The Johnster

IIRC (and I'm a little younger than you, Ian, so the C in that is important) they were allocated to Barry, Cathays, Rhymney, and Merthyr so far as Cardiff Valleys were concerned. They worked to Treherbert, and I have seen a photo of one working in the Afan Valley, presumably a Treherbert-Swansea working, perhaps a Dyffryn Yard loco. Many of the late 41xx series, the last built, were allocated to South Wales sheds, some to the Newport Valleys and the main line sheds, in replacement for withdrawn TVR As and Rhymney Ps that had been 'Swindonised' by the GW. When the 82xxx were built, at Swindon (they use a domed version of the Swindon standard no.2 boiler), they were allocated in continuance of this practice. They were considered by Barry drivers I spoke to in the 70s to have more 'range' than the 56xx on account of the larger driving wheels; they needed less topping up of the tanks which was useful on the longer Barry turns such as Clarence Road-Bridgend via Sully. They were capable of better speeds as well. I have no idea why they might have been thought unsuitable for the Rhondda Valleys, as they had no problem with Merthyr, steeper and more curved. The traffic on the Rhondda Fach Maerdy Branch probably did not warrant them. Tondu had one on the books from 1946 to 1948 (4145, brand new to the shed) which I assume was a reserve to 3100 which was the regular loco for the Porthcawl-Cardiff commuter train, and the class returned to the shed in later years. Post dmus, 1958, they were ousted from the regular passenger work in the Cardiff and Newport valleys and found employment on transfer freights and excursions right up to the end of steam in the area; their 'replacement' 82xxx were transferred away when the dmus arrived. Severn Tunnel used them on the Pilning car ferry as well as assisting freights through the Tunnel, and one could achieve a fair turn of speed on the downhill run with these trains! Often thought Pilning HL was a very modellable station...

Probably because they are XP branded and hence capable of running in freight trains. Some NPCCS is numbered in the coaching stock lists (BG, GUV) and does not require XP branding.

I use a spot of cyano, and if any shows around the feet conceal it with matt varnish.

Hmm. I'd say the 'modal share' was highest in urban and industrial areas, and a bit lower in rural environments, but there were a lot of bicycles around in those days for sure.

Fortunately there are 2 new 5101s in the pipeline that should close the gap a bit, Keith. I've seen photos of 56xx working with them in the Birmingham area as well, but 5101s would be the go to. In South Wales the Taff A and Rhymney P got a look in with similar coaches but in 5 coach sets, as well as 56xx of course, and BR Standard 3MT tanks in the early 50s.

A strategic reserve of Mars Bars! Probably makes more sense than greased up 9Fs...

Cadoxton, named for St Cadoc who was a dark age saint from South Wales, does not have to be directly associated with the Barry area of course, as there is another Cadoxton near Neath, and much closer to Port Talbot. The backscene cannot possibly be Port Talbot of course as the sun is shining and you can see the sky. Birdport is interesting, a converted dry dock directly off the Usk with a gantry crane for unloading the ships. It would make a very good model for something based on the current era East Usk Branch.

Back in the days when there was no internet and we all used to wash our clothes with stones in the river, I used my local model shops for anything they stocked and relied on show trader's stands for the rest; a visit to a show would see me coming home with a bag full of bits and pieces that I couldn't get anywhere else. There was already a healthy mail order element to the trade, but i did not indulge in it. Nowadays, the trader's stands at shows have been to a very large extent replaced by online ordering and cashless payment. I still use my local shops, Lord and Butler for models and Antics for tools and materials. but have had to source a good bit of stuff from the internet. There's also 'Bay of course, but I think I have worked that particular seam out for the time being. I don't like it; it sucks time with the auctions which I avoid as much as I can, and I've had a bad experience. 'Buy it now' is better, but still feels a bit chancy. I am conscious of being lucky to have a very good model railway shop close by, even if it is a 2 bus ride to the very opposite side of the city. I'll still buy stuff at shows if I see it but this is a much lesser part of my sourcing than it was, and I don't go to the big shows any more as I don't like the crowds and won't be able to get most of what I want. So, the answer in my case is and has always been that I source stuff from where it is available, and hope to be able to continue to do so. That a city the size of Glasgow has no proper model railway shop is an indication of how lucky I am to have one. A shop where items (especially second hand ones) can can be physically examined and test run before you part with your cash is a very valuable asset, and can be surprisingly competitive on pricing. It is also sometime a bit of a social hub. As this is a Hornby thread, I can say that I've bought all of my Hornby items from Lord and Butler, some secondhand and none at full manufacturer's rrp. Brilliant shop, no connection, satisfied customer!

