Midland Railway Company

[kevinlms]

There is a regular trickle of enquiries on RMWeb asking for information relating to the Midland Railway. The latest is for Cudworth Station. It would seem that many people are not aware that there is a Midland Railway Study Centre. This is located in the Silk Mill Museum in Derby. There is an online catalogue (http://www.midlandrailwaystudycentre.org.uk/) but by no means everything is in this, there is a card index for the Derby Museums collection. In total there are over 40000 items relating to all aspects of the Midland Railway. Also a visit to the Search Engine at the NRM York is a good source of information. There does seem to be a growing tendency to try and get all information via the internet rather than getting off the settee and doing some real research. Looking at the real  thing is much more rewarding.

It is rather a long way to go, though!

[kevinlms]

Of course it cant happen out of nowhere. I never said that. But pushing the idea out as impossible hurts the possible preservation of history.

I would have figured they would have scanned the documents already rather than having a room filled with filing cabinets. So theres that, the required website is something they already have, the societies website, all they would need is page listing the documents held. Most societies with a website should already have a few emails set up, but yes, email answering would be the weak point, and they would need a few people to do that.

Finally, money. Maybe a reason why to join the society would be for ease of access, maybe have a limit to the documents allowed for non members, and if you really cared about the information so much, you would either choose to donate or join.

Yes its not a fool proof plan, but its a start.

To deny possibility locks off any chance of improvement.

Sorry but, I cannot agree with your implications that, 'someone should scan all the documents, rather than have a room full of filing cabinets'.

 

Assuming that the whole lot has been scanned (most unlikely given the size of the collection as described - I've never seen it!). Why would the owner(s) of such a collection, want to destroy it - take away the filing cabinets? They are historical documents and ought to be kept in original format, if practical, AS WELL AS in electronic format. Or should we scan & destroy significant documents like the Magna Carta and just allow people to look at it on their smart phones? Technically possible today, but is it what we want?

 

By all means, scan the whole collection using the most up to date technology and MOST importantly, plenty of back ups. But what to do with the originals? Well they need to be kept in the best possible conditions. As for sharing the information, well most clubs & societies, have limited manpower & resources, so the idea of those organisations, giving away the information, perhaps for a donation, truly sucks. These organisations aren't denying access, because of a desire to 'keep it to members only', but because the 'behind the scenes' work is endless and probably is barely touched.

 

It matters not if we're located in New York or Australia, as an inconvenience to attending in person. Pay for the service, perhaps in kind, or do without.

[Spitfire2865]

Sorry but, I cannot agree with your implications that, 'someone should scan all the documents, rather than have a room full of filing cabinets'.

 

Assuming that the whole lot has been scanned (most unlikely given the size of the collection as described - I've never seen it!). Why would the owner(s) of such a collection, want to destroy it - take away the filing cabinets? They are historical documents and ought to be kept in original format, if practical, AS WELL AS in electronic format. Or should we scan & destroy significant documents like the Magna Carta and just allow people to look at it on their smart phones? Technically possible today, but is it what we want?

 

By all means, scan the whole collection using the most up to date technology and MOST importantly, plenty of back ups. But what to do with the originals? Well they need to be kept in the best possible conditions. As for sharing the information, well most clubs & societies, have limited manpower & resources, so the idea of those organisations, giving away the information, perhaps for a donation, truly sucks. These organisations aren't denying access, because of a desire to 'keep it to members only', but because the 'behind the scenes' work is endless and probably is barely touched.

 

It matters not if we're located in New York or Australia, as an inconvenience to attending in person. Pay for the service, perhaps in kind, or do without.

I never said destroy it. Far from it. Im all for the preservation of history, but what good is a document if it spends the rest of history in a cabinet instead of being shared and learned from.

And if you were to have read the rest of this discussion, you would see that I addressed the manpower issue, as well as not "giving away" the information.

I find your reply rather rude, insulting, and shows you didnt even read the conclusion of the discussion and that we wanted to keep this thread on topic.

[John_Miles]

It is rather a long way to go, though!

 

For those of you in the colonies and elsewhere outside the UK, I suggest you plead with Dave Harris who runs the Study Centre and is a really nice man.

[John_Miles]

someone should scan all the documents

 

I used to be chairman of the Roy Burrows' Midland Collection Trust which has around 40000 items in its collection all of which relate to the Midland Railway. We looked long and hard at scanning and photography, both as a way of making information available electronically and of preserving the information on acidic paper which deteriorates with time. The problem is the amount of time scanning and photography takes. We tried to get over this by sending a document to a commercial scanning company. They cut off the spine and then scanned the separated pages. This, we felt, was desecrating a historical document and it was expensive. So we ended up between a rock and a hard place, do we preserve the document which will gradually deteriorate, or do we effectively destroy the original but save its contents. No doubt everybody will have their own opinion (this is after all RMWeb) but the deciding factor was that the Trust could not afford to copy huge numbers of documents. So the answer is get to Derby and grab the information you need asap.

