thegreenhowards

I have two of the Thompson match board full brakes. One Mailcoach and the other a brass kit -Comet I think. I built them several years ago before I knew much about kit building and I just followed the instructions but I think both still look ok. They both run on Bachmann bogies because in those days I valued the good running of the RTR bogies over prototypical fidelity. I ought to replace them, but it’s not high on the list of priorities! Can you tell which is which?

I do that all the time. As a lifelong railwayman the 24 hour clock is ingrained in my psyche! I read 5pm and write 1700.

Hi Brian, I think Steve is spot on. The diagrams (available on Robert Carroll’s BR Coaching Stock group) show the train as a standard quad art set (I.e. 8 coaches). It’s diagram 21 on MFSX. As Steve says they never ran as half sets in normal service. Can anyone tell me what the buffing gear was like in the middle of the sets? I’m finishing off my O gauge 8 car set and I don’t know how to join the two halves. Andy

iI didn’t come to an end. While it was sad to see the Pacifics go they were replaced by the greatest locomotives ever to grace this planet. The end was 2nd Jan 1982.

Good news. Meg merillies lives again. It did prove possible to solder onto the Bachmann crank after I filed off the blackening covering which Is applied in the factory. However, having fixed the crank it pinged across the room while I tried to fit it and I can’t find it! So I ended up creating a second crank from scrap brass as can be seen below. This is soldered onto the boss on the centre driver and does the job very well. It doesn’t look too good in the photo above, but I’ve since ,filed it smoother and blackened the brass. It now blends in and bears inspection from normal viewing distances.

Good evening Tony, Here are my 5 Nucast V2s lined up at Gresley Jn. You sold me two of them - the lime green one and my namesake, 60835, The Green Howard. The other three were eBay purchases, all for between £50 and £87 - I also have an unstarted kit bought off eBay. All rather eBay ones needed some work to get them running smoothly and 869 recently chewed up its valve gear, but I enjoy that fettling part of the hobby. 835 (DJH GB1) and 814 (quiet Portescap) are both superb locos. The others all run OK, but with older motors and in the case of 869, on the original Nucast white metal chassis. I do like a Nucast V2! Andy

I’d be prepared to live with the faults - I’m sure there are less than on the rest of my fleet of V2s which are mainly Nucast! But I can’t live with £200+ for a 00 RTR loco so I won’t be buying one (unless they hit Mick’s bargain boxes). I agree it’s cheaper than buying a new kit and it’s not that I can’t afford it - more a one man inflation resistance movement! And if I’m buying a new loco I’d rather pick a Nucast one up on ebay for under £100 and do some work on it or spend a bit more and get an O gauge Heljan diesel where I really feel I’m getting some bang for my buck.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon with the Mousa lists which John highlighted. I’ve identified 8 pairs of sides I want - six for the royal train and a Thompson SLF and Gresley D.275 buffet. I have spoken to Bill about all of these before so I’m rather sceptical about whether they’ll happen but he will be getting an email shortly! And I wasn’t completely idle! I made some progress on my Gresley D.227 SLF. The chassis is now largely complete. It’s a mix of MJT bits and scratch built with Kirk bogies for now (as I’ve run out of MJT heavy duty). I’m sure I’ve missed some bits as I’m working off photos where the underframe is rather dark so if anyone wants to suggest some additions, I’ll listen. I’ll be moving onto the roof furniture next. Harris shows these vehicles as PV but they seem to have torpedo ventilators rather than the square boxes at either end which the Elizabethan PV stock has. Can anyone shed any light on this? Andy

I don’t think so. I had that etch for building my A2/3 but in using it I snapped the eccentric crank (?) as above. I think a small length of brass with a coupling of holes in it might do the job although it wouldn’t bear close inspection.

That’s a good spot John. I’m now going to retire from modelling to a comfy armchair with my diagram books to dream! I imagine the D.157 twin is a typo as he also lists the single D.157 SLF. Probably the twin SLF which I built earlier in this thread from a Mousa etch.

Those of you who follow Gresley Jn will remember that I ‘found’ a Bachmann Meg Merillies awaiting commissioning a month or so ago. Well I’ve done some further investigation and I now remember more about it. I cannibalised it when I broke some of the valve gear on my Graeme King A2/3 conversion. This has left it with a hanging rod (the radius rod?) as below. i have looked on the Bachmann spares website but they only seem to sell the complete valve gear assembly at £20 which seems a little excessive. I’m wondering about soldering a small washer onto the crank but I’m not sure one can solder onto the metal (Mazak?) used for the crank. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions? Andy

