Michael Edge

Trefolex for steel, oil or nothing for brass but use spit for Mazak - and the best advice is about frequently backing off the tap. I have taps and dies in all sorts of sizes, very rarely use anything but a taper tap and dies are only ever used in the lathe (cleaning threads is usually done with a die nut but I've never seen these in our small sizes). If you do break a taper tap grinding the end off will often leave you with a fairly good plug tap.

The drawings in the Russell book are mostly SR weight diagrams which are generally quite well drawn (unlike LMS and LNER ones). No drawings can be relied on absolutely but the majority of these are good enough to work from. Don't confuse with the Roche drawings which look very well drawn but contain any number of silly errors which are easily shown up by looking at photographs. It's bit of a puzzle because the level of mechanical detail suggests that Mr. Roche had access to works drawings to prepare them. The best sources of information are usually general arrangements or pipe and rod layout drawings - but locomotives were never actually built from drawings and many differ substantially from what was intended. The dimensions shown in weight diagrams can be trusted though, that's what the drawings were intended for, the accuracy of other items depended largely on the skill or interest of the draughtsman assigned to the job. When I am doing drawings for models, apart from mechanical constraints my golden rule is "if it looks wrong compared with the photos - it is wrong" - and I'm afraid your 0395 looks very wrong.

I've got one of these running in a 7mm Hunslet 05, with a fair bit of weight in it and it can still easily spin the wheels. More than enough power for a Crab, it's the very low ratio gearbox (I've not used anything else although others are available), maximum speed looks about right on the layout but I haven't timed it. The first one I used has been running (with 1:1 skew gears) in a Hunslet 14" on Herculaneum Dock for some years now without any problems. I've got a big bag full of them, might see them in all sorts of locos yet.

This is what the Fowler tender in the test track photo belongs to. It's a Crab I built from the Wills kit back in 1973, it's been out of use for many years waiting for new frames but now it's back in traffic again. I really ought to backdate it a bit for Herculaneum and it should have a coal rail tender but I think I'll leave it as it is for now. This is what came out of it, only the pony wheels, slidebar steps and balance weights have been recovered. This was very much state of the art back then, scratchbuilt with thin brass frames, coupling rods and slidebars filed from rail and all the motion hand cut. Hamblings wheels because at that time Romford didn't produce anything between 21mm and 24mm diameter and for some unknown reason I set in in full back gear. The K's Mk2 motor was considered a good option then as well. New frames and motion are all etched now, although I forgot to do anything for the valve spindle guide and this is cobbled up from something else - this time it's in mid gear though. New cylinders (photo reminds me I still have to line them) with drains fitted this time, sanding gear and brakes - would have been unusual back then but routine now. Romford/Markits wheels this time and it's partly compensated (between 1st and 2nd driving axles), the etch allowed for full compensation but it's much easier to use the bevel gears with a fixed axle. This is more of an innovation now, an n20 motor and gearbox driving the trailing axle through bevel gears - paint on the motor shows that I forgot to mask it before spraying primer but it doesn't seem to have affected it. The gearbox frame is simply soldered into the frames. Bags of power from this and I can fill the huge hole in the firebox where the K's motor went with lead, freeing up the cab means that it now has a firebox back and reverser. Press studs connect to the original tender pickups. 42864 has been out of use for so long that it hasn't been weathered either but that will be remedied.

Yes, that's about what I thought. Working Herculaneum Dock we do send the odd short van train to Central - the terminus was the original layout plan, HD was its extension, until I realised that it would be just about unexhibitable.

It always looks as if the CLC was trying to fit as much as possible into the available space! I'm not sure what all these short sidings were actually used for, photos only show the odd van in them. The loco sidings were tightly squeezed in as well but there was room (just) for a 70ft turntable in later years.

Definitely an S curve at your minimum radius - but make sure you put a bit of straight track in the middle of it (I didn't and have regretted it ever since). My test track has at least 8 different gauges from 9mm up to 7mm scale 5'3' but the wider ones only go along the straight part. There are a lot of other "accidental' gauges in this but they can't easily be powered with rails at the same polarity. Don't bother with "deliberately rough" track, that won't tell you anything.

I built this B4x about 15 years ago and I still have a spare set of the etches for it. Ian Rathbone painted it, there should be some photos on his website. No problem building you another one....

Has anyone looked at this? Liverpool Central was crammed into a restricted space, the station throat extended out into the tunnel and all long trains needed shunting after arrival. The centre road actually went all the way to Brunswick but was mostly used for carriage shunting at this end.

There was no problem turning the Garratts at the other end, triangles quite near where they usually went to. Big problem was at sheds, most MR ones were roundhouses so the Garratts had to satnd outside on straight roads.

