Wheatley

I've used it to unglue stuck fingers, it works well enough for that but my recollection was that it isn't a precision tool and it left my fingers very greasy. I'm not sure what's in it, acetone rings a bell in which case you don't want it anywhere near paintwork or glazing. If you use it, try it on a bit where it won't show or can be easily repainted.

The problem is not trains going past so the argument that "the railway was there first" is irrelevent, this isn't Nimbyism. The issue is engines idling loudly in the wee small hours where there was never a depot before, the new siding (because that's all it is) is south of the turntable on what used to be Appletons oil sidings. As far as I can work out the depot has noise attenuation screening on the Seamer Rd side, and the noise is masked from the houses on that side by industrial and retail buildings. On the other side are more industrial units and the football ground. But the depot is in a valley, and the complainants (or at least the ones with their photos in the local rag) are on the other side if the valley from the depot, and above it on the hillside. Sound carries across a valley especially if there is no screening on that side. As far as I am aware there have been no similar complaints from Leeman Rd in York. The fuelling point there is fully screened on both sides and movements take place throughout the night. The 68s were in and out of there in 2019/20 as they were stabled there for route learning.

They're certainly impressive. But like I said, I wouldn't one parked outside my house all night.

Failing that, go over white lettering with a yellow marker pen which is what we use to do with the old Woodhead transfers.

You can't, that's one of the joys of relying on research largely carried out by enthusiastic amateurs. Some of them are (much) better at it than others but at least the fruits of their labours are there to pick over and correct later if necessary. An awful lot of the primary sources we rely on were rescued from skips. In fairness it's only the capacity of the wagons on the HMRS captions which is wrong. The diagram information is just missing.

I used to work up there in the 1990s. At the time, there were a few very active, very committed local railway enthusiasts. Most of their energies were either channeled into supporting FoSCL which is where I crossed paths with them, or into making British Steel keep its limestone traffic from Redmire on the rails by objecting to any suggestion to switch to road. I have absolutely no idea who is involved with which bit of the former NER route, but knowing the personality of at least one of the above mentioned quite well (i.e. having once been hairdryered by them), it doesn't surprise me at all that there are two groups.

The River Eden might prove more of an obstacle. It's a nasty bend.

In what is now the pub (York Tap) in Tea Room Square between the station entrance and the hotel.

They can stick as much soundproofing as they like on the depot, the vibration coming from these things at low idle is massive. Coming off the Harrogate trains in York in the morning you could feel the 68 sat in platform 2 while you were walking down platform 8. I'd be complaining if these were parked outide my house all night.

I'm sure there were some posts on here about someone trying to build a permanent layout/ attraction in a hotel in Ballachuillish of all places. Does anyone know if anything came of that ?

My apologies Chris, it was intended as a tongue in cheek pop at Helijan, not MR, but I can see having re-read it that it didn't come across like that. I wouldn't really expect a review to cover how to chop bits off a model.

I've always used 3 or 6mm ply, added over whatever is actually doing the actual supporting at a late stage in the scenic work when I actually know what the finished profile will be. The current layout was varnished, then when it was rebuilt onto new frames a lot of screw heads appeared so they got filled and it got painted. It started off white undercoat, then a sort of dove grey but that just looked like primer, then gloss Royal Blue (it's an ex CR/G&SWR joint line) but that looked really garish, like crap 1970s decorating and G&SWR green looked just as bad (I stopped short of lining it out). I eventually settled on a soft pale grey/green, it looks neutral and doesn't jar with the green scenery. Whatever it is, on a portable layout or even one which gets walked past/leaned against it is going to get knocked. The new layout is semi-permanent, the plan is to have the fascias profiled to the scenery but screwed on last so I can run all the wiring and connections on a false wall behind them and get at them by just unscrewing the fascia.

Agreed. A more useful review comment would be whether the lights can be turned off on DC or how easy it is to get at the wires to snip them. The Heljan Hunslet 05 is bang on as supplied, but the same manufacturer's Park Royal railbus looks like it has Wipacs fitted. But then consistency of anything is not a Heljan strongpoint.

Yes that's then, thanks. I knew there was a 'B' in it ! L-r: Cararama S3, CMSC S3, BW S2a, JB/Airfix S3, Oxford S2a. These are lined up with the back ends in line, the Oxford, BW and CMSC wheelbases are 36mm, JB/Airfix 35mm,Cararama 38mm. CMSC are allegedly still available but I've no idea where from, sorry. The Airfix one has been partly converted to a 110 and shows the point at which I realised that this was trying to put lipstick on a pig.

Cararama did a few in 1/72, the LWB is about 5mm longer than the equivalent Oxford SIIa. BW Models (I think) did a fairly duff plastic kit, not sure if it was passed on to Airfix with the rest of the range but it can best be described as 'Landover-esque'. The Sankey trailer in it was quite nice though.

The bridge I think TheSignalEngineer refers to was replaced by a footbridge because it was remodelled by a container lorry some years ago, the container landed on the car behind killing the driver. The 'death or serious injury risk' isn't just the structure falling down, it's completely pointless structures presentng an ongoing and unnecessary hazard.

Once upon a time when coal was screened by hand then a few lumps of good stuff will have made it to the tip. But with the introduction of mechanised washers screening became much more efficient and most of what is on a colliery tip now should be dirt, even if it's black dirt. It might be worth foraging for a bag of coal to heat your house but it's not worth extracting it on a commercial scale. There's a limestone quarry near here which finds it economical to rework its waste tips looking for flourite (the Victorians didn't want it) but thats because it's worth considerably more per ton than the roadstone which the rest of the quarry produces.

