Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Varnish is very important. The weather in North Devon I reckon strips one to two layers per year.
Ideally we would be looking to do a quick flat back and three or more coats every alternate year for every carriage, but the guys at Woody Bay can only do so much.
To be honest, 7 and 17 have been at Woody Bay now for 10 years, 7 is having a touch up, then 17 in all realty will be going in for it's first 10 year overhaul and repaint.
There are a couple of issues that need sorting during that overhaul, chiefly solving the water ingress of the duckets (a design fault) and replacement of gutters (these are original Victorian gutters reused on 17).
I expect there will be various other bits and pieces.
10 years, out in all weathers including snow, rain, wind, sun.... used every day during summer, lots of passengers. .. It hasn't done bad at all

 

Old fashioned lead paints do. Paint we use now is lead free and isn't as good, needs more layers.
Spec 81 brush finish is thicker, and usually used as is from the tin. Max thinning recommended for coach enamel for brush is 5%, that's Williamsons spec, and preferably no thinning at all, with a temp of between 17°c and 25°c. I've painted outside these temps and it's hard work, especially at 35°c, you have to be really really quick with it.

As time went on and more and more metal was used in carriages I should imagine spray painting became the preferred option.

 

Well I can only tell you what I have been told by the guys I used to know who worked in the slade green depot near to were I lived. I did get an invite to have a look around the depot a couple of times during the 1970's once with the school and once at a family open day.

I could have ended up working there at one stage, but the size of the rolling stock put both my parent off of the idea (we where only used to seeing the top half of the train when it was in the platform).

There was still a need for hand painting by then but so I was told most of the repainting was carrying out with spray guns. I must admit to looking at some of the trains I used to travel on after that. I did wonder if they where still handpainted.

I think most of the railways today don't bother with painting, but use stick on vinyls and if it get ripped or scratched it is easy enough to take the train in and replace the vinyl. Sadly I think the art of the coach painter is dying but it is a skill that needs to be pasted on before it is to late.

Just had a look at my copy of John Harvey's Book 'Southern Style' and it mentions that LEW was going to be painted out in Maunsell Green, but due to the change in policy around that time, LEW could well have been finished in Urie passenger locomotive green.

Which if it is belived then we have:-
As built A dark green (possible a dark holly shade of green) very close to the old South East and Chatham style livery as seen on the locos on the Bluebell and else where
by 1913 A mid Brunswick green
by 1927 The standard SR Maunsell Green
by 1935 The revised SR Maunsell Green

Allowing for the livery of LEW and its Urie Green there is no reason why each loco has to be in the same livery. I also haven't include the variation of LYN colour schemes either at this stage. But if the L&BR had of survived, it may have been possible that at least one of the locos may have been turned out in SR (light) Sunshine Green livery and yet later on in BR green (basically GWR Green to you and me), I find it hard to accept that anyone could suggest that one of them may well have been painted Black at anytime after 1935, since this was still by and large a tourist railway and I think we should look to the Vale of Rheidol as an example of corporate livery at the time for narrow gauge steam locos.

 

Hi Dave in the book I mentioned above it is said that the SR EMU's used to get up to ten coats of varnish after a repainting and after five years due to wear and tear.

 

@DaveE, has any analysis been done of the Southern-era carriage doors recovered from a Devon barn/attic roof some years ago? Have they revealed any interesting info on the paint/varnish?

 

Sounds about right, you can never have too much varnish. I've always been told by the old timers that once your varnish layer goes your paint layer is compromised, and at that point it's a full strip back. This is why if possible having a revarnish schedule of say 3-4 coats every 2 years as a minimum is much desired and will prolong the need for a full repaint.

When my father was enquiring about the painting for the carriages some years ago he spoke to a carriage painter at Arlington, he asked how many layers for North Devon, the reply was at least 15 as the weather will strip 1-2 layers per year. I reckon that's about right. The problem is the spec Wiliamsons gave us at the time was primer, 2 undercoat, 2 top, and 2 varnish which is what Nos 7,17 and 16 have. As we have found, that is woefully inadequate for North Devon.

No 11 we added another top coat layer and varnish.

On No 5 I did 2 primer, 3 undercoat, 3 top, and 2 varnish. We were going for 3 varnish but we ran out of time due to the transport being booked plus it was the wrong time of year so conditions were not ideal to get as many layers on as we would have liked.

As an aside, the guy at Arlington also said to my Dad that when they painted the Royal carriages they put on 36 layers.... 36!

Something many don't realise is coach enamel and the varnish isn't something you can just do all the time and it's very much not like house paint. Conditions have to be right for the best results, so a temp of 17-25°c, a falling humidity with a dew point at least 3°c lower than ambient.

