dibber25

The coppered chimney cap on 1638 will be because there is a photograph of it with copper cap and because, as it's a fictitious livery, it was decided that those who wanted GWR green would want the full GWR effect. It is very simple to paint it black - much easier than painting a black one 'copper'. I seem to recall a discussion of the subject a long time ago, when we first discussed if we should do the preserved livery at all. We decided to go with GWR and NCB so that we'd have two 'fictitious' green ones for those who wanted something other than the Henry Ford option. As far as the separate bunker top is concerned, I'm told there are no detail variations in the bunker. Therefore I suspect the top of the bunker being separate is a tooling necessity because otherwise the undercut of the bunker would have made it impossible to extract the body from the mould. (CJL)

I'm sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the service you have received. I would respectfully ask all customers to please be patient. (I, too, have 16XXs on order and have been debited but not yet received them). We are in a pandemic, Kernow staff exhausted themselves unloading a truck on Monday and the models have only been in the warehouse for four days! There are different staff dealing with daily orders, and others dealing with back orders, hence the crossover where some customers receive theirs before others. I ask again, please be patient. (CJL)

There's more die-cast than plastic in this model. The body is die-cast but the alternative detail parts have to be in plastic. (CJL)

The split line on the bunker rear is a join between a plastic and a cast metal part.It can be concealed by careful placing of the supplied fire-irons. (CJL)

Some Thames Valley bus routes terminated at Windsor & Eton Central and, once they had turned, waited under the roof but it wasn't a bus station as such. Picture attached, probably taken when I was living in Windsor 1973-7. Nice little group of Bristol Lodekkas. Most of the time that I knew it, the clock was without hands. I think Tussaud's put the hands back when they restored the station for Royalty & Railways. After that exhibition closed it was bodged into the awful shopping arcade that it is now. I don't know whether the TV programme made the point but the station was a gift from the GWR to Queen Victoria for her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. She asked them to built the second glass roof, over the Royal part of the station "to keep my soldiers dry". (CJL)

I don't know for certain that he was there, but he writes with the authority of someone who knew the railways of East Anglia first-hand. There is, of course, the tendency for those who were steeped in the Big Four to be less thorough about anything BR. That and/or colour-blindness could cause one to describe BR reds as 'brown'. If, as the book suggests, this is the carriage that appears in The Titfield Thunderbolt, it got a studio repaint in Monkton Combe station yard - but did they just paint the raised woodwork grey and leave the panels in carmine? (CJL)

On page 125 of Peter Paye's book on the Tollesbury branch ( ISBN 0-86093-327-X) there's a black and white photo of E60462 ex-works on 19 September 1950. I guess that's the one you're referring to. It looks to me very much like it is in all-over carmine ('blood') BUT the caption says "as repainted brown and relettered by British Railways, pictured on the light railway". Peter Paye is likely to have known and seen this first-hand so you should probably trust his caption rather more than my impression. If it's any consolation, I have a W&U bogie coach, and mine is painted carmine. (CJL)

I've never seen the GWR green 1638 model - one of my colleagues must have the livery sample. I did have the NCB green version for a while but that required some livery tweaks before production. It's worth noting that, with 22 versions to choose from, some numbers/variants are in VERY limited quantities, so if you are wanting a specific number/livery its worth getting your order in quickly. (CJL)

I have been advised that the 16XXs have arrived at Kernow MRC. However, because they were delivered on a truck with no tail lift, the eight pallets had to be unpacked by hand and Kernow staff are now more than a little exhausted. Please, therefore, don't go asking about the progress of your order any time soon. Despatch will start once the team have had a chance to recover. In the meantime, fewer enquiries will ensure a faster recovery. (CJL)

The E1 project will be with Rapido, and the diesel shunters are with Heljan. The Class 48 is merely a bolt-on to a Heljan Class 47 project. Progress of projects has more to do with what the Model Rail editorial team can handle and at present, we have been working from home since last March and have been one experienced person short (in a team of three and a half) since November. I don't expect any E1 progress in the immediate future. (CJL)

Would it be fair to say that the WR reverted to black backgrounds for name and numberplates at the earliest opportunity? It always seems that way! I recall seeing a 'Hall' (Dumbleton, I think) at Reading in the mid-1960s and thinking how odd it was. I think it was the only red plate I ever saw and I can't now remember what tender emblem it had. Black name plates looked so much more classy on GWR locos, but red was 'right' on Southern ones. (CJL)

