“BEYOND DOVER”

[Northroader]

Sticking my neck out, I think the first 0-6-0 with outside cylinders in France were built in 1846 for the Cie. Rhône et Loire, a component of the PLM, and named after the region it served. The Mammouth was the name of an inside cylinder 0-6-0, which I have a struggle tracing to which particular company or date, possibly a Stephenson import?

[Northroader]

 

The next EST loco I tried was an 0-4-2 tender engine, with inside cylinders. This type was quite popular in France, the EST, NORD, PLM, and OUEST all had some. The EST ones were built in batches from 1853, a class totalling 63 with drivers of 1.68m diam. (5’6”, although I’m rounding off metric conversions slightly) These were used as mixed traffic engines, good for freight or passenger work. 45 larger engines followed from 1885, driving wheel diameters 1.82m (5’11”) also regarded as mixed traffic. For some reason I’ve never worked out, they were given the nickname of “Crapauds” (Toads) Five of them lasted as long as 1938.

 

Construction of the engine was quite simple, with the trailing axle allowed some float, and the weight placed over the drivers, it being quite easy to make a model loco “nose heavy” . The engine has its fair share of pipework for water, sanding, air brakes, and the air pump was bought in, as were the tender axlebox/spring assemblies, which are a Slaters job for a Midland loco. The chimney has a pronounced taper, and as I don’t have a lathe I did it from some Shimstock,  very thin brass sheet around .004” thick I bought from an ironmongers shop years ago, I don’t know where you’d get it now. This was cut oversize, polished both sides with emery paper, and tinned, then rolled into a conical shape of around four thicknesses, and secured with some thin wire wrapped round top and bottom. Then apply a hot soldering iron, trim to size, and file the end edge smooth.

The tender is loaded with briquettes, coal which has binding compound added to form large blocks. I gather French coal isn’t the same as what they dug out of the Rhondda, being more friable and difficult to burn on a loco grate. The PLM went as far as having a dedicated fleet of colliers shuttling between South Wales and Marseilles. This is represented by stripwood sawn up.

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by Northroader

[Devonbelle]

On 07/03/2020 at 21:34, Northroader said:

Sticking my neck out, I think the first 0-6-0 with outside cylinders in France were built in 1846 for the Cie. Rhône et Loire, a component of the PLM, and named after the region it served. The Mammouth was the name of an inside cylinder 0-6-0, which I have a struggle tracing to which particular company or date, possibly a Stephenson import?

Bob - I have a trawl through my SNCF Society magazines of the last 25 years, Ill post on this thread if i find anything. Paul 

 

[Northroader]

Thanks, Paul, that’s a kind thought. I never joined the SNCF society, thinking it did what it said on the tin, and was all Jouef RTR, although now they’ve changed the name and become more wider in outlook, it might be more in tune with what I’m up to. (Present company excepted, there’s nothing wrong with Jouef / Lima RTR, I hasten to add, pictures of Nouvion quite welcome!)

Edited March 22, 2020 by Northroader

[EddieB]

On 07/03/2020 at 21:34, Northroader said:

Sticking my neck out, I think the first 0-6-0 with outside cylinders in France were built in 1846 for the Cie. Rhône et Loire, a component of the PLM, and named after the region it served. The Mammouth was the name of an inside cylinder 0-6-0, which I have a struggle tracing to which particular company or date, possibly a Stephenson import?

The term Mammouth derives from a locomotive built by Robert Stephenson.

 

RS 378/1842 MASTRODONTE and 379/1843 MAMMOUTH were supplied Alais & Beaucaire (Soc. des Mines de la Grand Combe et des CF du Gard), and later became PLM nos. 1212 and 1213.

 

RS 500/1845 MAMMOUTH was supplied to the CF Paris-Orleans et du Centre (no. 48), becoming P-O 448.

