Sasquatch

Don't know about a licence for a .22 but paint ball should be perfectly legal and quite effective! Unless you are planing on venison for tea that is.

Don't know how I missed this. Its a great idea. The short falls would be fixing over a 1000 staples to all my stock and then removing any when it comes to selling anything on. What would the life of the magnets be without thier keeps.

The uncoupling system is on my blog as of Tuesday. I have repaired RTR bogie stock by slicing off the axle box covers and drilling out to fit plain bearings, making sure all is true before gluing the covers back on! Prolonged use of stock with plastic bearings will eventually wear out. A spot of lubrication helps and any dirt in there say from weathering powders, will only speed up the wear! Will check my latest batch of Dapol wheels. I like Romfords the most but they're more costly. Got some mainline wagons from a chap in California which need smaller Hornby couplings and metal wheels but it's so nice to have 30 year old stock that

It's the other way around nowadays, lamb is the luxury not that we eat it! Mind you the chicken cost $14 (almost 10 quid)!

Morning Don. Was out and about in a t-shirt today and tommorow (Friday) it wil be even warmer! Enjoy that chicken pie. We brought a chicken to roast for dinners over the weekend, Friday will be with baked taters and steamed vegies, Saturday a salad and Sunday a special recipe for chicken enchilladas albeit with soy cheese!

Having already installed this on Dunster with great success I`m going to have a go on Goathland which might be a bit of a challenge due to Goathland being open frame constuction and all. Then there's Avon Park my shelf layout which is under constrution also! (Project scrapped) Shaun.

Tried a few different ways before settling on the actuator which allows for springing as the plates don't always fall back down! I used wieghts on the nails but didn't like the dangling stuff. Because the plates sit between the cut sleepers they need chamfering on all 4 sides and can still stick. Everthing is a push fit into tight holes which allows for easy adjustment.

Hi Don Yes it is Wednesday (still Tuesday here)! Bangers and mash sounds nice, hope they serve that with HP sauce. Almost Tshirt weather again this afternoon wierd because there is lots of snow on the mountains! Shaun

In between coats of varnish drying today I gave thought to blogging about this Heath Robinson style uncoupling system I have developed. For added interest on Dunster which has limited operating movements I set about making everything work, the signals including two ground dolls, the crossing gates and the possibility of auto uncoupling in the sidings and on the main line. Having employed Hornby uncoupling ramps in the past I knew of their ability to uncouple things when not required. That apart I needed something less conspicuous. Rising plates was the answer, and operated with Ratio levers like the signals. Firstly a master was hashed up from cut sleepers and cork underlay to represent the permanent way between the rails and this had a box built around it out of which a silicone rubber mould was made. Now I can cast as many uncoupling plates from two part liquid plastic as I need. The master has been retained in case the R.V. rubber mould ever wears out. Although I think a new master with more detail might suit. The system required springing as the weight of the castings alone was not enough to return the plates by gravity. Here comes another entry in my notes for a book I have planned “A Thousand & One Reasons To Carry Zip Ties in Your Pocket”. (I think that’s Cable ties in English English). Half a length of zip tie has just the right amount of tension in it for this purpose. The design is very simple utilising only a small ply triangle, block of wood, track pins and stuff from general household trash. The plastic tubing comes from cotton buds and I used square type nails from my nailer but any stiff straight wire will do.The last piece of the puzzel is the single connector cut from an electric connector strip which is used as an adjuster. A small piece of MDF is used as a jig to gauge the size of the required hole in the track and for drilling the two holes in the base board consistantly. Sleepers and underlay is cut with a Stanly knife and 1/4" chisel. Two plastic tubes are used one for the actuating wire and the other as a guide. Things are lined up dry and marked with a pencil then when satisfied hot glued in place. The Ratio point opperating system makes for a perfect and economic means for opperating. Here are the results. I have cpied and pasted Stu's drawing mentioned below. Thanks for taking the time Stubby! Members 2,783 posts LocationKernow Sent Today, 05:32 Hi, This is what I meant... Stu Attached Thumbnails

Hi Ray There was a very good article in one of the magazines quite a few years ago about standards with regards to all things track. It talked about using back to back gauges, track setters, coupling height gauges and using metal wheels. I too replaced all plastic wheels and couplings at great cost! It was well worth the effort. Dapol do good wheels (which are cheaper than Bachmann or Hornby) which I employ in brass barings along with Bachmann mini type couplings on most of my kit/scratch built stock to great effect! I've even perfected a simple Heath Robinson style uncoupling system that uses Ratio signal levers, a block of wood, cable tie and a cast plate that sits at sleeper height. Regards Shaun.

Thanks for the tip about the shims! All my layouts are wired with droppers the same way except I use single core wire throughout and burnish the underside of the rail joiners. The only thing to watch out for is if cleaning your track with denatured alcahol the liquid is so thin that it can wash the dirt down into the rail joiners and cause shorts! Shaun

Sitting in the surgery the other day waiting to see the local quack I was surprised to see a duck waddle in. "Quick, Quick, Quick, quick" said the duck loudly. The receptionist chased him out shouting "How many times have I told you. You can't see the doc for hicups"!

I'm off to bed now folks. Got to be up at the quack of dawn! Very tired I've been trying to learn how to get down off a horse all day, then some wise ass tells me I've wasted my time. Down comes from DUCKS!

Dead Duck A woman brought a very limp duck to the veterinarian's office. As she lay her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest. After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm so sorry, your pet duck Cuddles has passed away." The distressed owner wailed, "Are you sure?" "Yes, I'm sure. The duck is dead," he replied. "How can you be so sure," she protested. "I mean, you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something." The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room, and returned a few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the lab and led it out of the exam room. He returned a few moments later with a cat. The cat jumped up on the table and also sniffed delicately at the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room. The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck." Then the vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman. The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. She screamed, "$150.00!" "$150 just to tell me my duck's dead!" The vet shrugged. "I'm sorry. If you'd have taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the lab report and the cat scan, it's now $150.00."

Don't be too hasty, in An Illustrated History of Southern Wagons Vol.4 there's a note refering to a 2BIL being used to shunt banana vans in Portsmouth. Always on the look out for a prototype for anything!

Go beavers !!! Nite cap & bed. edit; football! not anything less! <--<<

Thanks Matt. Great stuff this, Ivatt class 2, Thompson non corridor stock and fish vans! Not relevent to the topic but well worth posting is this rather depressing short film. Most worthy of note is the chap using the saw towards the end! Health and safety obviously hadn't been invented back in 1966. The whole opperation would make for interesting modeling which I'm now considering for the master plan when we buy our new house and I get to build the layout building!

Michael, you post the best pics & vids. Back in November I was running my old Lima plain blue 3 car 118 on Goathland with late grubby steam frights and was thinking of spraying it green. After this thread I've changed my mind. For my next project class 118 will be populated, flush glazed, and weathered with working lights.

Now I know what to load all those open wagons up with, I do have plenty of wood off cuts after all!!

One can't watch this without wondering what all the brilliant and elegant victorian/edwardian engineers who built the railways would have made of all the grimey beasts in the smog of their future. Even the futuristic stuff in the film has gone now! Thanks for posting this one Chard.