Maurice Hopper

Used it three times now .... 20mins adds a couple of thousand steps to my iPhone Health record.   If I look sideways I might be lucky enough to see a train going by....  at least for a day or two!!

I remember at the Berlin exhibition, which must be a good ten years ago, the LGB for the kids to play with was powered by exercise bikes.  Each bike had a picture one of the trains on it and the more kids pedalled, the faster the train went..... very good learning.

Thank you for your generous comments.  Is the 'Syrup Train' better than the gravy train?

The cab front and back were of different material ....  many indeed have been an OXO tin.

It has been easy to work this material in 16mmNG, but I am not sure if it would be as pleasant a task in something more exacting.  It thinness makes filing things to shape rather taxing as it has the habit of just filing over!

As for the name .... it might be Pilton as per the L&B's (modern) diesel ... or I had wondered about Lion.

Must get some paint on it ..... BR diesel black with a cycling lion crest.

Thanks again - Maurice

Not quite complete....  the cab back is still missing, although the parts are cut.  I will wait until the lamination around the windows to hold the glass in place have been sorted out before fixing this.  There is a lot of tidying up to be done when it has finished drying on the Rayburn after I post-soldering wash.

One nice feature that works in this large scale is the way the tongues on the bottom edge of the front and back hold the body on the underframe.  It is a tight fit between the frames and a slight springiness in the tinplate holds it against the back of the buffer beam.  These two pieces were actually soldered onto the footplate using the underframe as a jig.

Jim,

Just a little more done over the weekend....

I find it very helpful to make card mockups of the different sections before cutting and folding the tinplate.  Here the front bonnet is nearly complete while the card mockup in place for the back bonnet.  The rounded top corners of the bonnet are pieces of 8mm diameter brass tube.  This gives the structure some extra strength and solves the problem of making a tight radius curve in the tinplate.  

Of the tools in front, the bending bars have been the most useful on this project.  The plate is marked out and scored with a Stanley blade before being place in the bars and folded using a a piece if ply or a steel ruler to make the fold straight.  After a couple backwards and forwards folds the piece you what snaps off.

The piercing saw, with its very fine blade has some uses where a 'folding' is not possible, like taking out the centre of the footplate.

I also remember tinplate in the past.  I seem to have a recollection of going to an Epsom and Ewell exhibition (when it was held in the Epsom baths hall out of season) and seeing some Gauge 0 thin walled, Southern Railway Maunsell coaches that had been built of .... you have guest it - Golden Syrup tins.  The maker must have had a sweet tooth or a lot of friends collecting tins as these must have taken at least half a dozen tins for the sides alone.

Mikkel,  

Strangely enough, I thought exactly that while working on this yesterday.  Perhaps it was inspired by just having seen some pictures of new Stagecoach bus liveries that have bits of the 'beach ball' logo randomly applied to a single body colour.

However, I have compromised this idea and will leave the inside of the body unpainted to show it pedigree.  I surprises me how well the footplate looks in the pictures after a clean up with some scotch bright soft abrasive pads.....  almost as good a nickel-silver.

Thanks for your wide view and comments.   All part of the human drive to make things!!

Maurice

I have not looked at this for a while, so here is a collective response.  Again many thanks for the comments made on what is hardly a mainstream modelling topic.

Westernviscount and Regularity

Jealousy... Envy?  or perhaps more unpleasantly - Greed.

Dava

I like the Good Office.  I have just recently come across a series of tiny layouts made by someone in Japan that display modelling skills but are not really big enough to operate.  They really caught my eye ... see below for more of the 'Japanese connection'.

.... and Jerry

Firstly, thank you for publishing the article in MRJ and to make it quite clear to others, it was edited by me at your request.  Perhaps my comments here were ungracious.  A case of who writes the history!!

Secondly, I am encouraged by your response in relation to the MRJ’s publishing policy.

Thirdly, we may have to differ here.

Plastics, single use or longterm use, are mostly a ‘by-product’ of the petrochemical industry. This industry is based on raw materials that increasingly would be best left in the ground if the global economy is going to be able to control the rise in temperatures over the next two decades to a level that is sustainable for future generations.  That we have, over the last 130 years or so, developed an addictive dependence on fuels and other products, including plastics, of the ‘fractionating column’ is no reason not to start carrying out an analysis of how such materials should be used.  There are uses of plastics that are extremely valuable, for example in the medical world, but there are many uses that are much less so.  Perhaps a true analysis of prioritising our use of these products over the next few decades needs to be part of the process of ‘fossil fuel energy cold turkey’.

Cardboard, is a product of a carbon capturing cycle - tree growth - and therefore seems to have a more sustainable longterm future. 

(As for Guy Watson and has carbon budgets; I realised some ten years or more ago that he had a very successful and cleverly marketed business that was probably beginning to miss the point.  To be overtaken by a Riverford artic on the A30, taking veg-boxes from Devon to ‘the market’, suggested to me that he had lost the ‘local’ element in his environmentally aware business plan.  His products may be organic, but his distribution is not necessarily green.  But no doubt it would have been too difficult to set up market gardens closer to his markets, as a result of the tyranny of the land price market that puts land for food production beyond the means of food growers as it is inflated by housing developers.  The economic distribution of land-use is something this country has never really got to grips with and is a great failing of my own geographic academic discipline, which has always trailed behind history in understanding our culture.)

Additional comment….

