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

[Compound2632]

16 minutes ago, wagonman said:

The main reason for resenting Montague's work – which looked like it had been thrown together over a weekend – is that it killed the market for a proper job.

 

Ah but there's the rub - it made material available to the common-or-garden punter such as myself back in the 1980s, sparking a bout of PO wagon modelling and an interest in the subject. When would I have seen a proper job? From the reader's point of view, something is better than nothing, even if for the author it's publish and be damned (as you say he was). Of course now we have the Lightmoor Press books, to which you have made a significant contribution. I find I often use Montague as a quick reference, then turn to one of the more recent works when looking for greater detail - vide my post above.  

 

There was a similar situation, I gather, between Ralph Lacy and David Jenkinson, re. Midland carriages; sadly Ralph Lacy did not live to see his "proper job" through the press but I wouldn't be without both works. Likewise Stephen Summerson and Essery & Jenkinson on Midland locomotives. Bob Essery, I am told, was a great believer in publishing what one knew despite knowing that one didn't know the whole story; Midland and LMS enthusiasts and modellers would be the poorer without his willingness to risk damnation.

[corneliuslundie]

While not wishing to defend errors in the Montague book, I should point out that longer captions would, have meant fewer photos for the same size (and price) book.

On the general subject of “railway facts”, the more collating of information I do (I am not a researcher and am never likely to go near Kew or York), the more I realise how little we can be certain about.

Three examples from recent experience:

1. There is an official Cambrian Railways photo of the Hamer Mutton Van. However, the number it carries or anyway appears to carry) in the photo is not the same number as quoted in all Cambrian and later GWR records.

2. There is an official, dated Cambrian Railways drawing of an open goods wagon. It shows the number carried. And a wagon of that number was built that year. But no wagons to the design of the drawing ever seem to have been built. Incidentally, another official Cambrian Railways drawing shows a livery which was never carried by any wagons.

3. In recent months I have been extracting a lot of data  from the GWR records of wagons taken over from the absorbed companies in 1922/23 and of the subsequent fates of those wagons. Ignoring the dates wagons were taken over and renumbered, there are two registers for withdrawn wagons, one apparently kept in South Wales and the other at Swindon. They frequently disagree on the withdrawal dates and even the final fates for wagons, and I am not talking about misreading the records when transcribing the South Wales ones at Swindon. So which are right?

In fact the more work I do the less I feel I can ever know.

Jonathan

Edited August 23, 2023 by corneliuslundie
Embarrassing error corrected

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

While not wishing to defend errors in the Turton book,

 

Keith Montague. One would hesitate to impute error to Keith Turton.

[Dave Hunt]

The divide between Ralph Lacey and David Jenkinson began with an argument over politics; Ralph was an ardent socialist whilst David believed Genghis Kahn to have been a bit left wing. From that point on they never co-operated or even got on together so when they both started work on Midland carriages books there was inevitably some contretemps. George Dow and Bob Essery were really just dragged along. Bob was indeed committed to publishing what was known rather than waiting until every i was dotted and every t crossed and said so to me when we started work on the MR and LMS locomotive books. The idea was that by publishing what we knew and asking if anyone could add to the story it was hoped that more information would be forthcoming and to some extent it worked. The perils of waiting until you were sure that you had everything possible to hand was exemplified by David Tee, who had more knowledge of Midland and LMS locomotives than anyone but died taking much of his knowledge with him. Many years ago he wrote a monograph on the Midland Compounds that was not very well received by some of the knowall brigade and unfortunately he took it to heart, which is why he was far too reticent to publish anything subsequently. Luckily I was able to spend quite a lot of time with David and from him obtained material that I was then able to include in the books and with that as well as other material that we obtained, some of the mistakes in the earlier Essery & Jenkinson work as well as Stephen Summerson's volumes could be corrected. There were also Midland Record and LMS Journal, both of which were intended to help fulfill Bob's idea of drawing out other people's knowledge that might otherwise never have seen the light of day. Apart from writing my own articles for those publications, my main function was basically to 'ghost write' articles based on the notes that we sometimes received from ex-railwaymen and others so that they could be published and thus make their knowledge available. In all the work I did with Bob, though, we were careful to differentiate between what we knew as fact, what we had gleaned from secondary sources without being able to fact check, and what we surmised by analysis of the material we had.