Not really an obsession, Ms P; we are trying to establish how fast they could go in our own clumsy ways in order to operate more realistically. I have arbitrarily put a 40mph line speed on the Cwmdimbath branch (clearly, the locos could do much better than that) and never get up to anything like that that; a passenger train departing might be expected to manage 25mph before the tail lamp disappears beneath the scenic break bridges. and as I imagine there to be a steep bank just beyond that out of sight, arrivals come over the top at about 20mph. I judge speed by driving wheel revolutions and imagined exhuast beats; all of my current locos are GW with 4'7" wheels and I think I'm probably ball park accurate with this. Freight and mineral traffic is unfitted and restricted to 25 mph, and never gets over 15mph in practice. If the point you are making is that small tank engines spend most of their time going slowly and a good bit of that going very slowly, and that slow smooth control of such locos is vital for realistic operation, then you are preaching to the choir; I absolutely agree as I imagine most of us do. Top speed in unimportant unless you have a layout on which an express passenger or large mixed traffic loco can stretch it's legs; few of us can do this without imposing curvature that would in reality be severely speed restricted on to the layout! Top speed is an irrelevance to many modellers. 8 out of my 10 are similar Bachmann mechanisms which perform very well in this regard, and the other 2 Hornby are just as good, but have a very different 'feel' on the controller. I fully expect the 94xx when it arrives to be compliant, and will be vocal on the matter if it isn't! One can be too slow, though, and it is frequent point of discussion. We've all seen exhibition layouts where endless shunting moves are left standing by invisible 4mm snails or continental drift. Very slow movements certainly took place on the real railway; movements into goods sheds where the driver cannot see if men are working in vans or wagons for instance took place with extreme caution. Most shunting in goods yards was done by the pickup guard, and took place at the speed he could walk about coupling wagons, pinning down brakes illegally with his shunting pole, and pulling point levers; about 8mph would probably be about right with occasional pauses for him to catch up. Carriage siding shunts took place at about this pace as well. Marshalling yard shunting was much faster and rougher; everybody wants to finish early and go home, train departure times are approaching, and the wagons are banged about with gay abandon and, with several men on the ground, it is a matter of teamwork between them and the driver. Realistic operation of a busy marshalling yard at prototype speeds is a major challenge on a model, with the continuous 24/7 intense activity as wagons are knocked about hard and fast all over the place running loose, maybe more than one pilot operating simultaneously in different parts of the yard, against the backdrop of continual arrivals and departures. I've never seen it properly achieved.

Good points from Cornelius. There were also the railway companies' own loco coal wagons, and the Royal Navy, which had it's own colliery in Tonypandy, manned by naval ratings who were kept in barracks during the riots and took no part, and ran block trains to Portsmouth and Plymouth. I have no idea what livery the Navy's wagons were, but one would suspect grey with perhaps red below the waterline... There were of course other private owner wagons, and still are. Tanks of various sorts were never owned by the railway companies and are another source of colour, and general merchandise types could be private owner in the owner's livery as well, but were not as common as the 7-plank minerals by a very long chalk. These would be usually in some form of circuit working. Another situation is where railway owned vehicles carried slogans or branding in circuit working; the Palethorpe's Sausage vans being a well known example. Blue Circle Cement hoardings on Presflos is another. Milk tanks were railway owned frames but the actual tanks were privately owned; St Ivel, United Dairies and so on. I have an idea the Murgatroyd's chlorine tanks that worked out of Dowlais over the Brecon and Merthyr route were in this category as well. You can also put stickers on your vans and opens; Fison's fertilzer and various cement companies often did this.

There were, as a very sweeping generalisation, 4 basic types of PO coal wagons; colliery owned or hired, large industry owned or hired (steelworks, mostly), wagon hiring companies, and coal traders. Some traders were small concerns with only one or two wagons but others were large and distributed over considerable areas; MOY was a well known one that served the East Midlands and East Anglia. As a very sweeping and generalised rule, the more colourful liveries beloved of RTR manufacturers, where they are accurate, tended to be a feature of the smaller fleets, though MOY was pretty colourful. The big fleets tended towards black or grey. Traders wagons did not usually have end doors, which were necessary for tipping into ships' holds at the docks. The big fleets were usually seen in block trains of one livery, and the colourful coal trains of many an exhibition layout are, sadly, fantasty.

