Tony Teague

Hi Tony Regarding point motors, I use only Peco solenoids and whilst I have had the occasional problem of "stickiness" - usually due to motor / point alignment problems, I think that I can say that I have only had 2 failures over about a 10 year period - and I have around 140 motors installed; nor have I ever had any problems related to point blades breaking due to the violence of the solenoid switching. So I would say that your Seep failure rate seems unreasonably high. Tony

Tony I have just invested in a 'GoPro' and I think it really can fill the gap in terms of the low shots - in addition to being able to deliver really high quality video. At present I am only experimenting and learning, but here is a shot which is a low resolution still, exported from a video, and taken from a moving flat wagon at platform level: Please excuse the triangular sky - I have done nothing to edit out the ceiling in my railway room! Tony

Allan Not sure whether you need a prototype but if anyone ever doubts that your derelict goods sheds are realistic, here is a picture taken a week or so ago of the former LNWR goods shed at Watford, Northamptonshire (as in Watford Gap etc): Such a waste, and not long now before it falls down completely! Tony

Tony Sounds like SD car corruption; I have experienced this but I got a complete recovery by using a free utility provided by the card maker SanDisk. It is Called RescuePro and you can download it from the SanDisk website - if of course, your card came from them. Good luck in recovering your images. Tony

Meanwhile....in the back corner of the layout, close to where the 4-track mainline enters twin tunnels,my good friend Mike has been painstakingly constructing a downhill stream which flows through a series of small pools. It is his first attempt at using a static grass applicator and at creating an artificial water surface - and I think it looks great: He built the small bridge from plasticard coated with Das clay, and the stone wall from Das clay alone. Tony

Shouldn't this discussion be on RNWeb, rather than RM.......?

About time for a further update! The work around Churminster station and yard that has occupied me for rather too long is now almost complete; I say almost, because the shed still lacks chimneys and because there will always be details to be added: Over to the left, there is still work to do in the goods yard, but there is far more to be done behind the camera, where as you can see, the ballast currently runs out: Until now, I have been reluctant to start work on this section of the layout as there is so much to complete elsewhere, but I have found it frustrating to have such a large, bare area immediately in front of the Control Panel and so I have changed my mind and started work. Zooming in a bit from the previous shot, I have been progressing the build of a large stone crushing plant to serve a nearby quarry; this is adapted a bit from a Walthers kit and needs to be heavily weathered, whilst the bridge beyond it is scratch built from foam board covered with Slaters brickwork. There is a lot of structural and scenic work to be completed around the bridge and beyond: Looking towards the bridge form the other side, you can see that I have started to form the shape of the embankments and these will shortly "get plastered": A drone shot shows the scene more clearly: There is so much still to do that at times I doubt my own sanity in starting it off! - but I will get there!! Tony

I worked through the various options recently and having rejected kadees because they come apart at gradient changes, I have settled back on small tension locks and the Heathcote Electronics uncoupler. See: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/118492-heathcote-electronics-uncoupler-for-tension-lock-couplings/ Tony

Not sure whether this will be of interest to anyone, so apologies in advance, but PostScript books are selling copies of Peter Tuffrey's "British Railways Steam: Kings Cross to Aberdeen: The Bill Reed Collection", pub. Fonthill 2012, for £5.99 (RRP £16.99). See: https://www.psbooks.co.uk/British-Railways-Steam-Kings-Cross-to-Aberdeen-9781781550533 They also have a number of other railway titles. Postscript sell remaindered books from many publishers including e.g. Ian Allan, and I can recommend their rapid service (no connection etc). Tony

Thanks to Northroader - that is extreme!, The Johnster, Tony W - yes, I think 18,000 is pretty impressive!, and t-b-g for your thoughts & pictures. I had intended to model this as a flat brick-sided girder with abuttments but I think that on reflection, it will be far more plausible as a brick arch. Thanks to all. Tony

Allan Thanks - and yes, and no - because this looks like an inclined railway over a flat road, whereas I am talking the other way around, but what it clearly shows is that some bridges were built where the two elements were not both horizontal. So thank you. Tony

May I pose a question to the assembled mass railway brains that follow this thread? My layout is not based upon a prototype location but I certainly want it to look right and to follow correct practice etc; at one point I have a road that is descending a hill and which will cross a double track main line across a bridge. My question is, would the bridge deck above the railway always have been level, with the road surface above descending at an angle across it, or would the deck itself have been set at an angle to match the descent of the road? I suppose a third option might be that the descent would have to level out at the point it crossed the railway, but I would appreciate understanding which of these configurations would most likely look "right"! Thanks in advance for your assistance. Tony (Oh, and congratulations Tony on passing 18,000 posts!)

Totally agree - Bring back the Stocks!