 

From the second locomotive of the first pair, the term appears to have been applied generically to similar long-boiler 0-6-0s at the CF de Lyon à la Mediterranée (LLM), the pair of locomotives becoming LLM nos. 61 and 62 in 1852, before passing to the PLM in 1857.  The term was also adopted by the Cie Paris à Lyon, which was the largest constituent of the PLM.

 

The term "Bourbonnais" originates with a batch of locomotives built by Cail and introduced in 1854 for the Cie Paris à Lyon; however the nickname may have been coined much later in PLM ownership, when a later batch (P&S of 1858) of similar locomotives were inherited from the unsuccessful CF du Bourbonnais and renumbered by the PLM within the same series.

[sncf231e]

On 07/03/2020 at 19:52, TT-Pete said:

 

Interesting. You learn something new every day an' all that. I have only spent the past 39 years or so wondering why this Rivarossi loco is described a Bourbonnais... :^)

 

I just noticed that the (former) French retailer Clarel, who introduced special versions based on industry models in H0, also issued a PLM Mam(m)outh based on the RivaRossi Bourbonnais. It can be seen (and bought if you are fast) here: https://ebay.us/4xtsaT

Regards

Fred

Edited March 24, 2020 by sncf231e

[TT-Pete]

7 hours ago, sncf231e said:

I just noticed that the (former) French retailer Clarel, who introduced special versions based on industry models in H0, also issued a PLM Mam(m)outh based on the RivaRossi Bourbonnais. It can be seen (and bought if you are fast) here: https://ebay.us/4xtsaT

Regards

Fred

 

Hi Fred,

 

Thanks for the tip, I watched the auction finish, in the last 5 seconds it jumped from 142 to 205 then ending at 252 Euros. Too rich for my blood!

[Northroader]

It’s the wrong scale, Grommit! That does sound a bit rich for one of them, but I have to admit I do happen to have one myself, messed up into a MZA version, although as there’s no HO track layout for it these days.

They are a nice well made model, smooth runner. I’ve done a picture of the underside with the keeper plate removed, to show a modification I’ve done with the motor feed wiring. There’s pickups on both sides for the loco on the outer wheelsets, needed to feed the one side of the tender motor through a drawbar spring, and both sides of the loco headlight. I’m never happy with electric headlights on models, so I took the feeds off this. There’s a centrally mounted arrangement with two copper tags for the wires, to which I’ve soldered two jumper leads going straight to the motor. The motor is then fed direct off two tender wheels on the one side, plus two loco wheels, and from two loco wheels on the other side using a feeder which bypasses the iffy drawbar circuit. The loco and tender become permanently coupled, but it’s much more surer footed.

 

While I’ve got the donkey harnessed to the cart, I might as well enlarge on my comments the other day about  briquettes.

 

This is an old view of the ETAT installation at Niort. Beyond the loco, (another Bourbonnais) you’ll see a massive construction of Briquettes stacked up. The size and shape makes this pretty easy, you wouldn’t have been able to do it with Phurnacite ovoids from Abercwmboi, but then the fireman would have to break them down before putting them in the firebox to around fist size, or they’d take too long to burn. Then there’s the activity going on at the side of the loco, it looks as if they’re digging the bank away, then you realise there’s a pile of small coal there, and it’s being shovelled into baskets, then raised on a rather mediaeval looking manual hoist to go into the tender. There are briquettes neatly placed round the edge, saving on the need for coal rails, and a mixture of more briquettes and small coal in the middle.

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by Northroader

[Northroader]

PATRICK TASSIGNON — EXTENSIVE LINKS FOR ALL BELGIAN MATTERS.

 

It struck me this morning, I ought to give a most useful link to matters oldtime Continental, which will nicely occupy any free time you have until this lockdown passes. It’s a Belgian site, but you’ll find down near the bottom there are such things as old manufacturers catalogues. Pre WW1 there was a flourishing export market with a lot of other countries, so it’s not exclusively Belgian.

https://www.tassignon.be/trains/documentation/documentation.php

Edited May 23, 2022 by Northroader

[Compound2632]

I especially liked the 1942 CAM catalogue/book of plans.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Compound2632

[Northroader]

FRENCH CRAMPTON 4-2-0 LOCOMOTIVES.

