Camperdown

When I sawed out the front door, I also tried to include the emergency door release knob, but it's not possible to match both the door position and the body panels exactly. Not too sure how I'll handle that one. Anyway, finally we have the new door in the BOC body, at the moment just placed in position. This is likely to be a slow process, as I have too many other projects on the go. But probably the next stage will be to do some surgery on the interior, to remove some seats, create steps down to the rear door, and add the luggage space that sat opposite the rear door (on BOC city buses, at least).

First thing to do was to dismantle the bodies. The Badgerline donor is useful here, as it gives something to practice on. The body is held to pillars coming from the roof with three plastic plugs. They look like they are threaded on, but the "threads" are just concentric grooves. So the plugs need to be drilled and torn out --- with quite a bit of violence. After that, everything else lifts out. Taking a door from a second EFE body means that it matches the main door, and you also get the glazing thrown in free (plus a lot of spare parts). So first thing to do was to saw the front door out of the Badgerline body. I also cut a rear door hole in the Badgerline body, as a practice before trying on the BOC body. I found that the door and hole for the door both need to be filed to 16.0mm wide. And here it, tried in place.

I haven't come across Jeff Day on Flickr, but I did find a conversion that was done by Dave (Dai) Wallington. I asked him where he got the second door from, and he said he had taken it from a second EFE body. So that's what I decided to do. Here is the OMO livered RELL, together with a second (Badgerline) donor body. I just bought the cheapest EFE RELL I could find on ebay.

Your dual door RELL looks very good. I think what I want is the MH centre door from Paragon http://www.paragonkits.com/illustr/mh03.htm

I bought an EFE 4mm scale model of a Bristol RE, liveried in the green and cream that Bristol Omnibus used for one-man-operation (OMO) buses in the 1970s. Excellent though the model is, it is the single door version, which was used on the country services, going to destinations outside city boundary. What I really want is a model of the dual door version, which was used on the city services. Something like the David Christie photo shown below. Does anybody know of detailing parts to add the second door? Google isn't helping me here. Also interesting from the photo is the little vertical window in the roofline, above the first door pillar. This was for the Plessey laser which scanned bar codes attached to lamp posts, spaced along the route. All part of a (failed) tracking system, together with the two way radios which were installed at the time. ("Driver to control, driver to control, come in please...")

As I was queuing for a ticket, one of the stewards pointed to the crowds and said it was just like Morris dancing. He explained that Morris dancing used to be dying, but more recent meets have been thriving, with large numbers of women and young people moving into the hobby. Not sure the analogy really works, but given the amazing RTR models that are now available, and some of the large layouts described here, I do feel that the hobby is thriving. The FT piece that somebody linked is, I think, slightly different. Toy makers (Hornby, Lego, Airfix, etc) have pivoted in recent years from selling to children to selling to adults. South Korea led the way, some years ago. Western countries have followed.

Only a short walk from the SECC along to the Riverside Museum, to see the real thing.

Great show this year, well done to the organisers. My impression was that there was more room to circulate as well, so it was easier to find your way around the layouts. For me, the outstanding layout was Donaghadee, not least for the entertaining commentary from the lads showing it. As someone observed, there are not nearly enough Irish layouts. A friend reminds me of a relevant song:

Looks fantastic. The video of the anchor links bobbing up and down below the frames puts me in mind of one of those 1960s children's pedal cars. I guess I saw more of those in my formative years than pre group inside cylinder locos with Joy valve gear.

I find it easier to get out the n/s sheet, piercing saw, and files rather than struggle with some poorly shaped piece of soft brass. Personal choice, of course, and other folk can manage to build a nice model from the parts supplied in the kit. One of the maxims of the late Iain Rice was that kits are just a starting point to a good model and one shouldn't be afraid to go off piste. Still good advice.

Thanks Nick. The GA above is from your Flickr stream, and I found the pipe and rod diagram especially useful. That, and your Z build.

Careful examination of the GA shows that the running plate starts to taper at the ends of the coupled wheelbase. At the back, there's an 8' 10" overhang. The bunker starts to taper about halfway back. If it didn't the bunker would be wider than the running plate, at the extreme back of the loco.

