invercloy

Thanks, makes sense reading it again, but wasn’t sure if you meant the real motive power or yours.

Where do you have the info on the motive power from? I've done LOADS of digging into this proposal, seen the documents lodged with the Board of Trade that are now in the National Archives, but never found any firm information on the motive power. There was provision for steam or electric, and it was 3'6", but I've never seen anything on the HLR relating to motive power.

I own a copy of the Rural Transport committee documents describing those lines. There's definitely some modelling potential in there!

I am, Ken, though I VERY rarely post on here nowadays. In answer to the question, been there, done that, exhibited it, got the t shirt Although, my version went the other way - the plans were for a 3'6" gauge line, and I modelled it in 2'6" gauge using 009. My layout is the one that features in the photos in the RM article. There were several proposals for a railway line on Skye, so you needn't model the narrow gauge one when there was actually a standard gauge proposal - opposite the Kyle station and operating up to Portree. It was proposed by the Highland Railway, so if you went for that you could have the fun I've had and imagine what could have been for one of the other proposals. More info on what I got up to on my website: https://hlrco.wordpress.com Here's a teaser: image by invercloy, on Flickr

We've just launched a Narrow Planet Facebook page. https://www.facebook...027?sk=timeline Obviously we'll continue to update you with developments here, but if you want another way of seeing what we're up to please like and share our page.

Noted, Mike. There used to be a 'splash' page to do just that on a previous incarnation of the forum, but it must have disappeared when it was upgraded. I'll suggest it gets reinstated to the owners Halton Boy, I'll pass that on and see what we can do. PM me in a few days if you've not heard anything.

As a moderator of NGRM I can confirm the question was put in place to avoid excess spam attacks, there's nothing sinister behind it. Far from it, it's trying to retain a friendly, lively forum dedicated to narrow gauge modellers. I've asked Matt who runs the techy side of things to look into it. Halton Boy - is that the username you registered with on NGRM? Just in case that helps us narrow down the problem. Thanks, Tom

Heljan kindly provided the details to the 009 Society for display at the Convention, which I pulled together into the display along with the CAD images. They mentioned that the the price is APPROXIMATE, but all other mentions of price have been in the same ballpark. £185 seems perfectly reasonable to me when you consider that a Backwoods Miniatures kit (which is the most comparable in terms of quality based on the details Heljan have provided to date) costs £92 and that requires lots of soldering of bodywork and chassis and lots of time invested in it before you get it to run, let along paint, details etc. It's a bold venture by Heljan, and from the details provided so far they seem to be heading in a very good direction in my opinion.

I've just taken delivery of a tender drive unit from Union Mills for a 009 tender loco scratchbuilding project. Being a slightly different project, Colin was quite helpful in advising me on what he could offer. I posted him a cheque late last week and I received my chassis today - great service. Does anyone have any photos of their chassis after DCC conversion? I'd be interested to see any slightly different approaches to the one in the DCC fitting guide.

Little faith? Absolutely not! I'm merely asking as I didn't know if it was usual for periods of radio silence. Remember this is a new experience for us 009 modellers I've heard more info since posting my query which is reassuring.

Has anyone heard anything on this project? It's gone awfully quiet... Is this normal practice after an announcement of a model until a prototype is shown? (spot the 009 modeller who hasn't bought an RTR model for over a decade so can't remember how marketing works )

No, it's good news, welcome to the dark side!

I completely agree, Paul, the collectors market is a good draw for an L&B loco over and above a generic design. There's also the option for anyone with a Southern Railway layout to have a feeder line in the same delivery, not to mention the same scenario for any layout using the original L&B livery to represent a freelance line. To be honest, I don't 'recognise' anything that was running before the early 80s as that's when I was born, so that rules out most of railway history... I don't see why date has anything to do with it. I disagree about the 'trainset' market, look at how many 00 layouts have a narrow gauge feeder line (as per my point above), this release will probably increase that, and I have a feeling that's where a good majority of the sales could be from - 00 layouts with 009 appearing as a special add on feature to an already extant layout. Look at the success Bachmann have had with the 0n30 range, that started with one loco, RTR 009 has to start somewhere, like I said before, it's just good that Peco provided the impetus with the stock and Heljan have begun working on a loco.

There are many many more 0-6-0s, a generic 'catalogue' design would probably fit in more with what Kenton is thinking of, and to a degree he has a point in that its less line specific and therefore less limiting in terms of stock it will look 'right' with. But conversely, and arguably more importantly, a catalogue design wont be as instantly recognisable as an L&B manning wardle, and wont have the added pull of the Peco stock perfectly matching it, or a prototype running at the Festiniog or L&B (soon hopefully!). At the end of the day we're getting an RTR 009 loco, its just great that someone has finally taken the plunge.

2-6-2s derail? Only if they're poorly designed or running track that's a tad on the lumpy side, I've never had issues with 2-6-2's. The new Peco points are much smoother and hardly cause stock to 'crash' through them, in fact I can propel (with a 4-4-0T) a rake of 10+ unweighted Parkside Dundas wagons with no issue. The new track is a big improvement in terms of running, so much so that I've ripped up the only two 12" radius points I had and replaced them with the new ones. Again, as it's your opinion I don't think you can say the prototype is 'wrong', but rather 'not what you would have chosen'.