mike morley

Yes please!

I'm a bit concerned about the big gap twixt the front of the motor and the worm. Worm drives cause lots of side load and that gap provides extra leverage that will give the motor's front bearing an extremely hard life. I guess the chassis design prevents the worm being shifted up the shaft towards the motor, but there looks like there might be the possibility of adding an outrigger bearing beyond the worm to ease matters.

I've recently built a couple of Cambrian kits with the same arrangement.

As it comes it is very porous (Someone described it as compressed Shredded Wheat!) and I reckon it would probably need several coats to fully seal it. Is it worth the effort? I doubt it. Certainly I went back to cork sheet for my next layout.

I have also used the B&Q (and Wickes) green stuff but found that when it gets wet -as it almost certainly will at the scenery stage - it takes an eternity to dry.

I thought last year's show would be hard to even match, let alone beat, but the organisers succeeded. Well Done. I was also impressed with the way some of those based in the vicinity were monitoring social media to keep us all abreast of what roads were open, what roads were shut and which were passable with care. It meant I set off home at the end of the day with considerably more confidence than I had on my outward journey. And would anyone care to second my proposal that whoever was responsible for the ginger cake be given a special award? Fabulous!

Yes! The one's in 1whitemoor's picture are the same as those I saw on the Foxfield. Not as difficult to model as the scalloped variety in my pictures, but still a tricky proposition.

Seen at Rocks by Rail, Rutland, a couple of months ago. The sleepers clearly bear little resemblance to those used on "standard" track. I've not been there recently, but certainly until not too long ago the Foxfield Railway had what I guess must have been ex-NCB track, which also had comparatively short sleepers with sloped ends and edges.

Difficult to imagine a top three more varied than that! Congratulations to all concerned. (Including those who voted, for showing our tastes are diversifying!)

Thanks 57xx. How did I miss that first time? https://www.wizardmodels.ltd/shop/signals/ls0017/

I have vague memories of someone once doing a whitemetal kit of token equipment. The most obvious candidate was Mainly Trains, but either I'm wrong or that wasn't part of the range that went over to Wizard Models. Second most obvious candidate was Mikes Models, but my attempt at Googling was thwarted by there being a model aircraft and car shop also named Mikes-Models that turns it into a needle-in-a-haystack job. I did, however, discover that Duncan Model makes a very nice version in 7mm.

I'm looking at the pictures of 3222 and 3216 posted by Miss Prism above and in particular at the considerable difference in the distance between the top of the cabside cut-out and the roof. Surely that difference is far too great to be explained simply by the three-arc roof? Did Barnums have cabs of differing heights?

I spent a lot of the 80's working on the other side of the road to a scrap yard and got to know exactly what one looks like. If I live until my 80's I doubt if I will ever see a layout that that captures the atmosphere and look of a scrap yard anything like as accurately as yours does. Fantastic!

The Cambrian and the NER also used left-handed levers on the "other" side. I once tried to find when they fell out of use. I only met with limited success and it was a while ago, but IIRC, the regulation change in 1911 only outlawed them on new-builds and any already in existence remained legal until some years after they had all in any case age expired.

A former friend of mine's family lived in the village of Gretton (at the Corby end of the Harringworth viaduct) in the 70's and I was invited to spend the Easter of 76 with them. It was an extraordinary experience. The friend had told me about the draglines and how massive they were but one thing he hadnt mentioned was the noise they made - a vast sighing and groaning that carried for, quite literally, miles. I can only describe it as sounding like the kind of noise you'd expect from some huge prehistoric monster, definitely not something mechanical. When we arrived there was no sign of the the source of the noise but it was clearly coming from just the other side of the low hill behind their house and sounded so close that in bed that night I had a nightmare involving a crazed dinosaur that came rampaging over the hill and trampled the house to dust! The next day we were taken out to see the dragline in action and I was staggered to find just how far away it actually was - all of three miles, nothing like the 'just the other side of the hill' I had assumed. We parked as close as we could get and began making our way across the fields towards it. On the way we passed what I was assured was its small bucket - easily big enough to accommodate two, possibly three Transit vans. By then the dragline itself was standing huge and awesome right in front of us but still quite clearly some distance away, on the far side of the vast trench it was digging. Then, suddenly, the jib swung round to land the bucket it was using alongside the one in the field, which was by then some distance behind us! I nearly shat myself! The sheer size of the thing distorted its surroundings, making it very difficult to even guess just how big it was or just how far away it was. I'm afraid the quietly decaying cab they've got at Cottesmore cannot even begin to convey the vast majesty of the whole from which it came.