Chas's workbench

[Chas Levin]

Thanks again @michl080 for the links. The Hermann Pleuer material is very interesting and very tantalising too. As you say, firmly in the Impressionist school, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate the basic colour information; if anything, you could perhaps argue that the Impressionists' strong preoccupation with the way colour appeared in different lights makes them particularly interesting and reliable recorders of hues, even if the lines and shapes are deliberately imprecise. Here's a very lo-resolution example of what I mean, where I'd suggest we can take the green and the red oxide sort of shade as being reasonably accurate:



The Diener book looks fascinating, but as a non-German speaker I'll have to weigh up the time I'd need to spend typing text into Google Translate compared to the graphic information contained in the illustrations that wouldn't need translating... I'm guessing you speak German?

Armin Berberich's site is absolutely superb, some really top class modelling there. His choice of paint shade for the KWStE oxide / red / rust / reddish-brown looks to my eye more similar to our LNER REd Oxide than I'd expected, but certainly close enough to the Phoenix PRecision Weathered Teak I'm using, so that's good news.

The VGBahn site you link goes to, the one with the Diener book, looks like it has some other very interesting things too... Good job it's bedtime here, or I might be tempted to go shopping. Unless, of course, the site's still there in the morning...

 

[simond]

I'm guessing you speak German?

I think so…

 

[michael080]

I think so…

One of the few things I'm quite good at

I can help if google translator fails to come up with a reasonable translation.

Michael

 

[Chas Levin]

One of the few things I'm quite good at

I can help if google translator fails to come up with a reasonable translation.

Michael

Thanks Michael, very kind of you! Google does sometimes stumble over technical jargon, unsurprisingly...

 

[magmouse]

Thanks Michael, very kind of you! Google does sometimes stumble over technical jargon, unsurprisingly...

A couple of thoughts on this that may be useful, based on my experience translating somewhat technical German texts (unrelated to railways). If you use a Mac computer, you can take a photo of the text and then copy it in the Photos app and paste it into any text or word processor document, saving you retyping. Microsoft's OneNote has a similar function, and I am sure there are others.

Once you have the text, I have found Deepl (deepl.com) to be a better translator than Google Translate. The free online version is limited to 3000 characters at a time, but you can do it in multiple chunks. It's not quite a 'one click' method, but I've done whole book chapters and it isn't too laborious once you get a routine going.

Nick.

 

[Chas Levin]

A couple of thoughts on this that may be useful, based on my experience translating somewhat technical German texts (unrelated to railways). If you use a Mac computer, you can take a photo of the text and then copy it in the Photos app and paste it into any text or word processor document, saving you retyping. Microsoft's OneNote has a similar function, and I am sure there are others.

Once you have the text, I have found Deepl (deepl.com) to be a better translator than Google Translate. The free online version is limited to 3000 characters at a time, but you can do it in multiple chunks. It's not quite a 'one click' method, but I've done whole book chapters and it isn't too laborious once you get a routine going.

Nick.

Hello Nick, thanks, that's very interesting. I do use a Mac at home so that's not a problem and you're right it is of course the typing that's a pain: I hadn't thought of text recognition - brilliant idea, thank you!

It's not something I've ever used and I must admit I've tended to think of it as a bit of a modern luxury but typically, now that I can see a use for it I'm suddenly seeing it as an essential key step in modern technological evolution...

 

[Dave Sutton]

Off topic a bit, but my Dad could speak some German. Came in handy in 1942 when he was asked to speak to a German officer by his (PoW) hut Captain. He was instructed to ask for more food to which the officer replied "we'd all like more food" Dad replied "you look better fed that we are" I asked Dad his opinion of the officer "Funny little fellow" was the reply, I asked "did you find out who he was" "yes" he said "Gros Admiral Karl Donitz"
I did ask if they got more food, he said they didn't, but the French guards were moved and the rations increased as they'd been stealing most of it.
Back on topic

 

[Chas Levin]

Off topic a bit, but my Dad could speak some German. Came in handy in 1942 when he was asked to speak to a German officer by his (PoW) hut Captain. He was instructed to ask for more food to which the officer replied "we'd all like more food" Dad replied "you look better fed that we are" I asked Dad his opinion of the officer "Funny little fellow" was the reply, I asked "did you find out who he was" "yes" he said "Gros Admiral Karl Donitz"
I did ask if they got more food, he said they didn't, but the French guards were moved and the rations increased as they'd been stealing most of it.
Back on topic

Wow, very interesting off-topic there Dave! Nothing wrong with being off-topic as far as I'm concerned: I know this is a railway modelling forum but for me it's also a place to chat about other things too.
To go off-topic about being off-topic ('Off-topic-ception', if you will) I've only ever once seen someone on their own thread cut short a general chat between other contributors by saying "anyway, can we get back to my modelling please" and I was a bit taken aback: it came across as so abrupt. Each to their own!