In years past painters would start to varnish at say 6 or 7am, paint until around lunch and then stop, as from that point on the humidity begins to rise again. You want the paint to be touch dry before the higher humidity later in the day otherwise you get blooming. With oilys that means at least 4 hours, so lunch time left adequate time for it to dry enough to hopefully prevent problems. Start early finish early.

Its all about time now, in the past you may have had 3 or 4 painters full time, now perhaps 1 on their own due to cost. Also, today's paints are harder to work with, with the lack of lead they have less "body" so it's harder to build a good layer up quickly.

The alternative is an environmentally controlled paint shop, but that can get expensive with heat, air filtration to reduce dust, etc.

Even the clothes you wear must be right, no modern fleeces, as they shed fibres. I've watched someone paint with a fleece on, told them to stop, I could see the fibres falling into the paint as they painted!

To be honest, I would love to do coach painting full time, it is an art, and can be tricky, but so satisfying as well

 

Hmm, I'm not sure. I seem to remember a piece going for analysis for Lyn.
To be honest I go by the records at Wiliamsons for the colours as they supplied the paint to the L&B originally. I enquired about the colour for V23, they even have the recipe in the archives, but cannot make it now due to the lead content lol
They have supplied the modern equivalent though.

 

One thing I will say about colours, they are very subjective. One person's Forest Green will not be another person's idea of Forest Green.

It is true the further back we go often paints were mixed on site according to a recipe, but again, if the painter didn't feel it looked right, tweaks could have been made to the mix to his satisfaction. Day light can also be different in different places, eg this is why St Ives in Cornwall has a high number of artists with studios there due to the quality of light.

Our carriages change colour depending on the light level and also at times by the angle you view them, sometimes they look more red, sometimes more brown.

I have at times stood and looked at the carriages at Woody Bay and the ends look a completely different colour to the sides, yet both are painted with the paint from the same tin.

There is also the fact that any colour will start to change the moment it comes out into the sunlight and weather, deterioration begins the moment it rolls out of the paint shop.

It also depends on whether you are looking at the colour en masse, or a small section, if your eye view is predominantly filled with one colour the perception is different to if you are viewing small piece of colour against a multi-colour background. This is why when anyone asks for a colour code for a model I always say don't religiously go by the code, go by what looks right to the eye. The models will only be small sections of colour, often under artificial light, which may be LED, fluorescent or daylight, and the perception of colour will depend on that lighting and it may need to be a shade or two lighter or darker to look right.

 

Modelling paint is one of the oldest and longest lasting arguments that has been going on for years and I don't think you will ever end up pleasing everyone at the same time.

Regarding full time painting yes I think I could just about do that, I am always in awe of sign writers, that is one skill I don't have the patients for.

As for lighting I don't think I would use LEDs in a paint room since the light will only travel down so far before you start to get shadows. I would suggest that a combination of different coloured florescent lamps from day light to warm white (blue to red light spectrum) should be used with a bright Halogen lamps as a main background filler light.

Paint shops have specialist dust light fittings to prevent fires from any paint fumes, having a specialist paint shop kitted out to just to do painting I think would pay for itself over time if you can keep the quality of the finish up to standard.

 

A good light is needed, but not for colour, just being able to see what you are doing, any colour which is hand mixed you would need to do test pieces which are then taken outside once dry to see how it looks. Once you have your recipe that's it, all is done to the same recipe, the temperature of your lighting from then on can be any but the best is probably around 5000k in my opinion. Back in Victorian and Edwardian times they didn't have the lighting available today. To remove shadows a couple of portable light bars can solve that and also bounce light off say a ceiling or wall to avoid glare.
Tbh, unless you are going for mirror finishes and to a museum standard, just good light is adequate.
The trouble is the standard of painting expected now is often quite a bit higher than it would have been originally, back then as long as a satisfactory finish was achieved it was all about getting the carriages back out on the line ASAP earning money. The difference between museum standard and service standard is quite large, where someone spends ages repainting to those mirror finishes etc just simply wouldn't have been done except for very high spec stock say Pullmans etc. The lead paints made up for alot though and layers and layers of varnish.
That is the most important layer for look in many ways is the varnish, if you can get a dust free, run free finish with a deep shine, most imperfections are not noticeable in the colour layers especially if you start tint glazing which can be very satisfying to do.
Service stock were repainted quickly, back out into service to earn money, and we're filthy again within weeks if not days, any museum standard would have been overkill. The most important thing back then was protection from the weather, and layering it on as much as possible in a short space of time allowed would depend how long until the next repaint.

