Keith Turbutt

There is also one on the NYMR at the Eastern (?) end of Grossmont station by the junction with the Whitby line. I think this came from Scarborough and was modified to fit its new location.

On the subject of gantrys I thought you might like to see this photo heading North out of Preston in August 1967. It was taken during a memorable bank holiday weekend visit to the area.

Hi Marcus, Have you looked at RAILCAR.co.uk website where there are several photos and information about this class. We occasionally had one of these units on our homeward bound school train from Colchester in the early 60's, I think it was at 4.15. More common on this service were the Craven, Derby Lightweights and Metcam units but I remmeber the Wickhams, of which there were only five sets, as these were were most lavishly fitted out. The Cravens vibrated a lot shaking the empty seats. The Wickams were also occasionally seen on my local Braintree and Maldon branches from Witham. The attached photo is the unit on the Llangollen - appologies for any breach of copywright - which was saved because it was used for a while as the ER General Managers special train.

Hi Mike, It was good to meet you and Judith at Scalefour this weekend. Re your recent post re 2mm etches, although I have no immediate requirements, do you have a similar list for 4mm etches. Thanks Keith

Hi Tony I know the irregularities in Bullied pacific casings were discussed a couple of pages back - I find it hard to keep up with the pace that WW moves ! - but I thought you might like to see photos of Salisbury coming off a special at Salisbury. This loco was brought in at short notice to stand in for the V2 which had been brought down to head the LCGB Green Arrow Railtour in July 1966 - hence the title of the special. I have heard several explanations of why the V2 was 'failed' and I'm not sure which was correct but it was a big disappointment at the time. Certainly Salisbury was not in the filthy condition that was typical of the pacifics in this late period. I think you will agree that Morthoe's subtle irregularities closely resemble the real thing on Salisbury. Anyway I hope you enjoy the photos. Cheers Keith

Hi Tony, For the soldering of the Proscale A4 footplate could this be a job for an RSU? The parts could be tinned and the heat applied externally with the RSU. The heat could be directed more accurately and the joint kept kleen. Having said that I still have to try it myself ! ISTR that you mentioned way back that the Proscale tender should have a beading strip along the top of the tender side panel (below the curve) to correctly represent a 1928 one. Cheers Keith Ah I missed the post above and see the RSU has already been suggested!

Hi Grahame, I am in complete agreement with you and others who have commented ie that anything creative is worthwhile and satisfying. Perhaps I phrased my question badly. What I was really asking was ' Assuming it is more complex is there more satisfaction in building and researching a steam loco and once completed seeing all the moving parts working rather than building a mainline diesel loco where there is little visible movement, shunters excluded, and for mainline locos at least, constructing a box like body. That is not to say that I don't enjoy diesels having lived through the steam /diesel era. Keith

Short of scratch building I don't think it's possible to avoid RTR diesels to represent the steam/diesel era(?). This is my period of interest having started train spotting at Gidea Park from about 1958/9 when the first pilot scheme diesels appeared on our line. Unfortunately the diesels swept in at such a rate on the GE that steam was all but gone by the end of 1960 although there were occasional sightings up to 1962. Diesel kits have only been available from a few manufacturers. Dave Alexander produced some of the best kits but only covered half a dozen types. MTK , nicknamed 'Modern Trash Kits - for that is what they were, produced some locos(?) and DMU kits, DC Kits produced a range of plastic DMU kits which were quite good. Also Westward I believe, produced multiple unit kits in stamped out aluminium. KItmaster and Airfix produced a couple of diesel shunters. Another manufacturer whose name escapes me for the moment (Modern Outline Kits - thanks Staffordshire) produced detailed brass kits which I think included an 08, 40 and 47 and maybe one or two others. Silver Fox supplied resin bodies of the pioneer and prototype diesels but that was about it for 4mm. No doubt someone will know of others - eh Clive? Back to RTR I think models have now been produced for all the main line diesels of the steam/diesel era including most of the pioneer diesels. A model of the Fell diesel is under development and the LMS precursor of the Class 15 (D8200 series) has been promised. Also the three Gas Turbine locos have been produced or announced. Heljan produced the EM1 and EM2 Woodhead electrics and Triang, Hornby, Lima and Bachmann have done the later West Coast electrics. No one has done the three Southern main line electric locos as far as I know. Is there the same amount pf satisfaction in building a diesel kit as one gets from building a steam loco ? I welcome comments. Tony I hope you don't mind me mentioning this on here as it is primarily a steam orientated thread which I always enjoy reading. Keith

