All Activity

With a three legged trestle you would only need to put adjustability on the two outer legs. Twould make levelling relatively easy.

I would suggest printing upside down at 145 degrees on the long axis, that way the support attachments are inside the wagon body, and along the top edge. This angle allows you to use less supports, and leaves the delicate items below the solebar to form with minimal support needed.

The vee has two scraps of fret waste soldered to the underside to enable bonding to the wing rails. This has both electrical and stability benefits I’ve found. These pieces need to be sited between the timbers, hence the marking. Only the two to the right are soldered: the longer one to the left is simply a support to keep it level. The vee is then laid gauged to the stock rail at the 16.2mm of OO-SF. Again certain chairs need trimming beforehand. Then the curved stock rail is laid gauged off the vee. If I need to transition to plain track, this is effected on the last 2-3 timbers of the turnout. At the toe of the turnout it is also 16.5 which aids a little with the switch blades later. The set in the curved stock rail should just be visible too. At this point the slide chairs on the first stock rail are firmly glued to the rail and can be welded to the timbers too. The next job is the first wing rail. This is bent by eye initially using pliers and test fit until correct. I’ve had a lot more success this way than making up complete common crossings away from the template. If the vee is gauged off the stock rail, and so is the wing rail, plus the flangeway gap is set at 1mm with the steel shim, it should work perfectly. Once all is correct, the 2 chairs (I use 1 normal 3 bolt chair and 1 L1 which is probably an approximation) can be welded to the timbers using butanone, and the wing rail is soldered to the shim. This can be seen below as the necessary alignment of crossing nose and wing rail are checked with a steel rule: Repeat the whole process with the second wing rail and trim the shim: The rest of the curved stock rail is then laid including slide chairs as previously. All the while, I am checking with the gauges and test running the bogie through. Now it’s time for the blades. But that can wait until I’ve slept. Iain

Civil engineers...

Yes. a diagram A Auto trailer and a P22 Carriage truck. A Diesel railcar, there may be others There's also a W2W Carriage truck, a W2W Horse box and a W2W Autotrailer and a W2W diesel Railcar. The GWR numbered all it's different class of vehicles in individual number lists.

The Yeoman O&K boxes look very nice.

Yes - but that doesn't necessarily mean they were all piped up. Train classification was related to timing speeds. If a train didn't need to be piped up to satisfy the classification the shunters probably wouldn't bother doing so.

37403 update, finished the buffer beam detailing, they are quite crowded now, did not bother to include the white pipes (MU ops control air) and was defeated by the actual jumper cables for the ETH and MU as they both run from buffer beam outlets to nose end receptacles. So I decided to omit the cabling due to the requirement to remove the body. All the plugs, sockets and receptacles are represented though. It was fun to do, had to paint up and fit as I went along, only viable way of getting all the painting done on the detail. So, body was reunited with the chassis. A few pix General view, base colour scheme essentially complete, the doorway handrails have been painted since. Get a feel for the "busy" buffer beam area from this low angle shot. But doing ETH and MU jumper cables would be trickey. Can't believe how I continue to motor on with this build, they usually span months! Cheers D.

I thought that was the armoured train full of German loot? Or is that in the siding on the down line?

Arkwright or Margaret Thatcher's dad?

It's a French film and the railway footage is appropriately emotional but I had a closer look and found the complete fim. The train is actually arriving in Amsterdam. The carriage number NS 752 was a bit of a giveaway, but looking more carefully, the arriving train is in blue and white livery. However, there is a continuity error as when Yves Montand, who is really already in Amsterdam with his lover (Candice Bergen), sneaks aboard the just arrived train from the wrong side to pretend to get off (having stuffed his bag with French magazines bought at the station news stand) to greet his wife (Annie Girardot) the carriage is now green, (probably shot on a different platform where it was parked for the film). There is a later scene aboard the Amsterdam-Brussels-Paris sleeper but you only get to see fairly tight close ups of the characters in their compartment and the corridor. If you like trams there are a fair number of them from that era at the tram station in front of Amsterdam CS. Thanks for finding it though as it's a good film that I didn't know. It was Claude Lelouch's first film after Un Homme et une Femme and he seemed very fond of jump cuts (and a few line crosses).

Grocer Heath or Grocer Jack?

Big updates over the weekend! Managed to finish the path slabs (took ages!) painted and positioned the rest of the railings along the paths. Flocked the embankment added some greenery and gave the road a repaint with a lighter grey. Also painted the surrounding walls for the factory area, just weathering them up now. will hopefully get some shots tomorrow with everything back in place when the paint has dried.

Fair call, however despite whatever FCC requirements exist, American popular culture of which Disney is a major component has certainly been allowed to play its part in normalising and even glamourising gun violence, whether its some 1950's cowboy and Indian TV show through to a typical Gangsta Rap ode to popping a cap in someone. One example does spring to mind - I recall seeing "Kindergarten Cop" on release back in the day (1990-ish?) which was sold as a lighthearted screwball comedy about a police detective who goes undercover in a primary school in order to catch a drug baron, from memory. The climactic scene graphically shows the drug baron being shot dead in the school boys toilet , which I remember at the time thinking "How the $$*%# is that a scene thought suitable to put into a comedy movie?" even if it was classified appropriately. Now if I was to go on Mastermind, my special subject would not be "US School Shootings" so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of many school shootings in the US up to that point other than Kent State University, so having a comedy with a scene depicting someone being shot dead in a school several years before Columbine (the first shooting that got mass coverage here) seems a bit disturbing to say the least. In 1990 I'm pretty sure I could still go into our local Kmart and buy a rifle off the shelf (albeit a low calibre low velocity rifle suitable for rabbit shooting) - I definitely remember them being racked up in the sporting goods section in the mid-1980's - but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that despite that no comedy or any other genre movie made here in those lax gun laws times incorporated a scene showing someone being shot dead in a school. There definitely wasn't such a depiction in Mad Max, for instance, let alone "Picnic At Hanging Rock" even though that was set in a school. There must be a PHD waiting on why Australia and the US, although both sharing many historic similarities - both large frontier countries populated by an Indigenous people who were mercilessly subjugated, both with settlements springing up far from existing civilisation due to gold discoveries or opening up of new lands to farmers and graziers, and both with a "macho" outdoorsy self-reliant self-image among a large part of the population do not share the same gun violence path. Australia did have outlaws, mainly the bushrangers (essentially Highwaymen for any UK readers!) who would rob stages, government mail coaches and remote farms at the point of a gun, however despite our convict settlement beginnings we did not have the same gun culture as depicted in early US frontier accounts. Other than the Eureka Stockade, where gold miners rose up in protest against the imposition of mining license and opened fire on government forces sent to quell the uprising, I can't think of any other use of firearms here on the scale apparent in the US "wild west". (Hideous massacres of the local indigenous folk - often on the order of the British Government aside...) Perhaps its due to the judicial system in both countries? In Australia policing was by government police and troopers, centrally controlled by the government, with a system of government assigned magistrates in major centres who would try all criminal cases from both the local and more far-flung areas. Capital sentences were carried out in the major country centre like Bathurst, rather than locally where the crime was committed, and sentences could be appealed. In contrast if my studies of US frontier justice, based on watching many a Saturday morning western when young are correct, US frontier law enforcement seems to be based on locally elected "sheriffs" and judges, many untrained who would often organise an armed possie of locals or bounty hunters to capture alleged suspects. Justice was localised and swift and there was no central authority to oversee the sentence or to be appealed to.( Maybe I'm wrong? ). Its understandable that this would lead to a culture of gun violence as those with no faith in the justice system, as well as those seeking to exploit its shortcomings used guns to sort it out. Following the gun buyback in 1997 there were 3.2 million guns in Australia. As of 2019 there were 3.5 million guns, so despite many a MAGA enthusiast claiming the Australians gave up their guns, there are actually MORE guns in the community now than when the Port Arthur buyback scheme was implemented. Despite that we have not had a single mass shooting (apart from one tragic murder-suicide). The fact that as well as the buyback, the 1997 reforms implemented strict background checks, the requirement to have a valid reason for owning a gun (which does not include self-defence), the registration of all gun-owners, who are subject to annual police inspections of their gun storage facilities (must be kept unloaded in a locked metal cabinet, ammunition stored separately elsewhere) , as well as a ban on certain gun-types including semi-automatics, large capacity magazines etc, shows that many of the reforms called for by the sane part of the US population do work, and the gun enthusiasts don't need to disarm.

I don't believe eternal life will allow sufficient time to complete what I have stashed away!

Hmmm, it’s difficult isn’t it. Maybe in the railmotor era and for some time afterwards there was a coal bin and a coaling platform alongside each other? And by the 60s the timber platform was gone, leaving only the bin? Or the bin could be an ash bin and the coaling process was all done form the lost platform?

I also finished what I hope will be the final turnout for Camden Shed Mk2, and thought it might be worth documenting. In case I forget how to do it. It’s a basic B6 on the coal road approach to the turntable. Lay the template and add a thin strip of double sided tape: I tend to annotate the template with timber lengths and the number of chairs of each type (I know it’s on the templot template already but just makes it a bit more noticeable. Also I may reduce the prescribed number of slide chairs by one). Add the timbers (I pre cut these in batches of different lengths in bulk). I then lay the straight stock rail, or rather the one that must follow the curvature. On the 4 mainlines, it was crucial to get a smooth continuation of the very shallow curve through all the formations. I find this a lot easier if I lay the main stock rail first and build the rest off that. I know some lay the vee first, and I tried that but never quite got on with it. Chairs opposite the check rail, and close to the slide chairs, are partly trimmed to fit in preparation. I also add the slide chairs at this point, glued to the web and underside of the stock rail with a tiny bead of cyano, and left to dry while I……. ……make the vee. Rail pieces filed in the jig and then soldered together using the jig to ensure alignment. This one hasn’t been dressed down with fine file and 1200 grit paper yet. To be continued as I’ve run out of megabytes Iain

I don't mind using the toll roads in Melbourne (East Link is NOT owned by Transurban - although they are looking at the possibility of buying it), as long as they do provide a better product than the freebees. In the case of East Link, it is vastly quicker than using Stud Road, the only viable alternative. However, I admit that I don't have to use toll roads every day.

You are a John Major fan then?

Good for you gc4946, it takes courage to show a razor saw to a lovely rtr coach, but kudos to you for getting on with it. And now you have created a unique model, well done. And I have to say, its more than I have done, I kitbash but have never actually done a cut and shut yet.😟 Cheers TT100 Diesels

Looks like you could have an Audry II there.

W2W, a generator van conversion, photographed in Oxford, 1964. Dave

I remember the minitrix ones, a revelation at the time. When you think of it over the years N gauge has not been badly supplied with HAAs even if some weren’t quite the right length.

In Australia, the Country Fire Authority stations had sirens to alert volunteer firemen to come. In their infinite wisdom, it was determined that the sirens weren't required anymore, as pagers/text messages would work better at lower cost. The problem being, that they forgot that this meant dad left the shop when the siren went off, in turn that meant mum left home and went to take over shop duties and grandma, went to the daughters house, where the children had been left alone! All of which was easy, when the whole town could hear the siren. They got reinstated!

I like the progress on the layout but commiserations on the sales falling through. Seems to be happening round here too. Don