Brassey

Given the LNWR covered both Manchester and Liverpool it would not be surprising that it sent wagons to another major City such as Bristol. The GWR also had a presence in Manchester and Crewe so the wagons may well have come down on GWR goods trains. Having looked at the North to West timetables, I can see no LNWR named goods trains destined for Bristol but some GWR for example: 8.25 p.m. G.W. Manchester & Bristol Vacuum Goods. (This train also carried the station trucks from Chester and Shrewsbury to Bristol). The Central Wales line ran to Swansea. The LNWR also ran throughout South Wales to Newport and Merthyr via Abergavenny Junction so goods may well have been sent to Bristol too from those locations; transferred to GWR trains at Pontypool Road.

In pre-grouping times A lot of goods trains missed the camera because they ran at night particularly fast through trains. The vacuum fitted stock would have been almost exclusively from the named company such as the LNWR and would have avoided the transship shed being fully laden at source.

Why not make a brass footplate. even without the damage, I would do that on a white metal kit unless it had a wavy footplate and valance.

London Road standard hornblocks are lost wax castings not etches so these are probably radial trucks. I will have one somewhere in a kit and will look it out sometime.

I reused the original M&L (now Gibson) frames when I made my short wheelbase 517 no 835 and that works fine. IIRC when building the High Level chassis compensated, the beams rest on the rear axle too so all of that will need shortening too. In doing that you will be shortening the beams and putting more weight on the carrying axle which could affect the balance. I would not see much point in getting the High Level chassis and not building it compensated as that is a major benefit of the chassis. if you look at my 835 build, I put beams in that so every wheel can move too and possibly due to the weight, it is one of my best runners. So on balance, i think the Gibson frames should suffice.

I reused the original M&L (now Gibson) frames

I am sure the joints between my P4 baseboards have moved over the years and/or as the wood has dried and the layout has been moved around the house. The levels may not be the same meaning slight variances in the heights between boards since they were built. However, stock still negotiates the joins with no problems; everything being compensated and some sprung. I did use the old dodge of soldering the rail to brass screws at the joins firstly to make them more robust but also to give me the option to realign if required. So far I've not found that necessary.

my track is on a transition curve which at the tightest is 1.5m. The baseboard edge is about 10cm in from that giving a radius of 1.4m I’d planned to make this a roundy with 1m curves so 0.9m inner radius would be possibly required

I cribed my woodwork from Gordon S’s ET thread on here. He may well have built some to tighter radii. Have a look how he does it.

I agree. I built my first kit in 00 converted it immediately to EM and then went straight to P4 and have never looked back and I am as ham-fisted as the best. The challenges of building a prototypical model are not just about wheel standards but the overall look including the colours; painting and lining and transfers etc. too In my opinion 00 track on "scale" sleepers (9ft pre-grouping) would look completely wrong.

Yes as I said I am not a novice on eBay. They would not have known my maximum bid. But whatever they bid, it is more than the thing is worth as you can buy it online now for £3.

Seems to be missing the point or am I in the minority of 1 as per usual. I am not a novice having been on eBay for 17 years. Over those years it has become more of a marketplace than an auction with far more buy-it-now items which I do for most commodities. I rarely bid for things nowadays. The item in question had a starting bid of £3.00 and went for £3.20. £3 is the price of the item on retailers websites so was a fair price. We are all fellow modellers bidding on these items; it is the petty last minute sniping that I object to. If someone wanted to pay over the odds for this item, then why not put a bid in earlier and give me a chance to respond which I probably would no have and left them to it. They probably think they were really clever outbidding me by 20p but the item was described as Nickel Silver but all the others I have bought direct from the manufacturer were brass so the are in for some disappointment.

It doesn’t say much for the modelling fraternity. I spot something I need and hard to get hold of, not necessarily at a bargain price, but a reasonable one and I put a bid down early. Then someone comes along and snipes me for 20p at the last minute. Not very gentlemanly...

I used finally a laminate of 2 layers of 6mm ply on the curved sides of my boards. I thought one layer was too thin when I first built it so added a second layer outside. They are screwed to 44mm x 44mm blocks which pulled them into shape.

GWR 517 No. 1425, still a work in progress. I must finish some LNWR locos:

Yes; I just need to finish some more wagons! Edit PS: not to mention the missing dummy chairs on all the track!

