Nether Madder and Green Soudley Rly

[Northroader]

Might be a thought to look at security, grills, shutters, bars, locks, and so on.

[Martin S-C]

Thanks Annie. I'm hugely excited by the whole idea of finally building the layout of my dreams. You're welcome to come round and play! I will need an operating team eventually...

 

Northroader - yes, security is in my thoughts. The only access will be made more secure and I am considering external grills on the windows. I've specified an extremely secure door as well. However the area is a very good one for security with excellent neighbourhood watch and a major emergency services facility right across the road.

[Annie]

Thanks for the invite Martin, but since I live in New Zealand you might not see me too often.   

[Martin S-C]

A Tale of Two Wagons.

 

Chapter One - in which a small luggage van appears from the most unlikely of origins.

 

The chunk of luggage section I hacked out of the GWR clerestory brake coach being made into a small guards luggage van as I mentioned before. I added a spare wagon underframe and wheels and gave it a coat of grey primer, then added lookout duckets but it just didn't look right - too tall... too... cartoony. I don't mind some cute looking freelance designs but this was too much. After a day of glaring at it on my workbench I took a saw to the roof and replaced it with an arc roof. Then I sat contemplating it a little more. It was an improvement but still a little odd looking.

 

 

 

 

 

The next day was one of adding plasticard shims to make the sides and ends meet properly then trimming and rubbing these down. I gave the various joints and gaps a covering of plastic putty then rubbed this down as well. After that I removed the existing (now out-of-position) rain strips and added new ones. Then it was a case of adding all those lovely small details that make a railway vehicle what it is - buffers, coupling hooks, running boards and step boards, lamp irons, brake gear, grab rails, door handles, vacuum brake hoses and handrails on the crew step access end.

 

 

 

 

 

I've grown to like it now and I think it'll serve its purpose. I keep telling myself "would John Ahern or Peter Hancock have built such a thing?" and I keep getting a more-or-less affirmative answer so it will run like this for now. It is too short, that's obvious, but it has that certain freelance charm that I'm seeking.

 

= = = = = = = = = =

 

Chapter Two - in which some wooden dowels, some criminally bad instructions, some Prosecco and some runny French cheese combine to test the forum's profanity censor.

The twin gas tank wagon was an absolute b*gg*er to assemble needing - so far as I could work out - a person with at least 4 arms to hold every part steady as glue was applied. I needed to hold the headstocks, solebars and main frames in place while the wheel-sets were inserted. With loose brass axle bearings that kept falling out if I tilted it just a weensy bit. Bloody silly. I cursed those crappy concise instructions more than once. Eventually I had a square(ish) underframe with freely turning wheels but it was a chore and required a good couple of hours break during which aforesaid sparkling wine and runny cheese were consumed in excessive quantities to calm my nerves.

 

 

 

 

On the second day with the basic underframe assembled I added the tanks. Lo and behold, with the cast ends glued on these were several millimetres too long. Such awesome kit design. No wonder Wills stoped making these kits - you have to be a masochistic octopus with no imagination to build these. So I then had to carve out the inside edges of the headstocks to get the tanks to fit. It was like whittling a branch with a penknife. Took ages. Thank god I can paint this little beggar and park it in my carriage sidings and forget it!

 

 

 

Anyhow, got the little s*d finished. Now needs a squirt of grey primer and a paint job. I have been thinking more about the livery rules for my four railway companies. All the departmental vehicles (that is the engineering wagons like cranes, tool vans, ballast wagons and such, plus this gas tanker and a water tanker kit I have yet to tackle, and things like loco coal wagons) need a livery of their own. The GWR used black which seems totally boring. I may use an olive green or dark black-green which I've seen used by some-company-or-other. Other colours like greys and red bauxite tones have been allocated to other freight liveries, so probably a dark green it will be.

 

[Northroader]

That parcels van has turned out into a really nifty vehicle, great work! Two thoughts on the gas tank, a) with assembly why not a dab of glue behind the bearings, and then set the frames out on a flat board with some lumps of blutak while you square it up to glue, and b) the tank looks a bit free to move without any retaining straps going over the top and down into the supporting baulks?

[BlueLightning]

The parcels van looks good!!!

 

As for the gas tank wagon, I'm really glad they go together easily.............................................

