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4018 Knight of the Grand Cross on the Wolverhampton train pulls through Stoke Courtenay and meets 5975 Winslow Hall coming the other way with a stopping passenger train. Spent quite a bit of time this afternoon exploring Affinity Photo and other photo software to see how to paint in uniform backdrops (or paint out unwanted contrasts), but have retired baffled. I read thousands of words and came across dozens of icons, none of which I understood at all. Will have another go when brain working properly again! John C.

It's across pages 48/49.

You will Robin, you will ….. ! There's a good pic of 6801 on a freight at Aller Jcn in the Norman Lockett book, assisted in the rear by a large prairie as it starts the climb to Dainton. Interesting and varied mix of wagons too.

Three more of the Grange-hauled freight. Must neaten up those tarps and make them look a bit more secure. John C.

A couple more of 5000 Launceston Castle. Threatening skies over the Moor as 6801 Aylburton Grange approaches from the west with a class H freight. John C.

You've done a nice job removing it Martin. I'm sure I'll be able to do similar with Affinity Photo when I finally manage to set aside some time to learn how. Nice to know you're still watching - value your views & opinions, and your support. Cheers, John.

5000 Launceston Castle emerges from the tunnel with a down express and heads through Stoke Courtenay station. As I'm now self-isolating like on old Peco point there will probably be more posts from me on here over the coming days. Unless I do something really radical, like some actual modelling. John C.

A couple more of this afternoon's manoeuvres. Reasonably pleased with these two shots - quite colourful. The up platform starter hasn't got quite back to horizontal. A subsequent poke with a cocktail stick made it behave. Bit of friction? Not being a model engineer I'm in the hands of Dapol etc. in so many things. As for the branch platform starter, this is the last remaining non-working signal (modified Ratio kit). I'm just waiting for Dapol's left-hand single-arm bracket signal to do the replacement. (Perhaps a bit of an indulgence in that I signal very few moves from the branch platform to the up main line. But I guess I'm a bit of a compleatist!) John C.

Wonderful - keep 'em coming! Plenty pics of Kings like that in the Hubback book I mentioned.

4574 draws carefully forward onto the up main line with the Earlsbridge trip goods returning to Hackney Yard. 5557 has recently arrived in the branch platform with its B-set. On the right of the first photo you can just about see the road to the rest of Stoke Courtenay village winding up through the trees. John C.

Another big plus to the Hubback Collection is that it's not one of those full of 3/4 loco views where the photographer seems to have treated the surroundings as a distracting irrelevance. Many of the pics are taken from the angles from which we view our layouts, with plenty of landscape, civils and railway infrastructure. Many of the scenes just cry out to be modelled.

Another one worth having is Great Western Pictorial No. 2: The Hubback Collection. Lots of wartime and late 40s shots with many commendably clean Castles & Kings, various oil burners and a Saint in wartime black. (Loads of good 30s stuff in there too, which was why I bought it!)

Rails of Sheffield recently (at about 108 quid IIRC), but others on eBay in recent weeks at the £100 - £120 mark.

Final few of 6027 for now, heading west past the goods yard, while 5557 approaches with the Earlsbridge branch train. Of course, to get this last shot I had to lie on the roof of the leading carriage. John C.

No magic here - just Bachmann short t/l couplings made even shorter. I find that one can couple vehicles quite a bit closer than one thinks. As long as the coupling loop is in line with the buffer faces they're fine to go round the inside radius of Peco curved points in the fiddle yard. (IIRC I think that's about 2 ft radius?) When the buffers are sprung you can get them even closer. On the train we're looking at today the tender buffers are sprung but the ones on the Centenary van third are the original Airfix solid plastic items.

Good gracious! So it had. Thanks for the alert. And now I know what that pipe is. Finally got it to behave only after snipping it short and gluing down - couldn't find a locating hole. I'd do better at this modelling malarkey if I could actually see.

Some more of King Richard I, which like my other King started life as a Hornby 'King Edward V' (still available at pretty reasonable prices). What I've been trying to do is to represent that sooty, oily sheen that even clean locos developed after the ex-works polish wore off. It's a look achieved beautifully by @toboldlygo of this parish so I thought I'd give it a try. Loco & tender chassis had their wheel rims painted black and were then airbrushed with a mix of Humbrol 33 & 34 with just a hint of gunmetal added. I masked the cylinder covers while doing this, then later toned the lining down with Vallejo black wash. Finally some of Lifecolor's dirty grease and oil effects were added to the moving parts of the motion. Loco & tender bodies were then airbrushed with a number of light coats of Vallejo satin varnish to which a little touch of Vallejo black was added. Final detailing included real coal, lamps & crew (both Modelu of course). Name & numberplates were from Modelmaster and buffer beam numbers from Fox. One thing this treatment does, I think, is to disguise that rather flat, pale shade of green that Hornby used for this model. John C.

Thanks Gerry - much appreciated.

6019 meets sister engine (or should that be brother?) 6027 'King Richard I'. As I'd had a DJ Models King on order before the project's demise it was easy to persuade myself that I'd always intended to have two! John C.

I'd been thinking for a while that 6019 was just a tiny bit over-weathered for my taste. It needed a bit of TLC too to fix a dodgy inside cylinder cover, a mis-aligned buffer beam digit and a wonky lamp. All since done, but I still a hankered after a rather more pristine King for the down Penzance. So here's Henry V again just before it meets the new King on the block. John C.

Hope we're all keeping safe & well. Been a while since I posted from Stoke Courtenay, so here's the beginning of a game of two kings as Henry V sweeps through with an up express. John C.

Yeah , but the prob. was him and his approach to running a business, wasn't it, rather than the actual products? Having said that I've recently acquired a Slater's C28 third kit for body only, under Coopercraft branding. The floor supplied in the kit was nothing like the Slater's item, but looked vaguely familiar. It's only this afternoon that it dawned on me - it was from a Mailcoach K22 kit. Weird.

Yes, they were lovely kits. I've been lucky enough to acquire 4 over the years, which together with 3 from other companies makes up a decent little cattle train. Not got any of the Bachmann ones, but am I right in saying that the Bachmann model is actually of a BR wagon, like the old Airfix kit? I seem to remember that the BR wagons were based on a later GWR prototype but with some differences, e.g. a different roof arc. John C.

I fitted mine with replacement ends from Keen Systems. (The Hornby ends just slide out vertically). They're detailed resin items and include representations of the appropriate scissors-type gangways with the Keen Systems floating endplates to facilitate close coupling. (Though I don't use the Keen Systems close coupling method, just hook & bar couplings as close as they will go and still get round the curves). Have a look at the Keen Systems website. (Usual disclaimer.) John C.

I've only just been alerted to this topic, and seen references to the 'Brian Kirby uncoupling - problems' thread I started in 2015. I wouldn't want anyone to be put off by the word 'problems' in the thread title. By the time the final contribution to the discussion had been posted they'd been very largely overcome, and I still use the system with success. The only slight change I've made since is to couple some goods wagons in pairs with BK couplings on outer ends only, greatly minimising any residual tendency for wagons to spontaneously re-couple. And of course they don't have to stay in the same pairs. I'm in good company here, as the estimable Iain Rice used to assemble wagons in 'cuts' with his own 'imprecise' coupler (not dissimilar to the S & W) at the outer ends and 3-links in between. I agree that Dinghams would probably be superior, but I'm afraid I wasn't skilful enough to assemble them to a satisfactory non-binding standard. Like at least one other contributor to this new discussion I'd love to know what 'Greenwich' couplings are. (Google here we come.) John C.