West Scotland Group's Weathering wagons part 1

[Allan Goodwillie]

Hi Everyone.

One workbench covered in mainly hopper wagons for my Grayrigg layout - there was a regular trainload went up to Carlisle New Yard during construction - 2 WD locomotives assigned to the work during this time

I thought I would post something on this topic for those who might want to pick up a brush for the first time and have a go at developing their weathering skills. The West Group have been building mainly steel coal wagons for a colliery exchange yard on the Group layout. This is work mainly carried out at home, but it was thought it might be a good idea to put something together on the topic which could be referred to when working at home.

One of the M of S wagons built for use on the Group layout

Important Note

This PDF has been updated after a few suggestions by Noel. I might point out that the selection of mineral wagons shown may be incorrect in certain ways – quite a number of them were built using Airfix kits in the days when they were 2 /- each, so they date from long ago when I was still modelling in 00 and at school in the 1960’s they were converted to P4 not long after when I was experimenting myself to find something a bit more to scale.

In these far off days the wealth of information that is available today was not even envisaged. Most images and details were taken from personal observation of what was going around and a few photographs where wagons might just appear mainly in the back of shots. You will see from the discussion during the thread that once built I have not gone back and rebuilt the wagons mainly because there were rather a lot of them and life moves on and better kits etc. develop in time, but I have never been ruthless with anything I have built. If it can still turn a wheel that is fine by me.

The first of me discovering all these wagons were incorrect in their brake gear, was when my old friend Don Rowland published his first book on BR wagons. By that time they had been running for at least 15 years as P4 wagons and no-one had complained. They are still the same after all these years and truly historic and I am unlikely to change them now, so I apologise in advance. I have taken out the “schoolboy howler” – which literally was.

Although it may not be immediately obvious, not all the wagons are from exactly the same period, although they are all in BR livery, some numbers were also fictitious as well as such info was not so easy to find.

Noel elsewhere has been kind enough to point out any other discrepancies, so this comes with a warning that not all that you see is bang up to date, however the information was put together to show specifically painting techniques as there was nothing for people to go on in on the Forum – so plenty of caveats!

I have made up two versions of the "looking at wagon weathering" - one with a blank background so that if printed out it will use less ink. The other is for screen use and more book-like.

Weathering wagons part 1.pdf

Coloured background

(2.42 MiB) Downloaded 43 times

Weathering wagons part 1v2.pdf

White background

(2.29 MiB) Downloaded 41 times

Part2 - the actual "painting techniques" which this is all about is on a separate thread.

Allan

[Noel]

As a matter of history, the MoS in WW2 dealt with equipment for the armed forces; 16T minerals were the province of the Ministry of War Transport [MoWT], which became the the MoT after the war. In any event, when MoWT wagons transferred to BR they were given B numbers; the one in your post has a P number, which makes it a former Private Owner wagon, not one built for the MoWT. I see that the 'cupboard door' mineral in your pdf also has a P number, but this, so far as I know, was impossible, as the prototypes were built specifically for use in France, whence the SNCF returned most them as soon as it possibly could [but after 1948] so the refurbished returnees all acquired B numbers.

I note that this wagon has brakes that won't work, a problem that many [all?] of those in the pdf also suffer from [Airfix managed to get the brakes totally wrong in their kit], but that doesn't explain this one, as it's Parkside... The most interesting, though, is the VB one with the bottom door marking. Apart from the inaccurate Airfix brake gear and absence of a vacuum cylinder, VB and bottom doors are mechanically incompatible, so it's a combination which never existed. The brake gear on the ex-GER wagon defies all rational explanation, but single-sided brakes were illegal from well before nationalisation [why would you have a brake lever not connected to any brake shoe?], so BR would have scrapped it on sight, not repainted it, I think.

