Buckjumper

Photos suggest predominantly packing straw - lots of it, both on the track and left on the loading docks (plumber's hemp), some discarded lumps of wood used for battens, and some discarded paper - possibly newspaper (tissue etched kits are wrapped in), and some discarded rope or twine.

It measures as near as I can tell 140.5mm which scales out at about 20 feet.

The prototype was 19' 11" over headstocks, so just a smidgen over.  Nice van though, and nice build as usual Rob.

I think it got LNER green paint in the late 1930s at least.

 

 

LNER standard colours were brown & cream until mid-1937 when the green & cream painting schedule was introduced, though WWII put paid to many stations being repainted until the 50s.

There you have me, I don't know I can't say I have ever seen one of his lists.

 

Something worth enquiring about though, Thanks for the pointer

It's not in his current 7mm list. Could Danny be producing the 4mm version of Laurie Loveless' NER Dynomometer Car?

Modelling the Buntingford branch, are we?

It's my local, and I've had a couple of stabs at it over the last 30 years. #1 son likes our pair of BTH Type 1s and D8406 would be perfect if we had another go. Widford would be nice; small with a couple of sidings and the bridge at one end.

If that's the case then Lloyd I'll make sure we include D8406 in the next batch!

That's the one I want! All green or SSYP would be perfect...

I've never wish-listed before. That was some experience...

It's very interesting to compare the colour of the frames in the photo of Chris Wesson's 3245 in Miss P's link in the OP with a photo of the same model after it has passed through the hands of Martyn Welch (MRJ 165 p.80). Printer's interpretations et al notwithstanding, the final colour is closer to the colour of the frames of No.40 in the painting Mike posted (when seen on my slightly warm coloured monitor).

You are confusing two different sorts of Red paint here. Indian red, Venetian red, and other red oxides are all pigments made from the brown/red ore haematite (Fe2O3 also known as Rust). They are not translucent. The translucent reds tended to be made from natural organic pigments and are quite unrelated. In many cases a red oxide of some sort such as Indian red was used as an undercoat for one of the translucent colours specifically because it was not translucent.

Yes I don't disagree; Indian red is indeed an opaque colour "if left unadulterated" (Stone, pt.II) with excellent covering power (ref my earlier comment about the Midland 'brown ' livery); the pigments are excellent at scattering light giving a flat, even coverage.

However, Indian Red is made transparent with the addition of linseed oil as a vehicle, and guess which vehicle the railway companies used for their top coats in the pre-Grouping period because it had the best finishing properties?

For railway use raw linseed was only imported from the Baltic and Black seas - Indian oil was then considered inferior due to the presence of too much stearine. For the decorated parts of locos and carriages cold-drawn oil (crushed, ground and extracted without heat) was used and only considered pure if pale, perfectly transparent, sweet but tasteless (!) viscous and free from smell. Boiled oil was only used as a vehicle for roofs and other non-pretty areas of paintwork.

There's loads of this stuff by Stone such as the preparation and properties of the various paint pigments used by the companies, the vehicles (fixed and volatile oils), chemical tests, durability, driers, adulterants, varnishes, etc.

I'm afraid that references to British Standard paints are a red herring. The first standard BS381c was introduced in 1930, twenty four years after the GW stopped painting frames Indian red, and who's to say that the BS Indian Red was anything close the the GW shade?

Another red herring is the reference to post-WW2 paint. Paint technology in the Late Victorian/Edwardian period was much better than that of the mid-Victorian period, but still fairly basic compared to development in the middle of the 20thC. Paint used by the pre-Grouping companies was little more than a tint suspended in oil requiring many coats to build up the full lustre. Reds are notoriously translucent, the colour of the undercoat had a major role to play in the final shade - as did the varnish. Did the GW use Copal on locos? If so that would have altered the final colour too.

The point is that although Indian Red is more red than brown (suppliers of paint pigments refer to the original Bengal pigment as more purple than modern equivalents), the final appearance on the loco could easily appear to be purple brown if used in conjunction with a dark red undercoat. The Midland goods loco brown is as good a case for this as you'll find, being crimson over iron oxide. It would be interesting to know what procedures were used to effect a rose tint as described by Stone.

Very interesting and useful photos of the NSWGR carriages! Do you have any idea as to what the varnish was they used? Copal was the best quality and used extensively on carriages in that period, but unfortunately darkens considerably with age whether stored inside or out.

The NSWGR (New South Government railways) and successors painted coaching stock in "Indian Red" from 1954 onwards. I found some pics on flickr which give some idea of "Indian red". Here are some links:

It's a pleasant colour and suits the stock, but I'm not sure it helps in this instance as NSWGR Deep Indian Red could be a completely different shade to that used by the GWR.

May I quote an interesting passage from Sidney Stone's contemporaneous work Railway Carriages & Wagons, which is a collection of articles first published in The Railway Engineer between 1892 - 1897? Stone was trained in the DO at Stratford and went on to be the Asst. Works Manager of the GCR. Although his writings only cover issues pertinent to carriages and wagons, he has some interesting comments on paint, and refers readers to 'Terry's Paints, Pigments and Painting.'

