Buckjumper

 

Ah, it is in colour. I haven't watched it in a long time.

Me neither, but after your post last night I dug it out and had a watch. Not brilliant quality, but nice and atmospheric as there's a very orangey winter's sun.

 

There's another black and white film on one of the video's featuring one on the Buntingford branch, including cab footage.

There's some colour footage and a cab ride in one on the Buntingford Branch on that line society's DVD.

It would be interesting to hear some accounts from the old Stratford drivers of these wonderful machines but I expect most of it wouldn't be printable!! Oh for a time machine!

Spot on. For a short time about a decade ago I worked alongside someone who worked both the BTH and NBL type 1s on the Buntingford line. Occasionally we got to chat about the NBLs, stories about which invariably included flames, during which he always exhibited an astonishing grasp of Anglo-Saxon vernacular.

 

So, how long will you have to wait for Heljan to bring out Wickham Central Railway of Peru railcar twins, as trialled on the Buntingford branch?

Perhaps the year 2047 to mark the centenary...

Many of the Pilot Scheme diesels spent their entire lives in the steam-era but I'll bet the majority of purchasers are buying them to ruin with their other diesels.

 

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.

it’s difficult to find a good photo of this beast

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.

As I am in the process of starting my Buntingford branch project...

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.

Spoke to Heljan briefly today at Warley. Class 16 is not a rumour, it is true.

Good-o, I can breathe again!

Dear Santa, for Christmas 2012...

I am with you here....this is getting nonsensical. We haven't got a decent Warship orig or later, 06, 07, 24/25 could do with a rethink? 40, 55? 67, 81,2,3,4,7 90 92 101 104 110 121 122 mk 2 aircon etc etc etc Get your fingers out and give people what they want!! And I speak as an unashamed Heljan fan. Counting the locos in the Airthrey Park fleet we have more Danish than Chinese! Si

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?

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.

 

What a fantastic model you've built for Paul! It really looks the business; the weathering is outstanding! Do you build P4 locos to order (from kits and scratch built)?

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.

The new song by Stolen Earth, formed from the ashes of Breathing Space.

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..."

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.

Captured circa 1910 using the new state-of-the-art Autochrome Lumière process, this Yorkshire & Lincolnshire tar tank is a very mundane subject for such an expensive glass plate image. More photos here (external link).

You'd be amazed what will sell on eBay..

 

You betcha!

A version of this postcard was on an earlier incarnation of RMWeb, but I thought it appropriate enough to regurgitate for this thread. 'Success' was based on an Agenoria Manning Wardle with a number of scratchbuilt elements. The Slater's vans were very early unredeemable efforts which now lie in disgrace in some cupboard, not even fit for making a tenner on ebay.

Very little remains of my short dalliance in the mid-90s with British Railways Eastern Region in 7mm circa 1958-62, and I've very few photos of that project. 16T minerals of the period I always found hard to capture - easier to go to town on the weathering, but most in that period weren't utter rust-buckets, and capturing the subtlety of the rust breakouts and the overall weathering on wagons just a few short years or months old is quite a challenge.

Back then I failed utterly and always overcooked it, the condition of this old thing would be more at home in the mid-late 60s (and later), and the photo shows the beginnings of some of the techniques I later spent hundreds of hours trying to hone (I got better, I hope!), and was one of the last of the pack to get sold on. If I had some more to do now I'd swot up on Pennine's techniques as his results are, to my eyes, spot on.

Somebody with a little knowledge of physics (not me) will be able to find the theory that states that it's impossible to pull a piece of string perfectly taut

I've heard of that one - I think it's called ... string theory? B)

Sounds like tautology to me...

Ah - but that's the point. The pool of water in the tarpaulin wasn't everyday. In fact, it was so uneveryday as to be non-existent (and let them as says otherwise produce a photograph or two to prove it!)

Never say never. On the Great Eastern (where else?), the practice of 'hollow sheeting' was done on purpose during long dry spells. In his autobiography, Fenland Railwaymen (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd 1968), Arthur Randell recounted:

We now have a main water supply at Waldersea Siding, but when I first came to live here we had to use cisterns for catching any rain water that fell. During a long dry spell we often ran out of water, so a supply was sent to us from Wisbech in old engine tenders which were put opposite the railway cottages so that the water could be run through canvas pipes into our cisterns. The water was not very clean - it sometimes had a dead bird in it or little wriggling creatures - but as our cisterns already housed a few worms and snails we took no notice. Each house had a charcoal filter and once the water had passed through this it was as clear as gin. Sometimes it took a few days for the tenders to come along with our supplies so, in the meantime, we would fill baths and buckets from wagons which came from Wisbech where they had been “hollow sheeted†by the tying of new tarpaulin sheets over the top with a shallow depression left in the centre, This was filled with water, so when the engine brought the wagon along we only had to fill our buckets and empty them into the cisterns. The water tasted strongly of tar from the sheets, but it seemed to do us no harm - certainly none of us down here at Waldersea ailed very much.

Edit: which is probably so infrequently modelled it couldn't possibly be a cliché.