Northroader

There was some form of sliding shutter in the partition behind the grooms compartment, so the groom could keep an eye on the horses, and maybe top up their water and fodder. I gather it was bad practice for the horse to be able to see out and admire the passing countryside, as the motion would discompooperate them. (Have a look at modern road boxes) With the army cavalry movements, the occifers horses went in horse boxes, other ranks in cattle trucks, but these were sheeted over for the same reason, so I feel it would be a waste to put your horses inside the box, as you can’t see them.

But Father, he said he was selling the steam and keeping the diesels…

hang on to your Italian stuff.

Er, no, I’m afraid the thread is titled “Imaginary Locomotives”, and the two “Bullied Atlantics” are very much in my imagination. You’ll just have to get an unrebuilt “West Country” and start sawing.

What’s happening, Mikkel, is on the left side of the railway room there’s a small layout 37mm gauge, intended for Iberian/ Irish goings on (you get the blame for the Iberian side of things) where the pantiles roof building is going to start things off for Portugal. Then over on the right there’s another layout 32mm gauge, standard gauge, where the slate roof building goes, for Bonny Scotland. The intention with this layout is primarily to take British pregroup, or Continental 1900, with a change of platform levels. All the lot is in 0, 7mm scale. Maybe some 1950 American, although with everything else happening this is on the back burner at present. Currently I’m examining the build of the 32mm layout, which I hope to explain soon, on this thread. Thanks for your interest, I must try and find the Great Western bits buried in the boxes.

James and Kevin, speaking as an old git who had to downsize last year, and was far too infirm to do any of it himself, I’m sure your filial efforts were very much appreciated by the parties involved.

Thanks, Don, the postman has just come with my copy of the Gazette. My two are on page 56, I do hope they're behaving themselves. Richard is a lovely guy, and been a great help with getting stuff away.

PANTILES. (watch the spell checker carefully, there’s a tendency to drop the “l”, with unfortunate consequences) You can meet up with pantile roofs in places like Somerset, but they do tend to be associated with the warmer, sunnier climes over the Channel. I’ve been sitting on a couple of sheets for ages, with doing a French station roof in mind, but the station for São Lucas has come up, and they’ve come in for this. The roof has a base of 2mm ply glued down onto the walls, then a pyramid of ply built up with more strips of ply forming an infill from the edge to halfway up the pyramid. This gives a firm support to overlaying sheets of pantiles. Slaters do flat plastikard sheets which are embossed, but the sheets I’m using give a good relief representation, which is why I went for them. They’re done by a Spanish firm, Redutex, and I thought they were quite pricey before Brexit, now……!!!, and they’re not particularly large either. The plastic is quite soft and floppy, so although I’ve scored the back of the sheet along the change of angle, they still tend to look like a curve. One item needing care is that they’re self adhesive, but when the backing paper is peeled off, the thin adhesive sheet underneath can come up with it, rather than stay with the tiles. I’ve found that the mould they're made from must have air bubbles, there’s tiny little pinheads on the surface which need to be scraped off. My design of roof is quite wasteful, because all the diagonals mean that offcuts can only be thrown away, with all the tiles overlapping in a downward direction only. Now if I’d have gone for a station which didn’t have a hipped roof, but had a low pitch with square ends, the sheets would have gone further. In HO scale Wills do pantile sheets which have a relief finish, and before now I have done a design in the Continental Modeller for an Italian station built round Wills sheet dimensions. I should really have learnt from that, now I’m waiting for postie to arrive with another sheet, as two weren’t sufficient.

W.H.Smith stock packs of white card, so I got one of these and cut the end of a sheet into strips, with short cross cuts, and these went down to give a textured slate roof. Then some paper strip to get the flashing, and just another card strip on the top to link into the fancy ridge tiles. Now there’s just the chimneys left.

I would be looking at fitting the back room in Barbados.

Bought a house, he says. Just like that, simples. ?????

I thought brother Schooners thread was the most appropriate place to shove this link, which covers a lot of nautical goings on in bygone days: https://abdn.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/collectionDiscovery?vid=44ABE_INST:44ABE_VU1&collectionId=81151714200005941

He won’t manage against spikey toes.

