M.I.B

The view over the shed, turntable and into the station is the best one yet. I love this layout. Thanks. Hope you get time for the updates you want to do this Fall.

The lever reverse rodding is off the Moguls, I may be able to salvage some of them for use as screw reverse mechanisms. I hope that you are happy and healthy.

The BR(W) Guild Hall began it's transfomation. Cabside single handles came out as did the side windows which were filled with plasicard. This has been overfilled with Humbrol model filler. This does take some time to go properly hard, but any filler which is speeded up tends to need more work - I learnt this working on car bodies when i tried to speed up the job by adding extra hardener or using heat to set it quicker. Never worth it as it makes for brittle filler which pops out under load or pressure. Smokebox number plate is off courtesy of filing and a scalpel. Nameplates are off and mount holes filled. This will be one of the un-named Halls. In the meantime, I cut cabside windows into one of the Moguls. Corners first using a drill to get the curved corners, and then a Dremmel, and finally a file, much like the method used for cutting the coal out of the tender. The other 9300 series Mogul will be black so no side windows required. But the cabside rails are different so pliers and filler time......... Both will need outside steam pipes though, and I'm still not sure how to go about these just now.

Hope you all had a good constructive Bank Holiday. Due to the pouring rain in North Essex, I managed to get some modelling done. I had hoped I would be elsewhere, or that if I was here, it would be sunny enough to be out walking an old railway line or East Anglian airfield. I chopped the coal out of the tender for Project BLACK HALL. If you have never done this, this is how I do it: 1, Drill 2mm holes with a pin vice ( finger tip powered drill) in every corner of the coal. 8 holes in total. 2. Join the holes using a cutting disk in a Dremel. The holes ensure you don't go too far and slice into the parts you want to keep. Cut leaving about 0.5mm of coal left attached. 3. Use a hand file to take the remainder off leaving the sides of the coal hopper. I am going to partially fill the tender with real coal, so the exact shape of the hopper is not required. It will still look fairly empty befitting a Bristol engine getting into Paddington. I made templates out of lined paper to begin with and then made the sides and rear section out of thin plasticard. The sides are made of one piece folded twice to dog-leg around the toolchests at the front of the hopper. I attached them with liquid poly cement. Once the floor was set in ( after a check that the floor would clear the weights hidden inside the tender), I beefed up the seams with some left over Araldite. I will close the rest of the bottom seams with some masking tape before I paint and add coal. The Araldite was left over from fitting the rear coupling. I ditched the Hornby push fit one, and replaced it with a smaller one, shortened to fit snugly: . Because this will connect to a 7 coach rake, it was Araldited into place to ensure a solid and permanent fit: Whilst I was on a roll with the tender I looked at the draw bar. Using the trusty "Super 4" track (I will cover why later) |I played about selecting the right length. It was at this point, with the tender top off, I worked out how to use the strong Bachmann draw bar on a Hornby tender: Hornby use a C shaped connector with slots around a tube through which the front tender to chassis screw runs (the route of the screw shown here with some white strip): So I sliced out the flanges inside the tender: drilled the Bachmann drawbar and used the Hornby tender-top to chassis screw as both a retaining screw and mount for the drawbar: The drawbar has sufficient swing to cope with tight curves, and also allows for some hieght difference between tender and engine. I also made a flexible fall plate at the same time, using some super thin plasticard. The sharp eyed among you will notice that the fireman doing "YMCA" is absent as promised. So all it now requires is paint coal and logos.

"And in the East was a star..........." Can't wait til I see three Kings. James II Spud 1 and Spud 2 are my faves.

