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Scale of early railway carriages

Started by jamespetts, January 12, 2012, 02:23:02 AM

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jamespetts

As discussed here, I have run into some scaling problems with some of the early railway carriages in the pakset. I have re-scaled some of my new carriage graphics to be consistent with the scale of the BR Mk. I carriages (from 1951). I should be interested in views on the scale here in light of the below pictures.


This is a new LBSCR locomotive (from 1855 - slightly smaller than the A1 Terrier of 1872) pulling some of my new 1855 carriages, as rescaled. They are supposed to be 20ft in length. Does this seem a sensible scale?


This is the same locomotive pulling some of the 1847 carriages already in the pakset, for comparison purposes. To my mind, these are considerably too large for the era.


This is the same locomotive pulling 4 wheeled carriages from the 1870s (which is just about plausible - this locomotive lasted until sometime in the early 1870s, I think!). I should be interested in views on how these carriages scale, by comparison.


Finally, just for a scale comparison, the same locomotive pulling some BR Mk. I carriages. These should have underframes of 57ft - I have therefore made the carriages in the top picture 20/57ths the length of the BR MK. I carriages. The height of the early carriages is also lower, as they were in reality.

It may be that a number of the early carriages (especially the pre-bogie carriages) will have to be re-scaled. I should be interested in views on this topic.

Edit: Below is a picture of a model of the same LBSCR locomotive hauling more or less contemporary carriages (perhaps slightly larger 24ft carriages from the 1860s) - do the above seem correct in comparison?

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The Hood

The 1847 stock I drew was really a guess - I saw one photo and didn't find any data. It may well be wrong.  What about the LMR stock? I just assumed the 1847 stock would be bigger than the LMR 1830 stock.

jamespetts

I have not yet checked the LMR stock against the scale (I shall have to try to work out what its correct length was, to start with - if all else fails, I can find the correct length of contemporary locomotives and use a visual comparison to approximate the relative length of the two), but brief inspection shows that it does seem to be too big. The LMR first usually sits next to the Mk. III buffet in the depot window, and, although the BR carriage is much bigger, the LMR carriage still looks too large by comparison.

Again, without yet having checked in Blender, on a brief look last night, the LBSCR 4 wheel carriages appear to be smaller than the MR/MS&LR/GNR 4 wheel carriages (all of which are essnetially the same with different liveries), and the LBSCR carriages (see the illustration above) appear to be more or less correct in scale, with the other 4 wheelers being too large (the other carriages should be the same general size as the 1872 LBSCR carriages).

The 1880s 6 wheelers are correct in size if they are taken to be the GNR type, as they are indeed 34/57ths of the length of the BR Mk. I (the 37ft corridor carriage is a different matter: the window layouts of the carraiges seem to be consistent with the corridor type, but the length more consistent with the earlier non-corridor type; however, I have alredy recitfied this with the graphics in the passenger carraiges thread). I have not yet checked the clerestories, but, since I plan to add rather more types of those, that will be considered in due course.

Out of interest, which of the carriages in the above pictures appear to be in/out of scale to you? I should be interested in some visual feedback on this before re-scaling a lot of things.
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jamespetts

May I ask, The Hood, what was your source for the 1847 LNWR carriage? The closest thing that I can find on the internet is this which is described as an "1850s carriage". The size appears similar to the LBSCR 20ft 4-wheelers pictured above. I cannot find any 1840s or 1850s LNWR carriages illustrated in Kidner. Hamilton Ellis has a Stockton & Darlington carriage of 1846 at Plate 4 I, which seems o similar size, with low arc roof and three compartments.

To give some idea of scale, Hamilton Ellis describes (although, unfortunately, does not illustrate) Midland Parliamentary carriages of 1846. They were three compartment four wheelers; each compartment was 5ft long and 6ft 5" wide, and 5ft 4" tall (from floor to ceiling, rather than ground to ceiling). Each compartment seated ten (uncomfortable) passengers. The compartment partitions did not go up to the full height of the roof, and there was no padding on the seats. It was considered great luxury for third class that each compartment had an oil lamp!

A carriage in joint service of the LBSCR and South-Eastern is reported as having been 17ft 3" long and seating 48 on longditudanal seats both on the perimeter and along the centre of the carriage. This carriage was 6ft 3" tall inside.