[NHY 581]

In lieu if the classifieds and their successor, I have a set of Midland Records ( 1-22 ) that I would like to sell, preferably to an enthusiast rather than a trader.

 

Please PM me accordingly.

 

Rob

[John_Miles]

Does anybody have a good idea of a source for the short lived Midland Railway brown which was used on goods locos in the early 1900s. I have looked at Precision Paints and they don't do it, not surprising as I suspect potential sales would be very low. One final plea, can you make it simple. I am colour blind so I paint by numbers rather than mixing etc.

[Penlan]

John, what does it say in 'Midland Style' - I can't find my copy.  

Presumably it was also covered in 'An Illustrated Review of Midland Locomotives, Essery and Jenkinson, Wild Swan'.

Perhaps even in Stephen Summerson's ‘Midland Railway Locomotives’. 

You may recall the RMWeb discussion re. the changeover from Green to Red >> http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/46657-midland-railway-paint-change-from-green-to-red/

.
I would have thought it was near MR Crimson, just a cheaper paint.  

As your colour blind there's no point in referring you to any illustrations..   
There is this one though which may just be a dusty Crimson Lake, or Brown..

It's built and painted by John James - I copied from  the Scalefour / LRM's web pages via Google Images.
 

 

[DaveF]

Does anybody have a good idea of a source for the short lived Midland Railway brown which was used on goods locos in the early 1900s. I have looked at Precision Paints and they don't do it, not surprising as I suspect potential sales would be very low. One final plea, can you make it simple. I am colour blind so I paint by numbers rather than mixing etc.

 

In the early days of Precision Paints they did do Midland engine brown which I used it on a 2F (K's kit).  In those days it was code SB165.  I think it was dropped from the range a long time ago.

 

I've had a look through all the other paints I have this evening, using a daylight fluorescent light.

 

The nearest to it is Precision P630 M&GNR Freight wagon Brick Red.

 

Also close to it is Phoenix P980 Red Oxide, though it is very slightly lighter and more red in it.

 

Humbrol 133 is also very close to it, probably closer than the red oxide above.

 

I'm sure you know that there is a (printed) colour panel of it is Dow's Midland Style, though I'm not sure if you would find it useful.

 

There can't be anyone left alive who will remember it, so no one can say you are wrong if you go for a shade reasonably close to it.

 

To me it looks like a slightly reddish milk chocolate colour!

 

David

[jamie92208]

I've just dug out my copy of Midland Style and looked at the colour chart.  The Loco Brown is almost exactly as the loco pictured above.   I'm only looking at the chart in the normal room lighting.  It does have a reddish tinge and is slightly browner than the very similar colour called chocolate that was used on certain items of platform furniture such as the bases of lamp standards.

 

Hope this helps though my wife will gladly tell you that I have no colour sense at all.

 

Jamie

[Clive Mortimore]

In the early days of Precision Paints they did do Midland engine brown which I used it on a 2F (K's kit).  In those days it was code SB165.  I think it was dropped from the range a long time ago.

 

I've had a look through all the other paints I have this evening, using a daylight fluorescent light.

 

The nearest to it is Precision P630 M&GNR Freight wagon Brick Red.

 

Also close to it is Phoenix P980 Red Oxide, though it is very slightly lighter and more red in it.

 

Humbrol 133 is also very close to it, probably closer than the red oxide above.

 

I'm sure you know that there is a (printed) colour panel of it is Dow's Midland Style, though I'm not sure if you would find it useful.

 

There can't be anyone left alive who will remember it, so no one can say you are wrong if you go for a shade reasonably close to it.

 

To me it looks like a slightly reddish milk chocolate colour!

 

David

Hi David

 

Get in contact with Chris at Precision/Phoenix paints and see if he can do you a couple of cans of MR loco brown.

[DaveF]

Hi David

 

Get in contact with Chris at Precision/Phoenix paints and see if he can do you a couple of cans of MR loco brown.

 

 

Clive,  

 

Thanks for this.   If I need any more I'll do just that.

 

In this case it's actually John Miles who asked about the colour.

 

Regards,

 

David

[John_Miles]

Thanks for the suggestions. As someone guessed, the colours in Midland Style don't work if you are colour blind. I think as a first step I'll try Precision and see if they have any left in the bottom of a dusty cupboard.

[Rob Pulham]

As suggested by John Miles I am posting a copy of this here

 

What would an ex WD (Midland Railway) locker type wagon have been used for post WWI?

