Monday 14th March

Doors again. When you think about it a lot of the detail in the body is around the doors. So it's not surprising that they suck up so much time. Still working on the end door tonight. The cast white metal pegs for the end door catches don't appeal to me. Not sure I can solder them effectively and not sure how robust they'll be. So I'll make replacements from 1mm brass wire. It is possible to drill a 0.5mm hole through 1mm brass wire. File a small flat where you want the hole.Make a centre mark with the point of a scriber, that'll be enough to start a 0.5mm drill. Hold the wire in a vice and drill vertically through. The flat can end up underneath when installed, you won't see it.
Drill the hole first then get the length of the peg correct relative to the hole. They need to be about 1mm shorter than the white metal castings from hole to end, otherwise they stick out too far. Check photos. Taper one end and solder them, without fear of meltdown, into the end stanchions.

Now, more bloody chain and etched rings, but mercifully the last lot. The cotter pin X22 is too wide to go through the 0.5mm hole in the peg. On the prototype the peg had a slot milled in it. We can't make a tiny slot but we can carefully thin down the cotter until it fits the hole. 6 links of the tiny chain looks about right. That's one side done, and it is possible to fit the cotter and turn the ring X21 over the peg, just. The chain and rings on the other side of the end door, and that's it done. That's it for tonight. One month since getting started!



2.5 hours. Total 82.5 hours.
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Digression - Thomas the Tank Engine. Naturally as a little boy I had my share of Thomas books. Gordon The Big Engine was the first. I still have it, a fifth edition from June 1966. a sixth birthday present. The foreword starts - "Dear Ian, You asked for a book about Gordon. Here it is. Gordon has been naughty, and then Fat Controller was stern with him. Gordon has now learned his lesson and is a Really Useful Engine again." The books were generally true to railway custom and practice of the time they were written, the fifties. Post war society is reflected in them too - Gordon is a bit aristocratic and one of the locomotive upper classes, James and Henry are aspiring middle class, and Thomas and Percy are working class tank engine oiks.

You have your favourites. I never quite liked Gordon. Even at that age I knew he was supposed to be a Gresley pacific and I knew the rectangular buffers were bogus and he was an axle short on the tender. And he was a bit sniffy and patronising, wouldn't touch trucks, talked down to 'little Thomas'. Besides, I wasn't that keen on blue either. James? What was James supposed to be anyway? Never did work that out. And bright red wasn't the right colour for an engine. Thomas was OK even though he was pale blue, a bit cheeky and subversive. My favourite was Henry. Green was a favourite colour, and Henry seemed to be neat and well proportioned. A Black Five, as I subsequently found out. Henry always seemed to be getting a rough deal, you had to feel sorry for him.

As kids and parents you had to know your railway lore to appreciate some of the stories. I remember one Percy episode where he runs through a signal and ends up in the water with the Fat Controller standing over him muttering dark oaths. The whole point of the story, the whole joke on Percy, was the difference between upper and lower quadrant semaphore signals and the misunderstanding that arose. Who'd get that today, apart from folk reading this blog? The yoof of today eh?

Would it be a laugh to write a modern day Thomas? With Network Rail, the Rail Regulator, punctuality stats, RoSCos, franchises. Well, maybe not.