AdamsRadial

Got dragged off to have lunch before I could fully answer the post, I think (but have no easy way of proving it) the smell is Ozone. The other nostalgic memory is of the dry-cleaning fluid we used to use to clean the track, "Thawpit", otherwise known as Carbon-TetraChloride. I loved the smell of it.

I've had success using switch-cleaner spray on a similar case, an N2 that had the motor and brushes drenched in oil

On hinges, I admit to having a slight bee in the bonnet, a lot of repair jobs that end up on my bench are broken or missing hinges. They're something we take for granted, like screws, they're all the same? I opened a pack of four recently for a job that required three hinges. Two of the four I would describe as a matched pair, they weren't loose or tight, a third needed levering open with a penknife, and the fourth had nearly a sixteenth slop in it. My point in regard to Nearholmer's comment that something was throwing his lifting flap out of alignment was that we take hinges for granted and assume it's the wood or the frame causing the problem, but why do I get so many broken hinge jobs to repair? They're subject to quite a few conditions that cause them to snap, work loose, throw the pin, make creaking noises, humidity and temperature can affect a hinge just as easily as they can affect the wood they're screwed to. For Regularity, I can only apologise and assure him I wasn't firing my shots towards his installation, just accept it as an unfortunate riccochet.

You might need to take a better photo showing the bottom right corner of the board without the shadow, there appears to be a black IC there but it's hard to tell. It would also help if the red component were visible in greater detail. Whatever it is, it's a six-channel something, and what I thought at first were six yellow Leds along the right hand edge are not, because there are tiny Leds visible amongst the wires coming out of the vicinity of the yellow items. is there no identifying number underneath?

Regarding dowels and a couple of comments about how heat, vibration, changes in humidity can cause hinged flaps to go out of alignment, I've been considering for a while now making conical dowels that drop into a conical hole. I played around with the dowels that have a hemispherical nose to them and although they do work to draw the flap into alignment I found I had to give the board a bit of a slap to get it over the initial reluctance to mate I mean slide into precise alignment. I hope that a cone of about a 60 degree angle will therefore have a longer period of gradually centering and so not need the same amount of persuasion. The board in question isn't hinged but is a lift out section, so there are no hinges at one end to maintain alignment there, hence the need to get it right on two sides and four dowels at once. Hinges, being brass or steel, are good candidates for changes due to thermal expansion or sticking due to dust of moisture contamination, and so there might be a case for eliminating them.

It's tempting to strip a mech down as far as possible to clean it, but don't forget the armature acts to an extent as the keeper to maintain the closed magnetic circuit. An alternative is to dunk the mech as-is into a bath of solvent such as meths, lighter fuel, IPA, and swab it around to clean it, then after drying in an air-blast, carefully re-lubricate the bearings and see what improvement it has made.

That's local to me, I think on the OS map it's shown as Jack's Folly or something like.

I love that Cromwellised ruined castle in the background

Now that is coming close to an LSWR O2

If the crossover were a single slip it would achieve what the blue additions do.

There's no problem too big that can't be sorted out by a dam good thrashing.

From memory, the front of the motor has two lugs at the bottom that slide into cutouts in the block hidden behind the leading wheels, you have to do a bit of wiggling to get it going to and fro sideways and upwards at the same time? Mine is packed away and I can't get to it to confirm. Have you looked on the Hornby website for the service sheets?

I have two of the Triang clockwork 0-6-0STs sitting on the mantlepiece while I pluck up the courage to chop them about. I tried running them on my layout with the idea of them pushing a track-cleaning wagon around, but each of them galloped off at a stupid speed and tried to hurl themselves to the floor. One succeeded and so they're both on the naughty plinth for the time being. I have one electric version but that's sacrosanct, the first 00 locomomtive I had was the saddle tank, and stuffed full of plasticene it was (to me as a teenager) a phenomenal locomotive. Looking at the clockwork bodies, the splashers actually lead you towards making them an 0-4-4ST. I have some photos somewhere of a Beyer Peacock saddle tank I saw in a Finland railway museum which was either an 0-4-2 or an 0-4-4. On the earlier subject of chopping around the Dapol Prairie, I've just realised the potential for making one of the Lithgow heavy banking 2-6-2ST locos using a Prairie and two Hunslets. ETA Bad News From the thread on the Dapol meat Van I've just learned that Dapol don't do the J94 kit, apparently the tooling was lost in a fire. So it's back to the Triang Saddle tanks.

