Michael Edge

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.

Tests are ongoing with this variation for DG couplings initially on Wentworth Junction but also on Carlisle whenever I get back there. This combined draw hook and DG peg is etched in .015" n/s and is mounted in the buffer beam. The latch is pivoted on a pin but the coupling can be used without it if delayed action is not required. This is the application I had in mind when designing it, it's very difficult to put DG couplings on locos with deep buffer beams. They are also very unobtrusive in appearance, even without painting or blackening them. This is the etch, everything seems just about right with it although the angle of the peg and the length were just a guess, it also incorporates a hole for a three link chain. I was initially worried that it might cause problems when propelling stock but in practice the end of the coupling peg pushes against the buffer of the adjacent DG and the side buffers still don't touch. This eliminates a problem with 3 link and AJ couplings in 00, because the wheels are very sloppy in the gauge even short vehicles are prone to buffer locking - this isn't a problem in EM or P4. The big advantage of the DG coupling over the Sprat and Winkle is that all the forces are central, pulling and pushing, the offset pull of SW (and the hideous standard UK coupling) can cause problems with long trains on curves. More on all this in my workshop thread.

As far as I know no panel bashing/filling was needed, that was the point of hydraulically stretching the sides before welding - Andy Ross would tell you a lot more about this, he was working there at that time.

If you only put one loco on the track at a time it's no problem, the powercab can do all the changes you will need. Pressing the PROG/ESC button (bottom left) repeatedly takes you through the options, either "Program on main" or "use program track". You don't need to have separate program track if you only have one loco on the layout, it will treat the whole layout as the program track. The NCE controller gives you step by step instructions - just follow them. There's no particular need to make this more complicated unless you want to.

You would have enjoyed policing the operation to get them out of Qualter Hall on a low loader - round a very sharp corner an under a railway bridge, it wasn't easy and took quite some time. Qualts had to develop some special techniques for building these shells, including stretching the sides before welding to ensure that they were completely flat to meet the specification. They went to Brush at Loughborough for the rest of the job. They weren't the only locos assembled in Barnsley, the last of the Snowdon locos were assembled in a corner of Qualter Hall after the Hunslet works closed.

I wouldn't use 3 in 1 (or "trois en un" in France!) anywhere if I were you - it's absolutely lethal on many plastics, stick with GT85.

My loaded trains are loaded as well, not with coal (I use Woodland Scenics cinder ballast) but they are heavy - and the gradient is 1 in 40. Any of my O4s or WD 2-8-0s can manage the 60 wagon empty train without slipping. My main point is that the graphite on the rail head and wheels treads has made no noticeable difference to the haulage capacity. If Cwmafon was up and running I would have an even better test but that layout hasn't been set up since we started using graphite.

No adhesion problems on Wentworth Junction and the trains are a lot longer than that - they are all banked in the down direction (up the hill on the visible front part of the layout) but up trains have to get up the same hill out of the fiddle yard on their own. The longest is 60 empty coal wagons with one 2-8-0 or electric loco, the whole layout is graphited, no track cleaning done for years.