checkrail

Looks good. I think I have a pair of similar Shire Scenes etched coupling frets somewhere, which might lend themselves to the same treatment. But I will have another go with the Exactoscale ones - perhaps when I get round to tarting up King and Castle. John C.

You've done a great job there. After an initial experiment I decided that Smith's couplings weren't flexible enough in more than one direction to do this, but you've proved me wrong! The Exactoscale ones certainly will do it, and will probably look really good, but I think you have to a jeweller, watchmaker or skilled finescale modeller to manage it. I'm none of the above but working on the last one! I agree that a 3D printed one (or conventionally manufactured spare) would be very popular with GW modellers once the word got round. Thanks for kind comment. John C.

The next few pics show Broome Hall easing in to its scheduled stop at Stoke C. with its 4-coach local set (van 3rd; compo; 3rd; van 3rd). Those who've followed this thread recently may recall how the camera had exposed my skimping on detail that's out of sight at normal viewing angles. It hadn't occurred to me when building the layout that I'd be able to get my camera into places where my head or eye wouldn't go. I spent a couple of days or so last month putting this right. What fun - standing on a chair bent double as if I was standing on my head at the back of the baseboard, painting the platform side of the fencing and adding advertising posters, applying lettering to the back of the running-in boards, and above all adding and painting the missing brickwork on the rear side platform faces and filling the cess between platform and track. Glad it's over, with no damage (except a bit of acid indigestion from being bent double for so long!). Not perfect, but it'll do, and allows some good shots. Another thing I've been grappling with over recent weeks - without success so far - is trying to assemble Exactoscale GWR screw couplings and persuade them to adopt that characteristic GW arrangement whereby they're hung up to a hook beneath left buffer. I'll come back to this in due course and have another go, but I'd spent so long at it that it was time to move on and get other things done. (I note that the Hattons/DJM 48xx is said to have just such a coupling set-up included. I've emailed both Hattons and Dave Jones suggesting that this be made available as a spare. Otherwise, in the short term the only way I can see towards getting what I want is to buy ten 48xx models, keep the couplings, and throw the locos away. Might be a tad expensive.) I quite like this last shot, which I think shows Bachmann's nice finish to advantage. John C.

As Winslow Hall heads away towards the tunnel she passes sister engine (and Newton Abbot shedmate) 4908 Broome Hall on a Newton to Plymouth stopping train. I wanted a Hall with small tender to add a bit of variety, and I've found a number of 1930s photos of 4908 with the 3,500 gallon version. This model started life as 'Rood Ashton Hall' as preserved, part of the 'Shakespeare Express' train set. (I sold on the other items but I've since seen the loco advertised separately.) It's finished in a lustrous chrome green which is a shade different than its sister's. Don't know how accurate that shade is but it looks attractive. And though Halls do suit later, plainer liveries I think this early version with small tender looks nice and elegant in full pre-1934 rig, redolent of its Saintly forebears. I think Bachmann have done a particularly nice job on the tender. John C.

I'll continue to talk a lot of Halls. The two shots below show Winslow Hall pulling through the up platform at Stoke C. I think the elderly lady with her neck craned forward has just twigged that this isn't actually her train. And the next two show it heading away towards Newton Abbot and Exeter. (In the first shot you can make out the fall plate and the crew.) Have given the camera lens a good clean since these were taken. When I take some more I'll be able to see if it's made any difference. John C.

It's a Canon Ixus which my wife bought for holiday pics and suchlike. I could probably do better if I applied myself to finding out more about it. About time I heeded the old adage, RTFM.

Here are a couple more of Winslow Hall. Don't think I've used this angle before. Works quite well after cropping out the layout fascia board. Would work even better with a better camera. One strange thing about the Bachmann Halls is that both of mine (of widely separated dates of manufacture) have the ejector cone left in unpainted black plastic. What's all that about? Is it cost cutting, or an oversight, or did Bachmann genuinely think they were black? But easily remedied with a fine paintbrush, especially as you can get an offcut of printer paper behind it to avoid getting paint on the boiler. (Now someone will tell me that they were actually painted black!) John C.

