The Night Mail

[Dave Hunt]

Apart from the GG1, the other electric locos that I admire are the big Swiss crocodiles. When I was a kid in Liverpool I lived about a mile from Hattons shop in Smithdown Road and for years (so it seemed anyway) there was an O gauge, IIRC, model of an SBB crocodile (a Ce 6/8 possibly?) in the window. Whenever I was at Hattons, which was frequently even if I wasn't able actually to buy anything, I would spend some time drooling over the croc.

 

Dave

Edited July 9, 2021 by Dave Hunt
Bl**dy predictive text again. If ever I meet the prat who designed it I'll........

[Northroader]

How about half a GG1?

[simontaylor484]

2 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

Apart from the GG1, the other electric locos that I admire are the big Swiss crocodiles. When I was a kid in Liverpool I lived about a mile from Hattons shop in Smithdown Road and for years (so it seemed anyway) there was an O gauge, IIRC, model of an SBB crocodile (a Ce 6/8 possibly?) in the window. Whenever I was at Hattons, which was frequently even if I wasn't able actually to buy anything, I would spend some time drooling over the croc.

 

Dave

I have a lego.model of one it's impressive

[jamie92208]

27 minutes ago, Northroader said:

How about half a GG1?

Now who's going to donate a G motor to cut in two.

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

After the Y6B, I wonder if I'd get away with one of these Marklin Gauge 1 beauties - a mere £3K.

 

 

Wouldn't it look good trundling round the garden?  I could always get Jamie to knock up the OLE for me since he is the resident expert after his work on Green Ayre.

 

Dave

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Dave Hunt

[Florence Locomotive Works]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

After the Y6B, I wonder if I'd get away with one of these Marklin Gauge 1 beauties - a mere £3K.

 

 

Wouldn't it look good trundling round the garden?  I could always get Jamie to knock up the OLE for me since he is the resident expert after his work on Green Ayre.

 

Dave

 

I’ve often thought of buying a HO Marklin one for my Marklin layout, and probably will at some point. They also make a gold plated G1 version, I think it’s around $5,000.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Florence Locomotive Works

[Florence Locomotive Works]

Morning all,

 

 

Yesterday something encouraging happened. I received a message from the clockmakers containing suitable times for an interview, and it was decided that tomorrow after lunch will work. So tomorrow I have an interview at their works/showroom, so we shall see what they say.

 

With regards to the mogul, it’s going to be left alone for a while. Currently I’m debating wether to continue with model railways and my small collection of stationary live steam engines, or go into fixing antique pocket watches, which would go well with my hopefully future work. If anybody has an opinion on this they would like to share, feel free to.

Douglas

 

[simontaylor484]

36 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

After the Y6B, I wonder if I'd get away with one of these Marklin Gauge 1 beauties - a mere £3K.

 

 

Wouldn't it look good trundling round the garden?  I could always get Jamie to knock up the OLE for me since he is the resident expert after his work on Green Ayre.

 

Dave

 

It looks brilliant my lego crocodile cost nearly £100. I still need to make a display case for it.

[J. S. Bach]

20 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Morning all, ...snip... Currently I’m debating wether to continue with model railways and my small collection of stationary live steam engines, or go into fixing antique pocket watches, which would go well with my hopefully future work. If anybody has an opinion on this they would like to share, feel free to.

Douglas

 

Do both; one should never mix work and hobby.

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Currently I’m debating wether to continue with model railways and my small collection of stationary live steam engines, or go into fixing antique pocket watches, which would go well with my hopefully future work. If anybody has an opinion on this they would like to share, feel free to.

 

1 hour ago, J. S. Bach said:

Do both; one should never mix work and hobby.

 

Beaten to it......

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, J. S. Bach said:

Do both; one should never mix work and hobby.

 

Yup - took me a while to get back into it as a hobby.

[New Haven Neil]

7 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Now who's going to donate a G motor to cut in two.

 

Jamie

 

Gerroff.  You're not having it!  

[Happy Hippo]

2 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

 

 

With regards to the mogul, it’s going to be left alone for a while. Currently I’m debating wether to continue with model railways and my small collection of stationary live steam engines, or go into fixing antique pocket watches, which would go well with my hopefully future work. If anybody has an opinion on this they would like to share, feel free to.

Douglas

 

When you get your watch and clockmaking apprenticeship, a hobby that is not work related will be of more use. Do not let your job be your hobby and vice versa. 

 

Edit to say I'm not the only one here to suggest keeping your work and hobby interests separate. In the 5 years I worked for Brandbright, I never touched any of my personal railway stuff. 

 

I suspect that Neil and I have almost identical experiences and thoughts on the matter. 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Happy Hippo

[coastalview]

Well that was a pain in the posterior. During the thunderstorm last Saturday we thought it had cleared from our area. However after reconnecting the phone we had a single loud clap of thunder with associated lightning. I was sat at my desk next to the Internet router which made a loud bang as the lights went out. Scared me half to death as I just wasn't expecting it.

 

Luckily the lights came back in about 90 seconds, but the router and wall box were fried. So following a visit from an Openreach engineer and the delivery of a new router we are finally back on line.

 

I will try to catch up on earlier comments from you all. 

[New Haven Neil]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

When you get your watch and clockmaking apprenticeship, a hobby that is not work related will be of more use. Do not let your job be your hobby and vice versa. 

 

Edit to say I'm not the only one here to suggest keeping your work and hobby interests separate. In the 5 years I worked for Brandbright, I never touched any of my personal railway stuff. 

 

I suspect that Neil and I have almost identical experiences and thoughts on the matter. 

