UK Screenshots for Pre BR Blue. High resolution warning.

[Heinrich505]

Now came the tricky part. Robert had to dance across two fast mains and both slow up and down mains before he was safe in the Shed yard. If the Signal Box had the switches set for him, it was still close. Reggie thought he could hear a whistle in the distance, but Robert told him that the fog and night had a way of distorting sound.

Robert saw the switches were still set for him. He pulled out onto the slow main down and passed the crossing switch. He had to stop his momentum quickly, as he didn’t want to coast too far and find he had fouled the main.

He waited and heard the switch change behind him. The Box man was right on top of things. Robert reversed his engine and quickly dashed across the mains and into the safety of his yard. It was one fluid movement and he could hear Reggie swear quietly in appreciation of the skillful maneuver.

 

[Heinrich505]

Now there were only four more switches and they would be home free. Reggie said he knew those switches by heart and was only too glad to jump down and throw the junctions by hand, letting Robert glide back through two and then drive forward through two more to enter the coaling track.

 

[Heinrich505]

Robert had, indeed, seen figures by the coal bins. It was the BBC crew, as they liked to be called. Burns, One-eye Binkley (lost the other in the war), and Chipper (constantly carving small wooden bird figures) had all stayed over, knowing Robert was getting stuck with the late run. They didn’t have to, and probably weren’t getting paid to stay over, making this gesture all the more impressive. It showed the respect that these men had for Robert.

“Well, if it isn’t old L.R. Robert,” called out Burns, in mock surprise. “Take yer time, mate. We’ve already lost our seats at the pub, why dontcha.”

Robert was really overwhelmed by the men’s gesture. “L. R. eh? Nice nickname. As if I wanted the Last Run, yeh sodden lot. For that, I ought to sign papers to have you all committed in the looney bin for staying around in the cold fog. Here, give me a shovel so I can get the lot of you home quickly,” he quipped. “L.R. Really?” That brought a round of bawdy laughter.

“Better’n B. A. Robert,” chuckled Burns. “Rather not say in front of tender ears,” Burns nodded towards Reggie, who was standing there, eyes wide open at the camaraderie he was experiencing. Then, towards Reggie, “Ye beastie, are ye going to just stand there and watch old men break their backs?”

Reggie lunged quickly towards another shovel and pitched in, grinning at the crazy old railroad men.

Robert filled out extra detail slips for the BBC lads. It made him later getting home to Bess, but he couldn’t let them go unrewarded for their respect and integrity.

Life on the railroad.

 

[Lataxe]

Ah, I enjoy these stories of Dearnby railway folk. More! More!

Or even a vid, dare I suggest. Perhaps a human figure modeller can produce a cast of characters on which you can hang more stories? Myself I favour a portly red-faced station-master with a number of demanding gestures and gurns. Also a station cafe manageress of fine figure but gimlet eye, with an attitude to match.

Lataxe

 

[evilcrow]

Thanks for the compliment Annie, I hope you are better.
Goodly story and shots Heinrich505.
LBSCR WIP

Cheers, evilcrow

 

[Heinrich505]

Lataxe and Evilcrow,
Thanks for the comments. They are always appreciated. I was laughing out loud about the station cafe' manageress. I'm glad you liked the little story. The Dearnby Engine Shed looks spectacular at night - I just couldn't resist screenshots of that.

Evilcrow, your lighting effects on your WIP shot are always amazing. The ornate lamps really make the scene.

Heinrich505

 

[Railwoodman]

This thread always brightens my day . great shots guys . Ken I still think your cheating . I still say i want sound with these shots :hehe:

Matthew

 

[KotangaGirl]

Excellent screenshots everyone and even a little storytelling as well. In between sleeping a lot I have managed to play trains a little on my Norfolk layout.

H.T.Co. No.127 taking a rest between jobs at Elgar Wood shed. The brake van is ex-GNR from the 1860s.

Y14 No.554 heading away from Elgar Wood with a train of bolster wagons. Y14's are permitted to work on the non-roadside sections of the Hopewood Tramway as far as Downs Farm Halt.

Y14's at Elgar Junction MPD.

Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway Beyer-Peacock No.23 in charge of a night passenger service from Moxbury to Great Mulling.

 

[robd]

Nice shots in post #3370, KotangaGirl.

I especially like the Y14's in pics 2 & 3 of your post :hehe:.

Rob.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Nice shots in post #3370, KotangaGirl.

I especially like the Y14's in pics 2 & 3 of your post :hehe:.

