Michael Edge

1 hour ago, Clive Mortimore said:

 

 

The next stage is very sad, some poor soul has purchased it off E-bay knowing it might not be complete but wants to finish it only to find there are few essential bits missing. The modeller is unaware of the problem the purchaser is having owing to being in a care home or in their own box.

 

 

There's another sad stage after that - the buyer passes the kit on to a professional builder (me) who then has the frustration of finding that it's not complete. Happens all the time.

Fulgurex produced Castles and Kings, they were reasonably accurate although from memory the firebox shape wasn't quite right. They ran reasonably well by the standards of the time but might not seem so now.

The small Prairies were by a Korean firm, they also produced 57xx Panniers. These did run very well they had very nice cast brass wheels and can motors, I still have three of these and another Prairie which I intended to convert to a 44xx.

Seen here on Heculaneum Dock, I painted 5517 and it was expertly weathered by the late Paul Fletcher.

One of the Panniers, also seen posing in Liverpool.

Nice to see my drawing on there - pity we only sold one of the kits to Italy, after they asked us to produce it in HO scale. We have sold a few in other places but it hasn't been a big seller - it's still in production though.

There were etched sides from Perseverance which I used for one of mine - but they didn't quite match the Hornby body, being a little too short...

I was tempted (and gave in!) by this last month.

It's a Grünberg S20, very nice road/gravel electric bike, still needed mudguards when this photo was taken. It rides really well without power on levellish routes and flies up the steepest hills - and there are plenty of those around Barnsley. Riding it like this the battery is good for about 70 miles from a full charge, the biggest snag with it (being a European bike) was that I found the brakes are the wrong way round - front brake on the left. I'll just get used to it for now, I don't want to disturb the handlebar tape yet.

After spending most of my life with only one bike I now have three, this one, my Orbit tourer which has done about 28000 miles now and the venerable Claud Butler which I've been riding since 1963.

1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

 

The Treasury won't be getting much fuel duty revenue when all vehicles are electric, or are they going to add duty to electricity prices?

 

Of course they are but they will wait until there are more of them on the roads.

The side window cab version uses our (Judith Edge) kit to modify the Hornby model, there is one running on Shap which is probably the one you remember. We also do aa etch overlay just for the rivets on the tank sides. The original Hornby model was quite accurate.

And the buffers…..

Not really, the signals will tell you if you have  set the right road and links - the layout still operates in the same way.

1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

As above. But round tube works just as well, but needs to be held in place before soldering. I use the tubes for location and electrical connection, but I also use a tapered piece of wood as a guide to slide the cassette into rougly the right position and the use the tubes to line up the last gnats of misalignment.

Bernard

Round tube doesn't solder very reliably on to flat sleepers, that's why I used square tube. Location and electrical connection are both completely reliable with this.

I used square brass tube for mine but they have actual track on them, not the aluminium angle. Two sizes of telescopic tube soldered to the sleeper ends (that's why I used square tube), big one at one side of the track, small one at the other side. We used these for years on Herculaneum Dock before i built the current fiddle yard for it, I still have e few in store somewhere for Cwmafon if it ever comes out of hibernation.

When I designed Cwmafon’s marshalling yard I didn’t go into any of this theory, I just set up some track on a slope and let wagons roll down it. I then had to mark all the free rolling ones with a white brake lever handle - in those days not all my stock had pin point bearings. The slope is relatively steep at first, then flattens out to level at the bottom and can work remarkably well if the shunter lets go at the right speed.

Another snag appeared at this point - since the layout has very little level track anywhere I had to give the brake vans deliberately stiff running wheels to prevent everything running away.

3 hours ago, Ian Morgan said:

 

Yes, that 08 was fair motoring, but look carefully at the movement of the coupling rods. Try to match that speed with a model. Most model railways are run at speeds where the rods are just a blur.

 

I was referring to layouts where the shunting is done at well below walking pace, "flat out" for a 350 is only 20mph and it won't get there immediately. When diesels took over from steam for shunting the universal complaint was that they were too slow.

3 hours ago, woodenhead said:

@KingEdwardII Motorised wagons would be easier than creating a working Dowty retarder/boosting system in 4mm scale.

 

I am still hopeful someone one day will create an exhibtion working marshalling yard with hump or fly shunting it's main feature and not relying purely on a overly large slope and/or too fast freewheeling wagons to make it work.

I did exhibit Cwmafon at a great many exhibitions with a working gravity yard between 1983 and 2007. The layout is in store now but it really did work even if a little fast at times. This isn’t a hump yard but a continuous (variable) gradient, the well known “gridiron” yard at Edge Hill was the inspiration for this.

