PatB

Triang 37 needs at least a flush glazing kit.

You'll be needing a bulk order of Plastikard then .

I like the AJ. A fine, sporting motor-bicycle . GWK allegedly stood for Goes With a Klonk, a reference to what happened when the friction wheel developed a flat.

Yes, but it doesn't stop unscrupulous sellers from trying to fob you off with the cheaper Chancellor of the Exchequer version .

Did the P5 come with the factory option 1970s Prime Minister installed in the back seat?

Given what sticking 8 feet into a Ford Falcon actually costs the customer, I'd go for a Grosser Merc any day of the week.

I'd be happier if they did use RSJs . There's a lot of welding in a stretch, so I could never understand why all the welds in a lot of cars were rubbish. You'd think that even someone who couldn't weld at the beginning of the project would have learned by the end. Lengthening the wheelbase on anything knackers the Ackerman steering geometry. Noone ever addresses this. As stretches get longer, the weight goes up until the only suitably rated tyres available are intended for trucks. Combined with the rock hard springs installed by clueless monkeys, this pretty much guarantees the ride of a nodding donkey with a flat on one wheel. Anything over a modest length requires the forward passengers to crawl along the floor from the back doors to get in. Real luxury. I've seen at least one with some brackets in the internal framing that were almost certain to impale anyone sitting next to them in even a fairly minor impact. Horrible, horrible things and, what's worse, at least some are created by cutting up half decent motor cars. A genuine Walkinshaw Commodore went under the angle grinder during my tenure, and I was seriously considering a clandestine nighttime raid to rescue a lovely, patinaed barn-find MkV Jaguar which fell into the hands of a philistine intending to butcher it. Fortunately that one nver happened, AFAIK.

Steretch limos are always hideous and, having been professionally involved in approving their roadworthiness in WA, I'm deeply unimpressed with the engineering and constructional standards in many of them.

Looks as if someone was translating word for word via dictionary. Such things have led to many amusing misnomers over the years. Here in Australia, the predecessor of the Toyota HiLux was named by someone in Japan working from a Japanese-English dictionary. They were obviously looking for a word which summed up dependability, solidity and an all round trustworthy and workmanlike nature. So we got the Toyota Stout . You can see exactly how it happened. You can't actually fault the logic and I can't claim that I would do any better if I needed to name a product for the Japanese market, but, even so, it makes me grin every time I see one of the (few) survivors.

I am peripherally reminded of an incident in Meekatharra (a fly speck on the map 500 or so miles north of Perth) when some friends of ours lived there. A new policeman arrived in town, never having had much experience of country Australia. One day, whilst a long way from nowhere very much, on a dirt road, he pulled over to relieve a call of nature. Unfortunately, he parked amongst some low, scrubby undergrowth. Whilst he was otherwise occupied, the hot catalytic converter under his car set the tinder dry shrubbery alight and, by the time he turned back round and noticed, there was a merry blaze surrounding the vehicle. Merry enough to prevent him from getting to the car to either move it to safety or retrieve the fire extinguisher. Scrub one police vehicle, along with all means of contacting the outside world. I suspect that the very long wait for a passerby seemed almost pleasant when compared to the paperwork and the bollocking which awaited him when he returned to civilisation .

Pretty sure we've seen the HST before. As to the Blue Pullman oddity, I see it as another of those tributes to the ingenuity of past modellers who, instead of publicly bellyaching that the manufacturers weren't producing what they wanted, sat down at the kitchen table with a modest skillset, a modelling knife and a tube of glue and used what they could get to build a representation of what they couldn't. It probably took a fair bit more bottle than I've got to take the junior hacksaw to a pair of BP power cars, dummy or not .

Given that they claim to be professional layout builders and given that they don't claim it'll even be ready for pick up for nearly three weeks, you'd think they might solder up those last 2% .

