steverabone

You are absolutely correct - I suspect that the English translation as Silverfish was a marketing idea used by model manufacturers - when clean the lower sides did indeed look like the scales of a fish. After years of using the term Silverfish I'm now determined to correct my ways and use the German word!!

Hi Paul Thanks for the comments. I've used the photocopied method for both panelled and plain side coaches. For panelled coaches I've used Mekpak to secure the microstrip to the card. My coaches were all square panelled but dropping a tiny amount of PVA in the corner should produce a rounded corner especially after painting. The method of construction I've used is on this page of my website; http://www.steverabone.com/sscalewebsite/lms_coaches.html The internal part of construction is exactly the same for both panelled and flush sided vehicles and also whether you are using card or etched brass sides. I don't used shellac but Ronseal wet wood hardener. This is painted on the card in several thin coats and hardens the card considerably. For thin strips such as the metal sliding window frames I run a layer of superglue along the rear of the card which produces almost meta (e.g. brass etch)l like strength.

To scratch build these coaches is a challenge as representing the body side finish is difficult. In the end I decided to use close up photographs of models (the latest version by Brawa in HO scale) that I found on the internet. As the vehicles are in S Scale about 16 inches long I broke the sides into three pieces. One section was made from photographs of the short compartment at the ends of the coach with the ends spliced in between the end section as below: The longer central compartment also included the double doors at each end. It is obviously essential to get the height of each section exactly the same but this is easily done using a photo editing program. I use the freeware program Irfanview. After printing out on thin card the windows were carefully cut out and the centre window bar hardened by running superglue along the inside edge. I now cut the end sections into two along the dividing line of the corridor connection. These will later be joined together when the body is assemble. The three sections of the sides were joined together with strips of card under the body sides near the doors. The glazing strip was now glued to the inside of the sides using tiny dabs of epoxy. A card strengthening pieces was added with the window areas cut out and a strip above the windows folded at right angles to act as a strengthening bar and a location point for the ceiling of the coach. The ends have now been rejoined and the basic body shell is complete ready for the floor and ceiling. I've also added the orange curtains which were a distinctive feature of the real coaches. The carriage floor has been added - it is made from two layers of mounting card cut to fit tightly inside the body. Great care had to be used to get the doors on opposite sides to align with each other. The floor was permanently glued in place. Then the six internal partitions were glued in place after cutting out a hole to represent the sliding door windows. The toilet walls were added at each end and the walls in these areas and the door lobbies were painted light green. The carriage ceiling was placed loosely in place to ensure that it still fitted correctly after the partitions had been added. The Silberlinge had a considerable number of seats - 96 in total in the second class coach plus some tip up seats. I've modelled them by making 48 double seat units using the net above. The model seats were supported at one end by gluing them to a representation of the heating duct that runs along the side under the windows. The seats at the end of the compartments were simply glued to the compartment walls. The rest of the seat units were glued back to back before gluing in place - a touch of epoxy underneath the base end fastened them to the coach floor and another dab held them against the heating duct. The seats were painted in the reddish brown of the original seats. The body has now been sealed permanently with a ceiling made thick card glued in place on top of the longitudinal tab above the windows. A thin layer of epoxy was also spread along the joint between the ceiling and the top of the body sides. This will ensure that the card above the windows stays completely straight. The roof is going to be a separate unit to avoid damaging the body whilst it is constructed. I've cut two templates - one is for the cross section of the roof and the other gives the end profile for the domed ends of the roof. The transition between the end domes and the rest of the roof has been marked by adding curved profile strips. The roof profile has been built up using strips of mounting card. At the ends the domed shape will be built up using epoxy resin filed to shape. In the photo I've masked off the end from the rest of the roof ready to begin this process. The roof is now complete with the domed ends filled with epoxy resin and sanded to shape, the main part of the central curved roof is thin card sheet reinforced underneath with epoxy. The ventilators and rain strip are plastic strips. The bogie side frames and centre stretcher bar are made from a single piece cut from brass sheet and then folded into a U shape. The springs in the centre are short sections cut from a brass bolt and soldered onto the side frames. Brass wire is soldered across the ends of the side frames and a length of wire soldered along the top of the side frame on the front to represent the strengthening bar on the original bogie. A thin piece of card cut to the shape of the side frames as in the small diagram above and glued to the brass. This includes a square shape either side of the axleboxes which is presumably a type of compression spring. Another thicker piece of card was cut out for the shape of the heavy main frame and glued on top of the thin card. The corridor connection and buffers have been added. The corridor connection are circular section plastic from 4mm scale wagon kits.The buffers are made from nickle silver sheet cut to the correct shape and soldered to a length of brass tube. The tube is the passed through a short length of plastic tube from a biro pen and glued into a hole in the lower body. The rather complex steps for the doors were made by: Removing a small amount of the body side under the door so that there was a recess. A strip of thin card was glued in place under the body for the top step. The outer step support with its triangular ends was added together with a backing piece of card. This was then glued in place under the doors with strengthening pieces behind to hold it vertically in line with the body side. A thin strip of card was glued to the step cut out. The model is now largely finished with just a few underframe details to add. The roof was secured to the ceiling of the body with epoxy resin and held tightly in place with elastic bands. The handrails for the shunters are nickel silver. The roof was painted with Humbrol silver and then the panel lines drawn in pencils. Finally a dirty grey/brown wash was applied to tone down the silver to the more typical grey of the original roofs after the end of steam. For comparison this is a composite 1st/2nd coach that I photographed in 1980 at Wilhelmshaven.

