Martin S-C

You are well equipped to design a freight despatch system for your railway then! My dice are 20 sided, which I think makes them dodecahedrons. I use the red to indicate tens and the black for units. 00 is 100. I apologise for the yellowed numbers and the accumulation of, ...erm, material, within the recessed digits; I bought these when I played D&D in the sixth form at school and they've been rattled between teenagers sweaty palms far more times than I've had hot dinners. For information the roll above is 76. A bit more on my open wagon loads method. Due to quite a few pre-grouping small wagons I have five sizes of coal load - #1 is 57mm long, #2 is 60mm #3 is 63mm, #4 is 66mm and #5 82mm, the last being for 20t wagons of which I only have a couple. The 66mm ones are also restricted to my 1950s stock set as they fit a few old Mainline and Hornby wagons of non-standard dimensions which in time I'll probably dispose of. The smaller three are for 14ft 6ins/9ft wb wagons, 15ft/9ft wheelbase wagons and 16ft/10ft wheelbase respectively. I have to mark them up on the underside with the size as an aid to operators but perhaps I may need to put a corresponding mark inside each wagon somewhere. I'll see if confusion reigns when we get operating sessions started. Plastic or resin coal loads commonly come with RTR wagons so I just spray these black, daub on a generous helping of PVA and shake real crushed coal onto them. To prevent coal granules getting stuck near the edges and fouling the wagon sides I don't put PVA near the edges. This also lets you handle them by the edges so you don't get dirty fingers. If the load is injection moulded plastic it'll have a domed shape underneath. For this type I press in a blob of DAS clay and when that's dry, glue the steel nut to that. So far I have loads of coal, graded limestone, sawn timber and some engineering parts resting on timber baulks, the baulks being cut to be a close but not tight fit inside the wagon. For my bogie bolster and twin MITES wagons I have some sawn timber loads, a few lengths of timber in the round (old offcuts of buddleia) and a pipes and a girder load. I also have some of the commercial resin tarpaulin loads, some barrels, etc. I am not a big fan of these as they look wrong, the tarpaulins being over the load but inside the wagon which is a useless way of keeping rain off the load, but they are very easy and forgiving to use so for private use I accept their inaccuracies. My limestone test examples I am not happy with and will re-do these. The machinery loads can be hand-lifted out, but all the mineral loads have either nuts or washers glued underneath and can be lifted out with my magnetic "grabbers". These are a 10cm length of 15mm dia wooden dowel with a neodymium magnet glued on one end and a screw loop fixed to the other so it can be hung on a hook next to the control panel. Each control position on the layout has a grabber made for it. Tools of the trade. Underside of load showing DAS clay filler and markings for a #3 63mm long load. Some have had washers added under the nut for extra weight. Loaded! There is a small visible gap but having that is a price I am prepared to pay for the ease of use. The alternatives are permanently full and permanently empty wagons (just no) and loose filling with a loader system. This requires handling the models too much to empty them. Unloaded! Endless hours of fun for all the family. Well, the operating team anyhow. My apologies to Annie and anyone else of a nervous disposition for that strange green contraption in the background. I was play-testing with my 1950s rolling stock set yesterday. I recommend consuming copious amounts of Cornish ice cream to provide suitable storage containers. Other flavours of container are available. I'm going to need one per operator location. Yum. The graded limestone shapes need to be lower to go into the 2- 3- and 4- plank quarry wagons. A couple of washers does the trick for these. On the right is a #1 57mm load for a small 9ft wb wagon. Some of the easy to use but not so realistic resin loads.

