brack

I think brennan had calculated how long the gyroscope would keep spinning after power was cut off, cant remember the reference but I want to say that the car would stay upright for 12 hours or something daft. More than long enough to find a couple of props and wedge it in any case.

Late response (I've been scratchbuilding a kitchen) but yes. Some rather talented gentleman in japan.

That's a bit over familiar, dearie.

Im often tempted to try a brennan monorail in 7mm. I know it's been done in 1:22, I rather suspect the physics gets quite a lot harder as you go down scales. I'm pretty sure I've seen models of both lartigue systems in o scale, and I think don boreham built one (probably 16mm).

Er, surely if WW1/grouping/depresssion/1926 general strike hadnt intervened the ECML would've been electrified at 1.5kVDC. https://www.lner.info/locos/Electric/ee1.php

Civitaveccchia: Leopold and Robert (next to the building). Apologies - I was staying up on a hamster recapturing stakeout last night (it managed to escape, chew through the edge of an old floorboard and drop into the space below the floor for 2 days, but I managed to get the beast back at 2am) so had plenty of time to do some googling!

This photo at Aberdeen Proving Grounds: Shows 3 guns, which are identified as: 919219 Ausf C, 28cm "Leopold" 919214 Ausf C, 31cm Glatt 919396 Ausf D, 28cm Not Robert - which doesnt seem to have got to Aberdeen. https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=205906 Apparently the other 2 were scrapped at APG so only leopold survives.

Plot thickens - I found some interesting stuff last night - From this thread: https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=70939&start=105 "sure looks like the rail car on the left is part of the Pennsylvania Railroad? That would place an K5 (E) Ausf. D in the USA, right? O'Rourke (Anzio Annie does say that in February 1946, 2 more K5 (E) guns arrived in the U.S., having been found in the Hillersheben and Leipzig rail yards - one smooth bore barrel and one standard, the standard having never been fired." So there were possibly 4 guns that made it to the US. Reference is also made to the allies capturing several others intact in italy near trieste - one going to Yugoslavia in 1946. One may have been captured in the Netherlands too. Seems there were quite a lot of them floating about at the end of the war. Makes sense - they're great big things so wouldnt be that easy to destroy completely (one report says the crews of Leopold and robert only set charges on the breech blocks and elevator mechanisms, but an air raid shortly afterwards knocked one over).

Is the photo definitely in NJ? I see lots of references to them both being taken back to the US, and Leopold being fixed up with some parts from Robert. However every source I find then tells us that this gun is the one now at fort Lee, and then as an afterthought says theres also one at batterie todt. The most detailed site is this one: http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol133lw.html Which suggests that only one gun was taken back to the US, and the one left behind in Europe being that now in france.

There was a proposal to build standard gauge from the NB line at arrochar over the rest and be thankful to a pier near ardkinglas. There were later narrow gauge proposals (2'6" and 3') to build from arrochar - inverary - campbeltown or dalmally - inverary - campbeltown. Either of which would've been spectacularly uneconomic! It does of course make it quite plausible as a might have been. I believe many of the schemes were defeated by opposition from inverary castle - a change of heart from those quarters might have made it happen. I've toyed with modelling something along the narrow gauge proposals a few times.

It's far too fat in the boiler for a Y7 and looks quite front heavy (the skirt behind the smokebox possibly exacerbates that). It does however have a plausibly north eastern ish character to it, so to speak.

I used a motor like that in my 3d printed Y7 (and that's with 3d printed frames). You might need to make new frames if it wont fit. The back end of it will likely reach into the cab though.

Y8

I can imagine that as bigger locos were withdrawn their old tenders might well be cascaded down to others to give greater range or replace knackered tenders. I think I'd heard somewhere that a VS tender had survived, maybe that's the one.

I have a book with illustrations of an enormous crocodile in it, but it doesnt survive contact with an elephant at the end.

When the corn is as high, As an elephant's eye, That's amore?