If you have travelled by train in Germany anytime from the mid 1960s onwards you will almost certainly have travelled in one of the 'Silberlinge' coaches used on most locomotive hauled suburban and regional trains. There were thousands of them and only recently have the last been removed from service. They were known by the British as "Silverfish" although that is really an incorrect translation as a Linge was a coin - their appearance was unusual in that the stainless steel sides had a cicrcular pattern on it which could be said to resemble the scales of a fish. In S Scale this model is very long being 412mm (26.4m in length). It's built entirely out of card apart from the inner framework of the bogie and the wheels To get the patterned sides I found some really clear images on a German website of the latest Brawa Ho Scale models. The images were cropped and resized to S Scale and printed on card. Further details of construction will follow if anybody is interested.

I've been working away on stock for my DB layout which as before are built almost entirely from cardboard. First off is a model of the post war bogie "Umbauwagen" which like the six wheel coaches seen in my previous posting about DB models were rebuilt using the frames and bogies from pre-war coaches. I modified the roof construction slightly to give a better profile to their distinctive shape. This time I used a slightly different method of construction using re-scaled drawings for the coach sides and only the recessed ends and doors came from the pdf kit that I used for the six wheelers. Bogies were built using etchings from British wagon W irons etchings and brass strip. The bogie side frames are from layers of card cut out from diagrams of the real things. The intention is to be impressionistic rather than detailed. I now need to build a composite 1st/2nd and a 2nd baggage to make up a typical branch line rake of three coaches. More details can be found here. http://www.steverabone.com/sscalewebsite/deutsche_bundesbahn_bogie_umbauw.html Another model is one of the numerous cement silo wagons. This uses a re-scaled pdf kit from Albrecht Pirling which does all the hard work of producing the complex shapes of the silos. There are about thirty pieces of card involved in the basic body shape. many of which are internal strengtheners. I use Devcon two part epoxy to add additional strength to the underside of the card as well as wood rot hardener to make the outer surface of the card much stronger. The chassis uses a modified British 17'6 " chassis etching, with brass for the handrail, ladders and platforms. Considerable amounts of filler have been used to hide the gaps between the various elements of the body. At the moment the model is unlettered as I haven't sourced suitable transfers yet. More details can be found by scrolling down this page: http://www.steverabone.com/sscalewebsite/db_freight_wagons.html

Excellent article by Simon Dunkley and photos by Andy York. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the layout which I remember seeing at the York exhibition some years ago.

