Rivermead Central

[40057]

Construction is underway of the ‘stone work’ in which the Benham’s office building date-stone will sit:



The curved ‘stones’ on either side (one attached in the photo) are short sections of pine moulding sold by B&Q for use in panelling, window frames etc. The whole structure will sit centrally on top of the coping at the front of the Benham’s office building.

 

[Allen M]

My method of dating a factory building

Hi all
If you would like to see the building for 'real' (post 239) it is in Kidderminster. It is located in Churchfields at the 'Y' shaped junction where it leaves the A456 Ringroad. Look from the traffic island where it cross Blackwell Street.
Was part of Tomkinsons carpet factory, now flats. The rest of the area has been re-developed for housing.

The map is a bit out of date but the arial & street views are as now

Regards

 

[John R Smith]

I was watching earlier the very excellent short film ‘Train Time’ (British Transport Films, 1952). This delivery lorry appeared in one short sequence:

I'm a bit late replying to this, but just for interest - this is a Cornish lorry (RL registration), and the load looks like vegetables in wooden crates. If so, it is probably broccoli and we are somewhere on the Helston branch line, which produced a great deal of this traffic. Cattle wagons were typically used and we can see one just behind the lorry.

John

 

[40057]

I'm a bit late replying to this, but just for interest - this is a Cornish lorry (RL registration), and the load looks like vegetables in wooden crates. If so, it is probably broccoli and we are somewhere on the Helston branch line, which produced a great deal of this traffic. Cattle wagons were typically used and we can see one just behind the lorry.

John

Thank you.

Exactly as you say, one story line in the film is a surge in broccoli traffic and the extras run to cope with it. It is indeed on the Helston branch.

 

[40057]

Tuesday:



Yesterday:



Today:



The date stone for the Benham’s office building is now ready for mounting on the coping. It will get another coat of ‘weathered concrete’ paint after it is fixed in place and general weathering along with the rest of the building.

 

[40057]

I always paint the lengths of strip wood I use to make coping before attaching the coping to the building. If possible, I use a single length for each building so the size is exactly uniform. A couple of days ago, I glued the short lengths of coping to the north- and south-facing elevations of the Benham’s office building. This has enabled me to get the precise length required for the coping on the main, east-facing, elevation. I cut that piece this morning, measured to get the centre and glued the date-stone assembly to the coping:



When the glue is thoroughly dry, I will put a couple of small countersunk wood screws through from the underside of the coping to make sure the date-stone is held securely. Then fasten the coping to the building. Meantime, this is the coping with the date-stone just resting on the top of the wall, to see how it will look:



I think the style is right for the middle of the Art Nouveau period.

 

[40057]

Some progress, at last, with the rebuilt Royal Scot. I mentioned in my post #215 that I needed to swap the motor and undertake a repair on the tender. I have started with the tender.

Although the tender is generally in very good condition, at some point the division plate behind the coal space had been hit hard. The division plate had been bent and pushed forward and the soldered joint along the base had broken and split:





The task was to get the division plate back to vertical and remove the bend in it — but without losing any more paint and, critically, without breaking the soldered joints fixing the division plate to the tender sides. I got so far with using my fingers but eventually realised I couldn’t apply pressure at the critical point because the water pick-up dome was in the way. I ended up buying some specialist jewellers’ pliers designed for bending bracelets and these did the job. The division plate is now straight and vertical and looks much better:







I’m relieved to have got this done as I was concerned about breaking the remaining soldered joints holding the division plate in place. I have run some epoxy into the gap under the base of the division plate where the soldered joint had broken. This shows up as a shiny line in the above photos. I will cover the line of glue with black paint and the repair will be invisible and plenty strong enough for normal use.

Bassett-Lowke’s model of a 4000 gallon Stanier tender was originally produced in the mid-1930s to go with the model of 6201, ‘Princess Elizabeth’. The embossed beading on the sides and division plates show that these parts at least were made using press tools. The same Stanier pattern tender model was then used for the Black 5s and Jubilees made at Northampton before WW2. It replaced the original Fowler type tender sold with the Royal Scot models when the Royal Scots were upgraded from tab-and-slot to soldered construction and fitted with smoke deflectors. Finally, just before WW2, the same Stanier tender was used to go with the ‘Duchess of Montrose’ — though this was not the correct type of tender for the Duchess. I guess, commercially, the existing Stanier tender model was considered close enough and using it kept costs down. After WW2, the Stanier tender was used only for the Royal Scot and Duchess models.

