thegreenhowards

Thanks to all who replied to me. I don’t really want to spend £25 on an HMRS transfer sheet for two numbers, so I’ll give the fine sable approach a go. I suspect that I’ll need to give it a heavy weathering to hide my none too subtle brushwork! I’ll report back when I’ve given it a go. Andy

Tony, Thanks for the masterclass on renumbering. I have a slightly more challenging proposition! Can you suggest any ideas for changing the identity of two of these wagons as I have three ‘8245’s? They’re Dapol 7mm wagons weathered by yours truly. Andy

Thanks Bill, we’ll have to commission you to write our backstory sheet! My version goes like this: “I like LNER and other club member like Southern/ LBSCR.” I’d like to be more sophisticated but we’d have to re-write a lot of history! It was good to see you. Operations got steadily better as the two days went by. We were quite good by Friday evening with young Alex on the fiddle yard. andy

Humbrol decalfix helps as well. Applied once the transfers are on and dry it creeps under the transfer and ‘sucks’ it onto the surface.

Rob’s 6-wheelers inevitably stole the show. I grabbed a few photos and a lot of video which will need editing. Here are a selection of photos…more to follow. Rob’s J69 on Howldens My A5 on the Howldens My C12 at the buffer stops on parcels stock. C12 departing on Howldens with the A5 alongside on the Quad Arts. And finally the A5 with LMS vans behind. Andy

Perfect - I withdraw my pedantry! In fact the main time trees which look this this are evident is on the edge on blocks where the neighbouring block has been felled, so spot on. The extra stumps make it more convincing.

Nice trees. Can I put a little pedantic and point out that they are ‘forest trees’. I.e. they are made to look like they have grown in a forest surrounded by other trees and have therefore lost their lower branches (through light starvation). If they were open grown like you have shown them they would have branches down to the ground (like the ones on the right). Primo do both sorts. These will be fine if you are planning on putting other trees in front, otherwise, I’d suggest they are moved back into the forest with some fully branched trees in the foreground. Sorry to be picky and feel free to ignore - I’m sure most people wouldn’t bother! Andy

I’d be interested to see pictures of your work in progress on the embankment.

I agree. As a forester I get quite upset at the pathetic size of some trees on some layouts. But as an O gauge modeller I get quite scared at the size of the trees I need! Having said that 100ft is quite large. I tend to harvest my spruce at age 30-40 when it is typically 20-30 metres tall. This is the maximum height, it will spend most of its life rather shorter. Certain prize trees do get to 150ft, but not much taller as they tend to blow down in our windy climate!

They look great Rob. I think they’re a good representation of what was there in your photos and about right in terms of scale. Andy

I think Fox do the best transfers for pre nationalisation coaches. Not cheap though!

I'll be at the Beckenham and West Wickham show tomorrow manning the Gauge O Guild stand. Do pop by and say hello if you're coming.

Thanks Rob, That's incredibly useful. My brain got a little confused, so I prepared a simple spreadsheet table with the variations. Hopefully I've got this right and the simplification will be useful to other people I'm relieved and amazed that all my 37s appear correct. The Heljan 37s generally come unnumbered and I chose 051 and 264 for my two 37/0s. Heljan seem to have chosen single rivetted for split box and welded for centre headcode, both with no cantrail strengtheners. This is logical I guess as the most numerous for each headcode box type. I have 37043 on order which should be correct, but was thinking of doing 26/27 or 81 next as they were very common when I was on the line. How easy would it be to add the cantrail strengthening or double rivet lines? I'm glad all the ETH ones are from the same batch, so need need to worry about swapping identities there. Did the 37/5, 37/6 and 37/8 variants keep their roof details when modified? Andy

Thanks, it remains to be seen how the exhibition boards stand up to being carted in and out of the garden!

Rob, I like the mods on ‘264, I did similar to my Heljan version. One thing I’m never sure about though, is the roof differences which you talk about between different batches. Could you show a picture of the different layouts? Thanks Andy

A Primo forest would look really impressive, but might dent the loco budget for an awful long time!

Graham, I enjoyed seeing HOTN again. Your sequence of trains through the ages is a great way of running such a layout - one I intend to follow when I get that far with my Glenfinnan layout. I really appreciate the well researched and put together formations which raise the layout above the norm. I found the show as a whole unpleasantly crowded. Between 1100 and 1400 on Sunday it was hard to move. But it was worth the effort as there were a lot of good layouts there. Andy

Rob, That last picture definitively rules out Larch as it would have dropped its needles in winter. So I’m 95% sure that it’s Spruce, probably Sitka Spruce which is what is growing in that large forest to the left of the top picture. They may well have self seeded from the forest. Spruce grows quickly - that why us foresters like it! Each whorl of branches represents one year’s growth, so I would put the tree in your second picture at 15-20 years old allowing for some growth at the bottom that we can’t see. So the three in your first picture were probably chopped down and this one has grown up since. Here are some that I planted in my woodland in 2008, so a little younger than your example, but you can see how quickly they grow. The Primo Spruce is a very good match https://primomodels.co.uk/product/spruce-tree-model-20-22-cm Don’t go for the Forest Spruce as this reflects trees grown closely together which will loose their lower branches as I explained in my earlier post. Regards Andy

