OO Planet - Development

[What About The Bee]

Welcome back to another OO Planet Update.

During the last update, I discussed the buildup of tolerance and how it could possibly prevent the mechanism from functioning. This update will present my current thinking on how to make sure that doesn’t happen.

  

There are a pair of control rods on either side of OO Planet. As the valve gear at the smokebox operates, these transfer that motion to the curved handles on the footplate.

When examined in isolation, the control rods that run from front to back form a parallelogram. There are also two axes of rotation. The one in the front drives, the one in the rear is driven by the parallelogram. It is poor mechanical construction to have rotating members be supported by screw threads. On the right, observe the purple washers that the control rods contact. There is a mechanical clearance between the purple washer and the control rods, permitting rotation.

 

If I manage to get the axle supports to match the CAD design, then a perfect placement yields a control rod 52.462mm long, center to center. The red Xs denote perfect placement.

 

If I should not get perfect placement, then the control rod may bind. Here, the axle supports for the valve gear on the smokebox face slid downwards by 0.5mm, while the axle supports for the valve gear on the backhead slide upwards by 0.5 mm. Note that the length of the control rod increases to 52.662mm, center to center.

Sliding the axle supports in opposite directions yield a control rod length of 52.280mm, center to center.  

An additional set of errors creeps in when the longitudinal distance (front to back on OO Planet) of the axle supports does not meet the CAD model. If the axle supports are too long, then the control rods will be too short. If the axle supports are too short, then the control rods will be too long.

FIRST, SOLVE THE LONGITUDINAL DISTANCE PROBLEM

 

There will be two construction jigs, used to set the front to back distance, in purple. On the left, the jig axle (red) threads the tube. On the right, observe that the arms that will support the tubes are permanently attached, while the bases that support the arms are attached to the jig. With the axle lowered down and fixed into the groove, the tube support center distance to the base will be set

 

Similarly

 

With the longitudinal distance set, we can...

SOLVE THE VERTICAL REFERENCE PROBLEM

The more clever of you have probably been wondering why these parts have a tab projecting beyond the base. They are going to fit into square notches on the smokebox face and the backhead. With the vertical height of the tab and the vertical height and vertical location of the notch controlled, the placement of the axle supports will be far better than the +/- 0.5 mm shown graphically above

 

Similarly

 

It is usually good practice to anticipate problems before they occur. It is good practice to make the parts correctly the first time and to avoid troubleshooting of a faulty mechanism and remaking of the parts.

Using these jigs will set the lengths of the axle supports correctly and uniformly. Using reference notches will control the vertical placement of the axle supports to reasonable control. Naturally, the axle supports will be glued to the faces with a temporary axle threading through them, such that the axle supports are co-linear.

Until next update

Bee

[threelink]

Bee, I remain in awe of what you are doing. I was browsing Ahrons work on the steam loco from 1825 and came across an illustration of a vertical cylindered loco with a bell crank transmitting thrust to the driving wheel via a short con rod. I wondered whether it might make an appropriate candidate for your next venture, as it was stated to be an LMR loco. Keep up the astonishing work.

[What About The Bee]

Hi 3Link

I do believe you are referring to Experiment LMR32. A locomotive by Roberts and Sharp. A sister locomotive to Experiment was Hibernia, for the Dublin & Kingstown railway. Clear images of Hibernia exist on the internet.

I'd like to have each and every LMR locomotive. Lists of LMR locomotives are readily available. Similarly lists of carriages, rolling stock & etc. The Ox Wagon, the Pig wagon, Cattle, Milk, Logs, etc. All coveted. So yes, Experiment is on my list of locomotives to make. It is too niche for Hornby.

OO Planet just took priority!

In having vast plans, I am always reminded of a Mechanical Engineer named Marvin. Marvin had one piece of artwork hanging on the wall of his office. It was a slogan, to wit: "Never start vast projects with half vast ideas". Heck of a slogan!

I will be covering bell crank locomotives for the forum. Well illustrated of course. Keep an eye out!

Cheers

Bee

[threelink]

Hi, Bee. Yes indeed, Experiment was the one. The illustration in Ahrons is not of the best (it's a re-print) but the illustration of Hibernia is very clear. Can't wait to see your further postings. All the best. Threelink

[What About The Bee]

At the last update, the support brackets for the valve gear on the front of the smokebox and support brackets on the backhead were placed.  

Clutch Control 

The clutch controls are mostly a static item. I've no need for a functional clutch. Making it functional, within the context of the valve gear is a needless complication.  

