ChrisH-UK

And according to some Intercity (LMR) paperwork I got back in the 90s, that sleeper trains were not to be run above 80mph without authorisation. I can't find the paperwork in question but the implication was that this was for the comfort of sleeping car passengers. I wonder how late they had to be to get the authorisation. Not really relevant to the test train being discussed, but interesting to know.

Barrowmore MRG website has the BRB vehicle diagram book for On Track Plant (Book 400) on this page http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/Prototype.html which includes dimensional info for Plasser, Clarke-Chapman(Cowans-Sheldon) and other types of twinjib crane. The diagrams include length over buffers, bogie centre distances and front and tail radii for the jibs.

Would there be a line of trees between green and railway line to reduce the chance of a mishit ball?

I've used 2mm in the past for masking Intercity coach cantrails but I don't think I could handle wrangling 1mm tape I think if I'd have been doing that walkway I would have masked the grey parts then either - painted the entire walkway yellow, marked the edges of the green with a paint pen then painted between the lines or painted the entire walkway green, masked off the middle using masking tape the size that the green area should end up (preferably coming off the roll that way) and then sprayed the yellow Oh, I know it's a bit late to go back to your first question about wood grain but I'd have hoped a couple extra layers of paint would have taken care of most of it. I do think you will be fine in the end, in the 2nd pic, with the loco, the lines don't look too bad, maybe the front left area might be the only part that needs further attention once the structure is in place, thing to remember is those walkway lines in real life may not be as straight as we imagine, if you could view them from 40ft above they probably have some oops moments too.

For the sake of clarity, the alternative method did not occur immediately. At the time that DVTs became the norm there were two remaining daytime motorail trains, one to Edinburgh/Inverness and one to Carlisle, the Carlisle train used a DVT set, so that meant the northbound formation was Loco - motorail - coaches - DVT , southbound was Loco - DVT - coaches - motorail. It took 1-2 years for them to implement their solution which looked as simple as putting the vans on the rear of the entire trainset (behind DVT northbound and loco southbound) but required the entire loading/unloading and shunting procedure to change at either end.

You're right, I remember that now. Maybe it was using the same diagramming with the HSTs as with the loco-hauled sets they replaced?

Euston Downside still had a few Mk1 buffet vehicles in 1990, mostly used on the Clansman service, but this was very much the exception with what you say being the rule Shrewsbury & Aberystwyth were the destinations of trains switching from electric to diesel at Wolverhampton I believe the HSTs that appeared at Manchester were used on Holyhead trains from 91/92 and were allocated to Longsight

Yep as Mark says location is a big thing. At Stafford you would also see electric hauled cross country trains to Manchester, Liverpool and Scotland, there were also Mk2f sets with DVTs from Euston to those destinations. In the summer you would see more services and a wider variety of stock including sets of blue/grey Mk2 and in 89/90 I recorded Intercity liveried Mk1 passenger trains passing through Crewe. Until around 1992 you would also have seen Mk2 trains without DVTs operating services to Holyhead and once a day the Clansman ran from Euston to Inverness. In the Rugby area you wouldn't see the cross country trains, additionally you would see Mk2f+DVT on Birmingham expresses and 317s then 321s on local trains to/from Northampton. To see loco-hauled commuter trains (mk1) you would have to go to Northampton. Working north, in the Warrington area you might find loco-hauled trains from Manchester to North Wales, whose consist and frequency varied through the years until fully replaced by DMUs, Transpennine trains crossed the WCML north of Warrington, commuter trains from Manchester to Southport crossed at Wigan, at Preston the WCML trains would be joined by Manchester to Blackpool 'club' trains and there were times when Barrow services were loco-hauled. Carlisle had short loco-hauled trains up the Settle & Carlisle from Leeds which were blue/grey Mk2 hauled by a 47 or 31 That's basically just scratching the surface for 1988-1992

BSC Shotton sent scrap to BSC Ravenscraig in POA wagons (not the usual POA scrap wagons but the kind previously used by Foster Yeoman)

In 1990 the Manchester/Liverpool sleeper was combined with the Carlisle sleeper which dropped a SLEP and BG at Preston, did this happen once Barrow services ceased? At this time the "Night Mail" from Holyhead to Euston still had a single sleeper in the consist and iirc remained that way until HSTs replaced all loco-hauled Intercity services on the route. I think it was 92 when the Manchester/Liverpool again ran separately with the Carlisle/Preston running with extra parcels vans attached (which continued on to Scotland) and a year or so later both those trains stopped running and Carlisle was served by detaching 2 sleepers from one of the Scottish trains.