 

So far I’ve introduced you to three really useful engines, which would form a good backbone to any small layout. You may have picked up from my first post that I was really taken with a shot of an old EST express, with a Crampton as a pilot engine, so this time I’ve picked this as a topic.

The Crampton was a British design, driven by the idea of having a really low centre of gravity. This was achieved by placing the boiler really low, and having the driving wheels placed out of the way behind the boiler. The cylinders were then of necessity placed outside halfway along the engine. The arrangement gave a really steady engine, although the perway might not have liked the long wheelbase with minimal sideplay. It turned out that low c.o.g. wasn’t that vital a requirement, but the drivers must have enjoyed the steady running, and they could go fast. One aspect of the design which helped this was that the pipes from the regulator box on top of the boiler down to the steamchests above the cylinder were quite short and straight, with good port openings, and weren’t improved on until Andre Chapelon  started to rebuild the PO Pacifics with “internal streamlining” in the ‘thirties. The weakness of the design was the limited adhesive weight, an EST crampton weighed 33tonnes, and only 13.5 tonnes was on the drivers. On level track you just had the rolling resistance of the train, but on any sort of gradient the weight of the train would be factored in, and the drivers could start to slip.

Several of the British main lines sampled the type, but they never prospered, but they were far more successful in France.

The NORD had the most, sixty built in batches from 1849 to 1859, including three oddities, two being built as tank engines with an extra carrying wheel, and one with a Petiet boiler, having a heat exchanger drum above the boiler, which did nothing at all for the appearance of the engine. The fleet were withdrawn between 1878 and 1895, being phased out of top line jobs. The PLM had forty from the Paris  Lyon section built between 1854 and 1864. The stretch north of Dijon limited their usefulness, and they were moved around the system in search of lighter duties. Twelve were eventually sold to the EST in 1869, and the remainder had all gone by 1879, so some had a life of only fifteen years, quite low for a French engine in this era. This left the EST, who had twenty seven of their own, plus the PLM dozen. The first withdrawal of these was in 1892, and the last ones went in 1913. Driving wheel diameter on most of the NORD and EST fleets was 2.30metres, nearly 7’7”, some reduction in sizes happened, presumably to help the tractive effort. I fancied a go at one of the EST engines, which had a boiler rebuild, with a large dome added, which displaced the regulator box from the ideal position I’ve mentioned.

The thing I found was that a Crampton needs a totally different approach, because of the very low pitch of the boiler. I couldn’t use the normal way of having inside frames of two parallel vertical brass strips, instead there was just one brass strip, laid flat, centrally down the middle. At the front this ended with the U shaped buffer beam, and in the middle a flat cross piece to support the cylinders. At the back upward extensions were placed at each side for the main driver axle bearings. The motor and gears were attached on top of the strip, the worm being under the axle. The spur gear and axle are quite noticeable,as there isn’t much of a cab. The two pairs of carrying wheels were mounted on a bogie, so I had three point suspension. Mike Sharman did two very good articles in the RM for 3/68 and 9/68, describing his menagerie of old locos, and how to fit drives and adhesion, and I lifted an idea from these. The tender is articulated on the back end of the frame, and the leading axle of the tender is allowed to float, so you can put more weight in the tender body which will act on the drivers. In this state I was able to run trials on the track with a set of four four wheeler coaches, and it worked very well. So far, so good, and I turned to the next job, sorting out the outside motion. This involves two large eccentrics for Stephenson valve gear hanging off the outside. I have to confess at this point I realised I’m not anywhere as good as Denis Allenden, and give up. “What, you give up!?!?” Fraid so. Most of the components have been reallocated to other jobs, but there’s this big pair of drivers staring up at me reproachfully, and this post is really about not building a Crampton. Mind, in preparing this post I’ve realised that some of the later NORD engines were built with Walschaerts gear, which might help simplify things, so I haven’t given up totally.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Northroader

[Mikkel]

Mon Dieu, those are lovely machines - both the models and prototypes.