 

 

I have recently converted a Slaters Gloucester 5 plank open wagon into one of these that were built by the Midland and loaned to the WD during the first world war. One of the things that I would like to know is what they were used for post war when they returned to Midland and subsequently LMS service?

 

 

 

The suggestions that I have had range from meat to offal to engineering stock and re-conversion to an open wagon.

 

I model the grouping period and I am currently musing over what livery to finish it in and it has been suggested that I make up some WD transfers. Knowing what they were ultimately used for may help me to make up my mind.

 

Many thanks.

[technohand]

Thanks for the suggestions. As someone guessed, the colours in Midland Style don't work if you are colour blind. I think as a first step I'll try Precision and see if they have any left in the bottom of a dusty cupboard.

John I have a theory and it's only that, that the Midland turned out some Goods Locos in The Red Oxide under coat with a couple of coats of varnish on to save money and to overcome the shortage of cochineal due to a revolution in South America so a reddish chocolate may be right.

They then discovered that engines ran just as well without elaborate liveries so then started to paint goods only engines unlined black.

The other theory I have is that an unlined loco may look more brown to an observer at the line side.Who knows!

[John_Miles]

According to Essery and Jenkinson, it probably was the undercoat which they left unlined and just varnished. There is a 7mm 1F on the Dewsbury layout at Butterley which is in Midland Brown (George Brodie told me it was - that is how I know) and I rather liked it so decided to paint one of my 4mm 1Fs in the same livery. By 1910,  they were painting all goods locos in unlined black.

[meil]

According to Essery and Jenkinson, it probably was the undercoat which they left unlined and just varnished. There is a 7mm 1F on the Dewsbury layout at Butterley which is in Midland Brown (George Brodie told me it was - that is how I know) and I rather liked it so decided to paint one of my 4mm 1Fs in the same livery. By 1910,  they were painting all goods locos in unlined black.

It is more likley that the Brown was not the undercoat as such but was Venetian Red as used in painting buildings and signals/signal boxes. Venetian red is a very stable paint as its pigment is Iron Oxide.

Edited April 30, 2015 by meil

[technohand]

Could be. someone once told me it was more like Furness Railway Engine Brown (David Tee) which is virtually red oxide or Holford's red undercoat.

Edited May 3, 2015 by technohand

[John_Miles]

One of the last remnants of the original Birmingham West Suburban Railway has just been demolished. For those who are not Midland Experts, the West Suburban Railway was a single track line from Granville Street, near the city centre, to Kings Norton. It was intended to just be a quiet suburban railway and so was not opposed by the Calthorpe estates who were the major landowners in Edgbaston. Soon after the WS was finished, it was taken over by the Midland and turned into its new main line from New Street to Kings Norton (this would be around 1880). The original line more or less disappeared, although the line from Five Ways to Granville Street was extended to the Central Goods (later the site of Stanier House - now also gone). There was however a small remnant in Selly Oak, just to the north of the station where the line crosses the Bristol Road and then the Worcester Canal. In a small triangle of land to the north of the land were a few arches of a single track masonry viaduct, which for many years was used as part of a garage. These arches have been demolished within the last couple of weeks, presumably as part of the redevelopment of the area by Sainsburys.

Edited May 12, 2015 by John_Miles

[BG John]

I've just won these two Slaters wagons on eBay (from different sources), to start off my little dabble in O gauge, but with my limited knowledge of the Midland, there seems to be something a bit wrong with one of them! Do I need to put it the queue for the paint shop, or did the builder know more than me?

 

[Steve Sykes]

The one on the right is in the red oxide the engineering department used and is therefore a ballast wagon. Without checking the books I think the lettering is wrong; it should be E D, but that depends on my memory being right!

 

Steve

[BG John]

The one on the right is in the red oxide the engineering department used and is therefore a ballast wagon. Without checking the books I think the lettering is wrong; it should be E D, but that depends on my memory being right!

 

Steve

Thanks Steve. So it's not likely to have appeared in that colour on a sleepy light railway on the Sussex/Kent border, delivering some high value goods from a factory up north then!

[jamie92208]

Yes Steve is correct.  The red oxide was for ballast and was lettered E D in the same font.  They also had canvas covers over the axleboxes to stop the dust getting into the bearings.   I've got three of them on my layout and run an engineering train with a sleeper wagon, and an ex WD bogie flat with rails on it.

 

Jamie

[BG John]

A visit to the paint shop one of these days then, as I expected before I bought it.

[technohand]

Finished with 5ft Gauge American Railways for the time being. Hope to get back to constructing a Johnson 0-4-4t in EM. The chassis is a bit of a nightmare but I'm going for full compensation as per MRJ No3.Hopefully this will keep all the wheels on the track!