Rob.

Yes I particularly like your old Y14 reskins Rob. I cloned your original and carefully renumbered them as Nos. 555 and 526. No.526 being from an earlier batch than 554 and 555. They really are perfect for my Norfolk layout since there's a good few lightly laid sections where a heavier 0-6-0 wouldn't be permitted to go and they also fit the not particularly large diameter turntables on the layout as well.
I can't believe that after all this time that there are still so few GER engines available for Trainz. If it wasn't for my imagineering and assembling engines from parts that weren't meant to fit together I would have hardly anything to run on my Norfolk layout.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Tenpenny Branch

I haven't shown very much of the Tenpenny Branch on my Norfolk layout. The Tenpenny Wharf section started out as a part of a 3ft gauge line I built a while ago. I cloned the wharf and harbour and joined it into the coastal part of my Norfolk layout, smoothed out the landscape joins as well as sorted out the different water levels; - then I converted it to standard gauge. After than I laid a connecting line to the Windweather Tramway and that's how it stayed for the next few months.
Once I'd completed the old BH&FER secondary line all the way to Foxhollow I then laid down a number of low lying coastal boards cloned from another project to fill in the gap between Tenpenny Wharf and the line to Foxhollow. On these boards I built the Tenpenny Branch running it all the way from Tenpenny Wharf to a new junction with the line to Foxhollow. A fair bit of the landscape is still WIP, but the line is fully functional.

Partly a roadside tramway and partly a light railway it's a very simple line serving a number of small farming communities as well as a dairy factory and an egg co-op. The area around the wharf is a bit of a maze of tracks and old sheds and warehouses, - all a bit scruffy, but in the best possible way.

Tram engine No.044 at Tenpenny Wharf station.

Heading off on the morning passenger service. The signal is from the 1850s and there are several of them around the wharf section.

And out onto the branch. I'm thinking about replacing the bullhead track with a lighter weight flatbottomed track. The landscape here is low lying and very close to being at sea level. I still need to lay down a good few drainage channels which is a job I'm not looking forward to.

The main station on the line, - Mosston on Sea. The sea is on the other side of the raised ground in the distance. There is a path from the station to the beach, but it's a bit of a walk.

Jared is the next station after Mosston and this snap is posted out of order since the train is returning to Tenpenny Wharf.

Somehow I managed to miss taking a snap of Nelson's Crossing Halt (Nelson is a common Norfolk surname), but this is Locke's Soak station at the end of the branchine.

The Tenpenny Branch's unusual Manning-Wardle 0-4-2T tram engine. Originally it was a 3ft/3ft 6in gauge tram engine, but it's as wide as a standard gauge tank engine which made it difficult to use on a 3ft gauge line. So I converted it to standard gauge and generally fettled it a bit and it works very nicely in that format. The back story is that it was a failed export order that was purchased cheap and then converted to standard gauge in the wharf workshops. No.3 handles goods traffic on the line and for its small size it does that job very well. I've been trying to think of some industry I could build with a low clearance rail access so that No.3 can show off its short stature, but I haven't been able to come up with anything plausible yet.

And here's a 6 minute video clip of No.3 at work.

 

[borderreiver]

The GNR Compound No.1300 at work on an Up ECJS express circa 1906

Nice work Annie.
Just giving edh6's new loco a run on an ECJS express. She is No.1300 built at the Vulcan Foundry at the end of 1905, early 1905. I figured that she needed a rake of clerestories to attend her on her "maiden voyage" on my trainz route. If I have her history correct she lost her compounding during WWI, around 1917 and was scrapped by the LNER soon after the grouping.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Certainly an unusual engine Frank and all credit to Ed's skill to have made such a lovely job of creating it. I've always been keen on the GWR De Glehn compounds so it was a real surprise to discover that the GNR experimented with a De Glehn compound.

 

[borderreiver]

1906 GNR DeGlehn Compound No.1300

Hi Annie

I am still working my way through the Railway magazine digital archive trawling for references to No.1300 and even the GWR locos. Charles Rous-Marten, writing in his column "British Locomotive Practise and Performance" for December 1905 reported that as he arrived at Peterborough on the 10.20 am from Kings Cross he saw No.1300 starting from the station with the 11.36 am up express. The photograph above that paragraph is actually of a N.E.R. R Class 4-4-0 near Newcastle with an Up East Coast express, but then Rous-Marten was not travelling with a photographer and even if he was setting up the equipment to take a shot would have meant missing the opportunity to capture the moment. Usually, the photographs in the monthly article don't have anything to do with the practise and performance being reported!




