checkrail

I just stuck a Velcro patch to the back of the controller handset and another to the layout fascia. As the handset is wireless I've also put a couple more Velcro pads on the fascia at other locations, e.g. fiddle yard.

"Fade to grey", as Visage (I think) said. Grey is the new weathered black.

It is indeed Robin. After the wagon's been weathered a bit the tarp will go back on - straight this time. Never sure with these whether to bother with representations of ropes etc. I don't see this type of detail at normal viewing distance. It also gives me the option of taking the tarps off or putting them back as desired.

They did look good, especially for coaches within rakes, enabling easy retrieval of a coach from the set. But I don't think you'd want them on locos, and they don't solve the remote uncoupling question. Having given my granddaughter a Brio set for Christmas I know what Sven means!

Agree with recent remarks about couplings. When I returned to this game in 2012 my biggest disappointment was the lack of decent r-t-r track (since addressed) but the next was the lack of good, unobtrusive ready-to-use couplings with remote uncoupling ability. I've not had a lot of success with aftermarket solutions like Sprat & Winkle, though I may revisit them one day. I currently use shortened Bachmann straight T/Ls, 36-030, or even better 36-061, with NEM pockets. The pockets are fitted to Parkside PA 34 mounting blocks (supposedly designed for the cranked coupling 36-027 but I don't use those). The mounting blocks are glued to the vehicle floor using a bit of Plastikard packing if necessary) and set back if possible so that the coupling loop is in line with the buffer faces. If setting them back that far isn't possible I shorten the coupling and the NEM pocket by 2 or 3mm with a Stanley knife, and fix the coupling back into the pocket either with superglue or by fusing together with an old bit in the soldering iron. The shortened couplers are a bit less obtrusive and give satisfyingly close coupling, yet will still negotiate 2 foot radius curves (inside curve of Peco curved points in fiddle yard) Many wagons are also fitted with the 'Brian Kirby' modification to allow remote magnetic uncoupling, but that's another story. More on that on my layout thread and elsewhere on this forum. (Thanks for the bandwidth Robin!) John C.

Was only teasing! And if a coat of paint covers a multitude of sins then a coat of filth, soot, muck etc. covers solebars of any colour. Mine looks a little too clean come to think of it.

Snap! (But don't forget the black ironwork on the wooden solebars.) John C.

While I was at it I completed the last of my stash of wagon kits, another Cambrian SR 5 plank open (as built the other week by Robin of ANTB fame, coincidentally). I hadn't realised I'd bought two of these. But you can never have too many open wagons I guess. After weathering this one will get a tarpaulin, like so: I've still got a couple of old Trix 'Ocean' wagon bodies and two Cambrian 9ft wb RCH underframe kits to put under them, but they can wait. 2020 is supposed to be the year of the coach here at Stoke Courtenay. So I've told myself no more wagons until the OR ex-GER van appears. John C.

Just for comparison here are the Diamond wagons, old and new or little and large. Note the identical numbers - both purport to be models of the same vehicle. But Bachmann did make a lovely job of the printing. The Dapol 10 foot w'base steel underframes on the E & B wagons didn't go to waste either. Lurking in a drawer I had an ancient Airfix/Mainline GW van with couplings like snowploughs on huge blocks and the brake shoes aligned with the W irons. But the body and decoration were ok. I also remembered that I had a Ratio kit for a 'grounded van body' given as a freebie with RM a year or two back. A bit of carving the underframe to fit, some Dave Franks buffers and coupling hooks, a bit of lead weighting, and after application of paint and transfers another Mink was ready for the road. Waste not, want not. Here's Broome Hall on a westbound freight with the old Airfix/Mainline van immediately behind the engine and the Ratio one behind that. John C.

Seemed almost a shame to besmirch those lovely colour schemes, but to replicate the age of steam, smoke and soot a modeller's gotta do what a modeller's gotta do. So I did, using Vallejo black wash, applied in downward vertical strokes with a 1/4" flat paintbrush. Each wagon has shortened Bachmann couplings, Alan Gibson wheels, and a bit of lead (from Eileen's) stuck below the floor. The insides have been treated with a mixture of dirty black paint, coal dust, weathering powder and a good spray of Dullcote. Here they are back in the train, for now in pride of place immediately behind the loco. John C.

They do indeed couple up easily, but with almost enough space between them to squeeze another wagon in.

I mentioned some time ago that I still had three PO wagons on 10 foot steel underframes lurking at the back of my coal train. Here they are, two Evans & Bevan (old Lima bodies on Dapol underframes) and one Diamond Anthracite (early Bachmann, ex-Mainline). It was about time I replaced them with something better, but I did like the liveries. There are photos of the E & B wagons, with their distinctive heart-shaped logos in the GWR in the 30s albums and also in 'The big four in colour'. (The latter is in the LNER section. I was only looking, honest!) The Diamond wagon is a work of art, and provides a nice flash of red among all those black vehicles. So I ordered pre-printed kits from Powsides. They arrived after a long wait but well worth it, so no complaints. What's more, all are of the shorter Gloucester RC & W wagons (Slater's kits), adding a bit of variety to the usual RCH design from Bachmann, OR etc. Here they are before weathering. John C.

Superb prairie portrait. Looks great with the signal behind it. More close-ups like this please! (Was just about to start yesterday on my second Cambrian SR 5 plank open when my magnifying lamp blew its bulb. New one on order.)