This is the other part of your post I didn't pick up on. While death rates were calamitous during canal and later railway construction, as well as other civil engineering projects such as bridge building and tunneling, there certainly were some conscientious employers around, even in the Victorian era. I suspect though that modern writers pick up on these cases because to the modern lay reader the wasteful approach to life is shocking, whereas at the time it wasn't; it was simply how life was. I also wonder if writers highlight such examples of philanthropic corporate behaviour to illustrate that such attitudes were not the norm. Yes, it did happen, but the fact we remark on it means it wasn't common practice. Long service awards were also often given out - though in past centuries "long service" might mean beginning work for a company when you were a boy and retiring in your 80s. Perhaps, with my cynical hat on, such awards were again rare and companies could afford to hand them out because there were so few of them! I think the big social change came about after the Great War. Socialism with a lower case "s" had been gaining ground since the early Victorian times and went hand-in-hand with rising education standards but the Great War caused a step change and the 1920s and 30s saw the big rise of the unions, and of slowly improving working conditions generally. One comment I come across often on such FaceBook groups as the 19th century railways group is from people who wonder how loco crews could accept driving trains in all weathers without a cab and the answer is that they did it because it was perfectly normal. Our retrospective attitude is coloured by locomotive cabs, first of steamers and later on diesels and electrics complete with padded armchairs but one must remember that the Victorian era, like every era before it was one where it was customary to work outdoors in all weathers without much protection. Canal boat families did so, wagon drivers did, fishermen and other seafarers did, farm workers did, coach drivers did and of course railwaymen did as well, it was just how it was. The gradual increase of footplate crew protection with at first spectacle plates and later roofs and side sheets I suspect came about due to increased speed and the need to be able to sight signals at these higher speeds. It was okay to briefly stick your head out in a blizzard to check a signal ahead but at least 90% of the time you had shelter and therefore your vision was protected until you needed to check 'outside'.

I agree it annoys the heck out of me to see "crash-shunting" with the operator trying to get the train away within the 30 seconds challenge time, or something of that ilk. It also bugs me on a layout at a show where a freight train will arrive, the operator takes the brake van off, puts it on a siding, then proceeds to shunt the whole train onto it and send it back where it came from 5 minutes later. A brake van would be propelled all the way to the stop blocks and left with its brakes firmly on, and then the outgoing train would be built up on its siding, with the assembled train rolled onto it as the last movement of making up the train. The train and loco would also be short enough so that the exit signal from the yard is in front of them. The idea of leaving a brake van near the entrance to a siding then pushing it back as wagons are added to the train is extremely unlikely practice. As regards shunting speeds and styles, yes, Clive, I have been doing that for years and now with DCC I can run locos at really slow creep-against-buffer speeds with ease. I like to operate the coupling sound button as well while shunting, and the crew tooting the whistle in acknowledgement of the shunters hand signals. DCC with sound really shines if you are a shunting freak. Ah, oops, I went off-topic.

One wonders what the trackside accident rate was in steam days. I'd imagine it was a lot worse due to a lot more traffic, probably worse visibility and a lot more labour working on the lines. I'm sure the Big Four kept records of all incidents but probably the push towards safety that began in the 60s was a feature of the greater social conscience and value placed on life of more modern times. I think a parallel can be drawn between the mass slaughter in WW2 against the obsession with keeping war casualties now to the absolute minimum.

Argh! I just wrote out a huge explanation of the freight system and my computer ate it just as I was about to post. I'll rewrite it tomorrow. For now its late and I'm all grumpy now so I'll be off to bed...

The last few days have been 'wasted' spending time outside in the lovely warm weather, intermixed with testing the trackwork. I've been mucking about with a random freight generation system using a pack of playing cards and a pair of ten-sided dice, know in RP circles as d100 or percentile dice. You probably all know this but the pair will give a result between 1 and 100 without any bell curve as other pairs of dice will. This has generated a few nice looking mixed freights and with traffic weighted towards the colliery and the two main termini makes the most of the layout's main line run. Next up, I need a few wagon loads of pit props. Fairly simple to make. 28mm x 62mm 30 thou plasticard rectangles cut deliberately loose to easily fit a standard 10ft open wagon. In the middle of what will become the underside I superglue a steel nut to give depth to the load as well as weight, then I'm chopping up lengths of 2.5mm dowel bought from Hobbycraft into 14mm lengths. These stack 128 to a wagon. Slow going but satisfying once your rhythm gets going. Lastly a start has been made on a foamboard mock up of the tunnel mouth above Witts End, using the photo below as inspiration.

Thanks for that Clive, all useful stuff. I'm not a big customer for post nationalisation models and my interest dips to absolute zero when BR blue comes on the scene, so I often do not know what is correct and what is not, but I get the impression that Heljan are pretty good with their research. I do find the 1950s a fascinating decade on BR with all those test locos and the research going on. On the other hand though I find BR standard steam loco classes simply hideous! The BR period kettle models I own are all of pre-grouping or early grouping prototypes.