Locomotive detailing at Stoke Courtenay continues, albeit slowly as I try to refine my skills, sometimes finding out the hard way how not to do things. Last month I told you the tale of two prairies. Today it's a tale of two Halls. I'll start with 5975 'Winslow Hall', formerly Bachmann's 'Kinlet Hall'. In the shots below it's seen heading east towards Stoke Courtenay with a fitted freight. As with the prairies detailing consists of real coal, lamps, crews, etched number & name plates, new vac pipes (not so keen on the Bachmann ones) and dummy screw couplings. Fall plates on both Halls are made from matt black paper, stuck to the edge of the cab floor with double-sided Scotch tape to overlap the tender front but allow sufficient flex to avoid any interference that might compromise smooth running. Apparently 5975 was a Newton Abbot engine in 1938. I've not found any pre-nationalisation photos of her, but given her build date (1936 IIRC) I guessed that she would have been outshopped with a 4000 gallon tender with 'shirt button' totem. It took a while to get the printed 'Great (crest) Western' lettering off the tender, and as usual I brought some green paint off with it. This was remedied by a few thin coats of Railmatch GWR loco green over the central panel after masking off the lining. A few sprayed coats of Humbrol satin varnish covered a multitude of sins. Somehow I think that this more minimalist insignia diverts attention a bit from Bachmann's rather heavy handed lining. John C. (Edited to read 'Newton Abbot' (not Laira) as 1938 home of 5975.)

I was resigned to having this wrong on 4574, but wasn't sure whether I'd ever get round to doing something about it. But I'm off the hook. I've recently found two 1930s photos of 4591, of the later 4575 version, with portholes! So I'm sure that 4555-74 would have had them too. John C.

Yes, that large prairie looks great! .

I think the arch stones are known as 'voussoirs'. But anyone out there feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - it comes not from any civil engineering knowledge but from memories of a Railway Modeller article in 1950 or 1960-something! Bridge looking good. John C..

Just spent a very enjoyable hour or so catching up on this thread. Wonderful Layout. and plenty of lovely small prairies and panniers. Particularly liked the sequence showing the branch goods being shunted. And trains aside, the white house is an exquisite bit of modelling. Hope Mayshill is still an ongoing project and that we'll see more in due course. Regards, John C.

NOTE: in post #230 in regard to 'Great Western' lettering I meant 'too close together' and not 'too far apart'. Apologies for any confusion.

Thanks Captain, for this suggestion and for very kind words. Yes, they are a bit beefy. I'd vaguely considered gently filing them down, but your idea is better. I had tried attaching the lamps with Tacky Wax, but some of them didn't survive the first circuit of the layout and have not been seen since. So one or two have ended up being glued on with a spot of UHU. But locos can look daft with lamps permanently at both ends, so installing scale size brackets and hooking the Modelu lamps thereon, just like the real thing, seems the way to go. That just leaves another modeller's dilemma. Does one want to lean over with tweezers to change lamps at the end of every journey when one's leaned over backwards to eliminate the 'hand of God' from every other aspect of operation? Like most modeller's dilemmas I guess it will eventually be resolved by a modeller's compromise!

Thanks Miss P. for this guidance. My real doubt was not so much whether they were plated over by the 1930s, but whether the last (1924) batch, up to and including 4574, ever had the porthole windows in the first place. I don't think the 4575 variant did. John C.

Reviews of the new Hattons/DJM 48xx suggest that this comes with such a coupling (and there's apparently a corresponding little hook on the buffer beam). Just what we need. I've emailed Hattons to ask if it will be available as a spare. Answer was, 'No plans, but would consider'. The more people who contact them the more likely this will be I guess?

Wonderful stuff Jon. Station buildings look great, and I particularly like that skewed road bridge. Bacon factory sounds tasty too. Keep 'em coming! Regards, John C.

Nice pics Robin, and nice work. Thanks for that. A 45xx minus outside steam pipes might now be a future project.