I gather if you start looking on Russian sites things called Trojans can happen. I had it happen on one of my threads, and not really knowing what they were or how to treat them, I’ve kept clear since.

A. You’ve got something nice and tall left foreground, otherwise it’s all flat. Composition, dear boy.

If it’s any help, the GWR broad gauge track wasn’t solely done in bridge rails. Besides the known stretches done using conventional cross sleepering, round Exminster and Lelant, there was also stretches using “Vignoles” rail (flatbottom) I’m sure this is what’s shown in the old photo of Abingdon station, if you study the shadows cast. Not much to go on for the sleepering, transverse or baulk? My fancy is it’s done with a baulk supports, but so well ballasted you’d have difficulty deciding. So, you could use ordinary rail soldered down to copper clad strip. I have done this before now, with the transoms full width to set the gauge and the longitudinal baulks added as in between infill. This may help if you want to do a particular scale, but I would echo others on here and say use 4mm or 7mm, that’s what the BGS items are available in, axles and wheelsets being the key jobs. Consider the picture again. Small terminal station, running line, and siding, set in 1860. What more do you need?, no need to expand outwards, just do a runoff on to a “fiddle stick”, maybe the exit covered by an over bridge, and you’re in the business of running nice little broad gauge trains in a small space. Here’s one I’m doing now, in 7mm scale, but for 5’3” gauge, on this theme. Main board size is 33”x12”, say 840mmx300mm. Construction is using an A1 10mm foamboard sheet, with ply facings and foamboard “framing”, nice, light, compact. I think I’d make it 15” wide for a GWR line. Would I do it for a GWR line? Well, last year I had a major operation and downsized where I live. In the process my 7mm seven foot jobs and references were slung, and four months after the move I’m going round “why did you do that!, you fool?!?”

Nothing to show you now, and talking small sizes of buildings in 0 scale, but in the past I’ve painted embossed plastic sheets for bricks or stonework by an overall wash, using Humbrol flat paints, maybe patchy dabs of slightly different tone. Then do a paint mix for mortar and load a sprinbow pen, going along all the courses and risers by hand. This is tedious, but the courses aren’t as prominent as when you’re flooding and wiping. p.s. There’s always doing this, which looks great for old buildings: https://www.westernthunder.co.uk/threads/old-parrock.6209/page-5#post-172805

IN FRANCE, STOP FOR LUNCH.

That was Academical.

Well done, that is a lovely little loco, and thanks for the honour of giving it my moniker.

https://www.gnrsociety.com/locomotive-class/bury-type-0-4-0-goods/

AZULEJOS POR SÃO LUCAS. A bit more has happened with the station building. It started off with a 12mm ply base, then a 5mm foamboard shell. Now I’ve covered it with a thick cartridge paper, to give it some more texture, and then a wash in white acrylic paint. One very noteworthy feature of a lot of Portuguese buildings is the use of glazed tiles, commonly white with a blue design, but you san see them in other colours. I gather it’s a centuries old cultural tradition, and many railway stations use it. The larger stations can have murals of quite heroic proportions, such as the concourse at Porto São Bento: The second panel on a railway theme is interesting, as it shows Portuguese railways also used the large block bells. (See page 17) Of course, my station is too small and simple for the big designs, just having tiled panels on the lower part of the wall. I did a download of a repetitive pattern, and printed it with a reduction of 50%. The tiles come out too big with this, really it needed 75% reduction, but I found the print lost definition and became too blurred, so I’m using oversize tiles. A good tip would be to print your tiles, then design the building to fit, I was really lucky that the pattern came right for the panel sizes. The tiles were cut to size and stuck in place with UHU, and then got two coats of satin varnish. A shiny finish gives them a better look, but I find anything done on my printer always suffers from the ink fading, and I feel the varnish will help protect this. The building has raised strips round the corners and the doors, I used some card to do this, painted a sort of peachy colour mixed in acrylic, and a bit of Miliput filler under the door arches.

And another one sees the light..

Er, Kevin, this friend of yours, you could tell him of a chat we were having some time ago, which might convince him of the way forward? (And a picture which has survived the Great Photo Crash!!!)