Castle

Back in Black - AC/DC

Hi Weaselfish, I am glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for all the great feedback. All the best, Castle

No worries Ray - not superior knowledge but experience lifting the things! Quite right about not reinventing the wheel - plenty strong enough I think!

Hi SS, It might be of interest to you that in the prototype photo on the right, looks very much like the components that are used as the components that are used to couple a locomotive and tender. Did the carriage and wagon department nip over the road and take a few bits out of the loco stores I wonder? All the best, Castle

Hi All, Sorry about the late reply but I have just had a rather busy two days in which I finished work and went straight to Didcot, worked until just before the pub stopped serving food (!) and then got up at 05:00 hrs to help finish the last few details and light up No. 4144. Oh, and then I had to prepare my speech to thank my team and help our chairman and the mayor of Didcot launch her and then spent some time on the footplate with my team. I will do a full write up on the day and post soon but until then here is a taster... Hi Horse, That is the plan but only the deterioration is going to a bit slower away from the South Wales sea air! Hi Farren, Thanks for the compliments about the prairie! Thanks also for the compliment about No. 4079 being the most important thing at Didcot. To be honest we feel that they are all the most important but I do have a particular soft spot for her! They do get under your skin... The plan is that I have asked two of my younger team members to begin a page of latest news within the DRC website so as soon as our first edition is ready I will let you know! As for the 52XX - see above! Hi ZG, Thanks for the little extra caveat on the end of that one - I don't know what the speed limit is on that road but I suspect it's higher that ours! Hi Nigel, No problem, No.7202 is parked right next to No. 4079 AND she is on a pit so I will take a snap for you next time I am on shed. Funnily enough this is something we have been looking at on the Castle and the differences between our project and No. 5051 is quite remarkable - especially at the front end of course! This time a photograph of No. 4073 at Swindon by one of my team answered the questions we had. All the best, Castle

Hi All, Thanks for the support for No. 4144s launch everyone! SJRixon: I hope the weather holds - any weather gods reading Little Didcot please take note... Horse: I will be going for a ride on the 15XX and I will have my phone on me so we will see! Polly: Thanks for that! Let's hope No. 1466 is taking notes... DavidB: No - No. 4144 is tucked away from picture taking persons in the locomotive shed right now. The black thing you can see is No. 5227. This is not nearly in as nice a condition as the large prairie on account of the fact it's a Barry wreck! Well spotted though! Blackpete: Thanks for that - that picture is both very well done and completely hideous at the same time! Coming soon: All the best, Castle

Hi All, The rush for the Gala Weekend! I went to Didcot after work and another test of No. 4144 was done to satisfy ourselves that everything was good to go. I am happy to report that everything went very well and despite a few very small snagging points (mainly the odd small leak from cab fittings which are easily sorted) we are now happy with the mechanical side of the machine. We also did a bit of re-fenestration... We put the cab windows back in! My friend is now going to put a bit more paint on tomorrow and we have a number of mostly small bits and pieces to put back on and the sliding cab shutters are by far the biggest of these but the paint was still a little bit wet so they stayed in the workshop until Friday. After work I will be joining my gang and we will work until the engine is ready to go and light her warming fire before finding a corner somewhere to fall asleep in until launch day on Saturday! There isn't a great deal more to do to be honest but we want to go over her one last time to make absolutely sure. We will be launching No. 4144 on Saturday at 12:00hrs next to the turntable so if you can make it, please come and say hello! This is part of the May Gala commemorating the closure of Didcot Shed 50 years ago and we will be welcoming visitng locomotives No. 1501 and No. 1450. No. 3650 will be doing shunting demonstrations in the yard and the signalling system on the branch line will be in operation. The Swindon Panel Society are in attendance with a very interesting display and the Black Python real ale bar will be open to fund the restoration of No. 7202 and provide thier very unique form of lubrication... Early visitors on the Saturday might well get a pre-launch glimpse of a certain Prairie on a freight train too... All the best, Castle

