Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

If anyone is feeling ambitious, I have a copy of “Railroad Construction” by Messrs Crandall and Barnes, which contains detailed instructions and drawings as to how to build a railroad, including trestles. You really need a county or three available to take advantage of it, though.

 

Funnily enough, it does not seem so daunting a prospect as, say, the Bouch metal viaducts on the Stainmore route.  The latter would seem to require the soldering of infinite fiddly bits of brass.

[Compound2632]

and the statutory Midland open (unsheeted).

 

What we need is an "approve" button.

[Andy Hayter]

Profligate Teutons!  If they'd been Scots, they'd have hauled her out and promptly restored her to revenue earning service!

 

Still, I love the idea of a band of Eisenbahnromantiker!

 

 

Eisenbahnromantik is a regular TV show on SW3 (Suedwest 3) and shows railway and sometimes model items from around the world.

https://www.swr.de/eisenbahn-romantik/-/id=13831034/8w3np1/index.html

 

They already have a short video on the hunt for said locomotive

https://www.swr.de/jaeger-der-versunkenen-lok/jetzt-oder-nie-meint-swr-redakteur-mario-schmiedicke-deshalb-ist-die-lok-den-aufwand-wert/-/id=21071302/did=21036442/nid=21071302/rhgvzx/index.html

[Edwardian]

Returning to the subject of suitable motive power  for the WNR ...

 

We have deemed the 5'6" 2-4-0 as a suitable passenger locomotive for the WNR, and I have long had the Sharp Stewart Cambrian 'Small Passenger'/Furness E1 on the list.

 

Latterly, while ruling out large 6' (or above) classes, I have canvassed the possibility of a 5'6" 4-4-0 of the Sharp Stewart Cambrian 'Small Bogie Passenger'/Furness 'Seagull' type.

 

An alternative is that the WNR sticks to 2-4-0s, but acquires a more modern variety.  This might be illustrated by the Dubs & Co 2-4-0s produced for the M&SWJR in 1894.  Still a 5' 6" class, but with rather more 'heft' than the older Sharp's design ...

[Martin S-C]

The M&SWJ Dubs 2-4-0 was a beautiful engine - it was despoiled by the GWR with the conversion to a Belpaire firebox and Swindon chimney, but in it's original guise had a certain daintiness and poise that makes it one of my favourite steam engines.

 

The Nether Madder railway intends to purchase a Dubs 2-4-0 when funds allow.

 

Edited September 15, 2018 by Martin S-C

[Compound2632]

Those smart new Dubs 2-4-0s were bought by a railway with Midland money behind it... 

 

I'd stick with genteel poverty.

[runs as required]

Returning to the subject of suitable motive power  for the WNR ...

Sorry about interrupting Chief, but us Civils are still sniffing out our 'buried bones'.

Knitsley  timber trestle viaduct on the NER Lanchester line looked seriously Cecil B de Mille  EPIC before it got buried (presumably under Consett blast furnace slag),

Yet none of us appeared to have heard of it. I looked it up on the 6" NLoS geo-referenced map and to my surprise Knitsley is the small village on the south side of Bouch's Hownsgill masonry viaduct opposite Delves Lane, Consett.

 

I could not believe that the trestle (and its filling-in) might have predated the construction of Hownsgill (on the former Stanhope & Tyne).

Closer inspection reveals another much less significant viaduct between Knitsley Station and Lanchester across the Smallhope Burn.down in the, by now gentler, wider valley just above Lanchester some way before the line curves under the Hownsgill viaduct to terminate at Blackhill just beside Consett.

Rather an anti-climax I felt.

All these lines up to the mysterious Blackhilll node had closed long before us softies arrived in the mid 1970s.

dh

[brack]

"presumably under Consett blast furnace slag"

 

One link I read said colliery waste and old ballast. the thought that they'd be gathering up all the spent ballast from all over the north east did seem a bit strange when every pit or furnace within 5 miles was making their own little mountain of spoil.

[Edwardian]

It has always been a great source of disappointment to me that Lanchester  cars did not originate from the town of the same name, but were named for the Lanchester brothers of Birmingham.

 

Still, a Lanchester Twelve Tonneau could make an appearance on CA, if I had a source for the basic external dimensions. 

