Detailing coach rooves

[David B]

I am making a coach at the moment and the instructions leave a lot to be desired. It is a Blacksmith kit, perhaps dating from Mallard days (currently unavailable) and to be fair, the kit is many years old. I recall instructions being worse then than they are in general today.

However, my instructions say, 'drill roof for gas tops or oil pots'. . . . Thats it and there is a vague indication on an exploded diagram which also has several other unexplained markings which confuse rather than help.

The coach is GWR and dates from 1894, having been converted from a B&E broad gauge coach. I want to put oil pots on and looking at the photos I have (Russell's books), I can see there is something on the roof beside each pot.

Can anyone please help, expand on the sparse instructions and tell me what else there would have been on a coach roof at that time? I have got as far as one pot in the middle of each compartment on the centre line (there is no clerestory), but what else was up there? What were these things I can just make out on photos beside the oil pot and what did they look like? Was there any piping? I know there were pipes the length of the roof each side of gas lights, but was there anything on those that had oil lamps? Were there any other roof fitting likely to be seen? I have seen some trumpet like appendages which I presume were ventilators. Were these generally distributed or just over the loo (if there was one)?

David

[Russ Elliott]

For oil lighting, there were no pipes on the roof. There was often/usually a container thingy (with a lid) associated with each oilpot for holding part of the lamp when it was not being used (not sure why, but the lamps were lit and extinguised from outside I think, at least initially) - see:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index. ... -diag-t34/

It's possible that the container thingys were removed if/when the lamps were lit internally.

The containers were mounted either on the roof centreline or laterally on one side of the oilpot.

I think oilpots on GWR passenger stock were generally extinct by c 1900, although they survived on NPCS for a lot longer.

Trumpet ventilators were I think confined to NPCS. Passenger stock seemed not to have any roof-mounted ventilation in the oil-lighting era.

[allanferguson]

With oil lamps the actual lamp (the tallish thing with ventilation holes) could be removed when not required or for trimming / refilling. A cover to fill the empty hole was kept in an adjacent holder. At major stations special trolleys with lit lamps were pushed along the platform while a porter threw the lamps up to his colleague on the roof.

Waverley East 4100.jpg

Lamp Trolley.jpg

Allan F

[David B]

Russ & Allan,

Thank you very much. Your information is very helpful and interesting. I hadn't realized that oil lamps disappeared as early as that. I had in mind (with no particular evidence to call on) that they might have been seen on older stock up to the WW1 but I am clearly wrong and been misguided by the NPCS.

David

[martin goodall]

Sorry to be utterly pedantic (although this is surely the right forum for pedantry? ), but whilst horses have hooves, houses (and coaches) have ROOFS (not 'rooves').

While we are on the subject of 'fine-scale English', I have lost count of the number of times I have seen the past tense (and past participle) of the verb 'to lead' mis-spelt, even in broadsheet newspapers. (It is LED, not 'lead'.) The same applies to the verb 'to mislead' - the past tense and past participle are MISLED (pronounced 'mis-led', not 'mizzled'!)

I appreciate that this is somewhat off-thread, but if you believe in "getting it all right" then this must surely include the words we use to describe it.

[Mike Garwood]

whilst horses have hooves, houses (and coaches) have ROOFS (not 'rooves').

I had always wondered about that....

Mike

[David B]

Sorry to be utterly pedantic (although this is surely the right forum for pedantry? ), but whilst horses have hooves, houses (and coaches) have ROOFS (not 'rooves').

I think this thread has run it's course, so I don't mind, as the originator, deviating for this linguistic point.

I was taught that the plural of roof was rooves (or roofs) and that of the hoof, hoofs (or hooves). Both are correct and in the dictionary. I will allow that 'rooves' may be more archaic in it's use today, but it is not wrong.

I quote from Usage and Abusage, Partridge, Penguin, 1976:

'Hooves is allowed by the O.E.D., though it is less commonly used than hoofs; but good authors have preferred it. Rooves was also common in our early literature, and is (like loaf, loaves) consistent with the genius of our language; a writer that prefers it could not be condemned for error and hardly for eccentricity.'

Eric Partridge goes on to consider spoof - does it have a plural? Originally a game, it is no more capable of taking a plural than cricket or golf. However, were it to (as the 'abstract quality of a jocular description inspiring a trick or joke'), there would be nothing in spooves more ridiculous than in spoofs.

[John Bateson]

Obviously somebody knows his Onions ...
John

[martin goodall]

In answer to David, if Partridge allows these variants, then I would not seek to quarrel with that.

I don't have Partridge's Usage and Abusage, but out of curiosity I'll take a look at a couple of other works we have in the library.

My impression (as Partridge seems to indicate) is that 'rooves' is not really considered best practice nowadays. There are in fact quite a few spellings that are in this category, but which cannot be said to be absolutely wrong (e.g. connexion, or shew and shewn just to take two that occur to me immediately.)

Incidentally, the GWR favoured the "shewn" spelling, and I can recall photographing a notice by the exit to an ex-GWR station in the 1970s - "All season tickets must be shewn."

[billbedford]

A roove is a squarish washer used when clenching the nails on clinker built boats. I have yet to see any clinker built coach roofs.

[martin goodall]

I took the opportunity yesterday evening of looking up Fowler’s Modern English Usage. It very definitely gives the plural of ROOF as ‘ROOFS’. In a separate note on ‘FS/VES’ plural endings (and verb endings), Fowler says – “As the change [between these two alternatives] is far from regular, and sometimes in doubt, an alphabetical list of the chief words concerned follows.” In this list, the plural of HOOF is given as either HOOFS or HOOVES, but in the case of ROOF, he states – “No -VE endings”. This applies both to the verb ‘to roof’ (past participle ‘ROOFED’) and to the plural of the noun (‘ROOFS’).

