James Harrison

I do like a bit of ragtime, particularly Scott Joplin.

Any mention of jazz immediately makes me think of

The stars have aligned such that I have some time off work and no (or little) house-hammering lined up so I proceed with Grimston goods depot. Several months ago (at least several months ago- it was before I moved home) I bought a download paper kit for a stable block, which I've now finally gotten around to having printed out (and ordered some brick sheet to clad it with, and worked out that I've got enough cardboard to mount it on). So that's going to be this week's specific task...

I've ever-so-slightly tweaked the plan; there appeared to be some tension in the run-round loop. Also not shown on the plan, a pair of wagon turntables on the top left sidings. Moving the lowest siding on the left (really only provided for brakevans) up by seven inches, swapping out a straight for a second radius curve and then having the loco release (lowest track left) on more of an 'upward tick' solved that admirably as well as bringing overall length down a little. Overall then this is 1900mm x 700mm and that is allowing space for a decent goods warehouse (adjacent top left siding), the goods office and the stable block. Quite where the GCR goods depot I bought recently will fit I'm not sure- I'm toying with an idea to have it as a sort of private provendor's store or somesuch on the bottom right siding. Top right siding is to be a loco stabling road and the original idea was that middle and bottom right were to be a coal yard. This may yet still be the case. Between the two loop roads I'm thinking of placing a bothy and the whole area will be variously macadam, brick setts and ash / coal dust. The alignment of the track, incidentally, really will pivot about the curve to the top left siding- I'm aiming for not even an inch of rail to be parallel to the baseboard edges.

It has taken more than a little while but some sort of an official start has been made. In a break with tradition there was no silver shovel or wheelbarrow, no junketing and no verbose meaningless speeches. Good- it all fits together.

So long as they stick to their latest release date.... I'd put them on my Christmas list but I fear it would just be *another* year where come December 25th there's an empty parcel under the tree with a note saying 'later this year perhaps' inside.

I tweaked the plan a little to standardise on use of common or garden setrack pointwork, figuring the tighter radius is more suited to a goods yard. Then I double-checked what I had in stock (bought in the early 1990s, if you can credit it.... remember when you used to get Hornby pointwork in little cardboard diamond-shaped sleeves?) and ordered the points I was lacking. Slightly taken aback by the cost of trainset track...

Railway Modeller had drawings of the A5 and the proper Robinson L1 in April 1973. Triang clerestories can pass muster as GCR stock (but the guard's ducket is quite unlike anything Dukinfield ever turned out), otherwise Recreation21 produces Robinson suburban stock. Or, if you can find them, the generic Graham Farish suburban carriages can be bashed into close facsimiles of the later Robinson matchboarded suburban carriages.

Err, not by a long shot. I've got the luggage van and a Python built and I've scrapped my original idea of turning a Siphon (G or H) into another GCR fish van, so that's going to be cleaned up instead and remain a Siphon and that will also go into the rake. Then I've got; 2 GCR bogie fish vans (undecided whether these will go in the parcels rake or form the basis of a fish train); 1 GCR CCT to build; 1 GCR bogie brake (newspaper?) van to build; 1 GNR milk van. If I leave out the fish vans I reckon that the whole rake is about halfway there. The wonder for me at the moment is what do I want to build next.

I do indeed. It's pleasingly unlike the plain masonry box that seems to have passed for most other goods sheds.

This coming Autumn / Winter I'm planning to start work on Red Lion Square. I want to use Peco's bullhead system but as certain key elements of it that I need show no sign of being released I'm looking instead at what I already have to hand and whether it can be pressed into use in some fashion or another. What I do have is a quantity of Code 100 train set track, mostly Hornby but a few examples of Peco Streamline pointwork in there too... which I reckon I should be able to use up in the goods yard as the track will either be in cobbles or setts or else buried up to the rail head in ash, cinders and general muck. So, I've been playing about on SCARM trying to mirror the goods depot in Iain Rice's 'Rutford Market' plan (in 'Mainlines in Modest Spaces') and I came up with this, in a space roughly 7' x 2'. I'm calling it Grimston Goods (Grimston being a neighbouring village to Rufford that was similarly evicted in the 13th Century)- if you want a rough idea of how it will eventually look, see Mr. Rice's plan below mine. At risk of plagiarising further, I'm looking at the photograph of Attercliffe goods shed in one of Dow's books with covetous eyes, similar to a certain Reverend gentlemen did 50 or 60 years ago.