There seems to be a fundamental confusion about period in your examples. The heavily rusted vehicles would have been unlikely to get into quite so poor a state in BR ownership until well into the 1960s [BR's standard of maintenance steadily declined over time] by which time the ex-GER wagon and probably the NE 13T open would have gone, and the earlier steel vehicles would have been scrapped or rebodied, such rebodies in almost all cases having no bottom doors. The K and L suffixes did not appear until sometime after 1963, so the 24.5 tonner is not as built but has been repainted at least once. Its brakes also won't work incidentally.

The 'accident' damage along the bottom of the whole side on B74150 isn't, as such extensive damage would inevitably have involved considerable damage to the side pillars as well, leading to rebodying or scrapping. It is most likely to be replating due to rotting of the lower part of the side sheets, carried out by BR from the late 1950s, until the programme was abolished a few years later in favour of complete rebodying. It normally involved both sides, the fixed end and the floor as all would be equally affected; bottom doors were not normally replaced. BR's expectation was that mineral wagon bodies would need major repair or replacement by about 15 years after building, owing to rotting caused by the acidic nature of most coal when wet.

[David Knight]

Inspiring stuff this (both parts 1&2), thank you. Makes me want to go and get some wagons nice and grotty.

Cheers,

David

[Allan Goodwillie]

Thanks David,

that is very kind after Noel's submission made me feel as if perhaps I should not have made my submission - I just thought it might be useful, although he is correct in the things that are wrong about the models and as you will read I will try to correct the examples and update the PDF when I get time. I look forward to reading about Noel's techniques for weathering as we can all learn from one another.

Allan

[Allan Goodwillie]

Hi Noel,

thanks for your timely submission.

I have added a bit here and there to warn that not all examples of stock are meant to be on the go at the same time, some are from my Dubbieside layout and built over 40 years ago now and the intention of that layout originally was to show mid to late fifties. Other items are for a post 60's layout I have and so on. Yes there are a few howlers which I admit to and have put a covering statement in saying so. The worst being the fitted mineral built before I had even started making any P4 models in earnest, we are talking over 50 years ago now. It was just sheer ignorance I am afraid. It would be about 15 years later that my old friend Don Rowland published his wonderful book. His latest book is also an absolute gem and well worth getting. I have known since about that time that the minerals which I had built were all wrong, but I had loads of them and if you rebuild one then you also have to rebuild all and I am not sure I have enough time left in life, living on borrowed time as it is!

The ex-GER wagon was one found in the scrap at Inverkeithing around 1960 and so unusual, but my notes did not give me enough info at the time to get the brake gear right. Incidentally the only buffers I could get hold of at the time were ex-LNER types, so also wrong for the wagon. The original had very little paint at all and I made my model from a Westy kit - amongst the very first plastic kits to come out - very modified from my few measurements and sketches. I know the kit cost less than a pound.

However I would like to thank you for the information on the MoS wagons and the number was the one which latterly came along with the kit - a P number, but I have looked the info up in Don's book and you are right, since that has been more recently built I will do the corrections- must go and look again at the under-gear as I built it according to the kit, and Richard seldom managed to get these things wrong. Curious.

I must admit when you have more than 400 wagons from a range of periods some built up to 50 plus years ago, there is a tendency not to want to go back to previous models and update. I was over a while ago to see Chris Pendlenton's present layout and he told me he was fitting sprung buffers to everything as he thought that it helped in the running - a mammoth task and I thought about my own collection of stock and made a mental calculation how long it would take me to update in this way and add three links and replace brake gear and renumber fictitious numbers put on before the days when such information was at your fingertips it was mind boggling! I still, like most people, want to build a few engines yet and would far prefer to be running trains rather than bringing them up to date to be honest. I am sure you understand.

As you age you begin to realise that your older models may look wrong simply due to lack of information at the time of building, but should you go back and rework them all? Models have a history of their own and maybe that should be respected and understood. I have individual models that have been given to me over the years by kind folks and would not dream of having them updated as they have both historic value as well as sentimental value.
It would be like me going back to a painting I did when 12 years old and correcting any mistakes in the perspective I managed to get wrong. I am just so grateful they were held on to and not just thrown away as it is a record in some ways of a small part of my life. How I wish I had taken more photographs when I was younger, or had an eye for wagons like Don, but we are what we are Noel, fellow travellers who appreciate both similar and different things in life.