Does everyone wear protective clothing or go in fear of their lives and limbs in case their safety valve lifts? I repeat, provided that the boiler costruction is sound, particularly around the steam outlet nipple, if the silicone steam pipe fails, the very worst that can happen is that the breach will vent steam at the same rate as the safety valve must be capable of doing and should be expected to do occasionally. No, you wouldn't want to be in the way when even a small safety valve goes pop, and neither would you particularly want to be too close in the direct path of a ruptured steam pipe, but it might anyway be generally considered a bad idea to put, for instance, your face right next to the sort of hot, spitting, fizzing monster that is a small live steamer. I've had some professional involvement with pressure vessels that make a Big Boy boiler look like something from Mamod so I'm well aware of the potential of steam and other compressed fluids but what is appropriate caution in one case can be massive overkill in another.

As someone who doesn't remember revenue earning steam, it feels a little odd to see so many shots of a "modern" wagon like the 16 tonner in steam hauled trains. Until, that is, that I remind myself that the 16 ton mineral wagon and its predecessor designs were around for 20 years before the demise of steam, which is, when I think about it logically, not that much less time than they remained in revenue service after 1968 .

I knew MrsB was the woman for me when, as my landlady prior to becoming my girlfriend and subsequently fiance, she came home early one day to find me boiling a motorcycle chain in Linklyfe (all the old bikers on here will know what that is and those who don't are better off for the lack) on her kitchen stove and didn't throw me out on my ear.

Garden centres and the like sometimes sell decent sized bags of small gravel/chippings for things like bonsai tree pots. I don't recall seeing anything small enough for 7mm (I've been looking with a view to 16mm narrow gauge) but it may be worth a look.

Yep. A fairly standard cyclone shelter in the more remote bits of northern Australia is an old shipping container chained to buried 44-gallon drums filled with scrap iron and concrete. They work.

My father used to tell the story of the time when he was a student and spent a summer working at the Met Office. This was back in the early '50s when weather data came from fixed stations, merchant ships and the odd weather balloon and so could be expected to be incomplete, conflicting or just plain wrong. He alleged that a daily conference would take place, during which the various Experienced Meteorologists would provide their analysis of the data available to them and, with much discussion, a general consensus would be reached as to what the weather had been doing, what it was doing now and what it would be doing over the forecast period. During this, sometimes quite heated, debate, the Very Senior Meteorologist would generally remain silent but observant. As the meeting wound down, he would nudge his gathered minions towards a consensus which he would silently ponder for a while, following which, he would get up, wander over to the window, peer out at the sky for a few moments and then either OK the result of the meeting or, alternatively suggest "Gentlemen, I I believe you may wish to reconsider your conclusions" thus kicking off another hour or two of argument. I'm happy to accept the story as BS, but I find it quite amusing BS nonetheless .

For a small engine with a small boler at low pressure (say <30 psi) with no superheater, it'll be fine. This table shows us that at 30 psi boiler pressure (3 bar absolute) the steam will be at 133oC, leaving plenty of margin below the max working temperature. It may be slightly softened at 133oC but not, I would expect, to the extent that it won't hold the fairly modest pressure involved. If it did burst, so what? Based on your previous posts, it'll be a diddy little boiler operating a lowish pressure. All that will happen is that it will sit there venting steam in exactly the same manner as the safety valve can when asked to do its job. Finally, I've noticed that unreinforced silicone tubing seems to be becoming quite a normal means of feeding lowish pressure steam engines, especially on small garratt or fairlie type locos where some movement between boiler and engine is inevitable. It's certainly not anything new or experimental.

Youtube; definitive proof that there are an awful lot of geeks out there with too much time on their hands .

That's at least the third time the burnt out Triang brake van's turned up. You'd think the seller would have got ther message by now.

IIRC the Peco trap point appeared in the late '60s, when ROI and the "Bottom Line" were slightly less dominant in the world of business. That and the fact that, as I understand it, in those days, if Mr Pritchard said they were going to make it, Peco made it .