That said, the clutch controls are an integral part of the appearance of OO Planet. The only thing the model must do is look the part.

With one major exception. Those two walking rods, which hold the eccentric rods up at the smokebox, must slightly rotate. The small angle of rotation permits the eccentric rods to move in and out.

Blue arrows point to one of two eccentric rods. Pink arrow points to one of two walking rods. As the eccentric rods thrust in and out, the walking rods rotate on the clutch axles, yellow arrows.

Axle Support 

The light blue supports each consist of two pieces. The bottom half toggles into a notch. The top half round holds the axles.  

The control rods are shown floating by the chimney.

Short Connecting Levers

On the prototype, the short green levers will transmit the command from the control rods to the walking rods. The small upper green lever is pulled towards the backhead. The axle transmits the rotational force to the walking rod, lifting it up. When lifted, the eccentric rod is disengaged from the eccentric rod follower, permitting manual control of the slide valve, via those oscillating curved footplate handles

In OO static mode, the short green levers simply hold items in place. In order to assemble / disassemble the shell from the chassis, the control rods will need to be removed. The small screw will detach the control rods from the short green levers.  

Here, you can see the axle rings and screw at the top of the walking rod. The other walking rod is hidden, to show the sleeve that the walking rod walks in. I am not convinced there is sufficient material in the lever and will likely make the surround wider.

The concept should be evident. A sleeve protects the tiny screw threads, and that sleeve is a bearing surface for the hole in the lower green short lever.

Backhead Clutch Handles.

The mounting for the handles follows Armengaud, inset.

A short rod is bent and fixed to a plate. The etched handle is bent and threaded onto the base. A screw connects the clutch control rod to the clutch control handle. It sits statically in place, looking marvelous!

With this, the first pass at the valve gear and clutch is complete. Everything is supported to the chassis and proper tolerances have been considered.

Plan Forward

Consider the shell and how it will attach to the chassis. How all the small control bits fit onto the shell must be added. For example, the base of the clutch control by the backhead is a small disk. There should be a corresponding shallow counterbore to not only locate the base relative to the shell, but to also hide any glue lines.  

The sandwich frames and spring assembly to be redrawn for OO. Recall I drew iteration 1 of the sandwich frames at full scale, a rookie mistake.

Detail all the rivets and other associated decorations.

The journey continues

Until next time

Bee

[What About The Bee]

Mentioned at last update was my intention to take a look at the body shell.  

Size Matters

I have already purchased a OO Planet Tender, along with the Hanazono motor boggie it fits. I thought the best approach would be to align the locomotive shell design to that tender, given that this is a cosmetic exercise.

In CAD, I placed a scale next to OO Planet. 5 mm cubes, all stacked in a row. Printed the entire model on paper, making sure the printed scale was the correct size. That is, an image of OO Planet, the same size as OO Planet will be, with a ruler next to it.

I placed the OO Tender next to the image and aligned everything manually, so the pair would appear as if they were on rails.

Yikes!! That tender doesn't look right. It is entirely too tall! I checked and re-checked, finding nothing wrong with the process.  

Issac Shaw

I have an image of Planet, herself, by Shaw, a known good observer. This is a contemporary 1831 image.

Given all the conversation about tophats, strangely, nobody is wearing one. The tender floor is higher than the footplate, as the engineman seems seated in that ledge. Importantly, the front of the tender seems a bit lower than the boiler.  

Armengaud

I then examined Armengaud. Armengaud has the top of the boiler 2000 mm over the rails. OO Planet has the top of the boiler 27 mm over the rails. My OO Planet is within 0.03" of being accurately scaled for height. So if the locomotive is a close match, how does Armengaud portray the tender? 

Armengaud draws the tender at exactly the same scale, and clearly identified that tender as a match for the locomotive. Armengaud draws them on separate sheets. I grabbed both and put them into one image, aligning by the rail tops. The odd tender floor to footplate relationship is present. The front of the tender aligns fairly well with the top of the boiler. That doesn't look like my pair, but does confirm Shaw as a known good observer.  

Especially side by side.

Here, the side by side of Armengaud and the reproduction Planet at the museum. That's a reasonable match. Leaving the purchased OO Tender odd man out.

Hornby

Hornby produced Lion and Tiger, with LMR generation 3 tenders, just as this OO Tender is, an LMR generation 3 tender. The front of the Hornby's tender is a height match for Hornby's Tiger Locomotive.

Well, that's odd. My OO Tender is nearly a perfect height match for Tiger's tender.  