In the days of my youth I enjoyed reading about Peter Denny's fine EM gauge layout as many of us did, in recent years at least part of it was out on the circuit for a few shows and how lovely it was to see it in its original condition - staggeringly ahead of its time along with a few other great modellers of the time. In today's climate now quite dated, but it was still a joy to see it, tight curves and all! Dubbieside is coming up to 50 years as an exhibiting layout and possibly the oldest on the circuit, but still looks OK in today's company. I hope to get it to a show on its fiftieth despite the present crisis. The last show it was at was Newcastle last year. All still the original track, and can be shown with the original stock, original wiring, H&M point motors etc. Only when something has been damaged have I replaced parts or sometimes changed the layout, just for one show in some way. It had a new trial backscene on it at Newcastle for instance, shown here as we were not exhibiting it with the back mainline circuit attached.

The photograph shows my good friend Alasdair Taylor's two J37's operating just for that show. All my friends like to come along when we are out and of course it is all part of it to be able to run guest engines. In its bigger version the main line, which runs along the back instead of the backscene was built so that friends could come along to a show and let their own trains run -all good fun.

However the new layout I am building for exhibitions will be up to date and a bit more advanced Noel so I hope you approve when the time comes. You will be most welcome to come and operate if we are working in your part of the woods.

Allan

[Philip Hall]

Allan,

I do agree about older models. During the lockdown I looked out quite a few older models; some I went to town on (like the Mink D in Scalefour News recently) and others just made a bit more respectable, however the fancy took me. I will need a fair few wagons for the new layout and simply do not have the time nor the inclination to bring everything up just so. I have too much to do to be correct in everything.

A small layout with some highly detailed stock is very nice, but I want to run some decent length trains on about 50 feet of visible main line. It’s taken far too long already. Something has to give!

Philip

[Allan Goodwillie]

Hi Philip,

you and me both. One of my great friends sadly no longer with us Mike Gilgannon, never did get his main line layout finished despite building all his life. He was the first person anywhere in the country to have a working main line which performed beautifully from the start and everything he put his hand to was top notch. However, progress was very slow and the layout had to be dismantled for about 20 years so that his daughter could have her own room and only when she moved on could his layout be re-set and construction continue, in the meantime he continued to build stock, all of a very high quality. It was not all scratch built by any mean, so I do not want to give that impression, but year after year he brought trophies home from the Glasgow Show (In the days when that actually meant something) and still has a very high reputation amongst the modellers up here.

By the time he was able to carry on he probably had under ten locomotives and an express based on the West Coast Corridor set. A local passenger set and enough goods stock to make up two or three descent main line goods trains. When he died the layout had some superb buildings modelled, some including a beautiful signal box incomplete, and no scenery worked up at all. I remember asking him if he wanted help to scenic the layout and I would have been more than happy to have helped here as he was my friend, but he wanted to make it all his own work, which was a perfectly honourable position to take. Mike only rarely built anything for other people although I know of one project in O gauge he was asked to do. He did towards the end of his life start to add chips to his engines as there was pressure to "modernise", but alas he died prematurely and the great opus was never finished.

Like your good self Philip I am concentrating more on my own thing, these days, while I can still enjoy it, although in my own small way I still want to encourage others to find enjoyment in the hobby and share the pleasures, when we can and however we can, in time together. As you and I did when working on the Burntisland photographs for Scalefourum the other year. It was very enjoyable sharing the experience with you and it allowed us both to get to know one another better and understand that we shared many views in life.

We are not here to build reputations, or if we are then we delude ourselves, there are far more important things in life, it is a hobby and something to be enjoyed and seen with that sort of perspective.

