Castle Aching

[drmditch]

My golden age is now. It's the one I'm currently living in!

I agree. The past is past, and tomorrow never comes. It's always today that matters!

[Adams442T]

Sharp Stewart produced the vast majority of the LT&SR's first class - No.1 Class - in 1880-1881, half the 37 Class of 1897, and the two thirds of the smaller 51 Class of 1900.  All 4-4-2Ts. They also supplied 2 0-6-0 tender locomotives in 1899. 

 

I notice that London Road Models produces a 4mm Scale kit of the No.1 Class (image from their website), and Worsley Works produces LT&SR bogie and 4-wheel coaches. 

 

Yes, l was aware that LRM did the No.1 class, but the GA drawing looks to me like the No.37 class, which is the one l have insufficient drawings for (apart from the Roche drawings, which are suspect to say the least!).  I have the excellent drawings from the Stephenson Locomotive Society Journals on all of the LTSR locomotives, including the 0-6-0's, but the 37 Class have only one side shown.

 

I did crawl all over the 79 Class at Bressingham, and photographed it from every, and l mean every, angle!  So if anyone wants any photos just let me know!

                                     

I wasn't aware of the Worsley Works carriages though, so that's one l shall follow up, asap!  Thanks!

[uax6]

Going back to the dome crisis, if you decide to paint it, could you use the earth pin from a 5 or 15 amp round pin plug? Most of the locos on Buckingham had their domes made this way... In fact you could even polish them, as they are of brass (although the flange at the bottom might be an issue)

 

Andy g

[Metropolitan H]

....................................................

I couldn't find the regulator valve - maybe in the smokebox - presumably easier there not having to cope with moving parts requiring to resist boiler pressure.

Sharpie section 1900.jpg

What I love about these General Arrangement sections is the way that so much is communicated by deft slicing and variations. For example the plan shews the view above the footplate along the bottom half and section through the wheels, steam chest and valves and cylinders in the top half.

.................................

Sir,

 

Please look closer at the section of the dome. The regulator valve is clearly shown - at the top of the "J" pipe - it being a vertical slide plate, with holes, driven by a crank and link from the shaft that exits the boiler on the backhead. All the working parts are inside the steam space so just the one gland needed on the backhead.

 

The same bits can be found on Met No.1 - and caused us some heart-ache the other year till we realised that someone - in the past - hadwrongly machined the sliding plate allowing it to tip off the port face - and so blow-by. Skimmed flat the problem was solved.

 

Regards

Chris H

 

P.S. - Met No.1 dates from circa 1897, so should not be too modern-image for CA purposes.

 

P.P.S. - I prefer the "Muddle and Go Nowhere" small Hudswell Clark 4-4-0Ts to the larger 4-4-2Ts. The 4-4-0Ts are real stunners in my book.

 

CH

[runs as required]

I agree. The past is past, and tomorrow never comes. It's always today that matters!

I can remember that question in debating Theory of History for A level - the corollary is that there is an awful lot more past ensnaring us than the fleeting present.

So escaping into the world of model railways - are small driving wheels preferable to large driving wheels?

For any given number of todays they touch the ground more often?

   dh

 

dh

[Nearholmer]

" I prefer the "Muddle and Go Nowhere" small Hudswell Clark 4-4-0Ts to the larger 4-4-2Ts. The 4-4-0Ts are real stunners in my book."

 

And, they were among the first 'motor train' locos in GB. Some (all?) were leant to the Midland, and used with driving trailers made from great big, old American Pullman cars, which worked on the Nickey Line, among others.

 

A layout featuring the terminus of the Nickey, Heath Park Halt, and one of these trains, would make a really out of the ordinary 1905 scene.