Is Tiger taller? 

I do have a very special image of Lion, as it was found in the 1920s. This is what Hornby based Tiger on. I put it next to an image of the reproduction Planet. Now both rear wheels just so happen to be 5 feet in diameter. The green bars are the same size in both. So yes, Lion/Tiger are taller.

But how much taller?

Records do indicate that Lion's boiler was 6" taller, and 3" wider than Planet's boiler, Lion's boiler is oval, Planet's round. It stands to reason that the boiler would sit at least 6" taller on the sandwich frame. I measured the images using various methods, but I am limited by the resolution of the Lion image and its' less than square on perspective. I get a range: between  6½" to 9" taller.

Does that account for the difference?

Assume 9" taller in real life. In OO, that is 0.118" or 3mm. Sadly, OO Tender's front is ~6mm taller than OO Planet's Boiler. Simple arithmetic gives a 18" height difference, which cannot be.  

I am left with the inescapable conclusion that the purchased OO Tender is too tall for an accurately scaled OO Planet. It started out as an N scale model, sizing it upwards to OO, per the designer. He made it to fit the Hanazono motor bogie. The designer specifically stated that it was for Planet. Welp, not so much. Perhaps for a larger LMR locomotive, such as Lion, or any of the Bird class, but not Planet.  

What to do?

I altered the vertical scale of the OO Tender image, so as to make the front of the tender match the top of the boiler. Shrinking the image vertically. The result follows

Bottom half, before and after. Top half, next to OO Planet. While that looks much better, it also means that the tender cannot just be tweaked to look the part.  

Alternatively, I could make OO Planet taller, but that means it would be out of scale with the Hornby models, so no.

I think this means I must add a OO tender to my list of things to do. I see no other real alternative.

Bee

[LTSR_NSE]

@bee - a few things to bear in mind: (although you’re probably already aware of them)

Firstly your vertically compressed image, is also vertically compressing the Hanazono motor bogie, so that is definitely a non-starter (unless the tender model is hollow & would allow the extra bogie height to be absorbed within it.)

Secondly was the tender originally scaled to 1:160 (international) or 1:148 (British) N scale? since that would affect the correct proportion conversion - although you would expect an incorrect conversion to have made it look significantly different to the Hornby one!

Thirdly since OO is a compromised scale-to-gauge, you may discover (in trying to accurately recreate Planet & tender) where Hornby have made certain compromises!

[What About The Bee]

Hello LT&SR_NSE

"How hard could it be?" I said to myself. "A few strokes at the keyboard, and I will have a OO Planet".

What a humbling, yet educational experience this has been. I would urge every person who has a complaint vis locomotives and schedule, to try their hand at it.

About that purchased tender

I do not fault the designer of the tender. He offers several designs, Rocket, Lion, Northumbrian as well as other era 1 items. I am convinced they are consistent within his group.

About OO Compromises

The lateral compromises are harsh. A primary example of this is boiler diameter. If I scale the diameter of the boiler properly, then there is difficulty in getting room to fit the valve gear and wheels. Shrinking the diameter causes height issues. My choice is a smaller diameter boiler, just higher up.

I do want the model to present as Planet and for it to be recognizable as such. This is as much art as it is engineering.

About conversion from N to OO

I think that this was generated, by the designer, as a tender for Lion, which is also on offer by the designer. How much commerce that will get, now that both Hornby and Rapido offer Lion, is debatable. Perhaps the designer did not care that Planet's actual tender was smaller than Lion's tender. It is rational to expect that tender capacity increased as locomotive size increased. But if that detail did not trouble the designer, then Lion's tender would have sufficed. He just scaled his Lion tender up to OO, inevitably a close match for the Hornby Lion tender.

The existing, too tall for Planet tender will not go to waste. I will use it elsewhere

About Compression and the Hanazono motor boggie

It isn't a great deal of work to design a static shell that accommodates the Hanazono boggie. Unlike OO Planet, there is no exotic valve gear or oodles of detailed parts.

Will I over do it? Seriously, have I ever shown any propensity of that? [self depreciating sarcasm fully intended]

I did need to convince myself that modifying the existing, too tall tender isn't feasible. The compression helped me to decide.

Something not asked. Why did I bother showing all those comparisons?

In another thread discussing 3D printed ideas, a point was raised about scaling upwards or downwards to get the desired model. I did want to demonstrate the issues of scaling, but thought the discussion of scaling for OO Planet belonged here, instead of there. It was a choice I debated internally. This thread won out.

