coachmann

The first all-metal Gresley I ever built was a 3-compartment built using Comet sides and ends and BSL roof. My bogies and underframe. Simpler to use a Hornby Gresley donor and they weigh a lot less.......

Yup, we can see why armchair pundits never get their letters anywhere near the printed page. They would only serve to tell active modellers that they are wasting their time because no one really knows what the real railway colours looked like and so nothing really matters!!! Forums are places for discussion, but to attempt to discredit over half a Century's researches by people who really did know what they were talking about is par for the course on RMweb. I always look at their profile when a gassing type hits the keyboard, and guess what....Hardly any of them show any building, painting or modelling tendencies...

What an insulting post! I give up.

Gobowen simply does not work within my shed. It has no overbridges and therefore no natural breaks where the line passes through the shed walls. I have moved on from simplicity Paul. If Carrog told me anything, it is operationally boring. Imagine standing on Carrog station in 1960 and seeing nothing for ages. I would have been on the next train out of there and back to Croes Newydd quick style. My taste for curved station and trains leaning on the camber as they sped through probably stems from my childhood days at Greenfield (Standedge line).

The significant factor of the plain olive green dining car is, it is plain out of period for 1930-39. Remember, plain olive green on modern mainline passenger coaches came in right at the end of the 1930's and may not even have occurred except on one diner. Afterall, malachite became the new colour scheme when Bulleid took office. We can only go off available information. Just because official photographs show certain newly built coaches from 1935 and 1936 in a simplified form of lining is no basis for assuming that it was carried over onto any of the Restaurant Cars. If it was when they became due for repaint, then the diners would still have retained some form of lining even if it was only along the waist. Hornbys' coach has no lining! It represents one coach circa March 1940. I can understand why buyers will accept it as produced. They have no choice!

As things stand now, and I cannot really see it changing, the new layout will be based on Ruabon. "Based on" is the keyword here because the prototype has marshalling yards and these demand a wide baseboard, something to avoid in a 6' wide shed. Code 100 track has been terrific, but I just might return to bullhead for this, my final layout....he says! Marshaling yards make effective storage yards and take the pressure of the fiddle yard. The station also has its own small goods yard. Traffic....Well what can I say....The potential is enormous. An Up bay for Dee Valley passenger trains. A Down lye-bye for goods traffic. Block brick trains from Trevor and block oil trains to name two. Non-stop passenger to & from Paddington, locals to Shrewsbury and Birmingham. Festiniog Society Special involving 'feature' locomotives and double-red route restriction as far as Saltney Junction. What I want to add though is more LMS influence before 1963. So I think the Chester-Shrewsbury section will be Joint GWR/LMS with the GWR being in charge of architecture and signalling, but both companies providing motive power and coaching stock.

There was a BR.Standard 4 working our of Shrewsbury in the last months of steam which was mismatched. Loco was lined green and Tender lined black....or vice-versa. It is featured on a B&R Video but I have so many covering this area that it would be a job finding it.

Interesting. Thankfully, I won't ever see a BR lined green Heljan ha ha.

It is an odd one out when compared with the last few years output from Hornby and Bachmann. If Heljans BR green is exactly the same as on their GWR model, then it is darker than all Hornby's models. Silver Sidelines images are not accurately capturing the green by a long chalk because something in the lighting is giving it a malachite appearance. The shot below is nearer the mark and even then it is portrayed slightly lighter than it is......The colour of the rails should look darker along with the ballast.

In response to something posted earlier, the late crest does not denote a loco is towards the end of its life. Repaint anything and it looks as good as new.........The steam locomotive was not somehow different from the norm. Judging by colour photographs, the 47XX locos looked particularly impressive when ex works in BR lined green, and quite a few were kept very clean in the latter half of the 1950's. If you dont like Heljans lining, one option is to purchase the green GWR version, give it post 1956 totems and engraved plates, and live without the lining. Another is to apply waterslide lining to this model, but on this, I have never used the stuff and do not know if it is any finer than that applied by Heljan. The 47XX is relatively easy to respray. Remove the cab first (two side-by-side screws under the cab, then the boiler (screw under pony truck and the screw between the rear driving wheels). Tender body comes off by detaching the plug-in tool boxes and water filler cap and removing the small screws. Cellulose and spraycan paint does not like Heljans paint, so do not flood the paint on. I transferred some Halfords semi-matt black to my spraygun and I still had to be very careful when spraying the model. Brush paint the splasher sides, boiler support bracket, rocker covers and the running plate 'pelmet'. I hope some of this real-world advice is of use.

Wake up at 6am planning layout in my head. Build baseboards Glue & ballast track. Wire up Mercontrol to points. Built platforms and buildings. Build scenery. Do a spot of gardenning. Wake up at 6am thinking about layout. Rip up track. Extend baseboard sideways. Re-lay track and ballast. Add new goods yard. Play piano. Make video for RMweb. Rip up track. Have a cheese butty. Go to Ffestiniog. Wake up at 6am thinking about layout. Lay new track..... Apologies, I'm in a daft mood...

