Long John Silver

On the subject of kits, I built two Westward panniers(64xx and 74xx) over 25 years ago, decent kits and still going strong.

Also if my memory is correct there were far fewer layouts featured in model railway magazines in the sixties, perhaps 2 per issue in Railway Modeler. Now there can be up to half a dozen in a single issue, most using modern off the shelf products, and very good many of them are too, if sometimes a little bit "samey". There are layouts featuring kit built and scratch built stock but they are very much in the minority. It is possible that the actual number of such layouts is much the same as it was in the sixties, just more layout articles are published in the mainstream model press. MRJ of course is a different beastie altogether.

Funnily enough I was thinking about the link between the preserved railway scene and railway modelling while eating my breakfast just now. I do think that the relatively healthy interest in modeling in our area is to some degree linked to the Dean Forest Railway (other excellent preserved railways are available. there just not quite so close to us). Many of our model railway club members are also volunteers there, though I'm not, I just don't have the time.

The points you make about the relative demise of the model kit and home car maintenance are good ones. There are other pathways into constructing though. and talking to the parents of some of our club juniors it appears that a couple of them make robotic devices out of anything they can find, and this constructive streak comes out in their modelling. They love their ready to run, but enjoy making things too.

Absolutely right, I use r-t-r and kit build to fill the gaps, but the gaps have just become fewer over the years. I am trying to keep my hand in as far as loco building is concerned, but my main layout doesn't provide many opportunities. In the longer term I my be pushing my modelling era back and will need to build more kits. As we all know some modelers using exclusively r-t-r produce some superb layouts, far better than I could do and there is real skill in combining products to form a convincing model railway.

Tony, I think there is still a fair bit interest in building things, it just gets lost amid the vast amount of r-t-r that’s available. I too find it frustrating when modelers complain in the manner of your Mr Angry, when in truth they have never had it so good. Most though seem to enjoy their purchases and for some it is the start of a journey to modification and kit/scratch building; others stay with r-t-r, but if they all enjoy themselves then great. In our club the juniors are interested in construction and we are trying pass on skills and probably bad habits as well. We are also cataloging a collection from a local modeler who died recently. His ready to run equipment was boxed and sold off by the family, but he had a stash of kits he’d bought second hand, some part built; some unbuilt. Locos, coaches and wagons mostly GWR late 19th early 20th century, which his widow has asked us to dispose of, with all money raised going to charity. Six of us have bought a fair few items for ourselves so hopefully the locos and stock will be built and run. and those we don’t sell to club members will be offered for sale at the Lydney Show later this month. I’ve bought a nearly complete 517 class, an unbuilt Metro Tank and an unbuilt Buffalo Saddle Tank to keep me busy once I finish my Large Prairie. I’ve also bought and already upgraded a K’s B Set with new underframe components and fixed the seating and roofs. On a slightly different tack I bought the Finecast Kit for the Large Prairie after Hornby and Dapol announced their models, but I had already decided I needed to build a loco as I hadn’t for about ten years and I and was in danger of losing what little skills I had. I don’t think for a minute that it will be as detailed as the r-t-r models but it will be mine, and as good as I can make it. Progress is slow but the chassis runs as an 0-6-0 and cylinders/crossheads and slidebars have all been fettled and are ready to be fitted. I’ll post a photo when a bit more progress is made. Jon

I propose the healthy option, the LNWR Cauliflowers, simple, elegant yet rugged in LNWR livery - and one of your five a day.

Mike, I like your pannier very much, it's a good kit, I built one over 20 years ago as yard shunter/station pilot - it's the only loco I have that has covered enough trainset miles to need new motor brushes. Al, the Comet rods are a little bit chunkier than the Finecast ones, I've built the Comet chassis for the large prairie for on old Airfix body and have had no trouble with the rods. I'm currently building the Finecast kit, photo attached, progress is slow but since the photo was taken I've attached the slide bars and filed the crossheads to fit. Regards Jon

Hi Al, A bit late on this, but I'm only a very amateur "Rmweber". I was wondering how your Bulldog turned out. It s a cracking model and captures the look well, nicely painted and lettered too. Looks great on the layout and a clever mix of components. Good luck with the De Glehn when you start it. Regards Jon

Hi Mark, Kinlet Hall does have NEM pockets. Jon

Agree with you about the telegraph poles and platform canopy supports being upright. I find it's particularly odd when modelling USA prototype that in old photos you rarely see a vertical telegraph pole, especially in more rural western areas. yet try to replicate that on a model and it just looks awful. I'm more of an overall effect modeller than a detailed one, but that is one detail that bugs me. Jon