Bee

[What About The Bee]

In light of the scaling results, I am now committed to a OO Tender that meets OO Planet's requirements.

The Hanazono Motor Boggie is the starting point. If I can get a tender to work with that boggie, great. If not, then the gear train in OO Planet needs re-thinking.

Begin at the beginning. The Hanazono Motor Boggie

The attachment is the screw on top. The hole behind the screw and the rectangular aperture on the side is to exhaust heat. The copper tabs are power take off. I didn't bother to sketch in some details, like the motor internals or the pickups. For the purposes of this exercise, that is unimportant.

Bee

[What About The Bee]

Tender Development  

I left off with a tender that was too tall and suggested I needed a shorter tender.  

The baseline was the Hanazono motor boggie. The question then being, can I fit the appropriate tender size around it.

In this image, you can see the tender. Currently, the top of the tank is 26.5 mm over the rails. As a reminder, the top of OO Planet's firebox is 27 mm over the rails. So, if anything, this tender is just a pinch short.

In this image, the Hornby tender for Tiger is photographed. The calipers are set to 0.5mm. We can observe that the rivets are at that dimension. This matches nicely to the rivet spacing presented by Armengaud. Scaled to OO, the rivets are 0.54mm apart.

Here, I show the proposed rivets for my tender. I do think a resin printer should pick some of these up. Fingers crossed.

Finally, we come to the handrail. James Nasmyth and Issac Shaw both show a tender with a handrail. Both are known good observers.

I can see one possible reason why the handrail was dropped and a flange added. Drawing the handrail has lots of little parts, all of which would need making and assembling. Far easier to wrap a flange and rivet it to the tank.

But for authenticity, Planet's tender should have a rail, just like Issac Shaw illustrated. It should print quite nicely. Pity the reproduction at the museum didn't follow the Shaw illustration

What's next

Coupling Attachment points, and the draw bar to OO Planet. 

Valve handles to permit the flow of water.

Springs and Horn guides.

Some more seams and rivets on the tank

Tank fill port.

Bee

[What About The Bee]

The OO Tender is almost ready for submission to be printed. 

An overview of the OO Tender, as it stands

The Hanazono motor boggie has protruding metal axles. They will be fitted with a cosmetic axle end. A simple cap.

This hornguide will permit me to see the end of rotating axle. This type of hornguide was very common and appears in many period images. If you have the Hornby Rocket, it appears on that tender.

Those handles on the front of the water tank control the flow of water out of the tender and across to Planet.

Armengaud shows a cut away of this assembly. Note the handles used to get up onto the footplate, also present on the OO Tender.

The OO Tender will be attached to the Hanazono Motor Boggie with the screw and then hidden under a coal load. Note the water fill tube on the rear tank deck.

The water fill tube will have a working lid, hinge in the back. If you look closely, you will note I have insured a small gap betwixt the lid and the square tube.

With the lid removed for clarity, you can see clearly down to the blue chassis and further down, the Hanazono Motor Boggie, in black. The Hanazono Motor Boggie vents warm air into this void. The gap at the lid will let warm air flow out. So not only will the lid open and close, but it also helps to ventilate the motor, keeping it cool.

Lastly, the front coupling is set up for a draw pin draw bar, while the rear coupling matches the Hornby Fine Scale chain arrangement, both in red

Bee

[81F]

There is a shop on Shapeways, Newman Miniatures who developed a kit/scratch aid that used one of these motor bogies to power it see:

so it should work. Although yoy may need to use some modelers license to get the axle boxes to line up with the axles.

I have used one of these bogies myself to motorise a 1:72 Soviet armored railcar kit but still have to convert it to DCC but there are instructions on the web on how to do this.

The only thing is that he does make a Planet in 00 that used the 24.5mm Tenshodo aka Hanazono motor bogie with 10.5mm spoked wheels but unlike Lion there is no video of this.

[atom3624]

Just a question.

There's been a lot of detail discussed on this thread, but where's it going?

Is somebody actually making a model?

Just asking.

Al.

[LTSR_NSE]

@atom - In case something isn’t clear this thread is a project. (It is the complete opposite of R-T-R models.)

Step 3 will be to construct the kit.

Step 2 will be to manufacture the parts of the kit.

Step 1 is designing all the parts of the kit. The posts to date: detail the research conducted into each part’s design, showing the various choices/decisions made - including their reasons.