The printed version was published on Friday 27th so should be in the shops already and if not in the next few days. The digital version is available a few days before the print version.

Welcome to this rather special issue of TRACTION in which we celebrate the Rail Blue years of British Rail. It was an era which many readers of TRACTION remember with great affection as, somehow, those years of the 1970s and 1980s managed to combine something of the old steam age railway with an increasingly modern one. We start with the short period when pairs of Class 50s were introduced to speed up the principal services north of Crewe on the main line to Scotland. Jon Littlewood and David Clough take us back to those heady days when high speed diesel traction roared over the northern hills. David Hayes concludes his look at the Midland Main Line using photos by Kevin Lane; in this issue it is the turn of the southern part of the line into London between Harpenden and St. Pancras. I’m sure most enthusiasts have tales of unexpected events on their travels by train when something unusual happened to add interest. Barrie Rigg talks about ‘Those occasional oddities’ on his journeys around the north of England. We start a two part feature by David Hayes about the distinctive tanker trains run for the British Oxygen Company. The first part looks at the 1970s and 1980s with the later years following in the next issue. Staying with freight traffic, John Dedman recalls the short period in 1985 when Class 45s were scheduled to power Severn Tunnel Junction to Eastleigh Speedlink freights. The ‘Deltics’ were, of course, no strangers to Scotland although, as a rule, they were largely confined to the East Coast Main Line between Berwick and Edinburgh. Richard MacLennan has looked at how widely the Class 55s actually travelled on lines north of the Border with some surprising conclusions. Martin Axford recounts his photographic experiences with different cameras in his younger days with particular emphasis on his favourites, the Class 33s. Finally Gavin Morrison presents a selection of Rail Blue images ranging across Britain from Penzance to Georgemas Junction. In TRACTION MODELLING we feature a fascinating layout which imagines that the Somerset and Dorset Line did not close after all but was modernised and survived into the Rail Blue period. There’s also a detailing feature about weathering a Class 40 as a review of the new Bachmann Class 414 2-HAP unit.

In the next issue TRA 261 there will be a detailed performance article about pairs of class 50s on the WCML in the 1970s. Hopefully this will please you! Stephen

The latest issue of TRACTION has been published and the digital version is now available online at https://pocketmags.com Content of TRACTION 260 Even today one of the best locations to watch freight trains has to be Barnetby in north Lincolnshire. In 1989 and 1990 Michael Vanns paid several visits to photograph trains against the backdrop of the wide variety of semaphore signals that then controlled operations. In the last issue of TRACTION the editor described the night he spent on Stafford station in July 1975 and referred to Crewe being an equally interesting location to pass the hours of darkness. Earlier in the same year David Clough paid several visits to record night-time operations on film at this major junction. I don’t envy him on those cold January and February nights though! David Hayes continues his study of the Midland Main Line using the photographs of Kevin Lane. In this issue he concentrates on the Luton area in the days before electrification. Like many enthusiasts in the 1970s and 1980s Nick Edmunds was something of a loco haulage fan and spent much of his free time travelling behind ‘Westerns’ and ‘Peaks’ in the West Country. However he was also drawn to sample the many local trains that were powered by the smaller diesels such as Class 25 and 31. In his article about these local workings in Devon he relates his experiences. Colin Boocock has written several articles about German locomotive types for TRACTION but it was on a visit to Dresden, in the former East Germany, in 2019 that he had several chance encounters with those same locomotive types now in their declining years. History, as we know, begins yesterday and it doesn’t feel that long ago that EWS were running most of Britain’s freight services. David Ratcliffe recorded the variety of intermodal trains that EWS operated in the early years of the 21st century. Gavin Morrison continues his series of feature about the Manchester to Leeds Trans Pennine route concentrating this time on the section east of Standedge Tunnel between Marsden and Huddersfield. In TRACTION MODELLING we feature a superb N Gauge layout by Peter Latham called Wormhill which is based closely on the actual location of Peak Forest in the Peak District of Derbyshire. Heavy stone traffic is the main focus of this layoutwith close attention to the details found at this freight ‘HotSpot’. And now some special news to look forward to. The next issue, TRACTION 261, will be a bumper special edition with the theme of ‘Rail Blue’. It will be larger than our normal issues and will cover just those years when Rail Blue dominated the railway scene. So whether it is the early years of plain all over blue or the later ‘Large Logo’ livery this is an issue not to be missed.

