Martin S-C

Hi Jim - yes, it will still be the NM&GSR. Having collected and painted most of the stock for the original layout I am definitely going to get to use it! The branch will be the Witts End Light Railway as well. The NM&GSR is however now more of a regional concern and to me feels a lot like the Midland & South Western Junction. Or as I think I said earlier, the Midland & Great Northern. Using Hunstanton as the catalyst for the terminus also makes me think holidaymakers and intense summer Saturday workings. This version will be about 50/50 passenger and freight while v1.0 was very much favouring freight. I am having a hard think though as to where it is set in the country. I can't really use the Forest of Dean any more as there were no double track lines there. I am not sure if the Monmouth-Ross-Hereford area was double tracked but will investigate. A holiday destination between the wars though definitely ought to be the coast and that's a problem. I don't think the Wye Valley was ever a mass train-loads of tourists destination. Its popularity arose with private car ownership and largely post WWII. However perhaps in my fiction the region became sufficiently popular with weekenders and fortnighters 30 years earlier than in our world with summer seaside levels of traffic, though the idea of candy floss and ice cream stands at Symonds Yat makes me shudder. The biggest hurdle is that all my coal wagons are Forest of Dean or South Wales, so some kind of fiction involving a double track line down/near the Wye Valley might have to be the case. The Wye Valley also gives some opportunity for cattle and dairy traffic which the Forest does not. The other double track line in the area is of course the GW Gloucester-Chepstow run but to give that critical trunk route to a small concern which has not been bought out by a national player is probably bending fiction a bit too much. Red Gem Alchemist - Thanks. The length is wonderful to have but its the narrowness of the room that causes the head scratching. I'm looking at an absolute maximum of a 42" radius curve for a continuous run and in practical terms really only about 30". In the storage loops and other concealed areas its a 24" minimum though I am trying everywhere to transition these and ease things as much as possible. Hi Kevin - yes "ease of almost everything" was my principle with this design having tried an "awkward and fiddley almost everywhere" plan And you're right it does lack character. I think I can do a good bit with the branch terminus and the colliery but a double track terminus to a provincial mid-sized town tends to look like every other double track terminus once you take away company colours and styles. I need to do something distinctive with the countryside around the tracks and you'll notice that v1.0 was packed with buildings while this one has very few. A more open feel was another item on my list of nice to have features. The part of the old design I am most sorry to lose was the tramway sections of the branch line. I had great things in mind for that. Perhaps I might be able to work that concept in somewhere? Regularity - thanks. I have fears it'll end up looking like a giant Hornby track mat affair but I'll try my best to conceal that. Corbs - 2-4-0s and 4-4-0s as well as 0-6-0s on freight were already in the v1.0 design so those will certainly come out to play. There's an Adams Radial tank (or maybe two?) in the box as well. I have quite a few coach kis to get built most of them 4-wheelers but the idea of reselling those on e-Bay and buying a couple of rakes of the Hattons generic ones with the proceeds has appeal. Like most of us I own far too many locos so will be selling a few, some RTR and some unbuilt kits. Lezz - thanks. The colliery is a 100% steal of Ackthorpe! That's why it looks right, because it was designed by people who knew what they were doing. Having stood and watched Ackthorpe being operated I really liked what I saw and how all the moves flowed. There will of course be a goodly number of light engine moves to get locos there to take trains out and after they drop them off. I do love colliery models they look great and give so many train playing opportunities. I had a nice long chat with Neil of the Little Layout Company today by phone and he is doing well, both personally and business-wise, managing to survive and he (thank God!) said yes, he'd very much like to be involved again with dismantling of what is there now and a rebuild. We can reuse all the electrics, most of the timber and some of the track. The new plan uses the long turnouts on the main lines in the scenic areas and medium ones in the storage loops and parts of the station (release crossovers, goods yard, carriage sidings). The only short turnouts are in the colliery and branch terminus so there isn't much overlap of turnouts (v1.0 was all short turnouts which was another negative issue I had with it). I shall sell the ones I don't need and so the overall cost of hardware should be negligible. I have a lot of buildings and building kits I now won't need so more income there and thus I hope most of the cost will just be labour.

For the moment I will just leave this here. https://www.dropbox.com/s/bp8hdiou1c7w9gg/NewPlan_Three.jpg

I have the same issue and I think it is linked to the "Content I Follow" view option. Site navigation is fine until I hit that button, then it fails, probably 9 times out of 10. As this is my chosen way to navigate the site its very inconvenient. Perhaps the database of linked (aka followed) threads isn't working right. Can it be looked at please?