Briefly, they were two separate and quite large premises, a loco shed and a wagon works. The loco shed, later dmu depot, was on the west side of the TVR main line between Woodville Road and North Road overbridges; it was the Taff's main passenger loco depot in Cardiff. The site is now occupied by the University Library building where the shed itself was and student flats in the yard. The wagon works was on the other side of the line, to it's east, and is now also occupied by student flats and the University's Business School, as well as a Lidl store at the southern end, in between the railway and Maindy Road. The shed, 88A under BR's coding system, closed in 1964 and it's remaining locos went to Radyr; the dmus went to Canton. The wagon works lasted longer, until the mid 80s, latterly under the auspices of the Pullman Company who maintained their own vehicles there and did contract work for BR. The site was not redeveloped and the buildings were still extant until 2000. A British Railways Staff Association club was incorporated into the wagon works site, but accessed directly from Maindy Road. Two halts were associated with the complex, opened by the Taff when they introduced steam railmotors, 'Woodville Road', actually south of the bridge and accessed by the lane at the back of Park Place; the site can be distinguished by a raised part of the stone wall separating this lane from the railway. The current Cathays station is just to the south of this. The other, 'Maindy' was near the North Road bridge and accessed from a path from the bridge approach. Both were single low platforms to the up (northbound) line and the service terminated at Maindy, using a trailing crossover to access the down line to return to Queen Street and Bute Road. Thus a journey from Woodville Road to Queen Street began in the wrong direction and ran via Maindy. It lasted until about 1960. To the south of Woodville Road bridge were the Senghenydd Road coal storage sidings, the site now occupied by the Student's Union building which straddles the track just south of Cathays station, a car park, and more student flats; the University is the major player in this part of town! To the north of the North Road bridge on the west side of the line was another wagon works, this time a private industry one, Powell Dyffryn, which IIRC closed in the early 70s. Guess what occupies the site now? That's right, more student accommodation.

Just as good an idea!

It’ll help if the buffers are sprung, but not too strongly. Most modern RTR sprung buffers are fine, as are any Silurian Era Peco ‘Wonderful Wagons’, as they are sprung by a flexible plastic bar that bends under soft compression. Be careful of buffers with actual springs; this is certainly a more prototypical method but the springs are nearly always far too strong. The buffers will not compress properly unless the train is very heavy, and the wagons will ping about all over the place when you’re shunting.

