PatB

There is a wonderful quote in Geoffrey Freeman Allen's "Illustrated History of Railways in Britain", attributed to an anonymous LMS employee in the 1920s, which always makes me chuckle. It sums up the motive power approaches of the main English constituents of the LMS and goes thus: "At Derby the nice little engines were made pets of. They were housed in nice clean sheds and were very lightly loaded. At Horwich they had gone all scientific and talked in 'thous' although apparently some of their work was to the nearest half-inch. At Crewe they didn't care so long as their engines could rattle and roar along with a good paying load, which they usually did."

The only real benefit I can see is in noise reduction. However, I see this as less of an issue on a shunting layout where wagons are shuffled around in short bursts at a scale 5-10 mph than it would be on a main line tailchaser with an A3 and ten heavy coaches roaring around for lengthy periods. Even then, though, I'm not really sure. 30 Years ago I was involved in building Somerset 0 Gauge Group's test track. There were two ovals of Bonds/Bassett-Lowke coarse scale track and one of Peco for the finescale (as it was in those days) boys. The coarse scale circuits were laid direct on the ply baseboards with the Peco on expanded polystyrene. I don't honestly remember the coarse scale circuits being offensively noisy, even with the seemingly all cast-iron locos and stock that many of our members favoured. Perhaps in a domestic environment it would have been a problem but in a noisy exhibition hall or on a club running day it never appeared to be an issue. I suppose it could be argued that cork takes pins but that falls down because any decent length of pin will go right through any sensible layer of cork into the substrate anyway. Besides, many plywoods are soft enough to take pins just as easily. Not all, though. Try it with Australian hoop pine ply and it'll end in tears. There might also be some small advantage if you want to recycle your baseboards. The cork layer provides a weak link so glued down components can be removed without ripping the surface off the board proper. But then you've got to clean all the shredded cork off anyway which is also an unattractive idea.

That's a good point. Lightweight litter like paper or packing straw wouldn't be evenly or randomly distributed but would collect where it was carried by the wind and then trapped.

Thanks. It was the lack of anything resembling a rocking beam which threw me. I'd think of that more as being partial springing but as long as it keeps all four wheels in contact with the rails it doesn't matter much.

Oh, I only ever injure myself in proper imperial measurements, not your namby-pamby modern rubbish .

How does the compensation work? I can't see it in the underside shots.

Generally just far enough to leave a pool of inky blackness between lamps to make it more convenient to bark your shins on protruding bits of architecture.

Shouldn't be. It's got no iron in it.

Just as an aside, was it not Ladybank which should have been hauling the train which fell with the Tay Bridge? That's if I recall my "Red for Danger" correctly.

Quite a bow in the sides of those wooden wagons. And was that an A4 we see passing early in the film? Presumably the station had been recently rebuilt under the Modernisation Plan.

"Jane Scott, for genuine friends" if it's the same agency who had an ad in every issue of Railway Modeller for years. I'm not sure if I should be admitting that I remember .

I approached my returning interest in small railways fairly carefully with MrsB, although I probably didn't need to. She's a professional artist and so is able to appreciate the attempt to create a scene in miniature, recognising the difference between Thomas performing endless small circles at 200 mph and a painstaking representation of the 5.45 down goods to Wibbleford Regis on 12th May 1954. She's also an accomplished jeweller and so is considerably more adept at small scale metalwork than I am. It's also helpful that I can scrounge things like weathering pastels, mounting card, small files and other tools off her when she's not looking .

I have to disagree with the previous posters. As an afficionado of rural scrap piles, it's remarkable what can, or could 30 years ago, be found behind an English country garage. Whilst I never found a stack of old loco buffer beams, old oil engines, tractors and parts thereof were relatively common and some represented very large lumps of cast iron indeed which would have been of no earthly use in the repair of anything the garage was likely to encounter by the time I found it. Large, mysterious structures of crudely welded RSJ and angle were also fairly commonplace. So I'm fine with most of the scrap, apart, oddly enough, from the one obviously car bit amongst it. That wheel in the foreground looks a bit too 1980s cast ally to me. BTW, do I spy bits of a Triang 00 crane in there?

Here are our two senior cats a couple of years ago. A pair of rescued littermates obtained from the local cats' home on condition that they not be separated and must never be allowed outside. Sadly, Stanley (left) is no longer with us but Harold (right) is still going strong, partly due to Stanley's replacement (below) keeping him on his toes and taking his mind off his bereavement.

Trains in films with non-functional continuous brakes are my personal technical bete-noir too. Those and road vehicle anachronisms.

Is that the musical number along the lines of: We drive the little trains of Wales Up the hills and down the dales We've overtaken lots of snails But only when we go downhill etc?

Years ago, I read somewhere of a working to (I think) Bishop Auckland in which the DMU hauled a tail load of vans. Following arrival and detraining of passengers the DMU would run round the vans, draw forward and then propel them into place for unloading, thus indulging in shunting. Others on the forum may know more details.

