Aston On Clun. A forgotten Great Western outpost.

[MrWolf]

Repainted in GWR grey, still wet but that's about it for the exterior until I get some transfers.

 

 

So while that's waiting, I might actually get the autotrailer finished....

 

[John Besley]

Meanwhile what's the latest on the bike?

[MrWolf]

Wheels bearings and weights fitted.

 

 

3 hours ago, John Besley said:

Meanwhile what's the latest on the bike?

 

Insurance company have been looking through the case today, so I'm waiting to hear something from them.

 

To add a little insult to injury, I sent off the original speedometer for a sympathetic restoration a couple of weeks ago and it arrived back today.....

 

[Rowsley17D]

Has it been clocked? 😁

[Bluemonkey presents....]

Catching you up!

 

 

Cant wait to see what transfers sets are produced, the ones for the CC2 were splendid. 

[MrWolf]

9 minutes ago, Rowsley17D said:

Has it been clocked? 😁

 

That's definitely not the first time round!

[57xx]

On 14/06/2023 at 12:54, The Stationmaster said:

 

Now then GWR service vehocle colour.  Some time back the livery expert at teh GWS ay Didcot asked me abouta Shunter's Truck which was beimg done up although his enquiry was in relation to alocation where such a thing would have been based rather than colour.  Having given him my answer I asked if he could confirm the GWR colour and he was positive - having done not only research but also having scraped back through layers of paint on various vehicles over the years - GWR departmental vehicles were painted in the usual dark grey colour.

 

I know that BR used black as teh standard colour for departmental vehicles for many years with the only exception being some breakdown train riding and tool vans which were painted carmine red in the days when black was still the standard departmental colour.

 

So on the basis - GWR - grey; BR black (until it was replaced by olive green although some departmental vehicles definitely appeared in Gulf Red.  Weighing Machine servicing vans were painted black in BR days with the normal '(straw) yellow' lettering although the lettering on any case plates in departmental vehicles was white was white

 

That's good to see some confirmation of what I thought. I guess the places painting items of stock in black were misled by the erroneous info in print. Given how dark GWRfreight grey is I can see how it could be misidentified or misremembered.

Edited June 17, 2023 by 57xx

[MrWolf]

4 hours ago, Bluemonkey presents.... said:

Catching you up!

 

 

Cant wait to see what transfers sets are produced, the ones for the CC2 were splendid. 

 

Looking very good, I'll hand paint the inside of mine as before and glaze it once the varnishes and transfers are applied.

 

They were drawn up a couple of months ago and cover the vans in original condition with 25" letters and numbers on the ends. 

 

All of the numbers and depot brandings are covered and for later conditions the end numbers could be omitted and the 16" G,W, substituted.

[chuffinghell]

On 17/06/2023 at 09:13, Bluemonkey presents.... said:

Catching you up!

 

 

Cant wait to see what transfers sets are produced, the ones for the CC2 were splendid. 

@railtec-models  have a heavy workload at the moment but they’re on the to do list and I’m confident they will be worth the wait

 

On 17/06/2023 at 09:33, 57xx said:

Given how dark GWRfreight grey is I can see how it could be misidentified or misremembered.

Mine is definitely dark grey

 

 

But will lighten with multiple coats of matt varnish

 

On 17/06/2023 at 14:07, MrWolf said:

They were drawn up a couple of months ago and cover the vans in original condition with 25" letters and numbers on the ends

 

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by chuffinghell

[MrWolf]

I was going to mention posting that drawing to you, but today has been rather mad and I'm still working!

 

This is the photo from which some of the livery information was obtained.

 

[chuffinghell]

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

I was going to mention posting that drawing to you, but today has been rather mad and I'm still working!

 

This is the photo from which some of the livery information was obtained.

 

As Warren is fictional I can get away with any location but I was planning on the above 14992 ‘SHREWSBURY’

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, chuffinghell said:

As Warren is fictional I can get away with any location but I was planning on the above 14992 ‘SHREWSBURY’

 

Likewise, despite Aston being on a planned but never built line, the logical nearest S&T Department would be Shrewsbury.

[Bluemonkey presents....]

My chosen layout location (if I can ever get the build going) is Chippenham during the 1920s although this is for the rail plan so I plan to have stock from 1890s-1940s. No timetabling but trains will be made up of sensible and logicle stock, i.e. no red wagons being pulled by a King. My permanent way stock many consists of Reading stock with the crane and mess wagons/coach to be stabled at Swindon.

 

[MrWolf]

I hope that you do get to build the layout, having seen the quality of the stock you've built it's going to be another one to follow for inspiration.

When I get round to building it, I'm thinking of two PW trains, one for track work and one for signals etc.

 

[Fishplate]

9 hours ago, MrWolf said:

When I get round to building it, I'm thinking of two PW trains, one for track work and one for signals etc.

 

Signalling things carried on Permanent Way trains ???? 🤯😬

[MrWolf]

41 minutes ago, Fishplate said:

 

Signalling things carried on Permanent Way trains ???? 🤯😬

 

Yes okay I was being lazy, but you get my drift...😉

[lezz01]

Well they got carried by S&T trains and although they are painted a different colour they use very similar vehicles. Many companies painted their S&T stock red but they had separate sidings and depots although the telegraph bit of S&T was often owned and maintained by a telegraph company rather than the railway company itself. At some stations the telegraph was operated by railway employees and at others by the telegraph company employees. It was quite a complicated system but it's a very fascinating subject and a rabbit hole that is very easy to get drawn down.

Regards Lez.    

[MrWolf]

That's interesting, the separate telegraph office is a bit of a mid Victorian relic, but as anyone who has read the account of the Abermule accident will know, some of these ideas lingered with the single line token machines being sited in a separate building to the signal box that was likely a former telegraph office.

Definitely a rabbit hole, there's an awful lot of them around here and all I can say is that Alice in Wonderland would have been a much shorter book had Lewis Carroll known what a machine pistol was....

 

Happily for our modelling budget we've established that the Great Western had a one size fits all big tin of grey paint. 😉

[Fishplate]

8 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Yes okay I was being lazy, but you get my drift...😉

 

I did indeed. But too good an opportunity 😁. . . .

[The Stationmaster]

16 hours ago, MrWolf said:

That's interesting, the separate telegraph office is a bit of a mid Victorian relic, but as anyone who has read the account of the Abermule accident will know, some of these ideas lingered with the single line token machines being sited in a separate building to the signal box that was likely a former telegraph office.

Definitely a rabbit hole, there's an awful lot of them around here and all I can say is that Alice in Wonderland would have been a much shorter book had Lewis Carroll known what a machine pistol was....

 

Happily for our modelling budget we've established that the Great Western had a one size fits all big tin of grey paint. 😉

Telegraph offices lasted very late although in some cases by the 1960s they were using modern equipment - but they were still called telegraph office because they handled all the wires (telegrams to non-railway folk).  Even in the second half of the 1960s some of the offices I worked in were sending a couple of dozen, or even more in a few cases, wires everyday.

 

Single needle telegraph instreuments were still around on teh Wr, although unused by then, in the mod 1960s and I worked with several people who had been Telegraph Clerks using single needle in struments.  Telegraph instruments survived in regaular daily use in signalboxes on the  GN main line until the commissioning of Kings Cross and Peterborough power 'boxes in the 1970s.

 

Incidentalkly folowing the Abermule collision the GWr carried out a survey of the number of locations whetre signalling instruments, inevatbly on single lines, were in the station buildingds rather than in teh signal box and duly resolved to move all such in struments into signal boxes.  Then the Grouping happened and it was back tssquare one.  i wouldn't mind beetting that some survived well into the 1950s and only went then because lines were reduced in status or closed.

