Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, Donw said:

 

Agreed lets stick to the Edwardian era. Here I am amazed at the military experts who declared the war would be over by Christmas when it turned out to be a different Christmas than everyone thought. 

 

Don

 

Agreed.

 

Russian military incompetence, however, goes back at least that far.

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

5 hours ago, rocor said:

I do not think any of us confuse miniature railways and what is real.

I prefer to see model railways and miniature railways as both being "Real" in the Pratchett sense.

 

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Meanwhile, plans for the weekend include .....

 

CAD review of the latest WNR coach

 

 

 

Commencing work upon these little beauties

 

 

And approving plans for my new office.

 

If you want to see the true face of megalomania, it's:

 

Those are some gorgeous coaches.
And that is also one hell of a bookshelf.

 

4 hours ago, AVS1998 said:

I dream of having a vast library, where I can actually have all my books out on display rather than perpetually in storage, as they are now. 

 

But above all, I must be able to have, what I call, the 'Belle' moment;

 

 

To be fair, I have a library, though not quite that size.

Edited May 19, 2022 by RedGemAlchemist

[rocor]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

Agreed.

 

Russian military incompetence, however, goes back at least that far.

 

 

The attack of the Russian Baltic fleet upon the Hull fishing fleet, the night of 21/22 October 1904.

Before the Russian fleet had exited the Baltic, they had fired on fishermen carrying consular dispatches from Russia to them, while they were near the Danish coast, this was without causing any damage, due to their poor gunnery. After this, they carefully manoeuvred around a non-existent minefield. A passing Swedish ship was then misidentified as a Japanese torpedo boat. During the attack on the fishing fleet, which was also assumed to consist of  Japanese torpedo boats, the Russians bombarded their own

cruisers Aurora and Dmitrii Donskoi, assuming them to be Japanese warships. The fleet still had 20,000 miles to travel before they would reach the battle zone. Spoiler alert! Their situation never improved. 

  

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, rocor said:

The fleet still had 20,000 miles to travel before they would reach the battle zone. Spoiler alert! Their situation never improved.   

 

Ah, well, they were up against a fleet largely built at Barrow and equipped with armament made in Sheffield. Rule Britannia - albeit by proxy! The Royal Navy was largely dependent on the support of the Imperial Japanese Navy for the defence of the Canadian Pacific coast during the Great War.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Compound2632

[Nearholmer]

The bit I never have understood about The Dogger Bank business is how the Russian Navy came to believe that the Japanese were in the North Sea. 

 

Was someone feeding them duff gen, or were they making it all up for themselves?

 

Or, had their charts been printed the wrong way round, effectively transposing east and west?

Edited May 19, 2022 by Nearholmer

[petethemole]

16 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The bit I never have understood about The Dogger Bank business is how the Russian Navy came to believe that the Japanese were in the North Sea. 

 

Was someone feeding them duff gen, or were they making it all up for themselves?

 

Or, had their charts been printed the wrong way round, effectively transposing east and west?

They were about to sail half way round the World to attack the Japanese in their home waters.  Was it unreasonable. in a time when communications and military intelligence gathering were not well developed, for them to suspect the enemy might do the same?

[rocor]

18 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The bit I never have understood about The Dogger Bank business is how the Russian Navy came to believe that the Japanese were in the North Sea. 

 

Was someone feeding them duff gen, or were they making it all up for themselves?

 

Or, had their charts been printed the wrong way round, effectively transposing east and west?

 

A social structure that consisted of Nobility and Knolops, without much in the way of a technical and administrative class in-between them. As warfare became more technological, this deficiency became more conspicuous. Not a lot appears to have changed in Russia since then.

[Nearholmer]

33 minutes ago, petethemole said:

Was it unreasonable. in a time when communications and military intelligence gathering were not well developed, for them to suspect the enemy might do the same?

I’d rather assumed that they’d have had some sort of intelligence network in place, watchers in key ports, people with their ears to the ground etc. A fleet couldn’t get around the globe without putting in for fuel, surely?

 

The Japanese must have known that the Russians were moving east by similar methods

 

Communication wasn’t too bad by 1905, very widespread telegraph network.

 

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

WNR railway carriage livery.  I was wanting to fill in the history here, specifically how we got to the green and ivory livery I've talked about.  As ever, I wanted an answer reasonably consistent with the evolution of prototype carriage liveries.

