Darwinian

That’s such an evocative shot! Hope to see this splendid layout in the flesh one day.

Regarding the fit of parts I squared up the edges of the floor by rubbing on fine abrasive paper laid flat on the table. Then carefully checked the fit of the sides and ends making the sides overlap the ends at the corners. I put the body/floor together first, then fitted the buffer beams and lastly the assembled solebars. You do have to be very careful to keep the floor flat and level. The buffer beams were a bit over wide and needed filing back at both ends to stand only fractionally proud of the sides. They are also distinctly trapezoid in cross section but can be sanded closer to square as for the floor. The visible ends were finished off with a fine file to be as rectangular as possible.

To be honest all of my rake of P.D. (see earlier in this thread) wagons have the same under frame as do a few other P.O.s built from Cambrian kits. All of those have the brake mouldings from the kit and I don’t actually notice when they are on the layout. However having started the upgrade on this one I might as well finish it.

Hope you all had a good Christmas. I’m doing a spot of dining table top model building. Cambrian 6&1/2 plank Gloucester 15’0” P.O. Takes careful trimming of the parts to get everything square. The supplied brake mouldings sit a long way off the wheels so I’m substituting some old Masokits gear. Will have a set each side, not cross connected. Apologies I cannot find the image for this stage of the build.

It’s been a bit quiet on here, mainly because the layout shed has no power at present and filling and sanding coach roofs isn’t very photogenic. In the past week I’ve also been sidetracked refurbishing the winter scene I built with our children’s help some years ago. The old street lights had failed and the windmill didn’t work. Modern street lights from layouts4u and a Matsui motor plus a bit of rewiring and scenic restoration later:

There should not be a cantrail like edge to the roof so I filled the joint and then smoothed it all off. The clerestory section needed similar treatment because I managed to cut one edge a little too short. After much filling and sanding back here are the two sections. There is a 40thou base plate glued to the top of the main roof to align the raised section. With the clerestory windows being blanked off there is no need to have avoid here, which makes life simpler as well as making the roof stronger.

The above are excellent suggestions. My first Comet coaches were built following the Comet way and an article in Model Railway Journal. I have detailed some of my etched coach building on my Cwmhir layout thread but it's interspersed with other stuff so may not be what you are looking for. Blacksmith clerestory 3rd build starts on page 7. I'll try to watch your progress with yours too.

Agreed. I am going to try to follow Steve Hewitt’s approach. Once I have some suitable concentric tunes and fibre optic I will experiment with making the rotating discs work.

This was one of those "why didn't I think of that before?" moments. When building the clerestory roofs, I had found the main roof vac-formed plastic provided was a bit too narrow so had added a strips of plastic to form the gutters/roof edges and give a little extra width to cover the top edges of the sides. Being only 1mm x 20 thou these were a bit of a fiddle to keep straight. After battling with the first side on this coach the penny dropped. Glue the roof to the sheet of plastic card, that way it stays straight and flat. Leave to harden for 24 hours, then trim the roof away from the sheet. Result: The upper gutter above is the one done this way. There is a bit of camera distortion making it look slightly curved but it is dead straight in reality. A little more solvent applied where it seemed necessary and then it will be carefully sanded back to reduce the depth. The bottom one was attached as a separate strip and you can see how it still wobbles a bit compared to the roof profile.

The whole core will become magnetised by the coil. My basic understanding of the physics isn’t good enough to be certain but I assume a longer core would produce a somewhat weaker magnetic field. This could be countered by increasing the current (within the coil / power supply capacity). A longer iron bolt in place of the shorter core supplied may well still work. My baseboards are 9mm ply with 5mm foam underlay. The wizard electromagnetic cores are 3mm or so below the sleeper tops, the hole filled with ballast and they still operate the Dinghams. They are only running on 9v too.

I use both neodymium bar magnets between the sleepers and electromagnets on my BLT. The permanent magnets are at the dead ends and uncouple the loco ready to run around. For the sidings I have 4 strategically placed electromagnets. 2 from Dingham and 2 from Wizard/MSE. The Wizard ones have a shorter smooth pole piece and a plate for screw fixing to the underside of the baseboard rather than the bolt used on the Dingham ones. Both work equally well for me powered on d.c. with push to make non-latching switches.

Congratulations on your success. Despite being in the process of building a "serious" if fictitious layout I thoroughly enjoyed the GMRC programmes and have great admiration for the imagination and modeling skill shown by the teams. I was able to see your swiss layout at Peterborough last time and have a chat with the team. It really does make a great model railway. I think the ideas and "tricks" of the fairground railway were great and I'd love to see the completed version in action if you are ever showing it anywhere near Norfolk. It's a pity the model is somewhat more entertaining than my experience of real "fairground" railways in most cases.

