I've been searching on eBay and the internet in general, but have failed to find a single image of the model lifting bridge that was available in the 70s/80s and which featured in a series of articles by David Andress about his Westport Branch (8x4 oval with a harbour in the centre). This afternoon I was glancing through "Scenic Railway Modelling" by Michael Andress and there was an article by David about planning and modelling the harbour, but with no mention of the bridge itself. I've attached two (poor) iPad photos of the photos in the book in the hopes that someone may be able to identify the manufacturer of the bridge so I can hunt one down for my own layout!  Remembering how quickly my loco query was answered, perhaps I might get a solution before being told to take down copyrighted material!

Back in September 2019, I floated the idea (sorry, terrible pun) of adapting the Minories plan with the goods shed in front of the terminus as a train ferry terminal. In that posting, I referred to the Rev Alan Shone's Wardleworth Lines Committee marine terminus, St John's, which featured a train ferry (albeit in N gauge). So as to make my thoughts clearer, I've copied over various posts and illustrations from the Theory of Minories thread.

Firstly, the Minories plan with the goods shed in front of the terminus:

Minories plus Goods jpg 

St John's, Wardleworth Lines Committee (1974) - note that the terminus is the reverse of the Minories plan:

St Johns WLC jpg

My badly butchered version of the Minories plan, showing the position of the train ferry instead of the goods shed:

Minories plus Ferry jpg

Hornby Duke of Gloucester. R3168 Railroad model.

So as some of you know just after Christmas I fancied a little bit of a challenge, so after hearing many negative things about the Duke of Gloucester model, I decided to go and purchase the cheaper of the 2 models, being the R3168 Railroad model.
From research and pictures I found very little difference in terms of details on the locos. Yes one had separate handrails on the deflectors and a detail pack and also some etched plates… Which I found out were not etched.

So price difference:
Railroad: RRP £82.99 / £63 – 67
Special : RRP £119.99 / £96 – 110

These prices are a range compared to the retail price Hornby state. Now my model was £66… was pretty much the same as the other model same chassis same body… ect… apart from those parts raised above. Also some parts were unpainted such as clack valve pipes and bearing on the caprotti valve gear and the axle boxes.

So the challenge to myself… could I use the difference between the 2 in price.. say £30 – 35 to improve the railroad range model to make it in to a model equal if not better than the special edition….
I listed a number of things that I wanted to do.

- Repaint – Proper BR green, and red for buffer beams. (£4)
- Line out in orange black orange. (£6.50)
- Paint details, cab, pipes, axle boxes, bearings ect….
- Details to be found, Sprung buffers, buffer beam detail, steps. (£6.50)
- Etched plates. (£12.55)
- Hand rails+knobs. (£4.20)
Approx. £33 - 35 cost.

First job was to find and acquire these parts and paint if needed, if you have done some models / kits before like myself, you may have some paints already. The finding of parts took a day or 2 and were placed on order with various suppliers.

Prep work.
I started with the tender much of which was ok, although the moulded handrails had to go as well as the moulded buffers, so the moulded handrails were removed with a knife and small dremel bit, the buffers were given the chop, and a 2 – 2.5mm hole drilled in the centre, and any of the casting was removed with a needle file.
Once happy with the work I hand drilled 0.5mm holes for the hand rails and the back and sides of the tender. Using 0.45mm brass wire and fixed in place with a small amount of super glue gel. I had some spare brass wire from various other loco kits, but you can find a pack of 10 for about £2.70.

On the buffers I wanted to add sprung buffers… so I went on the hunt for some Hornby replacement parts, I came across some on Hornby Spares / Abbiegails spares, sadly soon to close due to poor health, so with items reduced to clear I found a pair of buffers which fitted the bill, X6206 - Buffers (pk2) which are £1.20. Some slight modification to the chassis to enable the buffers to spring so some more drilling was needed to remove more material from behind the buffer beam.
A small mod to the back of the buffers, I removed a slight extrusion on the back with a knife and a file to make the back flat to glue directly on to the buffer beam, again done with super glue gel.

Transfers and lining were removed body and cleaned. I will be painting the loco with BR green post 54 which you can get from Phoenix precision paints. Hand rails were taken off the loco, glazing in the cab removed… which is quite easy to do when you figure out the drivers seat and the backing to it is part of the window glazing… so it’s just a matter of putting a knife between the side of the cab and the glazing / seat… and turning it easing it away, then it will come straight out.

Smoke deflectors are held on at 3 points, 2 under the running plate, to weaken the glue use acetone, the 3rd is on the side of the smoke box towards the back of the deflector which is causing some to look rather bent, as there’s nothing maintaining the gap at the front of the smoke-box. This should snap cleanly I did try the acetone but that didn’t do much apart from taking the black paint off.

After painting the body with some proper BR green, I then set out to pick out some details, like the pipe work to the clack valves on the boiler.