Interesting discussion. I have some RTR 6-wheel milk tankers from Hornby, Bachmann and Dapol as well as some 9-plank or steel sided 21 ton mineral opens (the long wheebase ones) and b****r me do these not like any basic PECO code 75 points other than the longest ones when being propelled. I'm sure its the longer wheelbase vs the springy plastic of the NEM coupler that's the problem.

I am sure the man rises to the occasion or some such platitude along those lines.

Nice to know that Sigmund Freud is alive and well on RMWeb.

I'm not basing the plan on any of his, but the concept bears a family resemblance. Having been weaned on his work I find it extremely hard not to plan the way he did. I could never be satisfied with a tiny Iain Rice or Chris Nevard bucolic little rural or industrial space, you know, something in the 5 ft x 18" league. Yes I have drawn in a lot of track once again but I wanted to try to get a double track run into the space available which happens to be 27 ft x 7 ft 8 ins. The access door is 5 ft 6 ins from one end so a loop of double track with the inner radius at 24" just fits in that end of the room leaving a clear entry without a lifting flap or duck under (that was Imperative Requirement #1). The terminus has 2 platform faces of 6ft length and 2 of 5 ft. Trains will be 4 x 57ft coaches plus a 4-4-0 loco and maybe a van or two. My chopped up Tri-Ang clerestories are down at around 50 ft length in some cases so I think trains will look about right in the platforms. That's another bugbear of mine - trains as long as platforms and having the platforms a fair bit longer than the trains using them was another Imperative Requirement. The plan of Hunstanton I've based mine on is before the platform lengthening and the simplification of station throat track work which I understand was in the early 1960s. The branch line train will be tiny - just two coaches and one these is a 4-wheeler or it'll be a steam railmotor so that will look lost in a 5 ft platform which is the intention. I will still get some nice shunty activity as the branch terminus will have a dairy Hemyock style as well as a furniture factory so freight vehicles will have to be moved across the station throat between yard and branch platform. The space I have for the terminus is about 15 ft x 2 ft 3 ins plus another 3 ft for the approach curve. Coal traffic will simply run mostly around the main line. Loaded trains will either go to the main terminus for town customers plus some loads to go down the branch and the rest will go to the storage loops. In both locations I'll use my magnetic grabber device to pull the loads out although I am toying with the idea of a loose loader at the screens which in this plan are against the operating well side of the colliery instead of the far wall side. The loaded trains leave in the direction that does not give a direct run to the terminus so all will be reversed via the main line double junction, similarly for empties leaving the terminus. This is just a ploy to play toy trains a bit more. Freight trains were 8 wagons plus brake on the NM&GSR and on this plan I think I can fit in 10 + brake. Regarding the NM&GSR it is not dead and its spirit lives on, mostly because I have a lot of stock painted in its various liveries. I think the main terminus will still be Nether Madder and the storage loops / rest of the world destination will be Green Soudley. The branch terminus will remain as Witts End because I have sufficient locos and stock in the Witts End Light Railway livery. Here is a photo of a pre-grouping Hunstanton and I found this view interesting as a small complete train is stabled in the longer road formed between the loco release crossovers between the platforms. It seems to be a tank engine and two coaches. My plan is the mirror image of this as the attached scribble I hope shows.

That sounds exactly like the kind of visual effect Iain Rice is well known for using.

Thank you all, having your support helps tremendously. Yes, I was very unhappy to realise that the NM&GSR was itself the problem - or rather its design was. The concept is a sound one and I still love the idea very much but it would work much better for a club effort. I'm going to hold off showing the new plan until Neil and I have had a chat. I'd rather there was some chance of it seeing the light of day before people either applaud it or highlight its deficiencies, and I am certain there are some. I find the AnyRail software result itself very train-setty as the track graphics actually represent the full width of the track to the sleeper ends even though they are edged in a highlighted tone which makes them look like a pair of rails when in fact they aren't. This makes tracks on the plans using the software look chunky. The plan right now is quite train-setty as well because I've not played about with any kind of transition curves or other wanderings away from straight lines. Tony - yes, the inaccessible areas of track such as storage loops under another station and tunnels on gradients with all the track cleaning hassles were two of the things I wrote down in my list of "woes". I will definitely not have any tracks underneath other tracks in the new plan, other than one overline bridge on the branch. I have narrowed the baseboards as well with 2ft 3ins being the maximum depth and will also lower the baseboard height a tad, probably 3" to 4" because while a high baseboard gives a better viewing angle it makes reaching across without a step stool quite the inconvenience. Its fine if you're an Iain Rice type with a small layout that can be worked on at lap-height and displayed at near eye height but not so good for a big fixed layout. All these factors are accumulations of things that began to wear me down without me realising they were, hence my low mood at the end of last year. In many ways its a refreshing and empowering revelation to realise what it is that was wrong before I even take corrective action. St. Enodoc - well, the new plan is very CJF-ish as well Call me a nutcase but I am a bit of a CJF fan. When I was a kid his Plan of the Month always held me spellbound, especially his big crazy convoluted ones.

