Little Muddle

[KNP]

2251 still chugging along...

 

 

The signal is a major kit bash of a Ratio one and was on trail here on a branch line from the Signalling Dept.

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, KNP said:

2251 still chugging along...

 

 

The signal is a major kit bash of a Ratio one and was on trail here on a branch line from the Signalling Dept.

 

One assumes, as one does, that you actually meant the signal was on trial, although what crime it could have  committed is beyond ones understanding.

[The Stationmaster]

On 01/07/2022 at 07:05, KNP said:

Middle Farm expansion building works are complete.

Trees and vegetation planted and taking root.

 

 

 

 

 

Daft, illogical, impractical layout it is but doesn't that follow real life where you look at something and think...why did they do that like that...

 

More items in hand to dress the area and make look like it's in use.

Looking further at this I've now realised that there is something missing.  So - apart from a comely Shepherdess is a short skirt - I see no ageing, rotting, or rusting, or thoroughly rusted and disintegrating, machinery etc anywhere.  i accept that some might well be hidden under the trees with the odd sapling growing through them.  

 

Such things were once a common feature of farms although I am prepared to accept - maybe - the fact that both my grandfathers, at almost opposite ends of England and farming in their two different ways on very different land, were maybe exceptions from the norm.

[KNP]

11 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Looking further at this I've now realised that there is something missing.  So - apart from a comely Shepherdess is a short skirt - I see no ageing, rotting, or rusting, or thoroughly rusted and disintegrating, machinery etc anywhere.  i accept that some might well be hidden under the trees with the odd sapling growing through them.  

 

Such things were once a common feature of farms although I am prepared to accept - maybe - the fact that both my grandfathers, at almost opposite ends of England and farming in their two different ways on very different land, were maybe exceptions from the norm.

Fear not…

Work to rectify this omission is underway.

Trouble is most of the odds and ends I have would be new in 1938 so need to have a hunt around…

[Donw]

Well if you assume that the farm has gone over to tractors instead of horses it would most likely be old horse drawn stuff that was rusting away.

 

Don

[MrWolf]

On the flip side, you were starting to see converted horse drawn equipment. Pretty much anything could have its horse shafts replaced with an angle iron A frame and carts were often fitted with redundant vehicle axles and rubber tyres.

[The Stationmaster]

7 hours ago, Donw said:

Well if you assume that the farm has gone over to tractors instead of horses it would most likely be old horse drawn stuff that was rusting away.

 

Don

In reality it was a bit of a mixture.  As noted above some horse drawn stuff could be (or has d to be readily converted for the new regime and many farmers still clung onto using horses for some of the work although the arrival of more tractors during WWII did change that to some extent (one of my grandfathers was still using horses, as well as a tractor) well into the 1950s.  But two wheel carts seem to have been less likely to altered and 'local area pattern' 4 wheeled carts  seem to have been the least common thing to be altered.    Horse drawn ploughs seem to have been something that was dropped fairly quickly.

[MrWolf]

When it comes to carts being converted in agricultural use it is evident that the vast majority that were converted to be pulled by tractor were two wheeled tip carts, manure wagons etc. A number of drays were converted to rubber tyres for hay cartage and a good number were built locally using axles or even complete chassis salvaged from two ton trucks or large cars.

 

This Commer Cars bus ended its days scattered around several farms, the body was used as a hay store on one, the chassis had a platform built on top and was used as a hay bale cart and the engine was found buried in the tip of another farm. It was restored over a 20 year period and returned to the road in 2000.

 

[KNP]

A bit of oddity these pictures.

I was messing about with my iPhone and used the 5x zoom feature which coupled with the lighting in the room gave a grainy effect.

So I used this and a little bit of photo editing on Affinity to give you these.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Donw]

 

14 hours ago, MrWolf said:

On the flip side, you were starting to see converted horse drawn equipment. Pretty much anything could have its horse shafts replaced with an angle iron A frame and carts were often fitted with redundant vehicle axles and rubber tyres.

 

9 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

In reality it was a bit of a mixture.  As noted above some horse drawn stuff could be (or has d to be readily converted for the new regime and many farmers still clung onto using horses for some of the work although the arrival of more tractors during WWII did change that to some extent (one of my grandfathers was still using horses, as well as a tractor) well into the 1950s.  But two wheel carts seem to have been less likely to altered and 'local area pattern' 4 wheeled carts  seem to have been the least common thing to be altered.    Horse drawn ploughs seem to have been something that was dropped fairly quickly.

 

 

I suppose it depends on when we are talking about in the thirties I would have not expected tractors or tractor equipment to have reached the end of it life.  As Mike says horse drawn ploughs may have been dropped quickly, possibly due to the fact that it was still hard work steering the plough. I suspect a lot of stuff was adapted reused etc. The impression I have is that the late forties and fifties was when the practice of dumping stuff around the farm became more common.

Cartwheels would have been common but in those days would it not have been just the rims and axles that were iron?

 

Don

[MrWolf]

Those pictures remind me of the first time I saw an article on Pendon when I was about nine or ten. 

[cliff park]

There was an awful lot of other horse drawn machinery besides ploughs. Before the days of the combined harvester rollers, drills, reapers, threshers and binders were all separate machines. Lots of these were easily converted to be tractor drawn, but only for a few years before being abandoned. I remember in 1959 as a ten year old helping out on my cousin's farm at harvest time and they were using horse drawn carts, with us sitting on their backs, to help get all the corn back to the barns. The horses were really retired, but came in useful once a year

[Nick C]

Does anyone know of any good references for this kind of stuff? For everything inside the railway fence there's loads of books, websites and photos, but I can't find much on mid 20th century farming...

