Guy Rixon

The handbrake column and linkage is particularly lovely. Were the handles on the winding gear kept polished, I wonder?

In my experience, mixing propanol-thinned paint with water gives a swirly mess and an uneven paint-finish. This is counter-intuitive, as the alcohol should mix well with the water. Perhaps the beer is the right solvent after all?

Back in the day there were many pits in Cumbria, but their coal was considered unsuitable for coking and iron-making. There was a massive flow of coke and coking coal off the NER, from Durham. It seems weird that a pit specifically to serve steelworks should be sunk in Cumbria of all places.

Dunno if this is any help to you re SER coaches: It's a SER/SECR oil axlebox, as used from c.1880 until c.1905 on a bunch of 4-wheel and 6-wheel coaches and NPCS. 5-foot spring, 10 plates, spring hangers as measured from the GA of a Grande Vitesse van. Bodged up from various HMRS drawings. If the CAD is any use to you, send me a PM.

BTW, it looks like you modelled this one off the 4mm-scale drawing in Bixley+, and you interpreted the spring hangers as narrow T-pieces, about as long along the solebar as they are high. I did that too, the first time I tried to model an SER "express" wagon from those drawings. In fact, the horizontal length of the hangers is much greater than the height, as per this drawing: Note also that the horizontal bits of the hangers are asymmetric and their arrangement on this wagon is odd. On coaches and NPCS where there is more space, the two-bolt side faces away from the spring on both side of the axle. On this wagon the solebars are too short for that and one of the hangers is turned round to have its two-bolt arm above the spring. Amazing what comes out when you get a drawing better than a 4mm-scale one. And this HMRS drawing isn't even a GA. You might also want to check the length of the spring. And the buffer guides, which were usually the longer coach-type on express-goods stock.

The scratches might even help adhesion. Elegoo are now making build plates with an engraved pattern to this end.

Yes, given that the wheels move relative to the blocks. Painting the rubbing faces of the blocks should sort it.

Do the transfers included the markings for the vans in the old D&S and Peter K kits? I'm after " GER Fruit van" to complete one vehicle and while I could recolour some other lettering it would be nicer to have the proper transfers.

I know next to nothing about NSR stock, but that bar between the axleguards looks like a support for sliding "sledge" brakes. I think I've seen similar on SER and LBSCR brakes.

Very nice. The 10-ton van of the SECR is SR D1425, yes? Presumably the 6-ton one is one of the 15' vans that preceded SR D1424; I might buy some prints of those if you chose to sell them. What kind is the GNR wagon?

Long shifts; lodging turns; through freight workings; and Webb compounds. The "Bill Bailey" compound 4-6-0s were built for the faster, long-distance goods workings. I wonder if the nickname --- the allusion to the popular song titled "Won't you come home Bill Bailey?" --- was not because they broke down and couldn't get home, but because they worked so far afield that all their diagrams were lodging turns. Anyway, I don't believe that rostering a single loco for a long haul precluded a crew change. I know of a working on the LNER where one crew took a fitted freight almost all the way to its final destination (at Grimsby docks), but had to hand over the engine to a local crew a few miles short (Grimbsy Town? Can't remember the details) because their shift hours were up. The shift didn't allow enough time for disposal of the loco, so local men took it on. And it was a lodging turn too; the departing crew got to sample the cultural intensity and vibrant nightlife of Immingham several times a week. EDIT: I looked up the details of the GCR working. Fish empties + goods Woodford to Grimbsy Docks, worked by Woodford engine and crew who worked through to the docks, then handed the engine over to a local crew for disposal at Immingham. The Woodford men lodged in Grimsby and worked back the following day. The dissatisfaction with lodging at Immingham was actually noted in respect of Gorton crews working newspaper trains from Manchester to Grimbsy. They were used to lodging in the town, then later found themselves rusticated to Immingham. All this is in The Great Central in LNER days by Jackson and Russell, a great read if you like details of train working.

