Michael Edge

That looks superb - but I'm not very keen on the visible screw heads, are they staying like that?

Looks OK so far, you've done all the difficult bits, it's all downhill from here.

I don't think so, it's 68155, not a departmental one. I'll send it to you in a pm.

I've found one top photo of a Y3 but as usual it has coal piled all over and round the water filler. I can't imagine what the planks are supposed to be.

I think it's a Stanier tender, you just can't see the top where it turns in. It looks the same width as the cab to me - Fowler tenders are considerably narrower.

Don't use 3 in 1 oil - it could well be that which has broken down the Romford wheel insulation. I use car engine oil, it doesn't harm any plastics. Electrolube should be OK though.

Gibson steel tyres are definitely better for adhesion.

The Carlisle Duchesses are all rigid, just the bogies (all centre pivot - no rtr style arms) lightly sprung so as not to take too much weight off the drivers. the trailing trucks just go along for the ride. Some have Ultrascale whells, some have Markits, the Ultrascale ones are definitely slippier, no Gibson wheels on the Duchesses but some of the Princesses have them.

Arthur Keen has moved on quite a bit today. It always seems major progress when the boiler goes on, this one rolled from .010" brass as usual. It looks a bit strange in the firebox area but this loco had a raised round top one, the half etch in the cab front is the shape of this. As usual I had no photos of the top of the tanks so this is also a bit speculative. The fancy plating in front of the smokebox is two layers of etch, interesting how it overhangs the wooden part of the buffer beam. Tank front steps added before the boiler while I could still get to the inside, I put the front handrail on before fitting the boiler as an aid to getting it horizontally aligned. The leading springs are on as well, made up from etched layers, these are on the frames but I wanted to make sure they came through the footplate and looked right under the boiler. More on the peculiar motion of the LSW C14 - looking at the lifting link the reverser will lift the radius rod when the lever is pushed forward so that might be why it was done the opposite way to conventional. Comparison with the slightly larger S14s shows the lifting link in front of the expansion link - and this time the return crank points the way you would expect.

Yes, that's what you have to do with Slater's wheels in 7mm - that's what I mean by engineering nonsense.

Most of the Duchesses on Carlisle weigh about 650g but even so some will pull more than others.

It's still booked in for Leeds this year but that may well be cancelled - we don't have to decide until August though. Nothing else booked for Herculaneum Dock but at least it will be packed ready to go.

You have to be quick with the soldering iron but it only needs a touch of solder to lock the fastener on - and they are easily removed if necessary by squeezing gently behind them with side cutters. The problem with the loose bushes (apart from being engineering nonsense) is that they are far to big in diameter. I don't much like running the rods on a steel screw thread either but I do have some locos which have been running for many years with this (Sharman wheels without the bushes).

I've only got one fitted 16T mineral, so that will be two.

It certainly is - I wouldn't have put it there! However Mr. Jones was usually right as far as I know. I don't know why they put the reverser partly in the doorway either but I can see this in other GKN locos.

Railmatch 1406 sleeper grime - all of Carlisle has been painted with this as well. It's a bit expensive, Wentworth Junction has taken 3 cans but spraying outside does use more paint. I hate to think how many cans have been used to paint Carlisle's 30m x 6m - but I haven't paid for that... Just as I finished spraying I found a track buckle (sleepers broken out of the glue) - on the section across the middle which had to be laid in winter, the rest was done in warm weather. I left the board in the garage overnight to cool down a bit and glued it back in place with runny superglue. Putting the layout back together today I had a strong sense of déjà vu - at most of the baseboard joints I had to trim the rails a bit - for anyone who doesn't understand this reference see the thread about Leeds Victoria and the 1977 Barrow exhibition.

Arthur Keen's cab more or less finished now. Buffer beams are wood, sandwiched between two steel plates - the fancy coupler pocket is etched on the outer face, pivoted coupling hooks on this loco. The reverser is a bit speculative, it's a modified version of our Hunslet etch, fretted out to an open configuration. I can see this in another contemporary GKN loco so it may be correct. One of the snags with the photos of these locos is that there is someone standing in the cab doorway in every one. The roof overhangs what I take to be a locker on the cab back, beading added round the opening with 26swg soft brass wire. The handbrake is what is shown in the T. L. Jones drawing - they are usually pretty accurate and I certainly don't have anything else.