 

I suspect that the original 1850s Joseph Wright coaches may have been varnished wood and that the WNR at some point adopted an all-over green.

 

What I was mulling over is when the two-tone green and ivory livery would have been current. 

 

Conducting A Brief Survey, I concluded that on the one hand we had a few early adopters who carried two-tone on for a very long time as part of the company brand, quite a number who had merely a fin de siècle flirtation with it, and a few somewhere between these extremes.

 

The 1880s is not too early, it seems, for such a livery and would coincide with the WNR's 1882 Dash for Norwich and the new stock required for the longer routes to Norwich and Bury. While a number of companies abandoned two-tone liveries in the 1900s for cost reasons, others persisted until the exigences of the Great War dictated restraint. For the WNR this would have signalled a return to all-over green that lasted until Grouping, the LNER applying its Coach Brown to extant WNR stock.  Thus, I propose the green and ivory livery of the WNR for the period 1882-1914 as favouring relative longevity, but not erring or inappropriate in doing so. 

[Andy Hayter]

I like the logic James and would only question one premise.  What would be the reason for change in 1914?  (assumed to be a change since you quote it as the upper range date for the two tone livery.)

 

Clearly WW1 had major influences on such things but history points to changes coming about on a roughly 2 year post the start of hostilities basis as the lack of skilled manpower or in some cases any power, man or woman, led to simplified liveries.  So 1915 - 1917 as a cut date for two tone livery makes more sense to me than 1914 where the number of vehicles needing repaint in the last  5 months of the year would be small.  Even if the directors did note an issue with all of the skilled painters having signed up, it would be several months before instructing an investigation let alone making a decision for a simplified livery.  

[MrWolf]

Good point and I was wondering if a minor railway (generally an impoverished breed) would have been able to justify, let alone carry out a repaint of coaching stock during wartime?

I do like the idea of green and cream coaches though!

[Edwardian]

7 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

I like the logic James and would only question one premise.  What would be the reason for change in 1914?  (assumed to be a change since you quote it as the upper range date for the two tone livery.)

 

Clearly WW1 had major influences on such things but history points to changes coming about on a roughly 2 year post the start of hostilities basis as the lack of skilled manpower or in some cases any power, man or woman, led to simplified liveries.  So 1915 - 1917 as a cut date for two tone livery makes more sense to me than 1914 where the number of vehicles needing repaint in the last  5 months of the year would be small.  Even if the directors did note an issue with all of the skilled painters having signed up, it would be several months before instructing an investigation let alone making a decision for a simplified livery.  

 

You are correct. I meant it in the sense of when the change was ordained, rather than carried out. So, it might have been ordained in September 1914, say, with no coaches actually receiving the plain livery until 1915.

 

Having said that, the directors might well not feel austerity was necessary until later, say late 1915 at the earliest.

 

So, a change to plain green ordained in 1915, 1914 being the last full year that the livery was officially in place.  It would, thus, be more coherent to say:

 

Lined green and cream 1882-1915

Plain green 1915-1922

 

As to the application of the plain green, I don't imagine there would be any new stock built during the war and repaints would become infrequent, thus, although the ruling was to apply plain green as and when stock was painted, how many wartime repaints there were and when is another matter. Perhaps it was applied in practice on repaints largely towards the end of the conflict and into peacetime, when new vehicles would also have been out-shopped in it. 

 

For my modelling purposes, I do not need to have a detailed answer in relation to the application of the plain green livery - in 1905 the two-tone livery worn still has another decade of application to new coaches and repaints - but it is good to be able to complete the story I did want a credible end-point for the livery.

 

 

[Donw]

Personally I would have thought the two tone livery would have been quite early possibly from the start where early optimism encouraged fanciful liveries with a change to all over green  say around 1907 a period when others were simplifying livery. I will admit a bias based on GWR and Cambrian. 

 

Don

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Donw said:

Personally I would have thought the two tone livery would have been quite early possibly from the start where early optimism encouraged fanciful liveries with a change to all over green  say around 1907 a period when others were simplifying livery. I will admit a bias based on GWR and Cambrian. 

 

Don

 

Indeed, and I cannot fault that logic.  However, I am looking at trends and having to apply them to the known history of the WNR. Absent the need to accommodate that history, I would have gone for 1896-1907 as falling squarely within peak two-tone.

