Clem

I bought the RM today - first one I've bought for some time - for your article on LB. It's a very good article with well laid out illustrations, an interesting back story of how it came together and interesting comment (even if a little well worn in this thread :-) ) . I liked the way you named and credited your team of friends and helpers with their respective specialisms. I was also struck by the fact that the Railway Modeller has improved much (in my view) since I last bought one and certainly this issue contains a variety of interesting articles. Plaudits to all!

How does it smell? .......

Just goes to show how different we all are. For me, the chimney stands out as much if not more than any other as a distinguishing characteristics and I'll spend loads of time trying to get it right.

Thanks Tony. Your help is very much appreciated. I've tried hollow half rounds but they looked overscale and so I felt a bit stuck and I've bypassed doing it up until now. I'll try the evergreen half rounds. Cheers, Clem

Hi Mick, It's been a while since I did it. It think it was Phoenix Precision can't remember for definite what shade but I pretty sure it was bog standard track colour.

I'm approaching completion of the signal box with just guttering, roof slates, name boards and outside step board (not sure what you call it) plus some final bits of painting. A quick question for 4mm building people (I've seen some great work on here). What do you use for guttering that's to scale?

yes Arun, I've always understood it. My comment was really about why some people might get confused. Rules are easy when you learn them. However, some people find rules hard unless they can see the reasoning, the logic behind it. My comment was about why some people get that one wrong. Their logic behind the mistake.

No. Surely it's Giles's. The second part is too unlikely!

Yes I agree. I was taught the same but for once, I understand why some people get confused.

I've never knowingly got this wrong, but I can understand probably more than any other grammatical spelling mistake why people do. Where is the the logic of saying "john's, Christine's, the people's, all in the possessive mode by adding an apostrophe before the "s" but when it comes to a logically identical case of possession for an inanimate object (but only for the pronoun, mind you) , it becomes "its" without the apostrophe. You've got to admit that it's logic gone bananas. Even a banana skin is a banana's skin.... but it's "its skin" when using the pronoun. Nuts. But I still follow this same illogical rule.

There could be real mileage in this. So, so many photos published for the locomotive subject have a more intriguing background feature. A book gathering up some of these with identifications/explanations would be tremendously educational/inspirational for modellers and enthusiasts such as those on here (myself included) who have a thirst for knowledge and analysis of past railways. Just thought I'd add my 'thrupence' worth.

Can't agree with you on this one, Andrew. Bad captioning and best guessing do irritate me but very often it's the photo that's the important thing here. It does provide evidence and at worst leads me to go away and do more research in an effort to a) identify the subject of the photo b) understand the context of the photo, and c) use it an an inspiration to bring something in to my modelling that wouldn't have been there. So whilst I sympathise with the ideal that no railway book writer should publish without fully understanding the subject, I'd still rather have the opportunity to see the photos to be able to use for my own research. I'd simply add, never trust implicitly, or take as fact, what you read without being able to back it up with other evidence/information. No modelling today.. (sigh)... Off to family do and then on to a gig with the band tonight. Bit of pressure as we are doing some new numbers for the first time live and we haven't rehearsed enough.

Thanks Stuart I somehow missed your reply earlier. This is just the clarification I was looking for. I'm modelling an ex-LNER line in BR days circa 1955, so it sounds like the only adjustment I need is to remove the call attention signal for the train entering section stage. There are other tweaks that will be desirable but it works well enough even now. Cheers Clem

Hi Tony. Yes I thought that was the case. It's one of the things I'll have to change to get it working more as per the prototype. At the moment, it picks up trains from the working timetable (database) and the boxes each side offer the trains. When accepted the line is set to clear. But I don't offer the train on to the next box until I get a train entering section from the originating box. It would only be at the point when train is accepted at the next box that the layout signals would be pulled off. The nice thing about it is that when the trains arrive, I've got them picking up sound from selected from another database of authentic sounds (many from the Nottingham-Derby Friargate line). Oh, and the bell noises are samples of Kimberley signal box bells. I'm hoping to use it fully to operate my layout in conjunction with the layout's levers/signals when they're all finished.

Hi Paul. I presume it is very different to VB6 which is used on mine. (I wrote it in VB4, upped it to VB5 and until yesterday never managed to get it working in VB6). I'm really out of practice with it and wouldn't have managed to rewrite it now (without some serious revision). Luckily it only needed a few tweaks.

I was wondering if there are any people with knowledge of working in a signal box operating the block system on here. I wrote a program in Visual Basic about 20 years ago emulating the workings of a signal box. It hasn't worked for much of that time - visual Basic is pretty well obsolete as far as I know. However, I had a look at it yesterday and with a bit of tweaking, I got it working. However, when I wrote the program, with up-to-date knowledge I know I got a few things wrong. For instance, when alerting the adjacent box there is a call to attention (1-0-0) but I now believe that's only used for offering new trains forward and doesn't precede train entering section and train leaving section calls (2-0-0 and 2-1-0 respectively). Can anyone confirm that? Also when a train is offered and accepted, at what point would the signalman offer this train forward? Can he do so straight away or would he wait till he got a train entering section from the preceding box? I realise the answers to these questions may not be fixed in the wool but may depend on the length of the sections. Here's a quick look at what the program looks like. As you can see, computer programming has come on a lot since I wrote this! Thanks in advance for any help...

