pete_mcfarlane

I spotted this in an article on the BBC news website about New Towns. It's full of fascinating pictures of 1960s and 70s Britain, taken by a town planner and scanned in by the University of Sheffield. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jrjamesarchive/ Should be useful for anyone looking for a bit of period detail. Anyone fancy modelling the brave new World of 1970s Britain, with buildings like this Health Centre?

They were explicitly banned from LM region third rail lines.

Didn't Tim Shackleton model one of these in his book on Plastic bodied engines for Wild Swan? There were several photos of the abandoned locos.

I'm also wondering if there's a problem with getting Dyeline drawings printed. The machines are nowhere near as common as they used to be, given that most Engineer and Architects use CAD rather than tracing paper.

Sadly that's pretty much true of most published drawings. Quoting your sources and stating assumptions seems to be a bit lacking.

I'm sure SNCF could find a use for any surplus Eurostars. so they wouldn't go to waste Surely HS2 won't be running at anything like full capacity at the start? I would hope that there's plenty of extra capacity for the amount of traffic to grow over time. (Cue "Fury as HS2 half empty!" style headlines in the Daily Liar in about 2030). .

They've been winding down for years - a lot of ranges got dropped about 6-7 years ago. That said, what they do still stock is really useful - discovered I had no open spoke wagon wheels on Sunday night, ordered some, and the packet arrived through the letterbox on Tuesday.

I do find the brake gear a bit weird, as the provided the break linkages for you to fit but moulded the shoes in line with the tender frames. It would have looked better if they'd left the brake gear off entirely and saved themselves a small amount of money.

The Tadpole now has transfers (HMRS pressfix) and door furniture (Southern Pride). It now needs a spot of touching up, and then weathering. The weathering on these units is odd - the narrow bodied Hastings coaches have virtually no body overhanging the chassis and so get a lot dirtier than the wide bodied EPB coach. This will definitely need replicating.

Sounds good, and I'll be after a green one to keep my DC Kits blue one company. I guess you've twigged on to the different arrangement of the side grilles on some of the locos in their later days. 71009/13 seem to have the original arrangement.

As promised, this is the latest state of play with the Tadpole. Still some touching up of the paintwork needed before I move on to transfers.

It's clearly hand finished, but not to a good standard. The lining is simplified (squared off corners round the cab) and the lettering on the tank is too low. It looks a bit like something out of a 1970s Wrenn catalogue.

Colin, I'm still painting it - I'm not the quickest when it comes to painting at the best of times, and I've not had much time for modelling of late as I'm preparing to move (from my small rented flat to a house with room for a decent sized layout, so I'm not complaining). I'll try and post some pictures of progress over the weekend. Pete

When you say '7mm version', does this mean there's a 4mm version as well?

It looks like there are two editions. I've now got a copy of the first edition, but the one in my local library was the second (presumably revised) edition. There are some photos of the content here thanks to Amazon, including the VB locomotive. (I'm sure there's some rose tinted glasses at work, but the selection of books in my local librry as a kind seems much better than waht you get now.....)

I remember seeing large scale models of the L&B - I think in the copy of Donald Boreham's book on Narrow Gauge modelling that was in my local library about 30+ years ago.

It must have been "interesting" trying to balance the passengers returning from market day, when they'd all have a few Guinnesses too many. The whole concept is completely bonkers from start to finish.

A quick update to show that the coaches have had a couple of coats of Halford's red primer, with any defects sanded down or filled, and have now had a couple of coats of Valejo white on the driving ends to act as an undercoat for the yellow So far, so go.

I have a couple of old Hornby-Dublo R1s in my to do pile with the etched chassis and detailing bits. They should make nice models when detailed.

It's an Emerald green from the Valejo range. Looking at the photos the lining looks very thick, but it's less noticeable on the actual model. Of course, lining in 4mm scale is always too thick or it would never actually show.

The R1 is finally finished. The lining was done by hand using a bow pen and the transfers are HMRS. There was a brief moment of horror when it was placed next to other rolling stock and the buffers were way too high. It turned out that I'd not spotted that the holes for them were too high, so some careful modification and touching up later they are in the right place. Overall I'm very pleased with it. It looks a lot better than the examples on the box lid, with their incorrect chassis.

The process of detailing the Tadpole unit took several months of odd evenings. There's a lot of scratchbuilt underframe detail, plus bits from all the usual suppliers like NNK, MJT and Southern Pride and lots of bits of wire and plastic. The roof lighting cables are steel guitar string with Southern Pride lamp tops, and the roof vents are the mix of types seen in the prototype photos. The power car grille is from a Shawplan etch intended for a class 40 frost grille. It will need careful masking before the thing is painted. The roof air horns are the newer Markits type which have a hole drilled through them. You solder a length of .33mm wire through the hole and this goes in to a hole in the roof, so the horns are more secure and less likely to get knocked off...... It's now stripped down, and has been given a good wash ready for priming.

There are certainly photos of the prototype power cars working with production trailers - there's one on this very interesting page: http://www.traintesting.com/HST_prototype.htm

I once saw a couple of highly abusive young women (no tickets but plenty of needle marks on arms) ejected from a Grantham bound train at Elton and Orston by the guard. I did wonder how they got on, since it was Saturday evening and the next train wasn't until Monday.

Elton and Orston must be the least busy station in the whole East Midlands. One train a day in each direction stops there. I guess it's cheaper to keep it open like this than to close it.