Hi Jonathan, I'm enjoying reading your thread and am looking forward to seeing further progress on your Easterling project. Just a small point in your earlier post quoted above. Southern Pride list their Composite, incorrectly as you state, but as D305. D304 is the Artic Set which I ordered and have now received. You had me a little confused for a while. I am going to use these sides with the original Artic Corridor D307 roofs which Andrew at Isinglass incorrectly produced, based on the 'official' diagram book, with domed ends as it seemed a shame to waste them. Andrew has now reissued the kit with the correct roofs and also changed the sides and ends which are now designed to fit inside the sides instead of on the ends of the sides. This is a much better arrangement and is per the prototype. I believe his current kits are now made this way. Andrew kindly provided me with replacement body and roofs from the revised kit when I spoke to him at ExpoEM. Keith

You might like to read my posting on Class A4 4-6-2 in O Gauge from Hatton's which shows how I fitted a Kaydee coupling to my A4 tender

I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this thread, but i would like to share my experience of fitting a Kaydee coupling to my A4 tender so that it can haul my rake of lovely Ellis Clarke Thompsons. It may also be relevant to owners of the A3 The pictures below are after removing the tender body, cosmetic coupling , unscrewing the tender weight, removing keeper plate and wheels. I also unscrewed the bracket holding the female plug which connects the electrics to the loco. The wires to this plug pass through a hole in the tender chassis but the hole is not big enough for the plug/pcb(?) board to pass through. Two further wires are attached to the brass pick up strips for the tender wheels. I left the wires connected while carrying out the work described below. However, this resulted in 6 of the soldered connections breaking during the work due to the handling required. If I were doing this again I would unsolder the pick up wires and make a bigger hole for the plug to the loco to pass through. This would have enabled complete separation of the tender weight and connected wiring which was, in the end, necessary to carry out the repairs to the wiring. The plastic was removed by making two verticle cuts in the buffer beam with a piercing saw to indicate the the width of the Kaydee unit. There was too much in the way to make further use of the piercing saw so the rest of the plastic was removed with a small file. The Kaydee unit was offered up during filing to check the depth of plastic to be removed. Three 'fillers' of plasticard/Evergreen strip. were inserted between the ribs to provide a flat base for fixing the Kaydee unit. The centre piece filling the space where the cosmetic coupling was fitted. On one side you can see that the evergreen strips, layed vertically, filled a hole through the tender chassis floor. The Kaydee unit was offered up again to mark the holes required for the two fixing screws. Holes were drilled slightly smaller than the screws which were then screwed in as 'self tapping'. Although not actually self tapping the Evergreen plastic was soft enough to achieve this. After re-soldering the broken wires and hoping I had reconnected them back to the correct contacts (!!!), the tender was reassembled without the body and wired up to the loco for testing. Fortunately all was well. Note to self - for attempting something similar again - photograph each stage of disassembly to show how to put it back together again - especially the wiring!!. The tender body was refitted and job done. The coupling was tested with a coach and although there was a small height difference that seemed ok too. All that remains now is to see what the haulage capabilities of the loco are. I have had the loco, light engine, on the West Bergholt Gauge O Guild test track. It also managed five Ian Kirk Gresleys. My Thompsons have the roller bearing axle boxes so I remain hopefull ! I will report in due course but it won't be for a few weeks. Keith

Bill, I would contact John Watling of the Great Eastern Society. What he doesn't know about GE Carriages isn't worth knowing. I should contact him through enquiries@gersociety.org.uk <enquiries@gersociety.org.uk>; and addressing your enquiry to John Watling Keith PS are we likely to see the 04/8 body any time soon or have you given up on it?

Hi Tony, As you know St Mungo was the last A1. Already withdrawn, I saw it on 50A on 6th August 1966 when returning from a family holiday in Scotland. It was stabled in the shed around one of the turntables minus its chimney. I attach my photo taken at the time. You will have to take my word for it that it's 60145 as smokebox number and nameplate have been removed and the cabside number is behind a pillar. I remember the difficulty I had getting all the loco in the shot. There were still some other LNER steam locos on shed including a couple of V2s, some B1s and K1s as well as LMS types including a Jubilee but I had run out of film being the end of the holiday! During the holiday I did get a run behind Blue Peter between Aberdeen and Coupar Angus on the Glasgow service. I also attach a photo of that trip taken at Forfar. I hope you find this of interest. Keith

Hi Douglas This thread has been quiet for a few days maybe because it went slightly of topic by going into the undisputed merits of the LNER V2s. The original query was to find a suitable LNER engine shed for a limited space model but preferably with an allocation of V2s - or perhaps the possibility of a visiting loco. After all, Derby didn't have a V2 allocation but they could be seen there. For a quick overview of suitable depots I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the BR Steam Motive Power Depots series by Paul Bolger, published by Ian Allan in 1982 - crikey was it that long ago! This was a series of volumes each dealing with a different region of BR. The relevant volumes would be Eastern, NER and ScR. Each volume covers all depots in its region showing a sketch of the track plan, a couple of photos, and a selection of dates in the 50s and 60s showing loco allocations. I think this would be a good way to commence research for a suitable model. A quick check on Ebay suggests copies are available and not at extortionate prices. I hope you find this suggestion helpful. Keith

