Ian Kirk

Hi, Back in the mists of time, when I started building layouts we had to make do with what we could get. No B&Q or whatever. I was fortunate in that my Grandfather's workshop was next door. He had a Painting/coachbuilding business. One of the things that they did was to build furniture lorry bodies onto chassis which were driven up from wherever they were built by well wrapped up drivers (with goggles) who somehow perched on the bare chassis. The bodies were built on a wooden frame covered in aluminium sheet. The sheet was delivered protected by specially thin (about quarter inch - 7mm) sheets of early chipboard (which was presumably cheap and meant to be thrown away). The framing used was only about one inch (25mm) square softwood, probably spruce. At least some of this came from a Kirkcaldy factory which had built parts of troop carrying gliders during the war and had surplus. My early baseboards were therefore made of thin chip board well braced and supported by a framework of inch square timber scrounged from my Grandfather's scrap pile. They lasted well enough. To get back to Andrew's posting. If you want 12mm chipboard then by all means use it. In the time that it has been discussed on here it is possible that your local B&Q has12mm in stock again and are able to cut to size for you. If no where else close to you has the material you want and or the ability to cut to size it might be worth asking them when they expect to get 12mm back into stock. I think that having flat solid supporting framework is possibly more important than the material of the baseboard itself. Fashions change. Sixty years ago Sundeala was the material of choice, Then "weyroc" (chipboard) now most people seem to prefer ply. I know one well known modeller who built the baseboards out of foam filled card (a stressed card structure?) Anyhow I wish you all the best with your new layout. best wishes, Ian

Hi, When these were produced there was nothing like so much prototype information available as there is now. The real railway was still using the drawings so they were not always available to modellers and the countless books on wagons were yet to be written. Still you could photograph the real thing and if circumstances permit crawl all over it with a measuring tape. Often in non ideal circumstances, wind rain and an eye out for authority as you were probably trespassing. In the early days I produced some drawings from a couple of photographs and a known dimention - wheel diameter if nothing else. You drew a grid and removed the tapers. Lots of drawing board work. Computers now do this easily. I suspect that the inaccuracies in a kit this old would be down to the non availability of a perfect drawing at the time that the tools were made. Some years later (than the Ratio kit) I started work on a GNofS van kit. I had cut the moulds for the side and end using a drawing in Model Railway News When I compared this with some photographs I had obtained I found that although the detailing, panelling etc. was about right it was considerably shorter than it should have been and the draughtsman had drawn it to the most common van length wheras the GNofS was unusually longer. I think I sold some as "grounded van body kits". best wishes, Ian

Hi, The motor looks too small to be the standard Triang item but is probably the little scaled down version the X500 that they produced for the Rocket. A similar motor was in the Minic Motorway cars. In the early days of British N gauge we used these in tender locos. Shoe horned into the tender driving the loco through a shaft drive. best wishes, Ian

Hi, In a discussion elsewhere about North British Railway locomotive liveries. It was said that the foreman painter mixed the paint measuring the pigments in units of a handful since they probably only mixed enough for the job in hand two otherwise identical locomotives could be slightly different shades. Going in and buying computer mixed paint in any colour you like is a relatively modern thing. My Grandfather had a Coach Painting/Building business and I can remember them mixing colours in the 1950s in a similarly crude way. This was then tried on a bit of alloy sheet and compared with what they were trying to match. Modern paint now has years of research behind it to avoid fading etc. Even as recently as 30 odd years ago I had a red Vauxhall Cavalier which faded to pink. OK I parked it on a South facing pier but if I wanted to model it what colour would I need? All in all I would suggest you choose a colour that looks right to you and go with that. best wishes, Ian

Hi, If you are not modelling a real location then the "it's my railway" rule can apply. In general ordinary railway stations /goods yards would not have had AAA defences. That would not prevent the defences of some high value target being located near them. As an example: Dalmany station and yard were not very important but the Forth Bridge was. For many years concrete emplacements could be seen south of the station beside the up main line. Houses were eventually built on the site and one of the bungalows has an attractive garden feature around one emplacement. If I remember my lectures correctly (as someone who might have been on the receiving end) AAA tended to have proximity fuses and/or altitude ones. The idea being that blast and shrapnel could bring an aircraft down as well as a direct hit and explosive shells would not be dropping into your towns and cities. So I don't think that this would have influenced the positioning of the guns. best wishes, Ian

