MPR

No, it’s much less obtrusive than copydex. I have some Airfix figures which have been modified by removing the base, the merest hint of the tacky wax is enough to keep the figure upright - but I would not rely on it to keep the figure in place if the board was picked up!

The photograph that I am using as reference is by Peter Gray - it was reproduced in “West Country Branch lines - A Colour Portfolio” - and shows 9487 on an up three coach local in April 1960, just north of Torre. The working doesn't quite match with the 1957 details in "Operation Torbay," which is all that I have at present by the way of data. (The caption says these were the 8.00am Kingswear-Manchester coaches). Formation is 1) maroon ex-LMS TK? steel sided, seven compartments 2) maroon BR Mk1 CK, 3) maroon BR Mk1 BSK. It is the diagram of the first vehicle that I am trying to confirm.

A pleasant diversion has been had recently spending a good few hours poring over "Operation Torbay" and trying to come up with a series of moves through Torre for the operating sequence. As ever, it is not until you really look closely that you start to get a decent understanding of what is actually going on. I copied the up and down workings information and appended the carriage workings pertinent to each train, creating a spreadsheet to cover a weekday in early 1957. I reached 93 movements through the station over 24 hours. A few things stood out to me. 1) There was an enormous quantity of formations in use on any given day. I counted 65 - ranging from a single van up to one of the (2x) 10 coach sets reserved for the Torbay Express. 2) The average train was relatively short (on weekdays!) For the passenger/parcels movement 4 movements were with one carriage/van 2 moves with two carriages 3 moves with three carriages 27 moves with four carriages 15 moves with five carriages 10 moves with six carriages 4 with seven carriages 8 with eight carriages 7 with nine carriages 3 with ten carriages 1 with eleven carriages I built the fiddle yards with limited capacity - just one express locomotive and 3 carriages. I am now thinking of extending slightly to capture 4/5 carriages, but even then, I am still facing a large carriage building programme to get even half way there! 3) There must be some movements that are missing - light engine moves for the Kingswear - Gasworks coal trains - possibly others? 4) Most photos that I have access to are on summer weekends. So, my questions are: a) What don't I know? To what extent are the loads typical, or are they minima/maxima? (short formations are useful to me!) b) What is missing? c) What is misleading? For locos, it is clear that 14xx/pannier/large prairie/Castle/Hall are going to cover most of my needs (with small prairie/Grange/King workings too) In terms of selection of coaches, the corridor stock can be relatively easily sort-of represented, drawing mostly from modified RTR, but the non-corridor stock is less familiar. Would any Mk1 suburbans have reached the branch at this point? Also, what about LMS stock? Seems to be a smattering of Period II/III coaches - but definitely not my area of expertise! Any help suggestion or correction would be appreciated!

Prairie patch-up part 4. The pony truck with tubular bearing - this is too long and will need to be filed down a little to give some additional play for the wheelsets - I will reseat it entirely square at the same time (and probably drill an oil hole too). As mentioned in the previous post, I won't go any further in terms of detailing as I expect to replace the whole thing at a later date. Next, I fitted the driving wheels. These were Ultrascales, so they didn't need any of the preparation I would normally do with Gibsons, which reward care in rounding and slightly tapering the first 0.5mm of the axles and gentle removal of a similar amount of material at the rear entry to the wheels - this enables you to avoid gouging out the bore of the wheels, as the axle is inside and well aligned before it is an interference fit with the wheel. I did prepare the wheels for crankpins at this point, countersinking the rear a little and ensuring that the screws fitted well. Step-by-step 1) Fit both wheels to the axle 2) Check back to back and that wheels are equally pressed in. 3) Remove one wheel. 4) Clean axle and wheel bore with IPA-moistened cotton bud and allow to dry. 5) Mount and quarter-press wheel in axle. 6) Apply a drop of Loctite 222 thread-lock with a length of wire and draw around interface between wheel and axle. 7) Press wheel home, rotating as you go, whilst checking back-back. 8) Remove excess Loctite from back and front with dry cotton bud and put to one side to cure. 9) Mark axle with indelible black marker - we will not want this one to move again. The rest of the assembly can now be completed. I used some Gibson 1/8" washers to eliminate side play on the front (driven) axle) and to reduce it on the other two. The pick up block was modified a little - I removed the existing pick-ups (there is room for top acting ones to be mounted on the chassis block later) and chamfered the places where the block touches the axle washers on reassembly - the washers will only rub on the metal chassis block after this. Once I was happy with the fit, the driven (front) axle was completely assembled , first the washers, then the gear, then the second group of washers. Lastly, the axle and wheel were cleaned and the second wheel permanently fitted with Loctite as before. The quartering was done by eye - easy in this case as the design of the chassis allows the whole assembly to be dropped out. Coupling rods were roughly weathered in the last century - another thing to address! Leading axle The whole assembly - ready to set up the quartering on the middle and rear wheelsets. Fortunately, both the motor and cylinder assemblies are easily removable. I plan to complete the basic chassis as if it was an inside cylinder locomotive first, and only then replace the middle and leading crankpin bearings to accommodate the connecting rod and clearance to the slide bars respectively.

The next step was to prepare the pony truck to take standard 2mm diameter axles. I thought that this would be relatively straightforward - I planned to (misuse) a drill bit to gently grate away the material in the moulded clips. Unfortunately, the aged plastic did not agree and promptly snapped! I removed the remnants of the two clips, then gently opened up the semi-cylindrical slot with a round needle file. I then cut a length of 2mm ID tube to act as a full width bearing - this was glued into the slot, giving a decent join between the two pieces. Unlike a pair of standard bearings, there was no possibility of misalignment, nor did I need any packing washers to accommodate the P4 wheelsets - I simply cut the tube to the correct length. I also took the opportunity to remove the NEM coupling box with a razor saw. This left a rather denuded pony truck - I have gone no further for now but may either buy the Brassmasters part when it goes on sale, or more likely, modify spare parts from the Finney kit when I get round to building it. This is a "layout loco" only! Gibson wheelsets tried in place before the modifications. The radial truck was much easier to convert - it is much more robust. I simply drilled it 2mm and added some spacing washers to keep the wheels where they should be.

