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thegreenhowards

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  1. Hello Jeremy, Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I really do appreciate constructive criticism like this. Your first point is a schoolboy error that I should have spotted….especially as the video has chosen to show that exact moment for its a still image! Annoyingly I won’t be able to redo this now until the Spring unless we have a very mild and dry spell. I’m blaming multi tasking for that error - trying to be cameraman, two drivers and signalman is clearly too much. RMT wouldn’t approve! The other issues you raise are, to a non signaller, slightly less obvious. But I do want to get it right. I know that you wrote a similarly detailed piece back in the Summer when we were discussing the diagram below but I omitted to reread that in my haste. I’ve never really understood why a driver has to be brought to a stand at the home before entering the station. Surely he has to be ready to stop at the starter signal and that should be sufficient? However, I know it happens (to my frustration as a passenger), and my role is to replicate signalling practice rather than question it, so I need to do it right on Glenfinnan. I presume that this is only the case if trains are crossing? I.e. if the starter is pulled off then the home can also be pulled off and the driver can enter the station without stopping at the home. I am using the signal box diagram below with my lever frame to control the signalling. Levers 4&12 are point locks which do nothing as yet, but I’m intending to wire them so that they electrically lock the points. I need to have a think about whether I can electrically prevent pulling off the starter while the home at the same end is off. Your 7 point list is very useful. I think I may need it on a crib sheet behind the lever frame. I won’t be doing any bells though - that’s a bit too ‘signalling hard core’ for me! Andy
  2. This is the final sequence from my recent spell of operation as the layout was put away before the rain on Thursday & Friday. I suspect that might be it for the year and I will use the poor weather to work on the scenery. Anyway, as a finale I decided to try a passing move. Here we see 37264 on Turbots heading West passing 37051 on Mark 1s. Concrete sleepers in Turbots has become a bit of a cliche in O Gauge following Al Tait’s excellent article in the Gauge o guild Gazette and his Facebook images. But they do look good and there was a view of Turbots loaded so loaded in the video of the Mallaig line which Andy (@Mallaig1983) posted recently here. I also did my normal video of the passing manoeuvre. Regards Andy
  3. I think Tony has hit the nail on the head. In my experience(incompetence?), kit built locos are easy enough to get looking good, but never work first time and need tweaking to get to work smoothly. That may be pick ups, wheel alignment, short circuits, weighting, motor gearbox combo, etc. etc. Each is different and it can take several days of test running and faffing to get them to run to my satisfaction. I’m not a pro, just a willing amateur with a fair bit of experience! Andy
  4. Tony, As discussed in our PMs, I’m happy to help if you want to go down the original route or some help with the kit, but I’d rather not get involved with the chassis, as I find they take an awful lot of fettling! Regards Andy
  5. All this talk about restoring bargain purchases had me racking my brains. I used to do quite a bit of that in 00, but my main focus recently has been O gauge where bargains are few and far between. However I did buy this non runner A5 tank from eBay earlier this year. I thought it looked good underneath its truly hideous paint job. It cost £200 which I regard as a bargain price for a large tank in O gauge. The non running part proved to be the motor not engaging with the drive axle. I sorted that with a little soldering of the support, but decided to replace the whole affair with a modern helical gearbox which I do on most of my O gauge locos. This is the old motor - if anyone want it for the cost of postage let me know! Anyway, I then stripped it completing, unsoldered the raised LNER of the tank sides and repainted into LNER lined black. I’ve recently finished the weathering on her and here she is posed on my garden railway with 3/4 of an Ian Kirk quad art (I’m still building the underframe for the last two coaches). Regards Andy
  6. The only steam engine I had for this layout was K1, 62052. But that has been playing up, with a burnt out decoder and more recently the valve gear fell to bits! But on Sunday, I visited the ‘O Gauge Get Together’ at the Severn Valley Railway and having only bought two wagons and thinking I’d been good in the exhibition, I discovered the Stanier Mogul Fund shop at Kidderminster which had bought a large collection of Eastern/ LNER locos and wagons. My wallet is now considerably lighter with three locos and several wagons weighing me down! The best of this bunch is another K1, professionally built from a Piercy kit and with a lovely ABC helical gearbox. It runs very smoothly and quietly. I was told that the owner of the collection had no layout, and I don’t think this is a good thing as it means the locos haven’t been fully debugged. The valve gear came undone after a couple of circuits! Luckily this was an easy fix as I found the nut and reattached it with a touch of the soldering iron to keep it in place. Anyway, after all that I gave it a proper train to pull - my fish vans as head traffic on a maroon rake of stock. I’m sure I’ve seen a similar formation in one of my books but can’t find it now. I can find a long string of normal vans on the front of a passenger train and a couple of fish vans with the same, but not a long fish rake with passenger. Can anyone else remember where such a photo is…if it exists! The sun is quite difficult at this time of year with the station area in shade for much of the day, so I offer another photo on the unsceniced side but in full sun. No video as it’s not DCC fitted yet, so no sound! The loco will need renumbering to a Fort William example. I may sell the old K1 which has American pick ups, so not ideal for DCC. In which case it will take the 62052 identity. Otherwise probably 62034. I think the preserved one was renumbered to 62052 and 62034 at some point for the Jacobite so I could run these in preserved mode as well. More diesels next time for the kettle haters! Andy