Simples… (or maybe not so much!) 😬🙂

Keep up the good work Bee! 👏

[What About The Bee]

Hello 81F

Yes, Newman Miniatures on Shapeways is where I purchased my 'too tall for OO Planet' tenders from. The tender he designed is a very good match for Lion. The models are scaled up N scale models, somewhat adjusted for the OO squish. I think they are perfectly fine. Based on Newman Miniatures design of the tender, I would think the other models on offer to be pretty good too.

When I asked the gentleman to quote some design changes, I realized that I would be better suited just doing it myself. Nothing against the gentleman at Newman Miniatures at all.

Converting the Hanazono Motor Boggie to DCC looks ever so straightforward. The pickups run up the outside of boggie. Simply cut those leads, run a wire from the cut up to the decoder, and from the decoder to the contacts on top of the boggie, which lead to the motor. A clever lad like you, 81F, shall have no problems with this!

Bee

[What About The Bee]

You have it exactly right LT&SR_NSE. You just missed a few thousand steps 😉

Hello Atom

You have asked a perfectly valid question. Exactly what is going on here, and why is the man taking an eternity to get to the point?

Firstly, I have never designed a OO model before. I have, consequently, fallen into every trap and pitfall along the way. If there is a blunder to be made, you can rest assured I will manage to find it, the hard way. Example: Thinking I could make the sandwich frames full scale and then just shrink it. Whoops. Err, no.

Secondly, I am quite sure that all of us have experienced the wait. The wait for a Hornby RTR model. The experience of designing my own has given me an appreciation for the tribulations Hornby goes through. It takes time. I shall never complain about the wait, ever again.

Thirdly, I am a retired Engineer. I will therefore apply the discipline I learned though of decades of experience. Critical lessons in rework suggest that you want the design to work from end to end, before you make a single part. I rushed ahead with the Newman Miniatures tender, an error.

Fourthly, I have a genuine interest in the details of how things work. So the minutia of what a lever on the tender does fascinates me. Just as the controls on Planet's footplate do. Understanding each element takes time. The preserved drawings are difficult to read and understand. There aren't any isometric views. I can't ask the designer any questions. But in the end, I now have a deep appreciation for Planet's details.

I am not in a rush to complete this project. I could have just purchased Newman Miniatures Planet, fitted it with the too tall tender, and had it whizzing around my layout. But then the handles wouldn't oscillate, many of the details wouldn't be there, and I would not have the sense of accomplishment.

I do get it. This is taking a long time. Far longer than I had anticipated. My intention is to build a model. I just haven't arrived at that step yet.

Bee

[atom3624]

Thanks Bee, and no offence!

Get to it man! sunglasses

Al.

[What About The Bee]

No offense taken Atom. Yours was a reasonable question. My hope is that the question was reasonably answered.

In the Turbomotive discussions, a correspondent has expressed that a screw reverser was never installed on LMS6202. That makes perfect sense, a screw reverser adjusts the stroke and timing of a slide valve. Turbomotive had a turbine. Not a slide valve. This detail was improperly added by the Hornby designer, perhaps due to economic or schedule pressure on that designer. Maybe the designer just didn't think it through.

My OO Planet will have things as correct as I can help it. I haven't any pressure to go fast. I am thinking it through and explaining what I can of that here, as LT&SR_NSE suggests. Documenting the details.

Bee

[atom3624]

All's good my end Bee!

Yes, it's all in the detailing, and a pity Hornby never seem to 'go the extra mile' to complete a job.

It's looking very 'British Leyland' to me - great ideas, design, poor / incomplete completion of project, then rush to production.

Al.

[atom3624]

Might find this interesting:

Al.

[What About The Bee]

Hi Al

Using LT&SR_NSE's steps noted just above, Sam is performing step 3 on video. Step 3 being constructing the kit. Step 2 is making the parts of the kit, step 1 designing the kit. I'm still at step 1.

Sam has produced a few videos of step 1 and step 2, but in general, has shown step 3. His model of Copperknob comes to mind, as well as a number of others like the propeller driven locomotive.

My take away from the video recommended was the mention of printed resin gears and the construction of the gear box. Printed gears have mixed reviews in PLA, they tend to shear apart. It will be interesting to see the longevity of Sam's resin gears, but that data is unlikely to be shared.

My intention is metal gears, and I note that Shapeways claims printed metal gears. That would be in step 2, material acquisition. The gears could be hobbed, and there are gear manufacturers for this. I will cross this bridge when I come to it.

Sam does give a sense of what it takes to build a self designed kit. It is what I will be encountering in the future. Of note is that I think I am ready to submit the OO Tender design to Shapeways for manufacture. I will likely learn about all of my design errors very soon.

