CKPR

On 13/02/2017 at 22:42, Pacific231G said:

Hi Dave

Could you expand on that please? It's a claim I've also heard many times before so it would be good to have a credible, preferably peer reviewed, source to deny it.

 

It's very difficult, if not impossible, to 'prove' a negative but it's very straightforward to demonstrate that any given hypothesis (e.g. All railway modellers are autistic) is false. It's known as the 'black swan argument', in that it's easier to disprove the assertion that all swans are white, as all you need to do is to find a single black swan to disprove ('falsify) the assertion / hypothesis, rather than  it is to check all the swans in the world to prove that they are all white. I wouldn't advise the latter course of action anyway, as they're horrible creatures (says someone who was attacked by a swan in 1967 when it bit me AND stole my ice cream cornet).

My day job is clinical psychology, I've worked in the field of autism for nigh on a quarter of a century and, no, being a railway modeller (or having any other hobby for that matter) isn't a sign of being on the autistic spectrum.

A. C.Stadden's loco crew are here!  Just in time for Christmas.  I have primed my family, but if they miss it then ithey will be a New Year present to myself.

These look excellent and I think that a combination of the 1860s and the 1900s sets would produce the rather old-fashioned attire, especially when it came to headgear,  that was worn 1890-1910 by crews on the M&CR and doubtless on many other of the smaller and more remote lines.

I can only hope - nay, pray - that one of the versions to be catered for is the one that went to the Bishops Castle Railway.

I was just about to post the very same !

Just to throw in a further one...another inspiring one for me was 'Horselunges' - light railway atmosphere again, this time in P4 and exquisitely modelled.it appeared in the RM around 1996 time if I remember rightly. I did manage to see this layout in the flesh around a decade ago and it didn't disappoint at all!

By complete chance, I once shared a flat with Alan the builder of 'Horselunges' and made some of the wagons (HM&ST prototypes) and one of the locos for it in a swop for an exquisite M&CR signal box, which i still treasure.

Just to update the post above.

 

The Thomas Blacklock 5-Plank open wagons are a C&M Models commission model, so will only be available through C&M - we usually do one Cumbrian wagon per year.

 

They are due for release at the beginning of November, which dovetails in with the Workington show on November 19th/20th.

 

Price is not yet finalised.

Just bought one today at the Workington show. Now, as all of my existing PO wagons are only lettered on one side only, I'll have to get another matching but unpainted Dapol wagon  and somehow cut them in half lengthways to make two wagons out of it.... ermm, mebbe not !  

As well as being high-end hi-fi manufacturers (I've got a Garrard 401 & SME 3012 set up), SME were also, and may still be, aerospace industry sub-contractors. Not bad for a firm that started out making model signals 60 years ago.

There was a layout in RM in the 70s, possibly based on or imagineered onthe Stockton and Darlington. Anyone have a better recollection?

September 1975 IIRC 

What's pertaining old bean ?

Stephen Poole (I went to school with his younger brother), who used to make GER loco kits, as well as selling various whitemetal and brass(?) GER loco parts - chimneys, smokebox doors, Westinghouse pumps.

 

Other loco kits came from Bec Models and GEM (George Mellor?) and Wills Finecast (mostly re-issued).

 

Jackson wheels and couplings.

GEM kits are still available from Thamesmead (IIRC)

Hope however it is going, it's going well!

Thanks  - We're very close to moving to just outside Ludlow into a house with a very large shed / very small barn that is already earmarked for my workshop and the layouts (Mealsgate, High Blaithwaite and hopefully Linefoot Junction and the Aurora & Pacific Logging and Traction co.). As predicted, I've been working on my stack of American craftsman kits whilst down in Cardiff and have just completed the JV Models Boyd logging camp - these plank by plank kits have opened my eyes to building exactly as per the prototype !

Bill Nelson's 'Chance Encounters in the Garden of Light'

This is a stalled project - a scratchbuild of a De Havilland DH10 Biplane Bomber in 1/72 scale. I last did anything on it in January. When it is eventually finished it will be completely from scratch with the exception of the guns, which will be brass castings that I have already bought for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that sir, is proper modelling !

I've seen Canadian Pacific SD40-2s in the mountains in eastern BC with engine compartment doors wide open in an attempt to keep the engines cool and running. I've also seen what look like 'unofficial' extra grilles on the engine compartments to get more air inside. It would be hard to model open engine room doors - you would have to have a representation of the engine inside the hood. Perhaps you could do it in a dummy.

Taking this a step further, how about a Class 28 or 17 with the engine on fire on a mid to late 1960s layout ?!

 have also been completing a rake of varied coal wagons for the Nantcwmdu Coal Company (I was told firmly by a Welsh speaking friend that it should be Nantcwmdu, not Nantcwmddu - after I had lettered about eight wagons) for my Rhymney layout, but they are not in a fit state yet to photograph. I just got rather fed up with applying transfers, and put them to one side for a while.

