at a number of photos taken from the side of East Coast Pacifics both in LNER days and BR days and can find no evidence that the vertical lines were narrower.

You’re right Tony, I’ve just had a look and those locos with a Bachmann B1 body have Comet frames with the motor driving on the front axle facing forward into the smoke box which leaves lots of room in the boiler, directly above the driving wheels, for weight to be added. A similar arrangement applies on some of the Pacifics except that the motor drives the rear driving wheels with the motor facing backwards into the firebox. Again this leaves lots of room above the driving wheels for weight to be added.

Sorry to hear you’ve been unwell. I hope you get better soon and are back to telling us all we need to know about the GWR of which I am a (secret) fan.

I’ve only managed to do four so far and I’ve yet to weather those.

Tony, I have fixed it. The loco has the motor in the tender and it had been soldered to the tender chassis but it had become unsoldered. All I had to do was re-solder the motor in place. I must admit having the motor in the tender is not an arrangement I’m keen on. The loco is rather noisy and the shaft driving the gearbox in the loco is apt to fall out if you need to pick the loco up. It is the very devil to get back in place. I believe this arrangement is widely used in N gauge but I think it is usually unnecessary in 4mm. I regret to say that the Bachmann D11s do actually work better and are quieter than the kit built engine. Sandra

I remember Roy mentioning an exhibition or exhibitions at the World Trade Centre. The World Trade Centre was in London by Tower Bridge. At some point in the nineties they dropped the name and it became International House. How do I know this? I worked in this building for 16 years in the 90s and 00s but I was totally unaware of there having been exhibitions there until Roy mentioned it.

Tony, My Andover Junction layout is DCC and I must say I prefer DCC from the operational point of view. After operating a DCC layout an analogue layout does seem rather restrictive. It is also easier to wire a DCC layout for whilst sections are desirable for fault finding you do not need so many of them and in normal operation they are not used. It is possible to put a decoder in a locomotive with a live chassis but it is difficult and any stray shorts have to be ruthlessly eliminated. On Andover Junction I have three locomotives with live chassis which do run OK. Andover Junction is EM gauge which probably makes it more difficult to make the live chassis/decoder combination work. I think the secret is not having curves which are too sharp. Andover Junction has curves of a minimum radius of 3’ 6”. I don’t think the size of the decoders is as much a problem as it was as you can buy some exceedingly small decoders which seem to work satisfactorily. I do realise that DCC is certainly prone to its own problems and it’s undoubtedly more susceptible to short circuits. A few days ago I operated Andover Junction and it worked OK. The next time I tried it there was a massive short in the fiddle yard. I couldn’t work out what was causing it. I checked the wiring, the control panel, the rolling stock starting with the most likely suspects first (metal coaches) until I eventually tracked the problem down to a 2251 class 0-6-0. Whilst the loco had been driven into the fiddle yard some time earlier without a problem, somehow whilst standing there the decoder had decided to fail and to fail in such a way that it caused a short circuit. This would not have occurred on a DC layout as any fault with a loco would only become apparent once you tried to use it and not cause the whole system to fail. As I said previously I do not intend to convert Retford to DCC although in my view it would be a better model railway if it had been built as a DCC layout. It was of course largely built before DCC was widely available. I did talk to Roy about it once and he was not totally hostile to DCC but it certainly wasn’t for him. Sandra

Tony, Ii think it’s fair to say that Roy’s approach to the wiring on Retford was somewhat eccentric in that he did not use conventional cab control. The choice of controller was determined by the setting of the points. This meant that there was nothing intuitive about operation, you had to know how the system works to be able to operate it. However it is easy to just run trains around on either the GN or the GC but to do more than that means you do have to learn how to work it properly. I have owned the layout for nearly 11 months and I haven’t completely worked out all the moves possible. However me and Robert did run through the sequence some time ago and I must say the railway worked reasonably well. It is possible to operate it quite reasonably with just two people if they know what they’re doing. As others have said the secret is to have operators who are familiar with the railway and know how it works. Once you do know it does actually run very well. A couple of times I did suggest to Roy that we should have practice sessions but he wasn’t keen. It must be said (I’m sure it’s been said before) that it would all be much easier if the railway was DCC. This would allow all the various optional moves to be made as well as make it easy to accommodate more trains in the fiddle yards. You could have as many or as few operators as you liked and they could operate any part of the layout. I do think that very large layouts like Retford are the most suited to DCC. Whilst I have considered DCC it is probably impossible to install it now. The railway would have to be completely re-wired. and about 100 locomotives fitted with decoders, it doesn’t bear thinking about so it will remain analogue. Sandra

As far as I’m aware the King Arthurs were only ever painted in lined green by BR. Upon nationalisation some already bore wartime plain black livery and some Southern malachite green. No doubt they ran in these liveries until painted in lined green by BR. The lined black livery was for mixed traffic locos and the King Arthurs were passenger engines.

I’m sorry you feel like that Tony. This was only a light-hearted post about a trivial incident where a locomotive ran into a fallen signal. No damage was done to any of the locos or rolling stock or even the signal. Of course I’m aware of the thousands of hour of work which many people contributed to Retford and I would suggest that the continuing existence of the layout and indeed my wish to finish is in itself a tribute to those many people, including yourself. It’s inevitable that I will do things differently to Roy but my aim is to respect Roy and everyone who contributed to the layout by continuing with the build of the layout in the same spirit as before. I will not change things unnecessarily but I do have my own way of doing things and I do want the railway to be seen by a wider range of people. I realise that some people may not like the way I do things but whilst I may respect their opinions I will nevertheless do things in my way including posting trivial photos if I wish. Incidentally I’ve now glued the signal in place so that this type of accident cannot occur again. Sandra

This is not a staged photo. This did actually happen. I was testing the A4 after working on the tender which had a terrible wobble. I was feeling very pleased because the wobble had been cured and neither me nor Robert had seen that the signal had fallen over the track. Several expletives were uttered but fortunately both signal and loco escaped without damage. The photo does emphasise that the loco needs to be weathered. At the moment she (he?) is as made by Hornby apart from being converted to EM gauge.