Annie

So it's not pre-grouping, - so take me out and shoot me

I was delighted to read Simon that you are working on a model of 'Gazelle'.

That basic boiler print would be good for scenic stationary boiler use too.

Another snap of Furlong station at the end of the twiglet of a branchline I've been working on at the moment. I love my digital trainset it makes me feel happy.

Delightful. These pictures really made me smile this morning. James, your daughter puts me in mind of my own intrepid daughter who at age 30 something is quite fearless about picking up tools and having a go at most things including a year or two ago rebuilding the engine in her car.

While looking about for useful spares for some of my old clockers I came across this auction on our local auction website for a down on its luck Hormby M1 tender loco https://www.trademe.co.nz/toys-models/models/railway/locomotives/auction-1568799152.htm?rsqid=f937d59f2bf4417eb66c5ea2b5467382 Only $NZ118.00, - a positive bargain! Since I already own several that are much the same that now makes me potentially a modestly wealthy woman Not much is presently happening with this project of mine at the moment as I'm presently spending anything up to 18 hours a day asleep and when I'm awake I'm constantly feeling like I'm about to fall asleep. Trying to build a layout looks like being a step too far, but I may be able to do some repair work on some of my tinplate treasures if I take my time and be patient over what it's possible for me to achieve during the time I'm able to maintain a useful level of concentration on the task at hand.

Lovely aren't they That's the kind or wheel you can depend on.

Seems like an appropriate picture for the UK at the moment. GNJt.R tank engines on the K&ESR. The looks-like-a-J72 isn't really as it's been modelled about 4/5ths too short and it's quite noticeable when they're in company with a scale sized J72 or J71. They were originally made for TS2004 and are fairly basic with no crew. I tried to adapt one to have a footplate crew and ended up rendering it completely inoperable due to not being able to mod configuration scripts for toffee. For the purposes of the GNJt.R I call them a Kitson copy built to my imaginary railway company's special order and I think the GNJt.R grey goods livery suits them very nicely.

Got one of those too, but missing the correct tender. They don't look so bad, much better than the 'Safetylectrics' which are seriously weird. I guess it's because I've still got a 9 year old me somewhere inside my brain that I have a liking for all these little trainset toys by Chad Valley, Mettoy, Brimtoy as well as Hornby's 'M' series. When I was still an HRCA member I found that the other women members tended to like these trains too. The boys would be trying to outdo each other by showing off the latest large pre-war item they'd just purchased and us girls would be having fun with our 'small trains' as the boys tended to sneeringly call them. EDIT: I should mention by the way that some of Mettoy's goods wagons are actually quite realistic and of near to scale proportions. Chad Valley did some LMS looking brake vans that are nicely proportioned too. One of mine even has 3 link couplings which Chad Valley fitted to their earlier wagons and locos for a short while. Brimtoy purchased some of Bing's old press tools and their earlier tinplate stuff made using these old tools isn't too bad at all. I have an early Brimtoy signal box that's as good as anything else from the pre-war period and is quite a rare piece. Later on Brimtoy lost the plot though and much of the stuff from their final years even I won't buy no matter how many pairs of rosy tint Christmas morning nostalgia spectacles I might put on.

Nice work Corbs. I'm really enjoying this thread. The Furness engine looks so good in NWR lined blue

Mettoy box art was really good. I've got a box (and the contents) for one of their larger sets. The box is knocked around unfortunately, but the couple that sold it to me said it was it was their brother's favourite toy. He was an invalid and died young and the family kept the trains to remember him by. They were going into a rest home and they sold everything to me because they had me figured for someone who wasn't going to break it all up and sell it all off piecemeal to turn a profit. Quite a bit of Brimtoy stuff came with it all too and it was all in lovely condition. I've always wanted one of those Mettoy Etons, but somehow never had the money at the right time. I have one of the Pullmans from that set though, - only without a roof which is a bit of a shame. I have a few of the smaller green 0-4-0 tender engine clockers though and the smaller sized bogie Pullmans. They look quite good with Hornby M1 and M2 tender engines. Better than Hornby's own 4 wheel efforts truth be told.

That cattle van is a thing of beauty. Superb model making

£20 for 6 metal wheels doesn't sound expensive to me Sem.

Signals for the earlier pre-group period aren't easy to find. I mostly use some lovely slotted post McKenzie & Holland signals that I found on Auran's Download Station, but otherwise apart from a pair of lonely LSWR signals there aren't any other lower quadrant signals except for GWR ones. Fortunately some of the GWR ones are on wooden posts and are of an older design and sometimes I make believe that they are Saxby & Farmer signals which they almost look like if I take my glasses off. Paulz Trainz has some early signals, but many of the ones he had aren't available anymore due to the files being lost. But he was able to provide me with this junction signal in both left and right hand versions. At the moment it's not exactly easy to say what period my HUGE UK layout is set in. Most of it is mid period Big Four era and the biggest engines I run on the layout are Atlantics as I've kept it a non-Pacific zone. All engines and rolling stock are of pre-group origins, - or at least to my knowledge they are since I'm not an expert on the finer points of post grouping rolling stock and that isn't helped by creative 'in-the-spirit-of' reskinning of some wagons and vans into looking like something else by various content creators. Overall though I'm happy with the picture I'm managing to paint of a pre-war steam railway. As I continue to progressively work on the layout I am trying to wind back time a little more, but it's going to be a long job and I'm going to have to put up with time warp jumps in and out of various eras for a good while yet. It certainly is a lot of fun though and there is absolutely no way on earth that I could own a layout with over 100 scale miles of trackwork by any other means.