On the front of the loco this is where most of the work was going to take place. The moulded smoke-box door handle was removed using a knife and a small dremel piece to gradually remove it, a small hole was then drilled in the centre.
The horrible plastic moulded buffers didn’t last very long, receiving a hefty snip from a pair of cutters… the stub which was left was filed flush, and a 2mm hole drilled in the centre to receive it’s new buffers.
Also mention to remove some material from behind this hole, as there is a metal beam on the chassis that runs the width of the buffer beam so 2 small notches need to be made to enable the buffer to spring.
The buffers in question and smoke-box door handle arrive a day or 2 later, the door handle came from Mainly trains, the buffers from eBay, X9313R which are from a Class 31 Diesel… see they are useful for something 

As you can see a much improved front end!

The smoke deflectors were a bit of a pain… hopefully someone will do some Etched smoke deflectors for it at some point, but I shall work with what I got.
The old moulded hand rails were removed using a knife and a dremel, watch your fingers! I left a small amount of material where the moulded hand rail knobs were to aid as a reference for drilling holes for the new ones.
I used small / short turned hand rail knobs, on the deflectors, and used some 0.75mm brass wire.
Results were pretty good. These were then sprayed Satin black Halfords brand paint,

As you can see from the image above I had left the ends of the transfer / print, to aid as a reference for the new etched name plates from Fox transfers, which you can see below. This pack costs £12.55.

The hand rails were then painted silver to match the special edition version.

Going in to the cab to tackle the moulded black plastic mass which is the back head on both models… so much can be improved here… So setting to work, some general research in to cab fittings and colours, and then to the paint. Having done this to a few locos already that I own I have most of the colours I needed… so no money was spent here..
To paint the pipes copper, I used an old GCSE art trick I picked up in school, using a slightly blunt pencil, and dipping it in to the paint, and just dabbing the access off, I could easily paint the pipes with no problem… you may need a steady hand!

Here’s a before and after note the glazing has not been re-added, certainly will try and fit them better than Hornby did obviously….

Anyway time for lining…
Lining used was Orange black Orange so GWR / BR lining, these are HMRS pressfix again brought from Mainly trains, it would take a couple of days for normal people to line a loco… me well I tend to do it all in one go… till about 3 am in the morning that way no interruptions.
Here’s the results after day one… minus varnish.

I then started to add back the hand rails paint them silver, as well as adding the etched numbers to the cab, I did this using varnish and then placing the numbers and manoeuvring them in to place with a cocktail stick the varnish will hold these etches no problem.
I added the gold outline around the forward facing cab window, as well as the overhead wire warning transfers.
The next day, a friend of mine arrived to put the name plates on his Duke of Gloucester as well as re-number his standard 4 tank to 80151, and already even at this incomplete stage… you can see the improvements… bearing in mind… mine was the railroad model compared to a Special edition..

I will let you the reader judge…. At this time I was in budget at around £25 / £30

Later that evening I decided to take another step forward, I decided to pick out the pipe work in front of the cab… again using the blunt pencil method and small brushes… I managed to pick it out quite successfully…
I used satin black and some acrylic gold paint which I then dulled down with some thinned down matt black paint which I applied after varnishing. Then the loco’s cab received it’s glazing back as well as silver paint for its hand rails.

A few small bits were done after the varnish, a light coat of matt black on the roof, running plate, and smoke-box was added, as well as this being a little clumsy I managed to know the whistle off… oops… but I have replaced it with a temporary replacement, an old turned brass one which Hornby made quite a few years ago…

Smoke-box door plate was fixed in place with a small amount of super glue gel/Varnish.

So apart from a detailing pack… which I would assume Hornby will provide as a spare at some point that’s a complete rebuild… I think at least it looks a bit better….

A few months later Hornby released the detailing pack for the more upmarket version of 71000, as the Railroad and main range model comes from the same tooling with different decoration or printing, the holes for the details are present on the railroad version, so a the detail pack was added, which gave the model drain cocks, front steps, and cab doors.
Also pinching a few bits from a Hornby article I changed the front bogie wheels to Alan Gibson's.
You can see the entire photo album on this FlickR link: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmEbKoFY

Hi All,

Could anyone tell me if the engine tender connection on the R3236 1960 Duke is supposed to be permanent?

Mine has a plate (which was loose when received, at the front of the tender), and it appears that the drawbar for the tender needs to go through the rectangular hole in the front of the plate before the plate can be placed correctly just below the coal shuttle area.

Gluing the plate in place will render the connection permanent as there is no height in the hole to allow the drawbar to detach. 

Can this be real? 

If so it's the stupidest piece of design I have ever seen.

Can someone put me out of my misery please?

Cheers

will try to post photos tomorrow.

Hi all

After sitting in it's box for a while I got my Schools Class "Repton" out for another period of running.