So for your 40 quid you get...what? Two pairs of possibly Slaters drivers of indeterminate size and with, based on the standard of the rest of it, the crankpins bodged beyond redemption, a motor (which is not what I think of as a can motor in the modern sense) out of God knows what, two pairs of carrying wheels that look as if they've had half the spokes cut out for no good reason, and half a dozen handrail knobs. Oh, and a handy firelighter. I reckon I could get all that, brand new, in sizes I actually want, for 40 quid. I know I've been known to speak in defence of dodgily made models from the past, on the basis that they represent someone's decision not to await the pleasure of the r-t-r manufacturers, bemoan their lack of cash and skills or whinge on a forum, but to do some actual modelling. I still feel that way in many cases. But there are limits and this monstrosity is well beyond them. If it was built by a 10 year old I'll cut them a fair bit of slack, but to try and flog it as a serious 0 gauge loco ...

Fair enough Martin, I hadn't realised about Slaters' efforts to render earlier standards obsolete. However, as long as the incompatibility only results in a bump through the crossing and doesn't give rise to constant derailments, I would suggest that, for a beginner in the scale, not wishing to construct their own track and points and operating r-t-r and basic kit built locos and stock, Peco and, say, Marcway's quasi-off the shelf offerings (all of which are, I assume, still 32 mm GOG Fine) offer a standard of running which is adequate, at least initially. To offer an analogy with 4mm scale, I doubt if the majority of modellers beginning in the scale start with EM (I leave the 18.83 standards aside as being more akin to S7), regardless of its advantages over 00. Even those not starting from the traditional "train-set" base might, at most, go for Peco Code 70 trackwork and whatever wheel standards Hornby and Bachmann currently offer. Many will find this combination perfectly satisfactory in the longer term too. Some, seeking more consistent running or better appearance may later adopt "finescale" 00, EM or P/S4 standards and enjoy doing so as a progression from their less than perfect beginnings and good for them, but most would not insist that the beginner should plunge into the track construction and level of technical understanding which is required in order to work in these finer standards and gain the advantages on offer. In short, I would rather (and I would emphasise that is my personal view and not an insistence or even recommendation for others) see a beginner in 7mm scale build something which they feel capable of achieving and which works well enough to maintain their interest, even if stock wobbles a bit through the turnouts (on the proviso that it doesn't also constantly derail), than see them put off by being given the impression that they must build all their own pointwork or their layout won't work. As I said, it's nothing to me. As a professional engineer and amateur metal hacker from way back I'm comfortable with the concept of track construction, as I am with stuff like etched brass kits and drivetrains; just don't ask me to work competently with card, styrene, paint or glue . But there are others on this board, some of whom I would regard as far more accomplished and competent modellers in general than I am ever likely to be, who find such things intimidating, at least initially. It would be a shame if the world were deprived of their undoubted talents applied to 7mm just because making flanged wheels run adequately through basic track formations seems too hard when it really isn't or because they've been told that having flangeways a fraction of mm wider will ruin the appearance of their pointwork when it really won't for most viewers.

Given the fact that something akin to "0 gauge" has been working successfully for over a century, including some very fine "finescale" layouts for much of that (Norris et al), along with widespread successful running over Peco standards since c1970, I do wonder if everyone's over-thinking this a wee bit . That is not to say that improvements in running and appearance are not worthwhile but, for someone starting out in 7mm scale, largely using proprietary equipment, standards which work (as opposed to what may be possible) have been around for decades. As we have seen upthread, anything else can confuse the issue and deter beginners in a scale which should be actively encouraging recruits. In the words of someone much wiser than myself, we must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good I have no dog in this fight, BTW, as I don't yet own a layout. When I do, it will most likely be built using salvaged code 100 rail laid using home made gauge blocks and roller gauges to 0-MF standards but with gauge widening to 32 mm o the inevitable sharp curves.