Pure speculation, but could there have been variants of the same diagram with the guard's door on different side? The SECR had some brake vans like this, when the carriage-building contractors interpreted the spec. a little loosely. The two versions would have been equivalent in use, so could have shared a diagram.

My wife has a curing device for specialist nail varnish and I use that. It has two lamps either side of a hand-sized cavity with a reflective floor, so gets good, all-round coverage without a turntable and motor. I find that two runs of 120s each does the job; the device has a timer for that duration.

Expanding a little on my previous point, consider the "Crewe and Carlisle" vans. Crew is about 140 miles from Carlisle, and an unfitted train between the two would not average much above 10 mph, given the banks and the need to wait for faster trains to pass. The journey is longer than one shift, even in the 19th century when the working hours were longer. It seems inevitable that guards worked part-way up the line, then changed trains and worked back, or returned "on the cushions". A through goods-service would have at least two guards during its journey.

The guard is in charge of the train, but what the engine hauls on a return journey is a different train, so there's no particular need for the guard to stick with the same engine crew. This would be true even if the return working was the empties from the inbound working: same wagons, different train working. If the guard and engine crew work the same shifts, and if they happen to book on at the same time (not especially likely), then they might work together through a whole day. On some railways, at some time (IIUC), guards had their "own" vans, just a particular driver would stay with one engine for long periods. On larger railways, with an eye to efficiency, a guard would get whatever van was available for a given working (and might well curse the previous man for his tending of the stove). Brake vans were often branded to work between specific points. LNWR vans, for example, were branded either for their home depot (e.g. Camden), or for the two locations between which they were supposed to work (e.g. Crewe and Carlisle).

If you have a dedicated room, then you could consider a filter mask rather than an enclosed booth. I find that I don't need a booth to control overspray with an airbrush, I just put a sheet of scrap paper down to protect the bench. The mask protects me while spraying, and then I go away for a while to let the aerosols settle out of the air.

The "Neo for Iwata" airbrush is good, I have one and it's fine for general resprays. IIUC, it is in fact, a cut-price copy of a more-expensive Iwata design, but a copy licensed by Iwata and done with more QC than the typical copies. The 0.35 mm nozzle is better than the 0.5 mm one, I find. If you want to do very fine weathering effects, then you might get on better with a more expensive airbrush. But getting the Neo to learn with is a good choice. The compressor is seriously overpriced. No doubts it's a good machine, but an AS186, which you can get from specialist airbrush suppliers for much less, is perfectly adequate.

16mm back to back would be an EM setting. That would mean new axles for correctly-gauged wheels in OO. There used to be Romfords axles to suit EM, IIRC. But I agree that these are more likely Sharman wheels.

Four possibilities: Romfords, so unscrewable; Gibson/Sharman/etc held on by friction; as case 2, but glued on; as case 2, but locked in place by a pin, passing obliquely through the back of the wheel into the axle. Case 1 is the most favourable for repair. Case 2 need a wheel puller (GW models do one). In cases 3 and 4, the wheels cannot be removed and reused, nor can they reasonably be regauged. Actually, the chance of reusing friction-fitted wheels isn't great anyway; they tend to slip or wobble after refitting. EDIT: I looked up the Romford range on the Markits site and they don't do anything as big as a 7' coupled wheel. So I suspect these are either Sharman or Gibson wheels. EDIT2 dammit: I missed one. There is a Markits/Romford wheel for the Johnson 2P that is ~7' on the tyre.