Hello to anyone still out there after such a long time. I am still here, alive and kicking and feeling a bit more like a human with interests again. It has been a terrible year of course though I think I should put that in perspective and consider my year has been better than most. I am still well, as is my elderly friend Sheila and my daughter Megan. No virus and no other major issues. My mental health has been up and down like a Bishop's cassock as the politically improper saying goes but is currently on the up slope as my interest in wargaming, model railways and a few other subjects is rising which is amazing considering how I was feeling last time I posted here. I have to confess to not having even switched the power on on the layout since probably February when Neil was last here. We encountered a very annoying feature of the reversing triangle gizmo on that day that appeared to affect the polarity switching software of the DCC Concepts point motors so that was a depressing discovery. Neil took the reversing module away and then lockdown hit. In the last month or so I have written down a list of things which began as thoughts about the state of the railway but morphed into a list of things I really would like to have in a model and which this one doesn't deliver and I realised that a big part of my low mood was my reluctance to admit that I had made several big mistakes with the design. I have learned a lot, mostly in what not to do and going back over this thread I do find many of you warning me of exactly those things early on, which in my blind lust for progress I ignored. I feel suitably humbled. But I must face the facts and the reality and accept that I have built (or had built for me) a model railway that just isn't going to work. I have been playing about in AnyRail and come up with another design which is ... well, its entirely different. Its just a case of sitting down with Neil and discussing the wholesale dismantling of the NM&GSR and rebuilding it into a very different form ... but one that will satisfy me more and be more future proof as regards my physical suppleness (or lack of it as the years pass). The new plan has a continuous double track run and in my mind might represent part of a company such as the M&SWJ or the M&GN where these were doubled, that kind of railway, that sort of level of financial (in)stability. There is a single main terminus and I have heavily based that on a mirror image of Hunstanton because that terminus is just so interesting in terms of its platform layout and intense seasonal traffic. The colliery will remain because collieries and I go together like two things that go together extremely well, as Blackadder might say. There will also be a single track branch line from the terminus going around 2.5 walls of the room to end at a BLT, because, well, BLTs and I go together like... you get the idea. Whereas the NM&GSR v1.0 had 7 stations, a colliery and a fiddle yard (9 operator positions for full efficiency), v2.0 has just 2 stations, a colliery and passing loops which may or may not be fiddled. They may just store up to 12 trains to be run in sequence. As I will be operating solo for a lot of the time the unwieldy number of operator positions in v1.0 was a big problem and it struck me that in effect I was really just playing trains on a half-dozen small layouts bolted together, sending a train to station X, shunting it there and driving it on to station Y, shunting it there and so on. There was also the mid-room duck-under which was over four feet wide and which I now view with some distaste. The doorway lifting flap although technically brilliant (thanks Alan & Neil) has proven to be a massive pain in the regions we don't speak of on family forums. The garage still has moisture change issues and the flap is continuously "breathing" so that no matter how much we plane off it's end, it swells to always stick tight in the space available. So NM&GSR v2.0 has no lifting flap and no duck-under, or at least not one you need to negotiate to run the major part of the layout. The new plan now incorporates an upright walk-in and a large principal operating well 3 feet 3 ins wide and 13 ft long. The way the storage loops are curved round means there is a 15" wide duck-under to get at the BLT operating position but I can live with such a small duck-under to a position that isn't a primary operating space. Operation will consist of two trains leaving the terminus and circulating around the main line so I get my "watching trains and sipping (insert beverage of choice)" itch scratched. These two can be left to run while I shunt the colliery or the main terminus goods yard or work away at getting locos off and onto the right ends of passenger rakes in the platforms. The branch can be operated from the main terminus if I use a push-pull set or a rail car of some sort and the once a day freight and Saturdays only cattle market trains will be the only times I'll need to get under the storage loop board to actually shunt that station. The rest of the time everything else is within reach of basically a single central seat on wheels. Neil is going to phone me on Friday and I'll be breaking the news to him then. Depending on how he takes the news he may or may not subsequently be a suspect in my untimely death.

