martin_wynne

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Hythe:

Hi Ron, When using 1mm flangeways it is better to use 16.2mm track gauge (00-SF) for that reason. The check span would then be 14.2mm, and wheels at 14.25mm BTB would run through, although the minimum normally recommended for 00-SF is 14.3mm BTB. Current production of RTR models tends to be 14.4mm BTB in accordance with the NMRA requirements, as standards improve. regards, Martin.

Hi Gordon, An alternative is to tap in a little way a row of 1" veneer pins along the rail or centre-line*. You can tear away the template if you have another copy and don't need it again, or lift it carefully over the lost-heads on the pins. Then you don't need to drill holes, draw a line between them, or try to see it through the glue. Just push the edge of the cork against the pins, and pull them out when set. There will be a small gap between the cork strips, but it is easily lost in the ballasting later. *Templot can also print the cess lines or trackbed edges if preferred (geometry > trackbed edges > menu items). regards, Martin.

Next one - this won't last long:

Ayr

Hi Ron, ??? By default Templot sets the timbering on 00 gauge templates (00-BF, 00-SF, 00-D0GAF) to 8ft long (32mm) to match the BRMSB standard for 00 gauge track. Did you change the setting? The timbering is matching the templates in the pics and looks ok to me. regards, Martin.

Hi Duncan, I suggest you choose 00-BF for your first go at handbuilt track. Most handbuilt track in 4mm/ft scale uses code 75 bullhead rail. Or sometimes code 82 flat-bottom rail. There is no direct equivalent for Peco Code 75 flat-bottom rail, which is underscale in 4mm/ft scale (00 gauge). regards, Martin.

Hi Mike, The solution to using 1mm flangeways without needing to change the Back-to-Back is to use 16.2mm track gauge instead of 16.5mm. This is now well established as the 00-SF standard (also known as "EM minus 2"). There are several layouts on RMweb using 00-SF and almost everyone who has tried it has reported being delighted with the results. 1mm flangeways will give smoother running through the crossings (frogs) with Romford/Markits wheels because they are then fully supported on the wing rails and can't drop into the gap. The narrower flangeways also look much better. You can use Romford/Markits at 14.5mm BTB, and RTR models with 14.4mm BTB, exactly as supplied. There is no need to change them for 00-SF. (Don't use the C&L BTB gauge, which is 14.8mm) The track gauges for 00-SF which were formerly being supplied by Brian Tulley are now available from C&L, see: http://www.finescale.org.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=346_375_376&product_id=8776 http://www.finescale.org.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=346_375_376&product_id=8775 http://www.finescale.org.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=346_375_376&product_id=8777 00-SF has been around for over 40 years now, but has only become popular since the commercial track gauges have been available. regards, Martin.

Hi Ron, Have you made a conscious decision to use the DOGA-Fine standard rather than 00-SF? Or did you just fall into it because those are the gauges which C&L sell? The disadvantage with DOGA-Fine is that it requires all RTR wheels to be widened to 14.7mm Back-to-Back. Whereas with 00-SF wheels are left as supplied at 14.4mm Back-to-Back. Both provide the same smooth running with 1mm flangeways. DOGA-Fine is 16.5mm gauge, 00-SF is 16.2mm gauge. 00-SF gauge tools are now also available from C&L -- see: http://www.finescale.org.uk/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=49 Several layouts on RMweb are being built to the 00-SF standard, most notably Gordon's Eastwood Town: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/3422-eastwood-town-update/page-12&do=findComment&comment=240832 Most 00-SF users continue to use 16.5mm flexi-track for plain track, as it provides some gauge-widening for sharp curves. regards, Martin.

I have never legitimately worked a signal box under the correct authorisation. I hope I won't be thrown off Early Risers. Martin.

In the supermarket. Cans of tomato soup. "Buy one get one free". MW at the checkout: "Please can you tell me which of these is the one I've bought, and which one is free?" Checkout Operator: "It doesn't matter." MW: "It does to me. One of these is for my next-door neighbour and I need to know whether to charge him for it." CO: "Oh I see. Well this one is the free one. I'll mark it with this felt-tip pen so you know when you get home." CO 1, MW 0.

Bewdley Bridge this afternoon -- Telford's finest masonry bridge (1798): © Martin Wynne © Martin Wynne

Yesterday I sent a package by Royal Mail Special Delivery. It was very expensive -- it would actually have been cheaper to take it myself on the train. This is the signature offered on the web site as proof of delivery:

