Wright writes.....

[ecgtheow]

This may seem a bit odd considering that I have recently been posting about MR carriages & locos, but I need some more GCR coach transfers like the ones shown in the photo attached. I bought several of them some time ago & cannot remember where from. Does anybody know or can point me to another source of similar transfers, please? I have tried most of the suppliers of 4mm scale model railway transfers without success, Quainton Road Models, which no longer seems to exist & Great Central Models also no longer trading.

I do have some GCR loco transfers bought from steamandthings.com in Australia, but they don't list coach transfers so I guess I didn't buy the carriage transfers from them.

 

William

[gr.king]

Might those transfers have come from Guilplates? If so, no idea if still in existence, even if only under a new owner.

[Willie Whizz]

11 hours ago, Pint of Adnams said:

It's Pint of Adnams thank you. The stock was not modified but constructed in that form, which may well have been a carry forward from earlier constituent companies or engineering practices. The construction of close-coupled sets of stock is still in use today, typically by virtue of articulation. The need was to move the greatest number of passengers in a given length of train; how might you have solved that problem oh Wise One?

Oh dear, spolling chocker strikes again, sorry about that.

 

However,  your comment adds further confusion as you were saying before that two smaller vehicles were combined into one, which is a ‘modification’ in my book. 

 

Leaving aside that pot has met kettle in your last sentence, the issue is why the train has to be of a “given length” in the first place. You have given one example, but it does not cover all the cases. However, if this is going to turn acrimonious perhaps we’d better leave it for the time being. 
 

 

[30368]

Sorry guys, this is a hobby right? We all know that being occupied building things and using our brains to sort out problems is good for us? But it is not reality and it is just not that important in the wider scheme of things.

I really like the cooperative and supportive way this website operates. Lets remember that we are here because we like the hobby and given that this is Tony's thread, looking in on the wonderful loco's and rolling stock that  he builds and operates on LB. He inspires us to do better. So, do better....

 

Kind regards,

 

Richard B

 

 

[Pint of Adnams]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I remembered that the substance of John Watling's articles in Great Eastern Journal Nos. 101 and 103 (January and July 2000) is reproduced on the GER Society's website:

https://www.gersociety.org.uk/index.php/rolling-stock/carriages.

There it is stated that the text is largely unchanged though copies of the carriage diagrams replace the photographs used in the Journal. There is no mention of close coupling of suburban sets, so I presume there must be further articles by John Watling covering this aspect. 

But in several places in the text John states the GER's need to move large numbers of passengers, the first instance reads: 'As the century proceeded the requirements of the traffic became more diverse. In the early 1870s the London suburban system was being created and its services needed to convey large numbers of passengers on relatively short journeys. Thus the suburban carriage remained a very basic non­ corridor vehicle with individual compartments. As the network intensified and traffic flows grew the challenge was to provide more trains containing as many seats as possible.' In fact standing room became important too!

 

Remember that Liverpool Street, Enfield and Chingford were terminii, and as such the platforms also had to contain the incoming train locomotive.

 

Wm Adams built pairs of close-coupled carriages for the North London Railway (NLR), the buffers at one end being very short and at the other longer, but not as long as a standard buffer. Adams moved from the NLR to the GER in 1873 and then moved on to the London & South Western Railway (LSWR) in 1878. During that time he designed an 8-wheel carriage that comprised two 4-wheel carriages pinned together but having normal buffers at the outer ends. Clearly this was a period of experimentation.

 

Below is a photograph of a GER 4-wheel 5-compartment Second No. 198, built May 1887, that shows clearly the very short buffers, the pin to secure the connecting link, and still at this time safety chains. These would be 'buffered up' and then close-coupled, so that there was no risk of ''snatch' when drawing away.

 

 

Finally, in referencing Chapter 4 of C Hamilton Ellis in Railway Carriages of the British Isles from 1830-1914, Allen & Unwin, 1965 you will find numerous mentions of close coupling of stock by several railways for urban areas, whilst the endpapers show a drawing of an early close-coupled twin carriage for the Metropolitan Railway. If you wish I will send you a pdf.