There's a very good drawing of the J11 in Model Railway Constructor January 1970.

Cwmafon is fully signalled with all of them working and made from Ratio kits - GW, LNW and LMS/BR. They are a bit fragile though. GW signals at the end of Cwmafon station, all these arms work, powered by relays and interlocked wth the points.

I think that's a Mk1 motor, the Mk2 had a shorter armature and magnets - and shorter overall.

There were regular westbound steel trains on the Worsbrough line as well - presumably from Scunthorpe.

Here's another one. This one (the only English WD 2-10-0) is EM and runs on Carlisle - again from the very good DJH kit, I built and painted it Barry O added the filth.

The first Garratts did have the cylinders at the inner ends of the bogies but this was very quickly changed. Positioning of larger cylinders and accessibility came into it as well - cylinders under the cab and near the front of the boiler would have been more restricted. The LMS Garrats weren't so bad for steaming, they were let down by the puny standard LMS 4F axleboxes fitted at Derby's insistence. In the end they were hardly a match for the BR 9F.

It's a nice model, looks as if it was made from an etched kit.

I don't know what the origin of that is, came in a job lot of wagons for Carlisle. At the moment it's just used a test vehicle, as is the K's Palvan which is a DG coupling test vehicle (not much use for anything else, it's far too heavy and stiff running to put in a train).

I've just counted along the test track shelf again - 9 locos in various stages of incompletion. Some are hard to spot and identify, I'm not sure if anyone will know what they all are either.

I can see seven on the test track shelf just now.... (but three are actually finished and waiting for the paintshop) There will be more tucked away in boxes in what one of my customers refers to as the "European kit mountain". It is complicated because some are for me, some are prototypes for Judith while others are just work but I do always have plenty on the go at any one time - it's the variety that keeps me going. Don't forget the layout under construction out in the shed either - and at the moment I can't get to the two layout building jobs underway. I don't suffer much from boredom most of the time.

Yes, it's a dry sump engine.

This one is 00 gauge.

Still not been out to the big lathe but another job started - and halted. This looked a nice interesting job, a London Road (ex George Norton) kit for a Kirtley 0-4-4T. Slightly complicated by being built in P4 but there proved to be just enough room in the splashers for the Sharman wheels, which are somewhat unusually, absolutely perfect. However it's going to be No. 793 in original condition and it became more and more apparent that the kit doesn't really cater for this. I had to add the compensating beam but that wasn't too difficult, problems came above the footplate. The original cabless configuration has the spectacle sheet at the back end of the firebox with shorter side sheets as well - and there simply isn't enough boiler since it stops where the later cab front goes. I don't have a photo of the front of 793 either and I don't know what sort of smokebox door(s) it should have. If anyone knows any more about this please let me know. I was pleased with the way the frames went together though, I don't usually use hornblock systems but this was designed round them - not with springs but a simple compensating beam inside each frame plate. The bogie axles are compensated in the same way and it works really well. So with that stopped I needed something quick and easy. This is the excellent Craftsman kit for the YE 02 0-4-0DH. A few hours work sees all the component parts here laid out - the engine casing and cab back peg neatly into the footplate, the cab interior builds up on the floor and drops in after painting and glazing. The cab roof will be glued on last. It's powered by an n20 motor and spur gearbox, driving the trailing axle through plastic bevel gears, the final drive gear already fitted to the Gibson axle. As an experiment I've scribed the cab back with the lines for the wasp stripes - I'll see how well this works when I paint it. With the casing off the motor fits in much the same position as the full size loco's Rolls Royce engine. This view shows the rebates to take the glazing formed by the two layers of the cab ends, window glazing has already been cut for these. The white metal buffers in the kit aren't very good, replaced by some turned ones with our large heads fitted. The bevel gears are a push fit on the axle and gearbox shaft after boring out to 1/8th" and 3mm respectively. To disengage the drive, as seen in the above photo, the first bevel gear is simply slid back along the shaft. Nothing fancy about the motor fitting, the gearbox frames are the same width as the frame and are simply soldered in place. Everything together, some handrails, lamps and the radiator grille to be fitted after painting which it is now ready for - after a good clean and grit blast. It's a shame Craftsman kits aren't available at the moment (I don't know who has them now) because they are all excellent and very easy to build. Some ideas from these kits went into my own designs a long time ago, starting with the use of .015" brass instead of the usual .012" or less - fitting casing doors separately was another good idea from these.

That's exactly what I suspected and since the etches are almost certainly hand drawn there isn't even any prospect of rearranging them. It's a pity but it does seem that they are effectively dead.