david.hill64

It's been a good day at the bench. I need to go out to get drunk welcome in the New Year, so no time to post the intermediate photos, but here is where I am now:

Working Christmas Day: attending the inauguration ceremony of the Taoyun mayor...... Hope yours was better!

Here are a couple of shots that may show the centre bearing more clearly. Next the valances were added to the bottom plate with the buffer beam and drag beam to form the tender base. The flare section was sweated to teh rear panel, formed to shape and then added to the bottom plate with the rear tank support. I have been working on the tender sides, top and coal space. More later.

BR's Horwich foundry was also the supplier of cast iron brake blocks, thousands of which were used by BR every month. Perhaps the boxes could contain these?

And indeed this happens with things like ETCS where the interfaces to everything took forever to agree due to vested interests. It wouldn't surprise me if the EU wasn't already working towards a common standard for the Train Control and Management Systems (if somebody reading this knows, please advise). At a simple level BR had something similar with standard coupling codes for locos and DMU. Yes non-standard locos and DMU's existed and there were technical reasons for change.

While I am not an advocate of wholesale rail renationalisation, I do believe that a strong case could be made to take a lot of these outsourced activities - particularly safety critical ones - back under NR direct management. I am not proposing that NR gets into signalling design, but installation and the various verification and validation works (and I say that working for a company that would lose valuable contracts if this happened).

Trisha and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Healthy and Prosperous New Year!

John, they are not sprung as such (but they might become so). The kit designer made provision for vertical movement of the centre axle by incorporating a half-etched guide allowing material to be removed easily to permit up and down freedom. The design uses a piece of wire soldered into the bearings (I drill them first) that stops the bearings from rotating in the frames. The design also allows for a 6BA screw to be fitted into the centre spacer about which the middle axle will rock. I haven't fitted this yet. I have in previous builds included coil springs around the vertical wire, but it is difficult to get the springing correct: too stiff and the chassis will rock about the centre wheels. Too soft and no benefit. So I may yet change to the Ken Mason method that he also uses for the centre axle of locos. Springing provided by horizontal piano wire (or similar) bearing on the top of the centre bearings and again located in a hole in the top of the bearing to stop it rotating. I will try to remember to take some more photos to show the current state of play.

The toss of the coin resulted in the tender being started first. No issues at all so far. I put pins in the brake beams to locate the pull rods. The brakeblocks were opened out with a piercing saw to accept the hangers and again pinned with a wire and soldered at teh rear. All went together as it should. The sandpipes will be cut to length later. The loco frame etches make provision for cut-outs above the bogie wheels to give clearance. I am not expecting any significant problems with balancing. Now for the tender body.

I wonder whether a couple of big inductive loops in the field would be a cheap alternative to the feeder station....................

Useful feedback. A agree about the usefulness of a drawing and apologies about the lack of brake shoes. Very strange. Getting scale drawings is an issue: I am trying to work out how it can be done. This is where copyright becomes very important.

Canadian owned but UK registered for tax purposes - the whole of Bombardier Transportation, including the German bits even though the HQ is in Berlin.

My next build will be another Gladiator kit. This is the ex-GCR LNER C4 or possibly the C5. The confusion comes because if possible this will be the C5 version. The C5 was a 3 cylinder compound version of the 2 cylinder simple C4. Gladiator can provide an extra etch to simulate the front cover, but there are no instructions (yet) so it isn't advertised. If we can find a set of plates for this build it will be a C5. Like all of the Gladiator GCR locos, there are many bits in the box, with options to cover the GCR and LNER/BR eras. This loco will be resplendent in GCR livery. I have already removed a couple of bits from the etches to emboss the rivets. I am not sure if I am going to start with the tender or with the loco this time. I am sure that it is going to take longer than the J6!

I shall miss the signals builds: perhaps I can follow a mogul build instead?

Two car 25kV EMUs have I think always been a rare beast. I can think only of the Clacton sets, but then my memory isn't what it was. Perhaps the bay has been electrified as a charging point for Vivarail................................

Gaudy backscene, no weathering of the stock, plastic bridge kits, lack of plants. Definitely a model.

Passengers are sitting in something close to a Faraday cage so have a degree of protection. (Mobile phone signals come through the glass). Having said that I think there were problems when the 317s were introduced and it was found that spanners could stand on end on the floor of the motor car supported by the large magnetic field from the choke. I would hope that designers are more aware of these issues now.

Sorry for the confusion. I should not have written C4/5 The base kit is for the C4 Jersey Lily atlantic tender loco. GCR also built 4 versions as 3 cylinder compounds. These became the LNER C5. The customer is interested in the C5 version and Gladiator does an unadvertised additional etch that enables the conversion. It's never been advertised as there are no instructions, so this will give me the opportunity - if all goes well - of building a C5 and producing an instruction set as well. They were, in my opinion, extremely handsome locos.

Just out of Paul Moore's workshop: Looks like Paul has done his usual excellent job. Next up: another Gladiator kit, the ex GCR LNER C4/5

Apologies if this has appeared somewhere else, but after a quick scan I couldn't find any reference. A few years ago a friend of mine, Paul Holmes, was instrumental in getting the Taiwan Sugar Corporation to release one of its Diema diesels to the Welshpool and Llanfair Railway. I understand that it is a well liked and useful engine. This opened links between Tai Sugar and the W&L. When I first visited Taiwan in 1992, Tai sugar had more than a 1000km of 2'6" gauge lines operating in the south of Taiwan - a longer route mileage than Taiwan Railway Administration's lines! These days most of the lines are disused: only one sugar factory now uses rail. Until 1982(?) Tai Sugar also ran a passenger railway. These days a few locations run tourist trains. This month the diminutive Andrew Barclay loco, Dougal, that served at Provan gasworks, Glasgow has been shipped to Taiwan where Dougal is the subject of much interest. Last Sunday I made a trip to a Tai Sugar factory near the southern town of Chiayi where Dougal was in steam. When we arrived t was not long since lighting up and steam had not been raised. But an hour later, the crew wearing their safety headgear were ready to give Dougal - adorned with Christmas wreath and very dirty dragon - a run. I suspect it is the first time that these have been growing in any yard where Dougal worked: The previous day one of the Belgium built locos from Tai Sugar's fleet had been operating: Its tender is quite interesting. Passenger trips were in the hands of one of the Diema locos. In previous years a railcar would have been used. There are a number of plinthed locos around Taiwan: this is another ex- Sugar loco: Dougal is off to the last sugar factory using rail for an open day next weekend and will return to Wales next month. That was a really good day out.

Limited stocks of the replacement Duchess fireboxes are now available. If you wish to exchange your old box for a new one, please send the original to us and we will replace it. Thanks to everyone who came and said hello to us at Reading. We will be at the Bristol Gauge 0 show in January.

Handling would not be by electromagnets. Steel is not ‘magnetic’ above about 700 degrees.

I was going to give Mrs Gladiator a slap for packing the wrong bearings, but the photos show that it isn't one we packed. Geoff will have to spend a few minutes on the naughty step. We use two different types of bearings: the ex-Fourtrack kits have bearings with a smaller OD than the rest of the range and I guess these were packed in error.

I am beginning to suspect that the etching company made an error with one set of etches and used material that was too thick. I found last week that I had two thicknesses of etch: the thicker one went into the recycling bin. The thicker one is better for the frames though.

IIRC one of the last bits of BR to remain - if not the last part - was the group that managed out of use assets such as still extant bridges. I don't know who retains ownership now.