I had a winter walking trip to Scotland the weekend before last. But storm force winds and blizzards stopped us getting up many mountains. The on we did summit, Cruach Ardrain near Crianlarich, was c.-25C wind chill on the summit so we didn’t linger long! Even when the sun came out briefly on the way down it was pretty arctic - I’m on the right. Why are you boring me with this I hear you say! Well the upshot was that I didn’t venture out at all on day 2 and got back early having given up at 700M on day 3, so I had plenty of time to tackle the two Parkside kits which I took…just in case. These were two O gauge LNER D.94 vans both bought off ebay as ‘complete unstarted’ kits. I should have noticed the word ‘solebars’ written on the side of one when I bought them. But luckily I did notice it while packing for Scotland and on checking found that the solebars were missing. So I put in some plasticard off cuts to see what I could knock up. Anyway, I completed the first kit on the Saturday and started the one without solebars. I managed to finish that on the Sunday, just leaving paint and transfers for when I got home. They are now complete (until one of you tells me I’ve got something wrong!). The darker one is the one which had no solebars. I ended up using some left over bits of plasticard from Kirk coach kits to make them and adding rivet detail with PVA on a pin. It’s not as good as the other one, but I can’t believe anyone will notice when running in a layout. I tried two different painting techniques. The darker one is Humbrol 133 over Halfords red oxide primer. The other is unpainted and I just weathered the Parkside plastic. I think they both look OK and add some variety in shades but I’d be interested in any comments. O gauge Parkside kits have much more complex brake detail than in OO and I struggle to work out what goes where, so I hope I’ve got it right. This part takes more than half the total build time. Andy

Tony, I guess that my C4’s paint job is based on the photo on p87 of Yeadon (I didn’t paint this myself so can’t be sure). Yeadon states on that same page that 192 was painted in LNER livery on 23/6/23 with an ‘&’ in the LNER. The cab side lining on mine is not right, but I’m pretty sure that the apple green is correct for 23/6/23 until 1925 when the ‘&’ was dropped - unless it got its ‘5’ first. Andy

Always nice to see some Gresleys.

I like the idea of the moveable workforce but that clear plastic does stand out on the photos. Have you considered some .45mm brass wire in their feet and some tiny holes in the baseboard? Andy

Is there a simple app to do this on the iPhone? Or is it still a case of post processing on the pc?

One's a Class 20. You can't say anything bad about them!

1, 7, 9 (my fav), 13, 20, 21, 29, 33 (and 700?!). All Hornby except 33 which is Wills on Hornby chassis. 700 is a Graeme King conversion. I’m told May 2021 but I haven’t seen any drafts from them yet so I’m not banking on it.

I agree. That’s where the sexy bits live! At exhibitions I often have a peep at the fiddle yard early on in viewing a layout to see if there’s anything worth waiting to see.

Havining finished the sequence, I thought I’d show a few shots of the engine room (pun intended!) which is my fiddle yard. First, here is the end leading to the station. This shows the end of the 16 through roads and a couple of dead ends where the pick up goods and an outer suburban rake live. The N7 is on the road for the branch train and uses two coaches off the back of another outer suburban rake. The lower baseboard strip on the right is for cassettes. Second picture is of the main through roads of which there are 16 containing 21 trains with a few doubled up. The nearest one is kept free in case I want to run anything from a cassette. A4 storage on the ramp above the tracks. Thirdly, this is the corner of the fiddle yard. This is where the outer tracks spread out. A1 and A2 storage is above the tracks. And finally, we have the corner leading onto the viaduct where the inner tracks converge. This includes four dead ends on the outer and two on the inner. The inner ones are a bit short and currently only store one of the two inner suburban rakes. The final three trains are in the station - loaded gas trip, F2/push pull and the Mk1 inner suburban. Other locos are stored in trays or draws with some on their trains in the cassettes. All together, I think I ran 32 trains in that sequence, not bad from one fiddle yard. My next task is to run them all again and see how many misbehave this time!

Duplicate (triplicate?) post.

Duplicate post.

This is the final train which I can run from my fiddle yard with no use of cassettes/ off layout storage. And what better to finish the sequence off that the loco which was the forerunner of the greatest class of all time, none other than DELTIC. Here she is on her normal turn in the Summer of 1959 - the 1230 Hull- KX. The video shows a similar view - an all mark 1 set apart from a Gresley tourist buffet.

Thanks for that Gilbert. I’m now home but still can’t find my 1953 WTT but what you have said all makes sense. It looks like I can either run my pick up as a class H or K - the former if it runs through non stop and the latter if it shunts the yard. It looks like Roy was right for the way I ran it this time.

Next up in the sequence is a down parcels and I decided that this would be a good train for my new A2 to debut on. I bought 60528 from ‘sir’ when I visited last summer. It’s a nicely built DJH A2 with a Portescap and runs very well. I’ve only recently chipped it so it hasn’t had much running and it promptly derailed at several points. This turned out to be the water scoop on the bottom of the tender hitting part of the point. I filed 1mm off the scoop and all is now fine. But another example of how a layout needs to be used and tested if it’s to run reliably. here is the video.