Ruston

Do you really think that's how it works? That because a "vocal minority" point out that something isn't right, the manufacturer runs off with their tail between their legs and bins months or years of design and marketing work? RTR model manufacturers aren't all-knowing, despite what some people may think, and their researchers aren't infallible. Input from this so-called vocal minority can help the manufacturers to get things right before they go to production. Instead of whinging about them you really ought to be thanking them for helping both the manufacturer and we as modellers to get a more accurate model by freely giving their time and knowledge for the benefit of others.

I got my old Judith Edge Ruston 165 back. I sold it a year or two ago but bought it back recently and it's been having an outing on CSM.

I don't. I have thought about it before but I've never tried it. How well do those rubber tyres take being sanded? I presume that's how it would be done? How do you get them to bulge out at the sides, at the bottom, or is that not noticeable at all?

Another thing that I bought, yesterday, was a new cutting mat. The old one was literally falling apart. I raised the height of the tipper body using 40 thou Plastikard and then covered it in a layer of 5 thou. to hide the join. A load of Evergreen strip ribs have been added and will be trimmed to length once all the MEK joints have hardened.

AB 2049 of 1937. It was a special low height loco with a dropped footplate that meant the cylinders couldn't go under the cab and so had to go at the front. The only one in the UK with cylinders at the front.

Three of those figures are interviewees for the job of dozer driver. I reckon the bloke in the donkey jacket and Wakey Trinity hat is favourite.

I went to take the whippets out this morning and also for a ride to the model shop. I found this in the second hand section. It's already the right colour but needs the signage changing and a Wakefield reg. plate. Maybe not just that. These Oxford lorries always seem to ride too low. There's hardly any vertical clearance between the front wheels and the cab. It needs the suspension sorting. And also, the tipper body is a bit small for carrying coal. Hoveringham would have been gravel, which is more dense. A coal body be taller and so be able to get in more in for the same weight. Looking at the lorries in the background of British Oak pictures, the tippers seem to be at least a foot taller than the roof of the cab. So apart from the suspension, the signage, the tipper and some weathering, it's ready to go. 🙃 And perhaps those door mirror fixings are a bit chunky...

Use graphite on the rail tops and you won't have to clean the wheels. I use it and have never had any need to clean the wheels on any of my locomotives. I'm saying graphite is the reason but I don't know for sure. All I do know is that I have never had to clean loco wheels since I started using it.

Trees. I ordered some Heki trees from an online retailer. Two different sets of deciduous trees of 6-13cm, plus some 5cm Silver Birch. One set of trees look OK but the others really do look like lumps of painted bathroom sponge, so I haven't put them on. I've paid for the damned things, so I will use them, but they'll go behind the viaduct, where they're not so obvious. Just these few have already made a massive difference in this area of the layout .I'll need another pack of the good ones, plus some large Woodland Scenics trees as all of these are a bit small. I know I could make some myself but I've tried before and it wasn't a success. I've also been adding details to the shed area that I've had lying around as left overs from previous layouts.

No. Mine is a resin cast, from Milicast. Or do you mean the same prototype? If so, it does look like it. Milicast also do one with a cable-operated dozer.

I wasn't aware of that at all. I wonder how many layouts were built off the back of it? t would seem that British Oak has been a layout idea for a few people but I only know of the one by @2mmMark. There is a layout with the name British Oak but it bears no resemblance to the real site in any way so I don't count that. Progress on the D7. It has been one of those builds that can't be put together at once and painted and weathered afterwards. The tracks are a bit wobbly looking, too, because they were stiff and straight castings that had to be heated with a hair dryer to get them to curve around the sprockets and idlers. A lot of the really fine parts, such as control levers are never going to make it from the sprues in one piece and even if they did they wouldn't last two minutes. They will have to be replaced with pins or bits of wire. The build is stalled anyway because the yoke that connects the arms together and fits into the back of the dozer blade was missing from the kit. I have sent an email to the supplier but have yet to receive an answer or the part. It's out there if you want to waste your time looking for it. I'm not going into it here. It's really just a question of mind over matter. I don't mind because they don't matter.