 

Here's a similar scene at Wirksworth http://www.wirksworth.org.uk/X625.htm

 

And, here is a cracker of a picture of one at Harpenden https://transportsofdelight.smugmug.com/RAILWAYS/MIDLAND-GREAT-NORTHERN-JOINT-RAILWAY/MIDLAND-GREAT-NORTHERN-JOINT-RAILWAY/i-mv35krj/

 

Not a whole lot different from the Cavan & Leitrim train in the museum at Cultra. http://www.chestermodelrailwayclub.com/DSCF4447.JPG

 

Or, indeed, the Madder Valley ....... could an old American Pullman become the Wolfringham Branch push-pull ..... and, exactly which castle is it that we're looking at here?

 

K

Edited August 8, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Donw]

As has been pointed out the Dome assisted in sending steam to the cylinders rather than hot water. One advantage of a dome mid boiler was that being central whether going up or downhill made no difference and the surges caused by braking or acceleration would not affect it.  Ilffe Stokes made a small garden streamer and although it was a bot boiler he put a small chamber with the end of the steam pipe under the dome to minimise priming problems.

 

I would go for Brass Dome and Safety valves unless going for an industrial railway.

 

As for the Golden Age of railways one only has to consider the GWR building the Kruger when they had some many beautiful engines life is never perfect. 

 

Don

[Edwardian]

one only has to consider the GWR building the Kruger when they had some many beautiful engines life is never perfect. 

 

 

 

A most unattractive specimen in the eyes of the contemporary British public ...

[Poggy1165]

I suspect the age of engines looking pretty was only really golden if you were a wealthy gentleman - in the historic sense of the word. Even then, only as long as you remained healthy. I should not have liked to live in those times at all. However, from a modelling perspective it's another matter, as I don't have to live in a house with an earth closet on five shillings a week. And I can have a bit of fun writing things like "VOTES FOR WOMEN" on some of the walls. Sets the period nicely, I feel. I should hate anyone to think that I was so naive as to think it was an age of contentment. After all, I was brought up on my grandfather's tales of the first full-on railway strike - 1911.

[Edwardian]

I suspect the age of engines looking pretty was only really golden if you were a wealthy gentleman - in the historic sense of the word. Even then, only as long as you remained healthy. I should not have liked to live in those times at all. However, from a modelling perspective it's another matter, as I don't have to live in a house with an earth closet on five shillings a week. And I can have a bit of fun writing things like "VOTES FOR WOMEN" on some of the walls. Sets the period nicely, I feel. I should hate anyone to think that I was so naive as to think it was an age of contentment. After all, I was brought up on my grandfather's tales of the first full-on railway strike - 1911.

 

I think that period, 1911-1914, could have been fairly disconcerting: death of the King, the first general strike, with mass protesters showing how the Tube can very rapidly deliver the angry multitude of the East End into the heart of the West End,  an increasingly violent suffragette movement - running under the King's horse and nail bombs - unrest in Ireland, with rival armed citizenry and a potential full-scale mutiny of the British Army, and civil war a real prospect.

 

The Great War didn't come a moment too soon!  But, of course, was the greater evil.

 

You can hear both the mourning of King Edward and the the sense of dislocation and impending chaos in Elgar's 2nd symphony, started in 1910, dedicated to the late King, and completed on 28 February 1911.

 

But, again, query the extent to which any of these events caused anxiety or hardship for the majority of those not directly engaged in them during the years up to the First World War. Ordinary life, its struggles and small triumphs, its joys and sorrows, shows remarkable continuity.  I am posting this today, for example, rather than quivering at the thought of a nuclear stand-off between the Orange Buffoon and Kim Bad-Barnet.

[Nearholmer]

If you read 'Lark Rise to Candleford', which I think is about a period maybe ten or twenty years earlier, on the surface the sense of continuity is almost complete, but I guess she wrote it all down because it proved to be anything but, which the subtexts allude to. Trivia fact is that 'Candleford' is almost certainly Buckingham, where the GC never really went.

