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Unlined green would have been the official livery. I have seen some evidence of being turned out in black during and possibly after WW2 - and scruffy engines that had last all visible trace of colour wasn't confined to the 1960s...

Definitely the Dean Goods - not the CR Jones though very similar. Difficult to be absolutely certain by the tender, they could get borrowed occasionally. Easiest check is the cab sides - which were more or less flush with running plate on the Jones offering, but inset with almost a walkway round it on the Deans. First photo particular is very clear on this Brian

On a slightly different tack ... Is anyone interested, for themselves, club or whatever, in a COMPLETE SET of Model Railway Journals. This is from issue 0 (1985) to issue 289 (current) along with the 1990 Exhibition special and the three compendia - total 294 items. They have been on Ebay for a few weeks but the only nibble was from a club a very long way north, with no way of arranging a collection. I am partially disabled and couldn't do anything to help. Any contributions to the modelling find are welcome - but the only condition is COLLECT ONLY, please (Ascot, Berkshire, SL5). I have to clear them out and in the absence of an appreciative home, it will be for recycling , which would be a crying shame. Look forward to anyone interested - even if they are doing it to break them up and make a profit on it!

There was indeed a proposal to expand the Harbour facilities at Portmadoc quite considerably - but strictly for freight, not passenger use as suggested by Keith. JIC Boyds "The Festiniog Railway" shows a number of map extracts and plans. At lease two of these (dated 1845 and 1864) show the area north of the current small lake north of Britannia Bridge as "Site of New Inner Harbour," or similar. This development would have been a logical target for a Cambrian branch starting on the alignment that Andy's map suggests. In fact it would have pretty much blocked any continuation of that alignment to the Festiniog unless it could be achieved through dockside sidings - where transhipment of slate between Festiniog and Cambrian sounds a bit unlikely. Brian PS: same comment as Keith re spellings!

Hi all Started by Iain Rice and his cronies, MORILL lasted no more than 4 volumes, back in the 90s, and is now all but forgotten. I always thought it was one of the best periodicals we ever had, and that it was a great shame it did not last very long. Towards the end, it changed publishers two or three times very quickly and lost out on distribution (and I lost out on acquisition) as a result - it finally petering out, as far as I can tell, somewhere towards what would have been the end of Volume 4. Over the years I have been keeping an eye open for back-numbers, and have finally reached the point that I have no gaps. However, I have no idea which the final issue was, to know if I still have more to find. Someone was flogging a "complete set" on Ebay a while ago, but it stopped two or three issues before the latest in my own collection - so didn't help - and obviously I'm not the only one confused on this score. Does anyone know, definitively, what the final issue was, please? Thanks Brian

Hi Alan Another addition to the Cambrian list is my "Caernarvon (Castle)" in N gauge. Yes, I know that Caernarvon was LNWR - but the line from Afon Wen was built by Carnarvonshire Railway as a branch from the Cambrian, the LNWR only got their sticky mits on it because the Cambrian were strapped for cash at the critical moment. So, what if the Cambrian had bought it ... it would have remained a branch off the Cambrian, possibly vying with Pwllheli in importance as a northern terminal. The tunnel under Caernarvon would never have built, so we can claim the Llanberis branch for the Cambrian as well. There is even the prospect that the Welsh Highland could have got the route they wanted to Caernarvon docks (blocked by the LNWR / LMS in real life) and had better fortunes as a result. Hence the "(Castle)" in the station name to distinguish from the other station in town. Early stages yet - station area track is laid (adapted from Pwllheli) but not yet operational. Not much photography done yet either, but will post some progress when I get the chance. Brian

Having been through the same basic decision process 3 or 4 years ago - before Easitrac or Finetrax appeared, I can sympathize. My ambitions were a bit larger - a dozen or more points with about 7 or 8 locos and stock to match (primarily passenger rated). Peco track is fine if you are modelling modern European practice - but for anything purporting to be a British secondary line ... yeuk!!! The die was cast then - hand laid track on copper-clad sleepers. 2mm Assoc code 40 rail and sleepers - but which gauge? The deciding factor for me was time. With a maximum of one day per week available for modelling - after retirement (measured in minutes before then) the 2mm scale route just wasn't viable if I ever wanted to run a train. After two years of retirement I have all but completed tracklaying on the visible section (Peco will do in the fiddle yard) and have a lot of locos (who said about 7 or 8 - there's at least 20 in the cupboard!) and stock to sort out some half-decent couplings and add a bit of weathering, etc. Were I a victim of diseaselisation, I might have gone the 2mm route as my trials suggested that these would be a lot easier to convert than steam locos with outside motion, some of which I can hardly see ... The extra bonus of hand laid track (along with the flowing curves through pointwork, etc) is the fact that I have actually been able to tighten up the check gauges etc so that it looks even less like N gauge and much closer to 2mm FS (till you look at the wheels standing on it!). The best of both worlds! Just illustrating different ways of looking at things and different solutions - everyone has to make their own. Brian

For a GW terminus without a turntable, try Pwllheli. Its turntable has already been mentioned in this thread - but it was not installed until the third shed complex was built - commissioned in 1959 (and became redundant in 1966 ...) I have yet to see evidence of a GW / WR service (as opposed to the LM services running in via Afon Wen) running anything other than smokebox first into or out of Pwllheli - whether tender or tank loco. The nearest turntable was at Afon Wen, so I can only presume that engines ran there to turn until the table there was removed - hopefully this was synchronised with the introduction of the Pwllheli one.