Tim Lewis

Yes it is: they even got the lot number and build date correct on the makers plate on the solebar! (So be careful if re-numbering it )

....or if not, commission one. 247 developments (and probably others) will do them. Cost (I think) a fiver and you'll have to wait a couple of months, but to my mind it's worth doing.

Fabulous photos as usual. Your J21 is the same one that mine will be when it's finished (but yours is better ): it was at Tweedmouth for quite a while in the early 50s.

Hi Rod Only just caught up with the ambitious plan to link Balcombe with the rest of the known universe: looks brilliant, go for it! The ###### boys were at Geoff Taylor's on Monday night: his railway has four scenic 'locations' and three fiddle yard locations: the sense of driving a train from one place to another (rather than just fiddle yard-scenic bit-fiddle yard) is very satisfying, something that your scheme would definitely provide. Good luck with it! Edit: rather amusingly, the ###### in the paragraph above is because I used the acronym for the Shropshire and Herefordshire Area Group!

Only just discovered this thread: looks marvellous, a proper 'railway'. Added to watch list. Your comments about being a slow worker amuse me: I started planning my layout over 20 years ago, and haven't laid any track yet (soon, soon, honest).

The vans won't necessarily go back to St. Boswells: freight continued over the whole Tweed Valley line (i.e. to Tweedmouth) until 1965. I remember reading something somewhere about the long siding (possibly in Robotham, but it's not to hand at the moment). I might be remembering this completely wrong, but it may have been something like a 'temporary' additional platform put in for some agricultural show at some time, but then found to be useful and retained (I hope I'm not imagining this ).

Hmm, yes, page 1 is rather long isn't it . I'd prefer to keep all my workbench stuff together if possible, so I'm hoping that now we're on page 2, it will be a bit quicker (if you use 'New Posts') . We'll see. If it's still unmanageable, then I'll do something about it.

Yes, I think all the etches come with ratchet type brake lever guards, which is irritating. I plan to replace them with some Dave Bradwell 'pin-and-hole' type (there must be a proper name for these?) ones. I've now built a 10ft clasp brake version as well (no pics yet): I used Gibson waisted bearings and Kean Maygib wheels on this one: better, but still a little bit of splaying (I'm going to attack the bearings with a drill next).

For various reasons I haven't really done any modelling for the last 3 months, but today I started putting together a Masokits 9ft Morton underframe. Exhibiting a typical lack of discipline, I should have done some more work on my hoppers and/or cattle wagons, but the temptation to start something new was overwhelming! Now I know David Bigcheeseplant has made about a million of these, and also wrote an article for MRJ, but I don't recall seeing a blow-by-blow construction sequence, so I thought some pics may be of interest to some people. Firstly, the main unit folded up: Then you fold up 4 of these: and solder to the main unit (alignment of these is important: tabs and slots are provided). There are small holes in these etches which the springs will eventually pass through, so it's important not to overdo the solder here: These are the spring carriers: which fold up like this: The brakes (only 2-shoe on this one) fold up like this: You then add safety loops (simple fold then attach using tab and slot again): and attach to the main unit (tab and slot yet again): You then fix the spring units to the main unit (springs are retained by the bent 'retainer' you can see at the corner: simple but effective: add wheels, et voila!! This is the first one of these I've built. I was very impressed with how easy it was: the quality of design and etching (and instructions) meant that everything fits exactly where it should, the tabs and slots are in the right place and don't even need opening out. I can see I'll be building lots of these (just as well I liked it, as I have around 15 more in the drawer!) The only drawback so far is that I used Exactoscale bearings and wheels and found that the W-irons splayed a bit, even after judicious filing of the pin points, so I may try some different wheels and/or bearings (either Exactoscale parallel axles, or Kean-Maygib wheels probably) and see if they're better. Hope this is useful to somebody!

Browsing in WH Smith today, there is a colour picture of a 9F on a train of these hoppers. I think it was in the latest Steam Days, but possibly another mag. Although a nice pic, I'm not sure it will help you much with lettering, as they're some distance away and not especially clean! The Tyne Dock-Consett ones certainly had these logos, but I don't know about the LMS ones.

On the other thread (which I can't currently find), I said that there were some photos of tar wagons in a recent NERA magazine. I've now dug it out: there are pictures of two 14T rectangular tar wagons at Darlington Gas Works in 1960, collecting tar to be taken to the Black Bank Chemical Works on the Croft Depot Branch for processing. I don't think they're quite the same as the available kit version, though I'm not too familiar with it. The ones pictured were built in 1912 and 1913 and have a very large cast iron plate on the (wooden) solebar reading "Thomas Ness Limited Black Bank Chemical Works nr Darlington No.85" (and No. 101). HTH

You'll enjoy building this! I did one a few years back and it all went together very well, though you DO need to read the instructions. I also found that some of DB's sketches can take a while to figure out (particularly the dummy inside valve gear one). There's some pictures of mine on my workbench if you're interested. As with Dave Holt, I've got some other DB kits stockpiled: WD, B1 chassis (and hopefully in the not too distant future a Q6) in my case.

Not seen the Britrail site before, so thanks for posting. Not looked through all of them yet, but there's some very interesting stuff in the ones that you have provided links for. I've never seen a picture of any of the Hawick N2s before (there weren't many, and IIRC most of the allocation was in the 1930s, with (I think) only 69510 in BR days, the details are in the RCTS green book). This could be a good excuse to run an N2 through Coldstream (although I suspect it never worked the Tweed Valley line). The picture of City of Truro by the border sign says it is the late 1950s: no reason to disbelieve this, but it was also stored in the disused engine shed at Sprouston (on the Tweed Valley) during World War 2. Great stuff!