I look very much forward to seeing your layout develop Philip - you have far more scope than I have these days to be able to do something really good and hopefully bring you and your friends some excellent shared times. I am getting back to re-establishing Grayrigg as a working layout after disaster struck the other winter,I have started early today to get emails etc. out the way then take my wife to hospital for a pre-check, so life goes on, and later in the day I am going to start relaying some of the cork on to the hidden down yard area and re-instating track. I have given myself 6 weeks to get the entire layout re-laid. Then a new door has to be fitted to the garage before I do any further work on the electrical side to get it all back working. So no workbench stuff on the new layout, that will not be until after the New Year, if then. I might just get some locos built for Grayrigg instead, providing we all stay well.

Thanks for your input as always, stay well and keep in touch Philip.

Allan

[Terry Bendall]

A very useful resource Allan and part 2 as well. Thank you for posting them. Like Philip I have wagons that I have built in the past that need re-visiting. Most of us I think try to get better as we do more modelling and what we may have accepted 10 or 20 years ago may not pass muster now.
The only way to learn is to try and do something, have some success, make some mistakes, learn from those mistakes and hopefully gradually get better. I am reasonably content with the standard of weathering that I do on wagons these days but there will be some steel bodied mineral wagons to do in the future which will be more of a challenge.

There may well be some issues with the brake gear and other things on some of the examples and some people may want to do something about that but since the objective was to show weathering techniques I can live with that. Given the many thousands of wagons that were once in existence it is highly likely that there would have been some that did not comply with the "rules". There may even be pictures to prove it.

Terry Bendall

[David Thorpe]

I too have got wagons that I've built in the past and have subsequently given P4 wheelsets. They may not be up to the meticulous standards some people seem to expect today, but I've no intention of revisiting them - they're the past and I've more than enough to do concentrating on the present and future. As it is these wagons sit on my layout and I've no idea if their brake gear is correct or not, or even what precise prototype they may represent, but from where I view them I can't really see much detail in the weathered underframes and without considerable research wouldn't know what to look for anyway, so as long as they run properly and are not clearly out of period I'm usually happy enough. I know, it's not even trying to get it all right, but life's too short, especially at my age.

DT

[Noel]

Hi, Allan. I'm well behind you, with only about 110 wagons and NPCCS currently [still building], but have chosen to stick to one period only, circa 1959, so can specialise a little more! I started over 50 years ago in OO, switching to P4 a few years later and have been buying wagon books [and others] ever since. About 20+ years ago I thought that the earlier wagons didn't really stand comparison with the later ones, so scrapped a lot and refurbished and repainted the rest. Since then I've stuck with a fairly basic but hopefully consistent standard, some compensation, odd springs now appearing, mostly kits but some modern r-t-r, but very little etched brass. The objective is simplicity of building [I'm a very slow worker] and consistency of standard, and creating an impression of how the railway I knew in the early 1960s worked; I am much in favour of Iain Rice's two foot [or is it three foot?] rule.

I look forward to reading about Noel's techniques for weathering as we can all learn from one another.

Nothing particularly original, but I'll post a couple of photos with comments later; I don't want to hijack your thread though.

There may well be some issues with the brake gear and other things on some of the examples and some people may want to do something about that but since the objective was to show weathering techniques I can live with that. Given the many thousands of wagons that were once in existence it is highly likely that there would have been some that did not comply with the "rules". There may even be pictures to prove it.

I'm sure there were wagons which broke the railway rules on occasion, but it helps to know what the rules are, in my view. The laws of physics are another matter. You would take great care, no doubt, to ensure that your locos are as accurate as possible, and yet you seem to imply that a major inaccuracy in a fairly visible part of a wagon, which would make the prototype inoperable, is of no particular significance. I acknowledge that the post was specifically about weathering, but no-one knows who is reading this thread now, or may do so later. We all know about our prototype period [don't we?], but there is evidence elsewhere, even on this Forum, that this is not true of everyone. If you know there is something wrong in the examples you show, albeit not related to the purpose of the post, is it not a good idea to include a health warning for those who don't know and might assume what they see is OK, especially since it is presented by someone of Allan's experience?