Wonderful to see so many good photos of layouts, all of which have been inspirational to many. I'd agree with Jol Wilkinson that it's a "how long is a piece of string " discussion, but great fun none the less. With many modellers the biggest influences tend to be those of their modelling formative years, hence for me Buckingham and Borchester particularly inspired, with their focus on operation. David Jenkinson's Garsdale Road showed you could have a main line in limited space, and I always enjoyed his writing. Later Martin Brent's Rye Harbour showed you could have an interesting layout in a small space, and inspired me to model at a time when I had very little room for a layout. Initial inspiration though came from the real railway and the environment, urban and rural, but the layouts above helped me focus on the aspects of the railway I wanted to model. These days I don't find layouts inspirational in the same way, I know what I want from a layout now, but I am inspired by the modelling standards and techniques, and am always interested in what makes other modellers tick. Having a wide range of interests, but inevitably having to limit what I can model I have always enjoyed layouts that cover prototypes I love, but don't have the skill or time to model, Adavoyle and London Road being good examples. Hats off to those who have modelled a prototype location, Little Bytham is wonderful and Retford even unfinished is a magnificent, but I've never had the room to accomodate a real location that would satisfy me operationally. If I did though I think I'd go for Whitland in West Wales.

The livery on the Heljan 37 is very bright which can accentuate the plastic looks, in BR green it might look altogether more sober, and it's a big diesel with lots of relatively flat surfaces too, which also makes it more difficult to produce a realistic finish in plastic. To be fair I'm sure it's an excellent model for the price and gives the opportunity to make it your own by weathering and adding detail. I dabble a bit in American N Gauge modelling and find the finish on the N gauge diesels more realistic than on the HO models - particularly those in brighter liveries, again it's the smaller size. Of course that's just how my dodgy eye and brain combo sees things. As for scale and gauge, I believe it's horses for courses. My 00 layout is urban, and I find the scale suits, and I can do some kit and scratch building, my American N is about the same size but represents a more rural area and N captures it well. I find myself more reliant on r-tr stock and kit bashing in N, as I don't have the skills to do intricate work work in that scale. I have immense respect for those that can in N/2mm, such as Atso, Grahame and Tim Watson.

There were small allocations at Banbury, Leamington Spa and Tyseley in the Midlands, and in West Wales, Neyland usually had one on the books in the 1950s. For a small class they were allocated quite widely.

Hi Tony, I guess it's an achievement to collect an entire range, but as you say - what next. That thief must have had specialist knowledge of the HD range to target the most expensive pieces, a real shame that people do these things. On a lighter note I remember seeing Stoke Summit at the Rhondda Show, I'd never taken much notice of the articles about it in the model press, other than those about the locos and stock. However it was the first layout I remember seeing that was much better in the flesh so to speak than in the magazine photos. I spent 20 minutes absorbed by the scene and the passing trains, something that I've never done before or since with a continuous type layout. I thought the palette of colour on the layout was particularly convincing, and of course the variety of trains passing. I would have spent longer but had to get back to our club's layout and earn my keep. Regards Jon

Morning Tony, looking at it dispassionately your box swap sounds like the perfect win/win deal to me. As Rich (Bucoops) says boxes are important to the collector, they are probably rarer than the item that was packed in them, and having the box enhances an items financial value. A part-built kit is equally valuable to a builder, and the time spent rebuilding and/or completing it adds some financial value, but more importantly gives great satisfaction to that builder. Two different, and valid perspectives on the hobby, though give me the kit anytime. I don’t really get the collector’s thing. I suppose there is a sense of achievement in collecting an example of all of a particular set of vintage models, and particularly the thrill of finally finding a particularly rare example. I think many of us GWR modellers would get that same feeling if we came upon a stash of Slaters Toplight Kits, made or unmade. I’ll admit to enjoying the working displays of old trains, and I’m glad people put such layouts together, but it wouldn’t maintain my interest. Jon

HI Al, that looks like a K’s Aberdare, and nicely made too. I built a NuCast re-issue over 20 years ago, I bought the kit at a good price when W&H were closing down. As with my Bulldog if I was building it now, I’d replace the smokebox door and chimney. Mine has a D11 motor in it and runs slowly and smoothly, if a little noisily. They are wonderful looking engines. Attached is the only photo I have of mine, must take some more. Jon

Thanks all for the info on vehicle mounted cleaning pads, as a fully qualified clumsy devil, with honours, I will look into these. My ground signals can then sleep more peacefully at night. I use to use electronic track cleaners, but interestingly since I switched them off, I’ve needed to do much less wheel cleaning, particularly on my Romford/Markits wheeled locos. Jon