 

Dave   

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

my main function was basically to 'ghost write' articles based on the notes that we sometimes received from ex-railwaymen and others so that they could be published and thus make their knowledge available.

 

Those were some of the best articles in Midland Record - so now a quarter of a century after the event you can take the credit due to you!

[corneliuslundie]

"we were careful to differentiate between what we knew as fact, what we had gleaned from secondary sources without being able to fact check, and what we surmised by analysis of the material we had"

That describes the dilemma pretty well. A problem is that there are some people who will say that one shouldn't publish anything unless it is certain fact. That would mean that very little was ever published.

Minutes: what those writing the minutes would like to have happened

Photos; could too easily be altered

Vehicle records: not always accurate

Memories: unreliable

So what is left?

Jonathan

[Compound2632]

20 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

Minutes: what those writing the minutes would like to have happened

Photos; could too easily be altered

Vehicle records: not always accurate

Memories: unreliable

So what is left?

 

One's best efforts to piece together as much of the story as one can, weighing each piece of evidence in the balance.

 

Those dates in the registers: are they date a thing happened, or the date that thing having happened was entered in the register?

 

That drawing to which no known photograph corresponds: not everything that was drawn was built, or intended to be built. Something might be drawn up to demonstrate its unfeasibility or expense, or the Chief came by and suggested alterations, for which a new drawing was made.

 

The number on the van differs from the number in the records. 1. Signwriter's error, not caught before the photo was taken. 2. Clerical error, copied forward in all future documents. Is a cast numberplate visible? 

[drduncan]

This discussion about veracity and completeness has touched a nerve in me - or spurred me to take a hobby horse of mine for a quick canter around the paddock: referencing, or the almost total lack of it whether footnotes or endnotes in what is sometimes called ‘enthusiast’ railway histories. Even well regarded periodicals are not without sin here - the GWR journal, for example, (and they were far from alone in this) very rarely felt the need to encourage its authors to demonstrate where their facts came from and which were unsubstantiated assertions.
 

If authors referenced properly it would not only differentiate between ‘fact’ and opinion, but also to show what facts were based on primary sources and which were extracted from secondary sources, allowing them to be weighed and balanced by the reader. They also would show where the primary source was to be found - helping those researchers who follow the trail being blazed.

 

Now I know most publishers hate any form of reference (some appear to consider indexes and bibliographies optional extras too) but as responsible researchers with a professional approach, when we put pen to paper we must reference. And as engaged readers we should demand bibliographies and references too from our authors and publishers. 
 

[In my professional life I spend a lot of time on my own references and chasing down other peoples so I do practice what I preach.]

 

Hobby horse untacked, rubbed down and stable door shut…

 

Duncan

[jamie92208]

A very difficult subject.  Not being an academic I have not been rigorous in referencing the sources of information in the articles that I have written.  Bob Essery was the guy who encouraged me to research and write about the unbuilt West Riding Lines, however I tried to explain how got the Information in the articles.  Sadly I never received much further information though Bob did send me a part completed article by another author no longer with us, that helped me a lot and took me towards other primary sources.  

 

Wagon builders have been mentioned.  My own interest was sparked back in the late 90's when looking for Information about wagons that would have run through Long Preston.  A spell of unplanned leave from work enabled me spend a day at Kew which lead to three outcomes.  Firstly an interest in the PO wagons that worked in the Yorkshire Dales, Secondly the name of a little known wagon builder in Keighley and thirdly the discovery of a file about the West Riding Lines that lead to my contact with Bob Essery. One of those subjects has probably been researched as far as it can go, the third.  The first two are still works in progress though quite a bit of information has come to light. I have had an article about PO wagons on the S and C published in the Midland Railway Journal and have now got quite a bit of information about J Beadman and Co, wagon builders and repairers.  It has been interesting to research this and I've even managed to fi d and talk to, two of John Beadman's great granddaughters.  My dilemma now is what to publish and where before the information expires with me. 

