AJCT

I've just come across this and will follow with much interest, as I was on the last train from Corstorphine in December 1967. I also worked for many years in the Forestry Commission HQ building which overlooked the branch formation, and regularly used the foot/cycle path along the branch to and from Balgreen for lunchtime walks. The footbridge was behind the back of the FC building and I can recall it being dismantled sometime in the 1980s. At the east end of Pinkhill station the track superelevation must have been quite considerable: as you can still see, the Up platform is significantly higher than the Down one at that end. The caption to the B1 pic says it's an "early evening suburban passenger train" and it could well be the 5.18pm from the Waverley: IIRC this remained loco-hauled latterly, maybe up until closure, while everything else was usually Gloucester or Met-Camm DMUs. With some friends from our school railway society I made a trip specially on the 5.18pm one evening - can't recall the date, but it was Type 2 diesel-hauled by then. I believe the train may have been a rush-hour extra working using stock which had arrived from somewhere like Perth, and usually left from Waverley's Platform 19. On arrival at Corstorphine the loco ran round and worked the train away as ECS, so we had to await the next North Berwick DMU for our return. HTH - Alasdair

Following this with interest as I've a couple of Mk.1 sleepers to upgrade. Did you manage to find a drawing or dimensions for the end air duct to enable your friend to laser-cut them ? Alasdair

Yes, that's right, but by the time I found out about it and enquired, they'd stopped producing it. Alasdair

As it happens, I have an Airfix BR 4MT 2-6-0 on a Kemilway chassis (bought even more way-back-when than the J37s mentioned above) which uses an X04 in the tender driving the loco through a cardan shaft. So when I get round to rebuilding it from 00 to P4, that looks like an ideal use for one of my Buhler motors, so many thanks for that suggestion. Cheers - Alasdair

I have a couple of Buhler motors which IIRC I got for the 2 NB Models J37 kits I bought... maybe a third of a century ago (!) .... The instructions recommended "ECM Type 2", so that's what I went for, but at the time I never got gears or gearboxes. By the time construction eventually commenced some 30+ years later, I knew perhaps a little more about these things and I found that there were no fixing-screw holes on the motors to attach gearboxes, so I went for Mashima 1420s allied to High Level 60:1 or 68:1 Loadhaulers - with, I might add, excellent results (usual disclaimer). I'd like to make use of the Buhlers if I can (see pic): the casing dimensions are 13.6mm (over flat sides) x 17.5mm (over curved sides) x 23.6mm long: the overall shaft length is 41mm x 1.8mm dia, and there's a number 048017 stamped on the brush end of the casing. Does anyone have any performance info on these motors, eg maximum rpm, current consumption (or even stall torque) or how best to attach them to suitable gearboxes ? And what was the tag for, fixed to one of the flat sides ? In hope ! Alasdair

Great... many thanks ! Alasdair

What diameter of brass tube did you use and where did you obtain it ? I have several old Airfix vans to complete.... Alasdair

Following this with much interest as I have a Mk.1 dia.17 RF under construction, using Comet sides on an old Mainline RB bodyshell. I suspect the Mainline RB roof profile isn't quite right but I got the body years ago as a spare for just such a project.... Alasdair

The Black 5 is also in reverse gear, so that would clinch it. Alasdair

Wouldn't disagree with any of that. But I'm unlikely to build much more than a dozen loco chasses at most... if I get that far... and early results with the Poppy jig have been encouraging. Alasdair

Further to my post of July 16th... I have under construction an LNER J38 in P4 from a SE Finecast kit. Some-one was asking about hornblocks, and this is what I've done. The first pic shows the chassis in the Poppy jig with brass bearings in the frame axleholes provided, secured with drops of superglue, to get the frames assembled square before adding complications like springing. Next 2 pics show the chassis before and after cutting out the hornblock spaces (Dremel/disc-cutter, piercing saw), and finally the chassis re-inserted in the jig to enable the Kean-Maygib units to be added. The actual plastic hornblocks are secured with generous quantities of superglue and held in place while setting with the ubiquitous hair-clips (Pic 4), bent slightly to allow the end sof the jaws to lie parallel when in place round the hornblock. I'll insert the actual springs in the suspension units after I've painted the frames and before I fit the wheels... to be continued ! The additional holes in the Poppy jig I referred to in my earlier post can be seen just to the right of the centre axle in Pic 1, though the J38 wheelbase was such that I didn't need them this time round. Alasdair