Why not grab a Dapol Prairie kit and make a Never-wossa-wun-like-that? Or the Hunslet Austerity, an 0-4-4ST would be quite a rarity.

Very effective, particularly the effect of depth.

I use either a drop of washing-up liquid or a larger amount of car screen cleaner, the type supposed to get rid of grime and bugs (which I believe contains methanol). I've also tried the glass cleaner which I think is mild acetic acid, but that didn't do much. I've had good results putting a chassis in, (Triang or Hornby), with the motor removed of course. Be warned though, putting in a Triang 0-6-0 3F body shell to see how well it would clean up saw all the transfers for the lining crumble and float off. I didn't weep too long or hard as I don't model BR period so it will end up with a coat of black and "M R" on the tender sooner or later. I've also seen a warning somewhere that some sintered metals might start flaking due to the vibration.

Does this mean another poor innocent bodyshell goes under the knife?

If you're stuck for IPA then meths will do almost as good a job on wheels, with maybe a bit more agitation. For really awkward crudded wheels I use one of the glassfibre brush pens and slowly work my way round the wheel with it, dipping the end of the brush in the meths to clean off what it's picked up. I usually only have to do this to the very old grey metal wheels on Triang and very early Hornby, the later nickel-plated wheels let go their collected muck with just the aid of a cotton-wool bud. Don't forget to clean the backs of the wheels where the pickups rub, and the plastic bogie wheels can also benefit from cleaning even though they're not doing any electrical work.

"It's art, Jim, but not as we know it" I'll get me coat...

You're going to make a Bulleid Leader!

It might cause a slight bloom in the spots where the water laid. If it does, you could try polishing it out very gently using T-cut, the finest you can get hold of. The one time I had a varnish coat go bad was in misty air and in the end I had to flat it away and redo it. Let's hope you get lucky

That Stephens book is a new one on me, I might celebrate the arrival of my state pension in a few weeks by getting a copy. Can I in turn recommend to you "Colonel Stephens - Insights into the man and his empire" by Phillip Shaw and Vic Mitchell? It has a lot of articles on what life was like in the offices from where Stephens and then Austen managed their portfolio of lines. I'm not sure if it's available as digital media, I got mine from the Tenterden Shop back in 2006 when I passed through. The ISBN is 1 904474 62 4 , but I far prefer names. I hate numbers. "I am not a number, I am a free man!" "You are not just free, Number Six, you are cheap into the bargain"

And there I was thinking the Nephilim perished with the flood...

Perhaps I can give a better example of what problems the kerf gives us. Imagine we have a piece of ply 4' x 2', and we want to cut it into three pieces, 2' x 1'4". We establish that the 4'x2' is accurately cut with all four corners at right angles. We mark along one top edge at 16" and at 32", and using a square, we draw lines across the board, and check at the opposite long side that they again intersect at 16" and 32" We saw accurately through the two lines we have drawn, and put the three pieces together. We find that although the two pieces from each end of the board are exactly the same width, the piece in the middle is slightly narrower. The reason being is that the two outer pieces have each only one sawn edge, and so are the nominal width of 16" less half the width of the kerf. The middle portion however has a saw cut on each side, and has therefore lost the full width of the kerf.

I think the issue here is what is called the Kerf, the width of the gap left by the saw when it cuts. You are cutting along the centre of a line, so the kerf is being divided between the two resultant parts. In joinery one of the first thing apprentices are taught is "saw to the line, not through the line". The problem with through the line is you would have to position the saw cut so it was evenly divided either side of the line, but cutting "to the line" such that the line remains on the piece of wood to be kept and not the waste, means no such problems with dividing the kerf between two adjacent parts. Of course, if you are using a power tool and a fence or other guide you can do what you are trying to do, but you should really work out what the kerf is and so where you have been drawing one single line, draw two spaced such that the distance between them is equal to the kerf. ETA what David said, he got there before I did and used less words