 

By the way, contributors to this thread have been a great source of information. 

 

Jamie

[Adam]

I can only echo @drduncan (for similar reasons - it goes against my professional training and experience - I’m lucky enough to do history for a living). One of the reasons I find some of the recent posts so useful is that they lift the veil on some of the sources used. But not cited in anything I’ve seen in print. By anyone. Ever. Anecdotally, it should be said that railway histories are notorious among historians of other topics (professional and otherwise) in this respect and there’s no especially good reason for this.
 

References are a tool to help all researchers, they enable readers to flush out what has been used, what hasn’t, and where additional information for other things might be (that are not necessarily the subject of what is being read). All that’s needed is the call number of the record the researcher looked at (this is the key bit) and where that is (the name of the archive - secondary!).
 

If there is a hand list of the whereabouts of say, all the original records of surviving PO registers, or private wagon builders, I haven’t seen it, nor would I know where to look. 
 

Adam

 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Adam

[Andy Hayter]

Interesting view @drduncan.  My tutor, many, many moons ago, insisted that I not only included all of my references but also went back and physically checked them.

 

And guess what I found, an oft quoted reference in several learned journals was wrong.  It did not appear in the journal and page number quoted.  So each of these authors had never actually read the reference they were quoting in support of their arguments and findings.  They had simply re-quoted the incorrect reference without ever checking if it was correct!  [ and each had been peer reviewed!!] 

 

So while I agree with quoting references, it does have its dangers.  But then what doesn't have pitfalls.

[corneliuslundie]

Re Adam's comment about railway history, I think part of the issue is that many of us are primarily modellers and we are really just looking for the information relevant to our modelling, not thinking about its wider interest. I am building a model of location X so I want to know about traffic there. The fact that others may be interested in location Y down the line does not come into it when we are collecting information (I won't call it research because it is so often from published sources). And since we often bend history anyway (hands up here) a little uncertainty in our "facts" isn't really a worry - to us. But others then take what appears in print as reliable, whereas we probably knew it was not and didn't intend it to be read that way.

To take a current example from my modelling, I am building a layout of a fictional GW/Rhymney branch to a colliery village. So I want it to be as authentic as possible, but I have invented a valley, a village and a colliery company. But I want operation to be authentic so I look at the two parallel (real) joint branches, the local large colliery company (Ocean), the local architecture etc. However, I have also invented a local small colliery which has rather a ramshackle collection of wagons. But even these I wish to be as authentic as possible so I look to see what other small collieries owned.  And of course the Ocean wagons have correct numbers etc. But it is all fiction based on fact wherever possible. And that I suspect can mislead some readers in several ways.

But also I am really only looking for the information I need to achieve the above.

Which is why I will never call myself a researcher.

Jonathan

[Adam]

23 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Interesting view @drduncan.  My tutor, many, many moons ago, insisted that I not only included all of my references but also went back and physically checked them.

 

And guess what I found, an oft quoted reference in several learned journals was wrong.  It did not appear in the journal and page number quoted.  So each of these authors had never actually read the reference they were quoting in support of their arguments and findings.  They had simply re-quoted the incorrect reference without ever checking if it was correct!  [ and each had been peer reviewed!!] 

 

So while I agree with quoting references, it does have its dangers.  But then what doesn't have pitfalls.

That was what I was driving at (though primarily looking at archival research): I’ve too often found well-quoted ‘fact’ to be not quite right, or big gaps in ‘received wisdom’ revealed by looking at material at Kew (the transfer of the West Somerset Railway to preservation being a case in point - I’m not sure any of the established works on the line have used the stuff BR or the local authority created having looked at it myself). But unless you tell the reader what you’ve looked at, what chance have they got? 
 