Followers of my Cwmdimbath topic, South Wales Valleys in the 1950s, on Layout topics, will be aware that I've been given a Wills 1854, which I'm going to work up as 1730, which was at Tondu for a short while at the beginning of my 1948-58 period, withdrawn 31/3/48. First job was to examine what I'd been given. It's nearly all there, but has had a hard, and I suspect long, life. It appears to have been painted overall green, including the smokebox, at one time, but it has been stripped and only patches remain. It runs, after a fashion, but is reverse polarity for my layout. Can't simply turn the motor round as there is a brass gearbox, and it has meshing problems despite this because the worm is loose on the motor shaft. I have managed to lose one of the carbon brushes but have replaced it with one from a defunct Mashima motor, another gift, the holder for which will have to be glued in. The loco's motor is an Anchorage DS10. Running is not good though. Left front Romford driving wheel, on the driven axle, is loose on it's retaining bolt. So, work in hand:- .Desolder motor connections (bottom brush holder is soldered direct to live chassis) so that polarity can be reversed. .Strip chassis of wheels and pull driving axle out after loosening cog grub screw (Romford 40:1 gears). .Clean everything. .Repaint chassis block. .Replace wheels and possibly axles depending on availability of Romford wheels, and make decision about continuing with live chassis. .Replace crankpins and possibly coupling rods if I can find a suitable candidate, as rods are bent out of shape. If not replace, straighten rods. .Source wheel centre and balance weight etches. .Reassemble chassis and test run. When happy... .Strip remaining paint from body, currently in 2 pieces, which are footplate/cab/bunker and boiler/tanks. .Replace missing buffers, probably replace all four so that they match. .Assemble body to chassis, and fettle to run if there is any fouling. .Replace broken tank side/front handrail. .Fit new smokebox dart and my standard lamp irons. .Paint body. Probable livery for a loco withdrawn in March 1948 assuming it's withdrawal to be at the expiry of a 2 year extended 5 year boiler ticket, last repaint would have been 1941, in GWR shirtbutton unlined green, unless better information comes to light. Cab floor to be faded dirty wood. Livery box ticked! .Apply transfers, shirtbutton and buffer beam numbers. .Apply Parkside NEM mounts and tension lock couplers. This might not be possible if I am to keep the couplers at the correct distance out from the buffer beams, and some bodgery may be needed! .Fill or part fill bunker with coal. .Glaze cab spectacle plate windows, .Fit crew, essential in such an open cab. .(Optional) Fit canvas cover between cab roof and bunker. It rains a lot in South Wales. .Fit number plates. Kit or commissioned etched brass. .Weathering. .To service. That's 20 or 21 separate phases, so we'll be some time. I intend this to be a 'background' project to be progressed as and when; currently the priority is the A31 auto trailer but I will proceed with this when I am stuck with that and when opportunity presents itself. So it may well take over a year; I'll bump it up the priority list when the A31 is in service! I'll post progress here in the hope that my adventure will be of some use to anyone trying the same sort of thing; I'm sure there will be problems I haven't foreseen to overcome. Bit of old fashioned 'proper' modelling, not very high tec or fidelity and I haven't yet addressed the lack of brake and rodding below the footplate (maybe cut up surplus Bachmann pannier keeper plate). Cost so far has been entirely acceptable, but that won't last long. I'm not going to set a budget limit for the project, but will keep a running total of costs as interest to anyone considering doing something similar. I'm guessing it'll top out at about £50 or £60 squids; be fun to see how inaccurate I turn out to be!

Once upon a time, there was a modeller who operated a a British outline layout with scale couplings, Smith's and Jackson. His period was 1958-60, so there were no 3 links, and stock was fitted with instanter or screw as appropriate. The instanters were mostly used in the long position as his layout was a BLT, but he shortened them when he ran his stock on main line club layouts at shows. Few of his wagons were fitted with sprung buffers, and his insistence of 3' radius curvature where stock was to be propelled and avoidance of reverse curves, along with the use of transition curves (his layouts had very few straight sections!) avoided buffer lock when propelling. Then circumstances proscribed that he could not indulge himself in his hobby for some time, and when he was able to come back to it, he found that his eyesight and steadiness of hand had deteriorated (along with a few other things, but that's another website), and he was no longer comfortable with using the scale couplings; in fact it was driving him nuts!. In the time he'd been dormant as a modeller, tension locks had lost some of their horribleness, becoming at least smaller and less obtrusive, and allowing closer to scale distance between coupled vehicles, but they were still pretty ghastly. However, after a period of considering the alternatives, he rejected them all, Kaydees because they were no better than t/ls in appearance on British outline stock of the period (he'd gone back in time to 1948-58 by now) and came in a bewildering variety of types, Spratt/Winkles and similar systems because they seemed fiddly and faffy to install for reliable operation (a paramount requirement). He even considered developing his own wire hook and loop system, but in the end accepted reluctantly (sound fx heavy sigh) that he had to revert to t/ls and could no longer consider himself a 'proper' modeller. This brought about unexpected problems and unexpected benefits. He found that the so-called standard tension lock coupler was anything but, and had to deal with all sorts of compatibility issues between different profiles and setting the height above the rail correctly, and made a lot of work for himself by mistakenly assuming that height above the rail is the same thing as distance below the wagon floor or relative to the mounting on the bogie. He got it all right in the end, though, and has 100% coupling reliability in operation. He does not require automatic uncoupling as he has no objection to the hand of god on a home layout; in fact the hand of god operates the signals and changes the insulfrog turnouts as well as uncoupling with a wire hook/torch shunting pole. He requires to uncouple at any point on his layout and refused to be constricted by fixed point magnets. The unexpected benefit was that he could now use much sharper curvature, and while he objected to the appearance of that on the scenic part of his layout, the fiddle yard was another matter! He was able to extend his fiddle yard from 4 to 7 roads and increase the length of his coal trains from 8 to 11 wagons. He would, in an ideal world, like to prevent automatic coupling in some shunting moves, but The Johnster (For It Was He, all along) has learned to love his tension locks. Realistically, the only way I can use the scale couplings I really want would be to convert to 0 gauge, and I have neither the space nor money for that. But there is no substitute in appearance or realism of operation IMHO in traditional outline 4mm for scale couplings. My choice was between accepting an inferior alternative or giving up having a railway; no brainer and I am thus qualified. Using a shunting pole with scale couplings is performing an actual railway operation in the way it was actually done; doesn't get much better than that!