I couldn't agree more. I find it very frustrating to see some of the ill-informed captions in steam era books. It's not that it affects me directly but I think of all those enthusiastic people who have become interested in railways, whether for modelling or not, and in spite of their commendable efforts to get to the bottom of where and how the railways ran, they are misled and confused by people who really should not be doing the captions to these books - at least not without some (true) expert proof reading. (I can excuse the isolated mistake but there are some books that are riddled mistakes and uninformed comment). I would add that the photographs in these books are often excellent which makes the poor captioning even more frustrating.

Yes, it did. An interestingly slightly different subject for a model?

... and just for completeness, O4/4 Robinson 2-8-0 rebuilt with full length Gresley O2 boiler, extended frames, side-window cab and separate smokebox saddle. Just 2 modified to O4/4 and both subsequently rebuilt. First to O1 in 1945 and the second (3882) to O4/8 in 1947. (Nobody ever mentions the O4/4s). It looked similar to the O4/5 but was longer.

Yes. At least I got that one! .... And I knew about the other other but not got around to doing it.

Sounds like the punters made it very worthwhile in their appreciation. I desperately wanted to get up to Bradford to see it but all sorts of things conspired against it and I ended up not going. Is Leicester South going on display anywhere next year and if so when and where? I'd really like to get a much longer look at what I thought was a great layout from all aspects when I saw it at Quorn and at Spalding last year. BTW, regarding something else you mentioned in the above post, I should confess that I'm guilty of a GW bogie bolster infestation too. Anyway, it's good to hear from you again. I play guitar in a local band and that seems to have the desired effect of keeping the modelling fresh as I have to break off from time to time to learn new songs. I don't think it hurts to do that. Cheers for now Clem

Hi Andrew, First of all, thanks for the kind comments and I really hope you can get back full time into modelling as the standard of your work in my opinion, is as good as it gets - I've learnt a tremendous amount from it on this thread alone and it has at times given me a kick up the backside to try to reach those standards. And that's saying nothing about your fantastic in depth knowledge and expertise which I'm sure has helped many on this thread. Anyway on to the questions: 1. The body and cab are screwed on to the running plate. I haven't altered the wiggle round the cylinders and although it grates on me, I haven't yet had the gumption to try to modify it. The stuff the running plate is made of would make it pretty difficult and I'm a little worried that it would end up in the bin. But it's going to happen sooner or later. So in answer, at the moment I'm living with the incorrect wiggle. 2,3,4 and 5 The chassis has been retained and I've used one of Alan Gibson's conversion packs to re-wheel it (includes 3mm axles). As this arrangement is meant to be temporary, I would hope to correct the cylinder angle to point to the centre of the driving axle on a new scratch or kit built chassis. I've used all the original running gear with spacing washers (again supplied by Alan Gibson) to allow the coupling rods to fit the AG crankpins. The driving axle is different from the others in that both coupling and connecting rods have a larger diameter hole for the crank pin. For these two I cut a short piece of 2.4 diameter brass tube to bush the crankpin. Although it's a bit of sloppy fit, she runs fine. 6. Yes they are available although Bill Bedford has not updated his site yet. It's a 28 day delivery but I think my came in just over 3 weeks. There are one or two minor problems which to be fair, I haven't yet reported back to Bill but they are all surmountable with a bit of care and work. I found the O4/5 required more work smoothing out the print that the O4/7 and I'm not sure I did enough on my model of 63851. 63628, 63745 and 63851 of the O4/5s were indeed at Colwick between 1952 to 1956 but more interestingly for you, 63851 was at Annesley from 1948 to 1952 with a short gap in 1950 when it went to Colwick for the summer of that year. So in summary, I'm living with Bachmann's chassis faults for the time being but it is something I'll get too further down the line hopefully. And I think the O4/7 print is pretty good although there are still some work - fettling and sanding - to do on it before completion. Hope this helps, Andrew. Let me know if there are any follow ups. Clem

Errrmmm...... I haven't got a thread. I'm not sure how to start one to be honest (although I've not tried that hard). Perhaps I should do one instead (or as well as) invading Tony's brilliant thread. Andrew, I'm always happy to answer anything if I can help in any way. It's put together similar to the Bill Bedford O4/5, if you've had any experience of that. Although it has the limitations of a 3D print, for a small amount of work you get a very decent model out of it and it's a snip at £45. I'm hoping at some stage in the future to replace the chassis but this is fine for the time being. Clem

Thanks Tony, and also to Geoff, Barry and Doug, for the kind comments for 63699. Yes it is Tony, and I'll bet you've guessed it was one of my favourites. The last one - 63770 - became much loved by the locals around here in Nottingham. It outlasted the other O4/7s by some time , being at Colwick until the end of Eastern region control there in December 1965. However, it would be out of time with my period being based at Immingham in the days of my layout.... But you never know, I might just do it at some time simply for the affection I had for that loco when in my early teens. The CLC must have been a very interesting line to observe with it's mixture of ex-LNE and ex-LMS locos. Incredible to think that, although the parent companies were deadly enemies, the Midland Railway and Great Northern Railway collaborated on both the CLC and M&GN. I believe it was Edward Watkin, chairman of the MSLR (later GCR) that brought them together for the CLC.

Well, I've completed the Bill Bedford O4/7 and here's the lightly weathered result: 63699 was a Colwick loco which I particular remember. It was when I first became properly aware of the differences between the variations of the O4 class as pointed out by my brother who was 10 years older. It also helped that a photo of this particular engine appeared in the ABC Eastern Region for that year (1957?) and I remember thinking how one of our local engines was thus a bit of a celebrity. I had many joyous moments as a child.....