Adam

Edited August 25, 2023 by Adam

[wagonman]

12 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

"we were careful to differentiate between what we knew as fact, what we had gleaned from secondary sources without being able to fact check, and what we surmised by analysis of the material we had"

That describes the dilemma pretty well. A problem is that there are some people who will say that one shouldn't publish anything unless it is certain fact. That would mean that very little was ever published.

Minutes: what those writing the minutes would like to have happened

Photos; could too easily be altered

Vehicle records: not always accurate

Memories: unreliable

So what is left?

Jonathan

 

Of course you often have to publish what you know in the sure and certain belief that fresh knowledge will become available soon after – probably as a result of your publication! Evidence, even from primary sources, has to be evaluated as we cannot always be certain of the context in which it was created: 'official' drawings of vehicles which never actually existed being a case in point. Clerical errors did happen.

 

The Lightmoor Press 'house style' eschews endnotes so we have to smuggle sources into the main text. Where something is conjectural, we say so, giving the evidence available. Their books are after all aimed at a general readership rather than an academic one.

[Dave Hunt]

I have to admit that although I did include a number of end notes in the books and articles that I have written and that I frequently named and quoted directly from primary sources, that I didn’t quote the full reference for every statement that I made. This was really because I didn’t regard what I was writing as an academic work requiring a rigorous reference system but more as a work of general interest to railway enthusiasts, although I did quote sources wherever I thought it essential, particularly when making what I thought were possibly controversial statements or analyses. Additionally, to satisfy the requirements of academe used in works such as masters or doctorate theses would, in my opinion, make what I was writing too dry for the non-academic historian. What I did find was that if a reader wanted to pursue further what I had stated in the interests of research but where I had not referenced primary sources, that they would contact me for the information. There is, I think, a marked difference when writing for a non-academic audience and the academic, which can sometimes be something of a tightrope. It also has to be remembered that the majority of railway authors are not academically trained, myself included, and therefore will not have the same approach to writing. At the end of the day, it seems to me that the choice is either to have works written in a rigorously academic style by few writers to satisfy the requirements of ‘serious’ students of the subject or more material of a less academic standard for the benefit of a wider audience. That is not to say, of course, that it is acceptable to include statements that are simply the author’s opinion or guesses without stating as such; that is what I and my co-authors such as Bob Essery and John Jennison have always tried to do. It is also perfectly possible to satisfy the more questioning and research orientated reader by receiving and responding to queries with the information they require.

 

Apologies if this rather lengthy post is taking us away from wagons Stephen.

 

Dave

[Nick C]

4 hours ago, drduncan said:

This discussion about veracity and completeness has touched a nerve in me - or spurred me to take a hobby horse of mine for a quick canter around the paddock: referencing, or the almost total lack of it whether footnotes or endnotes in what is sometimes called ‘enthusiast’ railway histories. Even well regarded periodicals are not without sin here - the GWR journal, for example, (and they were far from alone in this) very rarely felt the need to encourage its authors to demonstrate where their facts came from and which were unsubstantiated assertions.
 

If authors referenced properly it would not only differentiate between ‘fact’ and opinion, but also to show what facts were based on primary sources and which were extracted from secondary sources, allowing them to be weighed and balanced by the reader. They also would show where the primary source was to be found - helping those researchers who follow the trail being blazed.

 

Now I know most publishers hate any form of reference (some appear to consider indexes and bibliographies optional extras too) but as responsible researchers with a professional approach, when we put pen to paper we must reference. And as engaged readers we should demand bibliographies and references too from our authors and publishers. 
 

[In my professional life I spend a lot of time on my own references and chasing down other peoples so I do practice what I preach.]

 

Hobby horse untacked, rubbed down and stable door shut…

 

Duncan

I was most impressed the other day when reaching the end of a novel, and finding a bibliography included (Robert Harris' V2)

[billbedford]

16 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

2. There is an official, dated Cambrian Railways drawing of an open goods wagon. It shows the number carried. And a wagon of that number was built that year. But no wagons to the design of the drawing ever seem to have been built. Incidentally, another official Cambrian Railways drawing shows a livery which was never carried by any wagons.