I spend some time years ago with a club, and learned much, but eventually decided that it wasn't for me. I still see the guys at exhibitions and get on well with them, but have no desire to revisit the experience. Nowadays I suspect that I would find the stress levels associated with preparing a layout for exhibition and actually exhibiting it, which was the fundamental raison d'etre of that club, far too much for me. It's a hobby, and thus I avoid parts of it I don't enjoy. And, like JDW, I'd not want to be associated with any club that'd have me as a member...

I’ve had some warnings about dealing with Coopercraft on the basis that they take your money and never deliver the goods over on Layout Topics as well as Nick’s comment. Thanks for the heads up, gents! 3D fishbellies (presumably from 3D fish) from shapeways mean that I can continue with W 207 W, but I still need a source of buffer castings or mouldings; nearly ordered an 0 gauge set in a fit of enthusiasm last night! Good to see your pics and that I’m not alone in this insanity, Lofty. You’ve made a very neat job of the floor. I’ll be attempting ‘Liquid Glass’ for the side windows, but if that doesn’t work I’ll conventionally back glaze it, which I’ll have to do for the cab windows anyway, and learn to love my thick whitemetal body...

Hmm. Thanks for the heads up , gentlemen! This might need a rethink; I now need an alternative source for buffer castings whatever coach I model, and fishbelly bogies if I am to continue with W 207 W.

The auto gear, manually operated rod and bar linkage, was handed, so you couldn’t couple it between the loco and the trailer from driving cab end of the trailer or between trailers that were not both facing the same way. Kevin’s photo shows a trailer being hauled as a normal coach, and the loco will have to run around before the return journey. Up up to two trailers could be coupled with the gear connected at each end of the loco; Siberian’s Plymouth Area trains were an example, with 70’ trailers gangwayed within the sets; the ‘inner’ coaches had regulator and brake gear in the cabs, and a bell, but I doubt they were used much! Locos were usually 54xx or 64xx. Cardiff Area featured 3 coach sandwiches on the Coryton Branch. Passed firemen with some experience were rostered to such jobs where possible, as they were alone on the loco for the whole duty and, as well as their own work, had to look after the reverser and cutoff settings. Auto fitted 4575s were used, but this did not begin until the locos were provided with auto gear by BR, in 1953 I think. The ‘2 trailer at each end of the loco’ limit was a result of the physical stiffness of the system and the play required in the coupling of it; it was unworkable with more than 2 trailers. Other railways’ systems relied on vacuum or steam operation, and were in theory capable of being coupled in different ways with more than 2 trailers at each end of the loco, but in practice 2 seems to have been usual limit. I am less familiar with such systems and unable to say why this should be.

This is why I described the 50mph restriction as 'practice' rather than written instruction, Mike. Gloucester certainly went very fast out to Standish with 14xx on the Chalford Auto; I believe over 70mph was common, and I have no doubt that they caned it a bit with the 94xx on the Cheltenham Spa Express (it had dropped the 'Flyer' by BR days). I never claimed it to be an official restriction, but I was certainly told that 50mph was 'regarded as the instruction', official or not, for 56xx on the Rhymney, a 90mph road from the north end of Caerphilly Tunnel down to Queen Street, and the Taff south of Radyr (70mph), because of the driving wheel size. The men said that they had preferred the faster Taff A and Rhymney P for right time arrivals at Queen Street if some had been lost to station work further up the valley. It is important to make clear that information is not verified when this is the case; as you say this is how myths and incorrectness perpetuates; perhaps I should make myself clearer in future and will take your comments on board. But correct reading of my post will show that I have not claimed anything to be a verified fact or inferred in the writing that this is so.

