Ian Kirk

My memories of crimson/carmine and cream or as we used to say blood and custard was that former LMS coaches and the then new Mk1s had the top strip. Ex LNER Gresley and Thompsons had not. Presumably because the LNER windows extended almost right up to the cantrail and there would not have been room for colour and lining. This was certainly the case for Scottish region but I am fairly sure it was nationwide. best wishes, Ian

would that be the dragon that lived in Ivor the Engine? best wishes, Ian who is old enough to have watched the TV program with my kids (now in their 40s)

IN my youth I scratch built a lot of Scottish locomotive types which I duly presented at my local club for comment. There was always a group of grown up "experts" prepared to comment. I was a teenaged upstart. One week I converted a Triang Caley single into a "generic" Scottish 4-4-0. In LMS livery. I presented this as a Garve and Ullapool 2-4-0 rebuilt by the Highland Railway. It got no adverse comments and one elderly ex railwayman claimed he was fairly sure he had seen it at Perth in 1931. best wishes Ian

Hi, Not the Guild's finest hour . I should say at the start that I am not posting here in any official capacity. I hold a minor role in the Guild management . I am the Area Representative for Scotland on the Guild Council but have no specific authority to post here. Having read through the thread I feel that someone ought at least say something. Problem with an organisation with deep roots in the past is getting it to update or accept something new. Collectively the management are not enthusiastic about electronic discussion groups, forums etc. even our own. I suspect therefore that in what grew into a crisis in the last few days using the valuable resource of RMWeb and similar as a means of getting information out did not occur as the first choice. I am sure that Council will be looking at a lot of things in coming weeks but communication will be high on the list and I hope that should anything similar happen in future we will use all avenues to get information out. I posted elsewhere that the Guild may not have as much influence in Railway Modelling as it thinks it has but it certainly has no influence at all over the weather. Which was the real culprit here. I apologise for anything that we may have got wrong over the last few days. I am not aware of anyone having authority to post critical comments on non members so if anyone has taken offence it should not be with the Guild. Area reps try to recruit among non members so offending them would hardly be Guild policy. So an apology from at least one Guild member with a promise that I at least will try to get things better. With my other hat on (as a Trader) I am just glad that my representatives are safe back home. They telephoned the report that there were few sales as there were not a great many through the door. I will be interested to hear the official figure and how other Traders fared. best wishes, Ian

Not quite on topic but the manufacturers of O gauge RTR shunters seem to have opted to include a flywheel. I was at the Glasgow Show at the weekend with the Gauge O Guild Stand where we had "Have a go in O" a 6ft long shunting plank where we were letting some "juniors" do a bit of shunting with a Dapol 08. Flywheel plus low gearing meant that acceleration was limited yet did not introduce too much of a run on and even the youngest of our trainee drivers seemed to manage not to ram the buffers. Some of the parents panicked a bit though. The loco seems to have survived unscathed which after three days of amateur operation is a tribute to its design/manufacture. best wishes, Ian

Here is a side view of the tender for the very similar NBR version. The NB locos did not have a hatch in the back of the cab and the wagon/tender had a raised floor so that in theory the fireman could reach over the back of the cab and shovel coal from a cut out in the top two planks of the end. I think that this must have been a bit awkward as I remember seeing the fireman standing on top of the tender and shovelling some coal over the cab end presumably onto those parts of the cab floor that the cabside bunkers discharged onto. (When tender fitted these were usually left empty) best wishes, Ian

Hi, I suspect that over the years CJF's Minories may have inspired more layouts than any other plan. I first encountered it when the newsagent delivered my April 1957 Railway Modeller (the order for this being part of my pocket money). The basic idea of a station in a cramped urban setting is sound and the track plan seemed to allow for plenty of operation in it's original form yet allowed scope for expansion/improvement. I have used it several times over the years. My first was a straight copy built on top of a bookcase that fed onto the model railway at one end of my bedroom (let's be honest the big train set). As you have proved with your drawings you can take the original idea and add to it. In my "early adult" modelling I built another as an exhibition layout. This extended the original from 6ft to 10 to increase train lengths and added another platform. The layout fed into hidden sidings beyond the tunnel mouth. The goods sidings set back trough a short tunnel to a small goods yard in front of the hidden sidings. Very much like the arrangement of your drawing above but only using plain points. I called the layout " Princess Lane" as I operated the passenger side as a small version of Glasgow Queen Street. All strength to your project and I shall watch progress with interest. best wishes, Ian