[Allan Goodwillie]

Hi Noel,

I see you are clearly of the opinion that we must in all things get it right so will for the time being bow to your request and try to find time to either upgrade the models or find similar examples of technique used on newer wagons more up to the present climate. This may take some time, however, but might I make a request Noel that you have a look through your own stock and see if you can come up with some good photographic samples from your own collection of painted and weathered wagons that might match those you feel are below par and I would be happy to do the work in replacing them in the PDF and would also be happy to issue them as a joint venture appreciating your interest in getting it all right. In the meantime I will take down the PDF's as they stand. Feel free to contact me behind the scenes by email and see if we can set this up properly to the advantage of all.

As there are now over 50 downloads of each taken so far I must apologise to those who have downloaded already and will try within a reasonable period to make improvements. Some will see this as a step in the right direction, I know, and others will see it as retrograde, for those in the latter camp I am sure you will understand this poem taken from "Time Traveller".

These sailor’s shoes


These sailor’s shoes are battered old wrecks
so many hours they’ve spent on decks

explored the islands, walked the shores
each pebbled beach from Isla to Islay

on island strands where the cuckoo sang
and Rhum’s stags bellowed on mountain top

they’ve taken me through rough waters
to shadowed inlets peaceful and sublime

sea eagles fishing and dolphins display
a fulmar’s company spent one day

my good friends laugh at my old shoes
drenched many times, discoloured by the sun

like the lines on my face
i love them just the same

as beaches wear in every tide
they’re drenched in experience
and won’t be thrown away..

and yes for the pedantic, it does finish with a double full stop.
Allan

[Philip Hall]

I think your original posts should stand, Allan. You have clearly gone to a lot of trouble to put this together (as with your other threads) and enough clarifying comments have been made for folk to know where you are with these older models. To remove such a resource is in my view a retrograde step, and you should not feel your efforts are not good enough. Time has proved otherwise on this forum as it has elsewhere.

Maybe I will show something of the layout when it gets anywhere. I am very lucky in having a purpose built railway room some 21ft x 20ft with baseboards already built all the way around. It’s never going anywhere because my days of lugging half the local timber yard around for a weekend are long gone. Mind you, they might well be gone for everyone for a fair old while anyway in the current circumstances. It’s very solid and ideal for P4. Very far from state of the art, it’s very old fashioned in its ideas (no DCC for a start!) but it is mostly intended to be reliable and smooth running. It’s based on Okehampton in Devon, around the mid 1950s. However, I am not going to stick slavishly and accurately to the prototype. There isn’t the space and I don’t have the time. And thanks to the likes of Hornby and Bachmann I stand a sporting chance of getting a working layout in a reasonable time. If I tried to upgrade everything to a better standard or to remove all the anomalies I wouldn’t have a hope, so I’m determined not to try. And that doesn’t make me a less than good modeller, just realistic. I am particularly nuts about running quality and I am again fortunate that I have a small lathe and can, where necessary, improve on the mechanical stuff so that it does run that way.

There are lots of ways to make models and no one way (including mine) is necessarily the right way. Some time in the future, when the thing is running, and when we are allowed out more freely you will have to make a trip south and let some of your engines rip around a different kind of large circuit to your own. Complete with a couple of trains trundling around in the background with quite a few things wrong with them. And the good stuff in front!

Philip

[David Thorpe]

Well said Philip. Totally agree.

DT

[Noel]

Allan, I have not requested that you do anything, nor am I now. I have suggested that, to be fair to future readers as much as anything else, that it may be misleading if they are not warned not to use the illustrations for any other purpose than that for which they have been provided.

Both painted light grey, and then dry brushed with successively darker greys, the one on the left [which is based on a colour picture of an actual wagon] with a different final colour to the one on the right. All paints were Humbrol. Both have wooden chassis, so these and the ironwork were painted dark grey to suggest degraded black in keeping with the body condition. The white line was painted with a fine brush, and then some of the colour removed with a larger brush which was dampened with white spirit and used to remove some of the colour, cleaned, and repeated as necessary to get the effect I wanted. In both cases the rust was bauxite paint applied to areas which had previously been dampened with white spirit so that the paint ran, and was then partially removed with a damp brush.