Here is a better view of 46100’s tender:



Very nicely hand painted — but made more realistic by a sheen of oil and dirt accumulated over 70 years.

 

[40057]

Sunday morning. I shall do some work on the Benham’s office building later. Meantime, a cup of coffee and a chance to reflect on Bassett-Lowke’s model of the Royal Scot.

The rebuilt engine I am working on was the last version of a model made, on-and-off, over a period of about 27 years.

From time to time, some manufacturer or other offers a new model that is a game-changer. It greatly influences — into the future — how models work, or are made, or customer expectations. In recent times, the first British-outline ready-to-run 00 model(s) made by Airfix and Mainline in the 1970s would be an obvious example. Before that, Triang’s Princess in the 1950s, which was crude but 2-rail and plastic, and ultimately triumphed over the 3-rail, superior, metal models made by Meccano Ltd.

I would argue that when introduced in 1929, the Bassett-Lowke 0 gauge Royal Scot was a similarly important milestone in the development of mass-market, realistic, model railways. First, in line with developments on the real railways, it was much larger than previous models. To run it, curves of 3’-radius or larger were required — which changed how and where modeller’s built their railways. The real loco was much more powerful than its predecessors and so was Bassett-Lowke’s model. New motors were designed to achieve this. I don’t have personal experience of the electric mechanism but the 6-coupled clockwork motor was an outstanding creation. It set new standards and was used in all large-size Bassett-Lowke 0 gauge clockwork locomotives until production ceased in the 1950s. As made in 1929, the Bassett-Lowke Royal Scot was built of lithographed tinplate sheets assembled using the tab-and-slot method. This type of construction was usual for toy trains at the cheaper end of the spectrum — but here it was being used for a large and complex scale model. Not only did Bassett-Lowke’s Royal Scot look like the real engine, the construction method chosen meant it was offered at a very affordable price. From the number around today, it must have sold well. An absolute first for the Bassett-Lowke Royal Scot was the accurate representation of the outside valve gear in a mass-produced model. Sure, the need to represent valve gear was made necessary by changes to locomotive design on the real railways but, prior to 1929, manufacturers had either chosen prototypes with inside valve gear, or simplified the valve gear or just omitted it completely. As with the new motors, the valve gear and cylinders designed for the Royal Scot were then used in numerous different models over the next thirty years.

The pride Bassett-Lowke felt in their new model comes through in the catalogue description:



To put the price into context, the contemporary Bassett-Lowke model of a J39 0-6-0 was offered at £4 10/-. The J39 was of soldered and hand-painted construction. The J39 originally had a Bing-made mechanism but the model was later altered so the clockwork motor made for the Royal Scot could be used in it.

Nowadays, a large proportion of model railways aim to represent some period in the past. It wasn’t like that in the 1920s and ‘30s. Manufacturer’s concentrated exclusively on models of current equipment, and especially on the latest locomotives. For the Bassett-Lowke Royal Scot model, it was out-of-date by 1931 as smoke deflectors were fitted to the real locomotives. The model, in its original form, was dropped from the catalogue after only a few years. It was then reintroduced c.1937 updated with smoke deflectors and a Stanier tender. The original tab-and-slot construction locomotive body was still used but with the joints now also soldered. The smoke deflectors and other additional detail such as lamp-brackets were attached with solder. The finish was, necessarily, now painted. After WW2, the Royal Scot reappeared in the catalogue in LMS black livery:



History then repeated itself as this version of the model also became out-of-date as the real locomotives were rebuilt. The black-liveried models were the last original Royal Scots offered, c.1952.

In 1954, the Royal Scot was back in the catalogue again, but rebuilt with a taper boiler and in BR livery. Only the cab, the lower part of the locomotive body, the bogie and the motor were now the same parts as were used in the models made in 1929.