More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[MarcD]

Just got the first 4mm shunters truck off the printer last night. Really happy with the finish. I will have at least 2 with me at scale forum

 

Marc

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, MarcD said:

Just got the first 4mm shunters truck off the printer last night. Really happy with the finish. I will have at least 2 with me at scale forum

 

Marc

 

I'll look forward to seeing it there.

[Compound2632]

 

More GW barrows. Soldering these up confirms my view that 2 mm finescale is not for me.

 

I've also made a building as a temporary building for Erlegh Quay, a view-blocker to hide the line that goes off to the as yet un-built eponymous quay:

 

 

Scalescenes papers, mostly. But as it is at the front of the layout, I thought I'd give the sash windows some proper depth. And no, you 2 mm finescalers, they don't slide in their frames...

 

There were supposed to be gutters and drainpipes but the relevant Wills kit hasn't arrived. 

[Mikkel]

What a lovely building, very tempting. 

 

I used Loctite gel for the Langley barrows, which worked well enough. I do find them a bit under-nourished though, although that may just be my subjective impression. 

[jamie92208]

Perhaps the collective wisdom of this thread can assist me. bI've just been given some 0 gauge wagons by a friend whose late husband  was building a model of Lavenham in Suffolk where he grew up.  In return I would like to give her a 00 PO wagon appropriate  to the area.  Does anyone know of a suitable wagon.  I'm quite happy to order some Powsides transfers and reletter a wagon.  Any help would be appreciated.

 

Jamie

[Penlan]

On 19/09/2022 at 07:25, jamie92208 said:

Her in France we have many shops that close 1 day a week still plus most close for the sacred purpose of lunch, often 12 till 2.  Jamie

A few years ago, when, like now, my understanding of French was minimal, I parked in a car park just off the centre of Quimper, probably in the 'Parking Place de la Résistance', and inserted the Euro (or three) for a couple of hours parking at just after 11.00hrs, the ticket showed a finish time of 15.00hrs, worried something was wrong - thus may be fined etc., I found an Information Office (or similar) and I was advised "We don't charge during the (2 hour) Lunch break".  What a civilised place 😎
In Concarneau at the time, there was a large car park just opposite (more or less) the Island centre, that was free.

[Compound2632]

4 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Perhaps the collective wisdom of this thread can assist me. bI've just been given some 0 gauge wagons by a friend whose late husband  was building a model of Lavenham in Suffolk where he grew up.  In return I would like to give her a 00 PO wagon appropriate  to the area.  Does anyone know of a suitable wagon.  I'm quite happy to order some Powsides transfers and reletter a wagon.  Any help would be appreciated.

 

There was a whole topic on the paucity of Suffolk PO wagons:

As far as I recall, the overall conclusion was that the coal trade in East Anglia was dominated by large factors such as Thomas Moy and Coote & Warren, rather than the smaller local merchants one finds elsewhere.

 

So a MOY wagon might be a good choice, from the POWSides list - RCH 1923 7-plank side door wagon, so straightforward enough.

[corneliuslundie]

A little further away but I seem to remember active over quite a wide area was the Peterborough Coal and Coke Co. Second wagon down in this link:

http://ukrailways1970tilltoday.me.uk/wagons_NVR_wagons_open_wooden.html

Jonathan

 

[Grahams]

The 5 inch gauge shunter's runner prototype is ready for finishing. 

A good friend of mine is going to make some shunter figures. Static poses will be best. 

I'm thinking one shunter sitting on the toolbox and another riding on the running board, tucking himself tightly against the runner to avoid other passing wagons. 

I'm assuming they would be in railway uniform. Is that likely? A 'normal' Midland Railway uniform similar to engine crew I suppose. 

Any other suggestions please? 

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, Grahams said:

The 5 inch gauge shunter's runner prototype is ready for finishing. 

A good friend of mine is going to make some shunter figures. Static poses will be best. 

I'm thinking one shunter sitting on the toolbox and another riding on the running board, tucking himself tightly against the runner to avoid other passing wagons. 

I'm assuming they would be in railway uniform. Is that likely? A 'normal' Midland Railway uniform similar to engine crew I suppose. 

Any other suggestions please? 

 

Bingo:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC item 61942.]

 

According to my reading of Midland Style, we're looking at blue corduroy jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, the waistcoat having cloth sleeves - at least that's the description given for porters and this looks very similar. 

 

This looks very similar, thought to be a Goods Department employee, the lamp suggests yard work:

 

 [Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC item 31279]

[wagonman]

According to the 1912 Kelly's Directory the only coal merchant in Lavenham was Gayford & Kendall who, so far as I know, didn't't have any wagons. Likely suppliers, given the location, were J O Vinter of Cambridge or William Booth of Ipswich, plus of course Moy who had a base in Colchester as well as at Peterborough. Alas I don't think POWsides do either Vinter or Booth.