Perhaps start a thread here in the Standard Gauge Industrial section? When the section was set up it was intended to encompass prototype and model but somewhere along the line the header picture and description that I made went AWOL. It's the sort of thing that belongs in the section and it fits in with my own ideas on modelling industrial railways. A resource where people can find out about prototype plant and also about the models that are available to us would be very useful. The way I see it is that you can have a model railway with industrial locomotives on it but that doesn't necessarily make it a model of an industrial railway. To model an industrial railway needs a different approach to a main line or branch line railway. The industrial railway is there for one reason and purpose and is only a part of what is often a much larger operation. To build a layout as an industrial railway requires some understanding of the industry that you have chosen, what part the railway played and what buildings and other equipment is required to serve the various processes. And also, would whatever it is be located in that geographical area at all? This applies especially to extractive industries; quarrying and mining. And of course the more you get into it and the more accurately you want to pin it down to a geographical area and time period, the more you need to know. This approach isn't for everyone and it seems that some people like to think that you can get away with anything with industrial railways - well, yes, you can because its your train set but if you think about it in the context of let's say someone wanting to model the Midland & Great Northern in 1909, you wouldn't tell them that it's fine to stick a GWR pannier at the front of the train or a Ford Capri parked out in front of the station, would you? This is it. We all have a limited space in which to build a layout but it's having the understanding of how it should be if space, time and cash were unlimited that helps to make an industrial layout. Knowing what to put in and just as importantly what you can leave out works wonders. When I started to build Royd Hall I quickly realised that I would never have the space to model an entire deep mine, so I changed to a drift, compressed the sidings massively and only modelled part of the washery and screens. With Blacker Lane I'm not modelling a mine at all and apart from having to compress everything and have a simplified track plan, I can still get in what was at the location of the prototype site on which it is based. Before I leave this rambling post, and before I get jumped on by the Rule 1 brigade, I'd just like to say that the above is my modelling philosophy. I'm not telling anyone that's how they have to model. I'm saying that if you want to join me in it then you're most welcome. It's something I would like to encourage. If you don't like it, or don't want to join in then that's absolutely fine. Just don't bang on about it here. I've already been told by someone this week that because I'm not a member of a club and don't exhibit then I may as well not bother modelling at all ,so I don't need the aggro.

No, it's the same hobby but we have different ways of doing it and we obviously get different things from it. If you like interacting in that way, and you see it as your mission to get people into the hobby, and you get enjoyment from it then that's fine. I have no problem with that. We can't all be the same. I'm not into clubs, committees and the like. As far as I'm concerned there are enough rules, regulations, and people who tell you what to do and when to do it at work, and in life in general, without having it seep into something that's supposed to bring enjoyment and that's done in your own time. I don't want to have to seek permission to build a layout from a committee, to get involved with petty club politics or to have to please anyone else in any way, whether they're a newbie or some grizzled old veteran of umpteen War(ley)s.

Now you put it like that I can see and understand your point of view, which isn't the same as Jason's, who seems to think that exhibiting is the be all and end all. Which is fair enough. I've been to a lot of shows and I get it. I just don't go to anything like as many these days for various reasons. What I was saying is that as far as the hobby dying out, the end of clubs and their shows wouldn't mean the end of the hobby because the number of people who do have their own layouts at home must by far outweigh the number of people who are members of clubs. There would still be customers for all of the products we buy and there would still be layouts built, even if for some they may not be able to build them by not being in a club.

What a narrow-minded view! Because they want to? Because doing the best job of making one's layout for one's own enjoyment is as fulfilling to many of us as doing it to show it off is to those who like to show them? Go on then. No one's stopping you but you could also show them on here, which is what I and many many more do. My main layout is in my shed. Others have them in rooms or the lofts of their homes. Just because we're not going to invite the public into our homes to view our layouts means that we should give up modelling, does it? Why do they need shows? What goes on at a general club show that is vital to the continuation of the hobby? Don't kid me that these shows are put on for the advancement of the hobby because they're not. I don't want to watch model trains on videos either but what's that got to do with it? I and many more like me are getting on with building and operating layouts, building, painting and weathering models and all without being members of clubs or going to see a selection of layouts that are often not even that good. Just because something is in a club exhibition it doesn't make it exhibition standard, does it? I've never been a member of a model railway club and I've enjoyed this hobby for more than 40 years. I didn't know that in all this time I've been doing it wrong.

Please explain, Jason, because I don't understand at all what you're getting at and I'm not sure if what you mean by the 'last bit' is the last bit that is visible in the quote, or if you mean the last bit of everything I typed in the post.