Thanks for this comment and it is much appreciated. We have lots more interesting features in the pipeline over the next few issues.

Well seeing that BR05 running is a bit of a surprise. By the way my father saw one 05:003 still streamlined at Hamburg Altona in 1946.

I am sure this is true in many cases and of course that is a perfectly good reason to read a book or magazine. I count myself very fortunate as I find almost any subject to do with railways or model railways of interest: steam, diesel, electric, multiple units, carriages, wagons, British, Irish, anything overseas, signalling, track, the commercial and operational side of railways, history, the future. In terms of model making much the same applies as I find that almost any aspect of model making is relevant in some way to my own. On this basis I would always encourage others to broaden their interest and not be, as one reader once told me, "I'm only interested in what happened in the Preston area." Stephen

Thanks for these comments ThaneofFife. My aim robD2 was not just to list what I saw but to explain the background to many of the workings that I saw during that evening and night. With the help of several enthusiasts we've been able to piece together much of the complexities of operation at the time. The 1975 WCML is almost as far away from todays operations as is the steam age. By presenting the article in both a tabular listing and an explanation of the nature of operations I'd hoped that I could satisfy at least two different audiences - the number crunchers and those with an interest in operation. Look again at the text and see what I mean!! Stephen Rabone

Beautiful modelling on that SER van. Once you've painted it I suspect the roof issue will be less obvious.

I really like the way the track flows on this project. Keep posting your progress. Stephen

For various reasons I used Peco code 100 on my Deutsche Bundesbahn branch line. At the time I built the track I'd had a lot of trouble with nerve damage to my right hand and I wanted to avoid the amount of heavy filing needed to produce the point blades and stock rails when using code 100 rail. In Germany all rail is flat bottomed and code 100 looks about right for S Scale German track. I modified existing Peco pointwork as shown in this section of my layout blog. Whilst it worked alright and running is good I wouldn't do it again. Click on the link below. Stephen http://www.steverabone.com/sscalewebsite/new_german_s_scale_layout.html

As Regularity says I'm having a great deal of enjoyment pursuing my own goals and have accepted the fact that my stock won't run on layouts built to the finescale standards. I do, however, set the wheels so that they are gauged with the SSMRS L shaped back to back gauge. Of course many of my other locos weren't built from Alan Gibson kits - he certainly didn't produce a Deutsche Bundesbahn 2-6-2T with Walscaherts (Heusinger) valve gear!!! Perhaps I better not mention those German diesels with tram bogies regauged to S Scale. Also mentioned in this thread are issues to do with buffer locking on sharp curves. These can be overcome by using something like Sprat and Winkle couplings with a wire bar soldered across the buffers or the method I've standardised on using the NEM type plug in tension lock couplings. Of course I'm the first to admit that scale wheels, gentle curves and three link or screw couplings look much better.... Stephen

You are correct. Both the Alan Gibson EM profile wheels and the Markits wheels on S Scale axles are considerably thicker in profile than the thinner S Scale profile wheels. To get sufficient clearance on outside cylinder locos behind the cross heads and slidebars you do need to move them out a bit otherwise the leading axle crankpin washer will hit them.