Hi Simon, One chain it certainly was. Murphy's Law means I can not at the moment find my old RCH diagrams but attach a scan of a diagram for a ten foot wheelbase BR standard van. This gives minimum radius of 21 meters which works out roughly to one chain. Even the long wheelbase "blue spot" fish van in the same series of diagrams gives 31M as it's minimum. I think that the existing coupling chains would probably be OK. In the same way that the A4 regauged it's track the real wagons could make proper use of the sprung buffers/drawbar without pulling the stock off the rails as a model would. Unfortunately we can not scale down the laws of physics or perhaps it is not so unfortunate. As Kevin says we can run suitably designed model stock, with the right compromises, round tight curves at speeds which in real life would cause the locomotive to go straight on and/or roll over. The Ruston&Hornsby 88DS which was designed for taking wagons into tight places had a design min. radius of 60ft. It also featured large buffers which were presumably intended to prevent buffer locking. best wishes, Ian

Hi, Short wheelbase wagons and small 0-4-0ST were expected to be able to go down as low as one chain radius (about 18 inches in our scale) so they should have no problems. The short wheelbase 0-6-0T J88s at Kirkcaldy Harbour seem to have gone around bits of roughly130ft. So it would seem that small locos will run and look prototypical on set track points. When John Cameron had A4 Union of South Africa on his farm at Lochty the track had been re-located from a local colliery. The line into it's shed was over a pair of points which were really too tight for it. Being big and heavy it did go round though very slow with great grinding creaking. It literally re gauged the point every time and we had to work on this track weekly until the locomotive and track gang reached a compromise. (I suspect that repeated repairs in fact realigned the curve slightly to suit what the loco needed). I see a lot of uses for set track points in industrial/harbour locations but hope that people don't want to run expresses over them. When I saw the track geometry I thought that it might be to give the sort of clearances you would need for the awful overhang you will get with full length coaches or large locomotives. best wishes, Ian

Hi, No reason why they could not be made to work. They would need cleaned and polished and mounted up on backing plates etc. They would still be "last generation" though and nothing like the current computer driven plastic mouldings. I must look through all of these old moulds ( I have quite a few) and see what if anything is worth saving. They fell into disuse when I got the new (now ancient)moulding machine and did not bother mounting them up to fit this. best wishes, Ian

Hi, I think that this plan has really to be seen in the context of it's time. It could be done as a "retro" layout but even then would not be easy. If you are aiming for something to "modern" standard then I would suggest something simpler, a larger space or a smaller scale. When the late CJF (a boyhood hero of mine who I was privileged to get to know once I was grown up - I still see his son Nick from time to time) drew this up the RTR of the time, Triang and Hornby Dublo, had flangeless centre drivers,some of the coaching stock was shortened from scale length and it was all designed to go round 13.5 or 15 inch radius curves/points. This made the 1ft 10inch radius suggested by CJF generous by comparison. Streamline was in it's infancy I am not sure if the first points were even available and the advance from the train set was most likely to be Wrenn fibre based track and points. When I scrapped my last "big train set" layout-a mix of Triang and Wrenn track (1961 as it happens)in my first attempts at "scale" modelling I had to solder up my own track. Modern RTR makes no such compromises and a scale length Modern Image coach is very long and looks ridiculous on tight curves. Not to mention the extra space which would be required for clearance. best wishes, Ian

