Adam

Ha! What I think he typed was something like "yjkkkkl - o". Make of this what you will... Adam

Edit - toddler playing with the phone...

That's really coming on nicely, Gareth. I take it the sandboxes are 3D printed? And does the same apply to the wheels? Adam

A lovely bit of work, Laurie - I hadn't realised that the aim was a fully modelled(?) Pen Mill as well as 'Town. One of the advantages of the somewhat odd* railway history of Yeovil - especially in 2mm - gives the opportunity to represent an interconnected system. Adam * If you're not familiar with it: three different railways - which gave rise to, at one point, five different stations (ok, not all passenger stations, but still) - sort of converged there with more and less convenient methods of exchanging traffic between the GWR and the South Western.

That rendering of Mortenhampstead is really very good indeed, isn't it? My mind's eye isn't helped by knowing full well that there was a 4mm (00?) version on the exhibition circuit a few years ago. Thanks to @Not Jeremy for some enforced isolation reading. Adam

An Austin, but effectively the same thing, barring the grill (the cab came with BMC badges too, I think) - the motor might well have been different? Adam

That's looking very promising, Stuart. For what little my tuppence worth counts - all my pickups are phosphor bronze these days and this seems to work pretty well. That's probably just as well because I've got a couple of metres of the stuff. Adam

You can never have sufficient churns - I think there's about 30 on this lorry (from Dart Castings), and it's both heavy, which is unimportant, and pricey, which is more significant. The dairy on my layout will be - mostly - offscene, but this is part of the set dressing which shows its presence. I've noted Alan's new figures and one or two will indeed make an appearance... Adam

Looks very nice indeed, Stu. Nice to see a 14xx in black too. Adam

Thanks to Steve I’ve seen them too, now. Number 74 must be from the same batch of wagons - more, I’m sure, than the two shown in the works photos. Butlers divested themselves of the tar business in 1953 and their successor, Bristol & West Tar Distillers, in whose livery the wagon was in. Tourret could easily have worked this out, as there’s published work on the companies which five minutes Google work turned up. The filler and valve need moving (easy) and the slats, which I don’t think were wood, as the section is edge on can be added though I’ll need to add extra brackets. That’s less easy but doable. Adam

Hi Steve - thanks, not a book I have and, by the sounds of it, I've guessed wrong. Not a catastrophic error and one I'll have to live with, I suppose, though I could replace the mesh with battens? Hmm. Adam

No, just the HMRS images. The walkways are just visible above the top lip and can't really be anything else. The lid is hidden from view in all these works pictures, but you can make out the pressure relief valve: https://hmrs.org.uk/insulation-of-rectangular-tank-wagon-chas-roberts-wagon-built-for-wm-butler-tar-distillers-bristol-order-1619-1648.html The photos of the wagons as complete show them peeking over the sides. I'm not 100% sure about the inset top, but I can't think why else they'd be angle riveted to the cladding. See this image for the clearest view: https://hmrs.org.uk/butler-wm-bristol-14t-rectangular-tank-no-73-tar-distillers-bristol-order-1619.html All this detail is conjecture, I should add, because the photographer in Wakefield didn't think to bring his ladder. I'd love to be proven wrong because then I could get it right, but this is, at least, plausible. Adam

That’s sort of the point - though you can go too far with these specials and I build plenty of normal wagons too - but any layout in the steam era can probably find space for a tar tank as it was a byproduct of town gas production. That said, if you’re going to have one then it may as well be something more interesting than the Slater’s one: there were so many variations. Adam

Well it is Friday night…

It's been a while, hasn't it? Here's a recent project, a tar tank modelled on one of a fleet owned by William Butler of Bristol. It was sort of prompted by picking up a rather nicely finished Slater's kit lettered for that company, but ultimately by the availability of transfers for a Westcountry-based tar distiller from POWSides. The thing is that the fleet I know Butler owned weren't quite like the Slater's kit, charming though the original model - which I've lightly detailed - is: https://hmrs.org.uk/butler-wm-bristol-14t-rectangular-tank-no-73-tar-distillers-bristol-order-1619.html The HMRS Chas Roberts collection has a couple of useful images and these show a 1923 spec' wagon chassis and a heavily insulated tank which is pretty simple to make out of plastic sheet and so I have taken one Parkside underframe (the rest of the wagon will not be wasted): The size comparison is obvious - the scratchbuild is about the size of an SR 8 plank. Here's the complete, unpainted, article: Probably because of the lightweight cladding over the insulation these had catwalks on the top of the tank (just like a round one). I'm not quite sure what they were like so I've added a plausible guess: Time for paint. Adam