jwealleans

That would make sense if all the NE Atlantics used prewar had gone to the scrapper. I'm sure it's 'Top Shed' which mentions them and has a shot of one with an excursion headboard, but I can't put my hands on a copy just now. What radius curves are you working to, Gilbert? Ours at Ormesby goes round 36".

Maybe by 1958... I'm pretty sure B16s and the North Eastern Atlantics were fairly common on excursion trains at the Cross before the war.

But if you had a subscription you could have read it by now!

One word for you - 'Kardashian' .

Did someone say 'invisible ink'?

Is this it, Rob?

In case you haven't seen it, Mike, I've just noticed a good almost-broadside photo of one of these in Eric Sawford's Fifties Steam Remembered.

Best of luck with that, Arthur. Hope to hear from you fully recovered in the near future.

Cheers, Mick, I'll pass that on to Peter. R1 is a chap on the LNER forum who goes by 'Mossie'. He did an L1 and made a nice job - now he's onto an R1. http://www.lner.info/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6571

No problem, Mick. We only had one semaphore and a ground frame, so there'd not have been much for you to get excited about.

Good stuff, Mick. You swept past me at Donny this weekend and I never caught up with you to say hello. There was a chap on the LNER forum asking about your R1 - I've told him to get in touch.

When we had a local model shop, his display layout in the window had a cow which had been chopped in half by the train. My kids loved it.

Some updates worth posting after a few days fiddling about. First of all the coaches are about finished. There are one or two bits of paintwork to touch up but I'll leave them for a couple of weeks now and come back to them with fresher eyes. I will probably give them a run round Pilmoor on Monday as a test, so there may be more photographs then. I've just about done the passenger brake as well. The shiny bits are where I painted up the cornice to match the body after gluing the roof in place. The roof needs another coat and then it'll get a blow over with satin varnish again. I also realised that I'd forgotten a handrail, which you can just about make out unpainted at the right hand end. Now a couple of different jobs. When I took the A8 apart to paint it, I removed the insulating arrangement from the front cylinders. This consisted of a piece of electrician's tape over the cylinders and across the underside of the front of the body. Now it's painted I needed to put something equivalent back. These locos are notorious for shorting on curves, as are the B16s - in fact our B16 on Pilmoor can only be used 'down' because it won't go round the 'up' curves. The cunning plan we came up with on Monday night was as follows: This is the problem - the front bogie wheels touch the front edge of the cylinder very readily. The cylinder had already been cut away in the past, possibly when the loco was built, to try to counteract this. I cut it further back, almost across the half way point. To complete the cosmetic subterfuge, a couple of circles were punched out of black paper and stuck over the cylinder ends. I'd like to say it worked perfectly, but I painted the wheels today so I haven't been able to test it yet. Full report to follow in due course. Next a job Ian (Pennine) knows I've been going to do for months and kept forgetting. I have a GW open which I acquired and built last year, don't recall where from. I wanted to sheet it, but make the sheet removable so I can run it 'loaded' or 'unloaded'. The problem was how to make the sheet a realistic looking fit - and the wagon has a tarpaulin rail as well - but still be able to get it off. I had an idea but hadn't tried it. I'm pleased to say it seems to have worked. First, wrapped the wagon in clingfilm. Then coated the back of the sheet (Roger Smith) liberally with PVA and stuck it on, folding and moulding it to the shape of the wagon and over the tarp rail. A rubber band holds it nicely in place while drying. Once dry, only the absence of ropes is the giveaway - but that's an unavoidable compromise if you're going to be able to take it off. Judicious trimming to remove all visible evidence of the clingfilm and the sheet slides off easily. The PVA makes it quite rigid, but this may well get a bit of weathering and some matt varnish which ought to stiffen it up a bit more. I'll make a rolled sheet from plain black paper to put into the 'empty' wagon.

Well thanks, chaps, you're very kind as usual. The horsebox was done in a bit of a hurry for - I think - Manchester last year and I was pleased with the way it came out, so I have never revisited it. I'm not sure it's had much more than a wash over witha weatheirn mix and clean with a cotton bud. Rob; the variety comes from suddenly realising that we open again at Ormesby in not many weeks and all the jobs I said I'd do for them are largely unstarted. I have an F4 masquerading as an F8 to look at and the Sentinel railcar to remotor (although that won't be done by March).

Coaches now have roofs affixed and filler is drying. That doesn't make for very interesting photography, so here are a few other things I've been messing about with: I volunteered to repaint and line the A8 for Ormesby over the winter. The boiler bands are done with what I think must have been Modelmaster lining, given the way the lines kept detaching from the carrier film. The rest is Bob Moore. It's very much just a repaint and there are a few things which could do with attention at another time. The boiler bands will need toning down once it's cured enough to weather. This was in a lot of cast kits on Ebay which someone pointed out on the LNER forum. It was in bits (although described as 'well built') and so didn't seem to attract much attention. I know a GE 10 ton van when I see one, though. It came yesterday morning, went straight into the Nitromors and half an hour last night saw it put back together. I'll probably have to replace the brakes as I want to put it into BR livery and I believe they may all have had 4 brake blocks by then. Finally another parcels van. I've had these for years and done nothing with them, but the simple expedient of using the box for something else so they're on the test rack and in my eyeline has got me working on them. I though this D & S NER D171 van would be as simple as a few lamp irons and a repaint, but closer examination showed that the builder had failed to fit any handrails (and had blocked up the holes for some, so I assume it was a deliberate decision). Anyway, a bit of bent wire later it's about ready for primer again.