Later in the December 1905 article Rous-Marten reports on a run behind GWR No.104 "Alliance". Churchward was good enough to agree that she should take the 10.10 am down "Plymouth Limited" one day and return with the corresponding train the next day, instead of, as usual, either going down by the 3 pm non-stopping train to Exeter, and coming back the next day with the "Limited", or going down one day with the "Limited" and comng back the next day with the 12.7 pm non-stopping train from Exeter to Paddington. This must have involved some shuffling of loco duties and crew rostering and Rous-Marten must have been on friendly terms with Churchward (or with someone on the GWR board!).

The down train was made up of the newest specially built vehicles, with the weights given to Rous -Marten as 38 Tons for the 12-wheeled Diners and 33 Tons for the other coaches. The same train returned the next day. After careful reckoning of the passengers and baggage his estimate for the load was 217 Tons down and 220 Tons up. The non-stop run was 245 ¾ miles at an average of 55.3 mph. He passed through Exeter at walking pace at 3 hrs 12 min 44 sec - 192¾ minutes for 193¾ miles. Plymouth was reached exactly on time at 4 hrs 27 minutes, "to the second" from Paddington.

The up train passed through Exeter at dead slow in exactly 66 min from Plymouth, reaching paddington 5 min 16 sec early, taking 4 hrs 19 min 19 sec. This run was via Bristol. Rous-Marten's opinion was that the compound's 6ft 8in diameter wheels were not suited to climbing long sustained gradients of 1 in 40 and 1 in 42, In France, DeGlehns with 6ft 8in wheels were used on gradients not exceeding 1 in 125. Where the road there had gradients of 1 in 75 the DeGlehns allocated had 5ft 8in wheels and were-six coupled (presumably 4-6-0s). Rous-Marten was of the opinion that it was an open question as to whether 6ft 8in 4-cylinder compounds could be advocated on steeply graded lines on the grounds of economy.

 

[robd]

Good shot in post #3376 by borderreiver. A handsome train indeed!

Rob.

 

[KotangaGirl]

#3376. I agree with Rob, that's a great picture Frank.

1:40 would have been a tough call for a De Glehn Atlantic so it's amazing that 104 'Alliance' did as well as it did. Thanks very much for posting a summary of that run.

Did you know that GER Society has the 'Locomotive Magazine' 1896-1923 available on DVD? You don't have to be a member to buy it. They also have other DVDs that might interest you as well. https://www.gersociety.org.uk/index.php/home/sales

I did have a subscription to the Railway Magazine digital archive at one time, but since I find reading difficult because narcolepsy has messed up my eyesight I eventually cancelled it.

 

[borderreiver]

1905 GNR DeGlehn 4-cylinder compound by edh6

Hello Rob, thanks for the kind words. The shot is on GNR metals, to the south of Retford on a winter's afternoon. Perhaps, notionally, one of the passengers might be reading Mr. Charles Rous-Marten's article in the December 1905 Railway Magazine, bought from Mr. W.H. Smith's news stand at "the cross", preferring to read than playing cards. Around this time the RM mentioned the amount of card playing noticed as going on among travellers. Well, journeys could be long and there were no earbuds then!

Mind you, one could always have one's valet bring a gramophone and a few records for the apparatus. Once he places it in one's compartment he can then proceed to Third Class with an admonition to refrain from games of chance while travelling in my employ. The grampophone might jolly up the compartment with some music on the move. Farquarson, the curmudgeon, claims that it is low class and that listening to music whilst travelling will just never catch on.

Hello Annie, Another item for the shopping list for early 2021 there. I already have an order in mind for the NBR Research Group and the NERA's latest book on NER sheds is calling me.......




The driver's view from the cab.




The fireman's view from the cab.


PS - In April 1906 Charles Rous-Marten promised some reporting on runs taken behind the G.N.R. Atlantics, including No.1300. There was quite an expenditure of column inches on Ivatt denying either designing or building No.1300, writing that apart from the supply of some very minor parts the locomotive is the work of the Vulcan Foundry, the order being placed in late 1904. I find it interesting that, within a year of receiving her from works, Ivatt is expressing himself through the RM as having almost nothing to do with the 4-cylinder compound. In any event, in the May 1906 edition, Charles Rous-Marten wrote that No.1300 had suffered a mechanical failure and therefore he had not travelled behind her.

