Michael Edge

WC/BB locos have 3'1" trailing pony wheels, MN are 3'7". You need to lower the truck pivot to get it level.

I'm not sure how many of these couplings I've got and there will be a Mk3 version - mostly to get a better latch but you may not need that. I'll have some for you anyway.

Would these do the job just as well on the front of your tender locos? I still haven't perfected the latch operation but you might not need that if the pilot locos are detached on a magnet rather than pushing over one. You can also leave the screw coupling on the front of the loco.

I've not seen any different grades, the ones I use are sold as graphite pencils by Hobbycraft.

Cyano is fine for fixing the worm but you need to be very careful with the gears on the axles, it can easily creep along and lock the bearings. Personally I hate this sort of thing and would always go for grub screw fastening, I spent many years encouraging Chris to do it with all his gearboxes - maybe the Lorider is still the old design. Another option may be to raise a burr on the axle where the gearwheel fits, you can do this by rolling the axle with a rough file.

Ordinary tin/lead solder is easily available, the tin/copper stuff is useless. I use 62s solder which has 2% silver in it, Hobby Holidays sell this and it's available from the usual large elecctrical suppliers.

This is what the L&Y 0-6-0 looks like on the Triang frames. This one was built by my son when he was about 13, Triang frames with Romford wheels and using the Triang coupling rods. The rest of it scratchbuilt.

The old Triang Jinty frame is a good match for the L&Y 0-6-0.

Nearly finished now Just balance weights to fit and the frames can be painted before fitting the coupling rods. Photographed from the back because it doesn't have smokebox door yet, the kit provided a very nice machined door with etched hinges to add and once i'd done that I'll make a mould from it. The machined components in most Jidenco kits are very good quality. The brake gear was a bit complicated and I didn't have any etched kit parts for it, mostly made from various spares.

Yes, the handles normally turn outwards away from the toolbox, the cast ones were turned the other way.

I've stayed in Grandson, cycled under that tunnel in J6170 and heard a huge crash behind - a Dutch driver had forgotten that he had bikes on his roof.....

Mine too

I think the most extreme example of "accountancy rebuilds" was the LMS Patriot - nominally rebuilt from Claughtons but the only part retained in other than the first two was the reversing wheel. My drawing of P2 2002, from LNER GA.

Back to work now after holiday - back to the F1, tender next. There were no inner frames with the kit so I had to cut some from .015" n/s, a couple of my etched spacers providing fixing holes. Outside frames and footplate went together OK but the trailing buffer beam wasn't deep enough to get the buffers to the right height so that's a new one. Parts for sides and back laid out, I have to say that this is unlike any other Jidenco kit I have ever built, it's sensibly laid out with half etched coal raves and the slots/tabs fit perfectly - makes the really stupid mistakes even more irritating (and puzzling). One of the raves was slightly damaged, straightened out as much as I can. I have this very good folding tool for this sort of job - before anyone asks it was made by Ian Cherry many years ago. It can bend square or on three different radii. Lift the handles and the job's done. The springs are laminated etches, they would have fitted perfectly into the slots but unfortunately most of these got filled with solder when I was soldering the outside frames in. Either way it's best to fit the springs first before building the tank. At this point I thought it better to hack a large hole in the footplate so that much of the soldering of the top can be done from underneath. Sides, back and front fitted, all tabs fitting neatly in the slots. As usual there's a gap to be filled in the top back corners, this is the only use I have ever found for the appalling stuff that is marketed as "lead free". It doesn't work for proper soldering but it does fill gaps very well. The finished tender, the rest of it was fairly straightforward. There are two fold up toolboxes on the etch but I can't find any photos showing them on an F1.

The track layout was simplified a bit later on with bankers running through from Wombwell but it stayed much the same as I have built into the 1960s which is all I'm interested in. The original layout concept was going to go right through to blue locos and MGR operation, with the idea of gradually changing the stock through an exhibition but this was going to require far too much stock. At the moment it's all steam (although we can run an EM1 in a train with its pans down) and will go partly electric when all the wires are up - between 1952 and 1954 the line can run steam and electric. When the new Woodhead tunnel opened in 1954 steam locos were no longer allowed across the Pennines but the colliery trip remained steam worked for a few years until diesels took over.

It will do as it is, you can't see any of that with the roof on.

Some more fencing in place now. I've never done a signal box interior before but the Severn Models kit was too good to resist. Wentworth Junction was a 30 lever frame and I had the signal diagram so the levers have been set out for a train signalled through in both directions, plus one heading up the branch. It's all quite visible through the windows at the back, I'll have wait until it's out of the shed to see what it looks like from the front.

We have well over a hundred locos running on Carlisle (NCE DCC) with Portescap motors, we've not had any motor failures yet.

I took Wentworth Junction to Leeds last year for its first time out, I did clean the track before (mainly because a lot of scenic work had been done) and apply graphite all over. It's been back home now for most of a year and it's still working nearly perfectly, just an occasional rub with the graphite pencil if anything does hesitate anywhere. Since I started using graphite about 7 years ago I've done very little cleaning of track or loco wheels for any layout.

We have two of these (very early ones, possibly two of the first three) and one of them has done this from time to time. Re-setting is a bit of a pain since there are more than 20 roads off each, at least one of the failures was caused by a runaway loco falling into the pit as the turntable was moving so this was probably a slipping drive. Overall, once set correctly they are very good.

The two handles are for the water valves which feed the injectors, the toolbox sits on a shelf behind them.

I think it was just one batch of wire but we made a lot of couplings from it before we noticed. We have lost less blood since changing from the steel wire though….

After many years of stabbing ourselves with the steel wire Barry and I have gone back to the soft iron wire we used to make couplings (the "SJR Mk 10" if you remember that) from. This was prompted initially by a batch of stainless steel wire which turned out to be more or less non-magnetic..... We're still clearing out some of this from the wagon stock but the iron wire works well and is easy to shape and adjust.

I still have a large supply of these rivets and they do work very well. The snag is that they are a bit too big for most valve gear joints, when they were in common use motion parts were usually made well oversize and now I prefer them to be much nearer scale dimensions.

I meant to say keep the bevel pinion from the dead motor and put it on the replacement.