Premature eejackulation? (If I spell it right it gets censored)

Thanks to the inspiration of RM Webbers, I have in the last 18 months, set out standards for North Cranford: I have gone firm on the location (In-between Langley and Southall). I am set on the type of layout (DC Code 100 track and big roundy roundy). and timeframe (1946/1947). My oddly dated, and broad range of engines has become realistically focussed down to the plausible in terms of type and running number. Same goes for coaching stock and NPCCS. My complicated track plans and ideas are now very simple. Some excellent layouts on here have very little mainline pointwork, but beautiful sidings. Sidings can be left as "scenery" or alternatively, sidings can be operated as mini layouts. With enough operators, both can happen concurrently. A fiddle yard can also be scenic'd successfully. There are lots of outstanding layouts on here which are simple but the standard of paint, detail or weathering is what has "made" the layout stand out. I know my limits in terms of trackwork and scenery, but I am prepared to "stretch". I fully intend to keep improving on the airbrush both for repaints and weathering. This is inspired by many on here. I have improved at compromise. There is a happy medium to be found between "compromise" and too much "rule 1 applies". For every one of us there is a happy point somewhere between whizzing Thomas around on set track on the carpet, and someone spending 500 hours getting the rivett detail perfect on a live steam O guage King. Thanks All. I hope you are all healthy and happy.

I'm some-what house-bound at the moment, and reticent to start anything, so I have been doing research for the Shed 2 project. I have mainly been using Mr Lyons' shed book, and rooting through the large box of scenic items, putting one or two aside things. I decided to list the Dec 47 basing locations for my Motive Power, again using the Lyons' tome. And this in turn has led to a couple of changes: 1. My 45XX is departing the collection because the closest 45XX to North Cranford is way further than a bunker of coal can carry it. 4589 was Southall based in 1933, but by 1947 it was a Truro engine. I The model is headed to the same place as my small County went. 2. The vast majority of engines are OOC/Southall based. Fine to be sub-shedded at NC. Some 4-6-0s and 2-8-0s have come to Town from the edges of the Empire such as Oxley, Chester, Bristol, Newton Abbot and Laira. Acceptable. The black 28XX, based in Aberdare will be renumbered to become an OOC engine. 3. Oddly enough, my intermediates (Dean Goods, 2251s, Tanner-One-rs, 66XXs and 56XXs and my 72XX) all seem to be based too far away from Nth Cranford to be realistic. So new sheds within a realistic radius have been selected and numbers chosen. Out with Oswestry and Truro and in with Didcot, Oxford, and Slough.

The man from the Ministry in his silver flameproof suit and bowler, has come to scope the potential for an amalgramated railway company, owned by the Government............ "It'll never work" say many....................others say "It'll end in tears".

The shed and also the Brewery & warehouse complex are intended to be capable of being run as seperate layouts for multiple operator running, as well as adding scenery, depth and interest. Here is the shed area looking East to West. Entry is by single track from the upper left of the fiddle yard, running in plain view along side the 4 mainlines. There is a compromise between space and functionality ( coal, ash, water, shed): a. The upper 4 bays can be used by engines entering via the turntable, before going through the post-run cycle. b. The lower 5 bays can all be entered or exitted directly. The top track cannot exit directly unless it uses the table. c. There is space for ash wagon storage (spur to the W of the turntable). d. Space for a sand van, dropped tenders etc is available (headshunt opposite Bay 5). e. Beyond this short headshunt is room for a sand drier, oil tanks and an oil filling area. f. Oil tankers can sit on the same loop. Back in my ISO container in Afghan, with my pieces of paper on the floor, I tried so many permutations to get an authentic length coal ramp, and could not do it satisfactorily. So I have gone the other way and now have an "over length" ramp, which is currently planned to be non functional. That doesn't mean that I won't in future power it up and have the occaisional 0-6-0 puffing up and down it with some LOCO coal wagons. Perhaps I have just foiund a role for MIB Snr's Wills/Triang 94XX........................ I have yet to do the final measurements, but the depth in 99% of the layout does not exceed 1000mm, for reach purposes. Hornby's Law number 3: " If it's going to de-rail,it will do where you can't get to it." All track is Code 100 ( gasp horror silence) and operation is Old School DC. So it'll be a couple of "stud and pen" boards with section power feeds. One for the Shed, one for the brewery and warehouse and another for the fiddle yard. Will it be mobile? Will you see this at a show - "no". Making this permanent will be hard enough for me. I struggle with woodwork, depsite having the coordination and skills to work in metal.