I also had a glance in the Oxford Companion to the English Language. On the F/V alternation, the authors observe that so engrained is the tendency to F/V alternation that handkerchiefs and roofs are often pronounced with ‘V’ [although the unstated implication is that this usage is incorrect].

Admittedly my copy of Fowler is rather old (the 1950 reprint of the first (revised) edition), but my copy of the Companion is more recent (1996).

So what has this got to do with railway modelling? Not a lot, except perhaps as yet another example of the ferocious quest of the members of this august Society for accuracy (“getting it ALL right”!)

[David B]

What we also have, Martin, is a clear example of the way in which our rich language evolves with some evolutions being more acceptable than others. I think this case of rooves going out and roofs now being more common is an example of the more acceptable. Less acceptable to me is the current trend to use nouns as verbs, but that is a whole new topic.

David

[David Thorpe]

There's a discussion about it at http://michcommunication.wordpress.com/ ... -to-roofs/ (albeit from an Australian viewpoint). I can't remember when I had to write roof in the plural, but what I do know is that if I had to say it, I'd say rooves. Roofs just doesn't sound right....

DT

[Paul Townsend]

What we also have, Martin, is a clear example of the way in which our rich language evolves with some evolutions being more acceptable than others. I think this case of rooves going out and roofs now being more common is an example of the more acceptable.
David

So, as within Victorian era, at least on GWR, we had waggons and breakvans we now know that Clerestory carriages had rooves but Mk1 coaches have roofs.

And we are much better modellers for knowing that

[martin goodall]

So, as within Victorian era, at least on GWR, we had waggons and breakvans we now know that Clerestory carriages had rooves but Mk1 coaches have roofs.

And we are much better modellers for knowing that

I spy another can of worms just having been opened (!) - both the spelling and the pronunciation of CLERESTORY.

In this case, I am not prepared to stick my head above the parapet and say which is correct, but the origin of the word refers to the glazed wall above the nave arcade of a church rising above the height of the nave aisles, which lets light into the interior. This is, quite literally the 'clear' 'storey' (to use the modern spellings of the two components of the term). For that reason, I have always pronounced the word as "clear-storey", although I appreciate that the word is more frequently pronounced (even among architects and architectual historians) as "cler-es-try" or "cler-es-tory" .

As regards the spelling, this seems to have got stuck in the Middle Ages, and so the word retains its original spelling as CLERESTORY, but although the spelling CLERE doesn't cause me any problem (despite the modern spelling being "clear"), I cannot stop myself from correcting STORY to "storey" : thus CLERESTOREY, even though this would probably be regarded as the wrong spelling of the word.

(I say; this is far more fun than struggling with locomotive valve gear! )

[David B]

I spy another can of worms just having been opened (!) - both the spelling and the pronunciation of CLERESTORY.

I have looked in my Concise Oxford and it attributes the pronunciation (and word) 'clearstory' to the U.S.. The dictionary gives pronunciation (in the International Phonetic Alphabet which I cannot reproduce) based on 'received' English associated with Southern England. For clerestory it gives 4 syllables CLE - RES - TOR - EE (=ski), with a variation of the 'TOR' syllable as in either Ago or sAw.

I agree - this is much more fun that wrestling with locomotive valve gear! It also reminds me of Ronnie Barker's word 'pismonunciation'.

[David Thorpe]

A roove is a squarish washer used when clenching the nails on clinker built boats.

Only in Shetland I think, Bill!

DT

[allanferguson]

A roove is a squarish washer used when clenching the nails on clinker built boats.

Only in Shetland I think, Bill!

DT

When I last used such things over 40 years ago I talked about rooves, and Eric Hiscock in his seminal work "Cruising under Sail" (pub 1950) also referred to "rooves". But other authorities, not least the Admirality Manual of Seamanship, refer to "roves". I don't know anything about the Shetlands, though I've admired sixerns and fourerns racing off Lerwick, and they have clenched fastenings, I think.

Isn't Railway Modelling a wonderfully inclusive hobby!

Allan F

[dcockling]

The spelling mistake which I hate the most and which seems to becoming more and more commonly written, both on this forum and on RMWeb is 'definately' rather than 'definitely'.

Try entering the incorrect 'definately' in the search box on the forum index page and see how many hits you get, as well as the names of the culprits

Danny

[LesGros]

Danny wrote:

Try entering the incorrect 'definately' in the search box on the forum index page and see how many hits you get, as well as the names of the culprits

The result reads like a who's who of the Scalefour soc.

[DavidM]

... and while on the subject of modern English usage, how about "train station" instead of "railway station" - am I alone on this, or does it grate with others as well?

David

[chrisf]

... and while on the subject of modern English usage, how about "train station" instead of "railway station" - am I alone on this, or does it grate with others as well?

David

You are not alone! It makes my teeth itch, especially when uttered by someone on the BBC, which used to be seen as the guardian of spoken English. It sounds babyish and American - not that these are synonyms, he added hastily. Let all users be bombarded with complaints until they recoil.

Executive summary of the above: me too.

Chris

[grovenor-2685]

Yes, Train station grates with me, Railway station being so ingrained in the psyche. But there is logic to it, would you have the same reaction if Road station were substituted for Bus station?
Keith

[David B]

I have been watching Michael Portillo and enjoyed his programmes, though I wish he, like many others these days, wouldn't mix his tenses. The number of times he says, 'I am headed to . . .'.

[David Thorpe]

I think the one I dislike most is "off of" - e.g. (sorry, Stones) "Get off of my cloud". I believe it's normal American usage, however.

DT