Wheatley

Absolutely it does !

Thanks Alisdair. He's certainly one of the people (Derek Cross being another) who I wish I'd met. Both are responsible for an obsession lasting my entire adult life with a part of the country I have no connection with beyond family holidays ! "A Glasgow & South Western Innocent Abroad" was the real start of it ...

I can't do any more to the platforms until the station building is complete enough to be set in position and boarded around, so I've been channelling my inner Geoffs Kent/Taylor - this is the wooden tea room / parcels office on the Dumfries end. The extra bit of wall on the right is part of the main building: The glazing bars are sticky printer label sliced as thin as I could manage with a brand new scalpel blade. Once the slightly wider top and bottom frames were in place that left a pane 16mm high to be divided into 5 equal panes. So 3 and a smidge millimetres. Rather than try and guess four smidges consistently, here's an old O-Level Technical Drawing tip: Draw a line on an angle of a length divisible by 5, in this case 20mm. Then mark off 4mm intervals. On a drawing board with a parallel motion T square drawing the glazing bars in using the marks on the sloping line is easy, on a bit of plasticard you need to draw two sloping lines at either end of the piece and join the dots up. The incomplete glazing bars towards the left hand end will be covered by poster boards but it meant the horizontal bars could be laid as a single strip. The missing glazing bars towards the right hand end are prototypical, I've no idea why ! The weather boarding is a mixture of Evergreen sheet and (before I realised you could get weatherboard sheet) 10 thou planks laid individually. All the square section timbers are Evergreen.

Fixed that for you. I used to work with some of the signalmen who had worked the branch ten years before my time :-)

There was no attempt at shaping geography, it was simply an exercise in stopping the national network going bust. Look at the tangle of parallel LNER (NBR) and LMS (CR) lines along the Clyde or around Leith, or the spiders web of LNER and LMS lines around South and West Yorkshire. The latter were even still part of two different BR regions until quite late on.

Swan's book is excellent and contains several 1930s photos. (I can't comment on the early loco captions as they'd all been scrapped before my period of interest !) The Oakfield Press book on the PP&WJR contains some period photos too (some of which may also be in Swan). "Branches and Byways - Southwest Scotland and the Border Counties" by Robotham is my other go to book, half if it is concerned with some minor railway further east but its on Abe Books at the moment for less than a tenner. Edit 1 - all these concentrate on the PP&WJR rather than the Ayrshire & Wigtownshire but include photos at Stranraer. "Little Railways ..." covers both. You need a Compound. The G&SWR also had a Peckett 0-4-0 at Ayr Harbour (there's a thread on here somewhere, possibly in the main Peckett thread) which can be made from the Hornby one reasonably easily by the look if it, although I've not found another donor to try it with yet (I'm not allowed to touch 'Dodo', apparently its 'pretty'). LMS period 1 (Bachmann/Mainline) and 2 stock on the boat trains and through services, also LMS clerestories (Ratio). G&SWR and Caley non-corridors on the locals -scratchbuilding for the former (or a very involved kit bash from the Ratio non-corridors which seemed like a good idea at the time) and Caley Coaches for the latter. G&SWR corridor stock were handsome vehicles but unlike anything else you could adapt to suit. Almost anyone's wagons as previously mentioned. Finally I doubt DL Smith's stories were recorded or based on formal interviews. I'm not sure what he did for a living (Edit 2 - librarian apparently) but he seems to have spent a lot of his time around trains and enginemen just listening, and knew a number of them personally. I suspect his anecdotes were all written from memory. The G&SWR Association is small but very helpful, although it's modelling content is geared to 7mm as that's where its modelling members' interests mostly lie.

This was about the Servqual regime (empty bins, correct posters, clean trains etc), not operations. I haven't seen the slides and I'm certainly not an apologist for Avanti, but having had to sit through a few tedious presentations from corporate branding/marketing types about similar subjects which are of no interest whatsoever to the operating or any other department, I suspect this was an ill-judged attempt to get across that Servqual really isn't difficult, and it's a battle that's yours to lose rather than one which requires something terribly complex to win. "Read contract - work to contract - perform to contract - get paid". Badly worded and crass certainly. Evidence of corporate p*** taking and taxpayer eye poking ? I doubt it.

Paste Table hinges can be mounted on the side of the structure: https://www.ironmongeryworld.com/pair-of-steel-paste-board-hinges.html Or you could make your own bespoke system using M4 bolts or similar: Just keep the axis of the hinge above the top of the rail. Only just above will work fine.

Thanks Rob, there's a great deal of trial and error involved though ! One of the advantages of having the whole down platform and its buildings on one board is that it fits on the dining room table so I can work on it in comfort. I've made a start skinning the platform surfaces with balsa, two layers of 1/16" laid at 90 degrees, the forecourt is a single thicknes of 1/8" because I'd run out of 1/16". The tarmac surface will go on top if this, probably in thin card, the balsa allows any minor undulations in the surface to be taken care of with a sanding block first. The big hole full of tools is for the station building, which needs to be a bit more complete before I fit the platform surface around it. Talking of trial and error, the Peco concrete platform edging is perfect for Newton Stewart, the down platform having been rebuilt in concrete in (I think) the 1920s. But because the platform edge forms the edge of this module, rather than use the Peco sections as they are supposed to be - glued to the baseboard and the platform built up behind - I formed a false platform edge in 15mm square stripwood screwed to the baseboard top with the Peco edging stuck to it. That way the platform edge could overhang the other board slightly and the position of the edge could be adjusted by moving the screws. In the end a filler piece of 2mm stripwood (old venetian blind slat) was used as a filler as well. The first two attempts to fix the Peco edging to the stripwood using hot glue just resulted in a lot of practice in scraping cold hot glue off plastic and wood, the third attempt using double sided foam tape was much more successful.

