Michael Edge

He can stand wherever he likes - to see the signals clearly, contrary to most modellers' impressions you don't drive a steam loco with your hands on any of the controls all the time.

The specification for the Eurotunnel shuttle loco bodies, built at Qualter Hall in Barnsley, was that the sides had to be completely flat. This was done by hydraulically stretching the sides before welding them up, it was certainly a new technique to Qualts at the time.

Mine are in regular use for all those three gauges, they have also been used for small 7mm locos on 1/8th axles and 1:48 scale 3'6" gauge. Works perfectly well for anything, I can't see why there should be a distinction there, straight frames and corresponding axle centres and coupling rod centres are necessary in any gauge.

Have you seen what it does to steel?

I use phosphoric acid as flux and never need to clean any etched brass or n/s before soldering - but I've only been doing this for a living for the last 43 years or so......

Not much goods traffic at Liverpool Central, Brunswick Goods included the original Cheshire Lines passenger terminus - the branch off was really the later line into Central station. The Liverpool portions of trains from St Pancras had reversed at Manchester Central - as did the GC trains right into the 1960s.

There's no real need to clean them if you use an acid flux (preferably phosphoric acid) but if you really want to try "Bar Keeper's Friend" and scrub them with an old toothbrush.

Plenty of the Skinley drawings are quite accurate - it depends very much on the source used which is often quoted on the print.

I should add that the police officer was perfectly polite and reasonable - it did delay our train departure a bit though.

That was me but I wasn't being escorted away since I left by train back to Langwathby. When I enquired as to exactly what I was doing wrong, being on the station with a valid ticket they mumbled something about "should have asked us first".

The new roof would be over 2m long, I did draw out some of it while doing the drawings for the island platform buildings. island platform buildings.PDF I've done plenty of other drawings, just ask for anything you need.

Which roof are you doing for Carlisle? The old one covered up almost the entire station and the present one covers a lot of it. We've just about given up on the idea of building the roof for the EM layout, I did think of doing a sort of wire frame representation of the new roof but it would be far too big to lift off for access.

I've just used one of these, just as good as the Mashima and cheaper, it is very quiet.

I thought you might be, I'll put a pair of them in the post.

They should be OK, I've had no trouble with anything made as late as that, must be something else.

I might have known Greenly was involved - he even did it with the RH&DR in 15in gauge.

Evostik does seem to have a limited life but may be about 20-25 years - there's certainly a lot of failed Evostik joints in the Lawrence/Goddard coaches running on Carlisle. I've been using clear varnish to fix glazing for some time now with very few failures. For flat glass in thin sides (I mostly do loco cab glazing) I paint varnish round the opening and drop the glazing on, leave for an hour or so and then do another side. I have also used varnish for many years to fix shaped pieces of glazing in thick moulded bodies. This EM1 was built (from the DC kits resin moulding) and painted 16 years ago, no windows have fallen out and it's running on Wentworth Junction now (not mine - it's on semi-permanent loan).

I wouldn't be at all surprised.... I find it really irritating that when we are asked for our etches in gauge 1 it's always for the visibly incorrect and utterly pointless 10mm scale.

I did say you should only have one loco on the track at a time. To get back to normal just press the ESC button (repeat presses if necessary to get back to where you where) or you can just pull the plug out and plug it back in..... The changes are all made in the loco decoder, nothing in the controller.

Are they new axles? I have had faulty ones in the distant past, with the quarters not machined accurately - this was long before the Markits era though.

I don't think I've seen banking done in 2mm but we have plenty of experience with it in 4mm. When the trains on Wentworth Junction disappear off scene they continue on much the same curve in to the fiddle yard where most of the bankers uncouple to return. Testing has revealed a few potential problems, sometimes an odd wagon in the middle of the train might be too light, shuffling the train fixes this. The coal trains are all loaded, maximum this way is 30 wagons and brake van, very few problems with them. WJ has a great variety of locos available with all sorts of different drive systems - experience will tell which ones are best for this, once it goes all electric there will be no problem as all the locos will have the same power system. I'll try the coupling with a .012" etch, I think .010" might be too weak.

They are only test etches at the moment, I'm not sure whether we would want to market them but Andrew Hartshorne might be interested in the idea.

That's what I thought as well but in practice it pushes on the central buffer of the adjacent wagon. Would you like a 2mm test? What thickness material would you suggest though?

Set it on track (on its own) and the NCE controller can tell you its address - from "use program track" then you can reset it.

Most gauge 1 modellers seem to use 10mm scale (chosen no doubt because of an all too human love of round numbers) but 3/8" scale looks a lot better. 10mm is a long way down the 00 gauge road - for no reason whatsoever, clearances aren't a problem in 3/8" scale.