john dew

I got the sad news from Nicholas this afternoon. He was my friend and neighbour (albeit a thousand miles apart) these past 8 years. John was a true gentleman of the old school. Not only was a skillful and knowledgeable modeller, he had the ability to describe his creations in such a manner that the reader could almost feel the sunshine in his wonderful Dorset villages. He was invariably generous and supportive. He will be much missed John

I think the 42xx and 72xx roof assemblies are the same? The 72xx cab roof is lightly glued on and can be (carefully) prised off. The "coal" in the 72xx bunker can be easily prised off. The Brassmasters improvement kit has instructions for both removals. You can access the PDF file on line Regards John

Sorry you missed the earlier post.....I found it very frustrating! Since the problem got sorted there hasnt been much running activity in that area........I will watch out for overheating and let you know. Regards John

Thanks Tinker I am veering towards the Ivatt.................although I believe its a bit like the Hawksworths.... ........ie how many actually saw service in that livery? Certainly 1202 is one of the reasons Granby's time period stretched into 1948. I have always had a soft spot for it........it was a beautiful runner straight out of the box at a time when some of the other RTR locos I bought were indifferent to say the least.....a Hornby Fowler sits in a display case as a permanent reminder of the perfect non runner. Its a split chassis and was a pain to chip with the coupling rod mechanism........hopefully I will not need to strip it again......just remove the body cut the wires and re solder.......oh and make better job of hiding the wiring this time! The final factor in its favour is that its the loco I best remember from my childhood. Once a day it used to run from Southport to Liverpool on the electric line with two blood and custard coaches which were eventually attached/detached to Liverpool Lime St-Euston train at Edge Hill Cheers John

Thanks again for the likes/ticks guys. Glad that I am not boring you with this LMS chapter Unlike the UK we have been enjoying some rather pleasant spring weather. The downside, of course, is that the garden beckons.....not so much an invitation more like a command! So modelling has taken a bit of a back seat, however I have managed to finish the weathering of the locos involved in the LMS suburban routine. Four locos are required. One for each of the two trains and a relief loco at both Granby and Birkenhead (Storage). All have to be not only ultra reliable but also have similar performance characteristics. The first three were easy to select. Two ex Lancashire & Yorkshire 2-4-2 Tanks....".the Lanky tank" and an ex LNWR Webb Coal Tank Choosing the fourth loco has proved something of a challenge I cant make up my mind between an 0-6-0 Jinty........the LMS equivalent of the GWR pannier or this Ivatt 2-6-2T Both are long serving veterans of Granby II........in fact 1202 may have even briefly graced Granby I which makes her over 20 years old. Both were amongst the first locos to receive TCS decoders (hard wired of course) when I first started with DCC. After some experimenting I found it was better to pay a little more and now only use Lenz. The TCS give an ok performance but they all have a very noticeable spike in their speed curve and there is perceptible surging at the lower speed steps. On a roundy roundy its not an issue ........they run their schedule and one hardly notices these imperfections ......its a different manner when performing very precise manoeuvres alongside more modern locos with Lenz chips. So a Lenz Silver Mini is on its way from Cornwall and I just have to decide which loco it will go in. Finally here is a before and after with the Lanky Tanks and a carriage I confess to having some misgivings when I started to apply multiple washes to the carriage roof and the military part of me regrets the loss of the highly polished loco. However I do believe that one of the hallmarks of a believable layout is consistency.........and that is what I am slowly trying to achieve in grimy Granby Regards from Vancouver

So he was allowed off the naughty step?

Absolutely!

Super Robin......you did a much better job with the rivets than I! Its a very wothwhile improvement. Now I just have to get round to redoing the buffer beam number Cheers

Nice job Tinker.......I particularly like the tarp on the van......suspect a leaky roof might develop on a Granby van. Have a good trip.

I believe so........certainly what happens at Granby

Many thanks for all the hard work.......and some of the stuff you have had to put up with. Rmweb has had a huge impact on my modelling Kind Regards from Vancouver John

Dont think so Robin. I think that is class K....pick up branch freight,mineral or ballast. GWR shunting is a red light on the top iron front and rear.......I think.....remembering what Mike said.....that BR changed this in 1948 to red and white lights on buffer beam....front and rear Cheers John