HMRS Sheet 17 is what you need. It covers wagons for the following railways: London Tilbury & Southern Railway North London Ralway Midland Railway Somerset & Dorset Railway Stratford on Avon Junction Railway Nrth Stafford Railway Lamncashire & Yorkshire Furness Railway Maryport & Carlislse Railway Cleator & Workington Railway. I never painted wagons, but I bought a few of these sheets because the serif numbers were useful for making up LMS smokebox number plates. I suspect these numerals are for L&YR wagons though, but if you want a sheet simply PM me your address and it will be popped in the post ~ no charge. Cheers, Larry G.

Ron Charlton's Cotswold 47XX was indeed a good looking loco when built and it weighed a ton. But like many other models, I wonder what I would think of it today. The Heljan model is good, superb in fact, once all the detail parts have been put back or replaced. When I say detail parts, the ones that fell off mine were Tender lamp brackets, one Tender buffer, Injector overflow pipes, a rod between the loco frames, front vacuum pipe, one buffer, small wire in front of cab, one lower cylinder slide bar and the support stays (when boiler was lifted). I struggled to fit the brake rodding on the loco as it wouldn't stay put while the glue dried (a weird idea for fitting anyway) and I gave up on a front coupling because the bogie-mounted NEM socket faces upwards. Newly fabricated parts were front vac pipe, injector overflows and front stays, the latter because wanted them to look like the prototype. I could throw in engraved plates as well seeing as Heljans mouded plates were too small and rubbish. Then I repainted two 47XX's because I wanted them in BR lined green and could not live with Heljans effort. So I ended up with two locos I was proud to own and of course all the work actually happened! Fitting sound was a doddle I might add. I got in a Flame10 cube speaker and two stay-alives.

Interesting YouTube clip. Thanks for the link Phil.

ADENDUM When converted to slip coaches and given the older Plate 9' bogies, I am not sure if the bogies centres were altered to clear slip equipment. I have mentioned this because it is unlikely they were changed back to the original bogie centres when the slip equipment was removed. ​When the slip equipment was removed, it seems they were given back their pressed steel bogies, but they retained the wider spaced trussing and cylinders. At least one is known to have lost its chocolate & cream with totem and been repainted lined maroon with the then-new yellow stripe in the cantrail denoting first class. I spent some time this morning going through my GWR drawing file because I know I had information on these slip conversions at one time when Derek Lawrence and I produced a batch in aluminium. Trouble is, I had a good clear out in 2004 after Derek passed away. I did not find what I was looking for.

I am sure I covered bullhead point curving on the Carrog thread, probably around April time. It is not something would repeat though. They are rather flimsy. Next time, I will try not to lean on the track while taking photos...!

I agree. Hornby must be wondering now why on earth it didn't produce the 4700! As welcome as this locos' arrival was, it presented a problem for Carrog. Without wandering too far into the realms of Rule 1, I have been using a 'Grange' with small Churchward Tender as a temporary look-alike 'Manor', however, a severely route-restricted 2-8-0 was about as impossible to justify as a 'King'. My workaround might sound extreme to some folk, but this was when I decided to make a layout to fit the loco, hence the planned double track mainline. Incidentally, I do also have a 'King'.....

Model painting is my job so speed is essential. Very funny about the PVA not getting the chance to dry... I wonder who I got it from...

And now there are two.... I did the second repaint while still in the mood. The same four ruling pens have been in use commercially for 46 years now, but my eyes have been at it far longer, and so I have been thinking this loco will be among the last. Repainting these 4700's in lined green was something I never wanted to do. In fact I kept telling myself that I didn't need one, but then two arrived by surprise. I don't really need two and so the other will be going back to my friend complete with a repaint....

The M6....Aargh! It's a nightmare. Mind you, the A55 so-called Expressway two-lane effort is also a pain in the butt. It should be a motorway at least on the Chester-St.Asaph section.

I'm afraid Harlequin is right on this one. Rob is not modelling in any real sense of the word and so using fake modelling to promote a model that is so poor in its construction is bound to irritate. As far as I am aware without resort to books, the Dynamometer Car and slip coaches did, but no Hawksworth day coaches received BR choc & cream.

I picked that up earlier Budgie and adopted it. It works out well. Thanks.

Yippeee, mine arrived today. It didn't really,... I''m a fake.a box opener,,,,.

A CKD kit......Build it yourself guys! It wouldn't matter if the kits was £75.00 or only half-a-crown, folk who cannot repair things cannot build things. I had to enlist the assistance of fine tweezers and a spider to re-glue some of the parts back...I jest of course, but they were a pain. When the slidebar fell off, that was enough for me. You don't just tack on slidebars with glue! Is the Gresley 02 2-8-0 like this?

Yours is a serious layout in my book LNER 4479. Your comments about Shap, which uses Code 75, interest me, and I second that it takes more care to lay even and true as the smaller section makes it more susceptible to knocks, kinks, undulations. Peco bullhead demands even more care and is easily damaged just be putting two sections together with Code 75 rail joiners. I am not sure at this stage whether Code 100 will be used in the my layout. It has certainly delivered ultra-smooth running and it's rigidity is apparent when two pieces of track seem to lock together rather than clip together.