Graham Hughes

My uncle was a shunter at Shirebrook, but maybe not that kind of shunter. He'd also retired by the 1970s.

Impressive signal. (Although it doesn't give the trains much time to get going )

Do other types of alcohol work or does it have to be India Pale Ale?

Your bridge looks like it has a towpath on both sides. I am not familiar with the Somerset Coal Canal but although this wan't unknown it was unusual, particularly on older canals. Generally, on the off-side the bridge arch would continue down to the canal bed, like this one: Just to show the difference, and how it works, here's a roving bridge too:

I was just thinking I used to do a casting of that reverser. Not got any now, but as I recall the pattern was not all that difficult to make. Basically a couple of bits of tube with a wire down the middle and the crank fastened on the end and a couple of bits of NS soldered on and filed into shape for whatever the sticky out bits were. If it doesn't have to go in a mould it could be even simpler to make one out of styrene. I liked the Q, I think it was my favourite of the loco kits. Nice to hear of someone who made a nice job of one.

Then don't. Build, or buy, some new FS stock. If you were fancying a go at P4 or O Gauge you wouldn't expect to re-wheel your N Gauge stock. Start small with a layout that doesn't need a whole load of stock and see if you like it enough to want to do more.

Who'd have thought open-top bus tours of railway bridges were so popular?

Surely that can't be right as the note in the 2mm Magazine said the plan was to alter the mould so it produced one sprue of each at the same time. Depends how big you make the holes. I was thinking slightly oversize ones and fix the chairs in place with a dab of epoxy. I need to find out that drawing for a sleeper punch and see it is buildable. I certainly don't intend drilling holes in sleepers one at a time if it isn't.

My thinking about the chairs with pins was that if I could make the punch to make the sleepers rather than have to cut them individually then it was designed to make holes in them at the same time so I may as well use them. I can't say I have ever really got anywhere with Templot. Certainly nowhere near anything that was ready to be printed on any sort of paper.

Thanks for the suggestions about track. Not so sure about the baulk road one. I did make a short length once from the drawing of the Midland Railway variety in George Dow's Midland Style. I used code 40 FB rail on PCB "timbers" and flooded the base of the rail with solder to represent the wider base of the bridge rail. Not sure it was particularly accurate but it looked reasonable enough. I am planning to model the GNSR around the beginning of the 20th Century. I have been scrolling through the thousands of pages of the GNSRA CD of back issues of Great North Review going back to 1964 and have found some more information on track. I initially discounted easitrac because of the sleeper length but from the information I have found the GNSR buried the ends of the sleepers in the ballast around that time so maybe that is not an issue, (although so far I have yet to see any photos in which the sleeper ends are not visible) It would also hide the outside of the chairs to some extent. I do like the idea of the plastic chairs on the ply sleepers. I built quite a bit of 3mm scale 14.2mm gauge track from plastic chairs on styrene strip sleepers and that worked rather well. I built on a thick sub-base of .100" styrene sheet so didn't have problems with warping but I do like the idea of ply sleepers I was looking at the chairs Wayne Kinney does as part of his N range which seem very like the Association chairs and noted he has ones with pegs on the bottom. Then I see in the latest 2mm magazine the Association is intending to do them as well. Somewhere in an old Model Railways from around the mid '70s I have an article with drawings to make a punch to produce ply sleepers with holes for P4 ply and rivet track. I need to look it out and see if I can build a half size version and use the chairs with pegs on. Versaline looks interesting but I haven't seen any in the flesh as it were. I think I need to get enough of each from the shop to build a test length and see which looks best built up. I enjoy building track and don't mind a bit of extra effort to get it right for my own satisfaction, even if nobody can tell the difference when it is done. The last 2mm FS track I built was with the plain section rail and the whitemetal chairpins (who remembers those?)

I find the opposite problem. I have lots of little collections of bits, just can't remember what I intended to do with them.

Here's a track question. Which of the 2mm track systems do people think gives the best representation of pre-grouping bullhead track? I surmise from the name that easitrac is the easiest but I am more concerned with which will give the more accurate appearance. It won't be a big layout so the work involved is not an issue, besides I like making track. Any opinions would be welcome.

Glad you did. That all looks like it will be interesting as it develops.

Always best to start with an easy one, eh?

I read this in the MRJ article too, but are they expecting it? I don't see it in the list of layouts on the York show website.

I had forgotten about those. Always got a reaction from visitors at shows

I don't recall that big grey concrete building over the tracks to the left of the station. Must be new since I last visited Kyle of Lochalsh.

You just haven't lived.

Presumably the original purpose was to protect the end grain at the top of wooden posts from the elements, but in line with the fashion of the Victorian era for ornamentation a simple cap was not good enough (although some examples of these existed) so decorative finials became the norm and were carried over to metal posts too.

They posted on their Facebook page on October 14 that they were "still working on the website". Guess it is taking a while. They had a good range of stuff at the Aberdeen show a few weeks ago though.

English Civil War?

That is very pleasing to hear. Geoff was an excellent modeler. I recall seeing his GE 2-4-2T develop over successive Association events, it was beautifully modeled I hope you have enough columns, I won't be able to make any spares. The masters are long gone too. Quite a lot of them got damaged making the moulds, one of the problems of trying to get them as close to scale as possible was they were susceptible to damage in the press. Usually the mould would be fine but bits would come off the patterns when you got them out. The moulds would only have worked in my machine as it wasn't a standard whitemetal casting machine but one I largely made myself. My moulds were rectangular rather than the round ones usually used for whitemetal casting. Practically all the masters would have needed work to make them usable again and the way techniques have developed over the years there didn't seem a lot of point in putting in the effort for something that was a bit of an outdated means of making wagons. I didn't really think they would be any use to anyone else and I didn't plan on using them again. Keeping them would have been more out of nostalgia than practicality. To be honest, after 20 years of tipping white metal into that casting machine I was pretty much sick of the sight of them too. I only rejoined last week. I have recently started a continental TT layout but talking to the 2mm Scale Association people at the Aberdeen show a couple of weeks ago (Thought I'd better mention that just to keep the thread almost on topic) got me thinking of building something in 2mm again. Things have moved on since I was a member and if you wanted to build a smallish loco you started out by building the motor. That is why there weren't many pre-group locos about in those days, as you mentioned earlier. I have started on a rake of GNoSR 6-wheelers and have been looking for suitable subjects for a layout. I am thinking of somewhere on the Speyside line around the turn of the 20th Century. Something small that won't take too long to build and can fit in the back of the car if it ever gets invited to shows. At the moment I am favouring Cromdale, as to scale it fits perfectly on two 4' boards and has the distillery branch for a bit of extra interest. We shall see.

If you want to complain about a kit or want a refund, then that was somebody else entirely. The casting equipment wore out long ago so no there won't be any more castings.

Bodmine was a smashing little layout. It is so nice to see it again. I don't think I ever saw Bollingrove but seeing Bodmine, at Manchester I think it was, was what first inspired me to join the 2mm Association at the time. (I just rejoined after a very long absence.)

I registered and still can't access the page. Now a small railway museum, http://www.friendsofmaud.org.uk Thanks for that. I have often wondered and never been able to track it down. For one thing it is hard to tell exactly where it is from the train under the ground.