However I found that the plastic pin that locates the front bogie to the mounting plate had sheared clean off. In fact it was totally missing along with the spring that keeps the bogie in contact with the track.

I must have broken it somehow just before I put it back in it's box but not noticed.

No problem with providing a new (metal) pin but the soft spring eludes me.

The thin phosphor bronze and steel wires I have are all way to thick to make such a soft spring.

Any suggestions for a substitute?

Cheers

Keith.

I'm not sure where to ask this, so I shall start here.   I am trying to build a layout for the first time and am struggling with what loco's would fit on my setting.  Is there a publication of steam locomotive numbers that depict the engine type?   What I am looking for is a list of loco's showing, for example:- 42xxx = type 4a or whatever.  I have seen photo's of loco's and can discern their side number but do not know what type of engine it is.

I hope that I have explained myself sufficiently for someone to understand and provide an answer please.

cheers,
Mike

When was my last post? August? Yikes!

I guess I've been quite busy... but what with it now being January, the month of wet weekends when nothing is happening, I've been back to modelling - so settle down for a long read...

First, we rewind back to last summer. I had completed most of the scenic work on Alexandra Wharf, and was beginning to wonder what was next. Whilst I have enjoyed the industrial micro-layout genre, I was pining for the roundy-roundy passenger stations of my home layout. So could I create a station-based microlayout?

The requirements were simple:

• A station platform
• A signal box (and one or two working signals)
• A goods shed (or half of one at least)
• Capable of taking short branch line trains
• Footprint to fit the 22L "really useful box", not including a fiddleyard (most likely cassette based).

I came up with the following:

By having two tracks exit stage left, it has a sizeable loop for running around, and two decent capacity sidings. The platform dissappears into the rear corner so it can be as long as the viewer imagines it to be; both it and the stage exit are concealed by the goods shed. It can comfortably take a train formed of a coach and milk tank, or 3 wagons and brake van. The only slight oddity is to run around a train it must first be shunted out of the platform.

Since I like my models to have at least one foot in reality, I searched around for suitable prototypes the station could take inspiration from. The only examples I could think of where the goods shed was placed directly opposite the station platform as here is the West Somerset railway. A little digging revealed that as luck would have it, I've practically created the layout of Watchet station although with an extra road bridge and a heavily reduced goods yard.

I was happy in the knowledge I had devised a usable plan based loosely on an existing station, and was sitting on it over summer until I finished my degree and had some money to throw at it.

Then during a conversation with a certain @DRoe96, it transpired he has a book covering the line with detailed plans, and from this he had drawn a digital 3D model of the station building... so there was to be no weasling out of it now!

Time passed. I finished my Masters (with Distinction scraped in at 70.5%). I swapped from paying money as a student to earning it as a Graduate Engineer. I found my new lodgings have rather more space than previously. So what if I stepped up a size to the bigger 77L box - I could swap from Setrack to Streamline, and still have space to boot...

These ideas continued to float around my head for a few months, until just over a week ago when a purchase was made and a delivery received.

That's right, I'm finally upgrading from cardboard layouts! Although the corrugated-sandwhich baseboard of Alexandra Wharf has held up remarkably well for how many times it's been moved, I decided that it was high time I upgraded to a more durable, easier to handle material. And I must say I'm mightily impressed with this kit - even assembled dry it all fits snugly and is remarkably rigid.

And it also comes with a lot of free landscaping material 😛

I set about gluing up the boards, for which I chose UHU. I left the end boards unglued to start, since I was yet to cut the stage-exit holes which would be easier when they're not attached, but kept them in place to ensure the backboard was vertical. I quickly realised my book collection wouldn't be enough weight, so found a new use for my camping equipment...

And then it was play time! I experimented with many subtle variations to the initial layout to fit the slightly larger space. Whilst including a set of points for the left hand end of the loop could contain the maximum train length, it looked very un-railway-like, so kept to the original scheme. However, the station platform has slid to the left, to give it more depth and remove the awkward shunt-back from run-round manouvres. This has displaced the signal box to the front of the layout, where it helps to stop one from looking under the bridge and out of the scene. Also the goods yard is more defined. This does mean it's not really Watchet anymore...

The backscene came free with RM Jan2022, and is an ideal setting and size; I have trimmed it down so the foreground and horizon are more suitably placed. The length will be fine once it's properly installed.

And now some beauty shots. Whilst some might call it playing, it's vital to ensure the composition works 😉

Yep, I'm pretty happy with how things are looking!

I proceeded to cut out the stage exits (using a utility knife, a tool I inexplicably had yet to obtain), glued on the end boards, and added rounded corners with thin white card. I'm therefore now ready to apply the backscene, which will be yet another new thing to trial, so we'll see how it goes!

Although, right now, it looks like a complete mess of course...