Hi, A very nice model of a difficult prototype. Wonderful stuff this 3D printing. Completely beyond me I am afraid. Old school brass and solder is my limit. Many years ago I produced a set of brass patterns for GEM for a white metal kit of this loco. I had earlier done the patterns for the 0-6-0T and one or two patterns were interchangeable. Roy Dock was in charge at GEM at the time and something of a perfectionist. We had done pre production castings and built prototypes but could not decide on the best approach to the visible front frames and narrower 00 chassis. We had two versions one with visible 00 spacing frames and one with scale where I had "lost" the difference behind the cylinders . We were unsure of what was best but Roy was not really happy with either compromise and was prepared to write off his investment rather than release something he was not happy with. The kit was never released. I don't know what drawings and details were available to you now but all we had in the 1970s was a copy of the GA drawing from I believe the Engineer Magazine from when the prototype was new, an LMS diagram and a few photographs. My colleague Pete Westwater produced working drawings from these of which I still have the 4mm scale pencil original. best wishes, Ian

Hi, There were several railwaymen/retired railwaymen in my first model Railway Club. There was no junior section and I had had to lie about my age to join ( Years later I was told that they had known all along but as I was scratch building and half the club were running Triang out of the box they had let me join anyway) so this must have been very early 60s. The railwaymen were always willing to tell their stories and I heard that Thornton footplate men who developed shaky hands were referred to as having "Shire-itis". They considered the D49s to be very rough riders. Regular Shire firemen were reputed to have permanently bruised backs from some projection in the cab which they could be thrown against while firing. The D30s and D34s which were used on similar duties were preferred. The roughest ride story came from the late Bob Urwin who was firing for an elderly driver on a small J88 shunter. They were due to shunt Markinch but started at Thornton a few miles South with a small trip working. There was a climb from Thornton to Markinch and the train was one or two wagons over the load for a J88 so the driver called for a pilot. Control stopped a V2 which had been returning light engine to Dundee. The crew were not best pleased at being held up so having coupled up opened the throttle full. The J88 and it's train were whisked up the line to Markinch at a speed far in excess of the J88 (dock shunter really) design maximum. Its crew just had to hold on tight as it rattled along behind the V2 which stopped at the top of the bank, uncoupled and away before the shunter crew dew breath. best wishes, Ian

Hi, Sad indeed but unfortunately a fact of modern life. High Street Model Shops are hardly likely to be a growth area these days. Closures due to retirement like Abbey Models are also inevitable as the generation of model shop owners that I knew are all reaching a "certain age". When I had the factory and was selling most of my production through the shops I bought a custom produced business guide (Capricorn) which allegedly listed all Model Shops in the Country (I did find a few missing, they did not cover Scotland too well). This was in 1988. It is sobering to look through this now and see how many there were and how few there seems to be now. I doubt if there are anywhere near ten in Glasgow/lanarkshire now or six in Edinburgh. Not much use to theOP now but in 1988 there were 2 in Aberdeen, and one each in Elgin Lossiemouth Inverness and Dingwall. The Guide covered England much more extensively for example Lancashire 33 shops listed. I wonder how many are still active? best wishes, Ian

Hi, It is possible to get to the Shop pages on the Coopercraft website without passing the Home page which is the only place that the red warning appears. I found that if I searched for Coopercraft Kirk then I was directed to the pages listing my former range where it was possible to place an order and be charged the payment without ever seeing any notice of non availability. I did this as I had heard from other individuals who had done this then found me. If you search for Ian Kirk you get the website for my existing range of O gauge. The little bit of my business that I kept for my (semi) retirement. Although having no legal responsibility I feel obliged to do what I can to prevent potential customers for my former range being ripped off. best wishes, Ian

Hi, May have said this before but Colin Ashby ran off a quantity of each of the long mouldings before handing the moulds over. IIRC I supplied the beige plastic for the sides. I don't know exactly the quantities but it would be hundreds rather than thousands. This was only intended as a bridging stock to cover the time it was expected to take to set up to mould them elsewhere. I am certain that the quantities were not matched up to produce a set number of complete kits and you need a lot more roofs than any one side. The smaller components had at that time been produced on the Coopercraft machines while Tony Brown had the business. I strongly suspect that all of the Kirk kits packaged in Somerset were from the stock of long mouldings supplied at the outset and that little or nothing of them were moulded there. I suspect that any sides still available will indeed be left overs from the initial stock from when the stock of other components ran out. I am grateful for Andy Y for having taken this up with the website people. Something which an electronic illiterate like myself would not know how to do. If the website is changed and/or his ability to take money for things which can not be produced is removed then one problem at least is solved. For me at any rate. The unfulfilled and un refunded order that I placed is cheap insurance. If consulted I can safely tell potential customers the circumstances and advise them not to try to purchase my former kits here. best wishes, Ian