Thought I'd finish off the 45xx saga by summarising some of the items I used in the 'tarting up' process. Number plates are Jackson Evans/Modelmaster Vac pipes were braided brass ones from Scale Link. These are slightly disappointing in that the upright pipe seems far too thin (unusual - things are more often overscale). They needed beefing up by slipping some insulation from old layout wire over them. It's a pity the trusty old Romford braided pipes seem to have gone out of production. NIS at Peters and elsewhere. There was a pack on eBay the other week but I forgot to go back before the auction ended. If anyone knows of a source of brass pipes that can be manipulated into that characteristic GWR shape I'd be interested to know. Steam heat pipes were a 2 part brass item from Markits. Lovely. Screw couplings are Hornby spares x5069. Very neat but not quite correct as they have a shackle at the top passing through the hook. Designed for diesels I think. But very acceptable at a distance. I put a drop of Roket Hot on the links to ensure they hung vertically instead of in an s shape - they're very light. (I'm currently grappling with some exquisite - and expensive - Exactoscale items to see if I can persuade them into that typically GWR arrangement where they're hooked up below the left buffer. This is for when I get onto tarting up the tender engines.) Crew were 3-D printed figures from Modelu. Really nice and a wide variety of poses available. Fun to paint too (albeit rather inexpertly). Lamps are also from Modelu. I find these tricky. In removing the lenses I often manage to delaminate the little plastic lens from its reflector. Or I offer up the lens/reflctor but then find it difficult to persuade it to get off my knife point and adhere to the lamp. I'll try to nudge it off with a cocktail stick but then it'll stick to that. Or I'll slice it from the backing strip only to bring a trail of surlus gum with it, which I then can't get off the lamp without dislodging the lens. And on the sorry tale goes.... Grrrr. I need about 3 lenses per lamp to get it right. Any hints & tips gratefully received! But they do look nice. Buffer beam numbers were a mixture of Fox waterslide and HMRS Methfix transfers (but not on the same buffer beam obviously!). In regard to 4574 I thought the two words 'Great' and 'Western' were far too close together on Bachmann's 4539 (as they were on their 4555 which I guess replicated its preserved state). I've always understood that following the First World War the practice was to leave a gap that would accommodate the crest or twin shields, which in the event were never added to tank or freight locos. I've since been persuaded elsewhere on this forum that this might not always have been the case, and have been pointed at a pic of a grubby 4539 in which the words do seem a bit closer. But I was determined to model the typical, reflecting the numerous photos of GW tank engines in my albums, so the lettering had to go. I was new to this, and found that using T-cut or IPA and rubbing with a cotton bud, or scraping gently with a cocktail stick, as many articles suggest I would often get through the green paint before the lettering had disappeared. And on one pannier tank (still under treatment) the lettering left a 'ghost' shadow. But I blundered on and did a bit of touching up, and all was well. I originally applied HMRS Methfix lettering, but didn't like the vivid yellow colour. Fox do both gold and yellow versions, so I went for their gold - a better match for my existing Hornby and Bachmann finishes. But their letters were far closer together than any locos I'd ever seen pictures of, so I had to cut them out and apply every letter separately. Using some good 45xx illustrations in my books I faithfully copied the positioning of the letters around the vertical rivet runs on the tank side. I'll leave you to judge how accurately I managed it but after a coat of Halford's matt varnish spray I'm reasonably pleased with it. Still lots to learn with all this stuff. Anyway, enough of prairies for a while. Time to get back to King, Castle, Hall etc for the treatment. But here's a last shot of the the two of them. John C.

Last few prairie pics (he says, resisting the temptation to attach a picture of grassland with grazing buffalo). Below 4574 slows through the station to stop clear of the trailing point which will allow it access across the up main line and into the yard. These wagons could do with loads - or at least some tarpaulins to hide the lack thereof. Another thing on the long 'to do' list. No wonder they say model railways are seldom finished. In the shot below the points have now changed (one key stroke on my wireless handheld sets 'route 3', changing all necessary points), and the loco can now set back its train. ( I'm sure many of us are looking forward to the new Hornby 'Toad' - I'll take three please! - but this Bachmann one ain't so bad. It captures the character.) Finally, two pics of 4574 in the headshunt taking a break from shunting, allowing the branch passenger train to use the run round loop. I have a feeling that the plated-over porthole windows on 4574 might be incorrect for such a high numbered loco (last of the original flat top tank version). But all the S. Devon 1930s 45xx photos I could find showed locos not yet fitted with outside steam pipes, so I may have traded off one inaccuracy for another. But I don't let it keep me awake at nights. John C.

