richard i

I got an e mail from a company looking for my business addressed as " hey buddy" and a formal letter from a bank addressed as my wife's proper name and then mine as Rick. As can be imagined . They did not get my business. Richard

Steel weathering is that just rust / shiny steel on the exposed lines? What other tricks are there?

The wagons were never clean The inside was an experiment of thinned track rust washes of black and brown with brown pastels shaved on to them. The results were better than I expected The outsides used oils picked up to experiment with to ultimately do a teak affect. Lastly the milk van has gone through the paint shop and awaits its transfers. So the conversion can be done, the handles were the hardest bit as 6mm handles don't seem to exist, we'll certainly not over here. Richard

He did, and some have tried to model it. It would have looked great. It was turned down due to fear of the stability of a front pony at speed ...I think.

I have certainly seen one at the York show. The Baltic A1 could be done as an un streamlined W1 post rebuilding. There was no engineering reason it had to be given a cods mouth.

Spoil sport

Did the GC have jubilees allocated in its later days other than the beefed up ones? I am less strong on that era, more a pre grouping man. Richard

The second photo in Tatlow has the LOCO on the side and is dated post 1923, the first photo is pregrouping and does not have loco unless my eyes have missed it. I think you are right about immingham, now you have said it i can visulise the drops. So open to all. What traffic were these originally built for? Richard

I think i have seen the same one, it was in LNER days so might have been used on coal hoists into a cenotaph coaling plant? My photo from GC days makes no reference to loco so more likely for coal drops - to go to immingham? Where else on the GC had coal drops as a logical end point for the traffic?

You seem to have picked one of the double framed variants. They were not often photographed and were rarely seen outside of the north east. It will be good to see one of these finally being modeled .

Back to models, though it was fun to learn the basics of colouring in photos. I will go back to it. All done bar the painting. I decided not to do the rivets. I can't see them until up close. I had the devil to find wheels for the side so in the end I had to make one from a washer and some wire, a la Denny, the roding from the wheels is only representational because life is only so long, they will run in rakes so it will be hard to see anyway and I have other things to build if I am ever going to finish this layout in less than 20 years. Pragmatism getting in the way of perfection, or as close as I could ever get to it. Richard

If you really want engines far from home, look no further than the two world wars. Gw rail motors in Scotland, etc.

16ft for all that and a fiddle yard in O gauge?! I have something similar in 4mm and barely fit it in to 16ft, what are you using as baseboards, the TARDIS? Richard

Success....of sorts. I have taken down the saturation and the red side lamp now shows. It looks more realistic. still a work in progress though as a skill. Now for something more complicated/intricate Richard

I agree, but I have not done it before and just wanted something simple to start on.I have been advised elsewhere that I need to desaturate the colours, so I just need to work out how to do that. Richard

Round two, had a bit more of a play. I can not seem to get red to behave for the lamp. Sorry Bill i tried. It feels coloured in like the BBC stuff from 20years ago. I need to work out how to make that aspect improve. It has been interesting having a go at it. If i can improve it would be good to have a go at a full GCR train, perhaps one of the iconic photos frommy book collection. It has put the wagons on hold for a day or two. Richard

Thank you Tony, I knew it was too light, but the software makes you slide three bars around to get a colour match , it is not intuitive , well at least not to me yet. The horse box is precision one pot teak rather than the base coat then top coat they do. Then it is given a wash of brown earth to give it colour variation. That has the red in it. Richard

Not a real location but I will have a GCR station with all parts in 18feet once finished. This includes the curves at the ends. We need to remember platforms could be short for the locals to stop at, but longer expresses would breeze through.

So where do these three meet? Just out of Euston? But then the GCR crosses over a station if I recall.

And that shows how blind I am. Not spotting the letters.It looks a tiny bit like the corridor clerstories used on the London extension, but the door has too few window pains in it.

i was always taught, (had it drumed into me) that the worst thing a leader can do is take credit for what the people in their team have done. I always make sure my boss knows who has actually done the leg work on something. Actually you get more out of people that way. However, it makes you look less impresive so promotions do not necesarily come as quickly. I have to live with myself at night though so it is a "price" i will pay. Richard

Thank you,I had not seen this painting before. Interestingly there seem to be two colours of brown. The train's coaches are a more reddy brown but the one they are passing is a yellowy brown for want of a more artistic way of phrasing it. Richard

Thanks I am still trying to master it. I will have another play.

I have had a play with the picture Just changng the coach side has got me slightly hooked. It is actually theraputic colouring a side. Two things One: What is wrong from a GCR point of view were the side lights red? The brown too light? It was supposed to be more mahogany? two: How do i view it without printing screen and converting it in to a JPEG which loses so much resolution? If i just try to convert the gimp file it is sent back as a jpeg for every layer. Also don't google download gimp on a work computer mine got very concerned about exactly what i was downloading Please comment/ critique away, Richard

A question for the grantham crew if I may. I know in BR period that parcel stock would come from all the regions in one train passing over lner lines. What about in LNER days? Are the grantham parcel trains all lner stock or a mix of all the grouping companies? Any advice gratefully received. Richard