LaScala

Looks awfully familiar! I also bought a part built (ie messed up) kit and had enough slack to buy missing bits. I have same problem with droopy front footplate. I also had problems with eccentric wheels so replaced with Slaters. Certainly no issue with slipping with that huge chunk of white metal. I do recall that I spent a long time trying to get the safety valve bonnet to sit vertically. The Springside kits have been passed by with mixed media offerings and even RTR for many years, but still make good models IMHO

Don't you worry 'bout your kit? Very nice slow steady pace.

I recently bought a Dapol GWR O gauge autocoach in the Hattons Black Friday sale with light bar and (I presume) two function decoder, likely a rebranded LAIS. All worked well until I decided to add a directional lamp to the driver's end. I duly wired up a DCC Concepts bicolour red/white Nano LED . This also worked well on DC power. Also easy to fit to the iron below the driver's window and wiring invisible. Excellent. Then I thought why not use the decoder to power the lamps? I was able to identify white, yellow and blue pins, so confidently wired it all up. Place on the track and disaster. The tell-tale smell of decoder is all you need to know. Turns out that the light bar is the opposite polarity to the Nano lamp LED. I have checked the DCC Concepts manuals and cannot find anything that indicates a polarity, but it seems I'm boxed in, needing either new lamps for the light bar, a second decoder, or opposite polarity NANO's. Of course, I already need a new decoder. Are there any tips for how best to resolve this?

Another tale of polarity confusion and no doubt it's all mine. I recently bought a Dapol GWR O gauge autocoach with light bar and (I presume) two function decoder, likely a rebranded LAIS. All worked well until I decided to add a directional lamp to the driver's end. I duly wired up a DCC Concepts bicolour red/white Nano LED . This also worked well on DC power. Also easy to fit to the iron below the driver's window and wiring invisible. Excellent. Then I thought why not use the decoder to power the lamps? I was able to identify white, yellow and blue pins, so confidently wired it all up. Place on the track and disaster. The tell-tale smell of decoder is all you need to know. Turns out that the light bar is the opposite polarity to the Nano lamp LED. I have checked the DCC Concepts manuals and cannot find anything that indicates a polarity, but it seems I'm boxed in, needing either new lamps for the light bar, a second decoder, or opposite polarity NANO's. Of course, I already need a new decoder. Are there any tips for how best to resolve this?

We all know Tony dislikes DCC, or Dumb Crank Connections

Runaway trains are the most common awkward mistake even on otherwise fine models Your K2 man would remember this trip through LB for a while? Running on the relief line perhaps?

The driver of the K2 looks like the pint of prune juice has finally worked through his bowel

I thought many of them (in slightly earlier iterations maybe) are effectively available as Gladiator kits, my understanding being that he designed them before striking out on his own. The GCR ones in particular are surely clones?

Not forgetting the four Proteus motors in the SR N4 hovercraft that was also in Bluebird LSR car.

Never been better and 3D is finally coming of age making multi media kits the gold standard, CAD compressing development time and increasing accuracy. The numbers on this forum suggest it's a shrinking niche however and cost V RTR also an issue. The rate of posting in this thread is half what it was in 2009.

A reasonably obscure prototype with RTR available in 4mm & 7mm scale, (Planet and Minerva) just about wiping out the chances of anyone building the Agenoria/CSP twins, so good to see one built.

I love this little one. Pretty much an outside valve version of the Burry Port Avonside GWR pair 2094 & 2095. If there are ten restorable locos there I would be surprised.

The 2019 green excuse does not fly for me. They have had 30 years to do more than slap sump oil on the locos. They were in trouble back in 1989 and little has changed except the oxidation. "Unecessary and unmanageable" 34 years ago.

Totally agree. I took that pic in early 2018 and posted it on an Aussie forum lamenting the wanton dereliction and mentioned it being a southern hemisphere Barry but without hope. Predictably, there were Dorrigo apologists shouting me down along the lines of "we should praise the salvation not criticise it''. I hear more stock has been added whilst genuinely historic locos and countless items of rolling stock disintegrate. There are ''only'' 75 locomotives, 19 railmotors and 280 carriages and wagons there! Last steamed in 1987; well one loco. Their web site looks to be from the dawn of the internet 30 years ago https://www.dsrm.org.au/ This was two years ago and this a few months after I was there 5 years ago The two ROD's are seen a few times but particularly at 4:45

The Richmond Vale ROD is much luckier than the Dorrigo pair whose decades of unloved decay irks me every time the subject comes up.

Not that much!

Looks like every shovel of coal would involve a 3 foot drop into the tender and then a shaky climb back up.

Successfully cut the weight down to 120mm length, that is 60mm either side of the central hole. This has the benefit of instantly creating two more weights for other coaches saving much time and cutting disks. A bad idea in the first place and needless waste of steel. Whilst the weight is easy enough to get at, prizing it out inevitably causes more windows to pop out! Very easy to permanently refix them with canopy cement. Nice bit of Chinese ferrous oxide on the uncut one.

Just got two thirds at the bargain run-out price and count myself lucky only one window was adrift. Two more fell out removing the roof. Apart from the ludicrous metal weight (which I sadly air mailed across the world), I am pretty impressed. I intend to cut the plate down by two thirds. The wheel bearing issues should be solved. Covid supply issues seem to be over as the parcel arrived in Australia in just over a week.

I'm the first person to put the rubbish bin out when I used to be the underpants sprinter on garbage pick-up day.

Let's not forget 72's were the stretched cut and shuts of their day. There are 5 42xx's out there. The 72's would surely be ashtrays on a motorbike for usefulness and that probably explains their glacial pace of restoration.

100% agree. There will be line closures, scrapping of hulks and new engineering solutions, new fuels maybe. Nostalgia for the 1980's will abound. Vanity projects like backdating Merchant Navy 35011 and building a Churchward County will look foolish and a distant memory. Dare I say the preservation pioneers in N Wales were successful pioneers because: Genuinely historic Spectacular locations Manageable Established tourist destinations Fascinating machinery Locos work hard doing the job they were designed for, not poodling up a siding in the middle of nowhere with a fibreglass Thomas face How many preserved lines attractions go anywhere near this appeal? Is the Ffestiniog wrong for running a 1879 Fairlie with a 1960's Hunslet boiler and piston valves and even oil firing? Does anyone care Moelwyn has a 1950's bus engine and not a dreadful thirsty WW1 petrol lump? These are practical solutions keeping the past alive.

Your own argument fails right here. Absolutely nobody will worship the eighth Castle then..........anymore than they will a siding full of unrestored Bulleid rebuilt pacifics or 15 Halls.

There seems to be a great deal of what's the point in recreating a one off on the basis there is no work to be found for a large loco. I can see the point but the logic falls over immediately if TC was just another Castle with guess what? No meaningful work. Does it suddenly become interesting as the eighth example? Half a century of next to no progress on TC and (almost guaranteed) little if any donations or volunteering from the loudest GWS critics, shouts white elephant. If TC was so special, it would surely not have rotted for decades. Fifteen Halls are good reasons Burton Ag and Hinderton are rightly well down the list at Didcot. Is the anybody still lamenting Maindy Hall when enjoying Lady of Legend? And let's not mention the thousands of tons of idle Bulleid pacifics. I do agree the King story reflects badly on the GWS, but it's not a reason to deny it a serious customer magnet in 4709. When looking for mistakes in preservation, there are many more egregious than KE2.