This is my preferred MO - pickups on the tender only. I have four 0-6-0s which work this way: LNER (ex-NBR) J35, J36 and 2 J37s, with an LNER J38 under construction. Ideally there should be pickups on all wheels, but at least my method reduces the amount of clutter under the loco when you allow for brake- and sanding gear. This is the J38 tender: the pickups are just cobbled together with bits of PCB strip, copper and brass wire, with scraps of plasticard for insulation. Connection to the loco is by 2-pin plug and socket - I've used the Comet Models ones, but others are available - see the RH end of the chassis underside pic. The top tread-wiper pickups help to keep the wheels clean, and the extra weight of the cast tender body also helps to counteract the extra "springing" effect of the brass wire pickups. My stuff is built to P4 standards for analogue control, so I don't know if it helps DCC users ? HTH anyway - Alasdair

Don't forget the extra steps and handrails provided to enable access to the tender top for taking water and redistributing coal - seen here on 65345 on 27 Aug 1966 at Smeaton with the Railway Society of Scotland "J36 Railtour". HTH. Alasdair

Nice work. Can you provide a link to the Amazon connectors you mention ? The Comet ones are £2.50 each ! Regards - Alasdair

You're welcome... building up the cab roofs as I did means they end up level rather than sloped down towards the front windows as they should be, but it's not very noticeable. The air horns (Craftsman castings, I think) then sit on the original roof level in the slots cut in the roof buildup... if you follow me. This pic may help - https://www.railscot.co.uk/img/57/108/ As I said, it was a bit rough-and-ready and trial-and-error but I think it catches the character of the class anyway, and it was all done long before the availability of the Bachmann version. Cheers - Alasdair

Here's mine: a 2nd-hand Triang-Hornby body on a rather battered 2nd-hand Lima 37 chassis, tarted up and rewheeled to P4 circa 1988. I used the Lima chassis for the better bogie frames as I disliked the use of the T-H Brush Type 2 ones. I always felt that both the T-H and Lima bodies weren't deep enough, which was presumably to allow clearance for bogie swing on train-set curves: I suspect the Lima one was "compressed" upwards while the T-H one was merely a bit "sawn-off" at the bottom edge. So this loco was a bit of an experiment to see what improvements I could make: I added a strip of plasticard to deepen the bodysides (you can just see the join...) and lowered the buffers on the T-H body, having first sawn the Lima ones off the chassis. The nose grilles are the Craftsman etches (really for a 37/4 but suitably altered) as are the cab front windows, with the cab roofs built up with plasticard to match the window profile and allow creation of the slots for the roof horns. A bit rough-and-ready by today's standards, but being my first P4 loco there's a certain sentimental attachment. So to answer the OP: yes, it fits after dealing with the buffers, and you can secure the body to the chassis like I did, by cutting holes below the cab doors and gluing wee lumps of black plasticard to the chassis to match up. HTH ! Alasdair

Meanwhile, back with the Prestwins... here are my 4 at the head of an Up Millerhill-Kingmoor freight descending the 1 in 75 towards Newton Duns. There are 2 Dapol and 2 original Airfix, one of which was rescued in damaged condition and rebuilt with spare parts supplied by Dapol. I've got some MSE brass signal ladder to replace the plastic ones - another "lockdown" job I've not quite got round to.... Prestwins (and Presflos - I've got 2 to build) seemed to feature in Waverley Route feights in the 1960s but, despite asking the question on a couple of fora, I haven't so far elicited definitive info on what traffic they carried and where. One suggestion was sand for glass-bottle-making to Alloa for the beer industry there. Anyone got any other info ? Alasdair

I have a suspicion that with the advent of the first LM Region 25kv electrification scheme (was that Liverpool - Manchester?), there came an edict that all LMR-alllocated locomotives were to have flashes applied. That included the 4 Carlisle (Canal) A3 Pacifics, which seemed to acquire them C.1961/62 - a long time before the WCML electrification reached Carlisle. But perhaps some-one more knowledgeable than me can confirm ? Alasdair