RM writer James F. Vickery in the edition of May 1906 in his article "Modern Engines of the Great Northern Railway - the Goods and Tank engines", yes, the Goods and Tank engines!, references No.1300; "she has been undergoing comparative trials with No. 292, the Doncaster-built compound and one of the larger simple engines, No. 296. One of the tests satisfactorily performed was the hauling of a special train consisting of eight cars, weighing 312 tons from Leeds to London, the booked time being 3¼ hours."

In May 1907 Charles Rous-Marten mentions that he was at a disadvantage with No.1300 as her bearings had run hot. It is not clear whether this was the problem which had prevented Rous-Marten's planned run in spring 1906 or had caused a further failure to perform a run between May 1906 and April 1907. With Rous-Marten dying suddenly in April 1908 it appears that he never got to report on a run behind No. 1300.

We have to wait until the Railway Magazine commemorated the Diamond Jubilee of the G.N.R. to catch up with No.1300 again. Cecil J. Allen, who had taken over from Charles Rous-Marten, wrote the article "The Express Passenger Train services" for the edition. In it there is a photograph of No.1300 hauling an up Newcastle Dining Car Express due at King's Cross at 1.40 pm. It appears to be formed of G.N. & N.E.J.S. stock with an ECJS six-wheel non-corridor luggage van marshalled behind the engine. In the same edition, in an article titled "Rolling Stock Past and Present" it is down to writer J.R. Bazin to put in to writing the G.N.R.'s verdict on the outcome of the 1906 trials, that the Doncaster-built engines were better suited to work the Great Northern traffic than No. 1300. In November 1912 E.S. Hallett merely mentions its existence when cataloguing British Atlantics.

During WWI in the January 1917 edition, the Railway Magazine again merely mentions the existence of No.1300 in an article titled "The Why and the Wherefore". In quite a coincidence, several pages on all three G.W.R. DeGlehns get a mention in the "Pertinent Paragraphs" regular feature in a short item on curiosities on locomotive numeration. January 1918 reports on No. 1300's conversion to a two-cylinder superheated simple (20 in cylinders with 26 in stroke) and mentions that for some time past she had been allocated to the New England Sheds complex.

In February 1925 "The Why and the Wherefore" in an item about Atlantic No. 292 still working confirmed that No. 1300 had been scrapped.

 

[KotangaGirl]

[FONT=&quot]Hello Annie, Another item for the shopping list for early 2021 there. I already have an order in mind for the NBR Research Group and the NERA's latest book on NER sheds is calling me.......[/FONT]

Ha ha yes, - I have a few more items I want to buy from the GER Society as well, but my pocket money only stretches so far. I'm not a GER Society member, but I really should be.

#3379. Ed is an absolute magician when it comes to creating digital locomotive models.

 

[KotangaGirl]

With being sleepy I'm not doing much at the moment so playing trains on the minor lines that make up a part of my Norfolk layout is keeping me amused. If I start getting too sleepy I save the session and go back to it later once I'm awake.

Carrying on from where I left off No.3 has parked its train in the goods siding at Lockes Soak where it will be collected by one of the GER Buckjumpers shedded at Foxhollow. Collecting an empty wagon at Lockes Soak No.3 is now heading back to Tenpenny Wharf and it will pick up any empty wagons waiting at Jared and Mosston along the way.

Two empty PO wagons needed picking up from the goods yard at Jared. And yes that 7 plank PO coal wagon is quite genuine.

Waiting for the signalman at Mosston to show a green flag. Since Mosston on Sea is the largest and most important station on the branch the goods yard here is larger than the one at Jared and even has a proper goods shed rather than a small lockup shed in the goods yard.

On the way to Tenpenny Wharf. The line is almost lost in wide and lonely landscape.

And finally back in the yard at Tenpenny Wharf. I think that warehouse is based on an American prototype, but it's ideal for the wharf yard. The wharf here is perhaps not as busy as the one at Windweather, but it still sees a reasonable amount of goods being unloaded including timber and coal.
Anyone else as keen on operating small and minor railways as I am? I really like trip working and shunting since it helps to keep my silly fogged up brain in a functional state.

 

[evilcrow]

Re post #3368 Heinrich505
Thanks for the compliment and you can get the GWR lamps from Steve Flanders and other goodly things here, http://www.jatws.org/ing4trainz/gwr-buildings.htm
re post #3369 Railwoodman
Thanks Matt, your track laying viz the PRR thread is a joy to observe and learn from.
re post #3381 KotangaGirl
Some really interesting locos on your GER branch.

LBSCR WIP

Cheers, evilcrow