Given the quite different grey of the lighting conduits on the earlier B/W shot of D2574 I think those would be orange as well. I noted the coupling rod colours and the crank grey shade in the other photo but didn't mention it since it didn't seem unusual since my photo of the Heljan model shows that they seemed to have got the colours right. Unpainted rods and red cranks. Out of the box: And Heljan's D2578 in later guise (but how much later?) Note in both cases the lighting conduit is orange and it must be on my model as well, its just been heavily weathered.

Chris, if you have a teeny weeny pin drill bit, that door's keyhole is begging to be drilled out!

Thanks. My reading comprehension was never my best mark in English. Well, 2574 will be spending the summer of 1959 in the Forest of Dean in my version of reality. It is a pity the Class 14s were too late for my time period, I do like them. The Heljan model is very nice and they were used in the Forest, there's photos of them shunting the Berry Wiggins facility at Whimsey in the mid-60s in one of the Lightmoor Press titles. Maybe I can bend time a weeny bit. EDIT: I just noticed in the photo of D2574 that the cable protectors/pipes for the lamps seem to be a different colour to the red bufferbeam. I wonder what colour it might be? Yellow? Orange? A light green?

Good thing it is red on my model then! Michael - do you happen to know when D2574 was built? I bought the model because I liked it but it seems some examples were built after 1959, if that's the case with D2574 I shall have to renumber her.

Thanks Ian, all very helpful. One benefit I have is the contracted layout builder. He's very happy to return and fix faults. The DCC Concepts Cobalt point motors have a famously bad batch but Neil now has a simple in-house fix for this, which is basically a small resistance circuit added in. We don't have the track bus divided into districts but I've been under there a lot checking the work as it gets done and I'm very familiar with what is under there now. We will run a second bus for any layout lighting. I realise this project does have the potential to go Frankensteinian on me so we are taking it carefully and methodically. As for the aforementioned notebook - I already have a list of issues that have arisen and been addressed, including the dates and brief details of the remedial work, I couldn't face such a big task without a clear log of what's going on.

This is all helpful, thanks. So in 1959 I can do away with wasp stripes but could maybe include one shunter with an experimental pattern. I presume grills on bonnets would be red? Like so: Or was this a non-standard practice?

Many thanks, a great mine of info from you folks. My rolling stock collection is set in 1959 with a mix of early and late crest steamers, so now I know to avoid all yellow panels and keep the whiskers. I will probably delete most of the electrification flashes as I'm in the Welsh borders and I doubt that was relevant over there at that time. I'm now only left wondering about wasp stripes on the ends of shunters but my gut feeling is it was after 1959. The mid 60s seem to be when the full step-change of corporate image kicked in.

At a recent show I sat down with a gent who was doing a basic soldering course - just 15 -20 minutes of tuition. He remarked that while there were fewer females at the show than males, far more girls had wanted to try his teaching session than boys -and they were better learners as well. They listened while the boys thought they could do it without instruction and romped ahead and made mistakes. I think this is just down to the different rates of maturity in youngsters and the fact that girls are keen to now learn what were in the past "manly" trades while boys are very much of the "don't wanna read the manual" mindset. Its a set of reactions very much deep in our evolutionary genes I think.

I'm happy with programming and have altered CV settings and so on. I have even installed sound in two locos which work nicely. I suppose I was just having a rant at wasted money when people charged me £xxx for work that really wasn't good enough. Swapping out a speaker is easy enough though. Sorry - it was just me in rant mode. Its fixable and its all about learning as well. Thank you for getting me to focus on going forwards rather than looking backwards. No use crying over spilled milk. RMWeb is like a model railway club and free psychiatrists couch all rolled into one.

