Last night I watched the Railway Roundabout DVD for 1959 from the NRM. There is a short section on the "high tech" Thornaby Teeside motive power steam depot (51L I think) built by BR and opened shortly before this program was filmed. There is some impressive reinforced concrete structures shown but as the camera man is fairly close it is not clear if this is the same type of coaling tower. Was Thornaby the last large steam depot to be built by BR?
Alan
But which will be better, the Hornby or the Bachmann model? There's only one way to find out....
Fred X
Well the Hornby coaling tower has a RRP of £49 and their models are usually over overpriced compared to Bachmann's.
Fred X
One of the reasons, usually ignored, that triggered to rush to diesel was that Welsh steaming coal, of the right grade, in sufficient quantities and at the right price was likely to be a problem. I'm well aware that Wales had/has plenty of coal still un-mined, but not the right stuff. I was told this by a Coal Board chemist a few years back - a very credible source, he could quote all the relevant data.
Cheers Richard
For goodness sake dont introduce facts into an emotional attatck :-)
Riddles etc also put a lot of effort into tests for steaming with poorer quality coals, am sure they also looked at which locos would suffer and which could cope.
Cheers, Simon
Looks good to me
Chris
"Fred X" wrote
Having seen pictures of both, I know which I prefer - by a mile!
John.
From: "dan" Subject: Re: Coaling tower
No, sorry but if you email me off the 53amodels.co.uk website I'll send you an image.
John.
Hi John, are the images you have any different than those below from the Bachmann website.
"Hozz" wrote
I would hope so, dan asked for pictures of the HORNBY coaling stage, not the Bachmann one.
John.
Sorry, I replied in the wrong place, it was this post I meant to refer to....
Which was about the Bachmann one.
Hozz
Christopher A. Lee wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I always belived that it was Scargill and the NUM who closed all the pits by refusing to work except on their terms. Still it's all academic, if the pits hadn't been stolen from their owners in the first place by our post war commmunist government I have no doubt that many would still be open.
According to 'LNER Sheds in Camera' by John Hooper, the LNER started building them in the late 1920s. Sites included King's Cross, Doncaster, Gorton, March, Neville Hill,New England and Kittybrewster. It seems that they were very keen on mechanical coaling.
According to Hooper in the caption to a picture of the Kings Cross one, "Coaling plants of this type [500t bunker capacity] usually cost around £8,000 to build and the erection was always carried out by a specialist company, with Henry Lees & Co. and Mitchell Conveyors getting the bulk of the contracts from the LNER."
The picture of the Hornby coaling plant in MR 139 bears a remarkable resemblence to one that was at the new shed the LNER built at Darnall (Sheffield) during the early years of the Second World War.
The Hooper book is excellent, by the way, and contains loads of great photos of sheds of all shapes and sizes - some of which would probably make nice models.
Opened June 1958, so it'll be among them. Interestingly, it was always intended to become all diesel and according to 'BR Steam Motive Power Depots - NER' by Paul Bolger [1] this was supposed to have happened by mid-1962. It actually closed to steam in December 1964.
Notes:-
Odd that it's coming out at the same time as the Hornby one.
Should attract quite a bit of interest from Big Four modellers too.
"Fred X" wrote
In this instance I think Bachmann's higher price is justified by the apparant higher quality.
John.
I have had a copy of it on my bookshelf for over 20 years, and had quite forgotten about it. It is indeed a splendid book, thanks for reminding me of it.
David
Yes, I do prefer Bachmann's Scenecraft to the Hornby's Skaledale as they tend to be more realistic and not so garish.
Fred X
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