[Compound2632]

47 minutes ago, Pint of Adnams said:

Below is a photograph of a GER 4-wheel 5-compartment Second No. 198, built May 1887, that shows clearly the very short buffers, the pin to secure the connecting link, and still at this time safety chains. These would be 'buffered up' and then close-coupled, so that there was no risk of ''snatch' when drawing away.

 

This is very similar to the Midland arrangement of 1882 (Metropolitan area, 4-wheelers) and 1883 (Provincial areas, 6-wheelers) - pin and single link, with safety chains - with the exception that the Midland arrangement was to have sprung buffers at one end of the carriage and dumb buffers at the other, saving the weight of a bearing spring. I'm inclined to think that the resulting stiff coupling, as you describe, with the set of carriages moving as a single unit, must have been the principle advantage. But there's no primary evidence that I've come across to support this supposition. This would mean that the saving in train length was a by-product, advantageous in some cases, such as the GE suburban service and probably the MR and GNR services using Moorgate, but not particularly relevant to the Midland's provincial services.

 

This raises a further question, in the GER case. Some authors, including O.S. Nock as I recall, have suggested that the energy stored by compression of the buffer springs during a brisk stop was an aid to rapid acceleration, and suggest this is the origin of the nickname "buckjumper" applied to the 0-6-0Ts working these trains. This would appear to be contradicted by the picture we now have of close-coupled sets with no slack in the coupling and short buffers permanently compressed.

 

1 hour ago, Pint of Adnams said:

But in several places in the text John states the GER's need to move large numbers of passengers

 

All true. But for my part, bringing me no closer to understanding why close-coupling was so widely adopted, and not only in the London area.

[PMP]

5 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

Thanks Paul,

 

Very impressive results!

 

I think you'll find that Tony's quite wonderful B3 (Valour?) has two too many driving wheels for a Director.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

You’re welcome, re Director, GC ‘things’ aren’t my area of any knowledge hence the question mark 🙂

 

All the panning shots in that post were taken using my mobile phone hence the relatively poor quality, but suffice for interweb use.

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

This raises a further question, in the GER case. Some authors, including O.S. Nock as I recall, have suggested that the energy stored by compression of the buffer springs during a brisk stop was an aid to rapid acceleration, and suggest this is the origin of the nickname "buckjumper" applied to the 0-6-0Ts working these trains. This would appear to be contradicted by the picture we now have of close-coupled sets with no slack in the coupling and short buffers permanently compressed.

I'm surprised someone with Nock's level of knowledge would consider that.  If the buffers have been compressed in a rapid stop, when the brakes are released, the back of the train will start to move backwards as the front accelerates forwards.  This is going to increase "snatch" which is going to both make life uncomfortable for passengers and isn't good for couplings either.  Compare with unfitted freight train operation where the brakes were pinned down before a steep descent, so that the loco actually had to pull the train downhill.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

I'm surprised someone with Nock's level of knowledge would consider that.  If the buffers have been compressed in a rapid stop, when the brakes are released, the back of the train will start to move backwards as the front accelerates forwards.  

 

To be devil's advocate: it takes time for the air pressure to decrease; air is released from the loco end first, so the brakes will come off the front coaches first, whilst still being on at the rear - so that would push the loco forward. (Nock was a Westinghouse employee...) It depends how long it takes for the brakes to come off the rear coach, compared to the acceleration time.

[Tony Wright]

Well, the K2 has been successfully delivered, and a DCC decoder fitted (by me; Gilbert doesn't do that kind of thing).

 

 

 

And, tested to complete satisfaction (I don't know what happened to the lamp!); apart from Gilbert being unable to alter the loco's 'address'. It stubbornly refuses to be changed from the address of the loco I took the chip out of. At that point, I thought 'this is not my responsibility', so left it at that. 

 

I noticed another loco I'd built for him..........

 

 

So (after requesting) took its picture. Built from a Crownline kit some time ago, Ian Rathbone painted it.

 

Thanks for your hospitality today, Gilbert. 

 

 

[lezz01]

TBH we can conjecture all we like but the truth is we, looking back, will never truly know the reasons why the railway companies chose to do things the way they did.

