mike morley

Smartphones had been around for getting on for ten years before I finally got one and I very quickly discovered that a degree of existing knowledge that I simply didn't have was automatically assumed and that I was too far behind to stand any chance of catching up. I'm now in the early planning stages of a new layout and was considering going DCC, but am rapidly coming to the conclusion that exactly the same thing applies.

I think we ought to re-name Giles 'Doc' and club together to get him a De Lorean.

I think reversed 'N's were quite common on the Western - particularly on the '1-in-xx' of gradient posts. I recall seeing more than one photographed by Ben Ashworth.

Railway Modeller, August 1995 (Post Swindonisation)

0-4(2)2-0PT?

How well do they take paint? I'm thinking of the cleaning fluid with which I assume they are impregnated.

I went to the other extreme and used the ultra-thin foil used to wrap Tunnocks Tea Cakes. Undeniably fragile and won't withstand much handling once in position, but the results look better than 'ordinary' foil.

Whatever it came from had outside steam pipes. I would also have thought it was more likely to have come from something scrapped in the Stoke area, rather than built there.

Did any of the 15xx panniers end up at Staffordshire collieries after being sold to the NCB?

A friend of mine has always wanted to model Pontrilas. Then, a few years ago, I saw Bucks Hill (Which, for those who havent seen it, is a 7mm scale masterpiece that is Pontrilas in everything but name). Ever since then I've been trying to persuade him to give up the idea on the grounds that it would inevitably be compared unfavourably with Bucks Hill. I've never quite convinced him - mostly, I suspect, because he's yet to see Bucks Hill.

Dare I ask how long it took/how steady a hand/how long an abstinence from alcohol it took to successfully apply those wasp stripes? And, come to that, how long it took to recover from the ordeal afterwards?

Actually, the Surform cheesegrater method is the least tiring of the three! The pestle and mortar method is the one that gives the greatest variety of consistency, which I would think would make it best suited for use as a quarry floor. Edited to add "variety of consistency'? An oxymoron, surely?

I used real slate for ballast on my recently-dismantled layout, which I think would do what you need. I used three methods of creating it and for all of them I began by getting as small a chunk of slate as I could find, wrapping it in newspaper and hitting it with a hammer until I had created even smaller chunks. After that; 1) Find an old/cheap peppermill that has a metal core (for obvious reasons), put some slate in it and grind away. It is astonishing just how quickly your arms start to ache when doing this! It soon makes you realise that when grinding pepper on food we rarely give the mill more than two or three twists. 2) A sort-of pestle and mortar. I used a hammer as the pestle and the underside of one of those cast iron pseudo railway drawing-office paperweights as the mortar. 3) Get an old Surform with a worn-out blade, a chunk of slate and use them the same way you would a cheesegrater and a block of Cheddar. With all of these methods it takes a time to produce only a little, so you need to start long before you actually want to start using it. I had a little session at the begininning and end of every general modelling session. Even if you only do it for a minute or so at a time (and you'll be lucky to achieve even that much with the peppermill method) you'll soon make enough to start using it. All three methods produce 'grains' of slightly different consistency and I used a blend of all three. You will also soon realise that slate can vary far more than you'd expect in its hardness/softness and soon after that you realise that the softer it is, the easier it is to use - particularly when using the Surform cheesegrater. Good luck!

Demonstrations? Lectures? To describe the one last year by Brian McCulloch as merely inspiring would be an understatement of considerable magnitude.

It was me, not Chris M, who said I expected the quality of layouts to be better at Statfold and I am NOT a member of Warley club.

I've been to GETS three times and have always walked (I can see the football stadium from the end of the road) but the desire for quality means this year I'll be going to Warley @ Statfold.

The GVT had timber wagons semi-permanently coupled in rakes of four, with only the outer two having bolsters. The Welshpool and Llanfair used only pairs of well-spaced bolster wagons at each end of the load they were carrying, with just a chain connecting them, but they worked them with a guards van at each end. Your suggestion about wanting to keep the guard away from any mayhem in the event of a mishap sounds very plausible. Thanks

The excellent Milner/Williams work on the Glyn Valley states that timber traffic was coupled behind the guards van without offering any explanation why. Has anyone any ideas on the subject?

I've only seen a couple of the modern SEF chassis, but both were excellent.

A year or so ago I added a coal heap, locos for the use of, to the loading bank on my quarry siding. I never did get around to adding the dust, spillage and stray lumps that would probably have accumulated actually on the track, yet ever since it has been noticeable that the track in the vicinity of the coal heap needs cleaning far more frequently than the rest of the layout and is much harder to clean. At times I've come close to having to scrape the tarnish off the railheads. Most steam-era layouts have real coal close to the track somewhere on them, yet I've never heard of anyone else suffering this problem. Any thoughts on the subject?

Try before you buy. A friend of mine has a pair exactly the same as those and thinks they are wonderful, but when I borrowed them I didn't get on with them at all. I needed to try several different types before I found a type that I was happy with.