[runs as required]

Blast furnace slag occurred to me because it was used in the upper tidal reaches of the Tyne hereabouts to control flash flooding that had been causing loss of life in the decades around the turn of the C18 and C19.due to constantly changing river channels.

Between Newburn and Blaydon the Tyne Commisioners used slag (from Newburn Steelworks ) to form the banks of their preferred alignment of the Tyne's course across its flood plain and in so doing protect the trade of the keelmen who worked the river above the Tyne bridge until Armstrong's 1876 replacement swing bridge.

North Pennines lead was brought down to the shore opposite Newburn for shipment and to this day this stretch of river bank, (the Willows !) is poisoned windswept gorse . Before WWII ditches, still existing, were dug across it to prevent Nazi airborne landings and attacks on Vickers Armstrongs.

the inhabited bridge washed away with loss of life in 1771

[Argos]

Reverting back a couple of pages to the subject of single driver tank engines, at the Poynton show yesterday I was chatting to the owner of the Barton Hall layout, a rather nice minimum space Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway layout.

 

The subject got onto moving our modelling back in time to an earlier period and this engine was produced:-

 

 

It ran superbly and valve gear was very hypnotic.

 

Apparently an impulse buy off Ebay a few years ago, so the owner knew very little of the prototype, but believed it to be French.

[Killian keane]

Reminds me that 18 years ago when the first grandchild was born we had a drunken night with our neighbours and the proud parents up from London (on the still missed GNER) fantasising that we’d build a home-made Lartigue around our then shared back garden for sprogs yet unborn to both sides of the house

 

I drew a sketch which, as you can see, me being far more Civils oriented, was notably vague about locomotive, cylinders and valves. (it appears to be a sort of reverse Crampton - though I was rather proud of my hinging gate with its rollers on a radial iron track)

 

our lartigue.jpg

Thinking back I am pretty sure I did not know about Lartigue’s 1888 demo at Westminster.

But I’m wondering if my long-time hero Robin Barnes may have done a sketch of a small twin vertical boilered loco which I have ‘borrowed’. Anyone know?

 

Anyway as the powers-that-be told us, when they'd decided to cede the derelict house to us to restore

Sadly time has proved them right!

dh

 

Edit: link to Lartigue history page

Im a bit late to the Lartigue party but this did spark a bit of interest on fb a short while back, and works photos of the hunslets turned up

[Andy Kirkham]

Reverting back a couple of pages to the subject of single driver tank engines, at the Poynton show yesterday I was chatting to the owner of the Barton Hall layout, a rather nice minimum space Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway layout.

 

The subject got onto moving our modelling back in time to an earlier period and this engine was produced:-

 

crampton tank.jpg

 

It ran superbly and valve gear was very hypnotic.

 

Apparently an impulse buy off Ebay a few years ago, so the owner knew very little of the prototype, but believed it to be French.

 

Worthy of Mike Sharman.

[Owd Bob]

A bit late for me as well but I knew i'd seen and remembered reading something about a French monorail a while back so i've looked through all my old books and mags' and just found it, this article was in the Number 72. (October) 2007 issue of 'Narrow Gauge & Industrial Railway Modelling review' if it helps anyone. Seems my memory is not as bad as i thought it was after all! 

 

[ChrisN]

I would go with the Sharp Stewart small bogie, (I would wouldn't I?), for two reasons

 

i) it is a beautiful engine

ii) it will give the Directors of the WNR the feeling that they have a 'modern' engine

iii) it looks the part as a bigger 'beefier' engine.

 

It will all depend though on the relative cost of the Sharps and the Dubs, from the suppliers not Shapeways, and their relative axle loading.  I could probably find out the first and maybe the second if you wish.

[Donw]

That looks like something Dennis Allenden might have made. Try googling some intersting early French stuff.

 

Don

[Northroader]

Don’t think it’s French, more likely German, here’s something similar, but a later build, and painted black?https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badische_I_d

[Edwardian]

I would go with the Sharp Stewart small bogie, (I would wouldn't I?), for two reasons

 

i) it is a beautiful engine

ii) it will give the Directors of the WNR the feeling that they have a 'modern' engine

iii) it looks the part as a bigger 'beefier' engine.

 

It will all depend though on the relative cost of the Sharps and the Dubs, from the suppliers not Shapeways, and their relative axle loading.  I could probably find out the first and maybe the second if you wish.