The short wheelbase, close coupling of suburban trains was probably due to many factors. Some of it to save on train length although that seems to be a little implausible, given that they ran in fixed rakes, some to improve the ride quality which is more likely given that the users of these services would be more middle class down to upper working class and even "gentlemen" than people living at the bottom of our deplorable class system who lived in inner city slums not out in the suburbs in the times we are talking about. After all the higher the class of someone speaking the more notice is taken of them, especially if they are complaining and doing it in a letter to the Times.

There is also a matter of cost, both in consumption of coal and water and in maintenance. Using the stored kinetic energy of coach buffers when pulling off the brakes will give a forward impetus to a train thus reducing the amount of steam required to get the train moving thus a saving. It will also reduce the hammer blow on both the motion of the locomotive and the track itself, another saving. All of this will also help to improve the ride quality also reducing the number of letters to the editor of the Times which can also be viewed as a saving, certainly of necks if not monetary.

Unless we are lucky enough to come across the journals of Messer's Bain, Clayton et al stating "I did it this way because..." we will never know will we? So we can conjecture all we like and we will all have our pet theory's but it's most likely to be a combination of the socioeconomic reasons stated above and "I'm the carriage superintendent and we'll do it MY way"!

Anyway that's my two penny worth you can take it or leave it as you choose. You're not going to offend me either way as I don't claim to be an expert on the construction and working of suburban train formations of the 19th and 20th centuries. I'm just a railway modeller with an affinity for the Midland Railway who's happy in my modelling!

I will however say that arguing the toss back and forth and getting shirty with one another on someone else's thread is rather bad form wouldn't you agree? 

Regards Lez.                    

[Tony Wright]

56 minutes ago, lezz01 said:

TBH we can conjecture all we like but the truth is we, looking back, will never truly know the reasons why the railway companies chose to do things the way they did.

The short wheelbase, close coupling of suburban trains was probably due to many factors. Some of it to save on train length although that seems to be a little implausible, given that they ran in fixed rakes, some to improve the ride quality which is more likely given that the users of these services would be more middle class down to upper working class and even "gentlemen" than people living at the bottom of our deplorable class system who lived in inner city slums not out in the suburbs in the times we are talking about. After all the higher the class of someone speaking the more notice is taken of them, especially if they are complaining and doing it in a letter to the Times.

There is also a matter of cost, both in consumption of coal and water and in maintenance. Using the stored kinetic energy of coach buffers when pulling off the brakes will give a forward impetus to a train thus reducing the amount of steam required to get the train moving thus a saving. It will also reduce the hammer blow on both the motion of the locomotive and the track itself, another saving. All of this will also help to improve the ride quality also reducing the number of letters to the editor of the Times which can also be viewed as a saving, certainly of necks if not monetary.

Unless we are lucky enough to come across the journals of Messer's Bain, Clayton et al stating "I did it this way because..." we will never know will we? So we can conjecture all we like and we will all have our pet theory's but it's most likely to be a combination of the socioeconomic reasons stated above and "I'm the carriage superintendent and we'll do it MY way"!

Anyway that's my two penny worth you can take it or leave it as you choose. You're not going to offend me either way as I don't claim to be an expert on the construction and working of suburban train formations of the 19th and 20th centuries. I'm just a railway modeller with an affinity for the Midland Railway who's happy in my modelling!

I will however say that arguing the toss back and forth and getting shirty with one another on someone else's thread is rather bad form wouldn't you agree? 

Regards Lez.                    

Good evening Lez,

 

A reasoned and very fair response, though what I would say is that this is nobody's thread. It's everybody's. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[BoD]

1 hour ago, lezz01 said:

TBH we can conjecture all we like but the truth is we, looking back, will never truly know the reasons why the railway companies chose to do things the way they did.

It was probably just two bored gentlemen sitting in the design office saying “I know, let’s have a bit fun and give all those daft bu$$ers in the future, with their advanced telegraph machines, something to argue about.”.

[RThompson]

 

Good evening Tony,

Thought I would share my latest creation which was kit bashed over a period of many years.

 

A 4mm scale, 00 gauge LBSCR E4X.

