57xx

Thanks Dave, helps immensely! As I suspected, it was me not being able to see the wood for the trees. I must have scrolled past that a dozen times last night.

Hi Rob, I did see the B020s but they also have parallel housings, not tapered, as well as the ribs.

Dave, not sure if I'm being blind and missing them on your site or if it's not in your range - I'm looking for GWR 1'6" buffers with no ribs, similar to your BO21, as on this wagon: https://www.flickr.com/photos/svr_enthusiast/3646154001 Are these ones that you do?

One thing to note with the Dean version is that the whole cylinder moved up and down to apply/release the brakes, the piston itself was actually fixed in position.

For those worrying about DCC sound, don't! Rails have it in hand, you just need to read between the lines.

I never said you were. If you read what I said properly, you'll see I was agreeing with you.

Yup, it was indeed discussed 6 years ago, a bit late to be bleating on about it now. The Hattons 48/58xx also comes with/without top feed.

And on that point, why oh why oh why oh why wasn't the Hythe Pier railway stock listed on there? There must be at least one person who would vote for it. Yours, Disgusted of Hythe. (just in case....)

Definitely 2" extra up the front. The wife agrees.

I haven't got any platforms to check for fouling, but you are right, they are too low. I just used the fold lines on the etch to get the heights but after a) putting it next to a Hornby Toad and b) checking the pictures of 4 wheelers on the Penrhos site I can see the lower board is too low, it should be sitting midway up the axleboxes, not below them.

How many shades of grey was it? In today's case, there's 5 (if you include white as the lightest shade of grey). Some time ago after reading the 1935 painting schedule of the LMS, I wondered what rough shade the roof of vans came out from the workshop with. Normally I just waft over van roofs with white primer and then weather down to varying degrees from there. However as the LMS vans start off as a shade of grey first, I believe that will give me different results when weathering and also any recently out shopped vans will not look right with white. In "The LMS Wagon" the specifications for roofs is given as: Mix 6 Roof paint Protective white paint paste 56lb Thickened linseed oil 4lb Boiled linseed oil 7lb mixing varnish 7lb White spirit 8-12lb Black in oil 8lb Aluminium powder 7lb Liquid drier note more than 4lb This gives us a rough ratio of 7:1:1 of white:black:aluminium. So, out with the Humbrol white, black and some "Airframe Silver" paint I had. I added a dash of yellow as well as I'm assuming the "protective white paint paste" was lead based and wouldn't be a pure white. The result is shown below in the mixing jar. It looks quite dark here but once sprayed and dry it is lighter. Shown below beside an LNER van with primer white roof for contrast, the middle roof plonked on the 7 planker had white primer and the roof perched on the van started off with grey primer. There was not a lot of visible difference in the end with the different base coats. The bodies of the LMS wagons are painted with Phoenix Precision LMS Freight Grey (one is tweaked slightly for variation) which is supposed to be an accurate representation. So, is this roof colour accurate? According to the mix ratios, yes, however... my Airframe Silver paint is not pure pigment like the aluminium power would have been, so perhaps I should have upped the amount of that? The other thing to note is that Mix 5 Lead Colour For Wagons has a spec for 112lb Zinc White to 3-4lb Black in Oil and 3-4lb Ultramarine Blue in Oil. That's a ratio of between 28:1:1 and 37:1:1, or you could say white:darker pigment is 14:1 to 18.5:1. That would be paler than the roof colour! So, the lighter roof to bodywork showing in my pics could be well off. Nevermind, it was a fun experiment even if it does not draw any definite conclusions.

These are even more useful when you glue a piece of 1mm plasticard on the back of them. Drill out the hole you use most (or if you're a sucker for punishment, all of them...) and it keeps the wire that bit more stable when making the 2nd bend.

Are there any left, I thought even all the fanboys saw the light in the end?

This turned out to be a very nice wagon. If they ever do another run, I'll be in.