still going but still not refunding for stuff that he has been paid for but can not supply. Not to me anyway. In any case a few odd mouldings is a poor substitute for my once extensive range of coach kits. I have still as yet received neither the kit I ordered some months ago, a refund or a reply to my offer of help. So sorry, I still have to tell anyone who asks (I get enquiries about my former 4mm range from people who have found my O gauge website) that despite his listing of the entire range there is little chance of his fulfilling the order and every chance of any payment being lost. I would be delighted to change this if and when the current owner proves that he can in fact produce the goods. best wishes, Ian

Hi Sam, Triangulating the structure with spars will undoubtedly lead to a stiffer structure and if you intend "open top" baseboards then I would say they are essential. I see though you refer to the "top". If this is going to be ply and you can bond it securely to your plywood structure then this will itself provide the "across the corners" stiffening of a small spar. Another sheet bonded to the bottom would give you a really strong structure but would get in the way. Narrow strips around the bottom edges (like having another sheet on the bottom with most of the middle cut away) would contribute some of this extra strength. Especially if you can include triangular "gussets" in the four corners. Just another way of obtaining the same thing. Barnes Wallis geodetic design Wellington and De Haviland stressed ply Mosquito both produced strong airframes. Keep up the good work. best wishes, Ian

Hi Neal, I am afraid not. These were in the Mailcoach range along with the LNER Streamliners and some Thompsons. These were sold to Tony Brown but are now I presume at Coopercraft. I also did 4mm Southern types. Maunsels and Bullied and a 2Bil Electric set. These I think are still with Colin AShby but don't seem to be asked for so much. Perhaps because Hornby produced the same prototypes before their prices went silly, perhaps because Colin kept making them up until he became ill. best wishes, Ian

Hi, I don't want to put a damper on proceedings but Bill's question is where any project will stand or fall. I have no interest with my former 4mm coaches (other than I don't want my reputation damaged by the non actions of Coopercraft). OK I was proud of them 30 years ago and compared with the then RTR, 57ft "Greslish" coaches (now in the Railroad range but why but why?)they stood up quite well. WE made a lot, they sold and I made a good living. For the last twenty years they have never been upgraded. I like to think that if I had kept them I would have tried to update them. So they are at least twenty years out of date. People still want them but I suspect a relatively small number of people. Given the existing tooling it should have been possible to continue producing these in small numbers at a relatively low price. Reproducing the range in modern terms with new tooling would be astronomically expensive for a potentially limited market. I suspect that one of the reasons people still want them is the breadth of the range. Although in recent years the RTR boys have got away from the two types, Brake Third and COmposite 1st/3rd only idea of train formation they will still only manage a few. I can not now remember exactly how many LNER coaches I had in 4mm (I now have a lot in O to worry about) but: two Quads, a Quint, a TRiplet , some 51ft twins a dozen or so 61ft 6, some 52ft 6 corridors and half a dozen or so 51ft non corridor. I could afford to do it as I did my own toolmaking. While I was making moulds for the next type the factory was churning out the last one which paid our wages. I doubt if any new range could cover so many types and that I think is what people want. Sorry..... best wishes, Ian

Hi, This is exactly what I do in O gauge. The "cutting and shutting" in 4mm scale gave me the idea to sell these "pre cut up" which solved the problem of making O gauge on a relatively small machine and made the toolmaking much easier. Instead of engraving the detail for say eight doors on a side I only had to do this once, the auto machine makes lots and the customer cements them up into a side with the panels that go with them. Each door separate and the joints were they are in real life. Same door dozens of coach types. I think that it might be a bit fiddly in 4mm though. best wishes, Ian