Once we can master the tin opener we will no longer need humans.......... Cotton MacChattan Feline Laird of Erigmore

Hi, Your summary is pretty well complete. The "box" on the Peco points houses the spring that locks it once thrown. Removal ,means self locking point motors or locking point levers. Even painting the rivet fitting of the point blades does much to hide this. Also remember that in industrial/mining/dockside locations track was often inset this would mean that solder construction of inset points can be used as you do not see the chairs anyway. For minimum space, hidden sector plate or traverser can reduce the number of points required. best wishes, Ian

Hi, When I graduated from Train set to first attempts at modelling Plastic card was not in general use. My Father was really an aeromodeller but in the late 40s early 50s had experimented with a bit of the then fairly unusual 2 rail 00. There were some card wagons he had built and I found his copy of: "Cardboard rolling stock and how to build it" by Earl Rankine Grey. So all of my first efforts were in shellaced card with white metal axle guards, turned brass buffers and 3 link couplings (from ERG) the wheels if I remember correctly were all metal on Peco "insulaxles" - I never understood how these worked. I still like building in card and cereal boxes is a good source. If given a couple of coats of french polish each side it seems to be quite long lasting. I remember seeing old George Slater demonstrating his Plastikard at the Glasgow Show in the Maclellan Galleries in, I think, the mid 60s. How he survived into old age I will never know as he always had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth while sloshing his mek pack about. best wishes, Ian

I think possibly it did. That and having been brought up living near the Edinburgh Aberdeen Main line at a time that Gresley coaches were still in use. Over the years most of my personal modelling has been ex LNER orientated and that undoubtedly influenced my choice of prototypes once I was making kits for a living. My O gauge range that I still produce in my semi-retirement has a lot of LNER types. I am now getting to an age where I think I probably look better with the mask on! best wishes, Ian

Kevin, Never mind the figures I like the coaches. Santa brought me three of these (2 composites one brake) and a green 0-4-0T Christmas 1952 (or thereabouts I can't remember). I am the Scottish Area Rep. for the Gauge O Guild and as such am expected to attend some Shows with the Guild recruiting stand. Until I completed "Thrift Drift" ( An O gauge colliery layout in 6ftx2ft - to demonstrate economical O gauge in a small space using RTR stock) I had a little display of four shelves with The Hornby loco and coaches, A Bassett Lowke Royal Scot, A Heljan diesel and some kit built stuff on top. You would be amazed at how many gentlemen "of a certain age" came up to say, "I had one of those". Some even took a photograph! fame at last for my little old loco! best wishes, Ian Whose next recruiting outing will be SEC Glasgow 23,24 and 25 February. It pays to advertise.

Not sure if the "mechanism argument" in the reason for 00 is the right one. It is possible that someone considered the "front to front". (a little used measurement) As model wheels are generally thicker than absolute scale ones would be the fronts of the wheels, crank pins and coupling/connecting rods are not far off where they should be even on 16.5 gauge track. A much younger me found this out to my cost when trying to convert my scratchbuilt narrow Scottish 4-4-0 from 00 to EM gauge. Sorry to be a bit off topic. best wishes, Ian

Hi, A photograph of the North Midland was on the cover of the First "Plans for larger Layouts". As a boy I was fascinated by this picture and hankered for the chance of real water on my Layout. As a teenager I built a layout in the attic of the family home and laid the baseboards on the bar of the A frame roof which was about chest high. I screwed plywood across the bottom of a couple of joists and sealed this with polythene and bitumen. This was then filled with water. If my parents had known what was above their bedroom.... Fortunately it did not leak and I used up my tight radius Triang track inset in card to build quite an extensive harbour system. (THe main lines had "scale" track) Minic clockwork boats and ships could negotiate the sections of real water dock. I removed much of value when I left home but enough remained to remind me when I cleared the house some years ago after my Mother had died. It was a sort of Model Railway Archaeology. best wishes, Ian

Hi Sam, Good work as always. You could re paint the NER brake or not since you are modelling a light railway the brake vans would be bought secondhand from mainline use and could be in the colour of your light railway company but they could also still be in the original paint.( It depends how well off your LR Company is). Goods wagons on the other hand will mostly have worked through from the " real" railway and would be in the colours of their owners. My only experience of a "Private" Railway was the Wemyss system which linked some of the collieries in Fife with the Harbour at Methil. This was fairly close to where I was brought up and as it remained steam hauled after BR steam had mostly gone I visited it regularly as a teenager. I think that there was a paperwork problem at Nationalisation and the collieries were Nationalised and the "real" Railway was but the little WPR fell through the net and remained independently owned (by the Wemyss family) until closure. Me rambling on but I was going to point out that the WPR had second hand Brake vans and there are (somewhere) photographs of them in use both before and after re-paint. best wishes, Ian