 

Indeed.  My HO layout went into the doldrums for 6 years, and the garden railway little used.  It has run more this year than the last three or so combined, and I'm off to run on another railway tomorrow!  It took a change of scale, prototype and region to get the juices flowing again.  Next week will see the start of a brass kit too, it has taken a loooong time to get the, er, urge to get beck into actually making something.

[New Haven Neil]

MMmmmmm back into it!

 

[Dave Hunt]

Douglas, I agree with the others about having a hobby that is somewhat different from work. However, if there are skills that can be transferred from one to the other, that can be beneficial and it strikes me that railway modelling and watchmaking could be mutually supportive without resulting in loss of interest in either. Ergo, do both.

 

Dave 

[jamie92208]

I can agree with all those comments from a slightly different  perspective. When as a young policeman(I know that was a long long time ago) I used to spend my holidays as s volunteer on the Ratty, a 15" gauge steam railway. I was often adked to use my work skills and do  car park duty, and always refused on 2 grounds. A) If I was goi g yo do traffic duty I would only do it on duty in uniform with  all my legal powers available, a B) I was a volunteer giving up my holiday and wanted to work with trains. To be fair the foreman accepted this with good grace so I lit up engines and worked as a gaurd.

 

However traffic duty at work could be fun. When working race days at Wethetby, I always stopped open top sports fars with you g ladies in them.  You might as well have something pleasant to look at whilst the other queue  of traffic was moving. Every job has it's perks.  Good luck with the interview Douglas.

 

Jamie

[Florence Locomotive Works]

5 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Do both; one should never mix work and hobby.

 

3 hours ago, polybear said:

 

 

Beaten to it......

 

3 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

Yup - took me a while to get back into it as a hobby.

 

3 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

When you get your watch and clockmaking apprenticeship, a hobby that is not work related will be of more use. Do not let your job be your hobby and vice versa. 

 

Edit to say I'm not the only one here to suggest keeping your work and hobby interests separate. In the 5 years I worked for Brandbright, I never touched any of my personal railway stuff. 

 

I suspect that Neil and I have almost identical experiences and thoughts on the matter. 

 

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

Indeed.  My HO layout went into the doldrums for 6 years, and the garden railway little used.  It has run more this year than the last three or so combined, and I'm off to run on another railway tomorrow!  It took a change of scale, prototype and region to get the juices flowing again.  Next week will see the start of a brass kit too, it has taken a loooong time to get the, er, urge to get beck into actually making something.

 

34 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Douglas, I agree with the others about having a hobby that is somewhat different from work. However, if there are skills that can be transferred from one to the other, that can be beneficial and it strikes me that railway modelling and watchmaking could be mutually supportive without resulting in loss of interest in either. Ergo, do both.

 

Dave 

 

16 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I can agree with all those comments from a slightly different  perspective. When as a young policeman(I know that was a long long time ago) I used to spend my holidays as s volunteer on the Ratty, a 15" gauge steam railway. I was often adked to use my work skills and do  car park duty, and always refused on 2 grounds. A) If I was goi g yo do traffic duty I would only do it on duty in uniform with  all my legal powers available, a B) I was a volunteer giving up my holiday and wanted to work with trains. To be fair the foreman accepted this with good grace so I lit up engines and worked as a gaurd.

 

However traffic duty at work could be fun. When working race days at Wethetby, I always stopped open top sports fars with you g ladies in them.  You might as well have something pleasant to look at whilst the other queue  of traffic was moving. Every job has it's perks.  Good luck with the interview Douglas.

 

Jamie

Thank you all, I shall certainly take this into consideration. 
 

 

Douglas

[Dave Hunt]

I'm getting close to the time when I'll have to start ballasting my 7mm scale layout. As an MPD in about 1906 it will be mainly ash ballast up to near rail level and my thoughts at present are to use a mix of sieved chinchilla grit and coloured powdered tile grout laid and brushed in place then sprayed with a water/isopropyl alcohol mix and once dry oversprayed with modpodge or some other matting agent.and fixative. Does anyone have any other ideas?

 

Dave

Edited July 9, 2021 by Dave Hunt

[Stubby47]

I used chinchilla dust on Treamble with Klear. Utter disaster. The dust just absorbed the Klear and stayed dry and crumbly, plus is an awful light colour and needed lots of paint to colour it.

 

Try a test piece of track with your chosen method and see how well it works.

[jamie92208]

I used two main sources. Some real ash collected from the boiler room atvour training school many years ago when they were still coal fired, and smokebox  char from the Midland 4F on the Worth Valley. Both worked well.

A thin layer of Hydrocal mixed with poster paint to get the basic ground contour, then sprinkle some on when still wet. Then brush with PVA, sprinkle a fairly heavy layer on then brush off the surplus.  Black sand from beaches in Tenerife and El Salvador made excellent tarmac.

 

Jamie

[Mike Bellamy]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

  Black sand from beaches in Tenerife and El Salvador made excellent tarmac.

 

Many years ago (35?) a friend worked in an iron foundry and we used black foundry sand to ballast the yard area of the club OO layout. I still have an ice-cream tub full of sand somewhere waiting  for track to be laid on my first layout at home !

.

[Dave Hunt]

Thanks for the input guys. As I suspected, there are lots of ways to skin this particular cat and as Stubby suggests some experimentation on test stretches of yard and track will be necessary. I also feel a trip to some steam preservation sites and the collection of real ash may be in order.

 

Dave

[simontaylor484]

1 hour ago, Mike Bellamy said:

 

Many years ago (35?) a friend worked in an iron foundry and we used black foundry sand to ballast the yard area of the club OO layout. I still have an ice-cream tub full of sand somewhere waiting  for track to be laid on my first layout at home !

.

My sandpit when I was a little boy was full of black sand from the foundry.