Hi, Lots more on here since I last looked. In fact I think it might be time for a new thread about starting businesses. I would advise caution though, whether a viable business could be recovered from the "Coopercraft Empire" or not is a difficult question. Besides deals can only be struck between a willing purchaser and a willing seller. There is nothing I have seen to indicate that Paul is it? at Coopercraft wants to sell. I have still not had a reply to my message last week asking for a refund on my order and at the same time offering advice/help with plastic moulding. You can lead a horse to water... Help can only be given if invited and if he would rather go on independently sinking deeper into the mire that is his choice. I only wish he would remove my stuff from his lists and be done with it. We have to remember that these businesses belong to someone and what they do with it is up to them. On the Gauge O Guild website there was a similar thread bemoaning the loss of various ranges and suggesting that the Guild do something about it. I had to point out that neither the Guild(nor anyone else) can force the issue. If a Trader chooses to retire and close his business without selling it on then that is his perogative. Indeed several years ago an O gauge manufacturer left the instruction in his Will that he wished to have his patterns buried with him. Given the mess that Coopercraft seem to have made with my 4mm coach range that is a tempting possibility. The hobby is changing and kit building which is only one strand of that is possibly a smaller and more specialised market than it once was. AS far as injection moulding is concerned it is a good medium to work in. HIPS mouldings are easily "cut and carved" and solvent cements are neat and easy to work. I don't know what materials come out of 3D printing or their properties. Resin kits I presume need the right glues but I don't think solvent welds would apply. Injection mouldings can be cheap if the circumstances are right but for small quantities can be prohibitive. With existing tooling I could produce very cheap wagon kits. If people would be happy with "old technology" then I could produce reasonably priced kits. To produce "comparable with current RTR quality the toolmaking cost would price it out of the market. Which is where people like Bill Bedford come in. Not to mention any young entrepreneurs prepared to take up the new technologies. Over the years I have done quite well out of selling to the Railway Modelling Market. Over 45 years it has kept me and mine, paid the mortgage, put 3 kids through school/university. I even had my own little plane while I was fit enough to fly it and it still supplements my pension. So don't worry about the £17.50 I paid to put an order into Coopercraft. I invested this as I can now freely advise anyone who asks not to order Kirk Coaches from here and explain why. "There is no slander in truth" and I can now prove the truth of my statement. best wishes, Ian

Hi, Frankly I don't know what I would do if I was offered the range back. The age thing see. I am happily semi-retired. Keeping the O gauge range going (and not tooling for anything new) gives me as much work as I want. What was once an eight day week is now a part time job which allows me some of the time to pretend that I have retired and dare I say it do some modelling for me. In the Summer I spend 3 or 4 days a week at my holiday home in Perthshire. I would not want to give that up and in any case being mortal I have to see that I can not go on for ever. What Am I going to do about the O gauge range? Selling businesses has been of mixed success for me in the past as this thread illustrates so I have not been keen to do it. Until I saw things like this thread I had thought that as RTR grew the demand for old stuff would fade. In O gauge I assumed that the bulk of my customers were my age or older and with natural attrition plus the advent of new products perhaps with the advent of the new technologies demand would eventually tail off. Recently though it seems more younger modellers are moving up to O so I may have to plan for the ranges future after all. best wishes Ian