Wasn't intending to condemn an entire programme but I do think that something which tells how a structure was erected should tell it correctly. (CJL)

It's just the way Kernow's system validates your card. (CJL)

I know one local for whom 'not all that chuffed' would be an understatement. In the annals of international lunacy, holding a G7 summit in Carbis Bay must rank at the top of the list. I keep visualising Biden lugging his suitcase up three flights of stairs (there are no elevators in that hotel) and all those stretched limos grounding on the steep slope and sharp bend that coincide right on the bridge over the railway! I suppose the one road in and out is good for security but then a railway goes right past the windows. (CJL)

I know the question was specifically about locos, but, large amounts of USATC rolling stock were sent as kits to the UK and assembled here before going to Europe and North Africa in WW2. Some also ran in the UK and I have photographs which show freightcars standing on 4th rail electrified tracks which suggests assembly somewhere on the London Transport system. The vehicles included bogie flatcars , tank wagons and four-wheel and boxcars as well as some four-wheel tool vans, one of which I saw on a preserved railway (Market Bosworth?) some years ago. There were HO scale models in the Klein Modellbahn range but I don't know if they are still available. (CJL)

Not at present. (CJL)

Don't worry about it. Doing your hobby for a job means that its pretty much 24/7. I've had an easy time, in some respects, having been pretty much locked down since last March. But there were no weekend exhibitions or trips to preserved railways so its 'swings and roundabouts'. I feel that I should be able to answer routine questions like this but I was not closely involved in the 16XX project so I can only work from the sample models I have here. Taking the 16xx apart doesn't reveal very much because there's a big metal casting over the mechanism. (CJL)

There. Now I've had to interrupt a guy's pancakes and maple syrup to get an answer from the 'horses mouth'. !! Thanks, Bill. (CJL)

The answer to that is, No. The person who commissioned the 16XX is no longer at Model Rail. The only person who will know is the designer in the USA and I will attempt to contact him for confirmation. I have had the body off a 16XX but the motor is completely concealed by the metal weight casting. (CJL)

I'm not going to give a SPECIFIC answer to something I PERSONALLY cannot be CERTAIN about. I have had the top off a 16XX but I'm embarrassed to admit that I would not know how to recognise what is or is not a coreless motor. Most motors in ready-to-run locos, these days, are a sealed metal cylinder (with flat sides). I'm old fashioned and used to counting the poles on an open-frame motor after marking one of them with a felt pen so I know where I started. What I can't do is ruin a model by breaking open the motor, so if the instructions don't say whether or not its coreless, I'm not going to personally stick my neck out. Especially here on RMweb where I need to remind everyone that I post on here as Chris Leigh and NOT as Model Rail magazine. In my previous post I quoted the instruction sheet (which I did not write this time, although I did write the instruction booklet for the J70). (CJL)

Isn't it part of Cardiff Central's parcels office that was rebuilt at Sir William McAlpine's place in Henley? One of several massive pieces of railway architecture that he saved. (CJL)

Please can I ask everyone to be patient. There will (I hope!) be a lot of orders to be dealt with and very difficult circumstances with the pandemic and a small and scattered workforce. We at Model Rail would like to publicly thank Kernow MRC staff for handling the distribution of our exclusive models so competently. (CJL)

Yes, from memory of reading L.T.C. Rolt's biography of Brunel MANY years ago, they were floated out into position and then successively jacked up a little at a time as the piers were built up underneath them. The pier in the middle, of course, had to be built onto the river bed and required a structure (was it called a caisson?) to be sunk onto the rock footing and pumped out so that the stonework could be built on the one and only bit of suitable rock that they had been able to find. Was any of that mentioned on this programme? I once helped to write the questions for a Mastermind specialist subject "The Life & works of IK Brunel" so maybe I studied more thoroughly than most, so I tend to think this is stuff that everyone who writes/broadcasts about Brunel should know, but maybe not? (CJL)

Didn't watch it but if what I hear about the account of building the Royal Albert Bridge is true then it falls woefully short on accurate historical research. The spans were not 'winched' into position. I doubt there were winches in existence capable of lifting them. The actual means by which they were positioned is far more interesting and very easy to find out by reading any Brunel biography. More invented TV history. (CJL)