I think they are Spruce. Douglas Fir is a possibility but is fairly rare in Scotland - it likes milder weather. The other common tree is Larch, but that is deciduous and its needles would be a lovely light emerald green in the May picture. Trees will normally have foliage and branches all the way down unless they have been grown close together for forestry purposes. I’m this case the lower branches don’t have enough light and drop off. This is deliberate as branches create knots in the timber. Primo do some lovely Spruce trees. I’d put those at c.50feet tall, so you would need his 20cm trees which would look very impressive…at a cost! I was also at GETS yesterday and admiring his Birch trees. I was going to buy some for Glenfinnan but he’d sold out of the 14cm ones which I need to represent a 20’ tree in O gauge. I was very impressed by Tulloch Bridge at GETS. It’s too late an era for us but the presentation was superb. Andy

Hello Jeremy, Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I really do appreciate constructive criticism like this. Your first point is a schoolboy error that I should have spotted….especially as the video has chosen to show that exact moment for its a still image! Annoyingly I won’t be able to redo this now until the Spring unless we have a very mild and dry spell. I’m blaming multi tasking for that error - trying to be cameraman, two drivers and signalman is clearly too much. RMT wouldn’t approve! The other issues you raise are, to a non signaller, slightly less obvious. But I do want to get it right. I know that you wrote a similarly detailed piece back in the Summer when we were discussing the diagram below but I omitted to reread that in my haste. I’ve never really understood why a driver has to be brought to a stand at the home before entering the station. Surely he has to be ready to stop at the starter signal and that should be sufficient? However, I know it happens (to my frustration as a passenger), and my role is to replicate signalling practice rather than question it, so I need to do it right on Glenfinnan. I presume that this is only the case if trains are crossing? I.e. if the starter is pulled off then the home can also be pulled off and the driver can enter the station without stopping at the home. I am using the signal box diagram below with my lever frame to control the signalling. Levers 4&12 are point locks which do nothing as yet, but I’m intending to wire them so that they electrically lock the points. I need to have a think about whether I can electrically prevent pulling off the starter while the home at the same end is off. Your 7 point list is very useful. I think I may need it on a crib sheet behind the lever frame. I won’t be doing any bells though - that’s a bit too ‘signalling hard core’ for me! Andy

This is the final sequence from my recent spell of operation as the layout was put away before the rain on Thursday & Friday. I suspect that might be it for the year and I will use the poor weather to work on the scenery. Anyway, as a finale I decided to try a passing move. Here we see 37264 on Turbots heading West passing 37051 on Mark 1s. Concrete sleepers in Turbots has become a bit of a cliche in O Gauge following Al Tait’s excellent article in the Gauge o guild Gazette and his Facebook images. But they do look good and there was a view of Turbots loaded so loaded in the video of the Mallaig line which Andy (@Mallaig1983) posted recently here. I also did my normal video of the passing manoeuvre. Regards Andy

I think Tony has hit the nail on the head. In my experience(incompetence?), kit built locos are easy enough to get looking good, but never work first time and need tweaking to get to work smoothly. That may be pick ups, wheel alignment, short circuits, weighting, motor gearbox combo, etc. etc. Each is different and it can take several days of test running and faffing to get them to run to my satisfaction. I’m not a pro, just a willing amateur with a fair bit of experience! Andy

Tony, As discussed in our PMs, I’m happy to help if you want to go down the original route or some help with the kit, but I’d rather not get involved with the chassis, as I find they take an awful lot of fettling! Regards Andy

All this talk about restoring bargain purchases had me racking my brains. I used to do quite a bit of that in 00, but my main focus recently has been O gauge where bargains are few and far between. However I did buy this non runner A5 tank from eBay earlier this year. I thought it looked good underneath its truly hideous paint job. It cost £200 which I regard as a bargain price for a large tank in O gauge. The non running part proved to be the motor not engaging with the drive axle. I sorted that with a little soldering of the support, but decided to replace the whole affair with a modern helical gearbox which I do on most of my O gauge locos. This is the old motor - if anyone want it for the cost of postage let me know! Anyway, I then stripped it completing, unsoldered the raised LNER of the tank sides and repainted into LNER lined black. I’ve recently finished the weathering on her and here she is posed on my garden railway with 3/4 of an Ian Kirk quad art (I’m still building the underframe for the last two coaches). Regards Andy

The only steam engine I had for this layout was K1, 62052. But that has been playing up, with a burnt out decoder and more recently the valve gear fell to bits! But on Sunday, I visited the ‘O Gauge Get Together’ at the Severn Valley Railway and having only bought two wagons and thinking I’d been good in the exhibition, I discovered the Stanier Mogul Fund shop at Kidderminster which had bought a large collection of Eastern/ LNER locos and wagons. My wallet is now considerably lighter with three locos and several wagons weighing me down! The best of this bunch is another K1, professionally built from a Piercy kit and with a lovely ABC helical gearbox. It runs very smoothly and quietly. I was told that the owner of the collection had no layout, and I don’t think this is a good thing as it means the locos haven’t been fully debugged. The valve gear came undone after a couple of circuits! Luckily this was an easy fix as I found the nut and reattached it with a touch of the soldering iron to keep it in place. Anyway, after all that I gave it a proper train to pull - my fish vans as head traffic on a maroon rake of stock. I’m sure I’ve seen a similar formation in one of my books but can’t find it now. I can find a long string of normal vans on the front of a passenger train and a couple of fish vans with the same, but not a long fish rake with passenger. Can anyone else remember where such a photo is…if it exists! The sun is quite difficult at this time of year with the station area in shade for much of the day, so I offer another photo on the unsceniced side but in full sun. No video as it’s not DCC fitted yet, so no sound! The loco will need renumbering to a Fort William example. I may sell the old K1 which has American pick ups, so not ideal for DCC. In which case it will take the 62052 identity. Otherwise probably 62034. I think the preserved one was renumbered to 62052 and 62034 at some point for the Jacobite so I could run these in preserved mode as well. More diesels next time for the kettle haters! Andy