We are discussing concepts at very different scales.  The amount of materials used, even across the whole railway modelling community, is a very small part of total global material consumption.  If we are making ‘head of a pin’ analysis, it is only at the level of reducing individual consumption that we, as individuals, can begin to make a difference.  (There are a few countries that are moving towards a more collective view.  The Dutch P.M., Mark Rutte, has just announced a reduction of the national speed limit from 110 to 100kph to reduce exhaust gases….   And the NS, a 95%+ electrified railway has been running on green, renewable, non-fossil fuel electricity for over 2 years.)

I will, as in the way of “Ikigai - The Japanese secret to a long and happy life”, continue to view my modelling and indeed the rest of my life through a changing prism, with a questioning of purpose in both the use of materials and the nature of activities.  I need (and this is a very personal comment) to build ‘resilience’ about what I am doing and get rid of the things that make me fragile.  If that includes some aspect(s) of modelling then so be it. 

The aged proponents of Ikigai are able to live an environmentally balanced existence, through gardening - including growing their own food, social activity across all age groups, physical exercise and meditation.  Not a bad way to live, especially as many of them contribute to the cluster centenarians living in northern Okinawa.

Probably enough said on this.... at least by me!

Dave and David,

It was with a degree of trepidation that I opened my blog this morning, wondering how this post would have gone down, especially so after the rejection of the original, robust text by the MRJ.   One suspects even the MRJ has to look over it shoulder to see what the advertisers opinion of such a piece would be, let alone the assumed opinions of it readers.  (Rather amusing that the reply panel I am typing in has below it an advert for 30% off Hornby locos ... while stocks last.  Do they know something we don't?)

I very much appreciate your comments and the time and thought used in making them.  I especially like the concept that 'hand work' modellers have been usurped by the increased availability of commercial productions and that these have degraded the observational element of the process.  This has much wider applications (far outside railway modelling) for the autonomy of the individual, often swept along in the rush to consume.  Perhaps there should be another R in the three Rs - Resistance!!   Resistance, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Dave remarks about the 'display diesel depot' layouts, to show off high levels of consumption and questions if this is just jealousy.  It is interesting how the word jealousy is used as a means abuse about those who think there is another way to enjoyment beyond simple conversion of wealth into material consumption.  I have an older relative who spends a great deal of time 'flying the world', but while I would love to see some of the places to which he travels, I do not feel the aged should be 'burning up' the atmosphere!  This is not jealousy, even though I could not afford such a hobby, but it is laced around with a certain degree of sadness about the lack of awareness of his actions.... although I belief he is well aware, but is driven to the course of actions by another!!

David, if only we could recycle time!  It is really good to find there are others out there who are thinking of cutting there cloth to be more suitable to the time available... whatever that is!

And you remind me that it is the process and the quality of the outcome that is important.  We need to hold on to our creativity while paying due regard to the impact of the process.

Again thank you both for these comments.   They are quite enough to justify my making the blog post.  .... and the MRJ missed out on some interesting correspondence.

Kind regards     Maurice

Just relaying some track.  Extensions are not in vogue these days.  Reducing is more my style.  Unfortunately, a little too much reduction on one of these as they are back on the bench for some adjustment before I screw them down!  Remembered the old B Lowke triangular track gauge is perhaps not the best tool to rely on without checking.   Also quite difficult to get to all parts of a point compared with modern roller gauges.

Late spring would hide mistakes.... but late winter would allow a more satisfying detailed model of the van!

We (including me) will have to wait and see!

What difference a season makes....

Venturing out (with layouts) is not really on my agenda these days.  It will probably get some further coverage here as work progresses.  The shape grow out of having some circular 16.5 gauge test track baseboards laser cut.  It was realised that these had potential for supporting a complete layout at 2mm.... and I look forward to setting it up so it can be operated from the middle ... probably on a swivel chair so one can easily follow the trains around!!

Richard,

It's a long time since I had any Britain's farm animals..... so long ago I did not know what scale they were!!

Maurice

This is a point I have often made about the post nationalisation..... A point even more strongly made by my father, who was rather closer to the centre of things railway in the 1945-65 period.  The GWR carried on as if it was still on its own...  And it seems to have from the risen from the dead in the recent time with the rebranding of FGW to GWR with the adoption of the history imagery, colours (I still don't think it is the correct green) and logos.  

Both the SR, for which my father worked from 1925, and the GWR (original) followed the then very advert grade process of having strong public relations and advertising departments.  Father who worked with John Elliot (later as assistant to him as the Deputy GM) and just down the corridor form Herbert Walker, also said the SR's departments were based on knowledge and information while the GWR produced a summer holiday fantasy .... as indeed does the GWR (present) advertising campaign!

Joined up thinking defeated several pre-Beeching chairman of BR.  Regional power was out of control on a number of rather expensive fronts... not least in locomotive building - both steam and diesel.  Padding will do it Paddington's way.  

There may even be an analogy here with other present situations..... but that is not suitable for discussion here!

Maurice

Regularity,

As a matter of interest what was the BR (S) traffic lost for want of vans?

The Weymouth vans were mostly marked with yellow discs with CIRCUIT inscribed on them.  Not a feature I remember seeing modelled.

Thanks for you appreciation of my post.

Maurice

Good stuff... Will watch with interest.

Excellent work. I have one on my list of things to do.... one day in S Scale

Wonderful collection of pieces and ideas.  Thanks for the inspiration.

Why paint the inside of this lovoely piece of work... except with some slight 'weathering' of the platform surface.  After all, it looks like the interior of a wooden building!  Best wishes