After the Memories of Merseyside interlude its time to get back to the LMS Suburban routine: Both loco exchanges involve automatic uncoupling and coupling.......they take place at roughly the same time on either side of the layout This requires a combination of supreme confidence in the RR&Co profiling of the 4 locos involved, coupled (sorry!) with sharp eyes and swift reaction in the event the said confidence is misplaced! This quote from my last post is a slight over simplification. When the loco uncouples at Granby its relatively easy for the "sharp eyes and swift reaction" to come into play I knew there was a good reason for not glazing the station roof! Just enough space for my ham fist to do some swift fingerpoken if required.. The uncoupling in the storage yard on the other side of the room is slightly different Guess where the uncoupling magnet is! . It would seem the Design and Building manager didn't get the email from the Operating manager about the need for "sharp eyes and swift reaction" when he built this rather substantial warehouse last year! I had hoped to do something clever with a mirror or even a camera. The reality is that if the loco overshoots the magnet (perhaps 1 in 20) one quick bit of fingerpoken and all is well...........but not with that solid lump of Victoriana complete with girder bridge on top! The workaround is to rewrite the schedules so the loco uncouples in the block before......easily accessible from an alley way between the terraced houses......the released loco moves to the end of the siding under the warehouse......followed at a safe distance by coaches now pushed into storage by the relieving loco all ready for the return trip to Granby. The routine is now coming together nicely ......I just have to finish weathering the locos and coaches that will be involved. So to finish here is a shot, which I rather like, of one of the ex L&Y tanks at the loco sidings water tower That's the last time you will see 10698 in out of the box condition. Regards from Vancouver

Thanks Andy I read about it in the Telegraph but it's good to be reminded of his gags. As it happens he was the star turn at a Littlewoods Managers dinner I went to.........and he did indeed continue well over his allotted time. I remember his shirt cuffs were covered in scribbled words......cues for the endless stream of patter.....not that he seemed to need any prompts! Cheers John

Indeed.......always good to hear a genuine scouse accent. Do you now I had never heard of Hadlow Road and had no idea that the station had been preserved.........mind you I didn't get really interested in railways and the GWR in particular until we had been in Canada for about ten years.......nothing like going for the difficult route ! John

Hi David Would that be Heswall/Gayton by any chance? If yes it is a very small world .....we lived about half a mile from the station site! John

Thanks John All fine now....... thanks for asking......just needed time to get the medication out of my system. I always enjoy your writing......how can I access Back Track........I googled but got a link to some Linux product? Best wishes John

My "away" day yesterday was one of these routine but tiresome surgical procedures that require doing very little the following day so with time on my hands .....here is episode 2 of my Merseyside memories. A couple of Andy's links referred to some of Liverpool's suburban rail structure. When I was a small boy we used to live in Crosby, midway between Liverpool and Southport. Generally we travelled by Ribble bus even on shopping trips to Liverpool. Occasionally, as a treat, instead of going the whole way by bus to the terminus by Lime St Station (where John Flann would later work), we would get off at Seaforth Sands and continue the journey on the Overhead Railway. This ran from Seaforth along the entire 8 mile length of Liverpool Docks. Apart from a small section at the southern end it was all on raised track with the Dock road running underneath (Andy's Dockers Umbrella). You can imagine what a fascinating trip it was for a small boy, particularly during wartime. The docks where crammed with weather beaten cargo ships of all shapes and sizes. A couple of docks had been taken over by the Navy and here I would catch glimpses of equally weather beaten, grey painted destroyers and corvettes rafted together...between convoys (vide The Cruel Sea). We would get off at the Pierhead by the Liver Buildings. Sometimes there would be troopship departing from the Landing Stage, where the transatlantic liners used to depart, After the war we moved to Formby and now our main form of transport (we never had a car) became the electric train service which ran between Liverpool and Southport. In term time I used that service Monday to Saturday to and from School in Crosby. These were the EMUs that Andy referred to.... although we never called them EMUs.....just the "electric train". I seem to recall some of the stock having manufacturers plates with 1904 on .......and marvelling that I could be travelling in carriages that were over 40 years old! It was a very efficient and not uncomfortable service.Three car sets every 20 minutes. Strengthened to 5 and every 8 minutes at peak. The seating was all open and one or two cars had a small non smoking section separated only by the gangway.....how times change I must have travelled on them in LMS maroon but I only remember them in green. It makes me feel quite ancient when I see a train that I travelled on treated as a museum piece. Enough nostalgia for one day..... John