I'm not sure the nail was actually found in the stage, I might have had to hammer it in as well. The rails closed up on the baseboard joints on each of the three days of the show and I cut some out each time - the gaps never reappeared anywhere. The SJR coupler (Mk42 might be slight exaggeration) was basically an upside down Triang - or "tension lock" as people call it today. I've still got two in use between the 6 wheel fish vans, I'll dig them out and take some photos tomorrow.

View from below shows how little room there is behind the crossheads - and this is 00 gauge. The splashers need a reasonable clearance from the wheel faces to avoid short circuits, full size there seems to be hardly any clearance here, so the coupling rods have to be spaced out to something like the correct spacing. It might not be possible to fit the splashers at all in EM or P4 gauges. Motion assembly starts with the crossheads and connecting rods, the drop link has to be soldered on after these are fitted because the crosshead won't go back through the motion bracket now. The valve spindle guide is a short length of tube bracketed off the top slidebar, the spindle is fixed but I suppose it could be made to move. Valve gear added, the link pivot is lined up with a long wire through holes in the frames, this makes it easier and ensures it is in exactly the right position. Pivots in the valve gear are made with Duchess pins, soldered at the back. The return crank looks wrong, it's set towards the front even though these are outside admission slide valves and the valve rod is pinned to the combining lever below the valve spindle. I'm not an expert on valve gears but I think the effect of this is that when the die block is in the top of the link the loco goes forward rather than the usual backwards. Looking at all the photos I can find of thee locos in use this may be the case - the crew looking forward rather than backwards when the gear is at the top of the link. All assembled and running on the test track. With that more or less done I've spent some time back on the 7mm GKN 0-6-0T Cab tanks and bunker now fitted. Much of the cab itself isn't very clear, I have no photos of the back and nothing on the inside of the cab. The tanks obviously extend into the cab but it isn't at all clear how wide they are, the only clue is the position of the handbrake in the drawing I am using. This is on the LH side so the reverser (which isn't visible in any photos) must be on the right. The handbrake is also shown slightly forward of the front of the cab doorway, it must be just inside the frames as no linkage is visible below the cab. This means that the tank can't be full width inside the cab, at least at handbrake handle height, I'll leave them narrow - easier to widen them than narrow them if more information comes to light. Another difficulty with this sort of detective work is that the two locos (this one, Arthur Keen and Sandyford) swapped identities for the visit of King George V - fairly obvious since Sandyford had a belpaire firebox but confusing all the same. I'll finish the cab detail tomorrow and get on with the boiler.

Wentworth Junction track painting done now, taking full advantage of the weather to do it outside. Stacked in place in the shed ready to put it back up with Herculaneum crated up ready for whenever it might be allowed out again....

One small modification to the LOR before packing everything away again. This is the only workable point on the railway, the others are all sprung but this selects between the two roads of the car shed. It's always just been finger poked before and not very reliable, now there's a small wire handle sticking out of the girder to change it - still a job for the dock operator though. Incidentally neither this nor the sharp curve were responsible for derailments into the curved road of the shed - it turned out to be an incorrectly set check rail. Two of the colour light signals on the LOR had been giving problems, randomly going to red or flashing red/green. I tracked this down to the wire connecting the signal sensors on the crossover section, changed this, re-connected everything, still faulty. Did it again and re-routed the wires, still faulty. This was only the down side signals, the up side all worked perfectly. As a last resort I tried using the conductor rail to carry this but no joy there. Eventually the only solution was to take this connecting wire out of the structure completely (it will have to be run under the baseboard), presumably it's an interference problem, not helped by the whole LOR structure being live to one running rail. This was the jumble in the shed first thing today, last Herculaneum board still up to repair the area round the MDHB loco shed. A bit better now with all six boards crated up and the Wentworth Junction boards back after track painting. Track painting done outside in this perfect weather - paint dries really fast.

I just tape the Templot drawings to the bench with masking tape so it's easy to pick up and turn over once built.

When we have the etches, no idea how long PhotoEtch are taking but at least they are working again. No problem, we've already done the EE1, all 2mm etches are £18 including UK postage. The EE1 was out of stock for a long time but we have some now.

Don't try to pull the sleepers off the tape, turn the track over and peel the tape off the sleepers.

Looks OK to me now, the additional connections make your fiddle yard much more flexible in use.