I use weathering as a de-stressor too (if I don't think I'm stressed enough I drag a loco chassis off the Shelf of Doom ...) Those are lovely. Still waiting for Monkbar to put the SR 8 planks in their bargain bin :-)

Agreed. The risks to charter train passengers are exactly the same as those the 325 dead people were exposed to, with the exception of more tendency to try and look out of the door droplights. The frequency of exposure to risk across the national network has changed, but that just means you're likely to kill them less often. It's still an uncontrolled (and easily controllable) fatal risk. Indeed. The NYMR only has the paths because the franchised service is so sparse they aren't getting in Northern's way trundling about at 25mph. If it becomes the case that the service frequency improves and 25mph is no longer practicable then they'll need to fit CDL. I assume they're in the process of fitting it anyway as the exemptions are timebound and not perpetual (as WCRC have found). That said, there are greater challenges to raising line speeds on the Esk Valley than NYMR services. On the wider Value of Prevented Fatalities discussion, beware of using road risk as a comparitor. Society is far more tolerant of killing people on the roads because people perceive that they have some degree of control over their own destiny in a car.

Lol ! Like selling a pet ! To be honest a hole in the chimney would be the least of the mods affecting any of my locos - renumbered, often repainted, weathered, crew added, different couplings ...

I'd drill them out. But then I've never sold a loco on.

The kink in the near end of the baseboard edge was annoying me :-) Typically it was one of the few bits of baseboard framing that was actually glued ! Back to the cardboard mockup building for now, boxes of screws standing in for the water tower further along. The tool boxes at the back aren't standing in for anything, they're just permanently in the way ! At least the Ivar workbench is now on casters, and has acquired the top vice bit of the Workmate, which was also always in the way !

Great fun by all accounts. Two frames, no floorboards, S&T all over the place, a plank if you were lucky and a 'safe system of work' which involved remembering not to fall off it.

RRNE looked at that when the 308s were chopping thumbs off in the late 90s, it works on a domestic door with a consistent hinge gap but not on a Mk1 with a curved profile. It either fatigue fractures and falls off or has to be so flexible it either might as well not be there or it gets stuck in the door jamb and makes things worse. We ended up fitting a slightly larger grabable window ledge on the inside and plastering them with warning stickers. Their tendency to blow up was harder to fix.

Top left and top right are the same fret, as are top middle and the similarly sized one directly below it, and indeed left middle and the very bottom one. Hadn't spotted that on my phone ! I'm intrigued as to what the forked things are in the centre fret btw.

I was supposed to be finishing wiring and fettling baseboard joints but I got a bit distracted by the station building. The walls were partly detailed with window frames etc in the flat before being assembled, the gap in the far corner is for the glazed timber waiting room and parcels office walls. There is a further timber extension to go on the right hand end. The whole of the down (Stranraer-bound) platform and forecourt is now a removeable section, eliminating baseboard joints across platforms. A wider view. The pins are holding the Peco concrete platform edging in position while I do some gauging tests with the LMS dining car in the background, at the moment the platform gap is slightly less than what my Peco track gauge thinks is correct which looks good but needs checking against some wider locos. Goods yard throat is loosely laid out, the black hatching just to the left of the loco smokebox marks the position of the footbridge which in turn fixes the final position of the station building, the near end of the island platform and the top if the embankment on the far side The nearest end of the station had a rather nice station garden laid out. Most enthusiast photos only show it in the background or just catch the edge of it, but a Facebook local history group turned up a couple of nice photos of the rest of it including cold frames and an entire potting shed which doesn't appear on any published photos or the LMS Ratings Plan ! This will be the first part of the layout to be fully finished scenically but don't hold your breath ... Bachmann Std 5 (which needs renumbering as 73100) and a typical 'late Port Road' Bachmann/ Hornby Mk1 CK/Porthole BSK set.

Top middle and large middle fret - balance weights /arms and brackets for the lead-off crank at the bottom of the post. Middle right fret - point cranks and signal wire pulleys. Wonky 'M' shaped thing is a point rodding compensator, much simplified.

The 12" pugs used at Dailuaine and Balmenach are more petite than the 16" / 18" ones produced by Hattons, if I can remember what I've done with the ARC kit I'll blu-tac it together tonight for a photo alongside the Hattons one. Whether the difference bothers you is of course another matter ! The bigger ones are still pretty :-) Meanwhile here's another diorama I haven't got round to building yet either -

The traditional way of modernising the Hornby 29 is to use a Bachmann 25 chassis, but if you fit coach wheels you can use the original Hornby motor by separating the tyres from the plastic centre/gear moulding and cutting the gear ring off with a razor saw. Take about a millimetre of the wheel centre with it, then sand back so there's just a sliver of the wheel centre left and Evostick it to the back of the coach wheel. Doing it this way keeps the hole in the wheel centre to align the gear, otherwise you'll need to take great care to get it concentric. You may need to mess about with 2mm axle washers to get it to align. I did this with a 25 years ago. The real 29 had spoked wheels but a) no-one makes 14mm 11 spoke wheels as far as I'm aware and b) you can hardly see them anyway. The Dapol model is one of the best 4mm deisels around imo. I first saw John Boyes' photos of Cromdale forty years ago - still haven't got round to building the model but I did get a resin small Barclay from ARC Modeks before he stopped production.

Yay ! Trouts ! Pain in the proverbial to scratchbuild and nothing to kitbash from.

Other big retailers have failed before (Beatties, several others). The sky didn't fall in. Besides, there's always making stuff.

The guard irons are .... erm ... Mazak 😬 Let's hope not ...

The usual adverse result, assuming the brake wasn't so bad that the train rolled away while you were changing ends, is a poor brake rather than no brake at all. You brake earlier and heavier thereafter, or fail it.