Gentlemen, If only I were ten years/twenty or more younger...... This discussion has thrown up so many business opportunities. If I was still young and hungry the new wagon tooling would be cutting as we speak. However if I was young and hungry I might have been buying tooling instead of selling it and who knows might have some of what is now Coopercraft (just to get it back on topic) still that is now water under the bridge. When I started, plastic moulding was seen as "big boys" territory and only viable for hundreds of thousands of items. This was because of the cost of tooling and was thought to put it out of reach of the small scale model railway market. By doing our own tooling and production small runs to fit the small market became possible. Businesses can start on a shoestring. The Westwater and Kirk N gauge wagon kits (produced initially to provide British outline wagons for an Exhibition layout at a time when the only commercial N goods stock was repaints of European) initial working capital was my last months salary from the RAF The moulds were produced on a modified Myford Lathe and I built my own hand operated moulding machine - the ram that forced the plastic into the moulds was made from the steering rack of a Triumph Herald. If the current "modern" production methods are too costly then perhaps the next generation of potential business men need to look at ways of making them cheaper. Starting again injection moulding is probably just as difficult now. THe standard of (automatic) toolmaking which we have come to expect on the RTR side mostly from China etc. would be almost impossible to emulate without hugely expensive machinery (I think).Anything new would I think be compared with this. What is possible though is to manufacture from existing tooling where potential customers are it would seem content to accept "hand made" tooling almost as a "heritage" thing. Unless someone is greedy these can be very economically priced as the production costs for injection moulding are not high. Saving other ranges is important too. The last generation are now getting to a "certain age" Adrian is unwell and I don't know what he plans. Cambrian are looking to retire I believe and Richard at Parkside was at school with me (which is how he joined me ) and is therefore the same age and now looking to sell up and retire. I don't know if the customer base however enthusiastic can help here. Younger people taking over is what is needed but that could take capital and of course you need the "right" people taking over or else it could be another disaster like this. Even selling to a suitable person is no guarantee (I did) but it can then be sold on...... Lots of ranges have come and gone over the years and I suppose we just have to learn to live without them. My first teenage scale modelling depended heavily on parts from ERG and Hamblings now long gone then Kitmaster with the really useful Mk1 coaches........ sic in transit Gloria mundi I suspect that I will just have to add my 4mm coach range to the list. best wishes, Ian

Hi All, A lot more on this thread since I read it last. I was coming on here tonight any way to report that 1. there has been no response to the order I placed on the 30th Dec. 2. My bank statement indicates payment as having gone through. In order to place the order you have to register on Coopercraft website and tonight I used this to forward a message to them. I asked for my payment to be refunded, suggested that it might be time to remove unavailable stuff from the website. I also said that if plastic moulding was still causing problems it might be time to ask for help and as the creator of the moulds with 40+ years of plastic moulding experience I could be the one to ask. I added that as the kits still bore my name dissatisfied customers tarnished my reputation too so sorting out problems was in my interests as well. If he has attempted to alter the moulds without having the relevant skills they may indeed be beyond redemption but stored even in poor conditions should not be too bad. brass does not rust or break up and tarnish is recoverable. I have revived a mould that spent 20 years as a door stop. It is amazing what polishing up will do. In any case if you can make it you can surely fix it. In answer to what has been said about machines. If I recall correctly the Slaters 4mm stuff was produced on standard 250PRTs as in my photograph. I still have one in working order and another dismantled for spares. Parkside have several including one I gave them for nothing. Colin Ashby had a garage full at one time. He still has the special and if now fully retired may be prepared to part with it. If not converting a standard machine would not be expensive. It is only heavy metal work. Lots of small workshops could do it. I can not remember what type of machine Tony had at Coopercraft so I don't know about the coopercraft wagons. Anyhow, so far as predicted. I will report back any progress if it happens. best wishes, Ian

Hi, Sounds like Jim could probably answer this better than I could but here goes. Nowadays it is all CNC but when I did the LNER coach kits the computer that drove the machine sat on my shoulders. Still lots of co ordinates on 3 axes only instead of having a computer move the controls I did it all by hand. No CAD either so producing the plot of co ordinates from the works drawing was drawing board work. I had a reasonable sized vertical mill which I had modified so that the cutting head could be rotated. This meant that could mill out curved surfaces tumblehome roofs etc. The moulds were produced by milling out the cavity in solid blocks of machining brass ( in negative ) to give the back and front of the mould. Fine detail engraved on and then the mould made up with backing plates, ejector pins etc. Nothing like producing a mould from patterns I am afraid. I did my share of brass pattern making as well though as I did work for GEM, Nu Cast and Sutherland/Cotswold. I showed Richard (Parkside) my methods of making moulds about 40 years ago and like the Sorcerers Apprentice he is now better at it than I am. He is still doing his moulds this way. best wishes, Ian