 

Have you ever dabbled in Spanish? I have often been tempted. "The Mouse", for example: 

http://trenesytiempos.blogspot.com/2014/05/historias-del-vapor-i-un-raton-jerezano.html 

(the Google translation of that post comes out fairly well)

 

[Northroader]

Thank you, Mikkel. The link you gave to Trenesytiempos was very interesting, I feel a careful trawl through there will turn up some good titbits, once the “modern” chaff has been winnowed out. Model Spanish Railways? Well, you know how it is, you’re sitting on a warm evening at a outside table in a pavement cafe, letting a really enjoyable paella, which hasn’t come in a packet, slowly settle, gently working your way down one of those ridiculously cheap brandies in a balloon glass, dusk is falling, and the other side of the road is the old MZA coast loop east from Barcelona with the beach beyond it, and you think “I could model this”. At the time I was there it was nearly all “Swiss” emus, just a French style CC on an overnight through train which used the loop, and a lovely old 0-8-0 on an engineers train, so the whole lot needed a backdate by fifty years at least. The article in the Continental Modeller mentioned above was the result, also the Bourbonnais goods you can see near the top of this page. I think reality bit in with the track gauge, which is quite noticeably wider than standard, and in the end I let it drop. There are some good Iberian modern layouts in HO you can find looking round on RMweb, but I think if I tried it in O I’d really want to get the track looking right, and I’d need some long axles from somewhere. You’ve sussed out that I’m far more interested in Mice than Pacifics, probably cost and space as much as cuteness, but then that Mouse is another of those locos with very finicky outside Stephenson valve gear designed to put off a cack handed modeller like me. When you see a model where it’s working it looks great, but I do have a Pola T3 where it’s done as a one piece plastic moulding, and it looks terrible. That particular Mouse is a very good example in that it’s been allowed out pulling coaches and wagons, usually they were part of the scene at a big depot, and not allowed off the premises, so using it on a microlayout???? No, I really can’t spare the time...

Edited September 19, 2022 by Northroader

[Mikkel]

 

On 11/04/2020 at 20:28, Northroader said:

 Well, you know how it is, you’re sitting on a warm evening at a outside table in a pavement cafe, letting a really enjoyable paella, which hasn’t come in a packet, slowly settle, gently working your way down one of those ridiculously cheap brandies in a balloon glass, and the other side of the road is the old MZA coast loop east from Barcelona with the beach beyond it, and you think “I could model this”. 

 

Oh yes I know how it is. A spot on description, and a reminder of how the world used to be and hopefully soon will become again.

[Northroader]

THOUGHTS ON A SMALL SPANISH (MZA) COASTAL LAYOUT.

In the meantime, whilst being cooped up in the house, (thanks Covid) we can still step on the magic carpet of the web and go exploring. What about having a rummage in the sideboard, getting out that bottle of brandy kept for medicinal purposes, pouring one out, and settling down for a while?

On a technicality, the first Spanish railway opened in Cuba, then a province of Spain, but the first on the mainland was the Barcelona Mataro, 17 miles long, opened in 1848. Being aware of goings on in Britain, a commission had already decided the gauge, nominally 5’6”, originally 1674mm, later reduced to 1668mm to match Portugal. A replica train was built for the centenary celebrations, and you’ll see the loco was straight off the Crewe Works drawing board, very close relative of the “Columbine” in York Museum, and the coaches like Liverpool and Manchester jobs.

