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Next I added some remaining details - the clack valves are impressions made by threading two short lengths of brass tube of 0.6mm and 0.8mm outside diameter onto a length of 0.4mm brass rod. All three of these came in a useful pack from Albion Alloys. They were covered in flux then soldered on with a small amount of solder, before bending the pipe to curve under the boiler. Fiddlier to make were the next bits, which I **think** are controls for the sandboxes - they sit either side of the smokebox. These were made in three pieces: a length of brass tube was soldered on to a 0.2mm nickel-silver rod, then the handles of the "tap" at the top were made by soldering another length of nickel-silver rod at right angles. Rather than trying to hold in place a tiny sliver, I used a much longer length which could be stuck down with double-sided tape, leaving one hand free to hold the other piece and the other to wield the soldering iron: The next photo shows one of these after cutting to size. I got quite good at making these because I mangled two by trying to solder them to the footplate, before giving up and using Araldite! Finally we see these parts glued onto the model. The body is finished now except for coupling hooks and the lump of coal in the bunker, so shortly it will be time for the dreaded paint shop...

In my previous posting I had found this picture of a rather nice cast forge. Some more digging on the internet and I found some references to Keith - Blackman Ltd of Farringdon Avenue London, manufacturers of smith's hearths and forge blowers - purveyors of complete installations for the smithy. I thought I'd try to model up something suitable for my workshop. I've broken it down into a number of pieces so i can try and print the individual parts on the photon.. If there are any RMWebbers who know their forges please tell me if this looks hideously wrong! I've also started on modeling up a power hammer, this is definitely a work in progress and still needs lots more work doing on it. Again, all comments very welcome! David

Here's a photo of the loco before the details referred to in the title were added. In this picture the motor is not fitted, so the cab looks empty. I was running it up and down the track under gravity after glueing the wheels into their muffs, checking that the motion was working. Actually I found that it was a bit tight and had to thin the slidebars further. The middle and rear crankpins have not yet been trimmed to length, so the temporary "washer" - made from electrical wire sleeving - grazes slightly against the bottom of the PCB footplate. The chassis paintwork needs quite a lot of touching up. I etched the numberplates recently as part of an etched sheet with other things on, and here is a cruel enlargement showing one soldered to the cab side. In fact, they turned out a bit big (I copied the design from the Banking Tank, assuming they would be the same size), but hopefully I will get away with it. Once the plate is painted, you might even be able to read the "HIGHLAND RAILWAY" legend. Next up, the handrails. Having written in the last post that I would fit the handrails after painting, I decided that it would be better to solder them in place. I started with the short cab-side handrails, which don't have knobs but just bend into the holes in the cab side. I made them from 10 thou spring steel wire, for both its colour and strength. Beneath the loco you can see one of the tank-top handrails ready for fitting, along with a 2mm Scale Association etch of handrail knobs. These needed to be opened out carefully with a small broach. Bending the semicircular deviation to clear the tank filler cap wasn't particularly easy as the steel wire is quite hard. After a couple of attempts I worked out that I could get a neat semicircle by bending it around a brass rod of somewhat smaller diameter. Because of the shape of the handrail, it wasn't possible to thread it through knobs pre-fitted to the tank, so instead I had to thread four knobs onto the wire and attempt to get them all into the holes at once without falling off the wire. Once in place (finally!) they were soldered with Yellow-label flux to get a good joint to the steel. The next photo shows the boiler handrail formed to shape with one knob threaded on to go above the smokebox. The other four knobs are sitting (loose) in the holes in the boiler sides. This was also a pig to bend to the right shape, and required more than one attempt. But eventually I was happy enough with it. Here's a final view with all of the handrails in place:

As I mentioned in the previous post, I have been trying to track down a photo of the prototype of Sir John's special train. Today, I have found one but unfortunately, the morning of April 1st 1892 was notable for the famous London 'pea-soup' fog. Despite the photographer's best efforts he has been unable to capture much detail of the train. He has, however, used sepia toning very effectively to enhance the subject 🙂 Train in London Smog - 1st April '92