Hi Andy and John Sorry that I didn't reply yesterday......I was away all day.....but in any event I would have needed a day to even skim the fascinating links that Andy sent. They certainly brought the memories flooding back so I thought I would split my response into South and North of the Mersey. Byzantine is a very accurate description of the machinations of the GWR, LNWR and GC as they fought, almost literally, to gain control of numerous small companies in their bids to gain or deny access to both the Mersey and the North Wales route to Ireland. At times Chester, a joint LNWR and GWR station, appeared to resemble Berlin during the Cold War. The skulduggery, by any of the big three, involved in trying to bring a smaller company to its knees was worthy of a Len Deigton novel. It was the web of railways run by so many companies in and around Chester and Wrexham that first caused me to use it as the base for my rather elastic interpretation of North Wales geography. In 1923 GWR, Cambrian, LNWR, Cheshire Lines (Midland and GC) and GC were all operating. Post Grouping only the Cambrian disappeared (absorbed into the GWR). LNWR became LMS and GC LNER.....Cheshire Lines continued now run by LMS and LNER. I can actually run rolling stock from any of the Big Four because there was a service from Birkenhead/Manchester to Bournemouth that alternated Southern and GWR stock on a weekly basis. In the early stages of Granby I did plan to develop a LNER passenger service. Now, as you know from my storage yards, I have far too much stock.......so you mustn't tempt me Andy I do run a token LNER loco......it had a walk on part in the freight video hauling oil empties to Ellesmere Port. From a personal aspect, we lived in Heswall , on the Wirral, before we emigrated. The ex LNER line running to Secombe Ferry Terminal, that John referred to, was still running and there was a station about a mile from us. The LNWR/GWR joint line that ran from Hooton to West Kirby was a few hundred yards away from our house. But it was long gone converted to a nature walk.. the Wirral Way. For almost its entire length it ran alongside the Dee. It must have been a very attractive journey with views of the river (at High water!) and the Welsh mountains beyond. Thanks again Andy for those links.....lots of browsing to do......I don't think I had seen the David Heys site before. Regards to all John

Hi Bob Granby is based very loosely on Wrexham.......the line from Chester to Birkenhead was actually a Joint GWR LMS line and it was either here or on a Joint line out of Shrewsbury that they alternated locos and coaches on a weekly basis.....one week GWR loco and LMS stock....next week the reverse. Over the years I have, almost by accident, acquired a fair sized collection of LMS stock....although I don't mix them up. The phone box is over 20 years old......it was a kit from either Langley, Dart or Springside.......I would guess, but only guess, the former. Not sure if you were too polite to mention it ....but last night I realised to my embarrassment the box is upside down.....hence the badly fitting roof! It must have come apart when I stripped that section last fall....it's on the bench now! Cheers John

Those of you patient enough to watch the Freight video will be familiar with this view of the exposed storage sidings The only difference is that the front siding is now occupied with its regular tenants. Two "out and back" suburban trains. The first train, a GWR B Set starts from here "Chester" and now does a complete circle of the layout, stopping at Granby before terminating in the very rear storage siding "Ruabon" where the loco uncouples and another prairie couples at the rear ready for the return journey. Behind the B Set is a 3 car LMS set at "Birkenhead" with Jinty 7524 Once the B Set is clear the LMS set can leave Birkenhead for Granby.........at the same time an identical train leaves Granby for Birkenhead. The two trains meet pass one another at the top of Granby Bank The RR&Co schedules needed a lot of fine tuning to strike a balance between having the Up train standing too long at the signal or running the risk of the entry points at either destination being thrown prematurely As the down train from Granby, Lanky Tank 10695, enters the storage siding it passes a Webb Coal Tank 7841 ready for the return journey Meanwhile at Granby As the Up train enters Bay Platform 2 it passes the loco sidings where another Lanky tank 10698 is waiting, ready to release the incoming Loco once the passengers have departed. Both loco exchanges involve automatic uncoupling and coupling.......they take place at roughly the same time on either side of the layout This requires a combination of supreme confidence in the RR&Co profiling of the 4 locos involved, coupled (sorry!) with sharp eyes and swift reaction in the event the said confidence is misplaced! The sequence is by no means perfect but with a bit more snagging I think it will soon be ready to video. First though, I have to bite the bullet and weather those totally implausible silver carriage rooves/roofs along with the shiny black LMS locos. That's not how I remember those tank engines at Liverpool Exchange and Southport Chapel Street so many years ago! Regards from Vancouver John

Single red on top iron.

The sheets hide a multitude of sins particularly as they are only seen as a moving target from 3'. The other thing ,Tinker, is they should not be exclusively GWR. Big four wagon ownership was very roughly LMS. 40. LNER. 30. GWR 20. SR10 Cheers John

You call that snow? Canuck edited.....forgot photo

Thank you everyone for the likes and comments.........very encouraging. I am so glad the editing didn't jar........rightly or wrongly I feel that 5 minutes is about max length for a video like this.......or am I misjudging the attention span of Granby's followers? Pleased you noticed the sheeted wagons Tinker. One of my strongest memories of the fifties was the preponderance of wagons like this in the freight trains we used to pass. Anyone hazard a guess at the proportion of ordinary wagons to vans/bulk grain etc etc in an "ordinary" freight train (as opposed to a "fitted freight")? Its a bit below 50% on the long freight but I think it should be nearer 75%? Regards to all John