No kit available for the prototypes but believe a resin body kit may have been available (or just proposed) from Deans Sidings.

 

The model was created from a Weald models/ Rodney Steyning E4 whitemetal kit with etched chassis with a Nucast C2X boiler and fittings 

 

The real locos carried these larger than the smaller originally built boilers and mostly based in South London.

 

The E6X locos looked even odder having such tiny driving wheels under the massive boiler!

 

The engineers brake van is built from a Cambrian plastic kit and hand lettered with ink and a calligraphy pen as I find it easier and quicker plus not all wagons had neat lettering or a standard font.

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by RThompson

[robertcwp]

22 hours ago, PMP said:

Yup, I did some for Roy on Retford a good few years back, some on Pete Kirmonds Blea Moor, and for Pete Waterman on Leamington. 

on Geoff Taylor’s Barmouth

Simon Georges Heaton Lodge 

Retford with @t-b-g’s Director?

 

 

The B3 shot looks as though it might be more recent than Roy's time as the first carriage appears to be a Hornby BSO. It's a great photo for giving an impression of speed.

 

I thought the photo of a 47 was of the full-size version to begin with!

[sandra]

55 minutes ago, robertcwp said:

The B3 shot looks as though it might be more recent than Roy's time as the first carriage appears to be a Hornby BSO. It's a great photo for giving an impression of speed.

 

I thought the photo of a 47 was of the full-size version to begin with!

Tony Gee brought along  the B3 to run on Retford about a year ago. It’s a beautiful model and it ran very well. It’s not finished in this photo, I don’t know if Tony has finished it yet.

[PMP]

2 hours ago, robertcwp said:

The B3 shot looks as though it might be more recent than Roy's time as the first carriage appears to be a Hornby BSO. It's a great photo for giving an impression of speed.

 

I thought the photo of a 47 was of the full-size version to begin with!

The B3 was taken Sept 21 at Sandra’s. The Retford panning images I did were taken perhaps ten years ago, they’re on a CD! somewhere.

Edited July 12, 2023 by PMP
Date correction

[Chamby]

Re: close coupling of commuter stock, to me the answer would seem to be fairly straightforward.  Yes it is to do with reducing the ‘lost’ space between coaches, but ask yourself what is that converted into?  

 

Each extra compartment squeezed into a rake of non-corridor stock would accommodate 8-10 (?) additional fare paying passengers... over the lifetime of these coaches I would expect that could add up to a tidy additional revenue.

 

Of course you could just build longer coaches, or add on an extra one, but if platform or train length is an issue then it’s the only available option, apart from perhaps adopting double-deck stock as trialled on the SR and used more widely overseas, where the arguments would presumably be similar.

[billbedford]

The real reason that close-coupled coaches were used on suburban lines was to stop members of the thronging hoard from trying to travel standing on the buffer housings, as seen on Indian railways. 

[Bucoops]

8 hours ago, Chamby said:

Re: close coupling of commuter stock, to me the answer would seem to be fairly straightforward.  Yes it is to do with reducing the ‘lost’ space between coaches, but ask yourself what is that converted into?  

 

Each extra compartment squeezed into a rake of non-corridor stock would accommodate 8-10 (?) additional fare paying passengers... over the lifetime of these coaches I would expect that could add up to a tidy additional revenue.

 

Of course you could just build longer coaches, or add on an extra one, but if platform or train length is an issue then it’s the only available option, apart from perhaps adopting double-deck stock as trialled on the SR and used more widely overseas, where the arguments would presumably be similar.

 

That's the logic I keep coming back to but would like to find something that proves it. Been burnt further up thread 😆

[Nick Holliday]

21 hours ago, lezz01 said:

BH we can conjecture all we like but the truth is we, looking back, will never truly know the reasons why the railway companies chose to do things the way they did.

The short wheelbase, close coupling of suburban trains was probably due to many factors. Some of it to save on train length although that seems to be a little implausible, given that they ran in fixed rakes, some to improve the ride quality which is more likely given that the users of these services would be more middle class down to upper working class and even "gentlemen" than people living at the bottom of our deplorable class system who lived in inner city slums not out in the suburbs in the times we are talking about. After all the higher the class of someone speaking the more notice is taken of them, especially if they are complaining and doing it in a letter to the Times.