They were indeed in many ways the culmination of the policy formulated by Collett to deal with absorbed and constituent locos at the grouping, and the huge majority of these were from South Wales companies. The policy was to scrap such locos as could not be brought into line with Swindon practice and were life-expired, and rebuild the rest with Swindon components. Replacements in the form of the 57/8750 panniers and the 56xx, essentially a Rhymney R constructed of Swindon components, speeded the process but there were, at the end of WW2, as you rightly say Ian, still a lot of pre-group locos that had not been attended to and some of those that had been were approaching the end of their useful lives. A replacement somewhere in between an 8750 and a 56xx was considered necessary, and the result was the Hawksworth 94xx. Hawksworth developed it from the Collett 2251 0-6-0, with which it shares frames and many components; incidentally the no.10 boiler used on these engines was originally developed to fit pre-grouping locos being rebuilt to Swindon specifications. The loco's true progenitor can therefore be said to be the Dean Goods, the inspiration for the 2251 which was a modernised version of it. In practice many South Wales drivers couldn't see the point and regareded them as little better than an 8750 in service, and didn't like the small cabs. The GW classed them as power D, however. BR regarded the 8750s (GW C) as 3F, the 94xx as 4F, and the 56xx (GW D) as 5MT. The 2251 were BR 3MT.

The story of this Diagram A31 trailer began at this year's 'small' Cardiff show on Lord and Butler's stall, where, among the secondhand bits and pieces was a more or less complete K's A31. At least, not quite complete, as there were buffers missing and one of the bogies was a separate piece, but enough, I thought, to work on. I am after a pre-A28/30 auto trailer for Cwmdimbath; Tondu in the 50s had a good variety of types, though AFAIK there were no matchboard or 70 footers. These trailers were all allocated to Newport as division headquarters, and worked on the various Valleys branches serviced by Tondu; Porthcawl, Abergwynfi, Nantymoel, Ogmore Vale, and Gilfach Goch. My layout adds another branch to the list, Cwmdimbath. They seem to quite frequently not have been worked by auto fitted engines, and used as normal loco hauled stock, probably due to a shortage of auto fitted locos at Tondu. £8, so I pounced. The model, when examined, proved to not actually represent any actual A31 prototype unless bogies were swapped between coaches, something not mentioned in John Lewis's book. It is numbered as 211 in 1945-8 GW chocolate and cream livery, and has 'American' type bogies; a photo in Lewis of 211 at what looks like an Eastern Valleys station hauled by a 57xx in Lewis shows that this coach cannot be the K's model, as the real coach has 7' Collett bogies not Americans. Furthermore, the model has twin passenger entrance doors not the single door in the 211 photograph. The A31s were built in 2 lots, one at Swindon with a single passenger door like the real 211 and one outsourced to Gloucester RC&W; these had the twin doors. To complicate matters further, 3 types of bogies were used, the Collett 7', the American, and the 'Fish Belly' type. For Cwmdimbath I needed a Gloucester built coach allocated to Newport Division in the 50s. Luckily for me, 5 out of the 6 photos in Lewis are of Newport Division coaches. 3 are at Godfrey Road sidings, 204 with a Swindon door and American bogies, and still with guard's compartment end windows of the railmotor profile, then there is 209, with Gloucester doors and Collett 7' bogies, the 211 photo already mentioned, and 2 shots of 207 at Monmouth Troy, with fishbelly bogies, Gloucester doors, and plated toplights in BR crimson livery (Lewis calls this maroon, but it's not). So, working from this as a basis for a model for Cwmdimbath, some work has to be done either in the matter of replacing the bogies or cutting out the two Gloucester windows and removing the door join to make a Swindon passenger door, a move fraught with peril with the panelling and all. Further work in any case includes new buffers, NEM tension lock couplers probably on Parkside mounts, a floor and interior, and re-glazing. Interior surfaces need painting and the cab needs a detailing set. I'd like a new bell for it as well if I can source one; the cast one looks a bit malnourished and, well, cast! Lewis gives lists of what coach carried what bogies and the withdrawal dates, but the allocation has to be assumed from the photos. Only one coach carried American type bogies, 204, which we already know about. This coach was condemned in 1949, which makes it a poor choice. 211 was out of the loop because of it's railmotor guard's windows. OK, what about 209. This has Collett bogies and the correct doors, and I have Collett bogies available from a withdrawn Airfix B set. In service until August '57; a better option. The photo shows it in 1948 chocolate and cream livery as W 209. But I liked the look of the toplight plated 207 in crimson, very evocative of the period to my mind and something not usually modelled. But it had fishbelly bogies, and as far as I knew nobody made them even as cosmetic sides, so that was out. Ok, W 209 in 1948 choc/cream it is, then. But I was looking for buffer castings yesterday online and discovered that they are available from Coopercraft, and, to my delight, so are the fishbellies. So, I can have a go at 207 after all; the decision has been made and the coach has an identity. I have made a start this afternoon, removing the roof, taking the glazing out, and I have filled the toplights on one side with Milliput; the coach is starting to look different already!. I want the Milliput to go off before I tackle the other side, then after sanding and finishing up I can give the body a coat of crimson on the outside; I reckon cream with brown lower panels and a dark grey floor inside. The Coopercraft fishbellies are compensated, and if I make them up in this form they will be first on my layout. W 207 W lasted until the end of 1956, and probably turned up at Tondu some time in the 50s; that's good enough for my interpretation of Rule 1! I now have 2 pairs of Airfix Collet 7' bogies and one of Americans in my odds and ends box. One pair of Colletts can convert an old Airfix A28/30 to an approximation of an A27, but i'm open to (polite, please) suggestions about what to do with the other Collets and the Americans.