I gave up on the cast crosshead and made my own. The real slidebar is 5in x 3.5in in section, so on the model that is fairly easy to file up from a strip cut from some thick n/s sheet. The crosshead I soldered up from some little pieces of 0.015 nickel silver sheet, together with a small turning where the piston rod attaches. I think what I did was to tack the pieces together, using the slide bar itself as a former, then to make better joints with the slide bar removed. Obviously you need to be quick (and lucky) not to have the whole thing fall apart or solder together in an unworkable mess. The picture shows my assembly together with the kit casting. You might be able to open out the kit casting by using a piercing saw as a sort of file, or maybe there is a watchmaker's file small enough to open it out. (That will probably cost you though.) Alternatively, make a new slide bar to fit the crosshead. It looks as if about 1.3mm x 1mm is feasible, especially if you ease out the inside corners of the crosshead with a piercing saw. Anyway, best of luck.

I haven't measured it, but the shape of the bunker seems to compare fairly well with the GA. To be honest, I don't want to discover too many discrepancies as I'll just be compelled to replace even more of the kit. Where it does fall down is in the position of the vertical bend in the bunker, which should be about half way along. There is discussion about that in one of the threads listed above. But the bend is very subtle and is hardly noticeable.

Judging by the number of threads on here, the Maunsell Z class is a popular engine. With all the obscure prototypes now being produced in high-quality RTR, there must be someone working on a new model. Anyway,… In 2012, Metropolitan starts a thread here on the DMR kit by saying: "What is a perfect Loco kit? .... This is! - DMR SR Z 4mm". It's hard to judge the result as the pictures are missing, but the enthusiasm is clear enough. This thread pops up quite high on Google search, and must have helped Phoenix Precision's sales no end. In September 2016 Mr Chapman asks about motor and gearbox for the DMR kit: DLT --- heroically --- built two: one starting in December 2011 and one, with a fuller description, starting in July 2020 In June 2021, Nick Dunhill started a long thread on the 7mm version: He starts off "I have heard good things about the kit so I am going to enjoy the build." But ends with: "I'd give the kit a 4.5/10. I made life difficult for myself by not accepting the shortcomings of the kit, however. Once you venture so far off piste the parts were never going to fit. I'm currently doing a quickie building someone a chassis for a Finney7 V2 and that is just falling together so easily, so kits can be designed with fidelity and accuracy within. There are plenty of people who have built a Z for themselves from this kit and seem delighted with it so who am I to judge." The final result, of course, is superb, and the pile of unused kit parts is impressive too. In November 2021 we had a rather nice Millholme whitemetal version, described by Pierview. In May 2022, ikcdab asks for help with the crosshead in the DMR kit. Not sure what the eventual outcome of that was. There may be other posts. I've also seen a Youtube video where someone prints an N gauge version. I decided I wanted a Z in P4, and Metropolitan's fulsome praise led me to the DMR kit. In 4mm scale, what you get is 0.015in brass and nickel etchings, a partially rolled boiler, and a few fittings. Early kits seem to have had turned brass boiler fittings. Now the kits are supplied with some blobby whitemetal castings. Even the whistle and the injectors are whitemetal. There are nice turnings for the boiler clacks and lost wax crosshead and slide bar, which as ikcdab notes, doesn't really work. My kit was missing any buffers. I should have got back to Phoenix Precision about that, but used some Alan Gibson ones instead. I started off by building the running plate from the kit. It doesn't fit together terribly well, and getting the curves on 0.015 brass is quite a challenge. The result wasn't too bad. But one of the characteristics of the Z is the two drops in the running plate: a 4.5 inch drop behind the cylinders and a 12 inch drop behind the cab. The rear drop was about 1mm too shallow, so I ended up making a new running plate. The original was under width anyway. With the correct 12" drop behind the cab, I had to add an extra strip of material under the bunker. But with a correct width running plate, the cab and tank sides were too far from the edge, so I had to make new front and back spectacle plates, and a new bunker rear. It all sort of snowballed from there. I set up the frames from the kit using a surface plate and engineers square, aligning to their top edge. But when I came to add the cylinders I found they were horribly skewed. The two frame sides are different; the kit is etched from hand drawn artwork. Nothing for it but to cut new frames from 0.5mm tinplate. The kit had the cylinders in the wrong place anyway, so that got corrected. That is probably why the connecting rod is 6" too long. The pictures show the current state of play. The chosen prototype is 30953, for its S&D connection at Templecombe. Not a lot remains from the kit, although I'm hoping I can salvage some of the motion etch. I made new coupling rods and the slide bars and crossheads are scratch built, as are the cylinders. Clearance behind the crosshead for P4 is tight (this was after all the reason why OO was invented in the first place) but is just about possible with a recessed front crank pin.