Crewe North

Crikey!......I'm right for once

I may be wrong on this but did not BR remove the sandbox fillers in the keyholes and put them on the top of the boxes attached to the frames.....or am I imagining things

Thanks for that ,I remember now from our conversation at Telford (?) a while back.The vans are fortunately not too difficult to scratchbuild ,I did some for Alexandra Yard back in the days when you could get a half decent axlebox casting from CCW.....trouble is I'm getting a bit lazy now ☺ John

Oh that a resin body moulding for this type of LNW van was still available...... John......living in hope☺

P M sent John

It might be helpful , if you haven't already got a copy, to track down, beg , borrow or 'steal' a copy of Ted Talbot's 'Illustated history of LNWR engines' . It does occasionally appear on Ebay or perhaps your local library can obtain it, either way it's a must have book for the LNW modeller. With regard to the Coal engine the book has photos and '4mm' drawing of the beast which unfortunately shows that the footplate only just overlaps the rear edge of the bufferbeam and doesn't continue right to the front . I only mention this in the hope that the part can be unsoldered so that it can be moved to its proper place. John

In the current G O Guild Gazette Scorpio Models advertise a DD2 water tank wagon kit as 'coming soon'.......they don't unfortunately have a website, John

Hi, PM sent John

Not exactly uncommon as I've seen a few Coal Tanks in this form at shows before . Mine started out as a NorthStar Coal Tank kit ( now produced by Gladiator Models) to which I scratchbuilt the sloping front smokebox to depict the loco as running c1886. The great benefit of modelling at this period of time is that you don't have to worry about lining out and end up with something a little bit different........ John

Argos...... Not exactly brilliant photos in fact pretty naff as were taken in the late nineties when I didn't have a digital camera then and to be honest I didn't take a lot of photos of Alexandra Yard.......but here 'tis for what it's worth, John

The kits of these coaches exist in a couple of scales, I suspect they are all shrunk from the original Gauge 1 etches, I might be wrong though Oh dear....me again........I have to put my hand up for doing the kits in gauge 1 to go with my 10mm scale Crewe Goods kit which I sold under my Old Originals banner. I sold them on to Meteor who reduced them to 7mm scale but they did the artwork for the brake third carriage. London Road Models reduced the all third and comp to 4mm scale. Mercian have my artwork for the Crewe Goods.......you never know one day it might appear again in 7mm scale... John

Hi Argos.........thanks for your comments on Alex. Yard.......the layout lives on in Jim McGeown's (Connoisseur Models) workshop and forms the background for his models on his website. I have a few snaps of the layout......somewhere.......I'll see what I can find , it's been nearly 20 years since the layout was on the exhibition circuit......frightening . If you ever get round to building a Crewe Goods/tank one thing to look out for is the clearance between the leading crank pin and the inside of the outer frame. On the real thing it's decidedly fag paper so on the model I increased the distance between the two outer frames by 1mm either side for clearance. Keep up the good work on the Taddington branch John

Argos........the chassis contains the slide bars and crossheads , the cylinders or rather half of them are soldered to the outside of the frames so the whole body lifts off leaving the chassis, slide bars , crossheads behind.......hope this makes sense. I also ,way back, scratchbuilt the side tank rebuild of the Crewe Goods for my Alexandra Yard layout. With this the smokebox/cylinders were built as part of the chassis, the footplate, cab and tanks plugged in to the smokebox rear and fixed to the chassis with a 6BA bolt under the bunker, John

Here's my take on the front end John

In the late 1870's Webb rebuilt a few of the long firebox Crewe Goods tender locos into saddletanks primarily , as per the few existing photos, for use as station pilots. They didn't last very long as they seem to have disappeared by the 1890's which makes you wonder why he did it in the first place. They have fascinated me for ages ever since I saw the small drawing of one in O.S. Nock's book 'The Premier Line' which I used, together with the four known photos of the loco, to build the model. These photos are all side views so you have to make a calculated guess as to what the front end looked like but I'm sure that it's not too far removed from the front of the 0-4-0st shunter which was being built at that time also. The model is scratch built in brass and nickel silver with Laurie Griffin castings I for the fittings , usual Slaters wheels and can motor for the chassis. So there you have it......something a bit unusual....... John

Re: the tank tops.....Bowen Cooke's instruction sent out to steam sheds May30 1903...,,,,, Part 6.....Brightwork......Hand rails, angle iron round tank tops , hand pillars, coupling rods, spindle rods and weigh bars .....the above parts to be greased over with cleaning oil then scoured over with No.1 emery or bath brick and oil, and a little tallow rubbed over them. Above quoted in 'Bashers and Mourners' though it has appeared elsewhere perhaps the HMRS liveries book. Bearing in mind the working conditions pre- WW1 I should imagine if you didn't carry out this work you got the sack ! John

Yikes!...hope the iron works fits in .........on my mk2 I've done a mirror image of the plan so the train enters on the left rather than on the right, John

Ah!.....my Alexandra Yard trackplan still keeps cropping up ..........oddly enough , as the original layout now forms the backscene for Jim McGeown' s Connoisseur Models website and lives in Jim's workshop, I thought after 20 years I'd build another one. ........which is underway......same track layout as before John

The 'silver' beading on the tank/bunker tops though a bit bright is perfectly prototypical inasmuch as on some locos this steel beading was in fact burnished in LNW days....... Coat's on John

Something completely different.......an Alco Ingersoll Rand box cab from the 1930's in HO. Built from etchings from my own artwork and running on a Bachmann 44tonner chassis. One day I'll build a waterfront layout to run it on.....one day

It 's not you....I also looked at it, no stock on it at all........waste of space, John

Re: your Special Tank kit.........there's an article in MRJ 39 on building the kit.....you may find it of interest . Should still be able to get a copy of the mag via eBay if you haven't got it already John

Hi John No.....it's a shot of it parked up to another 08 cab to cab..... John

Errrm.....for the record .....in ' The liveries of the BR standard diesel shunters in colour 1952-1996' by Steve Jordan page 29 there's a photo of D4100 in blue with a black radiator surround. In the text it says....." The outer edges of the radiator grille are painted black. Again this was only applied to a handful of locomotives and was not adopted as standard. hth John

In 2012 there was talk on this site of a kit for a class 14 drawn up by John Firminger and sold through JPL Models . A photo of a built up test etch was posted but does anybody know if it went into production and ,if so, is it still around? Cheers John