 

It was the practice of pre-grouping companies to send traces of drawings of new designs to the director's C&W committee for approval. They were then usually retained at the company's head office. The grouping and nationalisation saw such drawings consolidated into a single collection held at Euston House (?) and was, eventually, scanned to microfilm to form the basis of the OPC lists. 

 

So, it could be your drawing was a design rejected by the C&W committee and an alternative used. 

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, billbedford said:

It was the practice of pre-grouping companies to send traces of drawings of new designs to the director's C&W committee for approval. They were then usually retained at the company's head office. The grouping and nationalisation saw such drawings consolidated into a single collection held at Euston House (?) and was, eventually, scanned to microfilm to form the basis of the OPC lists. 

 

In the Midland Traffic and C&W Committee minutes, the usual phrase is "in accordance with the plan now produced / submitted". In some 20th century minutes, there is a number quoted for the "plan", e.g. D.136, which relates neither to the C&W Drawing number or to the diagram number assigned to the vehicles when built. In a good number of cases, the date in the C&W Drawing Register of the full drawing to which the vehicles is built is later than the date of the meeting at which the "plan" was approved - usually by not much more than a week, sometimes after the date given for the relevant lot in the Lot List. 

 

My feeling is that these plans submitted to the Traffic Committee are diagrams rather than full drawings; this is lent support by Figure 18 in Midland Wagons, which is a version of diagram D818 labelled "Proposed 10 Ton Lowside Goods Wagon" and signed by various officials including the General Superintendent, Chief Goods Manager, Goods Superintendent, C&W Superintendent (or their representatives) and Guy Granet himself, as General Manager; it is also overstamped:

[P]lan received with

...Evans.... letter

dated .....May 26/15.... to

[illegible name]

 

This plan differs in some respects from the Diagram Book diagram, Figure 33 in Midland Wagons, notably in cubic capacity and tare weight, plus position of the drop-side hinges.

 

On the other hand, I've not seen the OPC collection drawings.

[drduncan]

4 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Interesting view @drduncan.  My tutor, many, many moons ago, insisted that I not only included all of my references but also went back and physically checked them.

 

And guess what I found, an oft quoted reference in several learned journals was wrong.  It did not appear in the journal and page number quoted.  So each of these authors had never actually read the reference they were quoting in support of their arguments and findings.  They had simply re-quoted the incorrect reference without ever checking if it was correct!  [ and each had been peer reviewed!!] 

 

So while I agree with quoting references, it does have its dangers.  But then what doesn't have pitfalls.

There is an important if little understood difference - even by those who should know better- between using a reference to find new material that either supports or disproves your supposition (reading it in other words and coming to a view) and mining references to bulk out your own (ie not reading the cited source)! I can think of one person in my field who is notorious for this. Indeed, I followed a few of his references back to the supposed document and found they didn’t say what he said - and others have found more subsequently…

 

@Dave Hunt makes an important point about accessibility and my view is that writing style is the key here. I am certainly not advocating adopting an academic style or tone. Yes, I have read numerous extremely densely argued books and articles, but this was due to the writer’s use of English and structure of their work, not the rigour (or not) that lay behind their analysis. Some of them were extremely badly referenced too! On the plus side I can think a several engaging history books that are well referenced. So it’s not about being ‘academic’ or not in style it’s about more ‘showing your working’ so the reader can get the fullest picture about your analysis.
 

I applaud anyone who is brave enough to share their knowledge (the publication process, editors, readers reports and, if done, peer review can be traumatic for even the hardiest writer!) My point is that whatever your style of writing - and the more accessible the better- referencing does not detract from this. I would argue that it enables your work to straddle audiences and that is good for all of us as we get more knowledge than just the writer’s wise words.

 

In the days when I had students they would always ask how many references they had to do for their essays. I would tell them in answer that it depends…that their references are there to allow someone to find where they got their information from and any ideas that weren’t their own. In tutorials some would get quite offended when I would pull a book off the shelf they had claimed to face read and check it in front of them - I think they felt this was cheating by the staff.
 