The prototypes of these two were built in 1951 and 1950 respectively, so would both have been repainted by 1959, but probably only two or three years before, so have been, in one case, lightly dry brushed with bauxite to suggest incipient rusting. The other has been more heavily dry brushed with a reddish-brown to suggest older rust, in some areas smudged with a damp brush, and a little bauxite applied over white spirit to suggest more recent damage. The chassis are lightly dry brushed with dark earth.

Sorry about the shiny wheels. The light was directly behind the camera; they don't show up like that normally

[Allan Goodwillie]

Hi Noel,

I appreciate the images that you have kindly put up here, very nice examples indeed with a couple of other approaches others may try which is good. You will find that I have updated the PDF's and also put in some notes as to what we have been discussing and also put the same notes above the PDF's so no one is in any doubt when they download or later, when looking at the examples.

I was sorry to hear that you had done away with some of your wagons as that all represents modelling time long gone. When I had the museum I was short of wagons to fill some of the exchange sidings and I remember Don Rowland stepping in and selling me 30 wagons at £5 each - all EM! They sat in the sidings for a few weeks before I put P4 wheels on them. They looked just the part and my compensated stock did the running every day.

Sometimes the NE boys used to come up from Newcastle just to enjoy the layout and have a day out with me in sunny Melrose. I used to sell Gibson wheels for P4/S4 and one time they were desperate to get some wheels - so I took them off Don's wagons and ordered some new ones from Alan Gibson which arrived 2 days later and fitted them again to the wagons.I still have these wagons in my collection now compensated of course.

I hope you are satisfied that I have made enough effort to warn of the limitations of what folks are looking at.

All the best and feel free to post some other examples Noel it may encourage others to put a few up here to add to the variations in painting and techniques people use.

Thank you
Allan

[Allan Goodwillie]

Hi Philip and David,

as you can see I have re-instated the PDF's this evening with a page covering various caveats and produced plain background versions of both so that people , if they wish, can print them out with less ink being used. Thank you Philip for the open invitation for when we get back on our feet as it were - it might be some time. you would also be very welcome up here if on a visit.

I have stopped working on my new layout and reorganised what I plan to do over the next six months. I hope to get Grayrigg rebuilt and with some improvements, maybe even get a few engines built- a Jubilee, a Patriot and a Britannia would be a good start as well as an 8F and at least one of the bankers.

Spent today stripping boards and hope to get some cork down tomorrow.

Hope everyone is happy in the end with the way this has turned out, this "Getting it all right" thing really does get in the way at times, but I do not want it to get in the way of anyone posting something interesting in the way of some nicely weathered wagons and giving their methods of working. Even if, like my ancient ones they are not quite up to today's standard of detail, that really does not matter too much as long as the weathering is interesting.

Allan

[Noel]

I was sorry to hear that you had done away with some of your wagons as that all represents modelling time long gone.

Different people make different choices; modelling time is never truly wasted as skills and knowledge take time, and most importantly, practice to develop, as you know. So far as the wagons were concerned, some were OO and simply could not be converted to P4 without major surgery, with others I had become unhappy about their accuracy or the standards I was capable of when I built them, and felt it was easier and quicker to build a replacement rather than try to convert or upgrade the original. I did salvage as much as I could; as well as reusable parts, the Airfix welded 16T mineral in my photograph was built in OO pretty much as the kit came [apart from sorting out the brake gear ] and was altered, repainted and converted to P4 sixteen years ago, along with others. There are still things about it that I would do differently now, but I'm not going to do anything about them because of the law of diminishing returns; there are more interesting things to do.

I should have thanked you earlier for the offer to operate on the new layout, which got overlooked in dealing with other matters, for which I apologise. I live in south west England, so I don't know if the opportunity to take up the offer will ever arise.

[Allan Goodwillie]

Thanks Noel,

Diminishing returns - this becomes stronger as you get older I am afraid, but I do understand.

We do come down to the Wells Show with layouts and when things improve I am hoping to do so again, so it may yet be possible before I am too old.

