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Great looking layout, great photos! Can't say more than that. Tony

I am just making a bit of a guess here but I wonder if signal 53 is a second starter signal because the one at the platform end may not be visible to the driver of a short train at the buffer stops. So if there are two short trains there, the driver of the rear one may not be able to see that the main starter has returned to danger after the first one departs. So the first train to depart would do so on the main starter signal but the rear train would start when both signals were cleared. At least that way the driver has a clear view of a signal before they set off. I don't think that I have ever seen a repeater with its own lever number but I am not nearly as well informed as some good folk on here and could well be wrong. Tony

They look very nice! Out of interest, what is the approximate height (either in model mm or scale ft/inches) of the figures? Tony

So, how exactly does the notion that soldering a metal with a melting point of 200 degrees with a soldering iron in excess of 400 degrees can have possible problems indicate a lack of understanding of the difference between heat and temperature? A spark from a firework sparkler has lots of temperature but little heat. A beach that has had the sun shining on it has lots of heat but little temperature. A 65 watt iron set at 190 degrees has more heat and not as much temperature as a 15 watt iron at 450 degrees. Am I doing OK? When the tip of the iron is at a temperature that can melt the metal if you allow it to heat it up too much then there is a possibility of it melting if you do not have the skill and experience to know just how long you can leave the iron on the job. You are also limited in what you can solder and where. With a low temp iron you can tin the parts and sweat them together just as if they were brass. You can solder detail parts on the outside of a kit by applying the iron to the inside, making for far neater soldering. That technique is highly dodgy with a high temp iron, if not impossible. With a temperature controlled iron, you can leave the iron on the whitemetal all day and it won't melt. You can move parts around and you can be as hamfisted as you like and not melt any part of the kit. I have built many kits using both techniques and there is no way I would ever go back to using a normal iron now but each to their own. Breaking it down to basics, with a high temperature iron it is possible to put too much heat onto the job and melt the whitemetal. With a low temperature iron it is impossible. Therefore there is more chance of getting it wrong with a high temperature iron, especially for an inexperienced modeller. Tony

I am a little bit (soldering iron pun there folks!!) surprised to see people recommending soldering whitemetal with a normal temperature soldering iron. If you are a highly experienced soldering expert and get everything right first time, then it is quite possible to assemble whitemetal using such an iron. I have seen kits assembled in that way and I used to do them that way myself but my modelling improved 100% when I started using a temperature controlled iron. Soldering a metal that melts at around 200 degrees C with an iron that has a tip temperature of over 400 degrees C is full of possibilities for problems. To get a good strong soldered joint, you really don't want to be depositing a lump of molten solder onto a cold metal surface. That can lead to brittle and weak joints. You need to warm the whole job up and let the solder run. As has been mentioned, soldering is more about heat than temperature. A high wattage, low temperature iron allows you to solder whitemetal just like brass or nickel silver. You can warm the job up, take all the time you need to move bits around to the right place and you can solder tiny casings to big lumps of metal with no risk of melting either. Also, if you get something not quite straight, you can easily move it afterwards. This is the one I currently have, after the other (now discontinued) model expired after being dropped! http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/60w-professional-lcd-solder-station-with-esd-protection-a55kj The digital tip temperature read out makes it a bit more fail safe than those irons where you set it to high low or medium but don't know how the tip has responded. With it set at about 185 degrees, I can solder the main whitemetal parts together with 145 degree solder, then I can turn it down to 150 degrees (which makes it just not hot enough to melt the 145 degree solder when it is attached to a big whitemetal heat sink!) to add detail parts with 90 or 70 degree. As Kenton says, soldering whitemetal with a normal iron isn't really like soldering. It is a technique that can work but you need to develop a certain level of skill in knowing how long to keep the iron on the job. You need to get in, make the joint and get out before anything else melts. I used to struggle with the "get out before anything else melts" bit. I prefer to "play" the iron along a joint and to see the solder run along the joint nicely and that got me into trouble. With a temperature controlled iron, soldering whitemetal ceases to be any problem at all and any risks of melting parts are removed completely. It is as easy as soldering anything else. I wouldn't use anything else now but as I said, there are always many ways to approach these sorts of jobs. I am just a bit surprised that so many people get on so well soldering with normal irons because I used to really struggle, especially with small components and if I didn't get things 100% perfect first time. I would never say to anybody that they should do things in a particular way. I will say that my own results improved dramatically when I got my temperature controlled iron. Tony

