CKPR

Having obtained that lovely Caley 4-4-0T, I obviously needed a Caley goods engine... "metal working skills required " is putting it mildly. This proper no nonsense old-fashioned manly Jamieson kit was waiting for me on my return and to be honest, the fit of the sheet metal and cast parts is rather impressive. Not sure about the Alan Gibson chassis sideframes that came with it though, as they are for an LNER J72 ! Now, is it feasible to convert a CR Lambie 0-6-0 into a CR ex-Solway Junction Rly. 0-6-0 ?

I think it's in Model Railway News sometime between 1967 -1968 [currently in a motorway service station on the M6 otherwise I'd could be more precise].

@SteamAle's Spattry with everyone's favourite M&C engine No.26 0-4-4T on a goods train heading west to Maryport. Ever the inverterate borrowers, the M&CR have somehow obtained a G&SWR brake van for this train, probably from the adjacent Sou' Western yard at Currock in Carlisle !

Went yesterday and it's a really excellent show with everything that you want from a model railway show, including live steam and model engineering through to kids layouts, a finescale section, impressive O gauge through to achievable micro layouts and some inspirational & friendly demos. A big thanks and well done to @SteamAle and everyone involved with Solrail.

Somewhat ironically for a company with a supposedly retro take on model trains, that looks like some sort of AI-generated abomination.

A lovely meeting with @Citadel at Solrail and a chance to see those marvellous M&CR coaches he's been working on - I think my rake [Trevor Charlton bodies with DIY underframes and a ropey Halfords'n'Humbrol paint job] might be going into the shops for refurbishment as a result !

At Solrail and suggested to @SteamAlethat as we have similar M&CR stock, we could combine his 7mm Aspatria with my 4mm Mealsgate using perspective and some deft timing of the trains on the Bolton Loop...here's the fiddle yard on Aspatria.

Here's a thought - what is the coach livery in the carriage print depicting the M&C Crampton ?

Six o' one and half a dozen of t'other !

Good question. We know for certain that post-1905 the underframes, headstocks and ends of the coaches were green and unlined as there is no mention of any solebar lining in Ross Pochin article on M&C livery (MRN Jaunary 1967) in which he quotes from the notes of one Arthur Gunn [former M&CR coach painter ?]. As for the teak coaches, I think the solebars would have been black and unlined - "Prior to the autumn of 1905, M&C coaches were varnished teak with lettering and numbering in square block style having a gold leaf body 4 ins high, shaded black on the right hand side".

Reading Vol 2 of the HMRS Journal over a leisurely breakfast before the arrival of the rest of the family from Manchester, I found this charming article from 1957 by Ross Pochin. It's part of a series of pieces about the LNWR's claim to be the Premier Line and he rather cheekily but convincingly puts forward the M&CR as THE Premier Line - you know that I'm not going to disagree with this assessment !

I'm really taken with this topic as I've always been more concerned with atmosphere than absolute accuracy and I'm more inspired by older models and layouts, especially systems built for operation. To put this into context, most of my modelling is pre-grouping, EM gauge and with a lot of very old fashioned scratchbuilding and having just turned 60, I guess I'm in the last generation of railway modellers who were inspired by Rev. Peter Denny's "Buckingham". I suppose I also remember when the standards of Pendon Museum were cutting edge and something to aspire to rather than a mandatory blueprint !

Agricultural lime and limestone for sugar beet processing would have been important imports into agricultural areas along with other fertilisers and seed stock, especially potatoes, with the latter two being among the last traffic conveyed in the old 12T vans in the 1970s. Also, don't forget about oil coming in for rural factories and processing plants.

It's been built for OO but the wheels are Romfords and there appears to be the necessary clearance for changing the axles to EM.

Will ye ken this beauty just arrived via the Bay of E ? A proper old school scratchbuild and none the worse for her armour plate mainframes. If anyone recognises her or her builder, then do please let me know. And what justifies a Caley 4-4-0T on this thread ? The Solway Junction Rly. of course and its connection with the M&C at Brayton with one of it's stations (Bromfield) being in the locality of Mealsgate [In reality, the 4-4-0Ts were used on the Scottish side of the SJR on the services from Annan to Kirtlebridge].

Staying in Cambrian territory, the Bishops Castle Rly. originally intended to carry on from Lydham Heath to Montgomery (or thereabouts) and I think this proposal has previously been discussed as the basis for a model.

The original description sounds very similar to the North Sunderland Rly. that ran from Chathill to Seahouses and which was a an 1898 light railway in all but its legal status.

The next ones will finished in pre-1923 William Baird & Co. livery, honest.

It's marked down as a repair before entering service and auld Dugald Kirkpatrick, the 60 year old junior wagon painter, has had his weekly pay docked by 2d for his lack of due respect for the company's property.

Well, I managed to finish off the LNWR and NBR wagons on the workbench and I'm going to have a go at completing No. 7 this weekend. But wait, what madness lies on t'other side of said wagons ?! In my defence, I used an unopened PC Models Sheet M13 LMS wagon insignia (methfix), so whilst I may be in the wrong, like the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, I am definitively in the wrong. The blank side of the NBR wagon is, of course, due to my lack of LNER lettering [forgetting about stash of Slaters NER 20T hopper kits with their ever so useful lettering sheets]

The etched weighbridge produced by Roger Smith is still available http://www.rogersmithmodelrailways.com/4mm_scale_oo_6.html

Currently betwixt an overnight stay in A&E at the start of the week and an out-patient angiogram at the end of the week and determined to finish painting a brace of LNWR opens. I'm also pondering going over to auto couplings, at least in part, and I'm considering Marc D's "Flippems" (I liked the look of Dinghams but these are obviously now unobtainable). Better modellers than me in the CRA have attempted to persuade me of the merits of AJs and I've got the wherewithal in the form of jigs, etc. Alas, the cluttered undersides of my wagon fleet, some of it nearly 40 years old, probably precludes fitting them.

To paraphrase Father Dougal, aren't railway modellers great, eh ? They're so much easier to talk to than real people !

One thought - is the engine pulling the tender as 'dead' weight or is the tender contributing to the effective weight & tractive effort ? There's a useful discussion of how to arrange the latter with reference to single drivers in Mike Sharman's booklet on compensation, but it essentially comes down to arranging the tender to rest on the engine via the drawbar.

Well...there has been at least one Guardian editorial in praise of railway modelling and which defended our hobby from the yahoo cry of 'boring !', which they defined as encompassing "seemingly everything in life except football and shouting"