Caley Jim

Wow! does not do it justice! That is one superb loco, Tim. You'll need to bring it up to Edinburgh (or as some of us refer to it 'that city in the east whose name shall not be mentioned') and photograph it on top of its namesake. Jim well impressed)

Work on the point rodding suffered a bit of a hiatus as I was struck down with a bad flu and spent a week or so in bed. Recovering since then has allowed me to make progress, however and the run down the 10ft between the down main and down loop has now been completed. The run starts with 9 rods :- And goes down to 4 rods which cross under the loop to then go to the turnouts on the far side of the bridge. Again, all the cranks are boxed in. This board can now go back out to the garage and one of the end boards brought in to fit the rodding on it. Jim

Well, er, not quite! I decided that it would be nice to have some lighting in the box, but wanted to keep it 'self contained'. I tried a couple of grain of wheat bulbs powered by a 1.5v button battery, but, while this gave a nice yellowy illumination, the battery died after a couple of minutes. Nigel Cliffe kindly sent me some LEDs and resistors and rigging a couple of them up with 3 batteries (the LEDs need 3.5v) works well, although the light is a bit on the blue side. i tried to correct this by painting some cling film yellow and covering them with that, but that just gave a rather insipid green colour. I replaced this with a more orange colour which is better, but still a bit green. More experiments required, methinks! Jim

This was the one to which I was referring in post #8. I got the date wrong, though, it was 1722, not 1772. Some of the artillery were moved on the waggonway, making it the first military use of a railway. Jim

I built one of these kits many, many years ago! The first Scottish railway was the Tranent and Cockenzie Waggonway, built in 1772, horse drawn on wooden rails. Jim

When the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway opened in 1842 they had 1st class (upholstered seats and glass in the windows), 2nd class (bench seats and no glass in the windows), 3rd class (no roofs) and 4th class. I'll leave arrangements of the latter for you to work out for yourself, but there was handrail round the edge for you to hold on to! Jim

I've used a similar technique in the past, applying a thick layer of white enamel to sellotape stuck to a tile, drawing black lines across this and then peeling off strips. Fixing was by dipping the lining in a 50/50 mix of varnish and thinners, then applying to the loco. If you leave the strips in the mix for a few minutes then soften sufficiently to allow them to be manipulated into curves using the ubiquitous cocktail sticks. LP is looking good, Tim. Jim

We've got about 1 1/2" lying here and blowing about so that some parts are almost bare. Jim

Pardon my ignorance, but what are rooves? I thought coaches had roofs. Jim (or should this be in the pedant's thread?)

As long as he is not intending to nail the BoT inspectors between the uprights! What defence would Our Learned Friend offer in that case? (Extreme provocation? Insanity?.....) Jim

I've now been able to trace the article which was in the February 1971 issue of the 2mm Magazine, p17. It describes making both hooks and links out of soft stainless steel wire, however now hooks are etched and, as I said, I use annealed p/b wire. One benefit of the latter is that it tarnishes to a nice dark, rusty brown colour as you can see from the photographs here. Jim

Iphones and ipads seem to have a habit of doing this!! jim

On the subject of interlocking, which seems to crop up from time to time on here, the following was recently posted on another area. Lairg M1.2.3.4 1946 DK.pdf Not only does it show the full signalling diagram for both boxes, the identification of each lever and the locking table, (showing which levers lock/release which), but also has a drawing of the arrangement of the rods and tappets on each locking frame. Both being relatively simple frames it is an interesting introduction to the subject. Note that the North box down starter and the South box up starter are both slotted with the ground frame in the booking office. I suspect that this was where the tablet instruments were located and these signals could therefore only be released when all the tablets for the relevant sections were in the instruments. A tablet would then be removed and passed to the driver before he could proceed. Jim

They are all of the same ilk. Their instinct is to herd anything that moves into a pen. I've even seen one go into the 'crouch' position to a passing car! Having said that, they are the most loyal and biddable of dogs. Farmers couldn't work without them. Jim

Looks like someone needs the services of a good border collie. 'I am a border collie, The best trained you could pick. Since you're the one who threw it, You go get the stick! ' (seen on a card in Haverthwaite Station gift shop) Jim

Another factor which has not been mentioned is that during WWI the Railway Executive introduced pooling, after which, in theory at least, any wagon might appear anywhere, hauled by a locomotive of the company on whose metals it was travelling. As time went on, wagons would become more and more randomly distributed, so, to my mind, and especially for the post-1923 period,this is a somewhat pointless exercise. If you want to 'sort out the regions' in order to understand which companies operated where, then the RCH atlases will give you a much more accurate understanding. Sorry to be so negative. Jim

In those days there wasn't much option! If you couldn't shoehorn in a Minitrix or Tri-ang X500 you either built your own motor, tried to modify a continental N-gauge chassis or did without! Jim

IIRC only the Midland and the Great Northern imported American locos and neither had any great success with them. Their light bar-framed construction not being up to the job for the work required of them. Jim

Agreed. I see an Assistant PW/Electrical Engineer post becoming available on CA, at which point the incumbent Chief Engineer may be required to look to his laurels! Jim

Insanity is a requirement for 2FS modelling! Did I not mention that earlier? Jim

I've similarly been puzzled. To me it's a bit like trying to work out where the driver of a car lives from the registration plate! Apart from rural areas only served by one company, many colliery companies had several pits which might not all have been served by the same company (there was fierce competition for lucrative coal traffic) so their wagons might be registered by different companies. Also many fleets of wagons were hired or leased and would be registered by their owner rather than the hirer. Jim

It's interesting to note that the most Westerly station on the British mainland (Mallaig) was part of the LNER. In parts of Central Scotland LMS and LNER lines criss-crossed, and even ran alongside, one another. Notably along the north bank of the Clyde. Jim

Welcome to the Association, Steven. As others have said it depends on what satisfies you whether you use rewheeled rtr or scratch built or a mixture. The prototype you're modelling comes into too, of course. As far as 3 link couplings are concerned, my level of insanity was at one time such that I used 3 links operationally, but I eventually saw the error of my ways and switched to Alex Jacksons (some would say only a degree or so down the insanity scale). I still fit cosmetic 3 links, one reason I chose A/J's, and make them out of 10thou p/b wire which has first been softened by running it quickly through a soft flame (e g. a match). It is then coiled tightly round a strip of 20thou steel which has had a section at one end filed down to 2mm wide with rounded edges. The individual links are then cut from this (while the coil is still on the former), slid off and threaded together and onto the hook. There is an article waaaaay back describing this, but I'm laid up with flu at the moment and not at the computer. I'll try and post a reference to it later. Jim

But they get put down as well as picked up????? A N Other Jim

I used the N/S wire and PTFE tube system sold by Model Signal Engineering (now part of Wizard). 6th item down on this page. I used modified Bambi staples, with each leg pushed in a little at a time with pliers, to hold the tubing in place (scroll down the post). Just don't press down too tightly or you'll squash the tubing and make the operation stiffer. Jim