 

Gary

[Nearholmer]

Both exceedingly characterful vehicles, what the Americans call ‘gnarly’ I think.

 

The van looks very believable to me; hints of Isle of Man and Vale of Rheidol, with some undertones of something else that I can’t recall, and a walnutty finish. Or, perhaps that was the wine.

 

Not a bad kit for 9s 6d, assuming that includes purchase tax.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Martin S-C]

Thanks. The passenger brake van is growing on me.

Yes, I thought the gas tanker needed some strapping, maybe even raised stanchions at the ends. One good firm shunt and you'd have a couple of gas-filled short range cruise missiles flying down your yard. I was also thinking some form of discharge pipework and valves need adding, like so:

 

 

BlueLightning, I see you got yours knocked down to 9/3. A snip!

*hint* Saw approx 2.5mm off the ends of the wooden dowels before you glue the cast tank ends on, or if you're feeling very adventurous (or you've run out of cheese and wine), make up a 2.5mm shim of card to make the frames longer before you glue the headstocks on!

And don't forget the squeezy washing up bottle and egg boxes.

 

John Noakes signing out.

[lezz01]

Well considering that most of those old school white metal kits are only fit to be melted down and used for weight I'd say you've done a marvelous job of that gas tank Martin. Now if you really want to impress us how about building something from the falcon bass stable. I tried to build their Kirtley 700 class a long time ago only to find that the inside frames were a different wheelbase to the outside frames. Of course it was the outside frames that were wrong not the inside which would have been fixable....go figure.......   

Regards Lez.Z.  

[BlueLightning]

Thanks for the tips on the gas tank, I will look forward to the challenge of building, and hopefully improving mine based on what you have said!!

 

Gary

[St Enodoc]

Well considering that most of those old school white metal kits are only fit to be melted down and used for weight I'd say you've done a marvelous job of that gas tank Martin. Now if you really want to impress us how about building something from the falcon bass stable. I tried to build their Kirtley 700 class a long time ago only to find that the inside frames were a different wheelbase to the outside frames. Of course it was the outside frames that were wrong not the inside which would have been fixable....go figure.......   

Regards Lez.Z.  

You were lucky. Sometimes the left and right frames had different wheelbases.

[Martin S-C]

Well considering that most of those old school white metal kits are only fit to be melted down and used for weight I'd say you've done a marvelous job of that gas tank Martin. Now if you really want to impress us how about building something from the falcon bass stable. I tried to build their Kirtley 700 class a long time ago only to find that the inside frames were a different wheelbase to the outside frames. Of course it was the outside frames that were wrong not the inside which would have been fixable....go figure.......   

Regards Lez.Z.  

I imagine plastic putty wasn't invented when these first came out so many of my sins of white metal (non-) joinery have been hidden behind white swathes of the stuff. Blobs of superglue also work wonders in hidden recesses! Another post-60s advance.

 

I don't know of the falcon bass kits and perhaps that's a good thing.

 

I have these to build. I am however starting at almost impossible gas tank wagons and gently easing myself towards the deep end of the dark arts of early 70s K's models.

 

Edited October 17, 2018 by Martin S-C

[Nearholmer]

My very limited experience of K's kits is that they contain a fair number of potentially useful bits of white metal, but that its best to forget them until you've created a really well-running chassis, which may necessitate a lot of re-working of the parts supplied, maybe even to the extent of starting over using none of them.

 

If all the wheels run concentrically on their axles, you are off to a good start, and beyond that you can't take chassis alignment, coupling-rod between-holes distance, or anything else for granted. Things may all be aligned correctly, but equally they may be 'out' by just enough to be really annoying.

 

Are you going to 'forward-date- these locos, to look 'late-in-life'?

[BWsTrains]

My very limited experience of K's kits is that they contain a fair number of potentially useful bits of white metal, but that its best to forget them until you've created a really well-running chassis, which may necessitate a lot of re-working of the parts supplied, maybe even to the extent of starting over using none of them.

 

If all the wheels run concentrically on their axles, you are off to a good start, and beyond that you can't take chassis alignment, coupling-rod between-holes distance, or anything else for granted. Things may all be aligned correctly, but equally they may be 'out' by just enough to be really annoying.