Hi, I presume that Peco produced O gauge Setrack as a scaled up version of their other setracks. I think that what some modellers were really looking for was shorter tighter radius points and to get these from setrack you would have to cut these down to avoid what Northroader points out. Possible but not what many wanting RTL track would want to do. S-N, Boxfile style layouts usually involve an industrial scene which in real life involved tight curves. Four coupled locos and standard wagons usually had a design minimum radius of one chain (66 ft) which in O gauge would be less than 18 inches so you should not get any criticism from O gauge purists. best wishes, Ian

Hi, At Exhibitions, as I do not take cards, if a customer has no other means of payment on them I tell them to take the kit and send me a cheque when they get home (or for those without cheque books I now have a special account that I keep for giving out bank details for bank transfer.) I have done this for nearly twenty years as I did not set up to accept cards after selling the factory and setting up the O gauge business. I have to date not lost a single payment and have over the years received a lot of nice letters saying things like "Thank you for your trust". Despite what the media etc. might have you think there are a lot more honest people out there than the other sort. Besides even if I were now to lose one or two think of the Bank charges that I have saved. best wishes Ian And a Happy New Year to all our readers!

Hi, There seems to be a growing following for Gauge 3 as this is in fact 2.5 inch gauge the rail might be near enough. Especially in a siding which could be lighter section rail. I think that there is a Gauge 3 Society but a google search for Gauge 3 track might give a supplier. best wishes, Ian

Hi John, Yes indeed I had the period2 non corridors (that I eventually did in O gauge) on the stocks when the range went to Colin. The roof and ends were already tooled and if I recall correctly several hundreds of mouldings run off. The whole lot was passed on. The idea was that once Colin was up and running and perhaps needing a boost in sales (new products always did this) he would get me to do the side moulds as a sub contract. In fact Colin found the existing range more than enough to go on with so the "new" releases were never needed and IIRC Mainline announced non corridor LMS around that time (but did the "wrong" ones). So that means that somewhere there is the moulds and mouldings for part of LMS suburban coaches but lacking sides. I suppose I should apologise to all of the potential customers who would have liked to buy these over the years! best wishes, Ian

Hi, If anyone doubts the value of this (and similar )threads. Consider an exchange in the last few days on the LMS coaches part of RMweb. The thread was by someone building a rake of my O gauge kits. Someone who introduced himself as a 4mm modeller enquired about them and another contributor in all good faith said that Ian Kirk had also done 4mm coach kits and gave a link to the website we are discussing here. Unsurprisingly the very next post issued a warning and a suggestion to look at this thread before ordering anything. Which is just as well, when I clicked on the link yesterday it took me straight to the coach kit pages of the website without passing the page on which is Mr Dunn's "warning". A quick experiment here seemed to indicate that I could have placed an order and money would have been accepted. (I did not complete ) If Mr Dunn would like to stop people posting criticisms here then surely he must see that a proper edit of his website, removing or marking unavailable items would remove much of the grounds for criticism. Come on Mr D its not rocket science or I suspect very expensive and think of the positive postings you might get once it is done..... I like the references to Monty Python, particularly the dead parrot. In our case though it is Schroedinger's Parrot. Until you open the box (by placing an order ) it might be alive, it might be dead. best wishes, Ian

I understand that Tony merely wanted to retire. Similarly Colin Ashby. It is an age thing. I think that we are all around the same age. Sometimes I think that I would like to retire but when I consider the ultimate fate of my 4mm LNER range I think again. So for my O gauge coach range I soldier on, not making anything new but continuing to supply anyone who wants something from the range. I call it semi retirement. I don't take credit cards and I don't cash cheques until the goods are posted so I am beholden to no one. (if I had taken payment I would feel under pressure to get the order fulfilled). I find that with age "I don't do pressure anymore". Seven day weeks, targets to meet and obligations to fulfil. That is a young mans game. Been there done that not any more. best wishes, Ian