Many apologies if my comments caused offence. I was just so pleased to see somebody putting forward the same sort of ideas that I follow that I felt the need to add a few words of support. I had also just been reading another thread, where people were moaning about manufacturers not producing exactly what they want, which is about as far removed from the approach shown here as it is possible to get! My comments were aimed at those types of people, not the ones who enjoy their hobby. Of course each and every person should follow the hobby in whatever way they choose. Tony

Testing your own ability is a superb approach to model railways and one that I follow for myself as far as possible. If a few more people adopted that sort of approach, the hobby would be much more interesting for it. It is a total antidote to the "I can't have the layout/model I want because nobody makes it for me" brigade! To me, a project has to be a challenge to my skills and abilities otherwise I quickly become bored with it. Perhaps that is why I have so many layouts on the go at the same time (currently involved with 4 ongoing new ones plus a major restoration) so I can flip from one to the other and keep things fresh, as each one has different challenges to overcome. I truly believe that these craft type cutters will revolutionise modelling, far more that laser cutting and 3D printing in the short term. They are affordable now and any models built using them can be done by the modeller at home, rather than having to send stuff away to a third party. Any new technology needs a bit of a trail blazer to show what can be done and to open the doors to others. The work that you and Mike Trice and JCL are doing on RMWeb seems to be doing just that. Tony

Will you please stop it! I am getting rapidly increasing feelings if inadequacy! Being slightly more serious, your work is highly inspirational and just makes me want to try a little bit harder. I have shown a number of non RMWebber friends what you have been up to. Every single one has been mightily impressed and several of them have immediately ordered the cutters! It is one of those projects where I am thoroughly enjoying seeing the work progress and am full of anticipation over what will appear next. Many thanks for taking the time and trouble to post. Tony

Perhaps I can just clarify a couple of matters regarding those gorgeous looking locos! Malcolm Crawley didn't ever finish any locos in M & GN livery. The ones he built in M & GN condition were both finished in LNER livery, after they took the locos over. He did the 2F as a conversion of his own kit design for George Norton and the MR style 4-4-0 but he never did a GN 0-6-0 in M & GN condition, so I am pretty sure that those two locos, lovely as they are, are not his work. The London Road J3/J4 had an unusual design process. It was started by somebody who got a bit bogged down and it came to Malcolm for finishing off. My memory is not 100% on this but I think it may have been Steve Barnfield who started the work. Malcolm found that finishing off somebody elses design quite frustrating and there were many times when he reckoned that he would have been better off starting again because the parts already drawn were not as he would have done them. Each kit designer has their own ways of doing things and watching Malcolm trying to marry up his methods with what had already been done was interesting to say the least! The kits that Malcolm did draw for George Norton/London Road Models were the G5, J6, Precedent, K2, 2F plus a number of GNR tenders. I hope I haven't forgotten any. He did all the artwork drawing by hand on his old ex railway drawing board. He often wondered if it was the only drawing board that had been used to design real locos as well as model ones by the same person. It probably was! Castings for the kits were sorted out by others. He also did a fair degree of advisory work and much test building on a number of other kits. Tony

I think that No 61 has the edge in looks because of those lovely carriage sized spoked wheels. It really does look for all the world as if it could be an original underframe with just the brakes upgraded to modern standards. I am not sure if the carriages originally had spoked or wooden disc wheels but those look just great. The wagon sized three hole disc wheels on No 127 are a bit of a give away that it has some more modern components underneath! 99% of people probably wouldn't ever notice and having a vehicle running like that is a million times better than not having it running at all. As for the quality of the livery, all I can say is gorgeous! They are both superb examples of restoration and the folk involved deserve much praise and credit. Tony

Play fair now! Derby built some very pretty locos and did paint them a nice shade of red.