I fear this may be as off-topic as we've ever gone. I am 260 years off target.

Yes, but its a case of how common might it have been and how easy/cheap to obtain. Military vehicle economics is the opposite of railway vehicle economics (he said, desperately trying to angle the discussion back nearer to trains) - railway companies spared no expense in making their trains look superb, especially in places where large numbers of potential customers would see them. Military hardware had to be entirely functional so no point in painting a cannon green at a cost of 2s 3d when a red lead oxide paint job would only cost 10 1/4d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green (Scroll down to the section headed Pigments, Food Colouring and Fireworks) You also bump into lovely useful websites like this while searching for "Paint pigments in the 1600s" http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/history.html

For gun models I am well supplied; in any case they varied considerably depending on the weight of shot from tiny things that a couple of men could push to absolute monsters needing 12 to 16 oxen to haul. It was the colours that first made me stop and think. Like railway modelling I then went off for a very pleasant evening into the wild depths of the internet reading about renaissance paints and dyes. I happen to have a pot of Railmatch LNER Doncaster green which is a really lovely colour and wondered if a green cannon was a thing but have since decided it would not be owing to the lack of a readily available green pigment in the 1640s. Here's a couple of tiny guns called Falconettes which were only about 1 1/2 pound weight of shot. These are Thirty Years War styled carriages from the 1630s but were still around, if a little ornate. Then a light leather gun with twin barrels - I am uncertain about the blue carriage on that one but it makes a nice difference - and finally a Saker which was a 5-pounder. If you know your artillery, compare the massive barrel on this to a Napoleonic 6-pounder and you'll see how primitive these barrel castings were. Everything about these bigger guns was massive since they needed to bear the weight of the colossal barrels. The yellow ochre colour is very tentative as well. There was jaune d'antimoine available from the 1620s which gave a yellow pigment but whether it was even available in 1640s England and at what price I can't say and I suspect soldiers wouldn't have thought in such decorative terms but again it makes a nice change among a sea of dull colours on a wargame table.

Thanks for the replies. The link to the blog about red/grey paint is just what I was looking for - thanks Stephen. Regarding the general situation in the 1640s and the sudden need to acquire artillery I'm aware this was a very haphazard procedure and despite Parliament handing out contracts to supply guns was essentially an amateur process. Interestingly there are apparently extant contracts that specify "lead colour" for the woodwork and its this that generated my curiosity. Parliament had access to England's principal arsenals in London and Hull and so could turn out artillery in a more homogenous manner than the Kings forces, if they had such a need. However there were a multitude of reasons why artillery of medium and heavy calibre was so little used in the ECW and I won't go into that. But one tends to find that cannon barrels were often cast and then kept in store at the principal arsenals and even in private homes (manors, castles, etc) and when they were needed a wooden carriage was sourced locally either by a village carpenter or the troops themselves, with the necessary ironwork also being forged locally on an as-needed basis at the same time. Pre-production of standard parts kept in store was unknown. I therefore suspect that most timber used would not have been seasoned and since no artillery piece would have been protected from the weather at all other than maybe a tarpaulin thrown over it at night or on a long march now and then, unseasoned wood would quickly have begun to distort. Not a huge deal except for issues like the trueness of the cradle supporting the trunnions and so on that would make aiming as well as overall strength/integrity of the artillery piece doubtful! There is also something of a tradition that the troops would tend to lavish some affection on their artillery pieces, naming them and so on, a tradition carried on all through the centuries with soldiers and their weapons. Naming of guns, planes and tanks was common in the 20th century by all armies. These issues make me think that the soldiers would take some care of the cannons and probably cover the bare wood with at least something, even if it was only grease or fat from an animal, or some form of vegetable oil obtained on the march by pounding some locally gathered materials. Re-enactors of course have invested a personal amount of cash in replica cannon and so tend to take greater care of them and therefore painted replica artillery is the norm and a dull red oxide colour is the most commonly seen on re-enactment battlefields. I would think some protection of the wood was desirable but that needs to be balanced against the fact that there may not have been much time, money or technical knowledge to apply any sophisticated covering. The artillery crews tended to be non-specialists and even infantrymen seconded for the job but the gun captains and one or two other specialists who were skilled technicians and highly sought after would certainly have been aware of the need to protect the wooden frames from the weather. One issue in the 1640s in England was a dearth of skilled artillerists. Artillery was a branch of engineering at this time and skilled gunners were rare so it may have been an embarrassment to lose one's artillery in a battle but the guns themselves could be replaced more easily and quickly than these vital specialists, most of whom were effectively mercenaries and would fight for whoever paid them most. Several wargamers have told me that ironwork was blacked; whether this means a chemical process or a black paint I am not sure but clearly it was important to ensure that critical iron parts didn't exhibit so much rust that the weapon's integrity was compromised. Exotic colours like greens and blues were probably never used, simply out of cost and a yellow ochre colour maybe likewise although I have seen one replica ochre coloured cannon and very smart it looked. I think I shall go therefore with a mixture of raw wood effects, stained/greased (that is darkened) wood, red oxide and greys. I think that's the safest course, if a little dull visually. By the mid 1700s in the time of Frederick the Great paint pigments had technically advanced and artillery was becoming more militarised and homogenous and you do therefore begin to see more distinctive colours applied to all the cannon of a nation's armies - Prussians = dark blue, Austrians = yellow ochre or pale brown, French = pale blue, Hanoverians and Russians = a fairly bright red; and so on but that's a hundred years after my current period of interest.