Mr Fred Bevan talking about Stourport industries in 1917 (as dictated to Stourport Civic Society 1992): ------------------------- "When I started work, I went home from school just after my thirteenth birthday and Dad came home and he says 'you aren't going back to school; I've got a job for you.' So I went to school in the morning and work in the afternoon. 56 hours was the standard week then and I had 5 shillings and 25 pence a week and I thought I kept the home, you know. That was at the Anglo Enamelware Limited, in the Time Office; There were two sections to the Anglo, the one in Mitton Street, the other in Baldwin Road. There was a whistle on top of the boiler; a cord or a wire used to go all the way from the time office to the top of the boiler, and if you pulled it it opened a valve and the whistle blew. This used to have to be blown at five to six in the morning, and at five to nine when it was breakfast time and at five to two when they came back from their dinner, then you worked to half past five. At that time the war was on, and for years and years they made water bottles for the army, literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them. They brought what we call tinkers down from the Black Country and the bottles were made by hand; they were covered in felt, had a cord on and a cork in the top, and they were enamelled. They started with just a piece of metal. Well it got to the point where they couldn't keep up with it by hand, and from America they brought a machine which made the tins: the bottle just went round a time or two and the bottom was on, whereas before it was actually knocked on, all the way round. Then about that time spot welding came in and they used to rivet the neck on. The war brought that about. But ordinarily, in everyday life, they used to make practically everything in enamel; and why the enamelware that they made was so good was that it didn't rust. They put a coat of what they used to call 'grey' underneath (so that it did not rust if chipped). They sent to India millions of rice bowls, and they found it was cheaper to build a factory in India and make the rice bowls out there. In the office where I worked, all along the mantelshelf was a row of enamel plates, and on them were all the different ships; They would have an order for so many thousand plates for HMS Ebenezer or whatever it was. There was always a very very big show in Hamburg in Germany and you know, there was no one to touch them at all. They've done enamelware that you'd think was porcelain. That was a real job that was; they could not afford to do that. I worked there about two years, then there came a vacancy tor a young lad up at the Foundry (the same people that were Kendricks at West Bromwich owned both the Anglo and the Foundry. The 'Baldwin' name never changed). I used to have to make the railway consignment notes out. At that time there were two railways - the London Midland & Scottish which had their headquarters in Mart Lane; that's where the boats ,were loaded. But everything for the Great Western, by goods, was col¬lected by Thomas Bantocks; they had the horses and the drays. I used to have to ring the station every morning and find out what stations were open that we could send to; this was the immediate aftermath of the war. They made more hinges, door hinges, at the foundry than all the rest of the firms in the world put together. From the station they used to bring pig iron bars, pick them up and drop them on a piece on the floor - there was a knack in 'dropping them on' - it would break the bars into pieces which was then put into the cupola and melted. If you got a Baldwin hinge, they never wear out, nobody could ever understand how the pin got in the middle. They made half the hinge, then they put the pin down inside and they covered the pin, with the finest camel hair brushes you could get , with whale oil, dipped them in sand so it stopped the iron; On the back of the hinge, so that it wouldn't stick, they used to use pitch, just dab it on. Then they put that half into a box and poured the box and made the other half - so the pin was in the middle. So really the whole thing was made by hand.And they made cores; that's how they put a hollow spout on a kettle. Different Parts of the country used different cast-iron saucepans. And they used to make maselines to do jam in and those were enamelled inside. They made quite a lot of , kitchens', with a brass tap in the front; you put it on the side of the hob (for hot water). When the war was on they made hand grenades; nearly every house in Stourport had got a foundry hand grenade; they used to blacklead them and polish them and put them on the side of the grate! If you go up and look in the old churchyard, you will see cast-iron grave stones that were made in the foundry. And Mr Isaac Wedley's brother, Mr Bill Wedley, he used to do all the odd work and he made the church door hinges - they would be 6-8 feet long, all scroll,you know. Another thing they used to make, cast iron boot scrapers: one of those was always outside the door. They invented, and they are used to this day, skew-butts, lifting hinges. Incidentally, the foundry was the first place to be lit by gas. They used tons and tons of sand, and that came from Masons sandhole up by Oldington; a man used to pull it down the canal - he'd got a padded rope round him and off we go, he'd bring it down to the foundry. And that was the reason that the tunnel is under Foundry street. They filled the barrows and wheeled them up and under and into the foundry. There was also another went under Worcester Street into the part where they did the enamelling. Stourport was a marvellously industrial place: we had the vinegar Works, the Gas Works where I used to go with Dad to fetch the tar to caulk the seams of the floating bandstand, and there was the Textile over the Stour Bridge. The Tannery was a real going concern; there was the Anglo and the Foundry, and Baldwins at Wilden. And Worths carpets. As I say, I left school at 13. Never once did it ever enter your head or crop up that you hadn't got a job to go to; if you were out of work, you wanted to to be out of work. That's gone."

Another case of boat theft on Skye:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29379678

Hi Peter, Templot runs fine on a Mac using Codeweavers Crossover -- it doesn't need a copy of Windows. See: https://www.codeweavers.com/products/ Lots of Mac users are running Templot this way. regards, Martin.

© Copyright Alan Walker and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Hi Cav, It would look better (and run better) with a longer transition zone between the front gentle curve and the sharp end curve on the right. Likewise on the left if the junction is visible. See: http://rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=652671#p652671 Martin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-29219727

If you leave at 9.45pm can you return at 10pm? Or do you have to wait the full 75 minutes?

A new school curriculum starts this week: Pupils aged five to seven will be expected to "understand what algorithms are" and to "create and debug simple programs". I don't know about the 5-year-olds but I suspect a few teachers are going to struggle with that. I have a few knotty problems in Templot, so I will be calling round at the local Infants School for some advice on how to solve them using toilet roll centres and plasticene. Martin.

There isn't a "mess". It is very sensible for RTR models to use an underscale track gauge, so that RTR wheel profiles and running gear can be fitted within a scale-width model, and sharp curves be used. No-one suggests that 4ft-1.5in gauge RTR rolling-stock is a mess -- nowadays most of it is hailed as very fine models. So why would 4mm/ft scale 4ft-1.5in gauge track for it to run on be a mess? It looks a mess only if you run it on 3.5mm/ft scale track. Proper 00 track to the BRMSB standard looks just fine, providing you remember that it is a model of 4ft-1.5in gauge track, not 4ft-8.5in. There isn't a law that we have to model a 4ft-8.5in gauge railway. By buying 00 RTR models we are choosing 4ft-1.5in gauge instead. Just build the track to match. Martin.

Hi John, That may be SMP bullhead rail which is known to be under scale width. Try C&L bullhead. I can only repeat that the correct scale head width for 4mm/ft scale is 0.92mm -- I suspect the narrower FB rails are intended for H0 scale (3.5mm/ft). The width variations hardly matter visually, but are important for correct fitting of the gauge tools and accurately positioned check rails. If possible use the wider C&L rail and 00-SF gauges for check rails, even if you use the narrower rail elsewhere. regards, Martin.