I've been looking around for parts for the A31 project, and have found a source of buffer castings, and perhaps more importantly, fish belly bogies; Coopercraft list them, at very reasonable prices. This means a rethink about prototype is possible. According to Lewis, 207, as W 207 W, lasted until the end of 1956, was a Newport Division coach (photographed twice at Monmouth Troy in plain crimson, or maroon as Lewis calls it, livery), had fishbellies, double 'Gloucester' doors, and, most importantly, plated over toplights by the time it was photographed, which has to have been between late 1948 and Dec 56, bang into my period! Plated toplights is something I am keen to model as it radically alters the appearance of the coach. Not only that, but it'll darken the interior, lessening the visual impact of whatever crudity I employ in scratchbuilding the seats... I have no photographic evidence of this coach ever working out of Tondu, but Tondu is in the right division and it very probably did at some time in the relevant period; good enough Rule 1 evidence for me, anyway! Lewis has a photo showing Diagram N no. 38 at Newport Godfrey Road, and another of it at Bridgend on an Abergwynfi working according to the destination board, so I'm happy to quote that as a precedent. W 207 W is IMHO the best prototype to go for, and the coach now has an identity! 'Plating' the toplights with Milliput should be easy enough. I will open a new topic in 'Kitbuilding and Scratchbuilding' for it. Meanwhile, back in the 1854 project box... I intend to do some further chassis stripping this evening, at least to the extent of desoldering the solid connection between the motor and the chassis in order to reverse the engine's polarity. This project also needs to be moved over to Kits and Scratches. Back at Cwmdimbath, a gale has blown down the bracket inner home controlling the loop exit, which will need repair or, failing that, a new signal. A replacement could be a single post placed between the loop and the platform road, but that would need to be done with care to ensure clearances. The post appears to have rotted just at the point where it emerges from the black painted metal base sleeve, and nobody appears to have spotted it. The '6 foot' is quite wide at that end, and the signal's moving further away from the baseboard edge might help prevent a repeat accident. I have no idea what really happened to it, but one of us has obviously unknowingly knocked it over.

With tractors, the critical thing is the diameter of the smaller front wheels and the possibility of them dropping down between the lowfits. This is frequent traffic and there will be a system for dealing with it; if not a plate than perhaps a couple of stout planks pressed into service. Or, as Mike says, compress buffers and apply handbrakes as hard as you can to stop 'em decompressing, and either drive, push, or tow the tractors off (I'm guessing brand new ones being delivered to a dealer would not have fuel in the tanks). Agricultural gear with smaller wheels might be more of a problem, but might also be possible to unload off the side of the lowfit onto a platform. My end loading dock has a recess to accept tension lock couplers so the wagons can be buffered right up to the dock as close as possible. Lowfits with occasional tractors and machinery for local sheep farms use it, as do Mogos with end doors. I occasionally put a conflat or medfit with a container there, for end unloading with the medfit sides dropped down.