Michael Edge

We're still busy sending kits out and stocks are a bit better now but I've had time to finish another 7mm test etch. The nearest available Slater's wheels are a bit small so the production version will be altered to give the correct ride height, it's a bit low at the moment. Construction is the same as the 4mm one but without the motor bogie option. Buffers are resin for now but will be lost wax castings. No cab interior details, I wasn't able to get inside either No2 or no10 to find out what they look like - there was no room in the 4mm one to do anything much anyway. Close up of the pantograph, works very well and not too fiddly to build. Nobody has bought one of these yet in either 4mm or 7mm scales to use on a tram, which is where they came from after the Sunderland system was abandoned. We don't intend to provide any drive components but it's not difficult to arrange. There is an inner frame carrying the wheels with the usual compensation option and the folded back version of the n20 motor/gearbox bolts neatly into the side frame with two plastic spur gears to the axle. Two of these would have made a very prototypical drive arrangement but one has more than enough power so the compensated axle is chain driven. View from underneath, pickups are a bit fiddly and short but seem to work OK.

Back at work now after a few week's holiday. The test track today, right to left: Next 7mm loco is a 7mm GW 1361 0-6-0ST, I've etched nearly all of this, more later. The GSR 4-6-0 has come back from Ian Rathbone for some minor attention. 7mm test etch for the small Harton 4wh now finished - more in the kits thread. D5679 is an ancient Airfix loco which has been in stock for many years. It's been on test on WJ for a while as part of the all electric era fleet, it will run on the colliery trip in place of the GC steam locos. Now in the workshop for some buffer beam detailing and proper glazing. The Kirtley 0-4-4T has moved on quite a bit this week, might even be finished next week. Midland steam railmotor is a customer's Ebay bargain, needs vlave gear repairs and re-gauging to EM. The Sentinel 0-6-0 really does need finishing, not much left apart from pattern making and fitting handrails. Closer photo of the Kirtley before fitting the dome and weatherboard, there's nothing wrong with the London Road kit but it was never designed to produce a model of the loco in its original condition. The whole of the boiler is visible with no cab front and the water tank is partly guesswork. I think there must have been some sort of well at the front of it to shovel the coal from but no idea how wide it might have been. The smokebox front has been altered to fit the original "cupboard doors", photos show some sort of linkage from the LH handrail to something across the smokebox front but I've no idea what it does. The only photos I've been able to find show the loco from the side - at least I've got both sides though.

The Stephen Poole one didn't do corners very well as designed, simple straight frames with sideplay on the radial axles. You do need radial movement on at least one end of 2-4-2T but both ends would require side control springing as well. My latest solution for this is an internal pony truck on the effective radius of the radial axleboxes, seen here in our C14 etch. This works quite happily down to my 28" minimum radius in 00 gauge at least.

That looks very good for a first kit build, the cast headlamp is easier than the etched option but I mostly had the BR locos in mind when I designed the kit.

It's not a very good switch but electrolube on the contacts will improve it a lot - tweaking it will probably make it worse though.

Your pickups look too short and too thick. I use .35mm phosphor bronze wire (one piece each side - there's no point in splitting it) soldered to a pcb pad in the same position but taken to the far side of each wheel, not the nearest point. All looks OK otherwise so far.

That might go down better than you would expect - when we took Herculaneum Dock to Bremen we were asked "why does your engine shed have no roof?" They did laugh when we gave them the answer - "Luftwaffe".

As far as I can see they are all LMS/BR round post types, all the old GC ones had gone by the time the wires went up. They are shown on the control panel back in this thread. It's not clear whether there were any distant arms (possibly fixed) on the Strafford crossing signals.

Drill the coupling rod blanks first and use them as a jig to drill the axle holes in the frames.

My mistake, the 4'6" locos didn't seem to have had them, I was thinking of the 5'6" 2-4-2Ts.

I work to an absolute minimum radius of 28", anything I build in 00 will go round this and my workshop test track has a 28" reverse curve. In the case of WJ I think there is only one curve approaching this and it's in the fiddle yard, the new crossover at the West Silkstone end. Sharpest visible main line curves on the layout are 39" (down end) and 40" (up end), the colliery branch starts at 34" radius.

I've not come across Dawson kits but I have built one or two from Leinster - as you say tinplate but I've no objection to that, i do a lot of work in steel.

You're going to struggle fitting the bars across the back windows now - or hadn't you noticed them? Maybe they weren't always there? Nice neat work so far though.

Nothing to do with Jamieson although they were produced by the same methods - marketed by Charles Covey I think. I've built a few of them years ago and they were quite good, mostly accurate but of course needed a lot of detail work adding. Jamieson did do a Duchess kit as well as the streamlined version, in fact I think I've got one somewhere and my son has nearly finished building one.

Our Fowler 150hp kit is in stock, price is £64 + £3.50 postage, it does cover the one shown in your post. Judith and Michael Edge

9mm scale is used quite widely in New Zealand for 3'6" on O gauge track, I have designed several kits in this scale. The most common scale used in NZ is S (on 18mm track) but there are others, more recent kit design has been in 1:48 scale (O scale in USA), strangely the only commercial scale which doesn't seem to be used there is HOm - which is slightly over 1m and nearer to 3'6".

This is the 14" type, Mersey Docks had two of them but there were plenty more (one - Brookes No.1 - iis preserved at Middleton) MD&HB No 14 was built from the test etch.

You're not wrong - it's not there! The website is long overdue for updating anyway but it might explain rather poor sales for the 14" so far. It's the same price as the other two HE saddle tanks. All three types were fairly popular with collieries but the 16" might have been preferred for heavier work. The 15" type was often built for stock when work was slack between the wars.

I wouldn't start with something like this for a first attempt at building a boiler from sheet - I certainly didn't (although that was a long time ago).

We do the Hunslet 14" 0-6-0ST as well - all three in stock at the moment. No difference in build difficulty between them but i think the 14" is the prettiest.

The resin moulded boiler in that kit was particularly bad, I think I replaced all of it in brass.

Don't forget that it cracks more easily one way (along the direction the sheet was rolled in) than the other way (across) and that brass sheet varies in hardness.

Parts like this (and the boiler cladding itself) might well have been replaced in preservation and may not be exactly the same as the Swindon original.

The strap isn't on the boiler, it holds the tanks together and just passes over the boiler cladding. There was usually only a small gap under it but sometimes it could be bigger - this model does look excessive though.

TH built some twin engined 0-6-0s later, these were based on the 0-6-0 Sentinel layout, weighing about 60T or so.