Chas Levin

Usually John I should say that no-one should stay up until 2am (early to bed, early to rise...) but for a resuly such as this, clearly it's worth it! Very nice work!

Thanks for posting this Rob; it's on my to-do list so this will be very helpful...

And at the risk of prolonging the size joke, it sounds like your workbench is bigger than mine too! Do you use a larger soldering area partly because you also model in O Gauge? I seldom need a very large area for soldering as I'm only working in 4mm so that's partly why I'm keen to minimise the soldering surface size. I must admit I am a bit on the tidy side though and I do rather like drawers, boxes, jars and so forth. Part of the recent change to my modelling space was to swap an old music studio desk for a much older rolltop desk, with a whole bank of cubbyholes, drawers and shelves...

Thanks Rich: that's pretty good going for that length of time. I might try one - good to have a variety of tools for different jobs!

Thank you - I'll have a browse, looks very interesting...

Thanks Rob, very interesting. I do have a hefty piece of plate glass which I used for a while for soldering, but it's a little on the large size (about 13" square and takes up too much bench-top real estate so I decided only to use it for things like making sure all of a vehicle's wheels are touching the ground. You're quite right about my having used too much solder there! It's a habit I'm still working on curing, born of early soldering fears of using too little - lack of confidence and lack of understanding as to how soldering works. I'd already thought I'd wick off some of the surplus while the sides are still unattached to anything else. I find the usual copper de-soldering braid that's normally used with electrical solder works very well with the stuff we use, but does need plenty of flux.

Oh, of course - thank you! Embarrassingly, I didn't recognise those titles: I certainly should have done as I'm involved in the GNRS! In my defence, I'm a fairly new recruit... I have all five volumes of the more recent 'Wagons Pictorial' and I thought I remembered being told that they incorporated previous material, but I'll check with a colleague as to whether that's the case and if not, I'll add them to the shelf...

Hello, thank you for the very informative post. I'd second Stephen's recommendation of the GNRS 5 part Wagon Pictorial publication, but can you please tell me who are the authors and publishers of the two titles above, 'Diagrams of GNR and ex GNR Wagon Stock' and 'Great Northern Railway Illustrations of Wagon Stock'? I agree about the complexity of markings and the many different styles - pre-Grouping railway companies don't seem to have spent any time thinking about the needs of railway modellers of the future, do they? 😉

Hello, the link seems to have stopped working: please could you post this again?

Hello Mike, when it's finished, may we please see a pic or two of the CLC van, partly to see the markings?

Hm: I'm going to have to get one and try it! Thanks Rich.

Interesting Jon; also, how do you secure things to the granite surface when you need to - for instance, when you're soldering something to another piece that needs to be kept still? I'm guessing blutak actually sticks quite easily, does it?

Now there's a thought: I just removed a couple of very old boxes of tiles from the loft as part the ongoing Operation De-clutter and they were on their way to the bin... Might try one for soldering though...

Also meant to say Mick, I can get good joints with 70 degree solder on NS and brass but only by tinning the metal in 145 degree solder first and as these sides are relatively thin and long, I thought the least soldering the better. I don't think de-soldering these backing pieces will be a problem - I've de-soldered worse!

That's very interesting too Jon, thank you: I've thought about pieces of stone... Doesn't it act as a bit of a heatsink? I've also tried a sort of stand, with a thin piece some kind of stone-like material on a board base (and with aluminium clips on arms to hold workpieces, but that's not relevant here) and the stone-like surface, whatever it is, did act as a heatsink which is largely why I stopped using it. It even felt very cold to the touch: is granite better, from a heatsink point of view?