Indian Red: This pigment is a ground hæmetite ore obtained in Bengal. The colour varies, but that with a rosy tint is considered the best. Calcined sulphate of iron is sometimes used to make an artificial substitute for it.

Now that doesn't tell us too much, but can we infer from this passage that if the purple/brown shade(s) folk now think may be correct was being used, then Swindon was painting locos an inferior tint?

A shocking thought!

Good-o - I can talk about enamels; acrylics I've not yet mastered in the airbrush...

It's possible the mix wasn't quite thin enough and that particles of paint simply dried in the internals requiring a full strip down, or maybe a build-up of deposits (which you thought had been properly cleaned out) which finally tipped the balance. I'm naughty and mix in the cup as I go, but if you're not careful and haven't stirred the paint sufficiently it can bung up the brush. I warm enamel tinlets on a radiator for about 10 minutes before shaking and stirring which helps to break down the thick gloop of pigment.

I always blow through with cellulose thinners between colours until it flows clear, and then squirt through with Liquid Reamer which is a xylene/acetone solvent, and at which point you find more colour flowing out! It's incredibly dangerous stuff if breathed in, but will shift dried deposits from the internals where cellulose fails. That should be enough for a colour change, but isn't enough if you want the airbrush to work without fail next time.

After an airbrushing session I always run through with cellulose until clear, run through with Liquid Reamer, strip the brush and clean the parts with xylene on some kitchen towel or using these brushes, lubricate if necessary and reassemble so next time it's ready to go. I think the first few times I stripped my Iwata it took nearly an hour, but I've become so familiar with it, and which parts need most attention, that I'm down to about 15 minutes or so.

Which paints are you using through your airbrush Rob?

If you were able to remove this piece and backfill with ballast the ruse would be even more complete.

 

It's a horrible ugly box and the multitude of openings hardly add to it's charm.

 

It has character!

Disposable gloves are a good preventative, but if you've got them stuck in your fingers then light, a magnifier and some of SWMBO's best tweezers from Boots will remove them.

I don't know the difference between my brakes and breaks, must be because I was thinking about broken vans!!

A little before your period, the GW, and many other companies spelled them 'break' on official documentation, and some even had it that way on the van sides.

Funny which details stand out to different people; I love the palisade fencing - the colour and texture is fantastic.

I don't want to blanket the place in snow, but contemporary commentators and photos often describe/show very muddy main streets - 'mud' being the Victorian euphemism for horse dung, so that may help a little. I think I'll have to resort to little and often over a protracted period to keep sane.

I'm guessing that like me you're layout is/will be set in the fifties?

A bit earlier...1890s. See here.

Barely notice the flangeway from that angle!

 

How many?

Well, from the baseboard edge to the rail where the cobbles finish is equivalent to a row of exactly 100 (what are the chances of that?).

There are nine rows to an inch.

And the area is about 31 inches long.

So that's 9 x 31 x 100

So about 28 thousand setts.....

Blimey, now you've worried me. In my time period all of the roads in East London were laid with setts, Macadam was only laid in parts of the City and more upmarket streets.

I could be looking at scribing millions of setts over the next couple of decades...

As long as it's there, ad looks vaguely plausible (eg set up so that dropping the lever would apply rather than retract the shoes) I'm unlikely to notice.

I think that's the mistake on the side with the reversing clutch... I'm sure most of us have done the same before, and will do again in the future!

I like your natural wood graining on the open wagon very much, Chaz.

I'm sure we've all got stock with errors we know about, but which we've put on the 'to fix one day' list. I certainly have. Big picture first, fix details later.

Pat - give Jim a call, I'm sure that for a few shekels he'll spin you a new set of castings for your Lowmac when he runs off his next batch.

You've got it; the Walsworth kit is partway there, so with a few replacement parts it'll be a real timesaver. Of course I've been caught out before (more than once) thinking a kitbash would give me a headstart, only to find it would have been quicker to scratchbuild, hence my keen interest in your J52.

And thanks for the compliment!

Oh I've had some challenges over the years - one kit everything went in the bin except the smokebox door, but most kits end up with replacement bits. This is the latest off the bench, once a familiar sight in both north and east London. The only imported part was the boiler from a J67, the rest of the platework was scratchbuilt, most with a piercing saw, but the spectacles were drawn with CAD and etched.

Hi chaz - just catching up with the last three or four pages of your thread - amazing to see how a layout in progress can already exude bags of atmosphere. Your photos of the Walsworth J52 were particularly useful as I'd like to build a J53 - or strictly speaking a condensing GNR J14 - Walsworth seem to have put theirs on hold, so I'm resigned to buying the J52 along with the two relevant GA drawings from the NRM and doing a bit of a kitbash.

There is one error in the Slater's kit - any brake van buffs spot it?

If you'll forgive the temporary pedant's hat, both the Slater's and Connoisseur kit follow the mistake made by the early (and current!) Hornby 00 models in providing impossibly curved horseshoe-shaped rainstrips over the four corners of the roof. Looking at photos of these vans in the 50s through to more recent ones the wooden battens are sometimes gently curved, and sometimes straight battens are fixed on in a diagonal position.

You'll find a couple of photos here and here illustrating the above.