Thanks Mikkel I would agree and the difference in colour is apparent in the flesh. I have different versions of PP loco green, pre 1906 both dull and gloss and the later pre 1928 both dull and gloss. I always plan to use the gloss on locos that are to be lined as it makes lining easier. However for me the best shade comes from a couple of very old tins of pre 1928 dull that I have. The paint looks almost black in the tin and goes on darkest and almost matt. For me this looks the best shade and looks "right" to me. Whether it is historically authentic is another matter. The paint in these old tins is like jelly and needs careful stirring and mixing before applying via an airbrush. Here is an example on 2524: PS: At one point in the past I briefly worked on the marketing for Barbour waxed jackets and spent the whole day once in a meeting discussing the shade of green on a shoe polish tin! Those were the days...

My first kit was a K's Dean Goods. That rapidly got converted to EM at which point I abruptly moved to P4. During the period when career, marriage and family took over, I seem to have acquired 4 Dean Goods chassis and a load of Mallard etches. I now have 3 completed Dean Goods and a Martin Finney kit still to build. Bits of the original K's Dean Goods have been incorporated in most of them. I have recently replaced a 1024 with a High Level coreless 1219 in a Wills Saddle tank mainly because I needed a shorter motor to make room for the DCC decoder. I am quite happy with it.

Good to hear you sorted it. Which motor did you have. As a naive newby when I returned to the hobby, the guy from Comet, alas no longer with us, sold me a Mashima 1015 with the DG chassis! That's despite me telling him I modelled in P4 and so I had much more room for a bigger motor between the frames. Mine has a 1224 underslung which was my motor of choice. I'm yet to build 30 wagons and the current fiddleyard wouldn't' hold that many anyway. We'll see what it can do when I get that far.

Despite using a GW wheel press and a B2B gauge, I find that the Gibson wheels can go on a bit tight if you are a bit over zealous with squeezing the wheelset together. Apart from being undergauge, the wheels are tight against the bearings. The first set wouldn't move and I broke the spokes trying to get them off with a wheel puller. The key to Gibson wheels, according to Colin Seymour, is to twist them off apparently. However, the Comet chassis is curved behind the wheels so the are a bu66er to get hold of, particularly in P4 with razor sharp flanges. I resorted to knocking the axle out with a centre punch. The next set went on almost as tight but would just about move. Still undergauge, it does run and I guess with a bit more running in it might improve. There are benefits in making all the wheelsets removable but I built this with a fixed driven axle. 2478 above has a High Level Dean Goods chassis whereby all the wheelsets can drop out. (It also has Ultrascale wheels which is another bonus and runs fine.)

Which one; the loco or tender? Both are from the same tin of PP pre-1928 great western loco dull but the tender has come out gloss and lighter. When all else fails, read the instructions. I read on the Phoenix website that Precision Paints should be diluted 80:20 and sprayed with 20 psi. I had always used a weaker 50:50 solution with less pressure but got runs and sags. So I tried the new spec with a different, less fine airbrush on something else and it worked! Have now changed the needle in my Iawata. I also think the pre-1906 PP comes out even lighter but should be darker:

The subject of my first blog is now nearing completion after only 8 years! It has been a problem build right from the start. I also painted it when I was really struggling with my airbrush so the paint is far from perfect. 2306 was an early Dean Goods which numbers started at 2301. In 1912 it was at Pontypool Road by which time it had acquired a B4 Belpaire firebox the Autumn before. This is mainly an old Mallard kit, narrowed footplate with additional spare parts from a Martin Finney Dean Goods including the more pronounced sweep of the cab sides. It has a Comet chassis, Gibson wheels, High Level gearbox and Mashima motor but is still not too good a runner. As a working layout loco it will do for the time being.

Why not abandon weathering powders and just weather with enamel paint?

I have considered hacking a hole through the wall to get the other fiddleyard in but I'm not sure that will enhance the value of the property. So it will just have to wait for the time to come when I can get a loft conversion/shed etc.

I have one of those gas blow torches now but in the past have resorted to the gas ring to unsolder entire jobs. It does not take much heat to loosen the solder. I would be concerned about getting the metal too hot as that might have some effect on it.