And that's the GWR luggage van completed. I've had the transfers for a few weeks but have been struggling of late to shrug off the listlessness. I blame spending the last five months pretty much stuck indoors except for essential excursions. I'm aware each of the doors should have 'luggage' written on it however there were not enough transfers on the sheet and, to be honest, it's one of those little details I can turn a blind eye to. It would also have been a struggle to get the lettering into that tiny slit in the panelling.

Another small part of the puzzle arrived today- the Bachmann resin model of a GCR goods depot. Not that I'm planning that to be the goods shed- I have slightly grander ideas for that- this is intended to be a smaller store. When I do get around to starting in earnest- and I'm still aiming for that being in the colder, darker months ahead- I'm probably going to be working on the goods yard first. Primarily because I'll be able to use up my tight setrack trainset points and pose the sleepers and whatnot in the ash and cinders and the like that will pass for ballast.

They look great!

Have you a copy of George Dow's "Great Central Recalled"? Pages 16,17 and 18 there's a series of photographs of the inaugral train. There's an interesting rear three-quarter view of the train on page 18.

A bit of a difference... It took about four coats of crimson lake to get a good finish and about the same for the white roof (though this is still streaky in places and I'll probably go back and put a few more coats down to finish that off entirely). I used glue'n'glaze for the glazing as whoever originally built the van, built the bodywork, got the bogies set up, and... didn't really think about how to glaze it. So along I come to finish it off and there's no way I can manouvre sheets of perspex between the roof and the bogies and then along the length of the carriage, and secure them in position, and achieve a result to be proud of. The perspex I'd already cut for the windows I was able to reuse however to build the floor between the bogies, which now needs painting. Under-floor detailing is rough and ready in the extreme; a vacuum cylinder and gas cylinder from the Ratio GWR carriages, centre steps fabricated from spare solebars from the same source. I'm planning to order a sheet of the appropriate transfers on payday, but aside from that I think I'm about finished. The debate now is whether these vans would have been lined out in 1920.

I've not had a good day of it at all (having work done on the house and I've been filling the role of the over-anxious spectator), but this has lifted my spirits a bit. And given me an idea or two to mull over.

Does anybody know when these are due?- Is it 2021 or 2022? I'm sure it's noted somewhere in the thread but in all honesty I've neither time nor inclination to wade through 73 pages of discussion largely along the lines of 'the beading doesn't exactly match that on precisely four carriages built in the far north of Scotland in 1877 and scrapped in 1909'.

Somebody turns up on holiday and the whole town turns German? I call shenanigans. Send in Special Branch.

Well, work started on my Ks Dean luggage van. Kadee couplings fitted and some buffers sourced from Jar of Many Random Parts, and then made a start on painting it up in GWR crimson lake (1912-22). When that is done I'll fit some glazing, a floor and the below-floor undergubbins, all of which is missing (except bogies and wheelsets). This will be set up with my GWR Python van and a Siphon H and form part of an imagined south west - north east parcels train that reverses at RLS.

It's from the 1931 version, but then this scene was cut and pasted also into the 1941 version.

You might want to close that bridge before sending the inaugural train across.

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that restoring and redecorating the house is something that's perhaps best done in smaller chunks, not just one room at a time but perhaps limiting it to only a few rooms each year (I say this after launching into it and going what feels like non-stop since late February on various things and now having had two weekends with leaking plumbing situations. I'm getting tired, worn down and irritable). So; once the lower part of the hallway has been sorted out I'll probably set-to to clear up the spare room and finally start work, albeit in a fairly limited sense, on RLS. To which end this morning I'm idly looking at the IKEA website at the lower variants of the Billy bookcase- what I want to achieve is something neat that runs around two of the walls of the room, and to my way of looking at things I'm thinking building on top of bookcases might be a good way to start, especially considering the railway room is going to be just that- where I keep my books, prints, railwayana and the layout. It's going to be a little while yet but I'm hoping I'll be able to make a start before the end of the year.

5 days from cutting metal to painting the bufferbeam. During a bout of 'flu, if I remember right from one of his books.

Yes, I'm erring toward employing a pilot loco myself (I think I've enough small 0-6-0 and 4-4-0 tender engines to have a dedicated pilot engine). I anticipate operating RLS with separate arrivals and departures platforms, however I'm also in favour of being able to have bi-directional running in the platform roads (one thought of mine being that local trains operate almost like the Jazz service- in, loco change and out again-considering how Rufford is placed to allow local services to Nottingham, Lincoln and Sheffield means things could get quite intense in the morning and evening rush hours).