Buckjumper

I have an external blog - a journal, if you will - in which I have been recording the research and construction of a long-term modelling project in ScaleSeven which will cover the Metropolitan Railway’s Inner Circle Extension, the Extended Widened Lines, and the East London Railway Extension as well as the Great Eastern lines out of Liverpool Street. Such a large area could not possibly be replicated in it’s entirety, so it is proposed to concentrate on the underground lines just east of the junction with the Metropolitan between Bishopsgate (Liverpool Street) and Aldgate beginning at Artillery Lane, and also the Great Eastern main line to Basilica Fields, skipping the huge Bishopsgate and Spitalfields goods and coal depots, and picking things up again just east of Bethnal Green Junction. I’m working to a plan which is timed as a thirty-year long project (yes, quite mad), so it is planned to build six self-contained segments, each 15 – 20 feet long, with the capability of being joined to its neighbour to make a continuous scene, and each taking five years to complete. Considerable thought and planning has gone into the presentation to ensure a seamless transition between segments, and this process will be discussed further in detail. I say thirty years, but that's just the construction side - I've been researching for the best part of a decade (and am only just scratching the surface in many areas). For me the interesting part is the road, not the destination. Good job really... Basilica Fields is set in two time frames – 1890 to 1900, and 1900 to 1906, though these limits are feather-edged with no defined cut-off. The reason for these broad dates is simple; with the workings of more than half a dozen railway companies to consider, there is simply not enough of the historical record left intact to produce an accurate representation based on a window of half a decade, let alone a single year. When considering basic, but essential information such as locomotive allocations, carriage numbers and formations, etc, even these for the larger participating companies whose historical record is often well documented, accurate data for London’s suburban services has proven difficult to assemble in a meaningful fashion. I believe this is due to three reasons, viz; an incomplete surviving historical record, misinformation perpetuated in print, and lack of interest by historians due to a corresponding lack of glamour in its day-to-day operations. I have been documenting my researches, and those of others upon whom I’ve leaned (sometimes quite hard), in order to attempt to redress the imbalance. I will, of course, be very pleased, if not utterly ecstatic to hear from anyone who is able to correct my errors (plenty, no doubt!), especially if they are able to quote from primary sources. It is therefore inevitable that in the presentation of this project, some engines, stock, and other items will be anachronistic, so instead I will attempt to convey the spirit and practice of the times based upon the evidence available. Sometimes entries categorised 'Basilica Fields' on this blog will comprise of a meaty teaser trailer with a link to the full entry on my external blog. There are legitimate reasons for this decision which have nothing to do with generating traffic to it.

Agreed Larry, but steam was expunged from the GE lines in 1962 and even earlier from many of the branch lines (for example, summer 1959 on the Bunt) so the NBL type 1s spent very little of their short lives in the company of proper locos steam engines.

Green Diesel Days - Derek Huntriss p.69 there's a good colour rear 3/4 shot of D8406 coupled up to the front bonnet of another unidentified 16. My favourite branch line! BTW, opposite the above photo of D8406 is a colour shot of D8236 at Liverpool St. on 6th October 1962 with the RCTS railtour which was photographed later in the day at Mardock and reproduced in Peter Paye's book.

Good-o, I can breathe again! Dear Santa, for Christmas 2012...

This entry should signify the start of me putting some productive contribution back into RMWeb after what has been a very long and fallow time for me in modelling terms of at least 24 months or so. The last four months or so I've been playing catchup with a big backlog of commissions (I'm astonished that some people were prepared to wait until I was ready to start again!) and it's been a very hectic but thoroughly enjoyable time getting back to doing some modelling done again. Almost like coming home. The next few weeks leading into Christmas will see all the current backlog completely cleared so I can start afresh in the New Year with what is already looking like an interesting selection of models to build, including a batch-build of one of my favourite classes. As I'm temporarily camera-less until later in the week, I'll kick off with a few photos of part-builds taken some time ago just before I had to stop modelling. All of these are commissions which were put on hold and have now been picked up again. All are much further advanced than you see, so I'll create separate posts for each one of them once I can take some more up to date photos. This is a Great Western O3 5-plank open from a WEP kit and will be finished c1910 with the 25" lettering. The sheet rail can be moved to any position. An AA7 Toad from a Connoisseur kit. Again to be finished in a c1910 condition. The roof is loosely laid in place. A Great Western X2 Mica B from a WEP kit. Again, this will be finished c1910 with the big red lettering. Finally, a Highland Railway Fish open. This from a Lochgorm kit, there seems to be some debate whether they were finished in red or green. I suppose it depends whether they were considered NPCS or goods stock - different companies had different ideas. I think it will look good in green. This after the first coat has been rubbed down. The brakes are on the other side. I say brakes, I mean brake, singular. One brake block bearing on one wheel only. I love the juxtaposition of that rudimentary brake and the Westo & vac through pipes... I've made the long brake handrail work a working feature. So there we are, more updates and there you will see quite a big jump in their condition, once I can take some fresh photos.

Well....as a 7mm pre-Group modeller, if it actually came about (and I'm not holding my breath) I'd buy a 00 Cl.16 but none of the above. Make of that what you will... Class 125 DMU anyone?

That's looking great. For some reason Stratford sometimes painted some locally based locos in a thick paint resembling tar. It happened one year to 69633 and the Buntingford depot kicked up a stink and sent it back to be scraped and repainted. Red guard irons from top to bottom, inside and out.

Lovely! I've got a real soft spot for o/f vans and that's a good 'un. I think you're being a little hard on yourself regarding the weathering - most of the photos are larger than life and look fine to me.

IIRC there was a second 7mm layout called Debenham on the circuit at the same, which appeared in the Modeller around about the same time as Paul's layout was in MRJ. This was conceived as a terminus, and set in the steam/diesel transition period. The station building was based on Quy on the Mildenhall branch.

