Nether Madder and Green Soudley Rly

[Martin S-C]

Very nice. I do like the solebar plates. What does the left hand one say? I think I read "WALSALL" on the lower line.

 

I have checked my fleet and they are all still here, so we need to get Inspector Trunnion of the Yard on the case. It appears there is a black market wagon trader in the district. Would you know anything about that Annie?

I do note you seem to have lost some rails though.

 

I am just getting over a week or so of procrastination and then I really SHALL get the garage interior painted. I have the emulsion and brushes, I just keep finding excuses to stay inside in the warm. I have encountered the first downside of a model railway built in a garage. It has a heater but its just getting out of the house and across the miserable grey damp intervening 30 feet...

I have distracted myself with a few cattle wagons, though I suspect I have way too many now for the layout. Still, variation is the spice of something-or-other.

 

 

There was a fair bit of hoo-ha over the Oxford Rail's LNER cattle wagon's accuracy I recall and I have encountered another bonus of building a freelance layout - if the wagon is inaccurate... it just doesn't matter

Edited November 15, 2018 by Martin S-C

[Annie]

I do like those cattle vans Martin.  Very nicely weathered and they look very much the part..

 

 

Very nice. I do like the solebar plates. What does the left hand one say? I think I read "WALSALL" on the lower line.

 

I have checked my fleet and they are all still here, so we need to get Inspector Trunnion of the Yard on the case. It appears there is a black market wagon trader in the district. Would you know anything about that Annie?

I do note you seem to have lost some rails though.

 

 

This is the plate on the wagon's solebar.  I have a growing collection of images of wagon plates and makers plates of one kind or another that I use in my digital modelling.  I really don't know anything about Cross & Cross, but I do like the plate and I've also used it on some completely imaginary PO wagons of my own devising.  Freelance modelling is a lot of fun and even though the Hopewood Tramway exists as a part of my moderately serious GCR-GER digital layout it's a little railway where I can do very much as I please with only the barest of nods to railway history and geography.

 

I put together the WELR open wagon mainly just for fun after seeing a picture of similar wagon you'd made and I also just happened to have a blank texture image for a red 5 plank wagon which made it all very easy.  I fully intend to run and use this wagon on the Hopewood Tramway and as to how it might have made its way to East Anglia is anybody's guess.  It's very likely that other wagons lettered for well known freelance layouts may find their way to the Hopewood Tramway and certainly once James has firmed up a wagon livery for his own West Norfolk enterprise one or two digital copies will be appearing on the Hopewood Tramway.

 

Losing rails? - yes sidings and the like almost disappearing into the sandy soil on which much of the Hopewood Tramway is built is a constant worry for the PW crew.  It can be a bit of a fiddle to lay digital trackwork so it looks like that, but definitely worth it since it creates just the atmosphere and character I want for my little railway.

[St Enodoc]

we need to get Inspector Trunnion of the Yard on the case.

A fine fellow with an upright bearing.

[runs as required]

OMG!

I think those cattle trucks quite APPALLING

I can smell them from here....

 

There is something of grungy Irish railway quaysides about them - pre the 1970s Troubles .

dh

[Martin S-C]

Yes, another reason to model prior to 1926 and the abolition of limewash for disinfecting cattle trucks. By the late 20s they just look too clean.

I have toyed with the idea of chopping the roofs off a couple of cattle trucks in the Irish NG style and may yet get the blade to one or more of these.

[Northroader]

This kind of thing? The Victorian era Irish lines had stacks of these, not just the narrow guage. I think the Board of Trade was leaning on them to fit roofs and be kinder to the moocows around 1900, but they did last on the ng lines until they stopped running. This also illustrates the other trick they had, having vans with an open roof section in the middle. This could be closed off with a tarpaulin on sticks for general goods traffic, or removed for transporting cattle.

[Martin S-C]

Yes, that's what I had in mind. Probably not allowed on the British standard gauge by the end of WWI though. I have some Highland sheep wagon kits that are opens with extra height rails. They may have to do to quench my love for drophead livestock transport. I'm using Slaters MR coke wagons as provender wagons too. I just have this odd hankering for open wagons that are effectively box vans with no roofs; something I can't put my finger on makes them highly appealing.

[St Enodoc]

something I can't put my finger on

The roof?

[Martin S-C]

The Magpie Modeller in me simply had to have this. It's maybe too big for the NMGS network and will not fit the 50 ft turntable at the exchange sidings but... I simply couldn't resist. The quality of some RTR locos and stock these days is just wonderful. This particular example might be the finest model Bachmann have released since the SECR liveried C Class 0-6-0.

 

[sem34090]

I want one... it's too big, but I know I'll regret it if I miss out like I did with the full Wainwright C and H...

[Nearholmer]

Its a loco that needs to be made in old-fashioned tinplate, along with its GNR progenitor. The ancient tinplate makers did some very nice, and in the case of Maerklin for the British market, very strange, Atlantics, but they are unobtanium now (https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/a-bing-for-bassett-lowke-clockwork-gnr-1974579-details.aspx), and, frustratingly, none of the revivalist makers can be persuaded to add one to their schedule.

[Martin S-C]

Yep, the Atlantic wheel arrangement was one of those iconic tinplate-period things that just looks right.

[Annie]

Atlantics are much more useful than Pacifics and 4-6-0's in my opinion.  Or at least they are to the average railway layout builder who doesn't have much room for sweeping curves.  And I totally agree about old fashioned tinplate and Atlantics, - they really are made for each other.

[Martin S-C]

I've had the older GNR version for a while now, and I understand Bachmann are releasing it again under a different guise. I am simply a sucker for pre-grouping liveries, so pretty. All that lining around the frames and axle boxes. Just super.

 

Edited November 23, 2018 by Martin S-C

[St Enodoc]

Atlantics are much more useful than Pacifics and 4-6-0's in my opinion.  Or at least they are to the average railway layout builder who doesn't have much room for sweeping curves.  And I totally agree about old fashioned tinplate and Atlantics, - they really are made for each other.

I'm told that tinplate 0-4-0Ts are quite good on sharp curves too...

[Edwardian]

I've had the older GNR version for a while now, and I understand Bachmann are releasing it again under a different guise. I am simply a sucker for pre-grouping liveries, so pretty. All that lining around the frames and axle boxes. Just super.

 

GNR Ivatt C1 Class Atlantic 4-4-2.jpg

 

My powers of resistance are likewise weak ...

[Martin S-C]

What is the blue engine on the second track James? Oh... and the LBSCR one at right?

[Edwardian]

What is the blue engine on the second track James? Oh... and the LBSCR one at right?

 

It is one of my favourite classes, and the perfect GER loco for a Norfolk back-water, a No.1 Class Little Sharpie, here in its Worsdellised turn of the century form. It is a Peter K kit, very much in need of both mechanical and cosmetic attention.

 

The umber loco is the Bachmann E4.

[Martin S-C]

I have the Alan Gibson kit of the Holden T26 GER 2-4-0 somewhere. Looking forward to having a crack at that eventually. It seems to be an almost identical engine? Same frames, dome position and safety valves at any rate, though the Gibson kit has a 6-wheel tender.

Yours looks very nice. To my eyes the colour is perfect.

[Edwardian]

I have the Alan Gibson kit of the Holden T26 GER 2-4-0 somewhere. Looking forward to having a crack at that eventually. It seems to be an almost identical engine? Same frames, dome position and safety valves at any rate, though the Gibson kit has a 6-wheel tender.

 

Yours looks very nice. To my eyes the colour is perfect.

 

The family resemblance is in part a result of the later fittings.  I should, perhaps, blame Holden rather than Worsdell for its turn of the century appearance, but compare a Y14 and a T26 and you'd think they were penned by the same designer, so I'd need to go back through some drawings to see when she first lost her 'Midland' appearance. 

 

Were I to place it next to a T26, or the Hornby J15 (ex-Y14), you'd see that the No.1 was rather smaller.   

 

Anyway, the class was an S W Johnson design of 1867, so began life looking rather different from Holden's T26 design of 1891. 

 

As for the colour, I'm not responsible, but I agree that it looks suitable, and I suspect that to use an authentic colour, without adding white to compensate for the effect of a smaller scale, would probably result in something too dark.

[Martin S-C]

Having injured my left hand with a nasty razor-saw cut yesterday evening and spent 3 hours in A&E I am up and about again but not able to do any modelling. Yesterday I started a repaint of a Dapol rectangular tank wagon into a livery for my greaseworks industry at Great Shafting. My other rectangular tanks are black so I went with a rust red colour:



I spent today one-handedly drawing out a possible set of markings. The drawing is to scale - the tank side in 4mil scale is 13mm deep and 60mm long. The darker lines are the lines of rivets which I want my lettering to avoid where possible.



My problem is I do not yet have a name for my company. I've had a long think but nothing has come along that appeals to me. I am okay with an element of whimsey but am also fine with something linked to the Gloucester/Forest/Hereford region.

So if anyone has any ideas, please fire away.

[Stubby47]

Larry Bow & Sons, but shortened to L.Bow & Sons.

[Zomboid]

How about "Zuko & Murdoch Greaseworks", or "T. Bird Greaseworks".

[Martin S-C]

I like the L. Bow & Sons but perhaps conceal the joke a little with "Lawrence Bow & Sons".

[St Enodoc]

I like the L. Bow & Sons but perhaps conceal the joke a little with "Lawrence Bow & Sons".

That would be a long bow to draw.