 

Are you going to 'forward-date- these locos, to look 'late-in-life'?

Priceless, they don't make them like in the olden days, do they!

 

Colin

[BWsTrains]

A Tale of Two Wagons.

 

......

 

Chapter Two - in which some wooden dowels, some criminally bad instructions, some Prosecco and some runny French cheese combine to test the forum's profanity censor.

 

The twin gas tank wagon was an absolute b*gg*er to assemble needing

Magnificent work Martin, but the one question that springs to mind for a wagon of this era is "what gas?".

 

Commercial use of LNG and LPG surely came in much later in the UK? the only gas I recall knowledge of before the 1960s North Sea Gas era was Town gas, not something you'd consider compressing and shipping, the old gasometers stored it under relatively low pressure for more or less immediate use.

 

I'm intrigued by this historical quirk,

 

Colin

[RedGemAlchemist]

I imagine plastic putty wasn't invented when these first came out so many of my sins of white metal (non-) joinery have been hidden behind white swathes of the stuff. Blobs of superglue also work wonders in hidden recesses! Another post-60s advance.

 

I don't know of the falcon bass kits and perhaps that's a good thing.

 

I have these to build. I am however starting at almost impossible gas tank wagons and gently easing myself towards the deep end of the dark arts of early 70s K's models.

 

LNWR_Problem_Class_2-2-2_01.jpg LSWR_Beattie_Falcon_Class_2-4-0_03.jpg

Clearly Martin you are secretly a complete masochist.

[Martin S-C]

Hi Colin

 

It was coal gas, produced in the same manner that town gas was and used for coach lighting. Gas lighting replaced oil lamps in passenger coaches around the 1870s to 1880s I understand. All the bigger railway companies would have their own gasworks to produce their own gas by heating the impurities out of coal with the outputs being coke, tars and oils of various densities and gas. Attached are a couple of photos of the very large gasworks that formed part of the main GW works at Swindon.

 

Photos from my collection.

The gas tanker wagons would be charged up at such facilities, then parked at various strategic places around the system where carriages were stored to charge their gas lighting reservoirs. The GWR used the telegraphic code name CORDON for these wagons and had a later design of nine transverse smaller tanks stored in two levels secured by longitudinal steel straps.

 

Photo copyright 53A Models (James Doubleday)

 

Of course, following a number of bad fires at train accidents, most tragically at Quintinshill in May 1915, which were fed by the burning gas tanks, gas lighting was slowly replaced by electric and at the same time, wooden bodied passenger vehicles by steel bodied.

Edited October 17, 2018 by Martin S-C

[Martin S-C]

 

Are you going to 'forward-date- these locos, to look 'late-in-life'?

I hadn't thought this far ahead yet. I have a number of RTR locos that I can work on now that my transfers have arrived so these kits are down the list a way. I do like the open footplates even though they are not correct for 1918. I might have to invoke Rule 1 and declare that my company's footplate crew uniform includes silk top hats and frock coats and of course you cannot drive a train that has a roofed cab while wearing a topper.

 

I also tend to fall back on my Madder Valley inspiration at times like this and if I ask myself the question "Would John Ahern have done it?" and the answer comes back even vaguely close to an affirmative, then I'll do it too!

[lezz01]

Those two K's Milestone kits aren't too bad Martin. The 2F and Kirtkey 0-6-0's are fairly good too but you might want to think about some Gibson frames for them as the one's you get with the kits are just two slabs of brass with screw spacers and they have no brake detail or profiling at all. The Johnson 0F 1400 class dock tank makes up into a nice little model with Gibson frames as well but you have to watch the gearing or it takes off like a rocket.

Regards Lez.Z. 

[Nearholmer]

the other gas used for train lighting, besides Town's Gas, was Pintsch's Gas, which was claimed to burn cleaner and whiter, but did actually have one measurable advantage, in that it could be compressed to a greater degree, allowing more 'lighting time' to be carried in a given volume, some sources give a 6:1 ratio in its favour.

 

According to some sources, the coaches at Quintinshill were lit with Pintsch's, rather than Town's, Gas.

 

I think we discussed this in Castle Aching, and I found illustrations of Pintsch's gas-making plants, which, at first glance, look pretty much identical to the Town's plants that are more familiar.