Hello everyone. It's been a while. Edwardian, I really do hope you don't mind if I drop in here to ask a quick question. I am asking here because I think this is the best place to find the largest gathering of astute minds who will know the answer. There was a discussion about railway liveries somewhere in RMWeb some time ago, perhaps a year, perhaps more, where if I recall, there was discussion of the colour "lead" which I think the railway research fraternity used to think meant "grey" but which we now know means a dull brick-red colour. Is anyone here able to recall this conversation and possibly point me to the thread where it occurred? Are there any other railway research documents (HMRS?) where a similar discussion took place? My other hobby which is wargaming is currently focussed on the English Civil Wars period and I am presently painting model artillery pieces and was wondering what colour(s) they tended to be. Apparently someone very senior in the Pike & Shot Society has written in their journal that many guns were painted with their woodwork grey because (and yes, you guessed it) he has found many references to "lead colour" in original written contracts that have survived from the 1640s. I wanted to open a correspondence with the gentleman concerned because I'm coming to the realisation that what he thinks was a grey colour was actually a red oxide colour and I wanted to be armed with the discussions that have taken place in the railway research and restoration community in recent years about the types of colours that oxide of lead will generate. I do apologise if this is taking things off topic and for non-railway reasons but if its possible that we can address this issue of colour for the wooden carriages of cannons dating to the 1640s it would be quite the significant achievement.

Thank you Schooner. I am still here, very well, virus-free but just taking a break from railway modelling for a bit. The layouts electrics and track are still about 90% done but Neil is missing a few small electrickery gizmos from DCC Concepts and of course nothing is coming out of China right now. In any case we'd agreed to halt things until the warm weather came around because we'd then tackle the scenery and things like Celotex and such need to be sawn and sanded outside. Then the virus came along and Neil isn't working at all. So we are taking a bit of a longer break than we planned. I am wargaming instead, my other hobby. I shall definitely be back later in the year though.

I would like to send my very sincere thank yous and best wishes for the season to everyone who has contributed here. Your comments have been very much appreciated. I am however going to be taking a break from RMWeb. Negativity from the admins when raising the issue of poor site response times has been the last straw. I'll come back in the spring, or when I'm feeling able to deal with life generally, if that happens to be sooner. My love and respects to you all. Take care.

Ah yes, the old "see if you can do it better yourself" argument. Well done. Very constructive. If potential users are coming here and experiencing poor page load times, you may well have to eat your words as someone might well go off and do just what you propose.