I started by dismantling the locomotive into an old ice cream tub - to make sure I didn’t lose any of the screws and fittings. The wheel set just drops out and careful levering of the crank pins with a screwdriver liberated the coupling and connecting rods, which are to be reused. A little more violence was meted out to the driven wheel, and the main gear wheel was slid off, thankfully in one piece. The pony and rear radial truck wheels were also removed at this time. All the old wheels were discarded - they are very crude indeed.

With another exhibition coming up, it’s about time that I got on and built some more stock! Firstly, a large prairie. In the 1950s, Newton Abbot had a sizeable allocation of them for banking and local services - I already have a Martin Finney kit in the pile. For now though, I am repurposing an original Airfix RTR prairie that I bought new when I was a teenager and which I resprayed and lightly detailed a couple of years later. This is a good candidate for a first P4 model - they can be had for very little money, have robust (if rather crude) mechanisms and take 1/8” axles. I had bought a full set of Gibsons for it, but substituted some Ultrascale driving wheels I had in stock to make life easier. I kept the Gibson crank pins and washers though. I have also bought a new MF smoke box door to get rid of the most offensive original detail. The chimney and other body detailing will have to wait for now.

Wasn’t there a (vetoed) proposal in the 1930s to give them early Broad gauge names?

It is now completed and in steam at the ESR - it arrived unrestored in Jan 2020. First moves 11th Feb 2023. https://youtu.be/KV2g8ZFgemA The Cranmore team are working on 4247 next - also destined for the DSR.

Wheel diameter is the same, but there was a change to the design from crank-on-spoke to crank-between-spoke. The wheel spacings are the same, but the articulation between the rods was forward of the middle wheel on Stars and early Castles, rearward later. (To be fair components did move around between locos, though).

Apart from the driving wheels, the coupling rods, the front frame extensions, the inside and outside cylinders and the cab… Great Western engines were famous for their standardisation, but the standards did evolve over the years. A post-war Castle is far removed from even an Abbey-series Star. It would probably be better to clothe up the spare std.1 boiler to look like a std.8 and restore 7027 with that. But that begs another question.

Yes - there is a photograph of 2805 at Kingswear on 2nd Oct 1958/ J R Besley in the Bradford Barton album Great Western Steam in the West Country (p51). I've also seen an image of 2881 at Paignton on a train of tank wagons on 21st Sep 1951/ D J Frost in “British Railways Past and Present Special The Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway” by P W Gray (p.49) which I assume came from the storage depot on the Brixham branch. Also, it was not unusual for 28/38xx to be seen on passenger trains on the branch in summer.

The Ultrascale economy packs are much cheaper if you can reuse the gears and provide your own contacts.

ID3 has them too (on the production car)

Looks like 1501 at least was delivered with no crest.

Tetraethyl lead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead

It appears to have been regauged to 4'1.5" on its holiday in Leeds, with inevitably crunchy effects to ride quality as it passed through Callow Lane.

If you aren't in hurry, Ultrascale do replacement (brass) gears of very high quality. I bought some 3D printed ones off Ebay which seem ok for now. They are completely different from the later Bachmann chassis. https://www.ultrascale.uk/eshop/products/view/cat015/431 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224920817330?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item345e534eb2:g:w3UAAOSwxDlh4E5Q&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA0Cf69EYr1k23ID%2BsFKpk3ivHsl3nEuMddysrD1z5mNcQ63GKmjgoS9eXJMOJbladBZ8uEJL3a%2FQE08Mq2HUrv6Ubha%2FiPJ8jHh26DT7wLFcUAAT9m%2BonGtpVjeURn9h288dy7Xu6WSmEhKUuPKF%2FOMWEV4XsHoNeLUOAaBlmtIV12RrSICd3kp6oTjOE9j6MctI6N5WFHBl5psCGncFb%2B7mXyJOeNVwE3Q6YSOgUBxXlGQgcS4vvRfpRSiME1guEa%2FcX96UzppREA%2BVx0G2a9oQ%3D|tkp%3ABFBMiIaTw5Zg

This video gives a better idea of what a structural battery pack looks like - the batteries remain in the floor, but are in a much stiffer structure. The way the body is built is very different to what has gone before and is itself radically stiffer and simpler.

Some resources: https://www.phoenix-paints.co.uk/products/steam-loco-colours http://www.bwwmrc.co.uk/paint.shtml https://howesmodels.co.uk/product-category/model-railway/railmatch-paint/railmatch-enamel-paint/ There was a very dark blue used very early, before the standard BR blue was established.

If I’ve got this right, they can’t use the standard 1 boiler they already have because it won’t make enough steam in a 47xx at 60mph on the mainline, but they can use the same boiler in a 75mph express passenger locomotive…

If you can allow a little more width at the FY end, how about a balloon loop(s)? This could be hinged longitudinally if required. This would remove train handling entirely.

The chimney/safety valve cover/cab roof changes to the mainline Kings are minor, cosmetic and fairly easily reversible in a few hours when required. This is a whole order of magnitude different.

Statement from GWS: https://didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/article.php/519/7027-thornbury-castle

I visited Cowley twice in the late 1980s and there was still a press shop in operation at that time.