He certainly was quite an odd chap Doenitz, from what I've read. Mind you, it's difficult making accurate judgements of people you've never met, because the information you're given may be significantly incomplete, or very biased. Have you ever seen the 1970s TV series 'The World at War', the one narrated by Lawrence Olivier? There's some footage of Doenitz being interviewed in that, quite interesting.

I'm glad to hear that the French stepped up though... Was your dad in the Navy then - was it a Navy POW camp, or did they not organise them that way, by service?

Funnily enough, my dad spoke German too! He was quite fluent through most of my childhood and adolescence, up to about his mid 60s. His mother had studied German though I'm not sure to what level, but she lived there for a year in 1929, specifically to improve her German speaking. My dad picked up a love of the language and the culture (especially the music) from her and as a student, he travelled in the Continent over each long summer holiday, taking jobs in the parts of Holland and Switzerland near the German border where many people speak German. Then later, when I was a kid, he used to take me on holidays there to visit the poeple he'd worked with in those earlier times - he was very good at staying in touch with friends. I used to find it amazing as a small boy to hear him suddenly holding conversations in a language I didn't understand - it was like a whole undiscovered side to him.

Did you used to hear your dad speaking German too and did it impress you in the same sort of way?

 

[Dave Sutton]

Dad learnt some German at school in the 1930's, he also had a German pen pal that he went to visit in the late 30's but when he arrived his pen pal was taken away to attend a Hitler youth camp, so he spent the 10 days with the pen pals parents!
He was in a Merchant seaman camp, first in France, then in Germany (Marlag und Milag Nord). He'd been captured in the Atlantic by Scharnhorst and transferred to the Altmark and taken back to France to be 'detained' He had just finished his apprenticeship as an engineer and been pressed into service on a BP tanker.
The 4 years in the camps affected him deeply, he was 12 stone when captured and 7 stone when repatriated. He bided his time by taking classes taken by the senior engineers and took his exams which were sent from the UK and invigilated by the Germans, the papers were sent back to the UK for marking and after the war Dad became one of BP's youngest Chief engineers.

Growing up we never heard him speak any German, in fact we had no idea he had been held captive until we watched 'The World at War - Battle for the Atlantic' in the 70's and it showed a ship being sunk by U boat. As it went down my brother (IIRC) said "That sank fast" and Dad replied " mine did too" we sat staring at him wondering what he was on about. He rarely spoke about his time until his final months and although we knew he could understand several languages (he worked in Japan for 4 years and learnt some of that too) he didn't speak them at home.
But then he could be a grumpy old b*gger with some annoying children

 

[Chas Levin]

What a great story, and one with great tragedy too. I think anyone who hasn't been through that kind of thing can't begin to imagine the effects it can have.
It's interesting that 'The World At War' touched your dad's life too - it must have affected so many people in that sort of way. It was the first time a lot of the people interviewed for it had ever spoken about the events they'd been through and the series was also made at a time when a significant percentage of those involved were still able to give interviews.

 

[Richard Gawler]

I had a wonderful neighbour for many years. Quiet but always polite, he used to make nesting boxes and sell them alongside surplus plants from his garden. They were good boxes, I had blue tits in mine for three years. He used to stand outside his house wishing good morning to commuters on their way to work, and on their way home in the evening, and most walked on by in silence. In his eulogy, I discovered he had entered the Second World War near its end, aged 18, and during his service in Continental Europe he saw things which his commanding officers had not foreseen nor prepared him to see; and this had altered his personality. I still cannot properly comprehend these things; perhaps this is because I can turn my mind away while his military service obliged him to concentrate on the tasks in hand.

 

[Chas Levin]

Absolutely, Richard. Also, I've sometimes wondered too why it is that shell-shock and what we'd now refer to as PTSD is so often spoken of in connection with WWI, but far less often for WWII.
On the one hand, I'd have thought people must have seen things just as appalling in WWII as they did in WWI - perhaps far worse - but perhaps by the 1940s people were less easily shocked? Having stored communal memories of WWI, maybe mass mechanised warfare seemed less terrible a second time around?

Some poeple came through these things surprisingly well though; my wife's grandfather was gassed in WWI trenches after several years' infantry service, but lived to be 90-odd!

 

[Richard Gawler]

I think (whether by choice or otherwise) he did exactly the right thing because little or no useful discussion was possible. But after he died, the folk who had walked past him every day knew they were following the career of their choice because of him and his generation. He got his best possible message across more eloquently by leaving us than words could ever say.

 

[adrian]

I had a wonderful neighbour for many years. Quiet but always polite, he used to make nesting boxes and sell them alongside surplus plants from his garden.

I had a very similar experience when I started work in Preston. Our neighbour over the road was always around looking after people, never a bad word even for the "youths" over the road with all their cars and antics. Ended up helping him shift some heavy stuff one day and got chatting, he took an interest in my modelling and said he used to work on the railways. It was only 8-10 months later I found out his work on the railways was as p.o.w. on the Burma Railway. Very humbling and much respect, he didn't want to talk about it as it was in the past and he simply looked forward to the next day.