Why is it a strange comment in the context of this thread? One of the themes of the thread is how people, especially the media, are saying that the hobby is dying, one reason being an ageing club population. If clubs do die out, and the exhibitions they put on die with them, it doesn't mean the end of the hobby because I would think that the majority of modellers are not members of clubs. The general club show is pretty much irrelevant in the state of the hobby as a whole these days. I've no doubt that the people involved would mourn the loss of their show and a night in the boozer with their pals but to the rest of us it's hardly the end of the world, is it? Things have moved on since the formation of most of the established clubs. It's here, the internet, where it all happens these days. This is where you can buy everything to fulfil your modelling needs and where you can see some of the best layouts and also where you can exchange ideas and learn from other modellers. The hobby does not need clubs or their shows in order to survive.

Newspapers. Tomorrow's chip wrappers, or at least they used to be. Warley. I last went to the Warley exhibition over 10 years ago and even then it was overcrowded and overpriced and don't get me started on the price of parking a car at the NEC. No matter how long Warley continued to run I was never going to set foot in the NEC again. Hattons. I've not bought anything from them since they brought out the Andrew Barclays. I don't know what the big deal was about them anyway. Just one of many online retailers as far as I can see. I buy the vast majority of my modelling stuff from my local model shop anyway. The ageing membership of model railway clubs. I aren't interested because when it comes to clubs, I'm with Groucho Marx. It's all just a storm in a teacup.

This looks like it's going to be a bit of a challenge to say the least! It's a cast resin kit, from Milicast, for a Caterpillar D7 dozer. It is to go on the waste tip. It's probably a bit too old as a prototype for the later period of the site but it's suitable for the 1950s and perhaps even the 60s. Ideally I wanted a D8, as I have driven one of those, but this seems to be as near and as large a dozer as I can find. There does seem to be a lack of earth moving plant in 4mm. Langley do a Drott B125, which is certainly suitable for the 70s and 80s, so I will also get one of those at some point.

It's not quite finished but I had to try it in position and then have a play with the trainset. I still need a lot of trees. I wanted to buy some from MBR https://en.mbrmodel.eu/ but that website hasn't been working for weeks. It's all jumbled up on the screen and if you follow the links you can eventually get to pages with pictures of the trees but I can't find how to add them to a shopping basket. I've seen these trees on other people's layouts and they look really good, so I don't want to end up using Woodland Scenics trees but it looks like I will have to.

Ex-BR 350HP EE shunter, 08016, at the NCBOE's Blacker Lane Disposal Point.

I found a roll of kitchen foil with not much left on it, so used the cardboard centre. The corrugated panels were bent over a paint bottle and glued to the cardboard. Here's the roof with still wet paint. I put in some short lengths of plastic rod to represent the return rollers and stuck a length of painted cornflakes packet card on as the return of the belt. I'm now tempted to make all of the troughing rollers and belt and leave the sides partially open, with just low windboards, so the belt can be seen. I won't go into the detail of bolt heads and what not as none of it will be viewed closely but a representation of the rollers and belt will suffice.

Thanks. I've had a go with the aluminium and it seems to take being bent quite well. I'm just looking for a cardboard tube to cut up to use as a base to stick the ally sheets to now.

The screens building now has the roof covered with CI. And I have been putting together an internal use re-railing/P.W. train. I pick up cheap second hand wagons at my local model shop now and again and give them a repaint and weathering. Always the ones where the tension link couplings are missing - there's usually a substantial price difference when the couplings are missing. I think the steel dropside is a Cambrian kit, a GWR Starfish and the van is a Cooper Craft Mink. The flat is a cut down RCH mineral, an Oxford model that had damage to the body. I'll put some ash ballast, sleepers and the chairs that Rob gave me in the Starfish and some tools and junk on the flat wagon.

Progress on the conveyor. I won't be making all of the rollers and belt as they would be mostly concealed by the roof and wooden planks on the sides. The roof ought to be curved corrugated iron but I will probably have to put a peaked roof on this one. I can't work out how to put a curve in the corrugated aluminium that goes against the corrugations. I haven't actually attempted it yet but I get the feeling it will crinkle and warp. I installed that guard rail around the concreted area but it was only glued on and has already been knocked out of place by my clumsy hands. It will have to come off and have lengths of brass wire soldered on so that holes can be drilled into the wood beneath. I was going to also have a chain link fence around the edge but it would interfere with coupling operations. In addition to being scenic, one of the reasons for having this raised and concreted area free from buildings and what not is to give somewhere to rest my hand when using the shunting pole and having a fence would prevent that. The conveyor has paint on it and is presently drying in the shed.