Superb! Is one of them even on its original underframe? So many carriages of this period have been restored on modern frames but that top one looks as though it may be the "real deal" Tony

I guess this is the one: http://www.cs.vintagecarriagestrust.org/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=819 In which case the red is the departmental "Gulf red" that was used for a while. Not sure of dates but I think it was adopted sometime in the mid 1960s and was only in use for a couple of years, when an "Olive Drab" colour replaced the red. Many vehicles didn't get near a paint shop for a long time and I don't think that Barnum ever got painted again. I did see that vehicle in that condition at Loughborough soon after it had been taken there straight from Barnetby and it hadn't been touched for many a year. Tony

I am not sure that a carriage full of Chinese people is prototypical for Wainfleet in the period modelled. No Barnums survived in service long enough to be painted in Maroon. There were some in engineers use (including the ones now preserved) which may have ended up in red paint but not for passenger service. Having said that, one on departmental use would be an interesting vehicle in its own right. That is looking really nice and it would be a shame to stop at one vehicle after all your good work developing the techniques and the drawings. How about doing the brake portion and tacking it on to half of your existing all 3rd saloon? Tony

The D & S GNR 6 wheelers have a fixed axle one end, a rocking W iron at the other and a floppy (on wire) centre axle. The Buckingham Branch GCR 6 wheelers have a 4 wheel bogie arrangement at one end and a sprung axle at the other. Slaters MR 6 wheeler kits have a Cleminson arrangement with inside bearings. I have used all the above over the years and one or two mixes/variations in my quest to get a smooth running 6 wheeler. I am all in favour of people investigating options and trying things out but for me, the Brassmasters arrangement has cracked the problem and I won't be using anything else from now on. If they should ever cease to be available, then I will scratchbuild a replica. The rake of carriages I have built with them (OK - one finished and four still to finish but are runnable) knock all the others into a cocked hat in terms of smooth running and ability to deal with tight curves. They are not perfect because of the splaying problem already mentioned but that is easily overcome and they are miles ahead of all the other methods I have tried. Tony

A quick conversion to B & W and now you really are there.... Sometimes when we see models in colour it doesn't compute in our brains as well as a B & W image because most of us have only seen such scenes as B & W photos. So even if the colours are spot on, it isn't what we are used to seeing. Apologies for tinkering with your lovely photo Adrian!

Hello Mike, I used the outside bearings as I preferred the freer running of the pin points compared to the inside bearings. I haven't tested it but I had some concerns over using sprung axleboxes at the outer ends of what becomes a very long wheelbase 4 wheeler with an extra floating axle in the centre. On a tight curve, the wheel runs at an odd angle compared to the rail and I thought that there might be a tendancy for the springing to allow the wheel to ride up and over the rail. The shape of a wheel flange means that if that flange is pressed hard against an outside rail, the wheel tends to climb up and I found that what is, in effect, a wheel trying to run in a straight line into a curved rail caused derailment problems with long wheelbase sprung locos. So I chose the Cleminson arrangement on the grounds that the wheels run along the line of the rail rather than attacking it at an angle. But as I say, I didn't really give the sprung axleboxes a test on such a long wheelbase. It was more and instinctive feeling that it may lead to problems. If you go ahead and prove that it works, I may have to give it a try someday as there are plenty more 6 wheelers to be built yet. Tony

Just to add a little to the discussion, on Buckingham there are 6 wheelers that go round 2'6" curves in EM. They are built a little like the Gauge 1 example above, the only difference being the the inside bearings are also mounted on wire springs. I cannot vouch for the scale accuracy of the spacings of the dummy outside axle guards but they look the part and go round curves that would defeat most 6 wheeled vehicles. Tony

Hello Mike, The width between the solebars is 25.2mm give or take a thou or two. I used 40thou for the solebars giving an over the solebars dimension of 27.2mm. There would be scope for getting a bit extra inside by using thinner material. I think it helps a great deal that in OO and EM there is a decent amount of play between the wheels and the rails anyway, which "buys" clearance round tighter curves. The amount of side movement in the brass W irons isn't huge but they go round the 3' curves as sweetly as anything. I hope that helps, Tony