 

At the time of the Abermule Collision the GWR1,356.5 miles of sig ngle line.  328 single line sections were worked by Electric Train Staff (ETS); 20 by Electric Train Tablet (ET); 29 by Electric Train Token (ETT);  and one by Miniature Electric Train Staff  (METS)  

At 52 places on the GWR the  singe line instruments - either ETS or ET - were located in the booking office.  and it was agreed to mve these to the relevant signal box.  

Edited June 19, 2023 by The Stationmaster

[MrWolf]

Thanks again for filling in the gaps and giving us the bigger picture, every day is a school day and all that.

 

The Cambrian Railways seemed to have more than their share of bad luck, they had some spectacular and as a result well publicised crashes, which despite not having the huge casualties of some of the other railways tarnished their reputation.

[The Stationmaster]

On 19/06/2023 at 19:27, MrWolf said:

Thanks again for filling in the gaps and giving us the bigger picture, every day is a school day and all that.

 

The Cambrian Railways seemed to have more than their share of bad luck, they had some spectacular and as a result well publicised crashes, which despite not having the huge casualties of some of the other railways tarnished their reputation.

Possibly a bit more worrying than 'bad luck although Friog certainly seems to have been more a matter of bad luck rather than anything else.

 

However the Cambrian was I think unique (unfortunately) in the annals of British railway safety history of having two head-on collisions on single lines equipped with state of the art single line systems.  

 

Park Hall in January 1918 was a collision involving two freight trains and that is presumably why it is not so widely known - there was no doubt plenty of ither news to keep the press busy.  The worrying thing about Park Hall was that somehow the Drivers of both trains had a tablet authorising them to be in the single line section.  In other words somehow a tablet had been withdrawn by the Signalmen at both ends of the section.  How that had happened was never resolved.

 

Abermule followed almost exactly three years later in January 1921 and was of course down to abysmal lack of discipline in operating the Electric Train Tablet system plus the unhelpful positioning of the instruments for that system.

 

When things like that happen more than once one has to have some reservations about the way the Railway concerned was being managed.

[MrWolf]

"There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it".

 

Dostoevsky, A Diary of a Writer.

 

I think that I have only read about the Park Hall collision in books specifically about the Cambrian.

Abermule sticks in the mind more as there are still members of the Wain family living in the area and one of those is credited as aiding in the research for the book The Deadly Tablet, well worth a read if you can find a copy.

I got the impression that a lot of the blame lay with the company for using boys as cheap unskilled labour and leaving them to cover tasks they were untrained for and certainly unauthorised.

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, MrWolf said:

"There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it".

 

Dostoevsky, A Diary of a Writer.

"There is no subject so old that some upstart cannot say something they think is new about it".

 

Present company excepted.

Edited June 21, 2023 by St Enodoc

[NHY 581]

8 hours ago, MrWolf said:

"There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it".

 

Dostoevsky, A Diary of a Writer.

 

I think that I have only read about the Park Hall collision in books specifically about the Cambrian.

Abermule sticks in the mind more as there are still members of the Wain family living in the area and one of those is credited as aiding in the research for the book The Deadly Tablet, well worth a read if you can find a copy.

I got the impression that a lot of the blame lay with the company for using boys as cheap unskilled labour and leaving them to cover tasks they were untrained for and certainly unauthorised.

 

 

Sadly not unusual to have far too much responsibility heaped on young lads. The Radstock train crash on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway occured on 7 August 1876 on a then single line section. Two trains collided with the loss of 15 lives. The telegraph clerk at Wellow was 15 and on the day was covering several staff, including the stationmaster who had gone for a drink in Midford some miles away. Add to this a signalman at Foxcote ( the scene of the crash ) who was practically illiterate and not strong enough to properly pull his levers over and which led to the signals being somewhere in between on and off. He was therefore using a hand held lamp to signal to drivers.

 

He allowed one train to proceed without the knowledge that the 15yr old telegraph clerk had also allowed another train to proceed but he had failed to advise the Foxcote signalman by telegraph. The driver of the down couldn't see the Foxcote distant as it was unlit and this was passed but saw the Foxcote home was against him........at the same time as he saw the up train approaching him at speed.......

 

 

Rob