You could exclude commonly held information or views from this (ie the idea that Nazism is bad probably doesn’t need a reference - unless you are writing to educate an extreme right wing audience).

 

However, as @Andy Hayter has intimated, and I know from my own experience, once you get into the sub disciplines what is commonly held by say, us GWR types might be a rather uncommon view to Stephen and his Midland acolytes, and worse, not what the actual documents (or photos) show! So what a knowledgeable writer on X railway topic thinks is common enough not to need a reference, I, in my profound ignorance and desire to learn from those who do know, would desperately wish did get a reference.

If in doubt bung in the reference!!!

 

Duncan

Edited August 24, 2023 by drduncan

[billbedford]

Hey, just let's remember we are talking about building toy trains. You can tell this by the number of layouts with pristine liveries and white carriage roofs. 

[John-Miles]

As a retired academic and the author of many fully referenced works and a former editor of several academic journals, I fully concur with what Dave Hunt as written above. A fully referenced and annotated article would make for very boring reading for the vast majority of railway fans. The audiences for railway books and academic journals are very different.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, drduncan said:

Stephen and his Midland acolytes

 

Acolytes? Fellow enthusiasts, I think, most of whom know more about the Midland than do I.

  

1 minute ago, John-Miles said:

As a retired academic and the author of many fully referenced works and a former editor of several academic journals, I fully concur with what Dave Hunt as written above. A fully referenced and annotated article would make for very boring reading for the vast majority of railway fans. The audiences for railway books and academic journals are very different.

 

The LMS Locomotive Profiles series gets the balance right, I think. Certainly essential corrective reading for some!

Edited August 24, 2023 by Compound2632

[Compound2632]

I'm not a very disciplined modeller - woeful at actually finishing things! I often find I need to start something new to get me back into the swing after a break - a quick project. Among the bag of second-hand kits I got at ExpoEM back in May was a pair of half-built Slaters Midland dropside wagons; I've had a go at them now:

 

 

On the left, a pukka D305, one from Lot 394 or more probably Lot 448 of 1899, Drg. 1143, as an Engineer's Department wagon. There is some evidence for some wagons numbered in the 118xxx - 119xxx range being assigned to the Engineer, possibly from new. Nos. 118024 and 118300 were among several ballast wagons recorded damaged in an accident at Hope on 3 September 1925, whilst Nos. 118285 and 119473 are among the wagon numbers recorded in a guard's return for the dispatch of a ballast train to Skipton on 14 February 1921 - loaded with sleepers [MRSC 25794.03]. This number range is associated with Lot 448 by way of No. 119497 (not an ED wagon) although there are other wagons numbers in this range that I have from various numbertakers' lists etc. which may well not be D305 [DY10824, Midland Wagons plate 70]. The model has the usual addition of drop-side end stop blocks to turn the Slater's kit into a wagon from one of these two lots, along with 0.010" Plastikard for the axlebox protection flaps - tarred canvas, I've presumed.

 

I'm thinking of painting this one red - in Midland Style it is stated that Engineers Department ballast wagons were painted red oxide from about 1900; if some Lot 448 wagons went straight into the ED fleet, it's conceivable they were red from new. I think I'm out of ED transfers, though - they're not on the sheet that comes with the Slaters kits but only on the PC/HMRS sheet and I think I've used them all up.