I see you use the solebar plate transfers from the Slaters hopper kits as well! I find these to be very useful items: with a little weathering you can't really notice that the number isn't the same as on the bodyside.

I'm not especially keen on nicknames, but for some reason they remind me of the automatic taxi cab in the film Total Recall, so perhaps they should be called Jonny Cabs? (or was it Tommy Cabs?) 70 002 passed through Shrewsbury again today (and yesterday), just before 1200 IIRC.

Well today it came through Shrewsbury at about 1245, I guess on the same working as in the video above (although I don't actually know where Portbury is! ). This is the first time I've seen it (it's usually a 66, and I don't think I've missed seeing the working any day this week, but now that I think about it I may have missed yesterday's). No guarantee it will be on the same working tomorrow of course.

70 002 went passed my office window today, on a Rugeley working presumably. They are as ugly in the flesh as in the pictures (and I think WDs and L&Y 0-8-0s are beautiful, so have a low 'locomotive attractiveness threshold' ).

A couple of pics of the weathered 13T slope-sided hoppers (not sure of diagram number) last seen in virgin wood/plastic some time back. Weathering of these was quite fun: the ironwork was done with the usual weathering powders onto still-wet paint (although I'm using less 'Gunmetal' in the mix for this now. I got a new tin and its quite different from my old tin! Although it is NOT the MetalCote variety, it is definitely much more 'metallic' than the old tin. This is rather annoying, since I used the old colour extensively. I guess the 'old' tin is something like 5-7 years old. Anyone else noticed this?). These wagons were put into service in 'unpainted wood' condition, but were only built in 1945, so I didn't want the unpainted wood to look too shabby. The woodwork was done firstly by applying Games Workshop Badab Black wash (i.e. not paint), which soaks into the basswood nicely. By itself however this looked too 'black' so was attacked with a fibreglass brush to reduce the 'blackness'. Then grey weathering powder was worked into the wood grain and again much of it removed with the fibreglass brush. The process was repeated a couple of times until I was happy with the result. The brake lever and guides still need final weathering (just blackened at the moment), then just a couple of handrails to fit, tone the numbers/lettering down a bit and they're finished

Yes, the complete underframe, and handrail supports, are Dave Bradwell's, only the body is Dapol (well actually these are so old that they're Airfix, but as far as I'm aware the Dapol mould is the same). The Bradwell etch is, unsurprisingly, superb and builds up into a really nice model, but they're relatively time consuming if you need quite a few of them! (I've built 3 and a half of the five I have so far: will be having a break from hoppers before I build the remainder).

A couple of pics of the second 21T hopper to be (very nearly) finished. Just needs a final light dry brushing on the body and replacement of the buffer that fell off! Parkside's version of these hoppers is apparently out next month: definitely something to look forward to, although I don't really need/want any more hoppers just at the moment. It will be interesting to see how well they capture the brake gear, which is probably the 'defining' area of these wagons. They probably rank as one of my favourite type of wagon, so I won't be able to resist a few more at some point.

Photos just keep getting better and better. Wonderful

Nice teak finish: how did you do it? I have a couple of pigeon vans in the to-do drawer. Think I'll do one in teak and one in early BR crimson (eventually).

Looking forward to seeing this progress. I always fancied making a model of Green Ayre, but in the 1950s with the second batch of EMUs. I remember travelling on them in the early-mid 60s on days out to Heysham from Preston. The single line down from Lancaster Castle to Green Ayre always seemed very mysterious as a kid.

This post isn't very interesting: it's simply the first post on this topic on the new RMweb site (except for the introductory one) and just serves as a placeholder should I need to link to it. Hopefully there'll be some real progress on the layout soon (but don't hold your breath ).

Coldstream: page 3 from old RMWeb by timlewis original page on Old RMweb __________________________________________ ??? posted on Tue Sep 15, 2009 3:21 pm OgaugeJB wrote: Spectacular baseboards. JB. Thanks. I should have mentioned earlier that in making the baseboards I had considerable help from members of the local P4 Area Group. One of us has access to large CNC milling machines and can also buy very good quality ply. I produced a simple DXF of the required baseboard shapes (by superimposing on top of the track plan, which I had already scanned and suitably scaled), which was then fed into the machine and voila, there's your boards . The boards were designed such that a) joints miss turnouts, B) minimise number of joints c) boards still fit through loft hatch. As there is no compression in the track plan, this gave rise to some odd shaped boards: they are all quadrilaterals, but there are few right angles. However, we in the group knew from building another layout (Lower Soudley), that the milling machine would produce very close fitting board shapes. In practice, the fit was amazing. Courtesy of AutoCAD, I also produced a DXF for the bottom boards, which are 9mm less all round (the bottom boards fit inside the sides, see picture earlier). Most of the bottom boards are later cut away for access, but this method of construction gives very strong boards. So, this gave me a collection of oddly shaped plywood pieces that somehow needed to be shaken together to form some baseboards! Enter my good friend Gavin Clark and his extensively equipped woodworking workshop. Lots of circular sawing, measuring, bench drilling, measuring again, routing, measuring yet again, gluing and screwing later, the boards were produced (as well as a considerable quantity of sawdust). My contribution to this process mainly involved watching Gavin work (which was therapeutic ) and drilling a few holes. I really need to get back to working on Coldstream: nothing has progressed since November . My current plan is to finish off the wagons I'm working on (see workbench), finish of the J25 (ditto) then do some more on the layout. But we all know what happens to plans don't we? __________________________________________ ??? posted on Sat Nov 07, 2009 7:52 pm This will be the last post on this topic on this version of RMWeb: transferring over to the new site. Please follow progress on Coldstream over there! __________________________________________