There are upsides to rainy days like yesterday. I dragged a set-track box or two down from the loft and re-planned the Fiddle Yards and shed area and the side section which contains the brewery and the furniture warehouse. Two reasons for doing this: 1. The old shed didn't really flow well in terms of activites: in, coal, drop fire, water, shed. 2. The photos and measurements from the first session like this have all disappeared(!) I have 2 laptops and a PC and could not find the photos on either. I know I could have done this with Templot etc, but I have the time and space to do it in 3d temporarily. TT in the main yard is the Heljan one, and in the fiddle yard, it is the venerable Horrnby item. I will now try and do a track plan to post up. But to put these photos in perspective: A 4 track mainline (2 up 2 down) with a semi scenic'd fiddle yard. Across the long scenic side, beyond the 4 mainlines is the main shed, with coal drop, oil fill point, 6 road shed and turntable, The ramp to the coal drop acts as a scenic break behind the yard backscene and is a non functioning dummy. Along the short side to the West (left), beyond the mainlines again, is a brewery and furniture warehouse. The Shed is fed with traffic from the fiddle yard, and the brewery and warehouse from the other side of the fiddle yard. The scenic mainline has no pointwork: all cross overs from Up to Down and Mains to Reliefs are in the yard.

And Mogul it shall be. OOC's 4 x 43XX Class Moguls in this period were all from the same small 9300 series, which means they were unique among the plethora of GW 2-6-0s. They carried from new, glazed side windows. Those lower numbered Moguls which received side windows, only got them in their BR days. The 93XX numbered engines were the last of the 43XX class to be built when they left Swindon in 1932. The 93XXs also escaped the gas axe or donation of wheels and motion to the Granges, as happened to many older 43XXs. So they were very young, alive and well in the late 1940s. .......and also over due a trip to Swindon or Wolverhampton by the time when repaints were done in black. But my quandry for tonight, is whether the 93xx numbered engines then lost their cab-side windows when they were painted black. Halls built in WW2 were turned out with no side windows and black painted. Others received shutters for side windows. So my first thoughts were to cut side windows into the Mainline model and renumber it as one of the OOC 93XX engines. Or do I cut the windows in and then re-plate them ( ie leave them un-cut?) I have plenty of time to ponder this, and it is not the most pressing worry in the World tonight. I hope you are all happy and healthy, and have enjoyed this scorching hot August weekend. Bank Holiday next week, then English schools go back, then it's Guy Fawkes and HoHoHo....................

The charm of diptheria, smallpox, ricketts and children up chimneys.............

Cue Lesley Ash and Paul Weller photos........................................ "This is The Modern World..........." "Wish I could be like David Watts.........." and most poigniantly........ "Hope I die before I get old.................."

All the way from The Lizzard comes the final missing part for Project BLACK HALL: Need to do some fettling on the connectivity because the Hornby and Bachmann systems are not compatable in any way. This would be a good time to draw them a little more close together and fit a fall plate at the same time. Intital thoughts are to retain the Bachmann metal bar out of the engine, but shorten it and bond a Hornby style "3/4" circle on made out of 1mm thick styrene sheet. The packaging will need a trim too - the tender is a very snug fit to the point where the brake handle is being bent.

Sorry - I did have pedantic mode off yesterday and didn't put enough detail in my reply to "bound" the handrails issue. I was of course referring to late non modified halls such as 6944 which has just rolled into my workshop, hence why I knew it was an L and not a single or 2 singles. Modified Halls do indeed run 2 singles in an L shape. So three types of handrail on a class - which LNER fans say that Swindon's finest all look the same?????

It's not two rails in front of the cab window on a later Hall - it's one "L" shaped rail. Don't mean to be a MRJ pedant, but if we are going to this level of detail............

Thanks. The Cape Yard sidings shot is a cracker.

Thanks Graham. That is a good steer.

The Lyons shed book lists a number of "Austerity" WD 2-8-0s at Oak Oak in Dec 1947. If the GWR didn't buy any, what were they doing there? If they were in GW use, what company/ownership branding did they carry? Thanks in advance.