This line became part of the TBF, the Companhia Tarragona a Barcelona y Francia, which reached the French frontier at Hendaye and linked with the MIDI in 1878. The TBF eventually amalgamated into the largest of the old companies, the MZA, Companhia dos ferrocariles Madrid a Zaragoza y Alicante in 1898. The TBF main line ran directly east from Barcelona inland to Gerona and on to Port Bou and Hendaye, but had a Coast Loop, and this is what I want to look at. It served places now in the glossy holiday brochures, Arenys, Callella, Malgrat, and I'm off to Sant Pol de Mar, probably the most historic town in the area. I like the setting, the railway has to pass under a headland on the eastern side in a tunnel, and runs along the foreshore in front of the town, heading out west to Barcelona over a small river on a girder bridge. It’s single line, with a passing loop between the bridge and the tunnel, and there are no sidings on the town side, just a short siding by the beach, with a lane to some houses by the headland crossing the tracks immediately in front of the tunnel. There’s a prominent hermitage, Ermita de Sant Pau, on the headland, and the town is quite small, with agriculture on the coastal plain behind, and a small fleet of fishing boats using the beach. Near the river bridge is an ancient angular stone church with a belfry stitched on, Eglesia de Sant Jaume. Back then no one would dream of bathing in the sea, or tanning on the beach, that didn’t take off until the late 1940s. I have included a more recent shot, where the siding has been taken out, and a second platform added to the passing loop, as it is good for showing the standard TBF station, Estacion, would you say Romanesque? and an attractive tunnel mouth. I’m scattering Spanish words in as you can get better results when doing a search than if you just stick to English.

i think you’ll agree it would make a good base for a model, attractive to look at, interesting to work, and fairly basic to make, just needing the church end bringing much closer to the tunnel end. Would you go with having the beach in front, and the whitewashed town buildings behind,  or view with the station building in the foreground, then all the dazzling blue of the sea and sky behind? I’ve treated it as a terminus, with a runround sector table concealed in the tunnel, and just a plain run off the main and loop on to cassettes behind a view block, but it could be done with these reversed just as easily.

In HO, it could be made as RTR in standard gauge, with Electrotren products. They used to do a Sharps 2-4-0T, used on this stretch, and some old four wheel coaches, but now Hornby have taken over there just a few of the older goods opens and vans, with a handy 0-6-0T. Then possibly cobble up a 0-6-0 as shown previously.

The required fleet would only be two locos, (one a tank engine) three four wheel coaches, and six goods vehicles. Not much to scratch build, so if you’re feeling adventurous, you could try an O version. Slaters do loco axles for Irish 5’3”, which isn’t too far off, and gives a broad gauge look, and I fancy if you ask nicely you could get some wagon wheel sets. Marcway do 6mm copper clad fibre glass sleeper strip which you can cut to length as needed, with n.s. code 100 flat bottom rail. So finish off the brandy, and say “I could model this”.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Northroader

[Northroader]

USEFUL LINKS FOR SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE RAILWAY INFORMATION.

 

It just struck me that there’s some useful web sites to do research on, Mikkel’s put one on, and I’m adding another Spanish one and one for Portugal:

 

http://trenesytiempos.blogspot.com

 

https://www.spanishrailway.com/renfe/

 

https://guardafreio.blogspot.com

 

 

Edited May 23, 2022 by Northroader

[Mikkel]

Incredibly tempting. In particular those photos of Sant Pol de Mar, with the fishing boats in front. And just 1½ hours drive from Cadaquez, which I rather like. 

 

I found the Electrotren Sharp Stewart on ebay in various guises, so that's still around.  As an aside, the search also led me to this page on the Keyser Mataro coaches, one of which is looking quite superb in GWR livery! https://srmg.org.uk/victorian-4wheeler

[Northroader]

If you go, you’ll probably want to change things, hundred and twenty years at least have passed from the photographs, and it’s all built up gee whiz holidays now. Shirley and Dave Rowe went following the CM article, and stitched in the castle from Lloret de Mar for “Catalunya”. I enjoy the tales from the town website. It seems the Railway never got on with the locals, after a storm the fishing boats would get blown across the railway until the railway dumped rocks down which wasn’t popular. Then there were problems with the tunnel, involving collapses with houses above.