It doesn’t half help having already done one and found the snags on that. I remembered to add a representation of the turnbuckles on the truss rods too, but they hardly show.

A return of my modelling mojo over the last week has seen the D37 clerestory make progress such that all the main soldered construction is done. Just lamp irons, buffer stocks and other end detail to do.

The short appears to have been the motor terminals touching inside the body. However it then stripped the teeth off the first drive gear of the Loadhauler+ gearbox. I suspect I didn't have it meshed deep enough despite a clear warning on the instructions from High level. I took some measurements of the Mashima I bought with the kit and a Mitsui N20 that I've acquired since and the Matsui is a little smaller. There are suitable fixing points on the gearbox so I've attached it and sure enough it slips into the firebox/boiler more easily (once i'd cut off the motor shaft at the terminals end and shortened the terminals. Replacement 1st stage gear and a new worm ordered from high level. Further examination of the motor-less chassis found an occasional bind when running forwards. Just got to track the cause of that down now and hopefully won't strip any more gears.

The evening sun catches the Dai Evans the Cwmhir shunter going about his business. Or in Colour original:

Decided to try to get some pictures of the Aberdare. Unfortunately it has developed a short so is not running at the moment. So I resorted to posing it! Evening sunshine breaks across Cwmhir as an Aberdare shuffles about.

Your list of Auto trailer kits is missing quite a few according to http://www.gwr.org.uk/kits4coacha.html . Most regrettably the Matchboard sided A7 & A9 formerly made by Mallard/Blacksmith but now consigned to the Coopercraft black hole. Still occasionally appear 2nd hand. A27 and 29 from CPL, Phoenix might be nice too but I've not seen them. According to the above list Nucast partners do a whitemetal A26 but that's another 70' job so not so much use for us valleys modellers. The trouble with GWR auto trailers is that so many were one off SRM conversions or small batches.

It's been a while since I added anything here as we have been away on holiday and then getting our children off to their universities. I have also been busy volunteering on the North Norfolk Railway. Anyway a running session resulted in some pictures, hope you like them. Ex Rhymney railway R1 No 35 arrives engine and van to clear the colliery exchange sidings. And departs with its loaded coal wagons down the valley. Aberdare 2671 on a test run from Caerphilly works brings in a short goods train including a GPV for the colliery. The Aberdare failed with a drive train problem (intermittent short) and a failed tender drawhook (the Dingham loop was sticking) The cause of the short is still under investigation. The araldite holding the Dingham on the tender had not gone off and had seeped onto the loop fixings making the coupling too stiff to operate magnetically. It was also not holding it in the bufferbeam very well so the hook has been removed for repair/replacement.

I am wondering if the wire you are using to connect to your motor/pickups might be an issue. I've found short lengths of wire like this are surprisingly inflexible, causing the frames to lift or not track properly. Compare to the fine wire attached to your mini plug/socket or used by Hornby to make loco to tender connections. Just a thought. These are an impressive challenge to model and I look forward to seeing it (them) completed.

Or perhaps a dilapidated jetty or groyne, I’m thinking timber rather than stone. That would be lower keeping the more open feel.

I don't know about this but could it be to prevent sheep/other livestock getting onto the bridge where they could be trapped by dogs/fox.

Progress on the D37 stalled while changed the cassettes for my fiddle yard as they were failing with the temperature fluctuations in the shed. Each cassette will hold a four coach train so approx 3 feet long and copperclad sleepers glued to the cassette with rails soldered to them. On the right is one of my early ones, just a strip of 9mm mdf. These are OK as expansion of the rails simply curves the mdf. but the stock can fall off too easily. The mark two is on the left. Here 4mm mdf channels were used. Stock stays on but as you can see the expansion/contraction of the rails causes the soldered joints to fail. So I have gone to mark3. Four shorter lengths of copperclad sleepered track but with plastic flexitrack sleepers at the joins to allow movement and hold the gauge (2nd from left). Only the centre sleeper and the chaired plastic sleepers are stuck down. Electrical continuity provided by wire jumpers (3rd from left). The sides and ends of the D37 have been united into two L-shapes but that's as far as I've got.

This looks a smashing layout project. Regarding the U1 are you planning putting it into a colliery livery as a sold on example? If I recall correctly they were passenger locos and had all gone from TVR/GWR by the mid 20s. The similar smaller wheeled mineral 02 and O3 lasted longer. I will be following developments with interest.

Hooper's rule says the number of woody / tree species in a 27m length of hedge is a rough indication of the age of the hedge, 100 years per species.