My Brassmasters ones easily manage a 3' radius in EM and my solebars are a bit thicker than 30thou. With the play that exists in OO I would have thought that something less than 3' would be achievable without any difficulty. Brassmasters have a display 6 wheeler made up and placed on some very tightly curved track on their show stand. Replacing the solebars with 10 thou would give an extra 1mm total movement (0.5mm each side). It would only need to be so thin for a short length alongside each wheel set, as has been done already on the test. I wondered once or twice if the narrow W iron spacing is to allow some side movement between the solebars. If they were full normal width they would hardly be able to move at all. I have used the Bill Bedford sprung axleboxes on a 4 wheeler but I chickened out on a 6 wheeler as I couldn't see any way of building any sideplay into them. Tony

I understand that the initial £1m is to secure the purchase of the land. Tony

There is a photo of the inside of a "Barnum" taken when new in George Dow's "Great Central Album" on P105. You are right about the partitions, with only one in the middle of the carriage. The photo shows the very distinctive seats, with ornate curved ends. A lovely little job for your cutting machine......... The Barnum is looking really nice. Most remained in LNER brown livery up to withdrawal, so even in BR days, they would be brown but with BR style E numbers. There is photographic evidence that at least one Brake 3rd and one all 3rd got painted in red and cream, so if you fancy one like that you can justify it. Tony

I had the same problem with bearings in the Brassmasters W irons. I was advised by a certain Roy Jackson that if I got Markits bearings, they have a deeper hole for the axle to go in. It seems that all bearings are not alike and other makes have a shallower hole, which is what caused the problem. The information on the CLAG site backs this up but at least I can confirm that the combination of Brassmasters W irons and Markits bearings works. At least it did a few years ago when I did mine, manufacturing new batches of bearings may have altered things over the years. New bearings and problem solved, although the solution outlined above has also cured it, new bearings may be the simpler option for future builds. Tony

I have similar questions running through my mind with Buckingham. Peter Denny was continually changing and adding to the layout. The last thing he did, which was still in progress when he died, was to replace the original trees with "sea moss" ones. I had a long chat with Denny family about what I should or shouldn't do and their answer was " Do what Dad would have done". This means that if an item wears out or requires repairs, I am at my own discretion as to what needs to be done. I am lucky in that most things on Buckingham were made from bits and pieces of scrap material and most of the construction techniques have been explained in detail. So if, for example, a fence made from old cereal packets falls apart, as several have, I can easily replace them with new ones made from cereal packets. I will probably continue with the tree upgrades, either putting new foliage on the old trees or perhaps replacing them with "sea moss". They really have suffered over the years and many are little more than stumpy twigs now. There are a couple of locos that I have actually repainted, mainly because the original paint was worn through to bare metal through years of handling and the lettering had almost vanished. They have been hand painted and lined, rather than using a spray and transfers and the lettering has been done to match how they looked on photos of 50 years ago. The liveries are not correct for GCR and one loco doesn't even carry a number but I have recreated them as he liveried them. A few signals are damaged and I am working through them, hopefully creating "splints" from thin brass shim, which can be stuck over breaks in wooden posts. Perhaps the biggest project has been the rewiring of Grandborough Junction, now nearly completed. This has been done using all the original controls but with a highly simplified and more logical wiring arrangement. We have, at last, been able to have a running session with trains going from the fiddle yard to Grandborough and back. In the last couple of weeks our attention has turned to Buckingham and I am pleased to say that about 80% of it still works with the original wiring, so my plan is to keep the original wiring there as long as we can trace the fault in the other 20%, which may just be one wire adrift somewhere. I don't understand the wiring, which is highly complex and unconventional but if it works, I will leave well alone. The baseboard join between Buckingham and Grandborough was connected this evening and although the track needs some attention I am hoping that it won't be too long before trains are running all the way through from the fiddle yard to Buckingham. Despite the hours of effort and considerable expense involved in building the shed, I still feel highly honoured to be able to spend my time and effort on getting my all time favourite layout back up and running again. What I won't be doing is carrying out any major alterations to the layout, the stock or the timetable. The track plan is now frozen as it is and I don't intend to add any new stock or even replace what is there unless I really have to. One or two locos may get new mechanisms but I will keep the old ones, so that they can be put back if it ever gets to the stage where the layout ceases to be deemed capable of being operational. If that ever happens, I am not expecting it to be during my custodianship but many years in the future! Tony

No way! It is a big engine pulling a long train and it is still on the rails.......... (Said with tongue well in cheek - I have seen a train like that in P4 once) Tony