buffalo

No, they were always the 2221 class. There had been a 2201 class (2201-2220), Dean 2-4-0s, but the last of those had gone by 1921. The 4-4-0 Counties were the 38XX class, although 3800 and 3831-9 had been 3473-82 before the 1912 renumbering. So, did they really mean the County tanks, or am I missing something? Nick

Hi Mike, Remember 5-6" overall is only 2.5-3.inches per side. I've just been looking through Ahrons' Development of British Locomotive Design, no GWR examples but a couple of fold-out dimensioned drawings may surprise you: An NER 4-4-4T, boiler 4'9", cladding 5' 8 1/4" A MR 4-4-0, boiler 4' 7 7/8", cladding 5'3". Maybe the GWR was rather stingy with its insulation? Nick

Oh come on, Mike, you're being really selective there. Just look at the other two drawings on that page or on any of the next few pages. In each case there's around a mm or more between the solid and dashed lines. Whilst these are far from accurate drawings most do show room for a good 2-3 inches of lagging. The 439 drawing hardly has room for the cladding to clear any rivets joining the boiler rings! Nick

Hi Mike, Looks like I missed the 1893 Wolverhampton rebuild! As it happens, I have a copy of Swindon drawing No 11130 of 1893 sitting in front of me. This relates to alterations to the trailing end of a 517, but it shows the outlines of both the boiler and the cladding. The dimensions are unfortunately unreadable, but given the usual boiler diameter of 3'6 7/8", a quick measurement and arithmetic suggest about 3' 11 1/2" for the outside of the cladding (for what it's worth, my Mitchell kit came out at fractionally over four feet). There are plenty of images online that may help to convince you - try a google image search on 'boiler cladding'. Here's one example, the length of the handrail knobs and the gap between top feed piping and boiler should give a clue. Nick

Hi Mike, Looks like you are making good progress. One question, though. Where did the 4'2" boiler diameter come from? RCTS Part 3 has 4'1" for the original boilers and 4'7/8" for the type 34a fitted when rebuilt in 1871. A trivial difference you might say, but the boiler diameter given is usually the diameter of the bare boiler. Cladding will add five or six inches to this size. Nick

According to the RCTS volume, all were renumbered between October and December 1946. Nick

Me too, and I need some more but their web site has said that it's not available for at least the last year... Nick

Of course, but equally we should not assume they are wrong without good reason. It's all very well rehashing all the well known and often repeated arguements about the accuracy of representation and colour perception, but in the case of the Wolverhampton blue/green we have, as far as I know, no other evidence. For what little it is worth, my perception of the colour sample (very close to Pantone 3288C) in GWW is a good match for their photo of the STEAM model, though the coloured photo in RCTS Part 1 looks more green. In terms of the potential errors here that's far from definitive, but it is all we can do without more evidence. On the question of different greens for goods and express pasenger classes at Swindon raised by the well-known quote from The Locomotive, does anyone know of any other source making this claim? Perhaps Simon's point about lining might apply to the saddle tanks with a large expanse of unlined green on their tanks, but it wouldn't apply to, for example, the Dean Goods which were lined. I suspect that any apparent difference was more likely due to two factors. Firstly the number of coats of paint, the extent of rubbing down and stopping between coats and the number of laers of varnish applied. Secondly, express passenger classes would typically have had much larger areas of brown or indian red on their frames and their larger splashers than any smaller wheeled goods engines which would surely affect how the green parts were perceived. Nick

Maybe, my Martin Finney has a 1020 horizontally mounted in the (round top) boiler and uses a 60:1 High Level Load Hauler Compact+ with D2 drive stretcher. It's a bit fiddly to get the motor into the boiler when putting the body o the chassis, so a 1024 might be marginal. Whether the extra space in the Hornby Belpaire would help, I don't know. Nick

Jeff, Whilst I'd agree that the blue-green on Mike's photoshopped photo does look too vivid, where did the idea that "Wolverhampton green was reportedly darker than Swindon green" come from? See the sources I've referred to. Nick

Hi Mike, The 3288C certainly looks closer to the GWW sample. The text is not very helpful with Windsor brown, suggesting it is only slight shade change (presumably darker) from the milk chocolate and both might have a slightly purple tinge. Their sample for Windsor brown certainly has a slightly reddish appearance. It is based on Precision P3, which I couldn't find on the Precision Paints web site. They also note that Precision P6 (Indian Red) "looks more like the early Windsor brown with a slightly purple tinge." Just to add to the confusion, the Swindon version of Windsor brown used up to about 1880 may or may not be the same as the Wolverhampton version... Nick

That's a crazy combination. The 1015 is quite powerful and ideal for small tanks, but it is a high reving motor. With a 38:1 box the theoretical max speed in a Dean Goods would be getting on for 80mph. You'll only be using a small part of its rev range at sensible speeds and thus only a fraction of its available power. 50:1 or 60:1 would be much more suitable, as would the larger 1020 motor (similar max revs but more powerful). Nick

Mike, I would add RCTS part 1. an often overlooked but extremely useful part of the series and has a colour plate of an Armstrong goods in Wolverhampton livery, and the second edition of GWW. I've not compared the detail differences between the two GWW editions, but the later one includes Wolverhampton green amongst its colour samples. The caption to this sample reads The colour appears somewhat darker and a little more green than your's. As to the frame colour, yours looks well within the range suggested for Swindon's Indian Red. According to GWW 2nd ed., whilst Wolverhampton used a dark red with vermillion edging from 1854-66, they subsequently used a rich milk chocolate brown with black edging and red lining up to about 1880, then windsor brown with black edges and red ling to 1894. Thereafter, there was a gradual change to Swidon practice until the end in 1902. Nick

Re lineside fencing, as with many topics RMweb has been there before. A quick search on 'fence posts' will find several topics with photos of the real thing including this and this. Not sure whether there are any LNER examples there, though. Nick

The kit usually comes with only 00 spacers but the instructions say they can be exchanged for EM or P4. IIRC, I asked for P4 spacers when I ordered mine so didn't have to do this. Nick

What fun you've been having, Duncan! I'd certainly recommend the Comet chassis kit if you can get your hands on one. It goes together well and the rods are intended to be articulated. I have one which I must get around to finishing one of these days. Personally, I'd dump the existing wheels for 3mm axles rather than trying to ream them and get a new set for 1/8" axles from Colin. After all that work the centres may well be distorted already. Nick

Excellent work, Ian. After watching its development in your previous entries, it's really good to see the Metro completed. I know it won't be easy, but I'd encourage you to have a go at lining the cab side sheets as, to me, the lining looks a little unbalanced at present. A much easier addition would be to paint the tops of the springs black. I'm not sure about the tops of sandboxes on the running plate. Comparison with the treatment of splashers and springs might argue for black, though it's difficult to tell from photos -- some, at least appear to have black edging. However, what I do wonder about is the red toolboxes. I think there may be an argument for those mounted on the running plate being red but, somehow, red boxes on top of the tanks looks odd to me. That said, I have seen a photo of a 517 in which the tank top toolboxes appeared to have black edging. Nick

I'll be interested to see how you get on with 12mm foam, Ian. My experience with 50mm foam is that it can sag by up to a mm or two without some bracing under the middle. Nick

Just for the record, I've not received any reply or acknowledgement from the museum. Maybe if someone is in the area it might be worth trying the direct approach. Nick

Read Al's blog entry again, you'll see he is well aware of this. I did once see a 7mm example which incorporated the sag, but it was quite noticeable that the wire used was very overscale, maybe because there were a large number of them. I'm inclined to agree with CK's earlier point that the eye expects to see them, even if scale sized wires would be almost invisble and probably wouldn't last five minutes. I've used EZ-line for fencing wire where the scale issues are much the same, but the result is much more convincing than having no wire at all. Nick

Good progress there, Alan. Before giving up on soldering, you might try making a simple jig -- just pins in a block of wood -- to hold the various pieces of wire in place as you add each part. Maybe also use a high temperature solder (188 or above) for the core parts and 145 or lower for the parts added later. That said, I have to ask why not just use the Alan Gibson cast brass injectors. They are a good representation of this particular type and can be fairly easily modified to match the slightly different arrangements on some other GWR tanks. Nick

Fair enough, Ian. I'm also quite old-fashioned in many aspects of my modelling. Nick

Mostly Dean Goods and 2361s as there were no more than a handful of Armstrong Goods or others remaining by 1930. Deans had always been rare (usually single digit quantities) west of Exeter and, from about about 1920 were usually shedded at Taunton and rarely seen west of Exeter. Nevertheless, there were stil well over two hundred Deans remaining when the first 2251s were built. Distribution of the 2251s largely followed that of the Deans before them except, as Mike says, on the Central Wales lines where they were generally too heavy. Perhaps it's interesting to note that Collett's 57XX/8750 classes, built similarly as replacements for earlier generations of large saddle/pannier tanks were also a bit on the heavy side for many routes until their classiication was reduced from blue to yellow in 1950. Nick

Not sure why you bothered with the scrim. Amongst the benefits of extruded poly are that it is easily shaped and will take almost any form of surface filler directly. I prefer Sculptamold because of its light weight. Nick

There's a small book on the history of the company though I've not seen a copy and an ebay description mentioned only b&w pictures, also a few words here, but otherwise I didn't find anything when I was looking last year or this morning. I've sent an email to Brixham museum to ask if they have anything that might help distinguish the colours. Nick