There is also a matter of cost, both in consumption of coal and water and in maintenance.

William Stroudley on the LB&SCR was an enthusiastic proponent of close-coupled sets, and is sometimes considered the originator of the idea.  Regarding saving in length, his close-coupling design was very compact, and, in fact, saved a touch over 3' in every gap, so, in a typical South London Line train, for which they were initially built, a 10 coach set was 27' shorter, and the coaches were only 26 feet long, so, effectively, an extra coach, perhaps able to carry some 50 passengers (in discomfort) which seems a decent gain, if platform length is a criteria.

One thing I am pretty certain of is that close-coupling was not done to improve the comfort for the passengers.  Whilst the set will work as a block, and individual coaches might not be prone to movement forwards and back due to sprung buffers, every jolt and surge would be felt throughout the train, not improved by the bare wooden seats in the, predominantly, third class carriages.  If close-coupling did improve the ride, why did Stroudley provide "main line" versions of this four-wheeled stock, with full buffers etc.?  Inner London commuters were only interested in getting a seat and then getting to their destination as quickly as possible.

One factor overlooked is the considerable saving in weight achieved by dispensing with four buffers and two couplings.  The carriage bodies, largely wooden, were fairly lightweight and this additional ironmongery would have made a substantial difference.  This reduction of weight was perhaps a factor in their introduction, as the South London Line was largely at high level and subject, initially, to load restrictions, and it also gave the Terriers built for the service a better chance to keep to the timetable, even with fully laden trains.

[Tony Wright]

This post is in parallel to a similar one on Peterborough North. 

 

 

I'm putting this loco up for sale on behalf of Gilbert Barnatt (Great Northern). It's built from a Crownline kit (builder/painter unknown). 

 

I've removed its decoder and effectively rewired it.

 

I've also rectified a few detail faults/omissions.

 

 

 

On test on Little Bytham, it runs superbly. 

 

The problem is, although it's a nice (all-metal) model, it's not as good as...............

 

 

This Hornby RTR B17 equivalent. Though the kit-build runs very well, in terms of detail it's lacking in comparison. It does, however, at least to me, have a greater 'presence'. 

 

I'll advise on price later, though the Hornby one is probably considerably cheaper. 

 

Which makes an interesting comparison. Who will pay more for a metal equivalent, just because it's been kit-built or scratch-built? Not only that, the RTR one is a known quantity, particularly in terms of running. If one were to buy all the components for a Crownline (now PDK) B17 kit, it would probably be over twice the price of the Hornby equivalent, maybe more.  

 

 

Edited July 13, 2023 by Tony Wright
to add something

[Northmoor]

19 hours ago, billbedford said:

The real reason that close-coupled coaches were used on suburban lines was to stop members of the thronging hoard from trying to travel standing on the buffer housings, as seen on Indian railways. 

I thought the reason was by reducing the length of the train, the company could tell the passengers at the back that their journey was getting shorter.

[DenysW]

Sorry to potentially prolong the close-coupling discussions but ...

 

On reading about Victorian air-brakes and vacuum brakes, the former were more effective, but required appreciably more skill to use. The vacuum brakes were easier but still not trivial. Would a handful of percentage-points less in carriage-length simply mean that the drivers wouldn't under/overshoot the platforms less often in a way that mattered. Not so much getting a 17-coach train in the space of 16 coaches (more money), more fitting a 16-coach train onto a 16.5 coach platform with nobody having to jump (less time-wasted)?

[BMS]

This being an LNER orientated forum, please could someone give me the full wheelbase spacings for a LNER C2 (nee GNR C2) 4.4.2T. All I can find is the total wheelbase so far.

I am trying to create a chassis to fit a Vulcan Foundry TVR 4.4.2T Class C  ( 5'  9" +6' 11.5"+ 7'10"+ 6' 0") and accept that modifying some other chassis frame is the most likely route for me.

 

More broadly have I missed something like Mike Sharman's wheels book but for chassis wheelbases; there must be others looking to adopt chassis for locos other than those for kits for more "popular" locos?

Thanks