TonyMay

PS, if you go for a slightly earlier period i.e. 1950s you get more variety in traction and say the 4MTs are just starting to dominate. Don't be put off by photos, because camera ownership increased after as variety decreased, so most of the variety in the 1950s didn't get captured on film that much. For that, you'd also need some 4Fs (which were used as mixed traffic engines and the LMS had *a lot* of 4Fs), some ex-LNER types, and whatever else you can find in the history books.

those bike racks aren't very realistic, or at least the parking isn't; all a thief needs to do is unscrew the front wheel and he can take the rest of your bike.

The BR 4MT is a development of the Ivatt Class 4. AFAIK the boiler is mostly the same shape though, and the chassis has the same dimensions which is the critical part. There are lots of detail differences though, including much fiddly looking pipework. I can easily tell the difference although I'm a bit of a geek. Bachmann have done both LMS and BR versions in OO and the usual way in which they develop N gauge offerings is reducing the OO gauge model, and with the same chassis it would be an "obvious" move to produce the Ivatt in N. When this happens though is anyone's guess. Meanwhile, a body kit might be available from http://www.atso-cadmodels.co.uk/ at some point. Why not ask?

I'm not sure that the Germans bothered too much with bombing the deepest depths of Wales. Not the most target-rich environment and too much of a chance of CFIT. Much to the relief of the sheep, I'm sure.

Thinking a bit more about this. The composition aspects are similar to railway photography, so a good railway artist should probably do some practical photography as well. Also, the point about unusual lighting conditions above is also the same with photography. Would be interested in hearing how those with experience in this area achieve correct proportioning and especially any advice for anyone wanting to have a go. I assume that especially to begin with, copying directly from a photograph (although there are potential copyright issues with this, so you might want to use your own). Pencil sketches seem to be a good idea. There appear to be various techniques for transferring the proportions of one image to another, including gridding, tracing paper, projection, and using a pantograph.

It's Leeds City not Central, but anyway... 190 miles from Kings X to Leeds, give or take a bit. 1760 yards in a mile, 3 feet in a yard. 190*1760*3= 1,003,200 (just over a million feet). At 7mm scale, that's 7,022,400 millimetres, or a model that's just over 7 km long, or just under 4.5 miles in proper money. Now that (as my wife would say), is big.

Points I would like to make: 1. I think that some railway paintings, tend towards saccharine and have an unnatural feel. There's always a boring clean green GWR engine running along a sunny branchline and a bloody family with a little boy and girl standing on a style waving to the train while on the road their Austin seven is parked up in just the right place. Just the thing you want on a Wedgwood plate (limited edition of 1,000 firing days in which they can mass produce a thousand of the bloody things per firing day. Yours truly will be one in a million...). These are possibly mostly aimed at non-railway enthusiasts? Whatever the market, they are basically complete tat and only suitable for use at Greek weddings. 2. Draw a human face a little bit out of proportion and it still looks like a face and still kinda looks like the sitter. Locomotives however are bloody difficult to draw or paint. Get one bit out of proportion, and it'll look very wrong to the trained eye. 3. Rivet counters will also notice if you've made mistakes, so for the pros detailed research from photographs is necessary. If you're just painting for yourself rule 1 applies. Something completely wrong such as Flying Scotsman on the Royal Albert Bridge, is just however amateurish. 4. Ignore point 2 & 3 if you're an impressionist. 5. Which brings us onto the final point - the better paintings capture aspects of the railway that aren't saccharine. See point 1 - saccharine has been done to death already. Good paintings capture character of the railway - the industrial grime, or the big landscapes of Northern England. They use light in a way that sets the scene, e.g. storm lighting (which is the sunshine you get with very changeable weather, you get quite a warm lit shafts of sunshine but with really dark skies). Or early morning/late evening sunset/sunrise light which is low and very golden. Or snow. Or night-time. Or just grey overcast and smog (see point about industrial grime).

I think a fair few stately homes were taken over by the Army during the war and used for urban warfare practice, often with live rounds... you get the idea. Whether this was one I don't know, but it's a local history issue.

3 black fives were painted green by BR in experimental liveries.

If you have a look at the prototype metal sided mineral wagons did often receive bumps and dents in them. This might not show up on photographs very well but inspection of prototypes is recommended. My thoughts are that this must be is difficult to represent in moulded plastic, which appear to produce "as new" condition, but that metal imitates metal better, and so with etched sides and some gentle spanking of the sides, possibly involving a hammer, it would be possible to recreate this. Has anyone tried it, which leads onto the question does anyone do an etched kit or is it only plastic jobbies? Have I just spotted a gap in the market? http://www.gcrailway.co.uk/the-railway/rolling-stock/windcutter-wagons/ 3rd photograph down clearly shows the ends as being very bowed, pittling on the side of the wagon and a few larger bulges. This is newly painted though so I assume the texture is highlighted by the uniform paintwork. Various other photographs in this thread show similar damage.

It's a box on wheels. the same is true of British designs too - at least in terms of steam locos. Pre-grouping companies tended to build small numbers of one particular design, then build a slightly improved (or sometimes, just different) version, and most of these got cleared out by the Big Four.

Then major variation would be for a round-topped boiler instead of the Belpaire variety. However, I note other similar models with firebox variations have not been produced. The splashers do look a bit large and wide compared to the prototype, and the cab does also seem a little robustly designed. Just out of interest can you get right-sized wheels and splashers in P4? Understand that Bachmann want the cab to retain its shape after you've dropped it on the floor.

are you sure about interlacing the track? You can get down to about 20mm or so track centres just by interlacing the sleepers. Interlacing track requires crossovers and will start to introduce complications into the electrics.

Without having to trawl through 23 pages of chatter, are Hornby confirmed to be making a streamlined version in due course, given they've now got the chassis, or is it only entirely sensible speculation so far?

Most of the Metcalfe kits are for Midland and the S&C. The coal stage is loosely based on the MR standard design; the shed is based loosely on Hellifield's straight shed. Looking at photographs however there are obvious differences, and Hellifield's 4 road shed has been reduced to two roads and about half its length. The Midland tended to go for roundhouses (see Barrow Hill), but had quite a few straights as well. Hellifield had standardish coal stage but was unusual in that it was wood rather than brick (and in later years it fell apart somewhat). The Metcalfe kit represents the more standard brick. The ramp at Barrow Hill survives (although the coal stage fell down/was demolished) - the whole thing is 530 feet or just over 2 metres in 4mm scale from the point, add on a 100ft headshunt and it's 2.5 metres or so. ouch. When you're having to compress everything else though, especially in OO, trying to recreate the ramp into the stage is a nightmare. The ramp ends up dominating the planning, especially if you want to put it where it should go, which is just outside the shed, on its own loop (to allow access to the shed when there's engines being coaled). And of course you can't have tracks going across the ramp, and because it's a higher level it should go further back in the baseboard so as to not get in the way of everything else... My considered advice is to ditch the ramp completely. The Midland did have level coal stages (e.g. Manningham, Lincoln), and some stages were later replaced or supplemented by more "modern" equipment, either a big full on cenotaph (mostly at the bigger sheds (or in the case of Hasland, ones not suffering from massive subsidence problems)), or a smaller arrangement usually consisting of an angled conveyor belt to raise the coal and deposit it in the tender using gravity. No doubt someone can provide photographs. The latter certainly would make an interesting model if animated. The key point is that such take up a lot less room, essentially being the length of a loop around an engine, and the width of about four tracks. Best thing might be to kitbash the Metcalfe kit into a level example, or there's a crappy superquick kit of a cenotaph.

Will the rotating bunkers rotate?