Wheatley

There will undoubtedly have been military traffic handled at Kirkcudbright but I think James has it as far as the Palvans are concerned. Railway modellers tend to think of creameries in terms of "MILK FOR LONDON" in 3000 gallon glass-lined tanks, but most of Galloway's many creameries produced cheese, powdered milk, baby formula and margarine. That's the first photo I've ever seen of the plywood variant, thank you. I feel another one coming on ...

Do you have a source for Dundrennan please ? This was discussed on a much earlier version of the forum, and we couldn't establish what the traffic was. Dundrennan was certainly discussed as a attractive possibility but it would be odd for wagons to be branded to be returned to their destination rather than their loading point. Also, there are at least two or three in almost every late 50s/early 60s picture of Kirkcudbright and that's a lot of artillery shells ! The other obvious source is the creamery across the bridge from the station. I have three, kitbashed from Ratio van ends on the 9' chassis from the Ratio GWR 5 plank open. The 10' chassis from the vans went under the 5 plank bodies to make some O30-somethings, and the left over sides were combined with spare corrugated steel ends ends and chassis from the Parkside spares box to make three free BR 12ton vans :-) Edit - beaten to it by 26 !

Good luck working out where BRB Residuary disposed of them all to, the trademarks for the Network SouthEast livery are now owned by a bunch of gricers ! https://www.nsers.org/ 👍 The franchised TOCs did not, in general, inherit design rights, patents etc, but they did have the right to use them and in some cases were required to use them as a condition of either their Operating Licence or a Group Standard. The ROSCOs might have acquired the IP rights for the rolling stock and I think EWS did for the FOCs, but in very general terms anything used by all the TOCs (BR symbol, design of an APTIS ticket, TOPS etc) was either imposed or used under a global licence from somewhere else. Post privatisation liveries are another matter - in those cases they are generally either owned by the franchisee (resulting in lots of hurriedly applied white sticky-backed plastic on Mk 4s at the end of GNER for example) or in the case of Scotrail (and possibly Merseyrail), by the franchising authority.

In some cases it can be cheaper, especially where you need multiples of 'It'll do' quality rather than showcase models. I still batch built 16 ton minerals from Airfix and Parkside kits, the buffer heads and handbrake levers get replaced with MJT and Ambis bits respectively and I've almost run out of the various sheets of Modelmaster transfers with a couple of dozen on each sheet. When I started it was the only way to get a 16 tonner, then the Bachmann one appeared and they were probably a bit cheaper than the kit + bits version, now the Bachman model is more than twice the price of the Parkside kit, if you can find one. 17 quid per wagon difference buys a lot of paint, transfers, wheels, etched brakegear, buffers, springing, compensation, couplings ... Its not necessarily about price though. If the RTR version does the job I'll buy it, especially if it saves me spending hours on something complex or fiddly or easy to do badly like Toad handrails. If the Bachmann Presflow had been out when I beat my three Airfix ones into shape I would have bought Bachmann ones instead. Nearly all my brakevans and tank wagons are RTR. Conversely I own one whole Bachmann 16 tonner.

We went today at the request of No.1 son. Unfortunately the Cob is still in Station Hall which is the part currently closed. The building is having a new roof and the displays updated before re-opening later this year or early 2025. Sorry !

I wonderd at first if it was a livery sample painted with a brush (the hinge anyway) but I think it's actually been sprayed and just not masked off very well.

If anyone else is wondering where the Karen Harrison Building is, it's the lean-to offices on the north side alongside the ECML. I don't think they'll be conserving anything large in there. Page 22: https://planning.org.uk/docs/20220307/131/R6BD9SSJN2200/vnnizl2vwyw1vzmq.pdf

Every time I look I see another ejector pin mark.

It all depends where Old Dalby sits within ROGS and what their Safety Management System allows them to do. It's an experimental establishment so I presume it's written in quite broad generic terms with a separate safety validation for each individual project. The booking form does say that electricity is extra, on top of the £21k !

Operating a 90mph loco at 75mph on a line certified for 125mph ? They wouldn't bat an eyelid, it's a test track after all. It's the "carrying fare paying passengers" bit which would pique their interest, I've no idea how that would work!

The vertical part is way too thick and the actual hinges (as opposed to the straps) are the wrong shape, at least compared to this pic of 5025 - https://images.app.goo.gl/zGhbJRgMooGt7G8u7 But the silver paint is making it much worse.

Same. I'll buy a couple to supplement mine, and the existing ones might even get pushed up the upgrade queue a bit to get etched brakegear, but I don't understand the "must replace" mindset unless the original was poor to start with. I did replace my 30 yr old Mainline/MJT/scratch Mk1 TPO with the Bachmann one but theirs had all the windows in line and the same size. I also managed to not buy any LNER 12 ton vans or LMS brake vans until they were in the bargain bin at a price which would have been rude to ignore.