Thanks to everyone for the amazing support. It helps me keep going when things get wonky. My biggest annoyance right now is not layout related but a number of failures of DCC locos, particularly speakers. Easily corrected but expensive. I've certainly learned to avoid all factory fitted units now plus another retailer whose 3 locos they did for me are all failures in terms of sound quality and stay-alive performance. Wiring up is completed and the entire layout is now powered so I've the opportunity to take a break from working this week and play tr... er, I mean test the track plan. I'm finding that Puddlebrook's layout is especially useful as regards moves from the colliery via the back road and the access to the main line via two routes from the exchange sidings. I didn't plan it this way, I just drew out a track plan that I thought would be different and interesting but fortune has smiled and given me operational capability that was unexpected. Yesterday I had a goods train circulating on the main line coming down the hill from GS while another was climbing up from the exchange sidings and they were moving at almost the same speed, the combination of motion in the same direction and the changing grades was engaging to watch. When the scenery is complete on these curves I think I might find myself often watching trains go by here. The next step is installing all the point motors - all 94 of them. We're also doing a test build of a control panel, the design of which will be modular in that each one will have a tool shelf and Powercab connector plate, both of which are of fixed dimensions, plus a lever frame box which will vary in length by number of levers. The whole panel will be supported on shelf brackets that will be attached to the layout frame's main side members. I have decided to go for a track mimic diagram behind the levers rather than in front so that the operator's view is centred only at one area as the lever frame is worked. If we can standardise on boxes, panels and so on it will be easier to manufacture the components for each station control position. Rather than have plastic slotted Powercab or throttle holders to slide the handsets into I think I'll go with simple Velcro pads on the layout fascia. The layout I helped operate for a friend at the GCR event last month used these and they were extremely user friendly. You could stick the handset away even if the Velcro pad was behind you; your fingers just brushed the side of the control panel and they you knew the Velcro was directly ahead. I'm all for features that limit your thought processes and body movements to actually running the layout and nothing else, nothing that's a distraction.

I wonder if someone has the answers to these questions, or can point me to a good book that will hold this information. When were overhead electrification flashes introduced? When were speed whiskers introduced on DMUs and railbuses and when were they removed? When were half yellow warning panels introduced? When were full yellow ends introduced? When did red grills on some shunter classes begin to get replaced by wasp stripes? When was blue introduced on diesels - I think it was about 1964 wasn't it? Were there any other significant livery steps in the 50s and early 60s I haven't noted here? Sorry for the very basic questions but I want to get a time period correct and avoid livery errors, or at least unlikely liveries. Many thanks for any help.

It looks like a Churchward Mogul, a 43xx to me.

Those runner beans and onions in that tiny allotment will never win any prizes - totally starved of sunlight down there I should think!

The DIY chains have mostly killed off the genuine builder's merchants.

Indeed, old school nudging was a classic era. One couldn't be seen dead nudging anything without your leather elbow-patch tweed jacket and pipe. BTW, your remarks on non-homing pigeons, Kevin, reminds me that keeping fleeing pigeons is probably the worlds briefest hobby.

OBS? Old Burnt Sleepers?

You should have seen the expression on its smokebox door when there was just a saggy bit of unsupported track there. Phil - nicely built structure. The ply you've used is nothing like the ply I have and therein may lie the problem. Mine is also not made into L, I, H, or box girders which may also be a problem in the future. This discussion has got me rather worried now.

Good progress was made today. I did some modelling and Neil soldered a shedload of bus droppers and supplied power to GS and NM, as well as fitting the reversing loop module. First, my bits: A crude engine shed was converted from the Bachmann tin barn by the simple expedient of dremmelling 20mm off the 8 square section brass legs. Maybe somewhat unlikely but it appeals to me. The finished article will have the far side extended down to ground level (with old sleepers) to make a full height wall for workbenches, tools and stores to be piled against. There will also be an awning rigged up outside over the adjacent track under which "tent" the line's mobile crane truck and runner will live. A small bothy will be supplied for the crews to brew tea and eat their sandwiches. I also noticed today that the Hornby resin coaling stage has the footsteps broken off but I have some in the spares box so will replace these at some point. It and the tin shed will be subject to some severe weathering mayhem in due course. Second, a timber trestle bridge. I finally got around to building this. It's my first scratchbuilt model in at least 20 years and I'm moderately happy with how its turning out. For now the leg assemblies are just placed loose under the two longitudinal baulks that support the rails. You can see in the last pic that the nearest assembly is leaning... I need to remove this track piece, shed the Peco sleepers and use some small section timber and chairs (I have a stash in the bits box) to extend the sleepers outwards beyond the ends of the leg main members, otherwise as it is now it looks odd. Neil's wiring work today included installing the Tam Valley reverse loop module for the turning triangle. This is an idiot proof installation: Two wires from the DCC bus to the input terminals and two wires from the output terminals to the ISOLATED section of your reverse loop or triangle. That's it. The widget does everything else and locos can be driven around a loop without stopping and with no polarity "clicks" or pauses. As the loco enters the reverse loop or section the green/red lights will flip indicating job done.