Michael Edge

Thanks very much for all this, very comprehensive.

7203 now finished. This seems to have been going on for a very long time but eventually only 52 hours - Christmas and New Year get in the way a bit. No real problems with a Dave Andrews design but one thing was surprising - the cylinders were set on the axle centre line so they needed to be packed up a bit, GW two cylinder locos had the cylinders offset 2.5 inches upwards. This does make the vacuum pump (it is there!) just about invisible, as it should be. The trailing axle has been built with radial axleboxes - seems to work on my 6ft radius test track. I did also modify the cab floor to come away on the frames allowing the cab roof to be soldered on - the instructions somewhat glibly refer to making the roof detachable, easy for the 72s with an overhanging roof but impossible for this one. Meanwhile the 7mm EE/HL 0-6-0DE has moved on a lot but this will be in the Judith Edge kits thread.

Not difficult at all, that's exactly what 6205 Princess Victoria had and the first two had a slidebar arrangement almost identical to GW practice.

I think you'll find the 5MT wheel has far too big a crankthrow anyway.

That makes sense, I’d forgotten about trains using the Leeds Northern and 1967 is a little later than I was using this route.

I remember using Liverpool - Newcastle trains in the 60s and they always ran into the platform roads (and stopped!).

The vast majority of Garratts had steam reversers but still only a single rod to each end but what’s peculiar about the LMS ones is that they look as though they are in back gear when going forwards - both ends.

The reason for the water tanks behind the GMAMs was to reduce axle weight, they had only minimal water capacity on the loco.

What's that train in J1184? Running through without stopping wasn't normal on cross country workings.

The only other 6 cylinder Garratts (in New Zealand) were cut up into separate 4-6-2s so they can't have been much good either.

I'm getting more and more puzzled by Garratt valve gear now. Having established that the LMS Garratts had the return cranks leaning backwards at bottom dead centre (not the LNER U1, they were forward) I looked through Durrant's book about Garratts and found about half and half each way - all have the radius rod pinned above the the valve spindle unles they had slide valves though. There are two ways to arrange the valve gear on a Garratt, either the front unit in (apparent) forward gear and the hind unit in back gear going chimney first or they can be arranged so that both ends have the radius rod at the bottom of the link going forwards. The LMS ones clearly have the former arrangement looking at photos of them working but the radius rods one the front unit look like back gear and the ones on the hind unit look like forward gear! It appears that the cylinders and motion were copied (against BP's advice) from the S&D 2-8-0s which also seem to have backwards leaning return cranks. Is there anyone on here who knows more about valve gears and can enlighten us?

You could easily add it to the back part of the link bracket.

The slidebars should be supported by an extension to the link bracket.

It's the juntion between the Midland main line to Leeds and the L&Y from Wakefield so possibly an L&Y box?

So am I now.... One or other of them is correct, looking again at photos it does seem that the return crank leans forwards so maybe Tony's is wrong. I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't understand this at all. still looking into the LMS Garratts.

The LSW C14 has slide valves, outside admission is normal for these. The LMS Garratts definitely had backward leaning return cranks but the valve rod is pinned above the valve spindle rather than below.

The main line here is the Midland, sidings are NCB though.

Not just Gresley, this is the reason why the GCR 0-8-4T hump shunters had three cylinders.

Yes, 120deg works perfectly, I've tried it a few times (mostly out of curiosity) - as Tony says, it's impossible to see it. Four cylinder locos normally have inside ones at 180deg. from the outside ones, giving four beats exactly as a two cylinder loco so they will have outside cranks at 90 deg. The best known exception is the SR Lord Nelson but one of these was modified to conventional with no discernible difference. Incidentally inside cylinder locos sometimes have the cranks in line with the coupling rods, giving rise to much larger balance weights in the wheels, GW 56xx is an example of this.

Nothing wrong with them from an engineering point of view, many of my own frame etches are designed with screw holes in discreet places for temporary spacers. I bolt up the frames on these while soldering in permanent L shaped ones. There is no point at all in trying to build a plate frame exactly square, it has very little torsional stiffness compared with the boiler you are going to bolt it to - the important part to get square is the loco body using the buffer beams as reference surfaces. All plate frames will flex a bit, even full size ones.

OK, on to link witches, panel photo repeated. At each end of the lines leaving this panel there is an on/off switch, mounted vertically, these are the link switches - 5 on this panel. Each one connects the inside rail (outside is common everywhere) of a linking section to the coloured section on the panel (the ones with the two way centre off switches). They don't connect to any of the controllers, just to the sections. The next panel along (in this case all 5 are on the fiddle yard panel) has the same switches to connect its last sections to the link section. If the link on your panel is on you can drive on to the link section, if the next panel's link switch is on you can continue to drive on to that part of the layout. This system also gives the ability to switch out a panel completely and allow through running from another one, for example the up line at WJ (green section running left to right). If the main section switch is off as seen here, switching the links on at each end allows the fiddle yard to drive right through without affecting anything else going on here. It also applies to the down line here since there are only two main sections in it - if there were more through running can be done by connecting all the sections ot one of the Junction controllers and leaving its direction switch in the off position. Alternatively an additional "link through" switch can be fitted to connect all these sections if required, we do this with one of the main lines on Herculaneum Dock. Operating procedure on the down lne (up the hill!) is that the train draws up to the starter signal at the right, train engine switched off with the on/off on the dotted part and a banker is attached at the rear. Then the operator switches the main red section to off, the dotted one to on and the link switch on at which point the fiddle yard operator can take over by switching his link on to drive all the way in. The system is completely flexible and allows any controller to control any part of the layout by various combinations of switching - on my older layout (Cwmafon) any one of seven control positions can access any of the layout. We've been using this system on Leeds club layouts for more than 50 years giving rise to the frequently heard "turn your ******* link off" followed by every operator surreptitiously checkin his own panel.... Hope this is clear enough and helpful. To answer your other queries, for uncoupling we used cheap coils from Whistons (remember them?) with a chunk of large nail through them for many years but this supply has long since dried up. More recently I've been cannibalising old H&M point motors to use the coils for uncoupling magnets. I haven't used the Cobalt point motors but they work in exactly the same way as Tortoises, their only drawback is that are just about impossible to drive backwards - the Tortoise is quite easy to work by hand for testing or in case of power failures. If you are fitting Tortoises all they need is a hole about 9mm or so under the tiebar, when you lay the track glue a strip of paper at either side of the hole to leave a narrow slot for the wire to move in - don't bother trying to cut slots for the operating wires. The layout in France is about 5ft off the floor (not my choice!) which makes working on it a bit difficult but does make wiring underneath very easy - and I have to do it from underneath because it's all fixed. I think I might suggest somewhere in between this and normal layout height - say about 4ft.

Drawings won't help much, your turntable is much bigger than the one at Ilfracombe - or any other UK one for that matter. You'll have to design it yourself.

The RSH looks great, I'll have a look at your suggested corrections as soon as I can.

Take care with the number for this, these locos had two distinctly different riveting patterns for the tanks.

I would solder up the screwed spacers (needs a fair bit if heat), remove the screws and fill the holes.