Michael Edge

The pedal car was possibly the most profitable car they ever made - about 40,000 of them were produced.

That's a good question, the 2-6-2Ts have much the same throwover as the 2-6-4Ts at the front. It might just have been for symmetry - the 2-6-4T has much greater throwover at the rear and definitely needed oval buffers there.

added to the list

Don't even think about lead shot and PVA, it would expand and burst your loco apart.

You can melt it with a soldering iron but I do it in a ladle (metal pouring ladle from Tiranti) over the gas cooker, usually when Judith isn't around!

I see that the muck has been rubbed off the cabside number on 63824 - common practice but mostly unnoticed or ignored.

The slide bars look very thin, you could beef them up a bit with strip added top and bottom. It looks a very good job with an awkward kit - I have refused to build these in the past!

I'd go with option 5, photos will show all the amazing work you have done.

Not mine, they are David's photos from February, I've not been back since last May.

Have you tried Cerrobend? Quite expensive but you can even pour it into plastic models with care - I've even resorted to pouring it down the chimney occasionally.

It's moved on a lot since you took those photos, I should have been back there now with the latest delivery of buildings from Ukraine but they are stuck in Cyprus and I'm stuck here. Much more scenic work done, including the river and backscene now. Dentonholme goods shed needs some modification though when I get back to it.

You shouldn't be gauging the checkrail from the stock rail anyway - check gauge should be set from the crossing v/wing rail.

I hadn't even looked at the wheels, nice of you to give me another complication... Flangeless centre wheels don't give any trouble in a model though so that would be easier. The ex ICI one (I know it's lighter and different) at Cottesmore has disc wheels, we measured up and took lots of photos of this one. It's hard to tell from my photos whether they had flangeless wheels and we didn't note it if they were.

Cylinder drains are rather prominent on this loco so I've put rather more detail than usual in, photo also shows the typical Hunslet brake rigging. Finally finished this afternoon, it's taken at least 25 years. Modern techniques caught up for the motion work which was etched in .022" n/s. View from the back, a slight snag emerged right at the end of this - one of the last jobs was fitting the return cranks to the driving crankpins. It quickly became apparent that the Slater's wheels (I've no idea which they are after all this time) didn't have the correct crankthrow and the return cranks are too long. If I set them in the right position they give far too much movement to the expansion link so I've set them for now in the minimum position (still too much but not so bad), I think I'll have to make new ones. Clearance behind the crosshead was just about zero and at this crankthrow the little end coincides with the leading crankpin, the fastener was already absolutely minimal so I finished up not putting the back on the crosshead - seems to work quite reliably though. Another complication with this is the weighshaft above the footplate so the lifting links are not attached to the radius rods. I don't really know what to do with this loco now, I've no need of industrial 7mm locos and don't even know how to paint it. I don't really want to paint it as Cadbury No9 (or more likely get someone else to do it) and Hunslet didn't actually build any others exactly like this one. That's three long standing jobs completed in the last couple of weeks or so, now what can I dig out of the pile next?

I've got drawings for the GECT 6wh shunters but they do present some difficulties in model form. I would need to drive all axles and the compensation gear is rather strange and very visible, it would have to move with the wheels.

Well get on and build it now then......

I started from that and my own measurements of the surviving swb loco at Avon Valley, Pete has since found a few more diagrams for me. I've got enough to build one of each to start with but we will end up either with two kits or one with a lot of redundant components - it probably won't sell very well anyway, not many of the steelworks locos do.

Yes, it's an old one from Railway Modeller November 1965 - a Leeds MRS special issue, most of it written by club members (bit before our time though!).

Any photos of the 0-8-0 Sentinels Pete? I've got the test etch for these now, trying to do both wheelbases but there's not as much in common as I'd hoped.

I didn't look that closely at them but I didn't notice anything on the axles.

I thought they might be from Elsecar, it is local after all. There's some sort of trade name on the tyres but I can't quite make out what it is, also what looks like a works part number in addition to the date.

More work on the Hunslet 0-4-0T this week. The sanding gear is rather complicated, quite why the leading sandboxes had to be up on the smokebox I don't know. The sanding rod comes from the cab to the LH box but has another crank on it fitted in a tower to carry a cross rod over the boiler to the RH one - most photos of HE 3665 working at Cadburys show much of this gear had disappeared but I've put it all on anyway. The sandboxes were made up from some etched components and worked out very well. By thius time I was really wishing that I had fitted the weighshaft before I built the tanks but it was a long time ago. The weighshaft itself has to cut across the boiler clothing, no photos of this and Don Townsley didn't show it in his drawing so I've had to guess that it was cranked like this. It could have been recessed into the boiler clothing but this is easier - it could still turn far enough to get from full reverse to full forward gear. One thing I concentrate on when building anything is, regardless of what the drawings and everyone else says, does it look right? One trick I use on myself is to park nearly completed locos on the test track at the end of the working day. Next morning I walk in, sit down at the computer and look up, at this point I see it through new eyes. This was the view this morning with early sunshine through the window - it looks just right!

These three wheelsets appeared fairly recently by the side of the Trans Pennine Trail at Stairfoot (Barnsley) Does anyone know what loco they came from? There are no cranks or eccentrics on the axles, a long crankpin on the centre pair which suggest an outside cylinder steam loco or a diesel with drive via a connecting rod from the gearbox. There's a date of 1957 on the tyres which don't seem very worn - slightly hollow but still quite thick.

They are near enough for me, after all I don't really need this loco. No idea where they came from though.

Put simply, I don't have an infinite amount of time available. It takes a lot more time and effort to produce a fully worked up kit, the easy bit is producing and selling the etched parts. In the last 18 years we have expanded from nothing to a range of more than 50 kits, we have also done many of these in different scales - and this isn't even my full time job. The range of "etches only" grew out of my selling off (via RMweb actually) some spare etches which I had produced for my own use and this promptly snowballed into a significant part of Judith's business. While there is a demand for these etches we will keep on supplying them.