John_Hughes

Thanks to all for their very helpful comments. First of all, I know about the Gibson's rods and have used them extensively in the past; I set them up on my Hobby Holidays jigs, and they do work well, although I find them a bit fussy. But they can't - for example - handle GWR-style fish-belly coupling rods, and their height means that they don't work for all prototypes, especially for some of the more elegant (and skimpy!) Victorian designs. The comments about the Shapeways 'steel' are exactly what I wanted to know about that material, and effectively rule it out. Shame, but there you go, and at least I now know. The Shapeways brass still seems a possibility for rods where the Gibson ones aren't quite right, so I may give it a whirl on something where the rods don't need to be visible steel - a Class 03 with painted rods, for instance. Thanks again to all! Much appreciated!

Shapeways warn against using their steel material for finger-rings as the production system may (will?) result in unpredictable shrinkage of the final item. Has anyone experienced this? I'm considering having some 4mm coupling rods 3D printed, and steel would be the obvious material to use, but dimensional stability is clearly vital. Brass would also work, and wouldn't have that difficulty, but it wouldn't look like steel! Or are there any other thoughts that I should build into my mullings before I put mouse to screen? Engineering plasic, perhaps?

A decent edition again, but the thought that I might outlive MRJ is a little worrying. Though the alternative doesn't sound good either, come to think of it.

The red and green lights on pedestrian crossings - the pedestrian ones, not the associated traffic ones - are, I understand, advisory and not compulsory - in the UK. anyway. On the Continent and in North America, the rules are very different.

Complete with Bishop / Fireman! Lovely!

Right, that looks fairly straightforward, so I'll see if I can rough up a quick 3D drawing some time today.

That looks like an interesting little project; if you have the details of the sleepers (dimension, no. of types, etc) I might be able to find the time to create the necessary 3D files.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with 20th Century printing technology, at least in terms of the quality of reproduction that it can offer, and I have several gorgeous books printed fifty or more years ago to prove it. (That's not to say that it doesn’t come with other disadvantages, but then so does every other technology). Colour reproduction really is in the eye of the beholder; as someone who spent a happy hour or two drooling over Black Lion Crossing in Manchester a couple of years ago, I can only say that the pictures looked fine to me. I don’t think that I’ve seen Farringdon in the flesh, so can’t comment. Proof-reading, as always, is something else; who but MRJ would make the same GWR vehicle simultaneously a Bloater and a Boater? But then I spend a lot of my life proof-reading stuff, and it somehow gets to me.

It turned up on my doormat yesterday too; and yes, another good edition. The ERG buildings caught my eye almost at once. Clearly they were pretty expensive (if the author's father was really taking home a tenner a week at the time then for a working man he was doing pretty well, I'd have thought) but with the exception of that rather strange tree in one garden they look absolutely smashing. I wish I had a few of them!

The lovely music is a reference to the Breton legend of Ker Is (the precise Breton equivalent of the Welsh tale of Cantre'r Gwaelod, the 'Bottom Hundred') supposedly engulfed by the sea, not by fire; legend claims that the bells of the sunken cathedral can still be heard tolling. I spent much of yesterday evening watching the Le Figaro website, which was running live video the whole time. Truly dreadful; and yet Hope Cometh in the Morning, as the psalmist said.

Canada changed all its measurements from Imperial to Metric over the course of a single weekend back in the 70s, without too many problems. though many visiting Americans who thought that the urban speed limit in Canada was 50mph got a nasty shock when they were stopped by the police for speeding.

The Comet chassis solution is to treat the driving axles as a unit which can pivot up and down, while the rear axle has almost no vertical play at all. Theoretically I can see all sorts of problems with this, but it seems to work pretty well in practice.

Wow, that's really something! And thanks for the 'egg' tip!

Immersion in an egg? I've not heard of that before - can you please expand? Smashing modelling, but that goes without saying!

'Yn Barod Etto' (the orthography's not the same as in modern Welsh) means 'ready again'. Strange!

Not quite actual mixed gauge, but I understand that the Vale of Rheidol and the Cambrian line in Aberystwyth have their - quite separate - Llanbadarn level crossings interlocked so that only one of them at a time can be set against road traffic. Presumably this is to prevent traffic which has been held up at one crossing from backing up and blocking the other.

W S Gilbert put it even better in Iolanthe: The House of Lords throughout the war Did nothing in particular And did it very well.

There are some places in Amsterdam - sorry, I don't have pictures - where the point blades are a couple of tram-lengths away from the traffic lights controlling a junction, so that if two trams are both waiting for the lights to change they will have already pre-selected the routes they will follow. Sorry, well off the OP's original quesion!

The Vale of Rheidol's running too - Red Timetable every day to the end of the month.

Gantlet track (yes, I know about the spelling, but I've been told that this is the correct form, though I don't have a clue why!) is probably more common on tram formations than anywhere else. This example is in Lisbon, though there's some much nearer home on the Croydon Tramlink:

Remember that the kit for Lion is for the loco in its Thunderbolt - ie modern - condition. The originals (named Lion and Tiger, and intended as 'luggage engines' - presumably what passed for fast goods back then) apparently didn't have that pretty haycock fitting over the firebox. I built one of these kits for a mate years ago, when they were new; it worked out quite well, as I recall.

Either converted from a tender loco or based on a tender loco design, with the additional carrying wheels inserted to reduce the axle weight; Dennis Allenden built a fine model of something similar many years ago. Gorgeous photo!

An early one and at first glance a corker yet again.

Earl and Countess on the Welshpool and Llanfair were duly converted to LH drive, but the reversing lever on both stayed on the right, as if the fireman didn't already have quite enough to do.

Thanks, and to everyone else who's replied. I tend to assume that I'll need triple the amount of material that things are scratched from to be sure of getting enough of them right, a proportion that I learned from Mr. Wurmser (Alfred, I think?) back in the 50s, when he created all sorts of animated stuff for the telly long before it could be done digitally. I've not been out to the workshop for a couple of days (back trouble again, sadly) but I hope to have a go before the end of the week.