wainwright1

Which year ?

The Ratio Midland Suburban All Third makes a good LB & SCR All Third *, after changing bogies and some details. Unfortunately, the other Midland Suburbans do not have enough plain panelled sections to easily cut and shut other types of LB & SCR coaches. A set of Mike King drawings would be of assistance.MikeKingDrawings (1).docx (*Also good for the Isle of Wight). All the best Ray

We will hopefully be sorting out the baseboard alignment issues next Tuesday and then making sure all the top surfaces are levelled. up. Paul also has to complete the stools for the point rodding on the tunnel board. The bases for the pavement will also need to be put down on College Road. I will hopefully be having a go at assembling the ground signals, assembling the point levers and frames and completing the rest of the smaller items for the road works scene over the Christmas/New Year period. In the New Year I will be taking home one board at a time to do the brickwork finishing with tinted varnish, and painting and finishing any bits that have not been done yet. Much easier to work at home where I can spend more time on each session and manipulate the boards to get them into a good working position. I will then lay the paving slabs, kerb stones, gutter stones and rainwater gullies and manhole covers on College Road and paint as required, also progress the road works scene. I will also be doing the ground surface detail in two or three stages. I have all the materials to hand, but need to experiment a bit to get the ideal finish. Gary says that he will have the South end building ready for painting after Christmas as well. I have a stock of the paint, and the building is a bit easier to work on than a 4ft x 3 ft baseboard, so I should be able to progress that fairly quickly. So I have a few jobs to do...... All the best Ray

Hi Tony. So you did that after you cam home from the club last night ! Are you on the night shift ? All the best Ray

Hi Matt. Have you seen this in the layout topics. Might prove of interest especially the most recent posts. All the best Ray

I hope that the depot is recovering after that dental surgery last night Tony. All the best Ray

That goes for most steam era, early EMU and DMU coaches. All the best Ray

There is a pull-push H Class in BR early logo livery announced about the same time that I have been waiting for to complete my pull-push set, which has also gone back to Winter 2023. This starting to get as bad as Bachmann. All the best Ray

Hi Colin. Got a bit ahead of myself there. We only lost Len Field this year. I knew him for nearly forty years. Peter was like an associate member of the bus group and got involved in some of its activities. All the best Ray

Nice view of the Feltham there. Not sure of the ownership status of that as it was privately purchased by I think three people: Peter Atkinson, Len Field and another and I believe that it was given to the LT Museum on long term loan. I knew Peter and we used to go up to the museum and let people have a go at driving it as it was mounted up on blocks. Len was the treasurer of our bus group 1702 Bus Preservation Society and we lost him last year from Covid related illness. I do not think that tram is still mounted on blocks. All the best Ray

Good shots of the framework there. Just thinking what you could use to make that. Possibly solder it up from brass strip and use some Scalelink rivet strip for the vertical bits. The section at the end obviously contains carrying wheels, probably quite small, maybe N Gauge. Not sure how you will hide the threaded road unless it was hidden under the floor in the middle with perhaps just a rod attached to the threaded bush under the bridge running in a slot along the pit. All the best Ray

Tony. You might have a look at Gary's turntable on Crystal Palace. Basically he used a piece of copper clad for the top of the bridge and soldered the rails to it. If you scored down the middle through the copper it would isolate the two sides and you can then lay the surface up to track top level on that. Have a look at perhaps N gauge plate bridge sides for forming the frames. These could be glued securely to the under side of the copper clad using Araldite making a nice strong framework for the traverser. Obviously you can plan your operating mechanism around that, installing a threaded bush under the bridge for the threaded rod to run through and some kind of guides to keep everything smooth and level down in the pit. Stanchions for the handrails are available from model boat suppliers and piano wire could be used for the handrails. Nice and strong and will not bend. All the best Ray

Hmm - Is there a Colin out there. The font of all tram knowledge ? See you at the club next week. All the best Ray

Four of our club members attended yesterday. Started with a good breakfast around the corner. Very good show with some excellent layouts. Also picked up a book I had been looking for, for some time and at half price. All in all a good day out. Ray

I do not think I have seen it mentioned, but does anyone know if the café in the centre is actually open this year for the exhibition ? I seem to recall that it was closed two years ago as the staff did not want to work at the weekend. All the best Ray

So SK says that it has to be right for the paint and the lighting ! Well they certainly did not get the paint right on the fairly recent LSWR New Brake Van. They have re-run the LSWR and SR post 1936 small lettered versions with nearly the right colour, but they have not re-done the SR large lettered one yet. On the even more recent 4 and 6 wheeled coaches the light shows through the sides and ends, so what did not happen there ? Perhaps they will back date and re-do these as well. All the best Ray

I have two six coach rakes of the originals. One in Crimson and Cream and the other in Green. I will just get the Southern ones in Malachite, just four coaches I think. I reckon that the RRP will be around £75 each. All the best Ray

Going back many years, I vaguely recall there being a model shop at Lake which was fairly near to the coast, possibly more like a kiosk than a shop. I don't remember a shop in Sandown, but the Sports and Model Shop in Shanklin is still there near to the station. It has undergone a change in recent years and the sports element seems to have disappeared and the toy shop from the other side of the road seems to moved across. I could not see much model railway gear in there about three weeks ago. Not sure if it still has the same owners, or perhaps the same people owned both shops ? They also have/had shops in Sandown and Ryde, but I think only the Shanklin one used to sell model railway items. I have visited Upstairs/Downstairs in Sandown a couple of years ago and there is also the shop in Ventnor which I think sells mostly second hand items, though quite well stocked. All the best Ray