Edited October 17, 2018 by Nearholmer

[BWsTrains]

the other gas used for train lighting, besides Town's Gas, was Pintsch's Gas, which was claimed to burn cleaner and whiter, but did actually have one measurable advantage, in that it could be compressed to a greater degree, allowing more 'lighting time' to be carried in a given volume.

 

According to some sources, the coaches at Quintinshill were lit with Pintsch's, rather than Town's, Gas.

Now this new info is really interesting news for me.

 

Town or Coal gas I remember well from Grammar school chemistry days, We did a tour of the Weston Gas works where Coal is partially burnt to produce useful volatiles, a mixture of gases chiefly hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide (Carbon monoxide will burn and has a decent calorific value; it produces that nice blue flame over the coals in a well ventilated coal fire).

 

The info I can get on Pintsch's gas is less clear but the way it was made, by distilling naphtha (itself an oil distillate) is not dissimilar to how ethylene and other small hydrocarbons are still made today, by thermally cracking naphtha at high temperatures in an inert atmosphere. It's no wonder it was a better fuel as ethylene etc have better calorific values but are more hazardous as well. The technology was probably much more demanding at scale than for producing coal gas back in those days.

 

In modern furnaces efficiencies can be reasonably high. I used to run a non-linear optimiser for the Botany NSW petrochem plant so have a little background here! We used to crack 250,000 + tonnes naphtha a year to feed 2 polythene plants.

 

Getting back to town or coal gas, what still surprises me is that useful levels of safe compression could be achieved, given limitations of compressors and cylinders, still if only used for lighting I guess they had enough!

 

Fascinating history, thanks for bringing it to our notice.

 

Colin

[Martin S-C]

Thanks all, I am learning a lot here. To me town gas/gasworks and gas wagons on model railways are really just adjuncts to modelling. Nice to have a little gasworks on a layout (the Peter Denny pocket-sized versions) and the gas wagons are just vehicles that I know were in common use until maybe the 20s, I honestly have not given a great deal of thought to the technology and processes behind it all.

Lez - thank you for the heads up. Yes, I was thinking along the lines of using a Gibson frames/chassis as a basis. I tried to build a whitemetal Dukedog way back in the 80s and got the tender built nicely and the chassis and frames and motor working with okay quartering but my soldering iron back then was a nasty cheapie one and it would melt the W/M parts... I never did get it finished.

I have the plastic Ratio Johnson 4-4-0 and 2-4-0 Midland kits as well which will clearly need brass chassis and decent motors/gears. I just can't help myself when it comes to smallish late Victorian tender engines.

 

 

[lezz01]

My avatar is the ratio 2-4-0 Martin. They do make up into very nice locos if you use brass boiler fittings. It's the second edition with a perseverance chassis though. Whatever you do don't use the mazak wheels that come with those issues as they weld themselves to the rails as soon as you put a current through them.

Regards Lez.Z.   

[DonB]

Quote:- " Nice to have a little gasworks on a layout (the Peter Denny pocket-sized versions) "

 

There was a "pocket-sized" gasworks at Shipton on Stour adjacent to the goods yard. There was a siding almost butting up against the mutual boundary of the two properties, but I have seen no evidence that coal was delivered by rail for gas making at Shipton.  My interest was of the period between post-grouping and late 30s, and my info. has all been passed on.  

 

A 1923 map showing the Proximity of gasworks and rail yard can be found at   http://warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrss3103.htm 

It may give enough info to estimate the size of the gasworks.

Edited October 17, 2018 by DonB

[Nearholmer]

Colin

 

I'll type quietly, because we are bit(!)OT here, but compression, both for gas transport and for refrigeration, is one of those important links in technological evolution that tends to get overlooked. It was a direct leader into the practical realisation of Diesel's engine, and particularly in the USA early Diesel production had close links with refrigeration engineering knowledge that had been built-up to serve the lager-beer brewing industry, which uses cold, bottom-of-the-vessel, fermentation, rather than warm, top-of-the-vessel, fermentation.

 

Further OT, I'm very interested in the history of liquid fuels for internal combustion engines, and get deeply confused by the late-C19th terminology for different fractions of crude oil, so I may PM you to check my understanding.

 

Kevin