Thanks for the heads up. It is appreciated.

Bee

[atom3624]

I thought that may be of interest.

Looking at your gear train, metal would probably be the way to go.

I must admit I was quite impressed by Sam's effort.

It'll be interesting how well he can 'finish' the job.

Pre-grouping locomotives have very intricate paintwork.

Al.

[What About The Bee]

The LMR Livery is not precisely known. We have hints and clues. We do have some ledger books. But the matter is subject of quite a bit of speculation. 

Aquatint Drawings

But Bee, I hear you say, what of all those fabulous drawings and aquatints preserved? Don't they show us the livery?  

Frankly, no. Colored views were  produced from etched plates and then water colors were added by a low skill painter at the book publisher. The etched line part remained consistent, while the colors tended to vary.

An example of this are the Royal Mail carriage illustrations. The LMR had a grand total of 5 of these carriages, ever. Hornby has this carriage in R3956

We can be fairly certain that these are all Royal Mail. The line drawings are fairly consistent, the outlier being bottom left, where the trailing compartment isn't sloped, but does have the distinctive guard. Yet the livery is all over the map! Fundamentally, a Kaleidescape of color!!  

So what do we know?

We have the Edge Hill Locomotive Works, the LMR's own locomotive manufacturing plant, but only after it came into existence, some years after the LMR opened. I would suggest that the colors are likely consistent with what was present earlier, but there are no guarantees.

The ledgers at EHLW mention that the 1st class glass carriages (for their glass windows) were "chrome yellow" 

If you think that this is different from current run 1st class Hornby carriages, you are not wrong. Once again, we suffer from the preserved 1930s carriages.

Ultramarine for 2nd class carriages 

Certainly not even close to the blue represented in the reproduction carriages.

Scarlet Lake for the Royal Mail

with black panels. In the Kaleidescape image above, the accepted correct livery is center left. Crest on the center door and letters on first and last.

At last, we come to locomotives. The color mentioned in the EHLW ledgers was chrome green.  

Black was used on the metalwork or possibly just raw wrought iron.  

We do know that the number appeared on the buffer beam and on the chimney in white. While no image records the font or locations, a letter exists which references the number scheme.

Over these colors, a varnish would have been applied as a protectant. Rather than the modern pheonelic resins which are crystal clear, the LMR would have used a natural varnish, giving a brown tint or wash over the color. 

Rocket was recorded as "yellow", I am unaware of any further refinement. Further, there is a several year gap after Rocket and before EHLW. The Ackermann aquatints do suggest many of the early locomotives were green, with black lining (bands?). Bronze work simply varnished. 

Again, be very mindful that aquatints are hand colored at the publisher by low skill artists.

Bee

[threelink]

I am mildly surprised that blue was chosen as a carriage livery. It is well known to be a "fugitive" colour - although perhaps not so much today with modern paint formulations. However ultramarine did have its place in early liveries. LNWR painting instructions specified the addition of a small quantity of ultramarine to the white paint for the upper panels of its plum and spilled milk liveried carriages, to counter the yellowing effect of the varnish. Blue and yellow, when mixed, produce green, which accounts for the near impossibility of accurately reproducing LNWR white, (a sort of pale blue/green off white) especially when account is taken of the effects of age, weather and soot. I happen to have part (3 compartments from one end) of the body of an LNWR 3rd class lavatory carriage built in 1886 using, I think, parts of earlier carriages - the LNW was notoriously parsimonious and re-cycled wherever possible. It survived into LMS ownership when the toilets were removed and was re-liveried in all-over crimson lake as 3rd class ordinary. Repairing and rebuilding it as a garden railway room is a retirement project and I am hopeful that when stripping it I may find some trace of its former livery to give me a clue on the nearest colour to LNWR "white". The same yellowing effect of varnish will have applied to all early liveries of whatever colour. If any one knows of a photo of LNW carriage number 01738 I would appreciate knowing where I might find the photo and yes, I am aware that the paint is lead based so care will be needed when stripping it.

[What About The Bee]

Hi ThreeLink

Synthetic ultramarine was developed in the 1820s and is our likely candidate. I sincerely doubt that natural ultramarine was used to paint the 2nd class carriages, given the extraordinary expense of it. That just seems too extravagant for the LMR, with no return on investment. Telling a passenger to find a blue or yellow carriage does make sense.

Now as to the part of a railway carriage sitting in your garden? Would you share a picture?? Wow!

Bee