If you've had enough of small prairies look away now! Here are some pics of 5557's sister engine (well, half-sister I suppose) 4574. This was also based at NA in the 30s. (I try to assign numbers that were in the area but without getting too hung up about it. By definition none of them were ever at Stoke Courtenay 'cause it doesn't exist!) This started life as Bachmann's 4539, and needed a bit more work than 5557 in that I replaced the tank side lettering. But more on that later. Here 4574 approaches SC with a short pick-up goods. The Ocean wagons in the pic above are the ancient Trix (later Lilliput) 3.8mm to the foot items, bought via eBay and mounted on Cambrian underframes. (It was amusing to receive a model of a wagon belonging to the Ocean Coal Company of Treorchy in packaging stamped 'Made in Austria'.) I had one of the originals many decades ago and always liked the quality of the printing. The picture below has revealed to my horror my omission of the brick facing on the down platform. I told you I was lazy, and when I started out it hadn't occurred to me what good photo angles might be possible with a little camera - indeed the notion of photographing the layout had barely even crossed my mind. Otherwise this is a promising shot, so I'll get to work to remedy this and similar bloopers before Andy York comes to work his magic. John C.

Hi Robin. Like my 'Truro' signal box it's one of those resin buildings commissioned from Bachmann by Kernow Model Railways as part of their collection of Cornish prototypes, and is based on the one at St Ives. It comes as a sort of kit, with support columns, lattice work (nice brass etching) etc. to be attached by the purchaser. Due to the minor distortions that happen with resin casting It was quite a job to get the columns to stand vertically and I had to discreetly cut through some of the diagonal support struts before I could get the thing to stand foursquare (well, sixsquare actually!). As with the signal box I repainted it to match my other buildings. I like the resin 'water' too, though it needs dusting from time to time. The design was obviously not confined to Cornwall - there's a good pic of an almost identical one at Kingham in Adrian Vaughan's 'GWR junction stations'. John C.

4 foot ruling radius on main line, but nearer 3 foot at either end of branch/yard run round loop. But they all go round the inside track of Peco curved points in the fiddle yard, which I think is about 2 foot radius. Only problem I've had is reversing ('setting back') goods trains from main into yard loop, where I've had the odd bit of buffer locking on the final 3 foot-ish point. If the loco's a pannier, no problem, whatever the wagon. If the wagon nearest the loco is of 9 foot wheelbase, also no problem, whatever the loco. But if the loco is a 45xx and the wagon next to it has a 10 foot w/b. buffer locking can occur. I've remedied this by gluing short horizontal bits of fine wire behind the faces of the inner buffers on a couple of bits of stock, e.g. GW cattle wagons. Can't be seen at normal, or even close, viewing distance - or at least not by me! A pragmatic solution from which the use of Templot might have saved me! Of course I could also have avoided the problem by keeping (shortened) T/Ls on the locos, but that's not a look I like.

Let's continue the story. In the photos below 5557 draws forward into the loco spur, where it has an opportunity to take on water, before running round its train. Below 5557 is seen running round. (The double slip was made for me by Stephen Freeman of this parish. As a rule I try to do everything myself, but I'm testing my limits and sometimes confidence fails me. It was a good choice.) But 5557's station work is not done yet. It needs to pick up an Earlsbridge-bound horse box that's been dropped in the short bay platform by a down main line train. Here it's seen backing up to the vehicle and retrieving it, before backing over the up main to attach it to the front of the branch train. (Just noticed that last two pics got attached in wrong order, and that the penultimate pic above [029] tells me I should have lettered the branch platform side of the running in board! But there's worse to come. Should also have cropped view of loft lighting!) The final two shots show the train departing back down the branch towards Earlsbridge. John C.

Neither Rich. I started out fitting them to the loco frames, but then decided to fit them to the loco body. They're attached to the inside of the buffer beams with superglue, reinforced later with epoxy, just to each side of where the front or back frames fit when offering up the body to the chassis. Height can be adjusted after fitting, with fine nosed pliers, using a simple home made height gauge. I did worry, just a few days ago, that the buffer beam gubbins might impede operation of auto coupling, but I seem to have successfully avoided this. (And on the other hand one has to ensure that the same gubbins, especially the slightly bent back steam heating pipes, don't get in the way of connecting/disconnecting body from chassis). The wire hoops are formed to sit very slightly proud of the buffers. All stock carries Bachmann 36-030 T/L couplers shortened to same dimensions, so loop is just a smidgeon of a millimetre proud of the buffers. John C.