Old Permanent Way

daifly

Western Thunderer
Martin Wynne has just posted a link on the Templot Club site to a new website by Ernest Bate. Ernest has started a new web site for his trackwork photos and drawings which looks to become a superb resource for modellers.
Already on there are drawings of points and crossings used in 1900 by various railway companies including the GER, GNR, GWR, GCR, LNWR, LSWR, LYR, NER and many others. These drawings have not previously been available. The link is here.
Cheers
Dave
 

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Ernest has provided me with support for obscure aspects of British railways trackwork for several years and in particular his contributions to Hartley Hill (LNWR circa 1895). Dave's post looks like Ernest has decided to include the illustrations from the 'Proceedings of the International Railway Congress, Paris, 1900'. Grab your copies now in case the material disappears again (last seen in HMRS Journal in the 1990s).

Why?

Because the British Library in Wetherby does not have a copy of the material!!!!!!!!!!!!!

regards, Graham
 

Axlebox

Active Member
I have an old book on British permanent way with some excellent illustrations within it. The articles covered in the book relate to a series of articles published in the "Railway News" as they appeared at various periods between 1911 and 1914. There is a wealth of information about everything to do with the permanent way.
I have scanned a drawing of a Great Eastern Point which I will try to upload. It is a rather large file so it may not work. I can rescan it at a lower resolution if necessary.
If this type of drawing is of any use I will scan and upload them. I think they are out of copyright by now as the book was published in 1915. There are details in it from 1822 onwards.

Roy
 

Attachments

  • Great Eastern Point 1.jpeg
    Great Eastern Point 1.jpeg
    1.9 MB · Views: 148

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Hello Roy,

Yes please!

If I may express a preference, LNWR then GER then GWR. If the book is anything like others that I have seen from that period then there could well be a table of illustrations and / or drawings - that might be the first step to see what others might desire.

thank you, Graham
 

Axlebox

Active Member
Hi Chaps, There is, as Graham says, a table of illustrations and drawings which I will scan and upload and then scan and upload those you require. The earliest I can do this will be tomorrow morning as I have to cook a meal and then off to the theatre, so I am a bit short of time right now. I will be very glad to help out where I can.

Roy
 

Axlebox

Active Member
Here is the scan of the 'Index of Drawings and Illustrations as promised. It is in jPeg format, I hope it's clear enough to read.

Roy
 

Axlebox

Active Member
I have removed the previous file and tried a different method. I split the frame in half and used a different edit program. very readable now. I will upload the other half to show the photograph list.

Roy
 

Attachments

  • Illustrations list.pdf
    877.2 KB · Views: 37

Axlebox

Active Member
Here is the list of photos in the book. Thankfully they are now all readable.

Roy
 

Attachments

  • Photos available.pdf
    1 MB · Views: 31

Axlebox

Active Member
Here is a table of rail lengths for various companies. I hope it is useful. I have some more images scanned but I have to process them before I can get them down to a reasonable size for uploading so they will follow soon.

Roy
 

Attachments

  • Scanned image: Rail - 1.jpg
    Scanned image: Rail - 1.jpg
    778 KB · Views: 110

Axlebox

Active Member
At long last I have managed to find some time to send some scans of the Pointwork for early railways. This one is a 15ft switch for the North Eastern Railway. More to follow tonight and tomorrow.

Roy
 

Attachments

  • img006.jpg
    img006.jpg
    1.4 MB · Views: 84

David McCarthy

New Member
Good afternoon
Found this thread while looking for LSWR permanent way info ... specifically switches, crossings, tie bars etc. I found some on the oldpway.info site mentioned above, which was very useful.

Thought I'd comment here with regard to the issue of large file sizes.

If you 'print' a scan to a PDF, the file size reduces considerably as the PDF contains a compressed version of the image. This image can later be extracted (using Acrobat Pro or one of a number of free online utilities), and it will be (almost) as good as new. It helps to create the PDF with a larger than A4 paper size. I've found A1 to be suitable. I used this to move a 66MB .bmp (9896x7000 px) file into a 3.5MB PDF. Extracting to a .png I got an 8MB 4967x3509 px image.

It's important NOT to use the .jpg file format at any stage, as there is an immediate reduction in quality every time the file is saved ... even if no changes are made.

Incidentally, saving the 66MB .bmp as a .png resulted in a 6.3MB file ... much smaller with no loss of quality. This can be saved as an A1 .pdf which is 3MB

Other sizes can be made by experimenting. If you start with a .jpg from a scan, the first thing you should do is convert it to a .png ... as this is a 'loss-less' format.

I hope this helps.
 
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