Rock and Roll ain't Noise Pollution - AC/DC

Immigrant's Song - Led Zepplin

Hi Chris - No problem! See you there. All the best, Castle

Sister Sarah - Alice Cooper

The lubricator is a removable thing. The most common type of Castle boiler was the 2 row superheater version (the same as No. 4079 has). She was built with the 3 glass lubricator but was later modified to the 5 glass type. The boiler is the same, the only difference would be to drill and extra hole or two in the smokebox to allow the extra lubricator pipes through. The 3 glass types were phased out fairly early on. All the best, Castle

Hi Farren, You aren't being a pain - it's nice to talk to somebody who is interested and I'm sure everyone else here will say the same! The Castle boiler was the standard No. 8 and it was unique to the class but as there were over 170 of them it really wasn't a stretch to call it a standard unit. They were swapped about within the class. There were actually more boilers than locomotives so that there was always an available overhauled unit to go in the frames of the next finished Castle out of Swindon. I hope this helps! All the best, Castle

Ok Trevor - no problem! See you there good sir! All the best, Castle

Thanks for the kind words Noel - I have a transfer or two and some weathering , packing wood and chains to go yet but we are getting there! They are essentially running. I had to do something called 'sorting out the garden' today though... I didn't like it much! All the best, Castle

Yes it would - the regulator, valves and cylinders! All the best, Castle

Hi Farren and Mike, Absolutely what Mike said! The pipes from the lubricator in the cab travel under the boiler cladding until near the smokebox. They then curve upwards in a sort of 'S' bend until they can clear the outside of the smokebox and enter the smokebox via a 90 degree union. If you think about it, if you want to hide the pipe, it has to be done like this. The pressure vessel part of the boiler is actually a smaller diameter than the smokebox and it is the lagging and the cladding that make them look the same at the smokebox end. If the engine has just one cover on the driver's side then it is an early loco fitted with the 3 glass hydrostatic displacement lubricator, if there is a second smaller one on the fireman's side it has the 5 glass version. Basically, each sight glass has a pipe to the front end coming off it. There are a few anomalies in this and there are two different types of mechanical lubricator to deal with too but that is about the long and the short of it. What they are most certainly NOT is a superheater cover. This is a common misconception. The superheater header in even a 2 row castle is an absolutely massive casting that is almost a wide as the boilers diameter, is about 9" - 12" square in profile and has 14 superheater elements coming off it going back down the flue tube in the boiler! It won't fit under the little cover... If you look at the 3 row or 4 row ones in Thornbury / Clun or Edgecumbe respectively, they are even bigger! The lance cock is the little tap on the smokebox as Mike said and we found an interesting one in the society stores the other day. We thought it was the one for No. 4144 but when we bolted it up we found it jutted out at a silly angle. It was only when the head boilersmith turned up and said 'that's an early Churchward one' that we realised our mistake. On some early locos it's on the other side so this fitting must be quite rare. Needless to say its now been put away somewhere safe! I hope this is of help and interest! All the best, Castle

Hi Steve, My pleasure - I'm glad it came out so well! Any chance of a 4mm scale version too please? All the best, Castle

Life And Death Of The Party - Alice Cooper

Hi Mikkel, Thanks for that - I do try to bring in my experience from the 1:1 scale stuff so it is gratifying to hear that from someone else! Weathering is something that possibly comes a bit easier as the things still get dirty in the same way preservation or otherwise.perhaps not to the same extent however. One thing I like to try to imbue is the weight and the solidity of the machines. That is quite an abstract concept I suppose but if it looks dirty and heavy in the right way it will probably look right! All the best, Castle EDIT: Yes - the yellow is long gone! It's now BR unfitted freight vehicle grey...

