checkrail

Looking good! Hope we get to see it again as work continues.

Good, because that's what I've done! (Though not as detailed as the Dart Castings parts.). Thanks Neal

The brass truss rods you can see are merely two Markits extra-long handrail knobs and a bit of handrail wire! The tanks and vac cylinder are cut from an old wrecked Hornby corridor clerestory underframe, as are the truss rods on the other side (below), only one set having survived removal. The other side also has a brass V hanger and linkage from the spares box. (I think there should be a vac brake set-up on one side only on this coach, but i may be mis-reading the evidence.) John.

After a period busy with domestic chores - including, alarmingly, some water ingress into the loft (again!) - I'm about to resume work on the old Tri-ang clerestory conversion. As you can see It's a bit of an ugly duckling at the moment. I'm unlikely to turn it into a beautiful swan but I hope it will become a passable representation of a C10 third in due course. John C.

Tim Bryan's 'A year in the life of the Great Western' has good coverage of the broccoli traffic and a 1930s pic of it being loaded at Penzance. Though most of the train is hidden by the line of delivery lorries which have brought the goods the one vehicle that can be seen is a 6-wheel low siphon. (There's another great pic of the stuff being unloaded at Paddington Goods by a largely female workforce.) I'm sure you will have a copy of 'The Great Western Railway in West Cornwall' by Alan Bennet, which also has an account of this traffic, including a couple of 1950s pics of loading, and cattle wagons, at Marazion. But my own favourite broccoli train photo is of a Castle at speed on the main line, with a train of fitted cattle wagons - vegetables for London! (Can't find which book it's in at the mo.) It would be a great one to model ....

As Robin @gwrrob suggests the rather nice Hornby SR cattle wagon tends to be somewhat overlooked. I know mine's been languishing in a drawer for a while in favour of its LMS cousin. But here it is in service behind 4574. Those Cooper Craft GWR MEX cattle wagons make up into nice models too. I have a strong feeling that Rapido will tackle these once they've got through their run of much-needed plain wagons and vans of the pre-grouping and Big Four eras. That's if Hornby don't surprise us first! John C.

You rang Sir? It is indeed a fine model from Hornby. I've just posted another couple of pics of it in action on my layout thread.

(At last - I've got the photo uploads to work again! Amazing what a walk out in the rain and a couple of pints can do.) Prompted by recent discussion over on ANTB @gwrrob my ancient K's Siphon F has been restored to its place in the parcels train, as seen below. But the real reason it's been languishing in the fiddle yard is that the up FY loops can only fit 9 vehicles and not 10. So for now it's on a down working. I bought this on eBay already made up some years ago and gave it a repaint and new couplings. The underframe detail is a bit sketchy but I've never got round to doing anything about it. The last pic shows the other end of the train. It will be nice if Dapol do a K22 as part of their promised corridor toplight selection. John C

Very nice pic. Yep, a lovely model. Hornby get a lot of knocking but a lot of their 21st century output has been superb. (Was just about to put some Siphon F pics on my thread but can't get them to upload. End of year gremlins!)

Essentially, unless measured or placed alongside a truly accurate alternative, very few people could tell. This recent exchange is not the first I've read this year about the K's Siphon F. It seems it's not quite the travesty that some have in the past suggested. So mine's been restored to my parcels train and given a spin or two.

A very happy Christmas and new year to all who follow this thread, and indeed to all those who host or contribute to the various other threads I follow. Your online companionship, shared knowledge and expertise, and your wit and humour, are especially important to us 'lone wolf' modellers, who may have many friends but none who know anything about model railways! RMweb is definitely life enhancing. Here are a few close ups taken around the station at Stoke Courtenay. All the best. Looks like lots of goodies coming our way in the next year or so, especially for us GWR fans. John C.

I think they would probably look best unpainted Andy. Agreed. They were made with galvanIsed iron or steel, later of aluminium. I find that buffing them up with a fibreglass pencil enhances the finish.

Ah ha! That explains it. Thanks Miss P.

As I've done before I'll run a thick Plastikard tongue out from the bogie stretcher and mount a small Bachmann t/l, with 'Brian Kirby' modification, on the end of it. This coach's occasional appearances will be as part of the branch passenger train so it will need to be fitted for remote automatic uncoupling for run-round purposes.

'The first cut is the deepest' .... Heart in mouth I loaded the razor saw with a new blade and got to work. The conversion joins the compartment ends of two Tri-ang brake thirds, cutting after the 11th window for one and the 13th for t'other. Joining these two together makes a coach a bit longer than a C10 should be, the extra length being at the outer ends. This is addressed by sawing off these ends, reducing the last narrow panel with files and sanding sticks, and then joining it all back together. This leaves some fiddly bits of filling to do, as you can see. I'm not sure whether it was worth it, as there's very little internal clearance between the inside of the end tumblehome and the first window, and the coach is still a little overlength - 47' 6" instead of 46' 6". I'll live with it. The two roofs have the brake ends cut off about 3 mm short of half way and the two compartment ends filed, sanded and joined against a straightedge. The roof retaining clips are sliced off and the corresponding slots in the ends filled with Plastikard blanks prior to a bit of filling. The lamp tops on the roof still line up nicely with the compartments. So far this has been a bit of fun, like a bit of modelling archaeology, resurrecting a model first released in 1961. John C.