One morning long ago, an 1854 class shunted the Old Yard at Farthing. The crew were slightly bored. Nothing much ever happened in the Old Yard. Just a handful of sidings. A carman (sic) watched them roll by, perched on his trolley (Birmingham pattern). The carmen at Farthing were famous for not using reins. William Simmons was particularly skilled. Known as The Horse Whisperer, he worked without reins for 46 years and never had an accident. People did wonder why his rounds took so long. It turned out his whispers worked on women too. On the other side of the tracks, lad porter Herbert Pocket was busy cleaning the lamps. Herbert had two goals in life: He wanted to drive locomotives, and he wanted to die like a hero. He was last seen in the Congo in 1924, hanging off the tender of a runaway loco. They say he was smiling. Meanwhile, porter Alfred Jingle watched the train draw closer. The morning fog was thick as pea soup. He liked a good pea soup. As the wagons rolled past, Alfred tried to avoid eye contact with Thomas Grig up in the lamp. They hadn’t spoken since the lardy cake argument. They’d been friends for years, but you have to draw a line somewhere. Thomas, for his part, had other matters on his mind. A lamplighter for 26 years, he had so far scaled the lamps at Farthing 81.121 times. He knew, because he counted. He counted, because secretly… …Thomas had an intense fear of heights. When he finally retired, Thomas bought a one-storey cottage in Holme Fen, sawed the legs of all his furniture, and heaved a long sigh of relief. The train rumbled on through the pointwork. The unsheeted Open carried a shipment of Empty Promises. A local MP would pick it up later. Shunter John Redlaw changed the points to No. 3 siding. Known as "The Phantom" he had a manner of appearing from nowhere exactly when needed, only to disappear again as soon as the job was done. The loco propelled the wagons into the siding... ... towards the covered goods dock. Goods porter Samuel Slumkey watched the wagons approach. As a veteran of the Red River Rebellion, the Urabi Revolt and the Sikkim Expedition, Samuel had travelled to the ends of the earth. It turned out, however, that the real edge of the world was right here in Farthing. As the train came to a halt, the porters prepared to put in some heavy work. Not Tom Roker though. Comfortably seated on his favourite barrow, he always found an excuse for not working. In fairness, whilst sat there thinking he invented a universal vaccine, a waterless crop, and an unlimited supply of clean energy. He never wrote it down though. He couldn’t be bothered. As the crew prepared to pull back, George Rouncewell said good morning. Not to the crew, but to the loco. He often spoke to the locos. They all thought he was potty, but George had his reasons. He had worked ten years in the A shop in Swindon, before an errant bar of hot iron put a stop to it. So these weren’t just locomotives, they were old friends. He would even order pints for them at the pub. And drink it all. On their behalf, you understand. Uncoupled, the loco backed away, leaving the wagons behind. As they drove off, bunker first, the driver said: “Staff here seem quiet today”. “Yep”, said the fireman, “Bit of a dull lot”. *** PS: Most of the figures have been modified, some extensively. The captions are all true, only the facts have been changed.

Having been granted a further day to keep the P4 circuit in place, I've been making the most of it, with further running in activity taking place. This time, it's the turn of my P4 16XX pannier, 1650. Here's a rather wobbly panned photo: This loco was built as a commission for me several years ago, when I thought that I would have a completed P4 layout to take to shows, so it was a means of saving me some modelling time, as I needed to work on the layout itself ('Callow Lane'). As things turned out, the layout still isn't finished, but I do hope to start work on it again soon. The loco features modified milled Alan Gibson 64XX frames (same wheelbase), with Gibson wheels, the usual High Level and Mashima drive and a whitemetal Cotswold body. Unfortunately, the slow running qualities of this loco never came up to scratch as far as I was concerned. These days, I would do things differently. For a start, I'd almost certainly make the loco myself now and I'd obviously use the lovely NuCast Partners 16XX chassis kit, designed by Justin Newitt, which was exactly what I did when I built one of these in OO a few months ago. I had put the loco away for a while and was contemplating building a completely new chassis for it, especially once said NuCast Partners chassis became available in recent times. However, I decided to put it on the rolling road for some extended running-in and was pleased to note, a year or so ago, that the running did seem to have improved somewhat. As such, I am going to try to give it a lot more running in, in order to improve it sufficiently, so that I don't have to build another chassis for it. Here is some footage of 1650 running on the highly sophisticated Kernow test facility this afternoon:

Have completed the ferry painting I then wanted to try putting on the transfers. I had created the designs on Microsoft publisher having copied the ferry logo off a downloaded jpeg. Unfortunately the jpeg quality wasn't good enough quality just to scale it up so I redrew it using the block shape tools in the software and tries to get the colour as close to the original as possible. I had purchased some transfer paper off the Internet and printed off a sheet. (transfer paper printed off) The boat name seemed a bit big so scaled it down and reprinted on the same sheet (this stuff is expensive!). Having read the instruction sheet it recommended applying 3 coats of acrylic sealer on top to prevent the ink running. Another quick purchase later and sealer was purchased. (first application of sealer) This stuff is really smelly so having had many complaints from family members the next applications were applied outside. I trialed one of the oversize ship nes on a spare bit of ply to see how well they went on (trial transfer completed) Happy with this I decided to tackle the less visible side first as a trial run. I had made plenty of airfix kits in my youth so assumed this would be something similar. Indeed it was although due to the size of the transfers I needed to keep some of them in the water a minute and a half to fully wet the back and get the transfer to slide. First attempt for the logo failed as it stuck in the wrong place and my attempts to move it bent it out of shape. So used the other one which eventually did work. Cut out the lining and transfered them onto the model as well. Once the lines were on then on with the ship name. The result was the below (first side complete) Due to my mucking up the first transfer I had to reprint a sheet and then spray finish it all again. Very time consuming. Lessons had been learnt from the first side and the other transfers went on much easier. Using a big oven tin filled with water. to give enough room for some of the longer transfers. The final result was this (Nord pas de calais in Dock in its new livery) Pretty happy with the result. Deciding whether to weather it at the moment although looking at photos the ferries seem to be kept very clean when in service. I have some laser cut handrails on order now to finish off the rear the ship. Now in the process of applying my resin balsa coatings to the rest of the structures. (other structures getting a similar treatment) Thanks for reading

Managed to get the train ferry funnel completed with a single top coat of black. Will need to do a bit of touching up but basically it's done. I slid in the vehicle deck to get some shots. Just some signage, transfers, and some handrails to finish it off then on to other things Funnel masked and painted Masking removed after a few hours and the vehicle deck slid into position The rear of the ferry where all the tyres hit the deck from the linkspan And some shots fitted to the layout Just need to finish everything else now!!

I've had this kit for over twelve years. Its for Resilient class diesel loco, built by John Fowler in the 40's and powered by either a 3 or 4 cylinder Fowler-Sanders diesel engine. Three 2' gauge locos worked at Alpha Cement at Cliffe-at-Hoo two of which still survive, one at Amberly Museum (the loco this kit was based on) and the other at Armley Mills in Leeds. Some were built to 3' gauge, one worked at Marland in North Devon and another at Dinmor on Anglesey. The Dinmor loco still survives and can now be found on the Cavan and Leitrim in Eire. The kit is OO9 and whitemetal and sits on a Grafar HST power bogie, bought new at the same time the kit was aquired. I'm not going into great detail about the build as its pretty straightforward but let the pictures tell the story. Here's the cab; The bonnet frame sides being glued in place; And the radiater/front bufferbeam in place and the power unit fitted; I prefer to glue whitemetal using 5-minute Araldite. Once I used to solder whitemetal but these days I can't be bothered. Soldering might be quicker though... Paul.