A LSWR brake third of 1855 is recorded as being 19ft 8" long. The height is not given. Hamilton Ellis records (perhaps of more interest; at p. 42) that the earliest TPO, of 1838 on the London and Birmingham (later LNWR) was 16ft long, 7ft 6 wide and weighed about 4t. It is illustrated at plate 3 I. This should give a useful idea of the size of 1830s carriages. Hamilton Ellis also records (p. 16) that the early LMR carriages had very short wheelbases, perhaps only 7ft, which short wheelbase made the carriages less comfortable than they might be.

Some particularly small - even for the day - carriages were built for the Bodmin & Weybridge in 1834 (Hamilton Ellis, p. 17) which were only 13 1/2ft long in total, and 8ft 5" high in total. The fully enclosed composite weighed three and a quarter tons. They are pictured below. Kidner also illustrates the 2nd class at p. 87.

I believe that the below is a photograph of a carriage, preserved at York, described by Hamilton Ellis at p. 31 as a Great Eastern carriage of 1851, 17ft 6" long weighing 8t. The body height (i.e., not including the underframe) was 5ft 11". It survived because it had on withdrawal in 1901 (by which time it was an inspection saloon) it was kept at the back of the paint shop at Stratford Works, where it was one of the few vehicles to survive a rocket attack in 1945. The fire guard at the works was sleeping in the coach at the time.



Here is another carriage of the approximate era preserved at the NRM, this time at the Shildon site (I do not have a great amount of information on this one, but it looks suspiciously similar to what is described as a "Stockton and Darlington composite coach" of 1846 pictured at plate 4 I of Hamilton Ellis):



The following photographs give an idea of the size of the original LMR carriages (these are replicas) in comparison to the Rocket:







Continuing with the photographs, here is a Midland 6 wheeler (compared in size to the clerestory behind it):



(and here is its interior:)



Here are the Bodmin & Weybridge carriages, now preserved at York:

First class (later composite): 3..25t, 13ft 6" long, 6ft wide, total height 8ft 5" 12 - 16 passengers


Second class: 2t (approx.), 16 passengers


Third class: 3t (approx)., 16 passengers


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ӔO

going by the newer scale, the 1847 carriages seem to be slightly too tall, while the 1870 carriages seem to be slightly too long.

I'm surprised at the difference in length between the 4 wheel and 6 wheel carriages.
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The Hood

I don't recall a particular source - it was a while back now. I think I was just trying to imagine something intermediate between the midland 4-wheelers and the LMR stock and settled on LNWR livery to fit the locmotives I had drawn.

jamespetts

The Hood,

ahh - thank you for letting me know. I might have to rework those a bit in that case.

AEO,

that's interesting. The 1847 carriages are too tall, I think, and I may need to redo them somewhat. The 1870s carriages should look like this:



The locomotive at the front is the LBSCR A1 "Terrier" class, slightly larger than the green locomotive in my screenshots above, which locomotive has been in Pak128.Britain for many years. In light of that, do you still think that they look too long in the game?
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ӔO

@james
in that picture it looks like the A1 is 2/3 the length of the carriages, which is pretty close to what it looks like in the game.

I think the game version could use a slight increase in spacing however. Currently, they are quite close together.
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jamespetts

The problem with the spacing is that the increments are very large. The current spacing setting is 6. Increasing it to 7 will produce quite large gaps.
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ӔO

in that case I think it is best to not tinker with it then.
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various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

jamespetts

I have been working on carriage graphics to-day. I haven't produced .dat files for them yet, but here are some samples of carriages to replace the existing 1840s carriages, which are too large, as discussed above. Comments welcome!
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The Hood

They look good - my only initially comment is that they seem small even compared to the 1830s LMR stock. I haven't tested these at all however.

jamespetts

Ahh, I've also re-scaled that stock: see the attached images (which also show the addition of loaded graphics). The very early passenger carriages were about the size of wagons: currently, the wagons in the game are the correct scale, but the early passenger carriages are too large, and are therefore too large by comparison to the wagons.
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The Hood

Fair enough. I'm looking forward to having a more complete set to test.

jamespetts

Complete set now on Github (and the LMR 1830s carriages, too). Can you find them, or do you need me to list each file? Here are some samples:





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