 

Here is an A G Thomas sketch:

 

[Compound2632]

Don't forget the shunter's horn:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue photo of MRSC item 11820.]

 

This is one of several designs. Note the loops for attaching to a shoulder strap or some such.

 

There's scope here for a DCC shunter's truck with sound...

[Grahams]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Bingo:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC item 61942.]

Thanks very much much for all the research Stephen. I really must have a tutorial on how to search the Society archive. I don't have much success, especially when trying to find the pictures to embed. 

I've passed the info to my friend for the uniform too. A really great help! 

The DCC horn idea is an excellent one too. I have some arduino chips left over from a different project which would be suitable. 

Now the next question 🙄🤔😀... Does anyone know the horn signals they would have used? I'm thinking they would have been similar to the whistle signals from the engine. 

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Grahams said:

I've passed the info to my friend for the uniform too. A really great help! 

 

On looking through again, I see the jackets are different. The man with the van and shunter's pole has a jacket with lapels; the studio portrait shows buttons all the way to the top and insignia on the collar. It might be worth asking Dave Harris if he knows any uniform experts?

 

7 minutes ago, Grahams said:

The DCC horn idea is an excellent one too. I have some arduino chips left over from a different project which would be suitable. 

Now the next question 🙄🤔😀... Does anyone know the horn signals they would have used? I'm thinking they would have been similar to the whistle signals from the engine. 

 

Of course you should arrange for a special recording to be made using one of the horns in the MRSC collection!

[Grahams]

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

On looking through again, I see the jackets are different. The man with the van and shunter's pole has a jacket with lapels; the studio portrait shows buttons all the way to the top and insignia on the collar. It might be worth asking Dave Harris if he knows any uniform experts?

 

 

Of course you should arrange for a special recording to be made using one of the horns in the MRSC collection!

 Well... my friend has just such a horn! He doesn't know the history of it unfortunately. Inherited from his father.

I now have a recording of it. It sounds very much like a diesel horn. Not really a surprise I suppose. 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Grahams said:

 Well... my friend has just such a horn! He doesn't know the history of it unfortunately. Inherited from his father.

I now have a recording of it. It sounds very much like a diesel horn. Not really a surprise I suppose. 

 

Perhaps a shunter's horn ensemble should be got together to perform at the next Midland Railway Society AGM?

[jamie92208]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Perhaps a shunter's horn ensemble should be got together to perform at the next Midland Railway Society AGM?

I've gotva 4ather battered and old french horn but I'm some distance away..

 

Jamie

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I've gotva 4ather battered and old french horn but I'm some distance away..

 

Better get practising: 

 

 

Note the rather impractical shunter's uniform at 1:55...

Edited September 22, 2022 by Compound2632

[corneliuslundie]

Well that outfit is the right colour to stop the train.

Jonathan

[Grahams]

My copy of Midland Railway Journal arrived this morning. Part II of the fascinating articles on the Midland Low Side wagons by Stephen Lea. 

@Compound2632

Thank you very much! Another great reference as well as some detailed history. 

 

[Nick Lawson]

On 21/09/2022 at 11:22, jamie92208 said:

Perhaps the collective wisdom of this thread can assist me. bI've just been given some 0 gauge wagons by a friend whose late husband  was building a model of Lavenham in Suffolk where he grew up.  In return I would like to give her a 00 PO wagon appropriate  to the area.  Does anyone know of a suitable wagon.  I'm quite happy to order some Powsides transfers and reletter a wagon.  Any help would be appreciated.

 

Jamie

Dunno about wisdom but:

a. Bachmann had a 3 pack of East Anglian PO wagons 33-030 allegedly from Norwich (H Fulcher) , Ipswich(Mellone & Coulder) and Colchester(Wrights). I have no idea whether these were real companies.

 

b. Turton vol 9 offers Will H Booth of Ipswich. A bonus pic shows a differently lettered Willm H Booth next to a Fosdick of Ipswich.

Slightly further off target, same vol also has Newmarket cooperative society.

 

HTH

[Darryl Tooley]

57 minutes ago, Nick Lawson said:

Bachmann had a 3 pack of East Anglian PO wagons 33-030 allegedly from Norwich (H Fulcher) , Ipswich(Mellone & Coulder) and Colchester(Wrights). I have no idea whether these were real companies.

They were.  See 'Private Owner Wagons' Vol 1 by Bill Hudson (OPC, 1976) for the first two and the last page of 'The Modellers Sketchbook of Private Owner Wagons' Book 3 by A G Thomas for the third.  I expect this is where Bachmann sourced their information.  These were the old 17’ 6” moulding.