It's actually possible to run large S Scale locos around 3 feet radius curves providing you accept compromises and, in my case, don't stick to SSMRS standards for the wheels. As I want a main line layout in a small room I've had to accept many compromises and one of those is 3 feet radius curves. All my track is built slightly over gauge as referred to elsewhere in this thread. Over the years I've built almost all the Alan Gibson S Scale LMS kits - Crab and Stanier 2-6-0s, 2-6-4Ts, Class 5, Jubilee and Patriot 4-6-0s and Stanier 2-8-0s. These have used both Gibson wheels (with the EM gauge profile wheels) and more recently Markits 4mm scale wheels on S Scale axles. The Markit wheels are now my preferred wheel because of the automatic quartering although again I'm prepared to accept that there might be 2 or 3 spokes too many. The main compromise is that cylinders and motion support brackets have to be moved out about 1.5mm from their correct position so that the crossheads clear the front axle crankpin. All the chassis are built rigid and for tender locos are free rolling with a powered tender. The 2-6-4Ts obviously have the motor in the tender. I don't allow any side play on the leading axle, a little on the rear axle and plenty on the middle axles. The frames are built up exactly as Alan Gibson supplied them with S Scale spacers. The frames may need to be modified slightly to allow pony trucks/bogies to move freely. The locos run perfectly happily at normal layout speeds around 36" radius curves on plain track and through 48" radius through points. Should I wish to they would go around the layout at a scale 50 or 60mph without problems. Of course if you use "scale" wheels with narrow treads and shallow flanges then you would have a problem - it depends what S Scale means to you!! Stephen

TRACTION issue 259 is published on 24th July. We start this issue of TRACTION with a detailed look at Lincoln Central which, in the 1980s, possessed a marvellous selection of semaphore signals and signal boxes. Michael Vanns used the signals as an integral part of the photographs he took there. Back in his younger days the editor was more than happy to spend long periods of time overnight at major railway stations observing operations. In July 1975 he travelled to Stafford and spent fifteen hours watching an incredible number and variety of trains during the late evening and night hours. In the first of a multi-part photo feature Gavin Morrison looks at the Trans Pennine line between Manchester and the western end of Standedge Tunnel at Diggle. It is a line that is now seeing regular Class 68 hauled services, although their introduction into service has been problematic. Mick Humphrys concludes his article about driving electric multiple units on the North London Lines. It’s good to learn more about the less glamorous side of passenger operations. Until the decline of King Coal Milford Junction in Yorkshire was something of a Mecca with the frequent freight services attracting many enthusiasts. Chris Lenton recalls to visit he made in the late 1990s. We start a three part series of images taken on the Midland Main Line by photographer Kevin Lane and backed up with detailed captions by David Hayes. The first part covers the line south from Kettering to just north of Luton. In TRACTION MODELLING we feature a fascinating layout Devonport Road which is based in Plymouth and features a leisure centre, naval dockyard and parcels traffi c as well as rolling stock maintenance and repair activities.

Yes Traction can now be read on Readily. https://gb.readly.com/products/magazine/traction?q=traction The cost is £0.99 for the first month and then £7.99 a month for which you can read any magazine on the website. There are lots of British railway and model railway magazines and some overseas ones such as Eisenbahn. Stephen

Good to hear that you enjoyed this issue and that Traction has escaped the recycling! Stephen

I can't answer this question precisely (especially for a question at the weekend!!). The copies for contributors have been sent out so I expect subscription copies will have gone at the same time. Obviously there are some delays in the postal system, as my own mail is a bit erratic in arriving so you may need to be patient. The digital issue is now on line. Stephen Rabone

Thanks for your kind comment. According to Wikipedia "German 2-6-2 T Class 64 No. 64.305. Built in 1936. Now stored awaiting overhaul. Original intentions had been to start work once 1178 (Swedish 2-6-2T) was completed. However, due to the potential costs of asbestos removal this now looks unlikely." https://davesrailphots.weebly.com/64-305.html