Allan

[Tony Wilkins]

Hi Allan.

The Airfix mineral wagon brake gear problem has caught many people out, me included. The problem was supplying two sets of brake gear designed for use on the reversing side as on the single sided diagram 108 variant. So no use for either side brakes, which the floor moulding would take. In any case, the brake moulding is too short and leaves a large gap between the shoes and the wheel rims. I have heavily modified the parts on my mineral wagons to try to make better quality pigs ear out of it.
Like you, the general lack of prototype information on wagons especially back in the 1960s inevitably led to errors. Even copying prototype wagons in the 1970s was not foolproof. Among other errors, I fell foul of the retrospective fitting of mineral wagons with vacuum brakes and built several that would have been unfitted in the mid 60s. Some of these I have modified back to unfitted, but not all as yet.
I also believe one has to set a standard to work to and try to be consistent. It is all very well producing a limited number of masterpieces, but I would much rather aim to achieve a consistent, if lower, overall standard. The shear quantity of wagons and rolling stock required for my project leaves little option if I am going to stand a realistic chance of achieving my goal of having a working layout and some time to enjoy it.
Regards
Tony.

[Noel]

Even copying prototype wagons in the 1970s was not foolproof.

I had a problem with this as well when I started to pay more attention to 16T minerals. In my case though it was not realising that I was looking at 1960s rebodied examples, rather than originals; the latter had bodies all the same way round on the chassis as built, the former did not, but it was some time before I found that out [which has something to do with why some models got weeded out].

I also believe one has to set a standard to work to and try to be consistent. It is all very well producing a limited number of masterpieces, but I would much rather aim to achieve a consistent, if lower, overall standard.

[Allan Goodwillie]

Hi Chaps,

I pretty much agree with what both of you are saying and I am sure that a good many people will be looking again at their rakes of wagons, spotting things and going "Oh No!", but not to worry there are few thought police around that can afford to tell you to "get it right" and not be afraid of anyone looking at the policeman's own stock and spotting a few dodgy things. They tend to be the one's who will never finish a layout of their own or only build stuff for exhibiting and competition. "Getting it all right", perhaps is OK for that sort of situation.

To be honest, trying to get it right when looking at things more than a hundred years ago is even more of a minefield. Difficult to get good photographs, despite all the information researched by such groups as the NB Study Group.

My model of the yard at Wemyss is just a small snippet of a larger scene, but few photographs exist- I probably have copies of most of the existing ones and yet every photograph tells me something new. My model of Grayrigg is similar - we have used Ivo Peters lovely book Steam in the North West as it shows three consecutive years worth of photographs taken of the same closed station location and again you would be amazed at the major changes taking place within that period in an out of the way closed country station. By the way anyone have a photograph of the rear of the station building showing the back door? I still have not found out after about twenty years of looking.

Track was changing over to flat bottom, one side of the railway only to begin with. The introduction of more diesel traction led to the replacement and re-siting of signals. A platform was taken out, the introduction of more BR Britannia locomotives the loss of other ex-LMS types, the introduction of changes to schedules all brought visible changes as well as the gradual changeover from Red to Blue coaching stock, etc. -it goes on and on.

Working on Burntisland can you imagine! I could make up a list as long as my arm of the things we thought we had managed to get right at the beginning and then had to revise as our knowledge grew! I have a feeling that anyone building anything of any size must find this to be the case. There may not be many who would own up to their models being incorrect given the Society Motto, a bit like "Forward" for the LNER giving some general hint of direction, clearly nothing on the LNER ever was seen to go "backward". Thanks both and the others who have openly commented about this and the fact that not all of your models are quite correct, they just show how far you have developed and there is absolutely no disgrace in that, in fact isn't that great.

Thinking about it , keeping to a certain level is less to do with improvement, but making sure that the minimum is to a good standard, leaving room for those things you will create that are exceptional and will flourish in the general scene you are creating. It will be the exceptional things that people will remember about your models and if the overall scene is of a good standard then the really stand-out items will as they do in real life.

Allan