I was going to order a couple of Shapeways bogies for the C10, which would have cost several times the cost of all the other bits put together. Then I remembered that I had a pair of Dean 8' 6" bogies from an old K's Dean 40' PBV I'd made years ago but fitted with American bogies. The K's castings are ancient and a bit deformed but with a bit of twisting and some drilling of the axleboxes for pinpoint bearings they went together reasonably satisfactorily on a sheet of glass using cyano. These bogies don't have the earlier full footboards, which is fine for my era. Instead I added MJT fold-up brass end footsteps I had in stock (intended for American bogies). The second pic shows some distortion to the white metal sideframe casting. No amount of gentle twisting would get rid of this while keeping all four wheels on the glass plate at the same time. Answer? Simples! Make sure that in service that side faces the back of the layout. Things always look slightly better after a lick of paint. John C.

By lining I just mean the black/gold line at the waist, not the earlier full panel lining. At some point I'll have to consider whether to slice off all the door and grab handles and replace with brass door furniture, or just touch up the moulded ones with gold paint. The former method would probably make it easier to put the waist lining on in one strip before adding the brassware. And of course there was a brief period in the mid-late 20s after the full lining was discontinued during which there was no lining at all, just brown and cream. (I think the GWR then thought they'd gone a bit too far, and brought the waist lining back.). Unlikely though, that this austere lining-free livery would have lasted until the late 30s?

Thanks Robin @gwrrob for very useful C10 pics. Though my layout is pre-war I might be tempted by the all-over brown livery, otherwise painting and lining this coach is going to be a bit of a swine!

I didn't come home empty handed from the MMRS show, having snaffled a copy of Brian Stephenson's 'Great Western steam at its zenith' for £2.50 from Nick Tozer. So there was at least one pre-war GWR photo album I didn't have (and I'd only seen a handful of the pics before). I also bagged these. With luck they'll form the basis for a C10, following the conversion described by @Mikkel of this parish on the gwr.org site (and by the Swansea Railway Modellers group as described online. This coach will become an occasional high season strengthener for the branch B set. But however well it turns out I don't think I'll be standing it next to any of the forthcoming Dapol items! John C.

I'd forgotten about these. Last two shots of the departing Grange from track level. Wasn't sure which I liked the best so I'm posting both! I note that the front handrail on the tender has gone a bit wonky. Must sort out. John C.

A couple more of Aylburton Grange and train. And one that got away, taken earlier on the way in. John C.

Here's an aerial view as 6801 pulls in. Longtime followers of this thread probably know that the footbridge is from an ancient 'Pola for Hornby' plastic kit that's undergone brutal surgery to remove the lower two panels of the staircase and bring it closer to earth. (Rather than a stairway to heaven that could have accommodated 0 gauge trains.). I think it's now part of Gaugemaster's 'Fordhampton' range. And here's the parting of the ways as the Grange continues on its way west leaving the through coach for retrieval by the branch train engine. The upright handle of the luggage trolley marks the spot where the magnet is buried under the track, allowing trains to detach tail traffic by a couple of momentary speed step moves backwards to ease the coupling tension. (And if the dropped vehicle itself moves back I consider it a black mark!) Now Aylburton Grange can head off to Plymouth, its load a little lighter. John C.

Nice bridge.

Meanwhile, back at Stoke Courtenay, here's 8709 with a pick-up goods. Once it's set its train back into the yard the line is clear for 6801 Aylburton Grange to bring in a Plymouth-bound stopper. As the E-set glides into the platform we see that it's also conveying the daily Earlsbridge through coach, which had been detached from an express at Newton Abbot. (I've observed over the years that after a while those first Dapol signals start failing to return to the fully horizontal. And some of them need a couple of prods of the push-button to make them work at all at the beginning of a running session. The later bracket signals are superior in every way - appearance, relability, 'bounce' etc. But at the time Dapol made it plain they weren't going to revisit the single-post ones. A shame - I'd certainly have replaced all mine.) John C.

A pleasant few hours at the Manchester exhibition yesterday. Some nice layouts including the 21st century China one I'd seen at Warley a couple of weeks or so ago, and the MMRS's own 18.83 mm gauge Slattocks Junction. But the standout for me was the wonderful 2 mm scale model of York station, viewed at eye level through a sort of 5 foot long letterbox. As it happens I think it was also the only layout in the show to feature a GW train, seen here with some nice coaches hauled by a Gresley pacific. John C.