Thanks Simon. No - I'm afraid my kit building days in 4mm are long over. Mark - last I heard is that Debenham is safe, but I don't know if it will be seen again in public.

Issue 197 also had a colour feature on the extension to Debenham, though by the time it was published Paul had sold the layout and had started building a new one based on another ex-GE light railway, but this time not Mid-Suffolk. J68 68640 is one of the locos I've built for Paul's new project.

Memories of Machines - Warm Winter. As ever, Tim Bowness' voice is sublime and Giancarlo Erra is a new name for me...a back catalogue search is under way. Some intriguing guest musicians appear including Bob Fripp and Pete Hammill, and the album is yet more proof that Steve Wilson is no less than a modern Midas. Before We Fall; perhaps not truly representative of the album as a whole in terms of instrumentation - most of the album is closer and more intimate, but it sets the tone and gets more melancholy from here on in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFoDu6n8ly4

Yes, a complete disaster, and I vowed never to pet-sit again. Back in 1995, during the very hot summer, I was asked by a neighbour to keep an eye on and feed their koi carp which lived in a huge pond with proper filtration while they went away for a week. On the third scorchingly hot day two were belly up, so I scooped them out. Next day there were two more. Then five. Then... By the end of the week the death toll was in the mid-teens and the number of remaining fish could be counted on one hand. They were very good about it, and even dared ask me to babysit their three kids sometime later. Fortunately they survived.

Dunno how you missed him - The Commentator was at Railex late Saturday afternoon, I passed him on the opposite side of the hall from you near Wheal Elizabeth. No doubt he had earlier been entranced by the possibilities of through traffic to Engine Wood, but perhaps you were sitting behind Combwich puling faces/having a nap/imbibing a sneaky beer/lobbing parsnips at Tim at the time?

Fab! Thanks for posting that. The guitarist has a great feel for space. Currently a mix of happy PT tracks including Don't Hate me, Stop Swimming, Heart Attack in a Layby, Collapse the Light into Earth, Feel So Low, Shesmovedon...

PH (basking in the glow): "Firebox door open, bacon on shovel, billy can ready...steady does it..."

The engine looks fabulous - oh for a decent Claud in 7mm. Simple jigs - I love 'em. I'm no engineer, so trying to devise jigs to make tasks like this easier often defeats me - this I can cope with! FWIW, the 'straight part of the flare' are coal guards and are actually separate sheets of metal riveted to some L-angle irons on the inside which are themselves riveted to the flare, though if you're going to have a full load of coal you could easily dispense with them. If you want a photo I may have one I can dig out.

This is a brand new blog and supersedes the old one which has now been deleted. Due to circumstances preventing me from modelling for much of the last couple of years, it was stillborn and essentially morribund. Much of the material had been transferred over from my workbench on the old site, so was hardly new content anyway, and any outstanding models will be documented on a new workbench thread which I'll link to as soon as I've set it up. For further reading I have another blog on here which details the research and building of an extensive (and intensive) ScaleSeven layout called Basilica Fields which set in East London c1890-1907 with trains of the GER, GNR, GWR, MetR, MDR, Midland, LBSCR, LCDR, SER and LNWR all vying for traffic. Posts to that blog are now fed in from my externally hosted journal. To see a selection of previous commissions please visit my website. I have retained the West Mersea RMWeblog, though it is long out of date as I've not attended for a long time, so when I do finally get back, there should be some big changes to report. Edited to update links.

68640 was allocated to Lowestoft in the early 50s, and exhibits the unkempt condition the species could almost always be found in. Unusually the loco has dropped brake pull rods, which should have only been fitted to shunting variants with a 1" greater crank throw on unbalanced wheels, but they were obviously the nearest set to hand when last shopped at Stratford. Most of the condensing equipment is long gone, leaving only the vent pipes and chambers on the tank tops. The shed plate is in the early 50s position and would be moved lower down the door at the next exam, the destination board brackets would probably be removed then too.

If you care to include the antecedents of the LU than I offer my embryonic ScaleSeven Basilica Fields (link to online journal) - an eastern extension of the Inner Circle and Widened Lines from Bishopsgate to Bow, swinging round to Limehouse (with a connection to the East London Line Extension) and back to reality at Mark Lane. I'm modelling just the northern bit between Artillery Lane and Basilica Fields...and that's a 30 year project in itself. It's being built in standalone segments of about 20' long each, and Artillery Lane - a sort of mirror image of Ray Street Gridiron - is the first bit to be rolled out. Traffic includes the MetR. & GWR on the Inner Circle, the GNR & MR on the Widened Lines, and traffic from South of the river via the ELR(Extn.) from the SER, LC&DR and LB&SCR. It all encroaches on GER territory, but that comes later. The track plan for Artillery Lane is currently being Templotted over a drawing of Farringdon to Ray St. from the GNR Civil Engineer's office, reproduced in The Engineer in the 1870s, and that segment will be very much to scale. The first lengths of track, built to contemporary GW spec (for a small GW depot off the MetR.), have been made. Several people have joined in with researching and building the project, and we seem to regularly turn over what's become accepted history as various old documents come to light. The latest myth-buster relating to contemporary Metropolitan track is a real killer, and once we've got our heads around it will form the basis of the next post in the online journal.

With the commencement of the 1959 summer timetable on June 15th, the passenger services on the Munden branch were taken over by Cravens two car and Derby/Rolls Royce three car DMUs working turn and about into Hertford East on the branch from Broxbourne. One of the Cravens units leans into the curve while powering down Sacombe bank on an overcast, but warm and dry day at the end of the first week of service on the line.

You have a PM - I think it'll be of use.