CKPR

All modelling at a halt as the stepdaughter has been using the modelling room as a home office this week and then there's the usual round of Crimbo socialising. Therefore, I thought I'd post this article from MRC March 1982 with a request. "Harringham" was the first time I ever saw models of the M&CR [I was familiar with Ross Pochin's Furness models] and I always awaited a follow up that never appeared. I never saw the layout at an exhibition but I did see the locomotives, albeit looking a bit worse for wear, when they were displayed in Tully House Museum in Carlisle in the late 1980s. Does anyone know what happened to them after this ?

We saw them play in Coventry cathedral ruins a few years ago and it was one of the best gigs I've ever been to - Terry Hall RIP

My favoured combination was Mainly Trains hooks (now available from Wizard Models) and EMGS links. For screw couplings, a reasonable compromise is MT hooks with PC links & screws (PC hooks are unworkably small in my experience).

IIRC it was by Stanley C Jenkins and was featured in RM c.1977-78.

Going back to Mike Sharman's 19th century models and layouts, didn't he once say that he wasn't interested in modelling any engine that had a cab ?!

Are you still looking for this ? If so, PM me as I have a set of wheels, gears and rods going spare.

In case anyone hasn't already read it, A.J.Smithers 'A New Excalibur- The development of the tank 1909-1939' is an excellent overview, covering the technical, military and political issues and controversies involved.

This is delving into modelling history, but I recall that the first picture of the loading of a tank was the subject of a rather good 1/76 scale diorama featured in either 'Airfix Magazine' or the shortlived 'Model World' that was published by Almark. Given my recollection of the latter, it would be c.1972-3 - told you it was going back a bit !

Railway of the Month, Railway Modeller June 1976

The website of the Cumbrian Railways Association is the best place to start [the link is in my signature below].Almost all of the published books on the railways of West Cumberland and the Furness region are focused on the 1960s or, to a lesser extent, on the pre-grouping period. That said, the CRA journal often covers the grouping era and there is a lot of information on the website. In addition, there is a very active on-line discussion forum [aka "the electronic telegraph"] that seems to be able to come with the answer to just about any question to do with the railways of Cumbria.

I've no idea what it is but I like it.

Just a thought on those left over end compartments - after cutting one down to the door, window & end and the other to just the end, you could build a nice horsebox using plasticard for the horse compartment & tack box. There's bound to be a prototype in Bourne's NCPS book and as horseboxes tended to roam far and wide, it wouldn't matter if it was LD &ECR or HR.

Alas no... in compensation for losing the barn, I've been offered the second sitting room as my room for modelling and hi-fi with the usual caveat that everything must be very tidy with no mess. This means that Mealsgate & High Blaithwaite will be converted into wall mounted cameo layouts and Seahouses will have to be an old fashioned portable layout living under the stairs. The idea of modelling Cockermouth has been quietly shelved - I'll probably build the engines and rolling stock and hope someone builds an EM layout on which I can run them.

I model the local railways of the area I grew up in, west Cumbria [ or Cumberland as was] but in two time periods. Firstly, 1967-1981, the period in which I became aware of and interested in the local railways and which encompasses seeing Black 5s at Workington and the WCML electrification reaching Carlisle. The second period is 1908-1923, covering the latter years of the original pre-grouping companies, particularly the M&CR, who adopted their distinctive green & white coach livery in 1908.I would say that my interest is in the old companies per se rather than any specific era and the various companies were still discernable even into the early 1980s despite the grouping, nationalisation and, more pertinently, the modernisation of the 1960s & 70s. I have to admit that although still a rail user, I've no interest in the railways after the early 1980s and certainly not in the present day franchises run by bus companies and other countries' state railways as to my mind, sectorisation and privatisation drew the curtain on the old railways.

Like the C&WJR coke wagons, these must have travelled over the M&CR...though probably not to Mealsgate even though much of the line was still intact in 1973. Alas, the plan for the dual era (1908 / 1973) M&CR mainline layout has been shelved as the old barn is coming down to make way for a house extension.

Oh 'eck, now this does raise a quandary - I don't usually buy r-t-r, least of all when there's a perfectly good kit available, but NER No.1 is one of my favourite locomotives (and the subject of a scratchbuild about 35 years ago, which was pretty good if I say so myself). Given the very limited range of these engines, the most prototypical layout might be an inglenook based on Newcastle quayside, which was operated without running round the wagons (mostly NER opens if photos are owt to go by). Now, if it wasn't for the unaccountable absence of any NER or LNER Tyneside electrics in the r-t-r ranges, I would also be thinking of a Newcastle 'minories' (basically New Bridge St. Mk 2 ! ), with the electric locomotives working an unlikely service to a city centre goods depot. After our holiday at Seahouses, I've only gone and bought an O class (LRM kit complete with Portescap motor) and I already have a lot of NER rolling stock...

Good luck ! If you're going down the epoxy resin route, as well as reinforcing with wire or pins, you could also add some thin brass strip under or behind the valences across the break. A bit belt and braces but better to be on the safe side.

Whatever adhesive you use [I'd suggest epoxy resin - evil stuff but it does the job], I'd strongly recommend pinning the joint with wire or headless pins to act as a reinforcement for what will be a necessarily weak joint.

These conversions are certainly making the most of the Drummond lineage of "Nellie" , something that hadn't dawned on me until now despite "Polly" being my first model locomotive back in the late 1960s.

Shades of the Gastang & Knott End and the WC&P.

It's interesting and informative to read the reports of model railway exhibitions from the 1950s and 1960s which seemed to be based around admiring superb glass case models and watching correctly operated model railways, many of which were still 3-rail together with instances of clockwork and live steam power. Whilst there were examples of superb finescale modelling combined with running to the book, e.g. the MMRS' 'Presson' layout, operational fidelity seems to have been the key factor for exhibition layouts back then. Similarly, published accounts of private coarse scale O gauge layouts run to the book such as 'Sherwood' and the less well known 'Millport & Selfield' and 'Manchester Central' all seem to convey an air of authenticity that far surpasses the standard of modelling, which appears poor by comparison to current r-t-r.

Sounds like a distinctly Marxist organisation to me - Groucho Tendency, of course.

Johnson using the Scooby Doo defence -I would have got away with becoming PM again if it wasn't for those meddling ex-ministers from my own administration - to cover up his lack of support among Tory MPs.

In terms of a northern prototype or inspiration for a Minories-style layout, I would suggest either Great Moor Street in Bolton or New Bridge St. in Newcastle. Both small urban termini that were overshadowed by later and much larger stations but which continued to have intensive local services.

There are quite a few real life examples of early passenger stations being repurposed as goods or parcels depots. If using inglenook design, you could have the entrance to , for example, an old train shed as a low relief feature at the end of the sidings.