I appreciate that this might be a bit too late, but I only ever letter PO wagons on one side, especially if I'm doing similar bespoke letter by letter jobs. I take my hat off to you for tackling a rake of eight - the most I've ever done is five and that was with POWSides dry rub sets (in my defence, dry rub lettering is one of the minor works of the devil)

You're losing me here, chaps - where is this strange place you call "Norfolk" ? It's not on my 1908 RCH map of Maryport and Workington and it's not even on my big map of the known world,  a 1899 map of the Leeds & Liverpool canal and that goes to some godforsaken place in the far east called Kingston-upon-Hull. I'm beginning to think that you're making it all up...

Finding unmade kits is not the problem, being prepared to pay the price does put some off, but this is what Sci-fi modellers have been doing for years. Look back at old Sci-fi from 60s and 70s and you will start to recognise the original kits, even when only part is used. Only way to replicate those classic sci-fi models is to buy an original kit(some don't come cheap), make a copy of the part required without damaging the kit(more difficult if sealed in bag), put back in packaging and sell it on(sometimes at a profit). The collectors get their unmade and undamaged kits, the modellers get the parts copied they require.

I think the problem with car kits would relate more to licensing of the car manufacturer. Unofficial models rarely state the actual vehicle make(trade mark), but to everyone it is obviously a certain vehicle.

This is what "Polar Lights" have been doing with the old Aurora monster kits, the moulds for which are either lost or unavailable.

"When I was a young engineer, one of my colleagues invented a fictional electrical device called an 'interositor'.

Whenever a Very Senior Person toured our department, and asked (hands clasped neatly behind back, craning forward slightly) "So, what are you chaps working on at the moment?", the reply would always be "We're looking further at the possible advantages of interositors.".

Wasn't the "interositer" from the 1950s SF film "This Island Earth" ?!

I too once had a Highfield Models 'catalogue' (from the York show in 1977 or 1978 IRRC ) and as far as I can recall, the range included:

-HR brake van (possibly two variants) - I've still got one of these unbuilt

-NER Milk van

-NER Brake 3rd and Compo coaches

-LSWR coach (Brake Compo ?)

-GER Tram engine (Y6)

-Sentinal 4w VBT

-GER sundries van (I think)

-GWR coach (?) 

The GCR/CLC brake must be a later model as I certainly don't recall it.

I'll be watching this thread with interest as I've also recently purchased this kit with a view to building the BCR version, presuming it's not too similar to some of the early 0-6-0s of the M&CR.

The name board from Forres SB, several wagon plates, a BR 9F tender numberplate, several NER cast iron door and gate plates, a BR first aid box (used as such), a couple of LNWR and FR bridge number plates (one of which is, by complete co-incidence, the number of our house and sits by the front door - the future Mrs CKPR thought it was intentional but I'd just left it there), a couple of NER oil cans, an awful lot of old paperwork form the pre-group lines in West Cumberland, various framed RCH maps, a couple of working LMS hand lamps, a noticeboard from Bassenthwaite Lake station, etc. In my defence, I haven't added to this mini-museum in the past couple of decades and gave away a load of similar stuff a few weeks when I moved house and just abandoned several cast iron track chairs along with a Furness Rly brick (!)

Not just the GWR and LNER kits please - the Connoisseur kit for the BR standard brake van was one of the best etched kits I've ever built and probably the best wagon in my collection.

White lead did make good paint and was used (still is if they can get it) by Artists. It does seem to discolour a little and I suspect that Landlords would use darker colour if available because they didn't show there age so much hence they could leave it longer before repainting. Incidentally wasn't it White lead that was used for carriage roofs.

Tradesmen used to mix a lot of their stuff themselves. Glaziers would mix whiting and Linseed oil to make putty. My grandfather said freshly mixed putty was much better.

Don

David Jenkinson gives a similar exposition on the old methods of mixing and applying paints in his 1988 book 'British railway carriages of the 20th century' and very interesting it is too.

 

 

I did originally try to scratch build some buffer stops making a jig for bending rail but found getting it right proved to be near impossible and when I realised just how much like LBSCR buffers the Peco ones looked I decided to modify them.

 

 

You and me both ! There are jigs for bending rail like this  (anti-clastic bending I think it's called)  and I think that Studiolith did one back in the 1970s but I've never seen one, let  alone tried to use one. 

As per jamie92208 with the use of small pieces of Tamiya masking tape (marvellous stuff, if rather pricey) to hold the individual pieces in place while you rub them down. I've used Powsides lettering sets in the past for scratchbuilt wagons (the "Moresby Coliery' wagon seen in the  'Mealsgate'  thread over on the pre-grouping pages uses these) but I now prefer to save up and pay extra to buy their pre-painted and lettered wagons, which require a fair amount of fettling and touching up but can look really good,  as I find applying rub-down transfers a nerve-wracking operation at the best of time. I much prefer modern waterside transfers used with Microsol and Microset or the old Methfix transfers, both of which give a really good 'painted on' look to lettering.