 

I agree.  The post posed a rather loaded question; I think that smallest of 4-4-0 classes, maintaining the tradition of preferring Sharp Stewart products, and, therefore, bearing a family resemblance to the 'Small Passenger' and 'Small Goods' classes, would be more in keeping with the 'West Norfolk look' than the more modern 2-4-0, represented by the Dubs example. 

 

Meanwhile in the village, work continues, albeit at the usual snail's pace ...

[Nearholmer]

Don’t let snails near it; they love to chomp a nice bit of cardboard.

 

It just gets better, and today has made me think of martial music, as might be played by a very small band. Did county volunteers have fife and drum, or some other form of aid to marching?

[Edwardian]

Don’t let snails near it; they love to chomp a nice bit of cardboard.

 

It just gets better, and today has made me think of martial music, as might be played by a very small band. Did county volunteers have fife and drum, or some other form of aid to marching?

 

Interesting question.

 

Despite the grand edifice, the hall behind will conform to the smallest standard Drill Hall size commonly found.  The Norwich hall, upon which the 'L' shaped façade is based, was twice the width and far longer.  So, in keeping with the size of the community, I guess we are catering for a single platoon in Castle Aching.  That said, there is no reason why a regimental band would not visit when the occasion required.

 

As infantry, the platoon would be part of a volunteer battalion of the regular army county regiment, in this case the Norfolk Regiment, which is what many Militia and Volunteer Rifle battalions had become.  One of the volunteer battalions of the Norfolk Regiment served in South Africa, hence the post-Boer War adoption of the slouch hat by the soldier illustrated. There are also many pictures of Yeomanry Troopers wearing slouch hats after service in the Imperial Yeomanry.

 

From what I have seen, some volunteer battalions at least had a band, below is a picture of the band of a volunteer battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, which gives us some idea of what we might see. 

 

Castle Aching - pushing our luck - must surely also support a Yeomanry Troop.  I am rather more familiar with Yeomanry traditions than those of volunteer infantry, but the Norfolk Regiment must have had a Regimental March (or, possibly, two; a Slow March and a Quick March), and wouldn't it be fun to find out what that was/they were?

 

Well, thanks to Google (other search engines are, apparently, available), I learn that the march of the Royal Norfolk Regiment is Rule Britannia!.  

 

There is, however, another option.  There was a specifically west Norfolk regiment - the 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment of Foot - that disappeared in the 1881 Childers Reforms. In our expanded West Norfolk, I wonder if this single battalion regiment might have been larger and have survived to gain its own volunteer battalions?

[Martin S-C]

 

I guess we are catering for a single platoon in Castle Aching. 

 

Whenever discussion comes around to small military units based in little towns the immortal line "Don't tell him Pike!" pops into my head.

[Caley Jim]

Whenever discussion comes around to small military units based in little towns the immortal line "Don't tell him Pike!" pops into my head.

And remember, 'they don't like it up 'em', sir!

 

Jim

[Hroth]

Of course, a platoon would be under the command of a Lieutenent, Mannerings mob must have been a company.....

 

As for Marching tunes, the slow march must surely have been taken from a louche 19C Operetta, while the quick march could be a sprightly Notfolk folk tune, ideal for fife and drum on a route march, and the soldiery would be able to whistle it as a recognition signal.

[Edwardian]

And remember, 'they don't like it up 'em', sir!

 

Jim

 

Entirely possible that there might be some veterans of Omdurman serving out their days as directing staff in volunteer battalions!

 

Though I think the nearest would have been the Lincolnshire Regiment, and, if not off to India, I would have thought any ex-regulars of that regiment would have ended up in one of its own 3 volunteer battalions.

 

It strikes me, though, that one of the advantages of extending the history of the West Norfolk Regiment past 1881 might be that I can invent its subsequent campaign history, rather like Bernard Cornwall with his South Essex!

[Edwardian]

 

As for Marching tunes, the slow march must surely have been taken from a louche 19C Operetta, while the quick march could be a sprightly Notfolk folk tune, ideal for fife and drum on a route march, and the soldiery would be able to whistle it as a recognition signal.

 

 

Oh, that is too good.  Yes, shall we revive the West Norfolk Regiment for our purposes and invest it with some additional traditions?

 

We have only to find our louche operetta and our sprightly folk tune.  Any offers?