Stephen 28

Blooming brilliant, and the idea of laminating plastic card and then milling it to shape is inspired.

Very nice work Anthony, I especially like the use of the thicker phosphor bronze for the chassis. If you decide to offer the etches for sale I could see several heading north to Forth and Clyde area group members!

Any plans to re-introduce the LNER CCT which you used to do in 7mm a few years back?

The Chinese made basic Hornby chassis can be spotted due to having blackened wheels and the bodies have nicer decoration. A quick rummage on auction sites shows they appear around the £15 to £20 mark. The Dapol/Hornby ex L&Y pug has a lower geared chassis and they are plentiful second hand.

Bachmann brought out a newly tooled Jubilee a few years back, covers the short firebox locos but may be possible to fit an old long Firefox body on the new dcc friendly chassis? One thing on your plan that troubles me, if you curved the Dumfries siding round between the main line and the branch, you wouldn't need any gradients, your boards would be simpler, and your locos will pull longer trains. Just a thought.

Beautifully painted figures Ian

What does it look like with the borrowed goods shed sitting parallel to the road, adjacent to the boundary fence? It would probably still require a smaller building but you could keep both sidings, perhaps cutting one shorter than the otherwith an end loading dock on it.

You could try epoxy-ing the motor in place using the defunct motor mount to set the height etc.

Split frame every time, the added friction caused by wiper pickups, and the faff of setting them up in N/2mm just aren't worth it.

I know you weren't keen to offer this as a kit but I would love to buy two etches for the version you have just built if that were possible Nigel? Carlisle always had one or two of these dotting about on all sorts of jobs.

Mr Nearholmer, if I may be so bold, push the boat out a good long way and purchase two left hand points, using the second to give a short, kick back siding, possibly serving a cattle or end loading dock or both. At once rural and more interesting for wagon shuffling.

2P looking good Nigel

Cooksons have a free postage offer on this weekend. I have just ordered one of these vices using it. (No connection other than as a customer).

Having had a good look at the Gresleys at Glasgow show,overall I am very impressed - they look the part. There is one aspect that does however strike me as wrong, the drop lights are far too shallow, appearing almost square whereas on the real coaches they are much deeper vertically, almost as deep as the main pane in the toilet window. Anyone have any views on this?

Looks good so far. Once you get enough rails laid to test the various routes, do so exhaustively, and don't convince yourself that good enough will do. With such a key piece of track it needs to be as near to perfect as you can get it otherwise it will be a source of derailments and frustration on the layout. This promises to be an impressive layout, I look forward to your progress reports.