James, the motor-gearbox is an RG4, so the driven axle is running in the bearings of the gearbox. The mesh can't change if the gearbox moves in the chassis. Jim's suggestion of changing mesh applies when the final-drive axle doesn't have bearings inside the gearbox, and we hand't established the type of mechanism when he wrote that. However, the motor flailing around might produce enough force to bounce it off the track. Ultimately, it will need a "torque reaction link", which is a posh name for a bit of wire to stop it rotating in the frame. But that's for later. You have three problems to solve: the gearbox may be FUBAR; the track holding is inadequate; the pick-ups are not reliable. I'd attack them in that order, because replacing the gearbox in this design is a major rebuild. Therefore, I suggest propping it level with the wheels, off the track, putting some volts directly on the motor terminals and videoing how the drive behaves from as many angles as possible. Then put the video on here (via YouTube, maybe, although you might be able to upload the file directly), and somebody in the parish can probably spot the drive problems. If it drives smoothly with the wheels off the track, then you've dodged a bullet the size of a howitzer round and the rest may be fixable. If it glitches when off the track, then the problem might not be the gearbox, it could be quartering; you can check this by peering through the spokes. But better, undo the set screw locking the final gear to the axle and see if the gearbox will run smoothly with the wheels stopped. Even if the gearbox is damaged, it may be FU but not BAR, as noted above regarding the lubrication. It would help if we knew how the coupled wheels are held on. Are they Romfords with cosmetic blanks over the axle ends? If so, then stripping down may be quite easy. If they are Gibsons or similar, are they pinned to the axles or just an interference fit? Concerning the track holding, the weight distribution will be rubbish with the motor facing forward, unless the firebox is full of lead. It will try to lift the rear coupled wheels. If, given that, the front coupled wheels are not firmly on the track, then it must be taking the weight on its bogie, with the bogie mount unsprung and a little too high. That in itself will spoil the pick-up. It will also put all the drive stresses through the coupling rods and that will make any quartering problems worse.

If less sideplay is desired, without complete dismantling, then "horseshoe washers" can be made and fitted. Just take snips and files to ordinary brass washers until they will clip over the axles with a little force and don't fall back off again. If the frames are old-school 1/16" brass or similar, then absence of turned bearings need not matter. If they are a single thickness of etch, then they might wear badly in time. But none of this bears on electrical problems. Query: is the motor trying to turn but locked, or it is bereft of power? Does the motor get warm when the engine if on power track?

Yes, we have to pay VAT at UK rate, currently 20%, on these goods, come what may. For orders with a "landed value" (i.e. pre-tax sale price plus shipping cost) above £135, we must also pay customs duty. As noted above, toys and models have zero rate of customs duty, but paints, tools and raw materials may not. Below the threshold for shipping duty, the European retailer is supposed to collect the VAT. Above that threshold (even if there is no duty actually to pay), the customer's customs agent collects it. If the customer appoints no customs agent, the courier organisation fulfils that role by default.

There is a technique with a drill press to hold the axle vertical while it is pushed in. My experience is that if a wheelset is true as bought, it's likely to remain true after tweaking the gauge. However, if I take one wheel off and push it back on manually I'm about 30% likely to put it out of true. Once an axle has been been driven in at an angle I've never had much luck bending the wheel straight. Hence the trick with the drill press (which I did not invent). Then there's Exactoscale wheels which naturally go on true because they are fitted with retainer, not interference fits.

The guardian has just posted an article clarifying the rules on imports from the EU. This explains that: for orders under £135, the on-line retailer is supposed to collect the VAT and deliver it to HMRC; some European retailers don't want to do this, so won't supply the UK; some retailers are just ignoring the new rules and leaving the couriers to collect the tax on small orders. It's possible that Shapeways have slipped into the "can't be bothered" category, which sounds to be unlawful. It's also a thing that the prices quoted on Shapeways to print one's own models are, and always have been, net of VAT, the tax being added on at checkout when it's needed. C.f. retail prices in Shapeways shops which traditionally are inclusive of tax. So I'm not sure how they're operating at the moment.

Do you know how rules of origin affect the materials from which something is made? Going back to Shapeways as an example, I understand that the prints are made in Eindhoven, but the resin comes from the USA. Would the prints then count as originating from the EU? I agree that scale models are zero rated for tariffs; I looked it up on the HMRC site earlier this month.