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Indeed, I had to make the code 40 track fit into the same area as the code 55 pointwork and Templot allowed me to really bring the templates close and maximise the radii. It would have been nice to improve the A 5.5 one but there is a joist that needs to be cleared by the under board point rodding! Total cost is looking at £15 for the rail, around £3.50 for the resin according to my slicer, (not counting the same amount in failures.) I also printed my own blade and vee planing jig, but it is less efficient than the proper ones.

One aspect I noticed from these Victorian pictures is rod colour. Swindon seems not to have painted rods, even before 1900. Wolverhampton however did, as seen in Adrian Knowles' lovely rendition of 517, with Indian Red rods. This is corroborated in another very early (c 1888) saddle tank pic. Note however, not all Wolverhampton livery depictions agree with this. Regardless, it does beg the question as to when Wolverhampton stopped painting rods.

Supposedly for tyre turning at Tyseley. Seems odd that it needs that without having really turned its wheels in anger.

D1670, I should have thought, going by the six roof vents. https://peco-uk.com/products/lms-meat-van D

Interesting when. you think about it. RMweb has in excess of 40,000 members, I don't know how many 'subscribers'/regulars look at Sam's Trains reviews but the number probably runs into thousands; some people will be looking at both while some others will only be reading reviews in teh printed media. So that makes a pretty substantial 'minority' although what percentage of even the 40,000+ are in the market for an 00 Black 5 is near impossible to ascertain although a 'members' modelling interest' survey result might give a good clue. But we don't know how many Back Fives have been sold by Hornby and we don't know the type of buyer they have gone to - back to Ian's 'what percentahge go into a showcase?'. Definitely RMweb will cover a range of potential buyers with diverse modelling interests and some will no doubt be happy with overscale headlamps showing a bright light while some won't. This thread will give an idea of some who won't from the comments we have made but I doubt our number is even 1% of the total number of Black Fives that Hornby have so far old. In fact Sam's reviews might lose Hornby far more sales than our comments about the lamps. It all depends in some respects where Hornby see its market and whether or not it satisfies that market

Groovy Kind of Love - Diane & Annita

I totted up the cost of the components to make this crossover and it came out at around £10, relatively cheap I'd say when compared with the cost of buying a 3D printer! ChrisB

What Kind Of Man - Cerys Matthews

What is that for a wagon? Does it have a name or designation or special number? What is its purpose? Perhaps radioactive scrap? . It looks interesting like something out from Star Wars... Is that a Crompton doing the honours?

The US is still largely imperial, except of course a pint is 16 fluid ounces not 20…..so a US gallon is 4/5 of a real gallon…. If you look at the Kadee web site you’ll see lengths quoted in fractions of an inch. You can buy electronic vernier calipers which display in fractions…. Thousands of an inch are easy to convert to mm, 40thou = 1mm.

However there is a bit of a difference between a minor typo (or two!) and getting a description, or place name, or date, or whatever, blatantly wrong. Simple answer is that if you think there is someone out there who might know just ask them and see if they do know?

Sleepers snapped out one side of the join and the baseplate soldered in. I don't have a Code 100 track gauge so to avoid a repeat of the tight to gauge issue the amount of unsupported rail is kept to a minimum. And the other side: "BLACK INSIDE" is written at regular intervals around the layout to remind me which is the common return wire when the boards are being worked on upside down and back to front. All done. The long siding will get slewed across later to eventually terminate in the V between the other lines. The real one went a few yards further but it will still be long enough to dump a few 'COND' wooden wagons on awaiting breaking up and giving the impression of more stretching away under the bridge. The Code 75 FB Streamline on the main line is temporary so will be pinned rather than glued. It will be replaced later with some copperclad sleepers and etched BR3 baseplates - they should be BR1s but the Colin Craig ones are unobtainable so Mike Clarke's BR3s will have to do. (They should be 3 elastic spikes per baseplate, they'll by 2x spikes and a sort of flat tang, which is near enough for me).

23:24 The rescued iris can't get much better than this. So posting with birthday greetings @Gwiwer. Hope you had a splendid day... and night all and nos da. Polly

Oh good, I'll do that. A very pragmatic suggestion.

RCTS breaks down the batches within the large 'originally-built-to-15' w/b' division or group, showing the differences in technical specifications between batches. For instance, within the 15' group, it places 1473 in penultimate batch of the group, 1465-76. RCTS chose to group the class by as-built w/b, in 3 groups. The gwr.org categorises the class in broadly the same way, but also uses different criteria. The gwr.org category for 1465-1488 might be valid against other criteria, but not in claiming all were built to the long 15'6" w/b, and indeed, most (three quarters) were not, so you could simply add that the final half dozen were built at a 15'6" w/b.

I was one of those who tried out the plug in chairs they seemed good to me. I found the fixing of the tie bar a little awkward but more practice would have helped ( I didn't have the parts for more). I have also use the chairs and the plastic strip to make turnouts. I found the once I removed the chairs from the sprue I simply could not manipulate them in my fingers to thread them on the rail. I found the only way I could do it was to thread the rail through the chair whilst still on the sprue then cut the chair free and thread it through the next one continuing until I had all the chairs I needed including checkrail chairs where required on the piece of rail. I would then thread a piece of easitrac onto each end this would hold the rail up whilst I slid chairs into place and applied solvent it also helped get the first stock rail aligned on the timbers. Now you buy the printed turnout kits and I believe it is much quicker but more expensive your choice really. I may try some of the etched chairs onto thin ply sleepers next time I do any. All these methods can produce good track including soldering to PCB sleepers it is really finding a method that suits you. I did find the plug in chairs stronger and easier to handle with the bit underneath so I would imagine that Martins Templot chairs would also be easier to fit to the base. I would probably opt for one piece chairs. If I had the printers I would build a 2mm turnout and write it up for the Magazine because there could be a real benefit as it would free you from the standard turnout look you get from templates. Don

Another bit which should have been done differently in the first place is the baseboard joint where the Code 75 Down Main to Stranraer joins the Code 100 fiddle yard track. There's a useful bridge here to form a scenic break and the join was originally on the skew below it. It was a regular point of derailment on testing, originally put down to the skew, so it was changed to a perpendicular joint by sawing a bit off one board and screwing it to the other. Of course all this is going on in one of the most inaccessible corners of the shed, the boards are nearly 4 feet wide here. Usually this isn't a problem as boards can be moved out of the way and the fiddle yard boards are strong enough to kneel on, but to fettle a baseboard joint you obviously need both boards in place. I need to do a tip run too ! So this was the state of play with the new perpendicular joint in the track, the join between the baseboards is now just this side of the red paint brush. Oh, and all this is going on on a 3rd radius curve. Main line to Stranraer in the foreground, goods yard headshunt / 'long siding' parallel to it. The BG is on the start of the Dumfries-bound dive-down in the opposite direction. Turns out the joint was actually narrow to gauge as well as being on the squint so time to saw up a new Peco double curve and sort that. Bombproof copperclad baseplates are recovered from the previous version. Work has moved to the comparative comfort of the station board using the base of the island platform as a temporary workbench.

It would appear Markits do the correct buffers so has anyone done this?

Ah yes, thanks. gwr.org.uk doesn't distinguish between the final batches, and perhaps it should.

A Kind Of Loving - The Police

Because the final batch, built with 15'6" w/b, was just 1483-8. 1473 was in broad terms a member of the largest group, those built to a 15' w/b. As you know, not all were lengthened. Fair Rosamund was one of those that remained with a 15' w/b.