 

[Chas Levin]

I had a very similar experience when I started work in Preston. Our neighbour over the road was always around looking after people, never a bad word even for the "youths" over the road with all their cars and antics...

It's reassuring to know that some people did come through these experiences reasonably intact and able to carry on. The press and the writers of films, TV series and books are much more interested in portraying those who suffered dreadful after-effects, PTSD and so forth and whose suffering makes - they think - more engrossing reading or viewing. That can give a disproportionate impression of the numbers; hopefully it was the majority who were in fact able to put their lives back together.
It would be a great relief to think we were past the age of large scale mechanised slaughter, but evidently not all world leaders are yet fully in agreement on that one.
Maybe next week...
I do believe though that overall, the world is a better place and that we are progressing and evolving in positive directions as a species, in spite of the occasional backward step.
Time for another cup of tea, and the application of a second coat of PPP Weathered Teak to wagon body number two...

 

[Rob Pulham]

My father in law was a desert rat and spent four years of the war in North Africa with the fifth year working his way up Italy. While in Italy his company were billeted one night in a church and during the night he pop out to relieve himself. While he was out, the church was bombed and he was the only member of his company to survive. From that point on he knew that he would go home at the end of the hostilities and sure enough he did. Like most of those mentioned in previous posts he said very little about the war to his children aside from the incident with the church and a few other amusing anecdotes. One of which, was him riding a motorbike off the gangplank of a ship in South Africa while attempting to load it. He was told to take it onboard without ever having had experience of riding a motor bike before. His ultimate survival is more remarkable when you realise that he was a tank driver for most of the war. He did speak fondly of his Sherman tank, saying it was the best tank that he had driven.

He loved his time in Italy and he would have happily returned to Egypt but never made it. He passed away in 2001 aged 89.

 

[Chas Levin]

Your dad was clearly a very lucky man Rob - he dodged more than one bullet and tank driving was certainly no picnic.

Mind you, neither is driving a motorbike along a plank: they pay skilled acrobats to do that in circuses!

 

[Chas Levin]

Moving back in time over a hundred years, from some of the less happy events of the twentieth century to the pre-unification Kingdom of Württemberg and it's goods wagon stock, a quick question or three about vac pipes and what I take to be handbrake handles: in the crop of the instructions below, you can see that while they show all four sets of steps (part no. 5) and four brake shoes (part no. 6) going into each side, they only show one of what I take to be a handbrake handle (part no. 11) on one end of the wagon, but they also appear to show two vac pipes (part no. 12) fitted to one end (the corresponding pairs of holes are present beneath the buffer beams):



So my first question: am I correct that the tall handle is a handbrake and if so, would it really only have been fitted to one end or should there be one at each end?

Secondly, would it be usual on this type of wagon of this era (early to mid 19th century) to have two vac pipes fitted to each end?
I'm assuming they're not shown being fitted to the other end in this diagram because that end faces away from the viewer. If vac pipes were fitted at all, they'd surely be at both ends or they wouldn't work as part of the vac braking system throughout the train. For what it's worth, the boxtop photos do show the tall handle on only one end and two vac pipes on both ends, but I don't know how accurate that may have been.

Which leads me to my third question: would vac pipes have been later fittings on a KWStE wagon originally built unfitted, as they were in the UK? They were invented and introduced here in the UK in the mid 1860s: does anyone know if they were in use earlier on the Continent? As Emil Kessler's photo is also part of the boxtop art, I assume these wagons are intended to date from his era, which for KWStE purposes was basically 1842 to his death in 1867, so it would seem perfectly plausible to assume that these wagons originally pre-dated vac braking, but also that it could have been retro-fitted...?

Googling has so far not thrown up any conclusive evidence on these questions, but I'm going to go through some of the write-ups accompanying the beautiful models on Armin Berberich's site as linked by @michl080 upthread, in case that helps. And I think a book or two by Wolfgang Diener may be on the cards, as these are not the only German freight vehicles I plan to build...

So far, I've just fitted one of the tall winding handles to one end of each wagon, on the basis that I'm fairly safe doing so - I can always add a second if needed:



And if vac pipes were a later nineteenth century retrofit (as it seems to me they probably were) then I'll probably omit them and go for an earlier modelling period: any thoughts gratefully received, as ever!

 

[Rob R]

Chas,
Unlikely to be vac brake on the continent, twin line air brake is more likely though - smaller pipes, different fittings etc

 

[Chas Levin]

Chas,
Unlikely to be vac brake on the continent, twin line air brake is more likely though - smaller pipes, different fittings etc

Oops - thanks Rob, another new thing for me! It's now bedtime and Mrs Chas is reminding me that we have to go out early tomorrow, but clearly some further research is needed on continental twin line air brake systems...