Michael Edge

Some of these apparent pre-nationalisation livery survivals may not be quite what they seem. I remember seeing SR S15s in Dai Woodham's yard with all their previous liveries gradually showing through the paint as they weathered away, both BR crests and at least two variations on Southern were visible. Many lesser locos were never properly repainted and if the old GWR and the like started to appear enthusiasts (or someone) would enhance them with chalk. I do recall some of the LMS Jackshaft 0-6-0DEs still running in the early 1960s with LMS still faintly visible under the dirt.

No mention so far of the GC Worsbrough branch here in Barnsley. This was always freight only, originally a dead end branch to small collieries, then extended as a double track Barnsley avoiding line from Wombwell to West Silkstone. This ran through the green and pleasant side of Barnsley rather than the more familiar industrial parts, electrified from 1952 and closed in 1981. I'm building a little bit of it for my next layout, Wentworth Junction.

Progress on the 150hp Fowler, this one will be SR 600s. Split into its component assemblies. We'll have this with us at York this weekend.

Years ago I built a West Country in 7mm from a Ravenscale kit, this had separate etched panels for all the casing. When assembled (quite carefully in this case but they could have been a bit battered) it had much more of the appearance it should have had, as you say many models are actually too perfect.

I'll have a look at that, it's the latest version I have (but i don't use it much).

Turbocad 2 was a bit like this but from 4 onwards you just have to select entities and it will fill between/inside them. The layer that the fill will be on is selectable, not necessarily the same as the entities selected. Depending on the shape selected and whether the lines are properly snapped together it does sometimes produce surprising results - easily corrected with ctrl Z. That wasn't part of the earliest versions, there was no "go back" in them! The fills themselves become separate entities, independent of the original lines used to create them and can be edited on their own with snap tools - often useful for later corrections. If you catch up with me at one of my demos I could explain this a lot better.

We do the Hunslet 15" 0-6-0ST in 7mm scale. This is one I built some years ago. Painting and photo by Ian Rathbone

No problem getting to Carlton from there but there's quite a big hill between here and Barnsley - maybe a tunnel would be needed.

I didn't know that "Engine Lane" terminated in our village! Very appropriate if you run any of our kits on it though.

Originally plain black with left facing crests on both sides, it's just about impossible to tell which side/end is which in this livery. The centre coupling rods were removed fairly soon after it entered service after problems with transmission wind up. The coupling rods were left bright, cranks were red, the amount of red paint on the buffer beams was minimal, buffers were black. 10100 was repainted in lined green about 1957, this time it received a left and a right hand version of the second BR crest. There are quite few photos alleging that it was withdrawn after an engine fire with a tarpaulin over one end, however it is still quite clearly in black with the 1st crest. The actual withdrawal date was August 1958, the reason given was high maintenance cost rather than unreliability - certainly not lack of power, only the Deltic was more powerful than 10100.

The BR standard buffer height above rail is 3' 5 1/2", 5' 8 1/2" centres.

The Albion kit is very good, this is one I built a few years ago, before and after painting by Ian Rathbone. Not all the fittings are the ones supplied with the kit, this customer often supplies better ones where available.

We did, busy nearly all the time both days.

I'm working on a kit for the Stone Faiveley single arm pan at the moment, will be the second 25kv pan in our range. Should be available later this year. Michael Edge Judith Edge kits

I only use the Powercab for a test track, not the layout but it does appear to react quickly enough to short circuits. The layout has an NCE circuit breaker which is programmable for maximum current and operating delay.

44765 is the one I did properly, there's a Hornby 5MT in there but it has new etched frames fitted outside the Hornby block to bring it out to EM gauge. These frames have proper bearings in them, Gibson wheels, new motion and double block brakes. With the addition of wider spaced bearings the Hornby mechanism runs perfectly.

Working colour light signals now fitted to the Overhead railway, the original test lash up with the sensor unit fitted at the side didn't look very good below the railway so another solution had to be found. In the meantime Train Tech had produced separate signal heads which made the job a lot easier. First test installation was Herculaneum Dock's down home signal. I cut a fairly large hole in the deck plates to fit the Train Tech sensor unit, the sensor itself is at the right, the three prominent terminals are to connect to other signals. It had to protrude up through the deck otherwise it detected the edges of the hole rathe than the train. I then realised that the terminals could be cut off and wire solder to it from below and if the sensor was angled upwards a much smaller hole in the deck was needed. This is what it looks like from below, it's not completely hidden in the decking but high enough not to interfere with trains along the dock road below. The very fine wires supplied with the signal heads fitted inside the tube used to make the original dummy signals, the new heads are a bit bigger but once re-shaped they look fine. New signal head glued to the side of the post, hole ready in the deck for the sensor. I've left all the wires visible, this was an electric railway with cables all over the place so why bother to hide them? New connecting plugs have been fitted all along the railway as well (the signals need one wire connecting each one to the next), these are tucked into the girders on the viewing side of the layout. Each unit was temporarily fitted with BluTack to test it, then fixed with epoxy once it worked satisfactorily. There were a lot of problems along the way while fitting and wiring up but most of these were down to stray electrical connections. Generally speaking most model railways are made from insulating materials such as wood and plastic, this one is all metal and live to one rail as well.... Once the lights were on a sighting problem was obvious and the canopy over the steps at Toxteth had to be cut away (as it should have been in the first place). Driver's eye view of the signal now. All the above photos were taken while the work was being done on the bench, it's too difficult to install the LOR on the layout when it's in the shed (not impossible though) so it's all been packed away ready for Train West. The Train Tech signal system works perfectly, each signal has one wire running to the next signal for full automatic operation, all are normally green, changing to red as the train passes, back to green when it passes the next one. No other wiring necessary, they simply work off the DCC power. At Herculaneum Dock however there were some semi automatic signals, i.e. they could be overridden from the signal box. I though this was going to be easy since the signals are controllable as a DCC accessory - red or auto. This was easily set up but then it became apparent that returning to auto wasn't the same as returning to green, the diagram below shows what was needed. An empty stock train arriving from Dingle passes signal A which has to be held at red while the train shunts into the car shed - however nothing passes signal B now to reset it to green. Similarly when a train leaves the car shed it passes B and reverses over the crossover to get to Dingle, this requires B and C to be held at red. Passing D will return C to green but not B. This caused a great deal of head scratching and the only way I found to get round it, at the expense of a bit more wiring down into the layout, was to put interruptor buttons in the power supply to A and B, this resets them to green. Signal D is not reset by the next signal (there isn't one - it's inside the tunnel), it's just on a timer but it still needs a hold facility if the works train is passing it. The Ruston goes so slowly that the signal would return to green long before the train was out of sight. The down starter at Toxteth is also on a timer but here the trains disappear immediately. Just have to hope it all works when we get to Train West now....

Markits do 2mm handrail pillars. Very nice Sentinel Adam.

Turbocad won't put text in an arc either but once exploded each individual letter can be moved and rotated. Colours are irrelevant to the process, I use ones which are easy to see on a white screen and easy on my eyes, which is why I don't use large areas of black when drawing. My earliest drawings were (still are if they haven't been used again yet) in yellow because the original DOS version of Turbocad which I stared with in 1993 gave a black screen. That version came on a single floppy disc - if anyone remembers them. Each layer has a colour assigned to it which can be changed at any point in the process so the black/white version only appears at the end of the process. If you leave text on your drawing it may look fine to you but may be changed in font, size or spacing by the etchers using a different format in the process. Sometimes it worked but early errors with nameplates and the like soon became apparent.

In answer to two queries above, areas which are black on the film will be etched, the metal is coated with etch resist and exposed under the film. Where the light gets to it the etch resist is fixed, elsewhere it washes off. I use Turbocad 4 professional (the professional version allows customising of the keyboard, otherwise just the same) for most of my work, that goes back to last century, I don't do updates or online services unless absolutely forced to. It works - "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

Yes, that's exactly what they look like when I send them to Phillips (or PPD for that matter) although they are first converted to .eps format they look pretty much the same. Grainge & Hodder do seem to be making things complicated by involving layers, their instructions would allow them to do what I have just demonstrated but I prefer to be in control myself as far as possible and wouldn't rely on someone else to turn on or off the relevant layers. DXF files are very large as well and may present problems Emailing them, I now save all files on OneDrive and allow Phillips access to the folder containing them. One more point has just occurred to me, you mention using text on your drawing - this doesn't work very well as it can be interpreted differently in different processes. Turbocad has a command to "explode text" which turns it into a series of polylines (fills) which are then reliably reproduced. It can no longer be edited as text but all the characters can be scaled, copied etc.

Nothing new to sell at Scalefour North apart from the frame kit for the Oxford Rail Janus but we will have plenty on show with regard to future developments. I didn't manage to finish either the C14 or the Stanier 2-6-2T but progress so far will be on show. The test etch for the Fowler 150hp 0-4-0DM will be on show, building to start next week and should be on show finished at York.

The ability to bring to front or send to back is essential whatever CAD programme you use. You should not fill unconnected areas together in any case (I learned this many years ago - by experience!) and this is exacerbated by the use of .eps, possibly why PPD pointed this out to you. You shouldn't be "filling" tags anyway, all you need is the fill - simply do one tag and copy it wherever you want one. The tags can overlap on to the parts, this is where bring to front and send to back become important. Your final etch drawing should be just the fills, delete or turn off all the lines used in constructing the drawing. This is a small area of one of my test etches, all these are fills, grey for etch both sides, blue from back, red from front. I use three yellowish colours for layers which cancel out the others - yellow cancels the front etch so leaves a raised rivet or number for example, khaki cancels the back layer so leaves a connecting tag. There is another layer (not seen here) which cancels both, this is mostly used for corrections applied after 1st build. All these layers are changed to black and white for printing of course, the colours are just for my convenience to see them on the screen. The two parts look like this when sent to print, front film first. I also draw all parts separately with their own surround, this makes it easy to move them around the etch sheet or copy to others later. I do a demo explaining this at York and Warley exhibitions and would be happy to help if you catch up with me there, we (Judith Edge kits) also have the computer with us at all the shows we do.

This was the real ultimate NER express passenger loco. I've just built another one of these, this time painted in fictitious BR blue by Dave Studley.

Yes, it's a second chance to check for missing tags - I still occasionally manage to miss some though.