For outside cranks I use a similar method to Mike Edge, but I fit a Romford Wheel Nut to the end of the extended axle, and solder the cranks to the nut and axle. The wheel nut gives you a good surface area to solder to. I think it was a West Coast Kit Centre suggestion or maybe one of Iain Rice’s. As Tony says easy then to adjust the quartering. I’ve only built two outside framed locos but neither has ever thrown a crank. I think you’ve caught the look of the Bulldog really well. Jon

ARMathwaite and bassaLEG Jon

I am old enough to remember steam on BR in everyday service, just, but I was very young - I’m 63 now. I did most of my long-distance rail travel, other than commuting, between about 1974 and 1983, so Blue Era diesel period. As a result, I am drawn to the early 1960s and also the middle 1970s. I was also lucky enough to go to a grammar school with a great library, which contained a large number of railway books by the likes of Messrs Nock, Hamilton-Ellis and Tuplin. Through spending far too much time reading these, I discovered pre-group railways, and developed a lifelong interest in pre WW1 railways. I’ve never had the skills or patience to dedicate my self to modelling the Edwardian Era, so I settled on South Wales just before nationalisation, GWR and LMS. This enables me to operate some modern locos of types I remember as lad, plus some old pre-group survivors in their final years. Can’t justify the blue diesels though, perhaps one day.

Tony, A bit late on this one but I hope you’ve recovered from your accident. Living where I do, I sympathise with you, we have fallow deer, Wild Boar and free roaming sheep to contend with, in the Forest. The deer are most active at dawn and dusk, and as you found out, once one has appeared others often follow. I saw eight deer cross the road in front of me one evening, having stopped for the first one. I like your experiments at “speed” photos, they really do convey the sense of a fast steam hauled express, like no others that I’ve seen. Jumping subjects again, sorry, I’m not too impressed with the sound on the J36, but it is an excellent model overall. I’m not a fan of sound fitted locos, though I wouldn’t condemn those that are, except perhaps for those who use it a little over enthusiastically at exhibitions. I will, however, admit to opening the Layout Room window during the summer, and amid the ambient noise can be heard the goings on at the 15-inch gauge live steam line a quarter of a mile away. I must try to get them to synchronise their operations with my layout’s timetable.

It’s happened to me too, with brake gear and motion parts as well; repairable but a pain and a fiddle. I have some etched brake parts from Mainly Trains to retrofit on to a Cotswold/Nucast 42xx I built nearly 25 years ago; they’ve been in my “to do box” for five years, waiting, so I tell myself, for me to be in the right state of mind to tackle the job. Jon

I certainly think Tony has a point about bloody-mindedness. When I built my first loco kit my soldering was just about OK for electrical work, and it had taken me about a year to get to that low standard. In the previous 5 years I’d had a couple of attempts to either solder or stick white metal together, with no real success, until I managed to build a couple of ABS wagon kits. My first kit was a K’s Coal Tank; it took a couple of months to put together. On test it could just about cover the distance from fiddle yard to station. Any attempt to run around a train resulted in derailment. To cut a very long saga short it took two and half years, three motors, three sets of wheels and four sets of pickups and two repaints before I was happy with it. I learnt a lot and had completed three other locos to a (by my standards) satisfactory level in the interim. I must have really wanted that Coal Tank. I have therefore some sympathy with those who get frustrated or give up, especially people like myself who are not gifted in an engineering or artistic way. I would certainly recommend anyone who has a half-finished kit to have another go at finishing it, even if it takes a while. It’s a great exercise in overcoming challenges, and as the project isn’t life or death can be taken at you own pace. If you’ve invested in the kit, you’ve already sunk costs into it so you can’t lose, and if you do start to make progress well who knows where it will lead?

Thanks for the kind comments. I do like outside framed GWR 4-4-0s, I look forward to seeing your Bulldog progress. The Toplights are Slaters; I managed to buy a Brake, Composite and Third way back in 1997. I saw a couple for sale on a club stand at a show a couple of years ago – they had gone before the show opened. I must say you’ve done a great job on that PC Toplight, it really looks the part. I have one Blacksmith (ex Mallard) Brake Third as well. This was only my second attempt at a brass kit. I cut the roof a couple of mil too short but somehow managed to solder the offcut back on again. It was the only part of the kit that was soldered, I wasn’t confident enough to solder the main bodywork. This had an unexpected advantage when some years later the coach became the only rolling stock victim of the “Great Roller Blind Disaster of ‘96”. Suffice to say having been hit by said blind the coach splintered in to the component parts. It didn’t bend or distort, just shattered, and I was able to clean up the parts and solder the kit together properly. The original bogies didn’t survive but were replaced by appropriate Westward ones. I made a better job of the blind installation second time as well. I wasn’t as lucky as you with my Mainline Collett, it never ran well, but I had a 1982 Mainline Pannier that was a very sweet runner for about ten years, until the wheels came loose. Jon