What an excellent thread. Very reminiscent of 1950s magazine articles when discretionary spending money was tighter than today and the available range of ready to use modelling specific materials much smaller. One thought on the cardboard baseboards. If I were looking to use cardboard, I'd consider laminating several layers together with the "grain" at 90 degrees in alternating layers in the maner of plywood. I've tried this for other purposes and the result can be immensely strong, stiff and light. Above all, because the base material is free or nearly so, the cost is not significantly increased. You do require a flat surface to construct it on, though (kitchen table ?) and, ideally, something flat and portable to weight the sandwich while setting (inverted coffee table?).

Very nice weathering on the building on the right with the columns.

That's an awfully interesting kit. A cheap source of light railway coaches if ever I saw one. OK so they're 1:45 scale rather than 1:43.5 but I doubt if that would be noticeable in a freelance setting. Being models of Japanese prototypes, I assume they'd be designed for 3'6" gauge but that's nothing that couldn't be sorted fairly simply. Great find.

Wrap the affected area in good sticky tape for a minute or two, then remove (the tape, that is). Seems to get most splinters out. Fortunately MrsB keeps industrial quantities of good quality parcel tape around so I'm never short.

Agreed with all that. More than thirty years ago I had an RC converted Big-Big Hymek. Twin motor bogies, a taped together pack of ni-cads for power, MacGregor 27MHz radio gear (with a receiver and single servo both the size of small bricks) and a crude, mechanical wiper resistance board speed and direction controller. It worked surprisingly well and created much interest when given an airing on Somerset 0 Gauge Group's test track c1980. These days, with the advent of staggeringly cheap and compact RC gear (~$20 for a 2 channel, 2.4 GHz Tx/Rx combo, ~$5 for a servo, ~$5-10 for a motor speed controller and similar prices for beautifully made and powerful but tiny motors) and the wonders of the LiPo battery, so much more could be achieved for very little money. Ny own interests are currently 7mm indoor but, should I eventually move out into the garden, RC battery electric operation will definitely form part of the plan.

Model like qualities probably somewhat enhanced by a train consisting of a 31 and only four coaches. Almost as feasible to represent without compression as loco hauled West Highland workings but with the advantage of being in easier to model scenery.

Nice weathering work on those opens. I can't see the brake gear mistake but then I'm no expert on brake gear. As long as it's there, ad looks vaguely plausible (eg set up so that dropping the lever would apply rather than retract the shoes) I'm unlikely to notice. Is it the use of a two shoe per side set up without a tie bar between the axleboxes? My own Toad is currently in basic grey with black underframe, awaiting transfers and weathering. I'll have to see if I can get a reasonable photo with the old digital instamatic. The ag imp wagon is approaching that stage and the Y7 chassis and wheels just got their first spritz of etch primer this afternoon. Progress is happening.

Thanks, chaz and N15, for the whitemetal soldering tips. It's more or less what I've been doing but using DCC Concepts 100 degree solder and their flux. I've still been finding it to be very hit and miss whether the solder flows into the joint or not. I was originally using my 80W iron with a light dimmer but found that the tip temperature was all over the place and took an age to recover after every joint, proceeding to overshoot quite spectacularly. Since then I've sprung for a soldering station which is much better at holding a steady, non-destructive tip temperature. I've also found a major improvement from using good old Baker's Fluid as flux, accepting that I need to undertake full decontamination procedures afterwards. I was also very pleased, when building the Y7's chassis that I succeeded in repairing one of the sandboxes (I failed to read the instructions, assumed the boxes to have been cast oversized and had filed off a couple of mm before realising my mistake) by soldering a filler strip of electrical solder to the whitemetal using the 100 degree and then cleaning up with a file. Very satisfying and stopped me kicking myself quite so hard. I conclude that I'm getting better and should become competent with more practice. Given that I've now got some scrap whitemetal to practice further, my abilities should improve. Lovely job on the lowmac. Yes, it does make me think I should dig mine out again after the loco. Something I was wondering about was how to finish the "wood" floor but yours looks as if it's just painted single colour and looks fine so maybe I've been overthinking it. I was contemplating trying to achieve the sort of mottled grey that old, creosoted wood gets when exposed to the weather but I'm very much a beginner in the painting and weathering field so keeping things simple would be a better bet for now. As to a convincingly secured but removeable load, I can think of a couple of ways I might try it if required but which are only ideas at this stage. For ropes I'd see what might be done with fine, round section elastic if I could find some way of attaching it either convincingly or inconspicuously to fine piano wire hooks to catch the rings. Chains might be easier as they would be expected to have hooks on the end and some sort of turnbuckle or over-centre dog for tensioning. That makes attachment to the rings relatively easy but leaves how to achieve a convincing level of tension. My approach would be to use commercial fine chain but, again, see if I could conceal a link (or several) of fine elastic somewhere in each chain run. Much depends upon the level of scrutiny your stock is expected to bear. Given the nature of your layout and the general standard of modelling, I'd assume that it will need to look pretty good from pretty close up. I'd also emphasise that I haven't actually tried either of these, they're just avenues I'd look at to start with. Oh, and apologies for hijacking the thread. Eventually I'll have enough photographed progress to start my own .