Annie

I finally got my old laptop setup to download pictures from my aged cellphone so here's two not very good pictures of the Bing bodyshell in company with a down on its luck Hornby bodyshell to give an idea of size.

The original clockwork mech must've been quite slender as a modern coarse scale electric conversion chassis with its sideplates at the usual 'O' gauge spacing wouldn't fit as it was too wide.  Pity really as in all its other dimensions it would have been perfect.  I don't know what I'm going to do with a Midland Railway loco should I be able to sort out a tender and a mech for it, but really it's too nice just to put away in storage again.  

The old loco sold for £87.00 which I thought was a fair price.  Hopefully it's gone to a good home and will be returned to working condition again.  

Good to hear Coronach.  Sad though that your Dad didn't live to carry out his dream  

A warning perhaps to us older ones to stop mucking around and get on with things if we what to see our plans and ideas come to fruition before we get promoted to glory.

I've always had a fondness for complete railway plans.  Unfortunately they tend to need either a large amount of space or a very small modelling scale in which to do them justice.  I've seen some complete systems achieved in smaller spaces by layering baseboards over one another, but this is always tricky to achieve in a way that doesn't either offend the eye or lead to the use of severe gradients or both!  

I liked this plan right from the moment I first saw it so I really do hope that you will be able to build it.

Wonderful to see work started on the almost a K2.  Some years ago I modelled the Furness so I'm always pleased to see a Furness based model.  With all the pre-group suitable items now available for 00 I've been tempted more than once to return to 4mm modelling, but at my age and with this illness I have 7mm is the smallest I can successfully work in. (le sigh).

I like the look of the proposed station plan, but then I suppose I'm looking at with my light railway bias to the fore where short platforms and trains are pretty much the normal thing.  Depending on the space you have for a layout the small station might be fine where it is if the old and familiar method of an overbridge was used as a scenic break.  Such things were commonly done when I was younger before the finescale mindset swept away the older kinds of simple representational approach to layout building.  The fact that half the train was still in the other station yard wasn't a problem because one's attention had shifted to the station where the train was about to arrive.

I will say though that I do agree that having the small station if front of a fiddle yard would swiftly become annoying even if your coupling and uncoupling systems did manage to operate with Swiss watch precision.  Not ever having the desire to exhibit I've always had my fiddle yards open and accessible as it tends to keep unladylike profanity to a minimum.  

hC_0134.jpg

 

Pointing in all directions. Make of that what you will.

 

Nigel

More than likely depends on the weather.  That looks like a calm fine day, but if the wind was blowing fiercely they'd be all standing with their fundaments windward.  I'm of the random facing school myself when it comes to placing sheep on a layout because every day on my layouts is fine and lovely.  

Very nice and as you say very old school Hornby.  Not being a GWR modeller (except in the digital world) I don't have a use for a Burnel timber viaduct and the thought of actually building one is somewhat frightening so this would certainly be one way of doing it. 

It's interesting though that the 7mm scale retaining wall of the same type by LCUT is a lot more shallow.  The slope back from top to bottom of the retaining wall is still there as it should be, but the recesses are notably less deep.  I'm going to be needing some of these for 'Foxwater' and I must say they are very nice.. 

Scrapping good clockwork mechanisms would be awful and would mark you out forever among tinplate train enthusiasts as the man who knowing and with aforethought scrapped 50 clockwork mechanisms. You would become a pariah and a target for any fanatical tinplate enthusiast with access to a shotgun and a backhoe.  

Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but I'm sure I can't be the only 'clocker' nut when it comes to 'O' gauge and anything you have would be highly saleable on ebay.  I would love to be able to say, 'I'll take the lot,' and hand over a wedge of cash, but I'm an old lady of slender means so I can't.  Hornby would be my main interest, but any you might sell would have to be cheap though.

Beautiful work with those transfers Gary   

I hope things improve for you soon.  Health issues can be bad enough as I well know, but when combined with the circumstances of one's life going pear shaped as well it can all get a bit too much.

Not wanting to clutter up your thread too much Edwardian, but as someone who lives with a debilitating illness railway modelling is very much my positive 'cheer up' therapy.  When I can't do physical modelling I build railways using Trainz Simulator, - which I do realise is not everyone's cup of tea, - which has done great things for my general sense of well being.

I've been enjoying following CA as I slowly begin to take my own first steps into building a pre-group era light railway somewhere (very somewhere!) in LSWR territory.  Even though I will be working in coarse scale 'O' I'm hoping that I can capture the spirit and atmosphere of these times when the steam railways were at their finest.

As small independent railways that didn't get absorbed by the GWR until 1917 the Liskeard & Caradon and the Liskerad & Looe railways are fascinating.  I've been labouring over a digital representation for Trainz Simulator, but haven't been getting very far as yet.

Details please Annie!

https://www.woodsworks.co.nz  Very friendly and pleasant folk to deal with.

Nice work on the old Triang 'Nellie'.  Many years ago I converted one of these to an 0-6-0 by using a Triang TT chassis and fitting two rail Hornby Dublo wheels and axles to it.  It wasn't at all difficult to do and the TT chassis fitted like it was meant to go there.  The overall appearance of the conversion was very good and looked quite plausible. Unfortunately someone stole it from me while at the model railway club I belonged to at the time which was very upsetting.  

You've put me off picking daffodils forever.   I didn't know they fought back  

Electrickery techniques for removing rust as well as electroplating might be a step too far for me; - though I do remember a HRCA member in the local group I used to belong to doing this.  Ordinary paint might just have to suffice for my efforts.