That link you give for the Spanish coach becoming a GWR job is most unusual, and the funny thing is it been carried off so well, the paint job makes it look really convincing. The Sharp Stewart tank was a tender engine in TBF days, the MZA rebuilt it to a tank engine, but the old Electrotren stuff is still on eBay, I would think, as their coaches are a must. They did some “American” bogie coaches which were used as well. You can find pictures of imported American trains in searches, real Wild West 4-4-0s with ballon chimneys and cowcatchers, totally out of place. Luckily they soon wore themselves out, but the coaches lasted much longer.

it is, as you say, tempting.

[wasabi]

On 10/02/2020 at 09:12, TT-Pete said:

Travelling home to Luxembourg by train in the early 1980's taking the ferry from Dover to Ostend the early morning connecting train was one of those grand trans-European expresses with through coaches beyond Brussels to destinations such as Aachen, Koeln, Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow. The two Russian Moscow-bound coaches were always at the back of the train, up against the stops at Ostend, dark green with typically Russian corrugated sides and proudly displaying cast aluminium "CCCP" hammer and sickle bodyside emblems.

 

In those Cold War days with the Iron Curtain still firmly in place they always seemed dark and menacing with all the curtains tightly drawn and no visible light coming from them and in all the years I saw them, I never once saw anyone get on, or off, or moving around inside them.

 

Who actually travelled in these carriages? Why and for what purpose? I couldn't help but spend the next hour on the train to my change at Brussels Nord speculating on the dark possibilities of spies and agents, of honey traps and secret drops, and of KGB officers being summoned back to Moscow in disgrace...

 

In 1987 I used the Ost-West Express as part of a journey from London to Hong Kong - I think there were 11 of us in a party organised by RT&P.  We did the leg of the journey to Moskva in one of the coaches but I think the other only went as far as Warszawa.  Unfortunately, that was the one where the attendant had stocks of beer for sale in his compartment so it was dry until we got to Moskva - we made sure we stocked up for the next leg!  The late Bill Ford was another participant in this trip.  Our coach spent 2/3 hours being re-marshalled in Koeln, during which time we discovered a bar in the subway between the platforms, and I think there was also a lot of time shunting in Warszawa Wschodnia.  I think there was a small number of other people in the through coaches, but really can't remember any of them at this distance.

 

The curtains were normally drawn in unoccupied compartments on SZD.

 

It's interesting that you mention that the connecting train went in the morning - on my trip the Oostende departure was about 1700 and I think we took the boat train from Victoria at 0915 to connect (plus give some time for some Belgian beers).

 

Ian Worden

 

[Northroader]

Belgian beer!?!? Ahhh.. so here’s a job using a Pola Banana wagon, which has had the wheels replaced by Slaters, and bearings fitted. In Britain you can use a whole string of private owner wagons, because it’s coal, but I think over the Channel it’s best to ration one p.o. wagon per train, as it’s beer. I have to admit I’m a bit suspicious of doing beer wagon searches, are they actual, or are they just “promotional”? Anyway, I've added a brakemans cabin, and you might spot that it’s the same wagon with different sides.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Northroader

[TT-Pete]

4 hours ago, Northroader said:

I have to admit I’m a bit suspicious of doing beer wagon searches, are they actual, or are they just “promotional”?

 

 

Like you I have a fondness for both beer wagons and their contents. :^) Your question is best answered by yes, no, depends. Yes there were both PO and leased railway-owned beer vans across Europe. Post WW1 their usage decreased considerably but continued with tanker and refigerated vans up to the 1980's in Germany.  (In Bayern in 1912 only 48 out of 71 breweries shipping by rail were willing to sign a new flat-rate van maintenance contract). As for the types of vehicles and liveries there was huge variation across all eras, so leaving the vagaries of model manufacturers making stuff up for promotional purposes to one side, saying what is historically "prototypical" or not is very difficult. As Rule 1 applies I run vehicles where I particularly like the product, or the livery.