Hi Chris. More food for thought - Beef on the hoof ! I wonder how often Jonathan has to get new clothes if he splashes that all over them ? It won't do his skin much good either. Not got around to building my open cattle wagon yet and must get one of your newer early Brighton ones as well. I did however apply the lime wash to the SE & CR wagons I built for my Hawkhurst layout. It does add that authentic atmosphere to the models. All the best Ray

Maybe they could do the liveries so far missed - Various GER and early LNER. That's with LNER on the side with lining and full skirts. All the best Ray

I think that this prototype has great potential and will appeal to a large number of modellers. Covering an extended time span and offering a wide variety of liveries it should sell in good quantities if it is well advertised and distributed widely through the dealer network. Perhaps they could be released in batches, rather than all one go. That would allow people to acquire all the models they want over a period of time without having to lay out a large sum of money all in one go. All the best Ray

That's very interesting Chris. I cannot remember that side of Dunton Road as it was. I am however very familiar with St James Road bridge which replaced Mercer's Crossing. The buildings there seemed to suffer a similar fate, including a row of houses and a pub on the corner end junction with Lynton Road. These seemed to have fared better and I am not sure whether the houses had another floor added, but they certainly had dummy front doors at first floor level which was always a fascinating sight to children. At a later date I found out that the pub, the Sultan, had received another floor and had a a two storey cellar ! How do I know that, well our club's first club room was in the crypt of St Augustine's Church, Lynton Road, about five minutes walk from the pub and we used to frequent it on a Friday night after our club sessions. Needless to say, the pub has now been demolished and replaced with a block of flats and the houses the same with part of the London Academy School built on the site. There is a tunnel under the road still extant, which links the two halves of the school, and I think was the only means of access to the houses on that side of the road. All the best Ray

Hi Nearholmer. Not sure when the tramway actually opened. Probably first horse, then the petrol locomotive then possibly back to horses for a while before steam was used. The petrol locomotive was owned by the the Corporation of London who also owned the Foreign cattle Market. They also bought a few vans at the same time, just two or three. There is a picture of the petrol locomotive which I have seen in a copy of the Southern Railway Magazine and more recently in a book on industrial railways. There is also another picture showing the locomotive and the vans on the tramway, but I cannot remember where I saw that. In its first form, the trains for the tramway had to go into the Deptford Wharf yard then reversed on a track which crossed the incoming tracks on one of the level crossings then proceeded along Grove Street. (That would make for an interesting model). I met an old boy about thirty years ago who could remember this and also said that where the track came back out of the wharf yard there was some kind of arch over the track. Not sure if that was an a brick opening or maybe a metal structure of some sort. Unfortunately there are no pictures of that, but if you have a copy of a book on the signal boxes of the LB & SCR, there is a signal box diagram from one of the two boxes at the wharf which shows this track formation. I also seem to recall seeing another picture showing an 0-6-0 or 0-6-2 working the tramway. All the best Ray

Surprised that Hornby have never done a model of this. All the best Ray

Hi Ian. I like this layout, right up our street and oozing with atmosphere. Our club looked at making a model of Deptford Wharf with its may connections early on in its life (35 years ago). It was very attractive with the Grove Street Tramway attached and other extensions into the Surrey Docks or the Royal Victoria Yard at various time. In the end we decided not to proceed as although it would only have scaled up in 4mm at around 12ft for the main river frontage section by about 8ft depth to where the running line came in over the canal bridge, the layout of the yard where the tracks crossed Grove Street then mostly turned to the North up to maybe 45-50 degrees made it very difficult to design the baseboards as the tracks crossed the joints at awkward angles. Also, locomotives were only allowed to shunt up to Grove Street, with its three level crossings and enormous footbridge and everything beyond that was done using capstans powered by the wharfs own hydraulic power station. There were also about 14 traveling cranes, plus the Goliath crane and a a few of the earlier hydraulic cranes still in use. The two storey covered warehouse which spanned the eastern end of the main dock, originally Dudman's or Deadman's Dock, which predated the railway, had around 12 overhead cranes inside. Getting back to shunting locomotives, I think that the usual Brighton C2/C2X, E4, E5 or ex SECR 01, C would have brought the trains into the yard and then the traffic on the tramway was worked mostly with D1 0-4-2's (SEF kit). I think that the exit from the yard was a bit humpy, although this was altered twice over the years and these tanks held the road better than other locos. There is a picture of an 08 which was tried, but was found to be unsatisfactory. Don't forget, there was a metre gauge system in the Victualling yard and I think an 18 inch gauge system in the Foreign Cattle Market/Army Depot/Convoys Wharf at the end of the Tramway. I believe that some of the tracks for the latter remained in use for moving materials around the site right up until closure in the not too distant past. There has been a lot of change in the last 30-40 years and much of what had remained has now disappeared under blocks of flats and other developments. I would certainly like to see the layout make a visit South. All the best Ray