 

It could have been introduced earlier, as you say. To that I would say that the introduction of two-tone in the 1880s rather than the 1860s puts the change more to the mainstream than outlying trends. 1890s would be unassailable in that regard, but the early '80s sees the WNR embark upon a decade and a half of expansion and modernisation, with new, longer distance routes and new stock, so a more publicity focussed livery fits this period.

 

At the turn of the century, as we have chronicled in the past, the WNR had a financial crisis which causes about 4 years of straightened and only gradually improving circumstances between 1899 and 1902.  Fortunes thereafter significantly improved and were fully buoyant again by 1904. If the company were to abandon two-tone for reasons of economy, c.1900 would have been the time, even though that would fly in the face of national livery trends.

 

There is a case to say that repaints were ordered to become less frequent and even that any repaints were to be plain green in this period.  However, I think that the WNR made it through the worse years by delaying repaints and not building or buying any new stock, but maintained its smart livery. 

 

The 1904-1915 period seems to be when many companies abandoned two-tone.  Of these, Highland, Furness, GCR, LB&SCR, MP&CR and MGWR had only relatively recently adopted two-tone.  Only three longstanding users of two-tone liveries abandoned it during this period, two Welsh companies that had been two-tone since the early 1880s, the Cambrian and the Rhymney, and the GWR, that had had a two-tone livery since mid-Century. 

 

The WNR would have been relatively prosperous during this period, having overcome its difficulties, so is more likely to be like the Furness and MP&CR, going to a plain livery in 1915 in response to the War, rather than earlier, like the other companies just mentioned. 

 

[ianathompson]

My pre-Grouping interest has always been the Great North of Scotland Railway.

This was a relatively minor railway, covering a small territory mostly in Aberdeenshire and what is nowadays Moray.

It seems to be a real life equivalent of the West Norfolk.

 

 Prior to the 1890s the livery was brown then Pickersgill  changed this to purple lake and white (1896?).

Being the cash strapped company that it was, and having a typically Scottish parsimonious atttiude, vehicles ran for years in the old livery.

It was apparently not uncommon to find brown vehicles in trains even by 1914. 

As I recall, it was reported that one famous example, dating from the 1860s never  received a repaint at all, was almost white due to the bleaching effect of the sun!

 

I am a little cynical of many pre-Group models.

There seems to be a prevailing idea that everything was nicely painted and in tip top condition.

God forbid that dirt encroached onto the railway.

 

The reality, I suspect, was somewhat different.

Paint pigments were not as stable as they are in modern times, and probably faded quickly.

All those nicely painted goods wagons? 

Really? I know labour was cheap but...

We are also dealing with a coal powered railway.

There was plenty of cheap labour to polish the engines but I am sure that it was not employed to counter the effects of steam and smoke gradually fading and blackening everything.

 

My own attempts at depicting the pre WWI scene are spasmodic at best, due to other interests, and are currently in abbeyance.

 

 

Here is a very old picture showing Inverness Citadel as it might have looked in preGroup days.

The rake of mixed liveries is in the departure platform and the , to date, only GNoSR loco (No10) is in the foreground.

A number of BR liveried candidates await attention and the paint brush.

 

The modelling is crude, no doubt about it.

The NBR wagon in the foreground (yes, probably miles too big, I know) shows my interpretation of a careworn livery, as opposed to a museum exhibit. 

 

Eventually, when I can drag myself away from the over the counter BR locos and diesels, I hope to complete many more pre Grouping models, and not in pristine condition.

 

Ian T

 

[Edwardian]

You make good points, Ian.

 

The burning of coal - vile stuff, really - makes everything instantly dirty.  The costs of not just applying, but cleaning and maintaining, elaborate liveries against rapid degradation crops up time and again in Board minutes of the period, with Directors invariably pressing for more practical liveries.   

 

I think I can justify my elaborate liveries and their duration in the context of prototype practice and the history of my line.

 

How well it is maintained, how clean it is, is, as you say, another matter. It is good to be reminded of that.

 

Moderate wear and stain, I think, is what I'd plump for with the state of weathering reflecting the status of the equipment.  I haven't yet painted any locos or coaches, but I have painted wagons and I try to paint in quite a lot of the dirt and wear and fade, rather than start with pure, clean colours and have to weather them or distress them. 

 

The points you raise, about unstable pigments and long periods of exposure, are some of the many reasons why I can never find it in my heart to stress about exact prototype shades on a model, the absolute accuracy of which is, I suspect, an illusory goal. If it looks right ......