I think (and may be wrong, but bear with me) that when Merlin was preserved (at cultra) it had no tender, that had already been scrapped. Merlin is currently on loan to the RPSI and the tender running with it is owned by the RPSI. Is it safe to assume that prior to Merlin arriving on long term loan they had 171 and two tenders? Therefore it could just be 171 running with each of the two. When they first got 131 running it had with a blue tender for a while (until they finished it's new one I presume). This is 131 on the plinth in dundalk (no idea what number tender it is): This is the new build tender for 131 (on an original underframe) So that'd give at least one spare tender?

From a J21 pattern I seem to recall - I believe it had a good fixing up at one of the local lner works before delivery.

Back to the subject at hand - this is the 1st loco print (which is a bit twisted in places so needs more support). However I gave it a waft of primer to see how it'd come up. The nuts on the valve chests are quite tricky to discern in real life - but zoomed in you can see they've come out very well - hex nuts and the studs poking out the top.the rivets look excellent in the primer too. Theres a bit of layering visible, but it's better quality than shapeways produce. I suspect halfords yellow filler primer might be enough to hide the layering.

Does it need to be a laptop? Desktops are usually cheaper, much more upgradeable and have higher performance. The main things to do would be to stuff as much ram in as you can and fit a SSD. My old (second) pc is only a Pentium g3220 from 7 years ago with 8gb ram and a 500gb ssd, but it runs very fast. Then again I'm using rhino3d which I prefer to fusion, and which runs faster in my experience.

If you've managed to retrieve the boiler already then it'd be a safe assumption to me that you can get access to where the chassis is and that you have the equipment to get that too. Lots of useful motion parts in it.

Loctite? (The bearing retaing ones, not the Cyanoacrylates). I'm not going to suggest it, but I have heard of people submerging the wheels in water with just crank/axle end sticking out and blasting it with a torch flame. Seems a bit much to me though.

I already had a chimney and safety valve bonnet spare, so removed them from the CAD. Some distortion on both front and rear buffer beams, so more supports needed there. Overall I'm pretty happy. The loco in 28mm wide across bufferbeams (it's a 7mm scale model of the smallest standard Bagnall saddle tank).

The sutton miniature railway booklet has drawings of mighty atom in it (class 10).

Regarding accidental empire, the evils of colonialism and do gooders, my favourite story is the mombasa protectorate of 1824-6. Mombasa was ruled by the sultan of oman at the time. They would send a ship every so often to collect their share of tax/revenue and take it back to oman. Mombasa being one of the largest slave markets/ports in east africa. Anyway, when the omanis turned up to collect the money, the locals refused to pay, so the omani fleet blockaded the harbour. Captain Owen, in the area surveying the coast for the RN with two boats, popped in to restock provisions (due to the recent treaties with britain the omanis happily let him through). Owen was a devout man and a committed abolitionist. The locals told Owen they would cede the city to britain if they'd protect them from their omani oppressors. To that end they (somewhat prematurely) flew a home made british flag from the fort and told the omanis where to go - we're british now, so we certainly wont be paying up. The omanis left. Owen was thrilled at the opportunity to strike a blow against the evils of slavery, so negotiated to form a protectorate, with the proviso that slave trading be banned, which the locals agreed to. He went off to carry on his surveying and left a handful of his crew to 'govern' the locals, who slowly succumbed to tropical diseases and died off one by one, whilst trying to stop the locals from selling slaves (which they carried on doing as soon as Owen's ships were out of sight - they'd had no intention of stopping). By the end the colonial governor was a 16 yr old midshipman as everyone of higher rank had died of malaria. He apparently put local noses out of joint by somehow capturing a slave dhow, freeing the slaves and giving them each a plot of land to live on. Owen wrote to the admiralty proudly informing them of the new protectorate and how it would greatly assist in the fight against the Indian Ocean slave trade. They responded in horror - relations with Oman were friendly but delicate, and they'd just signed a treaty to not interfere with the sultan's territories (in order to guarantee safe access to India) he was effectively told to go and give it back. So in 1826 the mombasa protectorate was abolished. Owen was then reassigned to northern Canada, presumably to teach him a lesson. 60 years later East Africa again became british, again pretty much unintentionally and against the wishes of the government of the time. Rather contrasts with the popular image of rapacious english armed forces turning up, shooting the natives, planting a flag, painting the map pink and enslaving the world. The truth tends to be much more complex and balanced.