 

D

[Compound2632]

Our club exhibition on Saturday went well - it's always been pitched as a family exhibition; although I've not heard the final figures yet from our treasurer there did seem to be plenty of families in and from what I saw the Brio and drive-Thomas circuit were doing a roaring trade. Plenty of those Hornby "S&D" 4-wheelers doing what they do best - keeping on the rails while hurtling round second-radius curves at hair-raising speeds. Pure joy!

 

I was quietly cursing prairies and swapping the one on the B-set for a pannier at the first opportunity but the various Pecketts and Barclays on the quay side of Erlegh Quay were popular with the younger engine-spotters, some of whom were very well-informed and ended up having a go at running the layout. It was thanks to one of them that our 1955 vibe was disturbed by the appearance of an inter-city liveried 08! There were a couple of videographers doing the rounds so no doubt something will appear on YouTube in the next few days...

 

There was one little lad who must have been pre-school age - the layout was barely at eye-level for him - who asked me if we had a Jubilee. I was slightly non-plussed so asked, what sort of Jubilee? Like Bahamas, he said, so I was able to reply not Bahamas, but Hong Kong (a Bachmann model of some years back) but it was a bit big for our little branch line - at which he nodded sagely. Mum explained they'd recently seen Bahamas. Anyway, it was very encouraging to meet a young person of such well-developed taste in locomotives. (Chris, whose stock were were using, did have a Grange in the stock-box but the largest engine we ran - also our only green engine barring Pecketts - was a 43xx. For our next outing at Bracknell on 30 October, I think I'll smuggle in a 3F and LMR brake... Perhaps I should take the Jubilee too, just in case.)

 

Scaleforum yesterday was an altogether more solemn affair - almost an ecclesiastical hush in the halls. There were some very fine layouts - and how the Leamington & Warwick Club manage to exhibit not one but two large pre-grouping P4 layouts simultaneously is beyond me! Richmond already has some very fine modelling, especially the original terminus-turned-goods shed, but is some way yet off having all the stock needed to run the promised intensive service - the Kingston loop, Windsor, and Reading services (all very familiar to me) require a lot of carriages, even at 1908 service intervals! For myself (and making life even harder for those building the stock) I'd have gone for the 1870s, when in addition to the North London, District, and Great Western trains, there was the short-lived Midland service...

 

The other of these two layouts was Market Bosworth - a beautiful model of the station on the Nuneaton & Ashby Joint Line, with plenty of LNWR and Midland stock, and also PO wagons of the local collieries such as Snibston and Moira. (Midland nerds might have a whibble at lined-out boiler-bands on engines in Midland post-1905 livery...) The building modelling is well up on the Pendon scale, with fully-furnished interiors.

 

It was good to meet and put faces to a couple of contributors to this topic - @Rail-Online on the Brassmasters stand (though they'd sold out of the Stephenson Clarke wagons, just as I'd finally decided I should get some) and @MarkD on the Pre-Grouping Railways stand. The printed part of the shunter's truck looks very nice; I'm still very much in doubt as to when or from what they were converted. I also need to do one further bit of research to settle the question of whether the Heysham bunker coal wagons were converted from lowside or highside wagons... (The Carriage & Wagon Committee minutes record authorisation for the conversion of 25 and then a further 50 lowside wagons.)

Edited September 26, 2022 by Compound2632
typo.

[WFPettigrew]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

It was good to meet and put faces to a couple of contributors to this topic

Frustratingly Stephen, a busy week last week meant I didn't have time to think to send you a message in advance of Scaleforum, despite having seen you were going. 

 

@Flymo749and myself as avid followers of this thread did talk about you yesterday, knowing you were planning on being there, but sadly as we wouldn't have recognised you, we probably passed in the halls without realising it... 

 

Argh!

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, WFPettigrew said:

Frustratingly Stephen, a busy week last week meant I didn't have time to think to send you a message in advance of Scaleforum, despite having seen you were going. 

 

@Flymo749and myself as avid followers of this thread did talk about you yesterday, knowing you were planning on being there, but sadly as we wouldn't have recognised you, we probably passed in the halls without realising it... 

 

Sorry about that. Were you on a stand or layout or just there as punters like myself? The conversation I had with Tony @Rail-Online was quite entertaining. Not knowing who he was, I was asking him about the Brassmasters Stephenson Clarke wagons. He showed me a sample of a standard Gloucester wagon they are working on; I commented that I was interested in the interior detail they had decided on, saying that I had become dissatisfied with my own interpretation when trying to detail the Slaters kits. He said that if I went on RMWeb I would find a really interesting thread with discussion of that and lots of other stuff about wagons... I thought I'd better not let him go too far, so with my best pomposity declared "I am Compound2632"!