Found a P5 books for 1990 which have 9007 allocated to Fort William for steam stuff and 9016 allocated to Upperby, the spring edition has it in the pool for Settle & Carlisle trains, the summer ed has it in an Intercity stored for withdrawal pool. It could well have ended up in a relief train or substituting for an out-of-service brake vehicle. I don't have much idea what the Heaton FO would have worked, I don't know what local services remained loco-hauled, which would leave the Newcastle & Middlesborough transpennine services maybe.

Walthers and Pikestuff make buildings in that kind of material, some is already blue if you want the colour as well as the style and are daunted by painting a large area of material. Of course you're unlikely to find a building that exactly meets your needs but you do get accessories and fittings to use elsewhere.

FO According to the 1988 ABC 3045 was in the Provincial General pool at Heaton notes say it was declassified, but retained its number. 3121 and 3124 were also noted as declassified at Upperby but in the Intercity Charter pool. 3605/6/8 were in the same pool at Upperby but renumbered as well as declassified. BSO Four vehicles listed, all in Scotland. Three BSO(T) - 9007 at Inverness and 9015/16 at Polmadie (presumably for services between Glasgow/Carlisle/Stranraer). One BSO - 9227 at Inverness IIRC by 1990 there was one, maybe 2 BSO(T) remaining in 1990 but at that time the only FOs in service were charter coaches.

Some time has passed since the last post on here, real life gets in the way. I've not had much time for physical modelling but quite a bit of time for trying to figure things out, like the grille from the post on june 23 - I'm thinking laser-cutting but with a twist. But the biggest has been figuring out how to represent some of the detail parts around the deck, that's the biggest issue of modelling something like this - everything is on show. Personal photo, taken with permission. So that's pipework all over the place, pumps and filters, electrical boxes, cabling and who knows what else. It would be easy to say "screw it" and not bother, but there's so much stuff going on it just wouldn't work if you didn't represent some of it, the model would be missing part of its character. I'd already shown some of my etch earlier in the thread but knew that wouldn't be the only way of doing things. As well as using those etched parts I figured 3d-printing would be my friend, it still will be, but not as much as I originally thought, at the sizes required it's difficult to sprue the parts or use a grid box, and printing a lot of small parts individually just isn't economical, so that has led to a lot of crafting of tiny pieces of plasticard, styrene section and leftover sprue. This is the result so far Should have included a ruler for reference, but the largest of these is 16.5mm wide and the smallest (still threaded on the wire) is 2.5mm wide. Of course to most people these are still anonymous pieces of plastic with no context, the only pieces that may be identifiable are the middle two in the bottom row, the control desk (slightly to the right in the photo of the prototype) and the radiator/fan assembly (in the center of the other photo) - it's also the piece I am happiest with. Next - more tiny parts and making better sense of these

Taking the example of Slough specifically, I went to college there in 1990-1993 and the outside looked very much similar, elements that are blue in the photo were red. The one part I cannot remember clearly is the horizontal bars between window sections which may have been red, been white with NSE lining or neutral black. The vertical blinds in the photo were present in 90/91/92, but those were the only windows for those offices. Behind the frontage it was full NSE makeover, modern white finishes for the foyer with red or rwb flashes, and the platforms had all the usual NSE touches as can be seen here https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2846987 That page also says that many of the station buildings are grade II listed which probably explains why the frontage didn't change much for NSE or after it. Deciding if your building would have been given listed status probably defines how much modification it would have had for NSE

Based on experience gained with my own first-etch I would suggest fold lines as wide as the material is thick. Others with more experience may be able to fine tune that req.

Horses for courses, do you have a specific railroad or region in mind? I've owned Athearn bluebox, Proto 2k, Atlas Trainman and modified an Atlas Master GP40-2 shell, all to represent specific prototypes operated by Conrail, CSX and NS. Athearn bluebox are widely available for reasonable money, as supplied they are a bit rudimentary but with a bit of work can be detailed up nicely, Atlas Trainman comes with a bit more detail but still need some detail work. Proto 2k aren't around as much, they were usefully priced and included a reasonable amount of detail but were lacking in certain places (such as bogies/trucks). I've yet to try the newest Athearn offering but I would expect it to have most of the right detail for each railroad but not leave you with much change for your freight cars. At this point in time modifying the atlas shell is neither economical on cost nor on time needed, but was a good way for me to combine all the details I needed at the time I did the work (about 10 years ago).