Hi All, A little Little Didcot update... Not massive progress today - I had a few things to do including ordering a few bits for the 1:1 scale Castle. The body colour of painting on the components has been completed and here is a bit of component balancing to show the basic idea of the train. Up front is the mighty Prairie No. 4144 and the original Dia. A6 POLLEN E outer wagons from the 1909 4 vehicle coupled set. Then we have the 1930s rebuilt centre wagons that are the focus of the current efforts. The wooden packing and chains still need adding. And then the TOAD - the gloss coat didn't seem to have covered evenly in the two spots I needed to lay transfers down (D'oh!) so it got another coat and is hardening off for more fun tomorrow! I didn't put a pile of white metal bits in between the POLLENS and the TOAD as it kind of spoilt the effect... I did cut the old tension lock couplings off the end panels today but I will do a full write up on these later on. Two days in a row? There will be all sorts of progress if this type of thing carries on... All the best, Castle

Hi M.I.B., Thanks for the kind comments! All the best, Castle

Hi All, Stop Press: Castle ACTUALLY does some work on a railway model project! That's right folks - I have finally got my finger out and done a bit of work on a 4mm scale subject! After all the distractions I have had recently it was nice to do a little bit of work on the Little Didcot fleet. I hope everyone is enjoying the DVD that came with BRM this month that features a lovely collection of locomotives and rolling stock of all shapes and sizes from Didcot, some great layouts, that nice editor chap Ben and some hairy hat wearer that happened to be in the shed at the time! Well, the chosen project for forward progress was what I refer to as Little Didcot's 'outsize load' train. The eventual idea is to have the following combination of vehicles: Large Prairie No. 4144 Diagram A.6 POLLEN Es Nos. 84997, 84998, 84999 & 85000 carrying a pair of bridge side girders. Diagram J.9 MITE B twin pair Nos. 32337 & 32338 carrying some large steel beams (supposedly for the same bridge project that the side girders are for in my mind at least!). Diagram AA.15 TOAD No. 68684 So the score at the beginning of today the 41 was done and dusted, the first pair of the POLLEN Es were done, the second pair were on the shelf half finished with the girder still in the sprues unbuilt, the kit to build the MITEs were in a box somewhere (!) and the TOAD was in GWR Freight Grey with the gloss on it to put the transfers on. So after a good bit of Sherlock Holmes type activity the unfinished POLLENS were dragged out of the dark hole they were hiding in. They were in yellow filler primer and it was really showing up the granular finish of the 3D printing material they were made out of. My solution was to sand the flat bits, well, er, flatter and then replace it with some rivet transfers. I got one POLLEN Es completely done and ready for transfers, the second one in progress and when I got bored with sanding I constructed and primed the girder. Elementary Watson - it was hiding in the last place I would think of looking! The TOAD is still just grey however... And on that bombshell! All the best, Castle

Hi Polly, That's right about the 69's tender as preserved and as she would have been in her late BR period. The loco (I am told by my informants at 81E) was built with a Collet version in two which is counter initiative in some ways for such a late loco but they almost always took the next available tender in the works... Guess what tender my early version of her has got? No, it doesn't start with a C... Still, it is hoped to have her repainted sometime soon into a new livery for static display and the lined black is one we haven't got in the toy box so who knows - perhaps my model will come round to being right in the end! The idea has always been to tell as many different stories told by machines and liveries as possible so that would be a good one in my book. I too drooled over No.4073 as a child. I even have a badge somewhere that says something along the lines of 'I've seen Caerphilly Castle at the Science Museum" from a school trip way back when! It must have made some sort of impression considering what I do now! It was nice to be able to include a few pictures of her both as preserved and in service in the book. All the best, Castle

Hi Polly and Ray, I got my No. 4073 to be No. 4079 as well and I have a week off next week... Guess what (amongst one or two other bits) I am going to be up to? I have my eye on a new Bachmann Modified Hall as well. I am going for a black one to do No. 6998 as it's more 'my era' but they look really nice! Glad that the layout is progressing well and I look forward to the pictures sometime soon. I don't know if I will be much help but I will keep looking in as and when. All the best, Castle