Hi, I don't want to add too much to this thread, I thought it might have run it's course by now. However to clear up a couple of points on the injection moulding of plastic and life of moulds. Moulds like mine, machined in hard machining brass will indeed wear out which is why some commercial mould use hardened steel. For model railway purposes where we are talking thousands rather than millions the brass mould is perfectly adequate and they are unlikely to wear out. I have now done 47 years involvement with plastic moulding and have never had to re-tool an item simply because the mould had worn out. (they can of course be damaged or re-tooled for change or improvement and of course require a certain amount of maintenance).I am fairly sure that when the moulds from my former range were last used by Colin Ashby and Tony Brown they would still have had more life left in them than any likely prospective demand. I believe that a quantity of mouldings was handed over when Coopercraft was sold to Mr Dunn and I am sure that these were of marketable quality and I suspect (but can not of course claim to know for certain) that the only Kirk coach kits sold from Somerset were packaged from this stock. The last Coopercraft mouldings produced by Tony Brown were not as far as I know flashed. Making, altering or repairing these moulds requires a certain degree of skill. (Ideally a precision Engineer). Now once again I must state that this is pure surmise but from the evidence of flashed moulds and what I have been told about the demise of the (now famous) moulding machine I suspect that the machine was operated without being set up properly. Changing moulds and setting up is not in itself difficult but it has to be right and experience helps. The Southern Railway Coach range of Kirk 4mm coach kits was recently passed from Colin Ashby to Precision who seem to have had no problem getting them back into production. Precision of course have many years of experience in plastic moulding. If Mr Dunn reads this he might consider approaching them to see if he can sell what is at the moment just so much scrap brass. best wishes, Ian

Bill, To answer your points: 1. I placed the order as something of an experiment. It had been pointed out to me that by searching for my old LNER range you could be directed to the relevant pages of the Coopercraft website without passing the front page which has the red instruction. Several people had done this and told me about it. I merely proved this to myself and also had confirmed to me the fact that a refund was not forthcoming. I can therefore categorically state that at that time money was taken ,no goods were forthcoming and no refund has ever taken place. Over a year later the website is unaltered so this is still a trap for the unwary. 2. The second quote is merely a statement of fact regarding good business practice. I do indeed not know if any payments subsequent to mine have been taken but until the website has unavailable items deleted or clearly marked as unavailable on each page then there is the potential for orders to be placed which have no hope of being fulfilled. I can understand someone being "out of their depth" in not being able to manufacture something but that is surely not an excuse for not refunding payments received for goods you can not deliver. 3. I passed the range on to Colin Ashby who later passed it on to Tony Brown. Both of these ran their businesses as they should be run. Twenty five years ago I had no idea that it could end up with someone whose business practices would have left something to be desired. Finally I am not attacking Mr Dunn. I did offer over a year ago to help him get the range back into production but did not get a reply. My only argument is that un available kits are still displayed and priced on active pages of his website which then allows orders to be taken and card payments to be made. Good business practice would be to make changing this a priority. best wishes, Ian

Hi, I am grateful to those who are taking action on this. I too placed a small order some time ago. Mr Dunn owes me the princely sum of £15 and did not refund when requested (over a year ago) this I feel enables me to tell any potential customer that he has taken payment, not supplied goods, not refunded and indeed not replied to my request (or even to my offer of help get the range working again) and since this is an entirely true statement (and provable) is not in any way actionable. I do not care who has more or less money, that is totally irrelevant. There are correct business practices and incorrect business practices. There is right and wrong. Accepting payment for goods that you do not have and which you are unable to produce in a reasonable time is certainly a bad business practice and undoubtedly wrong. If done knowingly it could be construed as fraud. Bill, I am a little surprised at your seeming support for Mr Dunn. Perhaps I am misunderstanding your last postings. Consider this though: Imagine you were retired and Bill Bedford Models had ended up with Mr Dunn and you heard that he was unable to produce the goods yet was taking money for them and refusing to refund payments. What would you think then? best wishes, Ian

Hi, For what it is worth I have always called these "sprues" and I have done a fair bit of plastic moulding. I would suggest great caution if using a naked flame to soften polystyrene. It does not burn particularly easily but once ignited it burns vigorously, gives off poisonous dense black smoke and drips burning drops.Softened HIPS does not stick to skin (unlike polythene which does) the outer layer hardens and becomes an insulator. Burning HIPS on the other hand most certainly does. Must be nice to be able to see such fine detail. As I got older I moved up to O gauge and even then doubt if I would see bottles and plates on the tables! If this is for a dining car remember that bottled water everywhere is a relatively new thing and most of the "nicer" things to drink come in coloured bottles. best wishes, Ian