Castle, Thanks for the input. I see your logic, but one place where Moguls were scarce was Old Oak Common according to the Dec 47 survey. Only 4x Moguls and 2x 2251s. I already have sufficient of these to cover a realistic portion sub-shedded at North Cranford. OOC records of Dec 47 show a plethora of 4-6-0s, 2-8-0s and 0-6-PTs for obvious reasons. But very little of stuff "inbetween" in terms of size. But a Mogul is a good multi purpose workhorse, and would look equally at home on a ballasting train as it would on an all stations stopper to Oxford.

More news.......... with the possibility of a trip to sandy places about to become a reality, I have promised myself that distraction and evenings' amusement will be had in the form of planning for, and purchasing for "North Cranford Shed Number 2" the mused photo plank/test track and inglenook. As well as functioning as a catwalk and test bed, it is also a dress rehearsal for the building of North Cranford, and thus will be the basis of experimentation and learning: ballasting was not so great on the Cabinet soldering wires will be learnt ( I am awsome with a MIG welder and oxy-acetylene - why can't I solder??????) fitting electric points will be tried and mastered printable buildings will be attempted What I have in mind will be cheap as I already have the track and point motors for the main North Cranford. I think I will only need to purchase some ballast, some printable buildings and a Peco Ash pit.......... Any figures will be re-used on the main build later as well - I already have plenty of shed crew. And to reward myself for being very patient with our Transatlantic cousins, (which really does take some doing out in the desert) I am looking for one final unlined engine to be finished also in black. Suggestions welcome. Currently thinking about another ROD or a Mogul............ I hope you are all well and happy. Where's my passport gone?

So, news time. Project BLACK HALL is underway. The cab has been stripped out (side windows in bin, rail and footplate with crew removed). Red lamps ( on a late BR????) in the parts box. Plates have arrived from Fox. Name plates will stay in the bag in the engine packaging because I will only require the numbers. 6944 was like her sisters of the same build Lot, all built without names. Haberfield Hall, part of my roster as an oil burner, (with its name and new oil burning number) was named just after Flodborough Hall so there is a factual inaccuraccy if I run 6944 un- named in black (as she was built). But the photo (circa 1946/7) which Coachman unearthed of 6944 in black with a lined green tender was too stimulating to ignore. So Rule 1 applies in a Dr Who /time travelling manner. The Hawksworth tender for "Guild Hall" is already on Ebay as mentioned last night A late non "Modified" Hall would have run out of Swindon with a Collett tender in black, and that's what I will recreate, tempting as it may be to have a black engine with a green lined tender, as per the photo. Perhaps I may turn the tender out in green one day. 6944 would have been a visitor to London during my timeframe, so I will attempt to chop out the plastic full bunker and refit and almost empty one, as befits a visitor to North Cranford shed, or passing through, slowing for Paddington. Crew need a repaint as their overalls look a little "Village People". Fireman looks to have a clutch purse in his hand - he'll come out in more ways than one, and be replaced with either a Hornby 'working hard' fireman with a shovel, or a Dapol "fireman resting on his shovel' , which would be more appropriate on a visiting engine just getting in.

I have no idea how the (above) picture of IKB in the cabinet has attached as a thumbnail, and I also have no idea how to get rid of it. But as it's IKB, I'll leave it be.

Dapol County of Stafford became County of Middlesex as planned a few posts ago changes to cab sides, name plates and bufferbeam. The driver's side name plate on a 1000 class is enormous because it has a large rectangular plinth. Mine came from Fox in black to match the name section, so I had to trim the plinth off rather than painting it and then lining it with transfers. The two 61XXs got rebranded, and their tank top shovels painted. As I was ordering Modelmaster Jackson Evans numbers for 3803, and another, I shared the postage price by buying a set for 6110. I will continue this practice when I buy plates/numbers in the future as it does drop the overall cost, and brass plates always look better, even on a grubby unloved unlined engine like 3803 will become when weathered (the plate is "square" - another trick of the camera)