Yes there's all kinds of little details that look more homebuilt than factory built as if somebody has made a copy of what was available from the trade at the time.  The driving wheel castings are different too and the coupling rods are held on with nuts instead of shouldered screws.

Yes it would be an LSWR road van like that one that I'm thinking of.  On branchlines and light railways road vans are far more useful than the normal vanilla kind of brake van.  Mentioning laser cutting is all a bit too modern for me since I'm still very much a craft knife and razor saw kind of girl.  It's also a cheap method and only requires time and I've got plenty of that.  I'll most probably do the underframe in wood too just to be really old fashioned.  There's a chap here in New Zealand who has his own micro sawmill and he cuts the most beautiful stripwood and it's not expensive either.

My own part built G6 looks at me in an accusing fashion whenever I take it out of its box.  I had a set of reproduction Leeds wheels for it, but they seem to have gone missing.  Most probably happened when I moved here to the rural countryside which is a bit annoying as the chap in the HRCA who made them for me said he wouldn't be doing any more.  

There's an 'O' gauge 3 rail loco on ebay at the moment that caught my eye; - not that I want to buy it as £75 plus is a fabulously unbelievably large sum of money for this woman of slender means.  Its wonderfully old tinplate non-scale appearance is exactly what I like and I've taken considerable notice of its construction so I could perhaps build my own.

The vendor has it written up as Bassett-Lowke, but I don't think so.  I think it's somebody's handbuilt loco on a commercially made mechanism; - not that I'm any kind of expert I hasten to add.

This is the link to it.........  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1931-LMS-O-GAUGE-3-RAIL-ELECTRIC-POWERED-LOCOMOTIVE-BASSETT-LOWKE/192453238861?hash=item2ccf1b604d:g:gqsAAOSwj1hagAfG

I have no idea what forum policy is about posting photos 'borrowed' from ebay so if I've been naughty somebody please tell me and I'll go sit in the corner for a couple of hours without any prospect of getting a nice cup of tea.

I've often seen links here on the forum to what might be interesting things on ebay, but of course they go out of date after a while and end up pointing to nothing.  Posting the photos from an auction creates a far better record, especially if something is a rare item not often seen.

Anyway I think it's a nice old fashioned model that captures the look of a 'Precursor' tank engine without getting all picky over those silly marks on rulers.  I'm not especially a LNWR fan, - it was the Midland, the Furness and then the LSWR that floated my modelling boats, - but I find myself very much liking this venerable old engine  

Lovely pictures Kevin with all the atmospheric delights of tinplate.  I can appreciate a finescale layout as much as anyone, but tinplate and coarse scale always draws me back.  I think it's because my imagination fills in the details which I find to be much better than fastidiously modelling every square inch of a layout.

Leeds Model Co solved the six wheeler problem by having no flanges on the centre wheels of their coaches which might sound crude, but if it works and needs no pivots and swinging links it's all good in my book.  I have pictures stolen from ebay of the undersides of Leeds coaches, but I don't know what the policy is here on posting such pictures.

What style and type of brake van do you need Kevin?  My totally pretend 'Foxwater Light Railway' is supposed to be sited somewhere in LSWR territory and I'm going to be looking at making brake vans in the near future.  I'm a wood, card and litho type of 'O' gauge modeller so while I can't do tinplate or etched stuff semi-Leeds/Milsbro/Annie interpretations are very possible.  Nothing would be instant as the illness I live with makes me very fatigued and tired, but it certainly would be nice to start building some wagons & etc again.

Thanks for that Kevin.  I'd forgotten about molasses.  The thought of handling gooey trackwork in the aftermath and cleaning it off is a bit daunting though  

NCB, as far as I know Jenolite is based on phosphoric acid so I suppose it's not surprising that Coke removes tarnishing.

Not really sure about that as I'd want something that chemically kills the rust and can be then cleaned and dried off rather than leave any kind of oily residue.

As an armchair pre-grouper, I think you raise some good questions.

 

Lots of good advice already, but a few further thoughts:

 

 

- ‘Our Iron Roads’ was an early general railway book that was churned out in great quantity, so is easy to find at sensible prices. Mine is a 3rd edition, dated 1883, and cost £16.

 

- this was before ‘lock, block and brake’, so signalling and traffic control practices varied widely, with only the best and latest bearing much resemblance to what has become familiar as ‘traditional’ railway practise.

 

 

'Our Iron Roads' is available from the Internet Archive  https://archive.org/details/ourironroads00will

Right, let's start adding some pictures!

 

I think I'll begin with a screenshot of my LSWR 48ft Family Saloon artwork and attach some GER Artwork.

LSWR Family Saloon.png

 

 

Wow! that LSWR coach side is much better than anything I was able to make for the LSWR.  Excuse me for a moment while I go find a hat so I can take it off to you. 

Very interested to see what you've been doing with Train Simulator.  I run the other one by Auran as I've never been able to get to like Trains Simulator's control interface.  I also like the fact that Auran's version is a bit more custom modding friendly.

To add to your list of interesting engines I would love to see someone produce a 7mm scale bodyshell for 'Lady Margaret' in original Liskerad & Looe Railway condition and not as rebuilt by the GWR.

And that G6 drawing you posted earlier looks to be the one I used for my model.  So thanks for posting it as somehow I've managed to lose my copy of the drawing and it's sort of essential so I can complete my model.