[The White Rabbit]

On 03/07/2022 at 09:39, Nick C said:

Does anyone know of any good references for this kind of stuff? For everything inside the railway fence there's loads of books, websites and photos, but I can't find much on mid 20th century farming...

 

If you can find someone who went through those years, they can give you some personal memories. I probably learnt most of what I know about the countryside from an old gent (grandfather of a friend) who grew up in the 1930s and after WW2 went back to farming. Sadly no longer with us. 

 

In terms of books, some can be a tad rose-tinted or coffee table but you might like to try:

 

Old Farming Days - Robin Staines - Halsgrove h/b (c) 2005. Focused on Devon & Cornwall but much could apply elsewhere. 

 

Tales of the old Countrymen - Brian Martin - David & Charles h/b (c) 1992 - not explicitly farming but gives a bit of info re rural way of life - as do potentially other D&C books re countryside/poaching. 

 

And although 'faction' and sometimes a bit idealised, some of the James Herriot books are not uninformative about the countryside/farming. 

 

There was also an article in Railway Modeller about farms/ing - March 1985 issue - which I thought was a useful introduction.

 

Edited July 15, 2022 by The White Rabbit
add RM reference

[KNP]

Looking at the web for farmyards in the 30’s and my gut feeling is that there would not be a huge amount of rusting junk in this era.

So my plan is to have some but not that much mostly wagon based.

Edited July 3, 2022 by KNP

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Donw said:

 

 

 

 

I suppose it depends on when we are talking about in the thirties I would have not expected tractors or tractor equipment to have reached the end of it life.  As Mike says horse drawn ploughs may have been dropped quickly, possibly due to the fact that it was still hard work steering the plough. I suspect a lot of stuff was adapted reused etc. The impression I have is that the late forties and fifties was when the practice of dumping stuff around the farm became more common.

Cartwheels would have been common but in those days would it not have been just the rims and axles that were iron?

 

Don

Some early tractors were probably being left to rot by the late 1930s due to the success of the Fordson Model N which was first produced in 1929 and was switched from manufacture in Cork to Ford's Dagenham factory in 1932.   BY 1918 due to wartime lack of horses and farm workers who had left to join the forces there had been a major change in British farming and, to some extent helped by Govt purchases, there were 6,000 motor tractors working on Britain's farms iof all sort of designs including some very unhandy ones.  

 

Thus there was good opportunity for the N although It was definitely becoming outclassed by the mid 1940s and was replaced by a revised model in 1945.  My grandfather had one which had been laid aside when it was supplanted by its successor Fordson Major.  And of course don't forget also that motor engined tractors were also replacing steam on a number of jobs although the Fordson N doesn't appear to have had a belt drive capability so couldn't do everything many traction engines could do.

 

This is a photo of a model N which I took a few weeks back at a large local rally - you can see the two fule caps, one each for petrol (which it used when starting) and the other for TVO (tractor vaporising oil) which it would be run on once the engine was warmed up.

 

 

 

[Donw]

Nick I cannot recommend a good source. There was a farm nearby when I was a lad in the fifties but I a lot came from being a rural postman in the shropshire hills. A welcome cuppa in a cottage or farmhouse would often be accompanied by memories of olden days. One such was Harry Gwilliam born in 1890 worked with horses. Come the great war he spent it breaking in horses to be sent abroad for the officers.

 

Don

[Limpley Stoker]

I grew up on the edge of suburban Surrey and one of my favourite sources of information about farming was  ‘ Countryside Companion’ edited by Tom Stephenson published mid 1940s. There are several copies on eBay . Covers all aspects of the countryside where little would have changed from the 1930s. I recently had to refer to it for our septic tank !

[KNP]

They're back

Jack & Jill and Jim sitting on the bank after their sabbatical by the brook.

When happy with the positioning I will remove some of the grass from beneath them so they are sitting in and not on the grass...!

 

 

Please note the new ScaleModelScenery field roller from the the farmyard pack.

Literally just finished and plonked on the layout. 

 

Lot more planting been done around this area, obvious to me but many will will look and say where???

 

 

[John Besley]

One item that would fit into the era would be a agricultural traction engine as opposed to a road locomotive parked up and disused as the internal combustion tractor is now taking over.

 

This could be partly sheeted over and pushed into a corner of a field where it will stay untill either the WW2 scrap metal drive or preservation in the late 50's

[Benbow]

It is worth remembering that the inter war period was a time of recession/depression in British Agriculture. It wasn't until the end of the 1930s with war looking again possible that the need to increase food production became an issue (nothing changes there then!). Years of neglect to farm buildings and the land in general started to be addressed.

[MrWolf]

2 hours ago, John Besley said:

One item that would fit into the era would be a agricultural traction engine as opposed to a road locomotive parked up and disused as the internal combustion tractor is now taking over.

 

This could be partly sheeted over and pushed into a corner of a field where it will stay untill either the WW2 scrap metal drive or preservation in the late 50's

 

Something that is smaller and even more likely to be dumped in a corner would be a steam portable engine, I'm sure that there was a white metal kit available at one point.

Some of which ended their days as heating boilers for greenhouses, or for steam cleaning cowsheds, piggeries etc. 

[KNP]

On we go, 2251 chuffs along as far as that 'pesky' signal!

Will it change before they get there or will they need to wait?

 

[KNP]

Nope...they've had to wait...

 

[Ponthir28]

The question is how many days is it going to wait?