Or it's like Jarrow Slake, where they photograph all the engines?

Are those the Hampshire Meads, or the Ancient Medes?

Would you mind getting on with it, then, Gordon? That way I can Ebay some kits and build something else.

No point, they'd only eat him.

All the kit manufacturers must feel a bit persecuted by the manufacturers these days. It will be interesting to see where things go as the cost of manufacture in China inevitably climbs; will the hobby tolerate prices rising in parallel or accept lower production standards as costs and corners are trimmed? There are at least two perspectives on kit building, be it locos or stock. By 'stock' I really mean coaches as it takes as long or longer to build a good coach as a good loco, unless you're Larry G and work at the speed of light. On your own layout you set your standards for accuracy of what you run and the standard you're prepared to accept. One of the reasons this thread is very popular is that the standard is high and the adherence to it uncompromising. If you want to exhibit your layout, on the other hand, then it's helpful to be able to run things which are different - they give the public something else and tend to impress exhibition managers more as well. Assuming you can build or have built to an acceptable standard. Otherwise - and this is not to belittle a lot of very fine layouts seen at shows all over the country - you're really only showing different combinations of the same RTR items, some better weathered than others. You've done yourself something of a favour in the location you've chosen to model, Gilbert, because it fits very neatly into Hornby's manufacturing portfolio. If you were in the north of Scotland or deepest East Anglia you'd have to look to kits. I make no bones about being an enthusiastic kit builder and encouraging others to do the same. You really can't argue with the standard of RTR these days, though. The positive side of it is that it forces us to up our game to try to match those standard of detail and finish. There will always be obscure or signature vehicles which someone has to have for a layout if they want to be spot on. It may be that kit making will expand to cover the kind of conversion/detailing items Crownline used to do and Graeme King has produced. You've shown me those photos before, Gilbert and I have to say I didn't remember them looking quite that bad.

A couple of evenings last week saw the lining complete - Coach has nothing to worry about but once they're weathered and the 3' rule applied I think they'll passs muster. . Good practice as I have an A8 to line for Ormesby once these are done. I glazed and added interiors this weekend as well so here they are as at this morning: I've had some discussion with members of the LNER forum about smoking compartments. It remains a little speculative - please tell me if you have definite information before I put the lids on..... I now need to spend an evening painting passengers. The roofs will not be removable due to the amount of filling and profiling the ends will need so all this has to be done in advance. I also received a parcel from ABS with some buffers so was able to just about finish off the two vans I detailed way back upthread: That lettering session also covered the SECR van which had been queued up for a week or two. While I was doing those I went to letter up the D5 horsebox I built only to find that CCT only include one set of lettering for it on their sheet - and that had gone on the Parkside one. I see that Parkside do a sheet with both LNER and BR lettering, which works out well as I have another D & S one to build, but I shan't see them until Doncaster in February. So it's on hold, but as promised here it is against the Parkside one. You have to say that the plastic holds up very well.

I agree about that article, Gilbert, it made fascinating reading. Do you know if that artic set has its origins in the BSL kits?

A short update from a lot of work.... lining. I hate it and the modern Hornby coaches set a standard only the very gifted among us can equal. Done it has to be, though. I did the 3rd over the weekend and made such a complete cock of it that it's been completely repainted. It was useful practice, though and I think this is much better. The camera is merciless and some of the lines have pixellated slightly making it look worse than it is. It's done with the fine tip of a Bob Moore pen. It's when you're sweating over this sort of thing and rubbing it off again for the dozenth time that you realise what a supreme talent the Larry Goddards and Ian Rathbones of this world really do have. I do know I've missed a line and once it's dry I'll be making some judicious adjustments with a cocktail stick to tidy it up. The other side still needs the upper panels doing.

I seem to have missed these from the last update. I had quite a bit of paint left over after painting the coaches so I did a couple of CCTs while I was on. Now I didn't build this, it was in an Ebay job lot I bought a long time ago. None of them were quite finished and I've completed the odd one now and then since. It's a D & S GC CCT. I don't think this is the kit which the GCS have bought from Dan Pinnock, but I've never seen a different model? I also lettered up a batch of LSWR vans over Christmas, all from the David Geen kits by Peter Simmerson. The left one of the bottom pair is a Meat Van - I still need the transfers for this if anyone has them spare from the HMRS sheet - and the other a butter van. Last night was mainly spent (apart from painting an ME 109 for No. 2 son) on the roofs of the coaches. I have scans of the Isinglass drawings but the scan had altered the size of them so I had to scale off to work out where the vents ought to go. Does anyone know which compartments were non-smoking? I also painted up a D86 General Van with the surplus paint but I don't know what the code above the number should be - anyone enlighten me?

Well, you missed a lot with the forum having Christmas off. So here's a condensed resume of what I've been up to; more detailed entries can be found on the LNER forum if anyone wants to look them out. The NE coaches: A new project - bit of a Christmas present to myself and built in more or less a day: ... and once you've opened the box, you have to finish the contents, don't you? I also made a start on a Mainly Trains J71 conversion kit, presently stopped awaiting a few bits: