Michael Edge

I found a UK supplier of Cerrobend on Ebay and got a few years supply, don't know if they are still there though and I can't find the invoice. Tiranti seem to be able to supply it from UK - it is always expensive but cost of shipping from USA is prohibitive.

It's dense enough, I've used it in a lot of the Carlisle locos. You do have to be careful to seal up the part of the body you want it to flow into, it's extremely runny. With some locos I've resorted to pouring it very carefully down the chimney. Since your layout is level (I think), 550g should be plenty, the heaviest Duchesses on Carlisle are 650g and they will pull anything up the gradients.

Just keep typing after you have added the photo - the cursor appears at the bottom right of the picture (but it's not easy to spot).

Looking down through a list of new posts (which is the way I normally look at RMweb) the back button doesn't take me back to where I was but to the top of the list - and I might have to scroll down a long way to get back to where I was. There is a button to view the next post but I don't want to spend time looking at everything, just the ones I want. On a more positive note it's a lot easier to add pictures to posts.

Tracklaying started now, I can put two baseboards at a time in one of the bedrooms (no grandchildren expected to be staying for a few weeks). Starting at the Wath end this is the last fiddle yard board and the first corner of WJ T The LOR turnback siding on the right is going to have to be made removable or the pantographs aren't going to get underneath it. The points below this present an interesting problem, for Herculaneum Dock this is the end of the fiddle yard for the Dock railway but for WJ it's the up running line. For the dock railway this is wired DCC but for WJ it has to be part of the up link, I didn't want to put a switch on here to avoid the inevitable result of it being thrown by accident. The answer was to wire the appropriate connections in the plug on the WJ corner board, this switches everything over when it is connected, the points don't have to be worked for WJ. I'm wiring this up as I go along so as each board goes back in the shed it should be possible to run trains. Fiddle yard board back in the shed and the next WJ board bolted up, the hole at the near end is for the Tortoise operating wire to first point of the junction. The curve in the background where the two test coaches are standing is sharper than I would have liked at 39" radius but we never have enough space. It will mean the overhead portals being a lot closer together than they should be, there's a similar curve at the other end but that one is in a deep cutting and may not be so noticeable. The new Peco track seems to glue down well enough with No More Nails and I'm using the new Peco fishplates as seen here. Amazingly after Peco finally produced 4mm scale 00 gauge track they also managed to produce scale length fishplates which actually grip the rail, not to mention the bolt head detail - so for the first time ever, I'm using Peco track.

That was before we widened it by 18" I built three turntables for this layout and all are still in use, the 70ft one form the loco shed is now Upperby's turntable on the Carlisle layout, the 60ft one form Bradford is at Brunswick shed on Herculaneum Dock and the other one (actually 65ft) is earmarked for Bournemouth West.

30ft X 15ft but it was a complete railway, terminus to terminus, no fiddle yard. I've got a track plan somewhere, I'll post it when I find it.

Thanks for the photos, brings back lots of memories. I think we called it Hall Royd Junction where the goods line diverged. My Kitmaster Midland Pullman and the 2P were still working happily on Chapel last weekend.

Please do, nice photo of my signal box for Victoria (Wakefield Kirkgate actually).

Some photos from last weekend, nothing fancy, just using my phone and the layout lighting. Some of the best ones don't actually have trains in them. From the right viewpoint the backscene blends in perfectly. The 1923 Horwich Mallet drew a fair bit of attention every time it ran round.

No, that's Taurus in Madrid, the twin engined 0-8-0 which BR also trialled in the 1960s.

I've used ratios of the order of 30:1 with good results, initial trial was about 54:1 which I thought was too slow (in a steam loco). The customer was happy with it though. In Bo+Bo electric locos they are fine on about 20:1. I've got one of the square motors in a diesel shunter, bolted straight on to a High Level gearbox, runs OK so far but does get a bit hot.

Shape matters as well, the Hercuaneum boards are very big anyway but the worst one to handle is the L shaped board with the corner of the dock. This one has a mind and a will of its own when being lifted and moved.

At the risk of being seen blowing our own trumpet - you can't do this sort of planning with anyone else's kits, ours are the only ones with a complete accurate print of the drawing of the whole loco.

The Mitsumi motors run fairly cool but they are rather slow. i don't know if you have tried the "square" motors, these are very powerful but do run rather hot. I've experimented with lots of these cheap Chinese motors and have quite a few running, no failures at all so far.

I'm working on drawing the wartime version of this now, thanks to a GA from the museum in Reading, hoping to have at least a test etch in time for Scalefour North. This will also do for the two SR locos 400s/600s and BR ED7 but it's now apparent that ED2 - 6 are of rather different dimensions - shorter length over buffers of 21'4" and shorter 5'3" wheelbase (wartime ones were 23'5"/6'3"). That at least explains the measurements I made of one of the TH rebuilds which must have been one of this type.

Yes it works for EM or even 00 but it's still not designed to use any of the rtr running gear. It might work to widen the frame block but I haven't tried it, all the building and checking has been done in Australia.

I thought it was yours! Must have been Mike Cole's in that case.

No idea about that, this is the frame from our Janus kit, it's fully compensated and we suggest Gibson wheels and High Level gearbox. It might fit round the existing frame block but that wasn't the idea in the first place. We have the frame kits in stock at £18 + £1.50 postage, etched Yorkshire plates are £3.

We still have plenty of those etches.

This is the DC kits moulding, properly glazed and fitted with Judith Edge pantographs. The moulding is 5% too big (because someone told me do it like that to take account of shrinkage - which is actually zero), it is however as accurate as I could get to in 1984. I wonder if one was moulded in a material which did shrink by 5% we might get to an accurate model? Two photos of JE pans fitted to a Heljan EM1 Finally this shows what can be done with a Triang EM2, repainting in lined black disguises the moulded lining quite well (electric blue isn't bad either), this one has kept the Triang pantographs but at least they do work. Such a shame that Triang put the raised lining on this - probably the best model they ever made - the line is too arrow to put the orange/black/orange lining on but too wide to do it either side. I would like another one of these to rebuild for Wentworth Junction if I can find one at a reasonable price, there is a photo of a brand new EM2 at WJ on a test run from Wath. I will be producing etched EM1s (and Tommy) at some time in the near future - at least before the new layout is ready.

Timbers for pointwork are 12" wide (4mm), this is because many of the chairs have to be screwed down at an angle. Ordinary sleepers are narrower but the chairs are always in line with them.

Yes, should be fun. We might have more of a problem with the daily coke train from Barrow - I'm not sure the 3H hoppers would survive the banking. We can always run them empty though.

No, there will always be at least one loco attached. We might have full 24T wagons as well once it's full electric operation - they will be heavy!

With the arrival this week of 25yds of track I thought I would repeat the gradient tests I did a couple of years ago with the fiddle yard boards. Once again I pinned the track down on the layout boards and made a temporary connection from the fiddle yard for power. Incidentally this is the new Peco bullhead track - this is the first time I have ever used Peco track. It matches the height of the pointwork reasonably well and certainly looks much stronger than SMP or C&L. This is a "half train" i.e. 30 loaded wagons, full loads were 60 wagons but the layout is far too compressed to run them. First test has an 04 on the front with the EB1 banking. The EB1 seems to have been doing nearly all the work, the wagons were buffered up all the way to the O4's tender but the whole train moved very smoothly at not much more than walking pace. This is done on one controller and the power supply to the fiddle yard is a lower voltage than will probably be used on the layout eventually. I've also cut out the ashpit on the banker siding today, I'll finish this before the track is laid here. With a few more locos out I tried out the full effect of four locos per train, although this would actually only have been used for a double train, O4 and J11 pushing at the back with two O4s at the front. With four locos on the speed was reduced but this operation was done at very low speed in steam days, electric operation only got the speed up to about 20mph on the 1 in 40. This demonstrates that half loads are perfectly practical but it might be a bit better to reduce them by 4 wagons or so, the train engine has to pull the train quite a long way up for the banker to get on the back via the crossover in the background of the first photo. 25 wagons or so was the usual load from the pit so this wouldn't look out of place. The two back roads in the fiddle yard are long enough for 60 wagon trains so we could run full load empties down the hill - assuming that one loco can pull them up the corresponding hill at the other side. The O4 on its own easily pulled the 30 wagon train up the hill without the banker. By the time of full electric operation there were no bankers outstationed at Wentworth Junction and a single load would have had an EM1 at each end all the way up from Wombwell.