Richard, The edges of the boiler look a bit flat in your picture especially the RH edge. I think this is a common problem using rolling bars to get the whole piece rolled especially at the edges. This will affect the 'fit' of the smokebox to the boiler. Perhaps someone can suggest a way of forming these edges. Does the kit come with discs to fit inside the boiler or at least a back plate at the firebox end. You could use this to check the 'roundness' of the rolling. Presumably the smokebox has a 'faceplate' too which you can use to check whether the whole piece has been rolled or if there is a 'flat' at the edges. I certainly wouldn't do any trimming until you have checked this out. Sorry if this advice is all rubbish - I haven't used my rolling bars yet! Keith

Hi Regularity, Yes,sorry about that. I discovered that I had uploaded more than one copy to YouTube but deleted the wrong one! Hopefully I have added the correct link to my post now. I'll get the hang of it one day. Hope you enjoy the video. Keith

Hi, Here's my second attempt at videoing Richard's wonderful scratch built GC coaches. This week we have the full rake of 5 French grey and brown coaches. Richard didn't have room in his carrying case for the two chocolate and cream(?) coaches which we filmed last time. Both coaches and track have been tweeked since the last session and everything ran much better. The videoing is still not great but hopefully an improvement on last time and amazing considering it is filmed on my smart phone camera. Next week Richard has said he will bring some goods stock with an appropriate loco so watch this space..... Keith

Good morning Clive. No, not a layout ... yet. Still just two tracks around the garage enabling decent length trains to be run. I had to lift some track and all points/turnouts to fit in the Backmann Scenecraft GC station. In fact only one track completed at the moment so really work in progress. But it was great to see Richard's train going round and through the station. It gave him the opportunity to test the running of his coaches which he can't do at home and do a bit of tweeking. Watch this space! Cheers Keith

Hi Richard, Here's a short video of this afternoons session. Clearly I need more practise so please bring everything along again next week. Also missing the view of the other side of the carriages - must have had the video in the 'off'/stop' position. Cheers Keith

Thanks Bucoops, I would never have found it. Cheers Keith

I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue ! What name is 'Samantha' using as 'seller' as I can't find anything on eBay. Can you provide a link please. Keith

Hi Tony, Congratulations on passing 2400 pages. I find it difficult to keep up. Just one comment about 'collections' that you mentioned a while back and the absence of layouts owned by collectors. In my case, and I guess I would be regarded as a collector judging by the models I have accumulated over the years and the pile of unbuilt kits. However I would prefer to describe myself as a railway enthusiast which modelling forms part of as well as having an interest in the preservation movement and general history of British railways. I must confess that I am not so interested in the current scene on the mainline although I still enjoy rail travel and often wonder what hobby I might have taken up if I was a youth today! My railway interest started as a young train spotter. I joined the LCGB and enjoyed all their activities. After steam finished on the mainline and I did those family things, I turned my interest to modelling and joined a local club. The club facilities included a permanent layout in the cellar of one of our members and we also built exhibition layouts. So finally I come to my point [at last! I hear you say] which is that my 'collection' did not originally require a layout of my own as I had the club facilities to run on. As time went by we lost the permanent club layout and members got too old to want to continue with exhibition layouts. I now have a double track around my garage, all be it without scenery (at present) so I can at least run trains for my own pleasure. By the way I don't remember you mentioning a layout of your own before LB? Sorry to read about your frustrations involved with disposing of the collection but it's for a worthwhile cause so keep up the good work. Keith

Jol, We displayed John Redrups London Road terminus boards as a static exhibit at the 2019 AGM at Woodbridge. There were some good eye level photos/views looking through under the bridge. Can't post them here as my computer is at the doctor's! Perhaps you have some.

Yes, I agree with the previous comments that the location is just East of Romford on the GE mainline. I believe the bridge in the background is a footbridge and is at the point where the Upminster branch diverges from the mainline. This footbridge, which is still there (and can be seen on Google Earth) but may not be the original, was popular with train spotters. The clincher would be if anyone is able to confirm the location of the TPO apparatus. I started my trainspotting days just down the line at Gidea Park around 1958/9 which has lead to a lifelong interest in railways and many valued friends. These friends include school friends and when it was popular to be part of the 'in set' we were known as the 'train set'!