Or maybe not! Just realised it was the Captain's post I'd responded to, not yours.

Nicely recovered Robin!

Lovely main line action! Great shots.

One thing that did work quite well was to replicate the M.O. of the original PC kits, by painting and detailing the brass sides before applying to the coach. (But after forming the tumblehome with an offcut of bullnose skirting board and a couple of other bits of timber.) I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd fabricated the door vents from microstrip. Another element not present with the etched sides was the droplights, which gave me the idea of using parts of the original PC kit's printed acetate sides, fixed behind the window apertures with Glue 'n' Glaze, thus taking care of the droplights, glazing and corridor-side internal handrails all in one go. Of course I still had to paint all those fiddly bolections. A problem area was the extruded aluminium roof. I've learned that I should support such roofs more firmly when drilling for shell vents to avoid dimples. Filler tanks were formed of thin Plastikard with a border of Plastikard rivet strips, while filler caps were slices of an old Dapol telegraph pole with bits of wire for the handles. But the big bugbear was the rainstrips. How do other people stick these to metal roofs? I'm afraid I've left bits of superglue residue which several coats of paint haven't entirely obliterated. Another aspect I need to improve is door furniture. The Brassmasters grab handles I had in stock are a bit overscale I think, and the distance between their two fixing prongs greater than that between the pre-marked holes on the etch, so I kept scratching my nice new paintwork while offering them up. in the end I cut off the lower prongs, so all the grab handles hang from top fixing only, which is why they're not all totally straight! As for those little T handles - well, there are 18 on the coach, and probably another 18 on the loft floor somewhere. But it's all good fun. Here's a cruel close-up, followed by a shot of the coach within its train while 3603 comes off the Earlsbridge branch with a goods train. John C.

In theory, yes. But in the case of the Dapol bracket signals, if you platform-mount them as Rich and I have done the inseparable sub-baseboard box of tricks is wider than the platform!

Thanks Barry Ten, but here's my guilty secret - I glued the second side on before the first had set hard, and somehow it moved a bit (ok, I must have knocked it). By the time I came to offer the roof up it would no longer fit quite rightly as one side of the coach was higher than the other at one end. I did try to get a side off again, but by then the adhesive was firmly set and I began to bend the side in the attempt. I did have a go at twisting the tin roof slightly, but that was fraught as I'd already detailed and painted it. The only way the roof would fit was with the cantrails partly behind the sides, meaning that the tops of the ends needed filing down a bit making the whole coach just a smidgen too low, and the ends ending up (after application of filler) a little too wide at the top. How to rectify this mess? Well, I disguised it as best I could by adding new 'false' cantrails with microstrip. Think I've just about got away with it! Here are a few more pics. And here's one of the other side, alongside a Slater's E88 compo for comparison. John C.

Here's Winslow Hall on a Newton Abbot - Plymouth local service, with a toplight C31 third in the consist of the M set. The coach is built from an old PC kit but with etched brass sides in place of the printed acetate ones supplied. I don't know who made the brass sides, but they were, fortuitously, included as extras in the box when I acquired the kit via eBay some years ago. So thank you to whomever I bought it from! This was my first try at a hybrid like this, and my first time working with etched brass sides. Putting a positive spin on things it's been a valuable learning exercise. Other descriptions are available. ('Comedy of errors' and 'catalogue of disasters' come to mind.) I'll add a bit about the experience, lessons learned and queries raised in another post. Meanwhile it'll do for now as a 'layout coach' tucked away in its train where it will I hope pass muster to the proverbial blind man on the galloping horse. John C.

Rich, the central portion of my island platform is 106mm wide. The Timber Tracks island platform building is 46mm wide, so there is clearance of 30mm (7' 6") between the building and platform edge on both sides. This is also the distance by which the canopies jut out from the sides of the building. Brian Lewis had cleverly designed his IPB kit in the knowledge that most modellers would be working to minimum clearances, and it was a bit of serendipity that they were such a good fit for my platform - seeing that I'd already built it, and on a slight curve too, before I came across his lovely kit. Here are a few pics of the site. (By having a bench full of people in front of the building I'm probably accentuating the narrowness of the clearance, but it's not that apparent in normal side-on view.) And here are a couple of views of the IPB footprint with building removed. BTW, nice to see the bracket signal find a good home. Hope all goes well with ingenious motorising idea for the dud arm. John C.

That's welcome news Mike. From what you've said before I believe the earlier etch for the Hornby 2/3 compo model was of an earlier (i.e. pre-1930s) incarnation Thanks for letting us all know via the great clearing house that is ANTB. Another project looms!

Or as a late friend of mine always used to say, "They said it couldn't be done - so I didn't bother".

'A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault'. - John Henry Newman I do like your Cardinal Newman epigram Rich. A new one to me but very apposite when approaching scary modelling projects. Other sayings I recall when things aren't working out 100% as planned, or I'm making things worse when attempting to correct errors, are ' The best is the enemy of the good' and ' The man who never made a mistake never made anything'.

I greatly admire those who model a real location as accurately as possible but I lean towards the view that aesthetics trumps fidelity to a specific location every time. For me it's all about seeing the trains, and if geography, landscape, trees, buildings etc. get in the way then 'reality' has to be changed! Best wishes for the revised layout - look forward to seeing more pics as it progresses.