PatB

Long ago, when I was looking for interesting things to do with my new minted motorcycle licence, I took a brisk, pre-dawn trip along the A4, from its origin in London to its end at the dock gates at Avonmouth. A great run, made better by the immense fried breakfast at the Blackbird Cafe (anyone remember it?) that I enjoyed at its conclusion.

Maybe not a cutting disc, but what about a diamond burr. Used carefully I would think it would be possible to grind off the last mm or two without involving the surroundings.

Arrangements like this have appeared on RMWeb previously. Apparently it is/was favoured when it is undesirable for derailed stock to be deflected to left or right, the solution being to derail vehicles into the 4-foot instead. In this case there looks to be a running line on the right, and derailing vehicles to the left would appear to risk potentially dangerous damage to the adjacent point-rodding, although there may be other things out of shot which would also make derailing vehicles to the left undesirable.

It does strike me that using correct lamp arrangements represents another method of increasing operating interest, particularly on small layouts with otherwise limited potential. Not for everyone, of course, but something which can be "correct" regardless of, for example, space constraints forcing compromise elsewhere.

Indeed. A company I worked for once undertook some measurements of the forces on railway wagon loads. Allegedly the longitudinal accelerometers peaked at well over 20g. And that's on the all-continuous braked railways of Australia.

You could give SCARM a go. Reasonably intuitive to work, with comprehensive track libraries and free.

On the original topic, can you get some sort of air line in there and blow the beastie out? I regularly clean the fluff out of laptop fans by pointing the business end of a bicycle pump in through the vents and giving a few vigorous blasts.

Well, if you run the resulting stock too quickly on a roundy-roundy you might be regaled by the ghostly strains of Rosemary Clooney or similar .

True, but FB can be salvaged from lengths of scrap Streamline obtained at low cost. Swings and roundabouts.

I would have thought that any fillers used in 78 records would settle out of the dissolved mixture if left to stand for a bit. Whether it would be worth bothering, though, given the lack of new supply of 78s and the ready availability of new shellac, is another matter.

I know I keep banging on along similar lines, but CJ Freezer drew a lot of plans for a nominal 8'x6' garden shed (layout area of 7'6"x5'6"), any of which would benefit from stretching to 8'x8'. Many are main-line plus branch arrangements which would give you the sort of operating potential you appear to be after. If you can get hold of copies of Track Plans and 60 Plans for Small Railways they should both give you plenty of ideas for what is possible. 60 Plans ran to several editions over the years and the layouts included varied between them, so I'd recommend getting 2 or 3 copies of different vintages if you can. Just beware that some of the earlier plans were drawn in the days when 15" radius r-t-r points were not uncommon and so some juggling may be required to fit everything in with more modern track geometry. Just for the sake of interest, I'll PM you a rather ambitious 7'x5' that doesn't, AFAIK, appear in any of CJF's books.

Indeed. IIRC they also did a Corsair. Trivia point: One of their Mk2 Cortinas, in tatty condition, had a role in an episode of Only Fools and Horses.

The Empiire got what it was given and would like it .

Shellac is used to both seal and harden the card. Well thinned it can penetrate the surface and, when dry, combines with the card to form a sort of fibre reinforced composite which can be very tough indeed. It's good for use on paper based products because it's not water based and so doesn't cause distortion to the same extent. Bought in flaked form it's not terribly expensive (I can get it here in Bunnings so I'd have thought the better UK DIY outlets would sell it at sensible prices), especially given that, for anything of modelling scale, you don't need that much. I've also come across it as an ingredient in homebrew car underseal, but that's another story .

In the film Mr Turner there is a brief scene of a train passing at speed and the producers seem to have gone to some effort to depict something appropriate to the early Victorian era (by whatever means) than go with the usual 14XX and choc and cream Mk1 cop out.

I suspect that the change of use to residential would mean that current requirements would apply. That's an educated guess though.

Well I can do Tuesday week, or I might be able to juggle the diary to get a couple of half days in in October. Can't do weekends though, cos I'm working.

One that occurs to me that I haven't seen mentioned. Was not Professor Branestawm (some here must remember him) responsible for a line linking several of the Pagwells? Presumably the usual unintended consequences ensued, but it's got to be 40 years since I read the books so I can't remember.

Half of the considerable thickness of every month's Railway Modeller is made up of adverts for businesses of all sizes, all of whom would appear to believe that there is an income to be made from the model railway market. That might not make it buoyant, exactly, but it suggests there is still a significant amount spent on toy trains.

As a former Suzuki owner I still remember the smell of boiling battery acid . I think they got the electrics sorted once the oil-cooled bikes came out. I've not heard of problems with anything other than the older air-coolers (yes, my GSX550 was a victim), and my DR650's remained significantly more reliable than a hammer.

Rat rod.

Definitely Michelotti flavoured, at least. I doubt if you'd get a DOHC six under that bonnet, though, without more of a bulge. That would tend to suggest against a Sabre as well. Happy to be corrected though. Special bodied TR4? That screen has a distinctly Triumph feel to it.

The track and DCC units probably add up to somewhere close to the asking price (at new prices). Whether it represents a sensible and cost effective way to obtain them, though, is rather another matter.

Shouldn't that Tinsley shot be in the "When the real thing looks like a model" thread?

Dad and I used to scour autojumbles for NOS or reconditioned units, I don't think anything lasted more than about 1000 miles before the bonnet started going up and down again like the bows of a Biscay trawler in a gale. Edit: To be fair, it probably didn't help that, having found out that Which? magazine managed to ground the front crossmembers of their test Farinas when yumping them over hump-backed bridges, I made spirited but unsuccessful attempts to emulate the feat. God, the things you do when young, foolish and immortal.....