 

K

Edited August 9, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Donw]

I think that period, 1911-1914, could have been fairly disconcerting: death of the King, the first general strike, with mass protesters showing how the Tube can very rapidly deliver the angry multitude of the East End into the heart of the West End,  an increasingly violent suffragette movement - running under the King's horse and nail bombs - unrest in Ireland, with rival armed citizenry and a potential full-scale mutiny of the British Army, and civil war a real prospect.

 

The Great War didn't come a moment too soon!  But, of course, was the greater evil.

 

You can hear both the mourning of King Edward and the the sense of dislocation and impending chaos in Elgar's 2nd symphony, started in 1910, dedicated to the late King, and completed on 28 February 1911.

 

But, again, query the extent to which any of these events caused anxiety or hardship for the majority of those not directly engaged in them during the years up to the First World War. Ordinary life, its struggles and small triumphs, its joys and sorrows, shows remarkable continuity.  I am posting this today, for example, rather than quivering at the thought of a nuclear stand-off between the Orange Buffoon and Kim Bad-Barnet.

 

That really deserves a funny rating for the last sentence but would be right because of the comments before.  I think the truth is that peoples happiness depends more on there everyday life. Take farms in the 1900s they employed a lot of local people and though the work was hard and long hours it often provided companionship and a sense of belonging. Activities like harvests often involved all the local people and often ended with a celebration. Today loneliness can be a problem for farmworkers.  My grandfather ran away to sea in 1902 to escape from a drunken bully of a father but by 1914 with a wife and daughter had taken his father then in failing health into his home. He then volunteered to go to war and for his trouble was badly injured. In a coma in a french field hospital for some days (my gran had received a 'Missing presumed killed' telegram) full of shrapnel with a shattered wrist  and blind in one eye he returned home. A dock worker he found it hard to get work during the 20s and early thirties to get work but had got established by the late thirties only for the family to lose everything during the blitz. We shared a house with them during the fifties. These momentous events in his lives had obviously had a large impact but he had not become bitter and twisted by then he was a glazier (self taught). His attitude was if today they had food in the cupboard they would eat and worry about the next day when it came. In fact I would say he was a happier better balanced individual than most today. I look at those involved in the Tower block fire I do feel compassion for those who lost their lives but it was little different to many who suffered in the blitz. There was such a shortage of houses at the time in London that the family (him his wife and two daughters) had to accept the kindness of his sister who let them live in her cottage in Reading which had but one spare bedroom. I here them whinging about the accommodation they have been offered in London being a little to far from school etc. 

For all the much vaunted progress I don't believe it has made people any happier and seeing on the news about the Isle of Skye do wonder why more dont feel we have things wrong.

 

Don 

 

edit I see in the above I missed out losing one of his daughters when she was 17 through illness. He never talked much about it perhaps that was his greatest sorrow.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Donw

[ATT]

As for the Golden Age of railways one only has to consider the GWR building the Kruger when they had some many beautiful engines life is never perfect.

 

Since I have been reading this thread from the day it was started without writing a line so far it is highly inappropriate my first contribution has nothing to do with the topic, but...

 

Am I the only person in this world who actually likes the appearance of the Krugers?

 

Yes, the prescription of my glasses is up to date.

[wagonman]

 

 

Am I the only person in this world who actually likes the appearance of the Krugers?

 

 

 

 

Probably...

 

:-)

[drmditch]

A most unattractive specimen in the eyes of the contemporary British public ...

 

Contemporary reference:-

https://www.lner.info/locos/Q/q1q2q3.php

 

(I think that the Doncaster built ones were on our side though!)

Edited August 9, 2017 by drmditch

[Northroader]

"Mum, mum, who's Kruger" "promise you won't tell your father, dear!"

[BG John]

Since I have been reading this thread from the day it was started without writing a line so far it is highly inappropriate my first contribution has nothing to do with the topic, but...

 

Am I the only person in this world who actually likes the appearance of the Krugers?

 

Yes, the prescription of my glasses is up to date.