 

It's election time !!

The paperwork for the election arrived here today. In essence a simple voting form listing five candidates, with instructions to vote for no more than four.

The target date for return is 2pm on July 20th, with the actual 'election' being on July 22nd. NO indication anywhere that a vote can be sent electronically - no e-mail address is specified for that purpose. So sadly our non-UK members may be disadvantaged yet again :-( [ NB: M&AoA Clause 29 only covers the sending of proxy forms. ]

There is an accompanying list of the candidate's 'personal statements'. It is pleasing to note that, as far as I can tell, there is NO mention anywhere about the matter of an impending disciplinary process, so at least no scope for undue 'influence' there.

Of course, there still remains the matter of whether or not such a postal vote is valid anyway, given that it is outwith the M&AoA requirements for Trustee elections to take place at an General Meeting, but no doubt that question will be answered in due course.....

 

I was rather taken aback by Mr Miles' effrontery to include the following:

'At last month's Trust AGM there was clear confusion regarding the vote for election of Trustees. The trustees apologise for this confusion and for any procedural errors that may have been made.'

Let's be completely clear: there was no confusion, nor were there any procedural errors.

What there was was a totally unscrupulous attempt by Peter Miles aided and abetted by Chris Nicholson and all of the Trustees other than Chris Duffell to rig the election by illegally removing Anne Belsey's valid nomination.

To try and call this "confusion" and "procedural errors" is simply untrue, and an insult to Anne and to the membership. Anyone who acquiesced with this should have resigned and apologised, rather than putting themselves up for re-election.

 

Is not 'clear confusion' a contradiction in terms ?

Surely there were 'procedural issues' - albeit not with the election itself - in the sense that the actual meeting was invalid as it was called without the due notice period? Are there now not also new procedural issues by virtue of trying to hold a postal election rather than follow the correct M&A0A process of a General Meeting?

 

Toby, I can understand a few may wish to keep on about some aspects of this, but I am beginning to feel myself, and after speaking to others, that we just need to have this election, get the results, and move forward from this bad period. Most of us just want to get in with what's got to be done, find the ways forward with the planning and extension, make sure OSHI does well, extend on the successes elsewhere too however we can and make sure Woody Bay continues to be prosperous. We need to heal from all this and that means compromise, otherwise the fractures are either going to continue for years, or just get deeper. We don't need that.

 

DaveF - I sympathise with your point of view, believe me - almost a week barely passes without a new problem emerging, it would be so nice to see that situation change for the better.

However, it does seem clear to many of us that the Trust is in this situation because the Board has failed to 'follow the rules' - and on more than one occasion. So how can we be assured that we can "move forward from the bad period" if the majority of the incoming Board will still be the same people as before, who so far seem to have taken the view that the fault lies with everyone else other than themselves?

At some stage in the future the Charity Commission may - in light of the various complaints which have been made to it - decide that the Trustees have acted incorrectly/illegally, in which case what then? They may of course decided to simply accept the status quo and insist on rigid adherance to the rules thereafter. On the other hand, they may declare the whole process invalid, including possibly any decisions made by an improperly-elected Board since May this year until such time as the matter is determined, in which case we could be a real mess.

So is it not better to try and 'stop the rot' and fix the problem as quickly as possible rather than simply sit back and hope that 'all will be well' in due course?

 

Exactly - we are having the election that Mr Fenwick and others want us to have including Belsey's name - we just have to await the outcome.Maybe then we can get on with things and put this behind us.

 

As well as advertising for a corporate secretary.

 

It was hardly just me, @H Cloutt . @RailWest is quite right.

@DaveE , I don't know anyone who wants anything other than to get on with extending the railway. But without good governance we'll get nowhere, not least because external funders need to see scrupulously good conduct, not these sorts of shenanigans. And I agree, healing is essential - but that starts with honesty and fidelty to a common set of rules so that we all know where we are.

 

I know it wasn't just you - that why I said 'and others'.

 

As probably one of the 'others' you have in mind @H Cloutt, I spent a career as a professional accountant and not following the rules and conventions was anathema. No different from a Solicitor, and he wouldn't allow it would he (or she)? There is no point to anything without that - it destroys trust, which is in danger of happening in this case. That is my only grouse - I want to see this railway recreated. - in my case as a reincarnation of what it was, and others will have their views on that which I will accept. But whether the reason for departing from the norms is because this is a hobby or for more serious reasons it is not acceptable to this member and has to be stopped somehow. At least the readers of this site will have the information from what has been posted without bias, in my opinion, to decide on how to vote in future.