Another way of doing this is to mask the lower part and spray primer fairly thickly on the upper part, followed by black. When the masking tape is removed there will be a clearly visible step there.

I used this technique years ago with some scratchbuilt SR 6 Pan and 6 Pul units which had a marked step out around the windows. I did warn the customer never to have the paint stripped off them. I think these sets have probably been sold on now but I don’t know where to.

1 minute ago, rodent279 said:

The people vote for them, they get what they deserve.

What alternative do we have? They all do this sort of thing and always have.

48 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Good afternoon Mike,

 

That's a good idea for retaining nuts.

 

On things such as coaches (where I use the system same as Brian Kirby), I retain any nuts with just a blob of old, sticky paint.

 

For a more 'permanent', though still easily-loosened, solution, I solder a small brass washer to one end of the nut (not too much solder). When placed on the screw this 'locks' very happily.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

It's simple, quick and foolproof - and the nut still unscrews without any problem. I've probably been advising people to do this for more than 50 years, I think my Dad told me how to do it when I was about 10 years old (as he was a plumber he also taught me how to solder properly).

Interesting bit of loose shunting, just demonstrates what I always say about slow shunting on layouts - it was actually always done as fast as possible and that 350 was being flogged along flat out there.

26 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Good morning Zak,

 

DJH's arrangement (and they're not alone) for fixing bogies and ponies is completely the wrong way round in my opinion. 

 

As Mike Edge points out, a box spanner is needed to fix the nut, and then what prevents it from working loose in service? 

 

 

 

If you do keep the nuts on the bottom it's very easy to stop them working loose, simply spoil the thread a little way below the rotating part with side cutting pliers. The nut will then lock on to this part of the thread before it locks the bogie arm or pony truck. I use the same method for coach bogies having seen far too many with springs inserted between the bogie and the underframe, this does indeed keep the nut on but it also inhibits the bogie from rocking as it it should. I still have dozens (possibly hundreds) of these to remove from coaches running on Carlisle.

19 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Good morning Mike,

 

What did you call the Fowler 0-8-0s? In Chester, they were known as 'Austin Sevens', though they weren't that common. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

I think they were Austin Sevens but they weren't nearly as common as the LNW ones.

I would work on the basis of taking the trucks off to get at the body fixing screws - but I never put bogies on like this anyway, I always change them to a centre pivot now. The DJH practice of putting the screws on top with nuts below is a nuisance for anyone who doesn't have a set of box spanners as well but if you are going to leave it this way round you must lock the screws in the spacers.

44 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I have heard Black 8 but that may be a recent appellation.

 

Fifty years ago, some of my mates called them H-bombs.

Black 8 is a nonsensical modernism, there couldn’t have been such a thing since there were no red 8s - LMS power classification only went up to 7.

Since I come from a little way north of the Mersey I concur with Tony about loco names, they were always Mickeys snd Semis, although our “coffee pots” were LNW 0-8-0s. I am (and was) aware that the enginemen had their own nicknames and rarely understood ours.

13 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Good morning Mike,

 

45156, one of the locos which generated the most incredulity to the 'spotters at Chester. 

 

Observing operations one day at the east end of the General, a 'Mickey' appeared on a Manchester-Llandudno express. Normally, this would cause little in the way of interest because any 'Mickey' shedded at one of the Manchester sheds, Chester or any based on the North Wales coast would long since have been 'copped'. In fact, apart from a glance, no notice would have been taken. However, on this occasion, a glance revealed a named 'Mickey' What! Now, to us 'Southerners', named Stanier Class Fives were only ever seen in photographs or dreams. Where was 65B? St. Rollox. Somewhere ecclesiastical? Somewhere very far away? Scotland? Yes. 

 

We gaped in incredulity, rushing along platform 5, then to 4 where AYRSHIRE YEOMANRY had come to a halt. Instead of 65B on the smokebox door, there was 26A. Newton Heath. Manchester. What! 'What's all the fuss about?' asked a mature enthusiast. 'Yesterday, LANARKSHIRE YEOMANRY came through'. And, so it was, the pair became as common as any other local 'Mickey', but THE GLASGOW HIGHLANDER and GLASGOW YEOMANRY were never ever seen. Later, 45154 and 45156 were allocated to Liverpool district depots, but they were still seen regularly. 

 

Happy days.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Yes, the 26A allocation shows its origin for my Wigan Wallgate layout. 45154 is also underlined in my spotters books but like you I never saw the other two named Mickeys.

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I think I remember 45156 from Wallgate days.

Very probably, it's been running since December 1979 - had a Pittman motor and K's wheels then.