Long before I started wearing reading glasses, and had no need for them, I thought the Krugers were interesting in a not unpleasant way. I would have been happy to have a model one, but it was a bit big for my BLT!

[Edwardian]

Contemporary reference:-

https://www.lner.info/locos/Q/q1q2q3.php

 

(I think that the Doncaster built ones were on out side though!)

 

A very pleasant design.

 

Clean and attractive lines.  The re-boilered ones look a little thuggish, but the original, slimmer boiler, with consequently taller and more pleasingly proportioned dome and chimney, look very elegant indeed, albeit prey to the suspicion that someone has taken a picture of an elegant turn of the century 0-6-0 and Photoshopped in an extra axle and boiler section!

 

 

Long before I started wearing reading glasses, and had no need for them, I thought the Krugers were interesting in a not unpleasant way. I would have been happy to have a model one, but it was a bit big for my BLT!

 

As for the Kruger, well, it's impressive, and even lovable in its extreme ugliness, but its aesthetics are surely more Brutalist than fin de siècle.

[nick_bastable]

Probably...

 

:-)

sorry they make a Q1's  look graceful  (although I admit a soft spot for Q1's)

 

Nick

[ATT]

Long before I started wearing reading glasses, and had no need for them, I thought the Krugers were interesting in a not unpleasant way. I would have been happy to have a model one, but it was a bit big for my BLT!

I've always wanted a model of an Aberdare and have been considering designing a kit of it in similar manner I've used on our native engines. Maybe I should do Kruger instead - apparentily an easy way to remove all suspicion whether I have already gone completely soft in the head.

 

As for the Kruger, well, it's impressive, and even lovable in its extreme ugliness, but its aesthetics are surely more Brutalist than fin de siècle.

An opinion I must completely agree with. There is a government building in the nearby city from 1969 which is basically a concrete box. And yet there is something interesting in it's appearance.

 

sorry they make a Q1's  look graceful  (although I admit a soft spot for Q1's)

Perhaps my sick interest in it is caused by the unfortunate fact that there are no RTR models of our local locomotives - that's why everybody who buy theirs off the shelf opt for German prototypes. I've seen too much of those over the years and consider them much, much more ugly than the Kruger...

 

My apologies - I'll sprinkle ash over myself and try to stay on topic in the future.

[corneliuslundie]

There is an etched brass kit for an Aberdare, originally from Martin Finney and now available from Brassmasters. No need to scratch build.

Jonathan

PS I suggest not absolutely suitable for Castle Aching.

Edited August 9, 2017 by corneliuslundie

[Edwardian]

There is an etched brass kit for an Aberdare, originally from Martin Finney and now available from Brassmasters. No need to scratch build.

Jonathan

PS I suggest not absolutely suitable for Castle Aching.

 

I have a couple of whitemetal Aberdares somewhere.  They came with Churchward 3,500 gallon tenders, though by the mid-'30s, my other period of GW interest, Robinson tenders from withdrawn RODs seem to have been more common.

[Jamie Douglas]

Don,

 

Life affirming story about your Grand-father but your reference to Skye confounds me unless it is a reference to the entirely fictitious report made up by the BBC earlier which they have since rescinded after being well skelped by the Police who were not amused.

 

Best wishes

Jamie

[Donw]

My apologies if I have offended those who are attracted to the Kruger. You must concede that aesthetically they were at odds with most of the Dean locomotives and I will concede that some are attracted to things with a rather brutish look.

 

Don 

[Donw]

Don,

 

Life affirming story about your Grand-father but your reference to Skye confounds me unless it is a reference to the entirely fictitious report made up by the BBC earlier which they have since rescinded after being well skelped by the Police who were not amused.

 

Best wishes

Jamie

 

 

Tut tut the BBC making up fictious reports. I saw the news item this morning and having seen for myself that many English and Welsh campsites are very busy I believe the idea of getting away from it all is being lost. I had not heard that the BBC had withdrawn their report.

Don