 

There may well be different West Norfolk greens depending on how I Aching Constable mixed the paint, the age and state of the finish etc, etc.

 

[Andy Hayter]

On the issue of pigment stability, it is not just the older pigments that faded.  In the 1990s Deutsche Bahn abandoned it older blue livery for a racy red for the locos and red and white  for the passenger stock.

 

By 2000 a lot of the stock was now in a delicate pink!

[Hroth]

Old varnish on top of paint is particularly unpredictable too.

 

As an example, removing old varnish on oil paintings is a major undertaking for art conservators.  The painting underneath is usually in reasonable condition, its just that the old varnish usually turns a manky shade of yellow.

 

Thats just indoors, imagine how varnish will go off in a railway environment....

 

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by Hroth
An example (though not railway related)

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

By 2000 a lot of the stock was now in a delicate pink!

 

Like my father's red Vectra of the same period. 

 

32 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

The burning of coal - vile stuff, really - makes everything instantly dirty. 

 

The extent to which that is true depended on the type of coal and the way it was burned, it seems to me. Good quality steam coal in a well-manage locomotive should give a clear exhaust with just a hint of grey under normal working conditions. Throwing live coals out of the chimney, Jumbo fashion, is the sign of an engine that is inadequate to its task. Domestic coal on a domestic grate would have been quite a different proposition. 

 

With the steam locomotive, the real villain of the piece was superheating - the higher temperature of the steam required the use of nastier lubricants. 

Edited May 20, 2022 by Compound2632

[Donw]

To add to this I seem to remember a change of varnish from German to British was reputed to have affected the colour of stock.

 

Don

[WFPettigrew]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

The 1904-1915 period seems to be when many companies abandoned two-tone.  Of these, Highland, Furness, GCR, LB&SCR, MP&CR and MGWR had only relatively recently adopted two-tone. 

The Furness went two tone in the 1890s with the arrival of Alfred Aslett as GM from the Cambrian.  It only abandoned two tone ultramarine and white during the Great War, probably later rather than sooner, and - as suggested up thread - did not repaint carraiges en masse during the conflict, or even afterwards.  Photos of trains between the war and grouping tend only to have the odd carriage in all over ultramarine. 

 

All the best

 

Neil 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Prosperity clearly played a part in all this, but I think some railways either had so many carriages per unit length of track (eg. LBSCR) or operated in such a filthy atmosphere (Met.) that two-tone wasn’t a great idea even when they were flush, at least until they electrified.

 

The LYR is the one that always makes me wonder, where they went two-tone, but chose colours that looked dirty even when they were new.

 

As a PS: weren’t some carriages two-tone in the very early days, schemes inspired by road coaches, so typically black on the lower panels and deep red, deep green, or some crazy “look at me” colour like yellow on the upper?

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Prosperity clearly played a part in all this, but I think some railways either had so many carriages per unit length of track (eg. LBSCR) or operated in such a filthy atmosphere (Met.) that two-tone wasn’t a great idea even when they were flush, at least until they electrified.

 

Good point about carriages per route miles in the case of companies with intensive commuter services. 

 

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The LYR is the one that always makes me wonder, where they went two-tone, but chose colours that looked dirty even when they were new.

 

Yes, I wonder how Attocks persuaded his Board that vomit and turd was the way to go. 

 

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

As a PS: weren’t some carriages two-tone in the very early days, schemes inspired by road coaches, so typically black on the lower panels and deep red, deep green, or some crazy “look at me” colour like yellow on the upper?

 

Actually, the other way around. Like Liverpool and Manchester.  The colour was the lower part with a black upper.  Alex has described how this was done on the SER before being reversed. 

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Good point about carriages per route miles

 

OT but I happened to work this out recently, having seen a newspaper cutting from 1848 reporting that if all the Midland Railway's locomotive, carriage, and wagon stock if coupled up together would stretch from Derby to Chesterfield. In 1902, the Midland's wagon stock would stretch from St Pancras to Carlisle and half-way back again but the carriage stock would scarcely extend to Luton.

[Adam88]

I missed out on the library discussion.  I've recently started to catalogue my own collection and have started planning yet more bookshelves.  I use an on-line cataloguing system called LibraryThing which suits my purposes very well for a number of reasons.

 

It tells me that my books are getting rather too many in number.

 

 

That in turn reminded me of my visit to Petersen House opposite Ford's Theater in Washington where the stack of books on Honest Abe is also rather tall.