Everywhere but usually on specific traffic flows. Port Sunlight for Lever Bros, one of the either dog food or biscuit factories I think, and whatever was being loaded at Kirkcudbright, probably cheese or some other dairy. I also found a photo some time ago of a long line of them somewhere in mid Wales waiting to be loaded with bagged peat. On wagons and kit building generally, there were way more variations in the real thing that RTR has ever covered, even where they've done different versions of a particular diagram. I think I've found 12 'as built' variations in the BR Standard (sic) 12 ton van so far and that's without starting on replacement wheels buffers and axleboxes. Some of the earlier Parkside chassis are showing their age but they're dead easy to upgrade with different axleboxes and etched brake levers, and in some of the kits you get a spare one too :-)

The part of the museum which i think the Karrier was in is currently closed for redevelopment. I don't remember seeing it when I was in the remaining bit of the museum last week but I only went for lunch so wasnt really looking very hard ! If no-one has found you some on their hard drive by next week I'll swing by and see if I can find it.

Nice. I'll have a couple of the 8 shoe ones (as the Parkside chassis is a pig to convert) but my other 6 are safe I think. I'm guessing RRP will be somewhere around the Vanwide and Presflo.

The plans for the interchange (the car park and bus stands at the front) are on the St Helens Borough planning pages, but either the plans for the building are not there or they aren't called anything obvious like 'building elevations'. There are 138 documents attached to the application and I'm on a cheap phone so I didn't try to open all of them. The building is on the station side of the boundary between Northern's station lease (from Network Rail) and the Mersey Travel Interchange set out in thd application I found so there might be a separate application somewhere. Certainly typing 'Interchange' and 'railway station' into the keywords box is not working. The drawings for the platform extentions are on another application though ! https://publicaccess.sthelens.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=ZZZYAPPETA474&activeTab=summary

Sorry, I forgot all about this ! This one has been 'got at' to make it rigid rather than compensated by soldering fret waste across the ends but you can see how the overlapping tabs above the axles limit the extent to which the two halves can flex.

Excellent. Something else I don't have to cut off.

On that evidence I don't think it's going to be an issue for a while !

Why am I getting a bad feeling that this means it's now significantly more complicated (i.e. expensive) than it was ? I really wasn't expecting it to be 16 quid but I think the estimates of 4 times that might be conservative.

1. 80% of perfect gets you a respectable result. The remaining 20% takes 80% of the total time for the project, whatever it is. Practical examples - modelling in OO instead of EM or P4, missing out all the bits of brake gear you can't see unless you turn the wagon upside down, basing a model on a single photo and accepting you might have misinterpreted it. It's the Juvinus Molestus Sorcero Cashcowium Rapido. I could do some proper research into what the Latin for "Annoying Teenage Wizard Express" is but that'll do for the purpose in hand. It should be in Rowling's Vastly Improved Engine Green btw. I did actually accept that this would be a problem for hobbyists because our research tends to be more casual and we accept things at face value which a 'proper' researcher wouldn't. We also increasingly just ask other people and accept the answers instead of putting a bit of effort in, there are several threads on here along the lines of "Can anyone tell me what sort of trains were operating on this area in this era ?". I don't know, maybe go and look at a few photos ? It also becomes a self-feeding problem because the Internet Experten gradually achieve a largely undeserved reputation when in fact a significant minority of them are taking tosh most of the time. It's not exclusively a railway thing. If you want to start a fight in an IPMS group just ask them what colour Olive Drab should fade to. There's even a sort of Godwin's Law about that particular question as to how long it will take for someone to post that photo of a B17 with every panel a different colour.

At least the smokebox door handle is a separate fitting thank heavens. 🤪

The only layout name I'd nick would be Kyle of Minogue (the significance of which will not be lost at all on Mrs Wheatley) , although probably not for another layout. A band or a yacht maybe, not that I have a band or a yacht. There are two of us on here building Newton Stewart, and there are at least two South Pelaw Junction layouts, both in 4mm although different gauges

All corridor, the original intention was (I think) that they were for named trains. About 300 miles south of my area of interest though.

The answer to all of these concerns is to cross check with other references if it's important enough to do so. There are enough non-colourised colour photos of Mk1s to establish that within the relevant timeframe those on the Southern Region were mostly (?) green and those elsewhere were mostly maroon with a few brown and cream ones. Most of my reference photos for accurate train formations are black and white, and whilst they might be clear enough to determine which set of Comet sides I need, a lot of them are either too indistinct or too far away or too head on to pick out details like lining or shades of monochrome. Where I can see detail I follow it, elsewhere several of the RTR ones are the right coach type but whether they are maroon or crimson, line or unlined, depends on what was on release when I picked then up. Pragmatism, 80/20 Rule, bodging with a finescale edge, take your pick. Life is finite and the 'to do' list is long. I have to be precise at work. I don't necessarily at home.