jwealleans

Turning Blue - The Undertones

Play That Funky Music W h i t e B o y - Wild Cherry - The obscenity filter abbreviated it! Who makes these rules?

Cruel To Be Kind - Nick Lowe

John Peck at Precision Decals.

My versions of the Coral A and Traction Truck.

I'm calling these finished. They can await weathering and then proper securing of the loads. These are nice kits to put together - the Coral is really only a case of fitting the wheels, the modelling is in the painting. The Traction wagon: were I to do another I'd overlay the sides where the printing is a bit variable, but there's scope on there to add detail to your own satisfaction and there were enough batches of these built with small variations that you can have more than one and make them different.

Wizard Models do them with vertical and horizontal bolt heads.

Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win - Beastie Boys

Waiting For The Man - The Velvet Underground

I have a couple of the Alan Rose Barnums. The first one I built, I decided to try the fancy handrails and Crispy Dave was kind enough to send me a print of his etching artwork which I could use as a bending template. Once is enough. The other will have the simpler pattern. Solebars teak paint in LNER livery, without question. I use Humbrol 62.

Diagram 51, built 1928, condemned April 1959 and the underframe reused on a CCT. Best I can do are Mike Trice's instructions from one of his kits and the drawing in LNER Standard Gresley Carriages shows the dynamo at the Third class end.

So the stripper pole is mobile, then? Keep us posted.

What diagram? We need to know whether it's 51' or 61'6", vestibuled or non?

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - William Shatner

I can only offer a McGowan GN brake van. I learned enough from that to avoid them afterwards.

I know. It's been frustrating me ever since I went to it.

Well, that was nicely timed and thanks very much. It confirms what I suspected and I'll now put fixings there to attach chains. I plan to run this empty, so it'll have a set of chains crossed over the floor as they seemed to do. To assist with that I've filled the underfloor space with lead and it's nice and heavy now. This is the current state of play: I lettered the Coral and also had a change of mind about the crates, repainting them to what hopefully passes for newer wood. The support frames still need touching in again. I've added brake levers to both vehicles and the Hydra has brake shoes outside the axles and a dangly vac pipe as well. I moved the other wagons along over the weekend. Fruit van is now painted and lettered. Hopefully the subterfuge with the buffer beam works at normal viewing distances. I'll get hold of a plate for the door whenever I see Ambis at a show. I also started to letter the D76, but soon realised that the transfers I'd had speculatively printed some time ago were nowhere near correct. I've spent some time making up a new sheet and I'll get that off to John Peck very soon. The other two and the containers are painted. Finally, a bit of nostalgia. 61645 was one of the first locos I built, in around 2004/5. We wanted a decent B17 for Thurston, so we concocted this one from a Hornby body, Comet frames and valve gear and a Dave Alexander tender. It had to be the subclass with the high vac cyiinder on the tender rear and we went for a regiment rather than a stately pile, just to be different. It was the first time I'd erected valve gear. I put it together, then Graham Varley made it work properly and it's run round on club layouts ever since. I noticed in May that it was looking a bit tired, so I brought it away to touch up. Jamie observed that it was nose heavy, so I had a go at doing something about that too. I did have the missing nameplate but it's evaporated from my toolbox, so there's another set on the way from 247. I still have the regimental badges from the first set I fitted as they were not present by the 1950s. I've replaced a missing smokebox handle, touched in paint here and there and also rerouted the wires to the motor so all the space between the rear axles is now full of lead. It's quite heavy. I'm due down in Ely in a couple of weeks for a stock fettling session, so I'll have it ready for trials by then.

The Needle And The Damage Done - Neil Young

I've never tried a Jidenco loco kit - life's too short - but if you approach these kits with an awareness of their shortcomings and aren't afraid to replace the dodgy bits you can make a decent model from them. This is their 15 ton GC van. 6 wheel GC brake van LNER Toad B. You can see some of the alterations I had to make here. GN fish van to the right. GC matchboard vestibuled Composite. This one was hard work as the corridor side needed a picture window replacing with two smaller ones. I wouldn't even say they're the worst brass kits I've ever tackled, now I've built an Acorn BR Grain Hopper.

It's one of those things they ought to offer an Ig Nobel prize for. Steve's dead right - when my Mrs and I first got together, I drummed into her that in a supermarket car park she should always park as far away from the building as possible, as that's where the spaces are and there's less chance of a trolley or door scrape from someone clumsy next to you. We've proved on more than one occasion, though, that even if you are the only car in the car park and you are as far from the shop as you can get, the next one in will park next to you. Vestigial herd instinct?

Graeme King did this a few years ago - I'll see whether I can find a picture of it running on Grantham. I think he called it Thomas Cranmer. Edit - illustrated here.

One diagram (the 20', D402 if I remember correctly) was available in the Micromodels range and then from David Geen.

I haven't found any documentary proof, but it seems fairly certain that this is at least a variant of the Ambulance Car conversions. Steve has kindly sent me the drawing from Longworth and I've had sight of another picture in addition to Larkin. The Larkin photos show the double row of vents which is a fairly strong clue. What has happened to the gangway we'll probably never know. I'm inclined to suspect it has just been removed and it's a quirk of the photo which makes it look like a hole. Frustratingly all the other pictures are of the other side, but the panelling and window style are very consistent.

Counting Flowers On The Wall - The Statler Brothers

Cheers. Steve. I don't have the Longworth book and the two in Larkin don't match this one exactly, but the similarity is very striking. Are the diagrams available anywhere?