mike morley

Yes please.

I've tried various alternatives to cork in the past but have always ended up going back to cork. One major reason being that most of the alternatives give off extremely noxious fumes when you go anywhere near them with a soldering iron.

The conversation I had with Adrian during the door hunt lead me to believe they began with him, went to D&S then came back to him (not that it really matters)

Not long before Adrian's health forced him to stop trading we went through his range of doors but they appeared to all be intended to convert Minks and none were quite the right size and/or shape. Most were a bit too tall and narrow, IIRC.

Another picture of it under construction Eek! Dates from 2011!

Outer thirds standard ABS. Middle third scratchbuilt. (Scribed plasticard planking with Evergreen strip framing) The kit might have been designed with the specific intention of making the conversion easy.

I did a field trip to Nantlle a couple of years ago and that looks like the bridge where I gained access to the trackbed. The views from there are fabulous (turn 90 degrees to the right and Snowdon dominates the view). One curious thing about the quarries of the Nantlle valley is that nearly all of their numerous inclines have been obliterated but nearly all the winding-houses remain intact. The result looks slightly surreal. If you want to set your layout in Nantlle, history is on your side. After the Caernarfon Railway converted the lower section of the former trackbed to standard gauge, the transhipment of slates from the 3'6" gauge horse-drawn wagons to the standard gauge loco-hauled wagons caused delays and breakages. There was a proposal to convert the rest of tramway to standard gauge but it was rejected by the majority of quarry owners who felt a lot of the ground the line would cross was not stable enough to support the extra weight.

The horse-drawn Nantlle tramway became the Caernarvonshire Railway, then the LNWR, then the LMS and now the first couple of miles of the Welsh Highland, and as your stupendous South African NGG16 hauls you down to the terminus at Caernarfon you can still see the trackbed of the original tramway winding from side to side on a very different course to the current line. At one point the two are close to right-angles to each other.

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.