Roche drawing info request

Alistair Wright LMS Society

Many thanks for the reply - Pity though, it was such an easy option to model!

Regards

Mike

Before petroleum products became widely available, whale oil was pretty universal. That would include the early days of the LMS. It was in fact the variability of supply of whale oil and similar products which spurred the exploration for petroleum oil which was then seen as a more reliable alternative.

(kim)

"kim" wrote in news:5MadndmkHtNCtu snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

...

Actually the search for petrolium oil was largely spurred by the RN (and of course what were then the worlds lesser navies) changing from coal to oil fired boilers.

They needed a reliable supply of heavy fuel oil, hence the inter war land grab of counties such as Persia. Of course once the valuable heavy fuel oil had been obtained from the raw material something had to be done with the waste products, one of which is petrolium spirit or gasoline as our friends in the colonies name it.

Probably a typing error. Anyway, if the Roche drawings are that bad, why do people use them at all?

I was talking in terms of lubrication rather than fuel oil.

Coincidentally, many railway wharfs had a facility for distilling motor spirit from coal before petroleum spirit became more commonplace.

(kim)

I suspect he mistyped 15 for 25ft over headstocks - about right for a

Did indeed - Ah well, back to the notebooks!

Erik,

The drawings have been around for years - the rollign stock drawings have 1949 dates on them. But they have a lot of dimensions and a lot of additional information with them that gives one the feeling that they are factual. They come from an era in British railway modelling when a lot of drawings were sometimes no better than figments of the authors' imaginations - as evidenced by the drawing discussed in this thread.

Thankfully, things improved greatly from the 1960s onwards and the standards of model railway drawings became much better.

Jim.

Maybe the whales gained WMD?

One some roads near Solihull (and possibly elsewhere) there are some signs pointing the way for Whale Tankers, which always worries me slightly.

Chris Wilson wrote: , one of which is petrolium spirit or gasoline as our friends

Depends on *which* colony you are talking about, certainly not normal usage here, in Oz.

But wait. Isn't the biggest mistake made by listing it as a wagon? Whereas it should be amongst the NPC stock. To me the drawing looks very similar to Diag 1990 in LMS Coaches Vol 1 pages 130 (foot) and 131. The capacity of this is also correct at 15 Tons as per R.J. Roche. It is a Milk Tanker wagon.

NPC was always a bit of a challenge in trying to differentiate between a wagon & coaching stock. This particular one most people would argue *is* a wagon and by appearance & its intended load (of a trailer from a road vehicle), it is difficult to see why the LMS classified it as passenger.

Kevin Martin wrote in news:45754ff7$0 $16552$ snipped-for-privacy@news.optusnet.com.au:

Gosh no, I was thinking of our colonies in Northern America .. after the cricket today I'm far more vitriolic on the subject of our antipodean ones. :-)

Nor here in New Zealand!

Regards, Greg.P. NZ

Might the LMS have classed it as "Passenger" because the nature of its load - milk - required it to be run at passenger train speeds (either as a milk train or coupled to the rear of a passenger train) because the milk might have gone off on a longer, slower journey? Just a thought, and happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

David Costigan

Ah! Well spotted that man! It would have been classed as passenger as milk tanks were, they were often attached to passenger stock, as in early morning milk trains and the like, often it was only once they reached the juncton with the main line did they gat formed into a milk only train.

Right I'll put it in then.

Cheers

Mike

Even when running as a 'block train', milk services ran under Passenger/Parcels train headcodes (latterly Class 3, ISTR)- presumably to avoid delivering trains of rancid butter to the metropolitan centres. Likewise, the six-wheel underframes were intended to reduce 'churning'. Regarding the attachment of non-passenger vehicles to passenger trains- in latter days, anything rated as 'XP' could run on slower services. XP stock had to have continuous brakes and a wheelbase of 10' or above. Whilst this normally meant the humble 12t van, I have heard of vac-fitted 'Pipes' running as tail traffic. Brian