I had a quick look on the map at some of the ones near me, they are almost all bridges on minor roads where HE are having to maintain a bridge over nothing to keep a road open. The only thing that suprises me about any of thiem is they are still there at all and weren't filled in years ago. The contracts for this were let last year - as well as demolition and infill of some structures they also cover inspection, stabilisation and repair of others. There is no dastardly plan to eliminate every disused structure.

Bridge 162 at the Dumfries end of the layout was one of two features which dictated where everything else would go, the other being the relationship between the West Junction and any baseboard joints needed to get past the door. The bridge sits at the very end of the single line and had to be as far into the corner of the room as possible whilst still leaving room for the line to curve away on a 3rd radius (19″) curve, which itself sat inside the equally sharp descending curve of the west spiral. The real bridge was a 35 foot span or thereabouts, with about 12′ headroom. The model is nearer 20 feet which squeezes in a couple of extra inches before the station throat pointwork starts and also just happens to be the span of a Peco N gauge bridge girder. The Peco girders are bow topped whereas the real ones are straight, but that’s hidden once the L girders supporting the handrails are added. I toyed briefly with the idea of sawing four of them in half lengthways and re-gluing to make parallel web girders but thought better of it. I don’t have a drawing of this bridge but I do have one of the very similar Portpatrick harbour branch “Bridge over Turnpike Road near Peg 8“, a grainy oblique view from Britain From Above and some screen grabs from Dan MacLachlan’s wonderful cine film of the route (https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3696) shot from the rear brake van window of a Stranraer – Dumfries train. The western abutment was also there to be photographed but was heavily altered and overgrown. Conventional wisdom with a waybeamed bridge like this is that the waybeams are supported underneath by a girder or sit within a trough girder, and the bridge ‘deck’ is merely a lightweight structure to stop permanent way men falling down the gaps. However, the Portpatrick bridge was different with a substantial timber deck supported from the bottom flanges of the girders and the chairs screwed directly to the deck. I made an assumption that this was because of lighter loads on the harbour branch, and that even if Bridge 162 had started out like this it would be unlikely to be in the same condition 100 years later with Stanier 4-6-0s pounding over it. The model therefore has conventional waybeams (not easy to see on the photo because it’s all still white styrene). These are based on the cine film still and might acquire some girder detail later. I’m still not entirely sure whether what I’ve built is correct but it looks the part. The rest of the drawing came in quite useful for setting out the curved retaining walls. The rails are carried in 4 bolt chairs but only because I couldn’t find any 3 bolt ones. The track over the real bridge was slightly curved, the model more so giving a very short transition curve between the 19″ radius curve and the 60″ radius points of the station throat. It’s all a bit tight but there is just enough room to get a 40′ locking bar and the down home signal in with enough room for a loco to stand at it before it all disappears into the back scene ! The bridge deck is permanently fixed to the ply track bed either side but the abutments and wing walls were built as a separate structure to be slotted in afterwards. The substructure is mostly 80 thou styrene with Slaters stone overlaid, the curved wing walls are laminated from thinner sheet and the embossed pattern is close enough for me to the greywacke and sandstone of the real one. The abutment walls only go halfway back at which point the road is blocked off. The west spiral down to the fiddleyard is just beyond the bridge so the idea is to put a mirror there to reflect the other half of the bridge and the continuation of the road. The wing walls and embankment on the other side will be visible if looking over the top of the embankment so they will have to be modelled too, but that can wait until the backscene is in place and I can see exactly how much room I’ve got to work with. No point creating unnecessary work ! Meanwhile the wiring up continues one board at a time ...

I wouldn't worry about it. My layout thread has been up since June with about a thousand views and maybe half a dozen replies. Admittedly I don't update it very often. A lot of the very popular layout threads are either long running and have built up an audience, or are a model of an iconic route or station which everyone can relate to, or are used as a group chat by the operating team or, quite frankly, are full of guff only vaguely connected with the layout.

I use 50:50 Railmatch sleeper grime and black as a base on wagon and coach chassis and also coach ends, add a bit of gunmetal for locos. That kills the ex-works look, then you can add any detail on top of that.

TRolley at a guess. If I'm right that would suggest they were regarded as plant by then rather than rolling stock.

Articles I have enjoyed recently are Ian Nuttall's series in RM about his various train formations on Dentdale, and the origins of the models in them. Also pretty much anything about Trevor Potts' "Churston", usually in MRJ, despite my normally having no interest whatsoever in the Great Western. They are well written and well researched, and fun to read.

That's fine if you're presenting something which has to be remembered, like beating training into people by Powerpoint, but not for something intended as entertainment. It's lazy documentary making, if you're telling them the same thing three times you only need a third of the content. Feature films don't repeat all the lines three times. My favourite example of proper documentary making is "Sailor". Half a dozen lines of commentary explaining why half the Royal Navy is watching a bored stripper gyrating around a crowded pub then virtually nothing for the rest of the hour except observation and the occasional sailor talking to the cameraman to explain what's going on. Magazines - I prefer layout articles about quality layouts (not identikit cliches of layouts), specially if it explains why the builder did it like that rather than just how, anything which shows me how to do something complex, and well researched prototype explanations. Consequently I don't buy many magazines apart from MRJ and RM. I occasionally buy the others for holiday reading or if there's a good prototype article, but not very often.

Hearing aid battery ?