Willie-Whizz said: It seems to me that anyone with the skills to research and design, manufacture and write the instructions for such a relatively complex thing as a plastic, white-metal or resin kit should not actually find that beyond their capacity, even if they don't have an IT-savvy grandchild or nephew to help. Tony is always encouraging us to 'have a go' at building kits, and that you won't know if you can do it till you try. Well surely that applies to this stuff too? --- My experience is that some, far larger, companies that are able to manufacture good quality products can still have poor marketing & particularly website skills, so it can surely be no surprise that "garden shed hobbyists" who produce obscure kits and parts that we might all want, may have NIL selling, marketing or website skills - and certainly it would be unrealistic for us to expect that they should. What I find more frustrating is when an entire business or product range is sold - usually due to the retirement or demise of the proprietor - and the buyer then fails to keep the range available; why would anyone do this I wonder? Nevertheless I can think of several examples in recent years. As to mobile devices, I share Tony's immense frustration that their perpetual use in the name of "social media" destroys face-to-face interaction and even damages relationships; my wife and I recently observed a young family at an adjacent table in a restaurant where the son was playing games on a tablet device whilst mum and daughter were each busy with continuous texting. Dad stared into space like "Billy no-mates", and this continued even after food was placed in front of them. So much for family life! I regard it as "anti-social media". Tony (a proud luddite)

Phil Have you tried Mike Radford at Marc Models - he has an enormous range of castings, particularly SR & BR(S), not all of which are shown on his website. He is best reached during business hours on 0208 440 5918. Good luck! Tony

Mick Many thanks for the suggestion which I will give a proper try. At first attempt I did use some Microsol but I found that it made the transfers terribly fragile and easy to pull apart. I will just have to be more careful! Best wishes Tony

Time for a further update although progress has been a little slower than I would like. Churminster locoshed now has a roof, and the multiple chimneys for it are under construction; I will post a picture as soon as they are complete and have been installed. Meanwhile I have been looking back at loco liveries; I deliberately chose the period that I am modelling because it gave me the choice of using pre-war Maunsell lined olive plus black for goods locos, wartime black with Bulleid sunshine lettering, and post-war malachite, however, I have recently realised that I have just 5 locos in Maunsell's earlier livery of goods black, lined in green. This is a pair of Brighton tanks, E3 no.2167 on shed from an EB Models kit, and E6 No.2415 from and SE Finecast kit on a short train of cattle wagons. I really like this elegant livery but the record suggests that the green lining was abandoned in favour of plain black for goods locomotives by 1935 - 36 - but who's to deny that a few locomotives might have still been around in this livery as late as 1938??? Here is the unique ex-S, E & C R crane tank no.1302, and heavyweight class W tank no.1915 on another cattle wagon train, both from SE Finecast kits. I don't think I have ever seen an original colour picture of any loco in this livery; can anyone point me at one? And finally, class Z no.954 from a DMR kit on that ubiquitous cattle train. All of the kits built & painted by Chris Phillips. Tony

OK, so I have managed to completely remove the old names & clean up the paintwork, but can someone help me as to how to get the new transfers to sit properly onto the matchboard sides? I have tried but the coach name appears to sit across the matchboarding like a nameplate, rather than settling down into the grooves between the boards. All ideas welcome! Tony

Thanks Baz The link works fine, although he does not yet have the telegraph poles on offer - nevertheless, I shall contact him. Thank you. Tony

Baz Are you able to give a link to his Shapeways shop? Tony

Tony The "LB Retrospective" idea has really taken hold. Despite my Southern affiliations, I do have a range of LNER horse boxes, vans, pigeon vans & wagons which I am hoping will win me sufficient grovelling rights that I might join the assembled company! (Sample offering!) Tony

Having started this thread a short while ago, I have now trialed the Heathcote Uncoupler and I have to say that I am very happy with it (no connection etc etc). As a consequence I have ordered a further batch as I will need quite a number around the layout. At the same time I have made significant progress on replacing older style tension-lock and some other coupling types as I have found that mixing these within a train has been a major cause of derailments as well as unintended & unwanted uncouplings. Thanks to all for their various contributions which helped me to learn a lot! Tony

This is a gruesome thread, is it not? My late brother in law was in one of the London Underground crews who were regularly sent to clean up after people had "jumped"; he and his colleagues had what might have been regarded as a very black sense of humour, but as Jol has observed, it was just their way of coping with a bleak job that involved collecting widely distributed body parts and cleaning up the mess. Tony

Mike, I found this thread recently when researching LNER teak for some pigeon vans; I am a Southern modeller so this is a bit alien to me! I followed exactly the method that you laid out right at the outset - white undercoat, Vallejo orange, W&N burnt umber oil paint + liquin, and then Modelmates Soot Black to weather. I am really pleased with the results, so thank you for sharing your approach! Tony

Seems a long time since I last posted, but I have been busy bedding in the Churminster loco shed and dirtying up / weathering the loco yard. As a relief from this I decided to make up a couple of kits to extend and add variety to my mixed, inter-regional parcels train, so these are Chivers LNER d.120 Pigeon Vans; my experience with Chivers kits is that they invariably go together exceedingly well, and these were no exception. Having built them I decided that I needed to find a better way to paint them to an LNER teak finish, and so I found within RMWeb an excellent thread by Mike Trice (see http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/75178-reproducing-varnished-teak-improving-latest-Hornby-thompsons/ ); I then followed his method as closely as I was able. I am pretty pleased with the results as this is only the 2nd time I have attempted teak. The problem now, is that also within my inter-regional parcels train is a Hornby Gresley full brake which has not been weathered at all; I have to say that it now needs some serious attention! Tony Edited to add Mike Trice reference.