  7. Thanks. I think it’s the best in my fleet. I’ve fitted all the others myself but not this one. I must take it apart and work out what he’s done. Andy
  8. That’s very useful, thank you. Does the book have that sort of information for all the 37/4s? If so, it’s on my shopping list! Andy
  9. I’ve just been reading September 2023 Backtrack. It has a lovely spread of the Mallaig extension including pictures of 37423 in triple grey livery on a nice rake of four MK2s dated 2April 1988. I was pleasantly surprised by this as I thought the first triple grey liveried locos were after sprinterisation. Can anyone confirm the dates of the first repaintings? I’ve looked on the cl37 website but it’s first mention of painting for ‘423 is into Mainline in 1989. Andy
  10. Some new toys came out to play today. I felt that my model of Glenfinnan needed a’Concrete Bob’, and when this one came up on eBay already ‘Legomanbiffo-ed’ I pounced. It’s a bit late for my chosen era in triple grey, but I’m rather fond of the livery, so I’ll make an exception - I’m not running a 156 to go with it though! I also picked up a couple of Cargowaggons recently and a Heljan red stripe van and open. I’m running these together but I’m struggling to find prototype pictures of Cargowaggons mixed with the older stock. Can anyone confirm if they did work together? I’ve also done a video. I think this one sounds particularly good. Sound was fitted by BBMR and seems to have the decoder in the fuel tanks and a speaker where the decoder normally goes. Andy
  11. I’ve now finished re-weathering the fish vans which I bought at Guildex and posted on here on 6 Sep. They’re a bit dirtier than I would have chosen, but I think it’s worked OK and they look credible. I did a mixture of removing the dirt down the stanchions with a lot of rubbing, white washing over them and just heavy weathering over them. All the wagons then had a dusting of roof dirt from my airbrush. Here’s a video of the fish train with a few other vans, which I also picked up at Guildex. Andy
  12. Looks like you might be right! I got them off the Fox sheet ‘earlier lettering/ numbering for black locos’. I ordered this set because the larger LNER lettering didn’t fit the tank side. Did the numbers change size, or is this yet another misleading Fox description? I’m not sure I can face changing them now as they’re under several coats of varnish and weathering. Andy
  13. More weathering last week, this time on my O Gauge N7 as featured above. This was an eBay purchase which came in a hideous brush painted LNER livery. I’m pleased with how it’s turned out. Here it is posed on our club layout, Smithfield. Andy
  14. It does amuse me how they think a nice sealed plastic bag adds value! I don’t trade on a regular basis but when someone contacts the club with an estate sale, I see it as an opportunity to offer a benefit to club members. Anything left over, I flog on eBay. Andy
  15. I’d also like to run one, so I was just looking for some justification! And I also have a 26!
  16. My impression is that the second hand market has peaked. Prices rose dramatically 10+ years ago as eBay took off and created a much wider market for second hand kit. Traders took a while to catch up and there were still a lot of bargains at toy fairs and model railway shows. More recently I’ve noticed far less bargains at physical shows as traders have woken up to higher prices although a few bargains are still there where people are trying to shift stuff quickly. However, in the last year or so, eBay prices seemed to have gone into reverse, perhaps due to the cost of living crisis or perhaps due to Tony’s oft quoted fear over the demographics of the hobby? In due course I hope that traders at shows will recognise this, but there will probably be quite a lag. In the meantime, our club has just bought a job lot of old model railway kit and we have wagons at £1 and coaches at £3 for a short while! Andy
  17. How common were 25s on the WH extension? I’ve only seen one or two pictures.
  18. It was moving up and down the yard on Thursday.
  19. I also received mine today. I’ve skimmed it this evening and it’s well up to the standard I would expect from Andrew Donnelly. I’m looking forward to digesting it thoroughly. Andy
  20. Lovely photos Rob, I look forward to seeing your attempts at ‘108. You’d need to be brave and very skilful to replicate the condition in that photo. I remember ‘081 only too well. It became a bit of a ‘bowl out’ engine as it was always turning up when I was hoping for something new. What I’d give for a run behind it now! Andy
  21. I prefer the first - beautifully framed by all those signals.
  22. ‘108 looks good. I appreciate tension locks, sharp curves and bufferbeam detail are not happy bedfellows! On my 00, I tend to use a fixed brass wire loop instead of the tension lock on my locos. This allows bufferbeam detail on curves down to 3 ft, but I haven’t tested it on anything tighter. My O gauge is a roundy roundy and I tend to use Kadees because I can’t stand screw/three links which seem to be the O Gauge standard. I have a Kadee on one end and screw links on the other and the loco always runs in one direction (with the screw link leading). Both coupling standard support bufferbeam detail. I appreciate this is not much use to you with Fort William reversals! Regards Andy
  23. Me too. But you can’t argue that the railways were at their zenith, had a huge variety of stock or colourful liveries. I grew up with BR blue on the SE EMU railway. The weekly highlight was a class 33 hauled train to Beckenham Jn coal depot. Apart from that it was all CIGs, EPBs and SUBs. But once I was old enough I found Finsbury Park and the Deltics and then the West Highland line - fantastic! I now model 1920s London and 1980s West Highland in O gauge and the GNML in 00 so covering all bases! You can’t beat a split box 37 on Mk 1s! Andy
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