XC - 26/8/91 - Carlisle 86241 1204 5836 5803 5638 5653 5626 9484 86228 5767 5824 5760 5843 5632 5821 1203 92939 86207 9507 5684 5722 5719 5706 1653 3228 GW sleeper 25/6/93 Paddington 47814 94010 9486 6226 3522 10583 10540 10539 10584 92194 47848 Penzance (day coaches used for service to Plymouth and back) 47849 6213 9501 94034 Can't find records for GW day sets but my recollections for 91/92 (when I was at college in Slough) is they were similar in make up to the train royaloak listed with 57601, only with a 665x series RMBT in place of 6720

Here's a photo I took of the prototype, better photos exist, but this one doesn't require anyone else's permission. The two-tone effect in the paintwork is a recentish thing, so is the toy guitar that I only just noticed was strapped to it. I've gone for generic yellow for mine, which was used by Conrail and CSAO. Orange is different, the only photos I've seen of that type in orange were NS machines, maybe one that NS sold on would still be orange? Colour on MoW equipment is weird, 90% is yellow, NS uses orange, CSX seems to go for a neon greeny-yellow and Amtrak can't seem to make its mind up, RJ Corman paints everything bright red (not seen one of these in red)

But to avoid misunderstanding, Scotland did retain Intercity locos for services between Carstairs and Edinburgh, for the Clansman and the sleepers, once the electrification to Edinburgh was completed it left only six trains a day and the pool of locos shrunk to 7, two in large logo, two in mainline, two in swallow and a single in original Intercity. (I know you were not suggesting otherwise but the OP may have inferred it.)

Are you building the kit to represent a specific machine or operator? Btw finally got round to posting mine here...

Wow four years! Having been prompted by Luigi/Foxy's own thread I thought it was time I showed off my own model of a Custom Finishing Mk3 Tamper that has been in progress for at least 8 years. Sadly I don't have any pics of build progress, but here's the parts all laid out. The castings are quite crisp, there's a little bend on the sides, but as you put it all together it mostly straightens itself. I'm modelling a specific machine, assigned to Conrail Shared Asset Operation in Southern New Jersey stretching across the Delair Bridge into parts of Philadelphia, the spec appears similar to machines in use with NS. So instead of looking like the included diagram mine looks like this. The styrene parts are obvious additions, I don't recall if the large tank is fuel or hydraulic reservoir, the alignment gear has been widened as per photos of my prototype, the gear to the left of the wheel position under the door has hydraulic rams and a floor added (seems to be something that the model should have, as most photos of Mk3 have this), two shim shaped pieces have been added in the cab after trawling the web for interior shots, and on the front an alignment frame has been crafted out of styrene section with wire used to keep the whole structure true. Handrails and ladders were added from nickel silver wire, and in one place a mini staple, pipes and hoses have been made from brass wire. On the other side of the cab is what appears to be an AC box, and on the side of the open frame a couple of hydraulic or pneumatic control or distribution boxes, an extinguisher holder and on the end a representation of the chain drive and its cover plate. More details to follow in less than 4 years hopefully as I've already added a ton of detail and painted it. (But it's still not finished)

I've made one of these, I thought I'd posted about it but apparently not, I'll try and fix that over the weekend. As for weedy wheels, the axle is a bit thin but the wheels are the correct diameter, I looked all over for something a tiny bit more robust but of approximately the right size, NWSL was someone I found with 26" and 28" wheels. I found the kit as-designed would go together well, but I was modelling a specific prototype so I've added bits and changed bits. I call it my fractal Tamper as each set of detail photos had me looking closer for even more details - It's the nature of vehicles with open sides. There seems to have been some evolution in the kit as I acquired a second model which had extra parts including monofilament to represent hydraulic lines or pipes. I also have a Kershaw 26-1 ballast regulator, but that's basically donor parts for a different Kershaw machine. Chris H

One time I got an email like this about an item well outside my interest, but I had registered an interest in other items. I just put it down to an error on their database and next time I was on the site checked my details including things I'd expressed an interest in. I was satisfied it was a system error and nothing onerous or malicious.

Looks fine from the front as you say. When it comes to the door, is it that the panel goes too high or the bottom of the door is not low enough? Thanks Chris H