Hi Martyn - You're welcome. It's quite a long time ago now and I can't recall my MO with D20's noses - probably just my usual "bodgit and fudgit" approach - but I've just had a look inside the noses and it looks like the packing to increase the height was 40thou. I can't see any packing under the windscreen (ie to take up the width of the saw-cut) so maybe I just used a lot of plastic cement like Britfix and filed it all smooth when it had set hard ! Sorry if that's not very helpful.... Cheers - Alasdair

Here's a pic of my two: D20 on the right (Mainline body) has the modified nose and the bogie-mounted buffer-beams (temporarily borrowed from a Lima Class 40... don't ask...), compared with unmodified D167. D20 also has split headcode boxes - a set of etched ones I got many years ago so can't recall who made them. HTH - Alasdair

Something else you might like to consider: the driver's side windows need to be horizontally-sliding because the space for the vertical droplight mechanism is taken by the tablet-catcher recess. This means that the side windows were different at each end - see this panned pic I took of 5132 at Inverness in 1972: HTH ! Alasdair

Yes, I think you're right about the "Peak" nose being too low: so far on one of mine (Mainline body on Bachmann flywheel drive chassis) I sawed off the top of the nose round the line you mentioned and inserted some packing (40 or 60thou, can't recall). I haven't done anything about the cab windows yet - I keep hoping one of the after-market suppliers will produce etched ones, like the ones you can get for 37s/40s. The other major improvement is to saw the bufferbeams off the body and fabricate new deeper ones fitted to the bogies - I got some castings for this but haven't fitted them yet. The most recent Bachmann Peaks are greatly improved in these areas, but I'll stick with improving my two rather than upgrading by complete replacement. Alasdair

There are of course other BR Mk.1 models which have appeared over the years. Back in the early 1960s there were the legendary Kitmaster kits (BSK, SK/TSO, CK and the rarer RFO) - my late Father built a 4-car BSK/SK/CK/BSK set in 00 which I still have, and I've picked up quite a few pre-owned and pre-built ones (including an RFO) in various states at exhibitions over the years. I believe they're very slightly under-length but the separately-inserted flush windows were a new idea at the time, similar to the Replica ones available now. Here's a pic of one of my second-hand CKs - - not in great condition, but it does have the printed card interior kit which Peco used to produce to match the Kitmaster kits. I say "match" because I believe the spacing of the 1st class compartments is slightly wrong and Peco designed their interior kit to fit it ! See - Then there was the Trix range of Mk1s to 1/80th (3.8mm to 1 foot) scale, all running on Commonwealth bogies - BCK, CK and RMB - rather a high proportion of 1st class one might say. Back in the mid/late 1960s the then Model Railway Constructor ran a series on "Constructor looks at..." and IIRC the "Coaches" article featured Mk1 CKs by Hornby-Dublo, Tri-ang and Trix (the Kitmaster version was by then no longer available). Their vote went to the Trix version as being the best proportioned example (despite its smaller scale), and on the strength of that I bought several Trix ones - well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, m'lud. The Trix versions used the same constructional methods as the Triang-Hornby ones, so they were also ripe for cut-and-shut conversions - out of 8 Trix vehicles I got BSK, SK, FK, CK, BCK, RMB and BSO (there weren't enough bits left to make up the 8th vehicle...). Here's a pic of the BSO - Not a brilliant job as you can see some of the joins - not all of the vehicles were fully completed and this one doesn't have any interior.... The later Hornby-Dublo Mk1s looked nice as the metal sides gave a nearly flush-windowed finish, but they were clearly under scale length. AFAIK also in the 4mm picture there are the Replica BCK, RFO and (ex-Mainline?) RB, all 3 of which have passed through my hands at some stage: I've no experience of the Coopercraft kits, and the one MTK kit I had was sold on unbuilt. Hope this is of interest - Alasdair

I've now been able to try this and, yes, it does appear to fit the RMB. Not quite as flush as on the Replica vehicles it's intended for, but a noticeable improvement nevertheless. Alasdair

Thanks for the pics of the brake gear - I think mine only has the shoes but I ought to be able to fabricate the linkage from some etch scrap or the like. Could you tell me the dimensions of the long outside linkage pieces, please ? To conceal the PortEscap 1219 I think my loco also has a home-made underboiler, which I've just realised I missed when I repainted the loco.... Alasdair