More Engerth locomotive.

Possibly having a little too much fun. An Anglicised Engerth 0-8-4T built circa 1860 hauling coal on my imaginary railway.

I'm having a fairly rotten time of it health wise at the moment so I'm sticking firmly to doing things with my digital trainset. Continued to work on the twiglet of a branchline which helped to take my mind off things. The buildings on the small station need their textures working on a bit so that they properly match and the noticeboards need changing to suit the GNJt.R, but overall it's coming together how I want.

That North Cornwall goods shed is very nice and would be very much the kind of thing to be found on a small rural railway. Then I suppose I'm a bit biased since I like North Cornwall railway architecture. Not so keen on the GWR, but I find the Cornish absorbed lines absolutely fascinating.

My Dad was in the in the RNZAF during the Pacific War and he said that the Americans would shoot at anything that moved whether friend or foe so I'm not surprised they had to take the red dot insignia off their aircraft. Not big on target identification were the Americans

I very much agree Don. To be completely honest I've looked at examples of modern RTR locomotives and I feel too scared to buy them (apart from not being able to afford them of course). They are just too spookily realistic as if a mad scientist had roamed around an MPD armed with a shrinking ray. Ah now I remember what I was on about before. Operating signals and points with cords running over pulleys would no doubt eventually lead to being driven nuts with keeping everything in adjustment, BUT on my branchline my copper signals that were desperately doing their best to look like MR ones had the most wonderful prototypical double bounce motion due to the combination of the cords running over the pulleys and the springy steel operating bellcranks which had quite long operating arms. My blobby hand soldered points had a lovely motion too and the spring steel bellcranks took up any excess movement and positively locked the point blades in place. I did find out quite quickly though that glue wasn't the best to hold points together though and brass tacks and solder had to be resorted to.

I loved using tinplate. Where I used to work before I retired I would claim the empty catering sized coffee tins because they would yield soooooo much beautiful tinplate for building things once they were cut open and carefully smoothed out flat. A boiler that says 'Brasso' inside. I love it, - that's what good old fashioned scratchbuilding was all about.

When I was very young and keen (around 17 I think) I hand laid the track for a Midland branchline layout using recovered rail from (pre-Triang take over) Hornby set track glued onto thick card sleepers. I hand filed levers for a lever frame from old steel Triang rail and made most of the frame itself from 1/16th aluminium off cuts. The points and signals (all proudly made by me from copper and soldered together) were operated by sashcord running over small brass pulleys under the baseboard and the bellcrank like operating links were all bent up from some springy hard steel wire that was a devils own job to bend properly with pliers. And it worked! I didn't belong to a model railway club then and I only had some 1950's MRNs a friend had given me to refer to as I was yet to start buying RM. A few not very good books on railways from our local library were sometimes useful; - but anything like a thought of the internet and detailed information at the click of a mouse was total science fiction and an impossible dream. I sometimes think about that layout as rough about the edges as it was and how I used to make things of my own devising that largely did work most of the time. And I had fun, - lots and lots of fun with it making things, - sometimes not very expertly, - and running trains. I do often wonder if kits and and out of the box solutions in exchange for money have killed off some of that inventiveness with using the materials you had to hand rather than what was ideal. My Dad was a sheetmetal worker so there were always oddments of copper and aluminium about which came from the work he did. I didn't discover brass as a modelling material until a year later when I built a kind of post train smash looking LNWR 2-4-2 tank engine on a sawn up Jinty chassis from an off cut I was given. (Ah sigh) I'm not sure what the point of all that was, but anyway do please carry on.

Large prairies are certainly a locomotive that has a very real presence.

I've been buying models from Paulz Trainz lately as he has quite a bit of useful stuff that suits what I want for my layout that isn't available on Auran's Download Station. His pre-group early NBR models have caught my eye recently as some items are just the thing for my imaginary GNJt.R where elderly rolling stock and locomotives can still be found at work alongside more 'modern' rolling stock from the post-grouping era. I purchased some of Paul's Hurst 0-4-2 well tanks yesterday. Most probably because elderly well tank locomotives have been discussed a bit on the forum lately. (Picture is from the Paulz Trainz website)

Now the Pickering railcar would definitely be one to go on my shopping list as it would be perfect for my little light railway. Have you given any more thought to producing the 6 wheel coaches in 'O'?