 

On the right, an S&DJR lowsided wagon. These were one of the Joint's more numerous wagon types, with a stock of 196 recorded in 1914, split equally between the Midland and the LSWR, though this included a number of similar 15' 11"-long 10 ton wagons - possibly only 14, since seven went to the LSWR [Bixley et al., Southern Wagons Vol. 1 Ch. 12]. According to Garner's Register, numbers were scattered randomly, suggesting all were built at Highbridge; that is the case for the two for which there are good photos: No. 508, built 1899 [DY8590, Southern Wagons Vol. 1 plate 167 and Garner's Register p. 4], which has a date painted on the solebar 14/11/03 and is rather grubby, and No. 649, the build date of which isn't quite legible on its numberplate but is probably of similar date [DY8443, Midland Style Fig. 30 and Colin Maggs' Highbridge in its Heyday plate 109; @phil_sutters's ipernity site: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philsutters/26349985], in pristine condition. Both have 10A axleboxes, like their Midland contemporaries, but retain the angle-ended solebars, acting as doorstops, characteristic of the Midland Drg. 213 wagons built up to the late 1880s. These I have modelled by cutting back the headstocks at the appropriate angle then adding 0.060" x 0.040" Evergreen strip to bring them out to the right width. The S&DJR wagons also have Highbridge's long brake lever in lieu of Derby's short one - modelled using a cut-up brake lever molding from a Ratio LNWR wagon kit (taken off the D1 wagon that I backdated to wooden brake block and put an unsatisfactory sheet on earlier this year).  A piece of 0.040" x 0.010" strip has been laid over the lever guard to bulk it out and extend it up to the bottom of the curb rail.

Edited August 26, 2023 by Compound2632
text in wrong place moved to right place

[Compound2632]

Back to the Mousa lowside wagon - which depicts the first Clayton vehicles, built to Drg. 10 in 1874-76, chiefly by the trade as additions to stock, though with some built in the old Derby Etches Park shops as renewals; distinguished from later wagons to Drg. 213 by having ends made from two wider planks rather than three of the same width as those used for the sides. I've assembled and added the buffers:

 

 

These are ingeniously sprung: the buffer guide has a coil spring printed integrally with it; the printed buffer shank is inserted into this and a dab of cyano applied to the tail, fixing the shank to the spring. This avoids the usual faff one has with steel coil springs pinging off into oblivion and having to bend over the tail of the shank of a turned metal buffer head - though I think this arrangement would work just as well if a metal buffer was substituted for the printed one. (From Bill's PoV, this frees him from dependence on third-party suppliers; I think the long-shank turned metal buffer heads have been hard to obtain of late.) My only caveat is that in my opinion, the MJT cast Midland buffers are better detailed - the fixing bolts are better-defined - but unsprung (at least the ones I use). But for this batch of Mousa wagons, I'm sticking with the parts supplied, as I like the idea.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Compound2632
sp.

[Compound2632]

From the latest technological advances to a seriously retro kit:

 

 

The venerable - or perhaps simply old - Keyser GW 6-wheeled siphon; which I understand to represent diagram O2:

 

 

[Embedded link.]

 

I happened to see a vendor with several of these kits for sale on Ebay, at a very reasonable price = £11.87 including postage. The package arrived stiffened with a copy of the Railway Modeller for January 1979, including an article by Brian Huxley on modelling GW Minks. That makes no mention of the Coopercraft kits, which, on the evidence of adverts and a brief mention in the review pages, were only just then being introduced.

 

This purchase was prompted by having spotted one of these vehicles in a photograph of a Midland train at Dore and Totley, before 1901:

 

 

My model sits on two axles at present, with spoked wheels, since (a) I discovered I'm out of Mansell wheels and (b) I'm thinking about how to deal with the middle axle. It was straightforward enough to build - very quick, in fact - though I replaced the floor with a single piece of 0.040" Plastikard, to have a smooth surface on the underside (thinking about the middle axle). 

 

Now, I have questions.

 

Looking at the rather indistinct Dore & Totley photo, it does look as though I need to remove the filler pieces that I assume were added when the large GW initials were adopted - 1904, as for goods stock, I gather. What was the pre-1904 lettering layout?

 

The prototype photo above shows tiebars - as built?

 

Buffers. The ones in the kit are altogether too chunky. MJT do suitable GW carriage buffers but they're out of stock - owing to the unavailability of the long-shanked turned heads, I think. (See previous post!)

 

The roof's too big by about 1 mm all round, is my impression!

 

No brakes in the kit, but I think the prototype photo shows enough to give an idea.

 

Anything else I should know?