CKPR

I agree - you're becoming the Brian Cooke of digital model railways.

I resigned from my 'learned society' and non-regulatory professional organisation a few years ago along with many other colleagues in protest at endemic mismanagement, apparent corruption and toxic internal politics. In so doing, I lost a couple of titles and a lot of the letters after my name but it hasn't made an iota of difference to my work or professional standing.

Thinking ahead to the next one as there are two more in the stash, as well as making a former for bending the sides and back, I might tin the underside of the tank top and cut some access holes in the tank floor to enable me to tack solder it from underneath and then seam it from above. Then again like travelling to Camelot, I'm concerned that this might be a silly idea...

Thanks for the heads up on this, Jol. I'm going by the instructions that suggest that it should be OK for EM but I haven't tried a full set of wheels as yet as I've been using a spare pair of wheels as a jig / template and a new full set is the next purchase . It's such a straightforward kit that it should be easy enough the remove the supports if necessary.

Some more progress on the tender for the Cauliflower - I've added LRM hornblocks and bearings to provide some compensation for the tender as per all my other tender locomotives but otherwise, it's exactly as per the kit. And a very good kit it is too. That said, I made a bit of mess of soldering on the tank top and had a lot of cleaning up to do. I'm rather pleased with it and looking forward to tackling the locomotive proper.

When I was at the LSE studying social psychology, our prof used to say that we were basically making things very easy for historians in the future.

Or indeed Carlisle Citadel (at least there was another terminus station in Kingston-upon-Hull).

I told you that I am very easily distracted. At least this counts as pre-grouping, unlike the bren gun carrier, and there is a connection, albeit very tangential, to my 'proper' modelling. Back in the 1960s, the toy shop in Cockermouth carried the full range of Airfix kits but my interests, abilities and pocket money only ran to Series 1 or Series 2 military aircraft or AFVs. The wider range of ships, airliners and vintage cars seemed both very sophisticated and also a bit boring to 6-7 year old me but the B Type bus kit seemed to be the very epitome of 'grown up' modelling. I think I was also picking up on the Victorian & Edwardian nostalgia boom at the end of the 1960s, including of course "The Railway Children", beloved of those resident in the parish of Castle Aching. There you go, a very tenuous link to fine scale model making, Cockermouth and the pre-grouping era.

I had several litters of kittens when I first attempted High Level gearboxes and having messed one up and wrecked a Mashima motor, I confessed all to Chris at his stand at a show. He had the patience of a saint, talked me through building them and since then, they've been my first choice. Interestingly, I made an exception for my M&CR 0-4-4T for which I used a NWSL gearbox as per Skinnylinny's suggestion as I wanted an enclosed remote gearbox for the front axle, the motor being in the well tank. The High Level boxes are actually really easy to build as long as you have a set of broaches and follow the instructions to the letter. What you do need to avoid are the apparently simpler fold up single-stage gear mountings for Romford gears that are still around - you'll spend fruitless hours trying to get the wretched things to run smoothly.

I think as a hobby, we would all have been happier if we had stuck with clockwork ! Seriously, reading through old magazines from the 1950s to the early-1970s, the modellers still using precision controlled clockwork tend to come across as very contented and enjoying running model trains in a very prototypical manner rather than worrying about every last detail.

It's written by Robert Western who wrote a history of the CKPR for Oakwood Press in 2001 and I don't know yet if there is any lineage back to Jack Simmons 1947 book (Oakwood Press No. 4 !).

The other treasures lurking in the RM digital archive are the real labours of love, the largely scratchbuilt layouts and individual pieces of rolling stock that are just so atmospheric and evocative even though they are not accurate to the n-th degree - have a look at RM for 1976 and you'll see some marvellous modelling that didn't all come from a factory, let alone one in China.

In other news, looks like I'll be doing a review of the new Oakwood Press book on the M&CR for the CRA journal, 'Cumbrian Railways' .

I like to have a kit build ongoing with a scratchbuild and so I've dipped into the collection of loco kits seen in previous posts and made a start on the London Road Models Cauliflower. Or rather, the ex-Geo. Norton Webb 1800 gal tender that is common to several LRM LNWR kits. "Always build the tender first" is the old advice and this case, it will be good practice for the ones included in the Whitworth and DX Goods kits. Definitely a case of etched brass origami and I'll be making a couple of wooden formers before tackling the other two.

A seriously good album as well.

All the very best for a speedy and full recovery - sounds much more serious than my minor cardiac troubles, so do take it easy and hope that some railway modelling is part of the rehab plan.

This makes at least three of us currently modelling the North Sunderland in O gauge.

Reletter it as Rowrah & Kelton Fell ?! No one will be any the wiser !

Best wishes for a speedy and full recovery. Dougal ['CKPR']

From memory, there is an article in "Airfix Magazine Annual 3" on a freelance LT layout that has pictures of stock built using the Hamblings lithos.

I've added the buffer and drag beams and the valences to the footplate of No.3, which I re-made as I hadn't thought ahead as regards fixing it onto the chassis, etc. The reason No.3 is looking down at the rear is that the trailing wheel hornblock stays are set too high for the beam compensation to work but this should be a straightforward job to correct. And now for something not so straightforward to correct - both No.3 and No.7 are a scale 6" (2mm) too wide. It's an error carried over from the old W Hardin Osborne drawings and perpetuated in my template for the distinctive M&CR bufferbeams. Oh well, it's way too late to correct it now and it's only really noticeable when you see the gap between the splashers and the cab sides on No.7.

Very nice and always good to see a standard gauge Fletcher Jennings / Lowca Engineering locomotive. I'm presuming that you've got, or have sight of, Ian Kyle's "Steam from Lowca" (1974) ?

Possibly in its dried form and in sacks would be my guess (with the emhasis on guess).

Thank you, that's really helpful as I should have that copy and now know where to look.

I'll have to get a move on then !