Don't put words into my mouth. That is not what I said and you know it. What I said was that if this sites code were configured correctly and it functioned as a large web community site should, THEN it becomes deserving of people's financial support. I pay an annual subscription greater than RMWebs to a site I no longer visit because I once was involved in that community and site membership allows me to store unlimited numbers of images on its servers. It works. Therefore I give it my support. There is nothing wrong in this. You might have missed a few posts up the page where I offered Andy my support and testing time. It was turned down, so don't lecture me about people wanting something for nothing. This is the web presence of BRM magazine. Andy and his team should not be doing this voluntarily. BRM mag should finance it - or should finance it more if they are already doing so. "More" being sufficient to fix any problems. The fact that the site is not 100% smooth and fast ought to be a problem for one of the premier model railway magazines in the country. If people are working away for free and its not working right then people need to be paid according to their efforts, or paid professionals brought in. If RMWeb became a pay-to-use site only I'd happily subscribe, providing of course it worked correctly. Its the code that's the issue as I think any IT professional would confirm. I know exactly what you mean.

So if its free we should just put up with it? Is that what you are suggesting? The issue is not just about current site members. Imagine how a prospective new member might react if they arrive here looking for a modelling community but every page takes 20 seconds to load and each time they post it takes 30 seconds, or the page hangs completely. The current state of the site could well be driving people away. Bear in mind also that the sites sluggish behaviour is a major reason I haven't bought gold membership. I'm not happy putting up with this for free but I'll certainly not pay for it!

I doubt its Firefox. As I said I have tried with Internet Explorer and its equally slow using that. Firefox is fast on plenty of other websites. I can't test with Edge as I refuse to have it on my PC! It could be a combination of the code in some browsers and the site but I wish anyone good luck in finding that conflict. For me this has become a real chore. I think it first began in about mid or late September... maybe early October... and its been like it every day, no matter the time of day, since then. It has made the site very unattractive to visit. I wonder if it would be possible to disable certain site features one at a time and see if that has any effect? My guess is its still image related. I genuinely expect a version of the site that had user uploaded images disabled would fly along. @AY Mod Andy - I would also be happy to do some testing if you were to set up a mirror site and play about with it. I imagine a few others would volunteer to see if we can make any progress in a live environment but without tinkering with the main site.

To my eye the problem is definitely site related. Other web pages load very quickly but RMWeb has been as slow as treacle for me for several months now. Consistently. And I mean sometimes 20 or 30 seconds to load a page or post on a thread, and some posts failing to action so that I refresh the page after a few minutes to find my post has uploaded. I'm using the most recent release of Firefox but checked on IE and it is the same on that browser as well. The site is so slow I now use it less than I used to because I just don't have the time and patience to sit watching nothing happening. Something in the forum code is the culprit I expect and I wonder if its to do with images, maybe the caching of them? There were some instances of all images being displayed twice in some threads for a short while after the new forums went live. That can still be seen on some threads.

And now I've lost the D299 thread! Argh!

Curious. That's a well known photo of a 517 tackling the lowest part of Butts Bank on the Highworth line. Hannington station is about a quarter mile behind the tail of the train around a right hand curve. The image is in the Wild Swan title "Highworth Branch", page 14. The caption claims the second vehicle is an all third with a centre perishables compartment but no diagram number is given. It could be a mis-identification. EDIT: "The Highworth Branch" book caption claims a date of "early 1900s".

The Highworth line had the steepest gradient in Wiltshire at 1 in 44, a grade which commenced soon after leaving Hannington station and ended at Highworth terminus making it extremely tricky for the crews. The grade was called Butts Bank and a pair of reverse curves at its base were of 10 chains radius which I think was also the tightest non-industrial curved standard gauge track in Wiltshire as well. It was lightly built with limited headroom caused by several timber overline bridges. Locomotive use was heavily restricted. Usually only 4-coupled locos were permitted along the line but two classes of 0-6-0 tank were allowed on it. Metros, 517s, 850 STs, 4-4-0 No.13 and in later years 48xx and 1361 class PTs were used. The last train in 1953 was hauled by BR Class 03 D2182. BR Class 08s were permitted on the lower sections of the line up to the Kingsdown Road junction which gave access to the Vickers aircraft assembly works at South Marsden. The line had a six and later 4-coach 4-wheel set which lasted until 1935 when a specially built B set pair were provided with the roof ventilators moved down the curve of the roof to allow clearance under the low bridges. No.13 was probably well suited in terms of wheel base but with only 140psi boiler pressure and a tractive effort of 13,328 lbs may have lacked power for the final uphill climb. In early workings 2 of the 6 4-wheel coaches were left in the loop at Hannington and only 4 coaches were taken to the terminus, the pair being collected on the return trip. Now there's a bit of railway operation it would be nice to see modelled. I'm in very slow discussions with a friend regarding a 3D print of No.13 in 4-4-0 form but it is a very slow discussion