 

I keep meaning to buy this book, but the price puts me off:

https://www.booklooker.de/Bücher/Lothar-Spielhoff+Geschichte-der-Eisenbahn-Bierwagen-Das-erste-Frachtgut-deutscher-Eisenbahnen-Bier/isbn/3882554428

Edited April 19, 2020 by TT-Pete
Spelling, again.

[Northroader]

GERMAN BEERWAGONS.

 

You can go on forever with German bierwagen, here’s two sites

 

http://www.osterthun.com/0Laenderbahnen/Gueterwagen/Index~Gw.htm

(This site is especially useful, as you get a thorough sample of all the old landerbahnen goods wagons, not just beer wagons)

 

http://www.laenderbahn-forum.de

 (This site is all affairs Bavarian,  most interesting, and you’ll find Beer wagons in the Journal section)

 

Edited September 21, 2022 by Northroader

[Mikkel]

20 hours ago, Northroader said:

If you go, you’ll probably want to change things, hundred and twenty years at least have passed from the photographs, and it’s all built up gee whiz holidays now. Shirley and Dave Rowe went following the CM article, and stitched in the castle from Lloret de Mar for “Catalunya”.

 

A freelance interpretation would be attractive. I rather like the current Electrotren 0-6-0s, although fortunately they seem like hen's teeth at the moment so I won't get unduly tempted. A Spanish layout is on my bucket list, but so is Battersea Wharf, the DN&SR at Southampton and the Zambezi Sawmills Railway .

 

 

16 hours ago, Northroader said:

Belgian beer

 

Lovely wagons. Among the Danish types I particularly like this one: https://www.jernbanen.dk/dsb_zvognsolo.php?Aar=1893&VognID=172. It was originally built for the Swedish Railways in 1885, but they of course did not know how to put a good wagon to proper use. So in 1896 Carlsberg purchased it and brought it to Denmark. It is thankfully preserved.

[Northroader]

That Carlsberg wagon is a lovely example  of good preservation, the lettering looks perfect. Don’t the Swedes drink beer? Funny lot.

Talking of beer, two miles down the road from us, the “Broad Town Brewery”, one of these microbreweries, has just opened. (Broad Town is actually a very small village) One of their brews is called “Wide to Gauge” which sounds quite appealing.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Northroader

[Northroader]

EUROPEAN “BOURBONNAIS” 0-6-0 LOCOMOTIVES.

 

Back to old France, I’ve built what I think is quite a balanced set of three locos, 0-4-2, 0-6-0, and 2-4-0T, for a small EST layout, and missed out on the Queen of the line, a Crampton. Out of interest, I did prepare drawings for another two engines, which I haven’t built, but I’ll stick them in here for you. They’re both long boiler types, and very typical examples, first a   2-4-0, which began life as a single driver and was rebuilt, which happened with a lot with this wheel arrangement, and a classic Bourbonnais. The EST had several similar classes for goods workings, this being the last and most numerous. They has an interesting rebuild, which was replicated on several French systems around 1900. As they needed reboilering, they gained a larger boiler pitched higher, with a leading pony truck, improved cab instead of a flimsy weatherboard, and new cylinders to make them two cylinder compounds. In this form they lasted to the end of steam.

 

 

Last year, Hattons announced their “generic” range of Victorian four and six wheel coaches, and the Bourbonnais could be regarded as the “generic” nineteenth century European engine, just needing a tweak to boiler mountings, cabs, and tenders for individual lines. The Red Box Empire are reissuing the old Rivarrossi HO range, the Italian steam locos being good to see, but so far no PLM Bourbonnais. To illustrate the point, here are Spanish, Italian, French, and German examples.

 

 

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Northroader