drduncan

Working out how to fit all the knitting together and in what order. D

Straight framed please! D

How about the Great Bear? D

Lovely work. Look forward to seeing the U28 finished. Shame you aren’t doing a 4mm too!!! Duncan

Tonight’s job was to make a start on the paintwork. It’s complex (but not as horrific as the diamond crossing) and I think the key will be in the sequence of assembly. I’ll need to build two linked common crossings and a k crossing. First things first the common crossing v’s. I made one leg over long with the intention of filing it back when soldered together. I tack assembled the v upside down over the template to make sure any cleaning up would be hidden. Then having moved the v to one side and using more blue tack to keep everything in place I added more solder to fair in the filed rails and give me something to file back to a smooth point. Then it was a few strokes of the file to remove the excess rail and solder and there was a vee. Next job to link them together as one unit - maybe tomorrow.... Duncan

Has anyone done a cut and cut of the Ratio MR clerestories into say an MR brake composite? If so how did you do it? Also what companys’ stock can use the Ratio suburban as a basis apart from SR constituents? Duncan

I’m going to need some BG stock soon to test it too! I’d best get busy...

Finished my first bit of mixed gauge track! Many thanks to Jonathan for making the BG 3 and 4 point gauges. Common rail in place. BG rail added. You can see Jonathan’s gauges very clearly as they are made from orange acrylic. Here’s a close up... Standard (or narrow if you prefer) rail going in. And the finished length... Now to start on the first of the points..... Duncan

Ah but I have the fire of doing something (BG and mixed gauge) for the first time to ward off tedium... are you saying that P4 doesn’t rock every part of your world? The S4 society will excommunicate you! D

I was laying track this afternoon while the children slept, and my darling wife watched me threading chairs onto rail. She commented ‘is that as boring as it looks? I mean I know you like doing this but really...’

I’m afraid that oral history (interviewing people to get their memories) is a well known method of introducing errors into the historical record. Professional historians have a number of techniques to get round this that can be briefly described as ‘don’t believe everything you’re told’ and ‘get corroboation’ - preferably documentary... Without getting into what peer reviewed actually means to a historian (its really very dull, believe me) and the differences between primary and secondary sources (even duller) and their use in railway histories, if you want to ascertain the veracity of an author’s research you need to look at the footnotes/endnotes and the bibliography. In our hobby and much of the historical support we rely on the former is almost completely unknown and the latter a rarity. This may be the more significant problem we face in years to come - being unable to verify where information came from originally and therefore if it can be trusted or is just all made up/opinion.... Drduncan

Like this... D

Hi Jon, Yes I think it should be close to a semi circle. Duncan

Very impressive. Now if you’d done a brake composite or a slip coach I’d be thinking of ordering some! (Or better still Dreadnoughts or Concertinas I might order some of them if they are available! If I might offer some constructive criticism, I think the corners of the waist panelling is too square.

A very interesting project and I look forward to reading more about its progress. Regards Duncan

Not in Portsmouth ‘smiffs...

I seem to recall that today was the expected publication date of MRJ.... Shall we bet on when it appears? Or how long before someone takes the huff and has this thread locked? Whenever it comes out, I’ll be waiting with great anticipation for what I’m sure will be an excellent read and worth the wait. Duncan

All the sleepers (except that one that went missing) are down. However, rivets still need to be added to strengthen the point work. Duncan

They look fantastic. Duncan

Tim, Worderful workmanship. Duncan

Lovely work. Duncan

In future could we have a ‘RON’ (reopen nominations) choice for each category as I found a significant number of catalogues did not get a vote from me... If RON tops the poll in a catagory, then we start again! And again, and again, possibly until it’s time for the next year’s competition. Duncan

Very impressive! Looking forward to the next update. Duncan

It is one of the great disappointments in reading rmweb - wading through the rtr frothing and apparent anger that whims aren’t being met. We have a level of choice in the rtr market that has never been seen before, yet a very vocal group within our hobby are still not satisfied. To those unhappy with rtr offerings broaden your skills, join a club, perhaps spend less time posting ‘I’ll never buy one’ comments and do something constructive!

Excellent news and I look forward to trying it out. Duncsn