Caley Jim

I have a few spare brackets left from my signal box and could put some on the next etch I do, so long as you are not in a hurry for them! Jim

Do the birdcages have budgies in them? Jim

Ooooh! You are awful. But I like you! Jim

All WCJS was dual fitted as the LNWR use vacuum and the CR Westinghouse. The 'Cavalcade' I mentioned yesterday was the 07:00 leaving Perth on 7th August 1888 which had 37 vehicles from 9 railway companies, 4 LB&SCR, 8 LNWR, 1 NER, 5 MR, 4 NBR, 1 ECJS, 1 GNR, 2 WCJS and 11 HR and included 12 horse boxes, 2 carriage trucks, 6 luggage vans, 1 ECJS sleeping car,1 HR PO van and a brake van. It had 2 locos at the head with another attached in rear at Blair Athol and left Perth 20 minutes late and Kingussie 72 minutes late. On place names there are a couple of villages just north of Kirkaldy called Achtertool and Puddledub, which always struck me as being good names for a layout. Unfortunately that is NB territory! Jim

I used newsprint ( just an A4 sized piece cut from a newspaper) for the slates on my signal box. I worked out that 10 sheets = 0.6mm, i.e.a sheet is 0.06mm thick. This falls neatly between the scale 0.083mm of a ½" thick slate and the 0.0415mm of a ¼" thick one. 80 gsm is around 0.01mm thick (10 sheets = 0.1mm). Painting with acrylic paints gives a slight sheen to the finish. Jim

Which, at Perth, would just be tacked on to whatever was there for the Highland to take up to Inverness. There is a famous description of a long cavalcade of vehicles which was put together at Perth. I'll look it out tomorrow. Jim

It was Hroth who suggested the Erstwhiles making use of it for a journey to the Highland Grouse moors! In that case they would also need a sleeping carriage, which they could possibly hire from the ECJS. Alternatively they could hire a Diagram 28 sleeping composite from the WCJS, which would give them both seated and sleeping accommodation in the one vehicle. That's not a Photoshop job, or a cut-and-shut one. That's how they were built, as you can see from the caption! Jim

They will also need at least one luggage van, a carriage truck and perhaps more than one horsebox. The servants will also require accommodation, probably in a second hand third class carriage (though that will have to be in a suitably fit state to be accepted for running at express train speeds by the companies over whose metals they will be travelling). Jim

Making conical roofs (any photos I've looked at don't appear to be spiral) should be fairly straightforward. Draw out the building to scale; project the cone of the roof up to a point and then measure the length of the slope from tip to bottom edge. Draw a circle of this radius on card, then a second one whose radius is the 'extra' bit you added on to take it to a point. Cut this out then curve it round until it fits a circle whose diameter is the width across the base of the roof. Seemples Igor! :-) Jim

Only if stacked on top of one another thus: 33 +33 =66 Just like you see diseasels in scrapyards! Jim

is it not just a big fiddle? Jim

On the other hand, the WNR (and its proprietor) are in great need of Money, Money, Money! A've picked ma windae..... Jim In a (probably futile) effort to drag things back on topic - No? - Oh well I tried.

I recently made some corrugated sheeting for a small shed using two lids, one of which is on a bottle of Carrs 188 solder paint and the other on a jar which once held styrene solvent (I think it was 'Plastic Weld', but it now has a label 'Polyclens' stuck over it!). These have ribbing at a pitch I estimate to be just over 0.71mm, a scale 4¼ inches or thereabouts. The downside is that the lids only have a usable depth of 14mm. I used ordinary kitchen foil and fixed the (individual - wouldn't do that again!) sheets to the (styrene) roof by putting them in place, tacking the edge with cyano and then flooding cyano down the underside of the ridges. The idea behind this was that the set cyano would give some strength and rigidity to the foil. I have a small stone barn-type building to make for Kirkallanmuir and I intend to try roofing it in the same way.

Sorry,Rob. I should have said that you have to hold down the 'Alt' key while you type the numbers. When you release the 'Alt' key the character will come up on the screen. Another way to do it is it add 'Character Map' (in windows accessories) to your taskbar. You can then open this whenever you want a character not on your keyboard (°, ½, ¾ etc.) click on the character you want, click on the 'select' button, then the 'copy' one and then go back to where you were typing, right click and select 'paste'. This might be easier for you. HTH Jim

Is that not going a bit far just to clear a clubroom? Jim

If you are using Windows, Alt+0232 gives you è and Alt+0233 gives you é. Jim

Or put a small industry (dairy or agricultural merchant?) there. The headshunt could also double up as a carriage siding. The more complex track layout means that the siding can be shunted without interfering with passenger arrivals and departures. Jim

Except in the area of the crossing and the knuckle of the wing rails the closure rails should only be attached to the sleepers to which the relevant stock rails are attached. Not to every sleeper. Getting that right on a tandem turnout with interlaced sleepers is a real test of concentration! Jim

There are several listed on P18 of the Yearbook, though some of them are getting a tad out of date now. Jim

I've never used chamfers in any of these situations. Far better to have an accurate means of alignment. The fact that a chamfer will introduce a section which is wide to gauge is likely to cause more problems than it's worth IMHO. Jim

Apologies James et al (who is this Al guy anyway?) When I made the above response I didn't realise that it wouldn't appear until 2 pages later! I should have know, such is the speed with which this thread moves. Probably faster than the trains on the WNR! I must pay more attention when I return from a meeting of our area group. Jim

Now you've got the idea!! :-) The run-off of the stock rails is a bit on the sharp side, but then perhaps that was the way the WNR PW dept. would do things. Jim ( who does not wear woad and did rather like the Claytons as they looked less like a motorised biscuit tin than most of their ilk!)

And I'll bet there are plenty Scots in your neck of the woods! :-) Jim

Can't have green engines stealing all the glory! The general understanding is that it was inspired by a design Buddicombe produced at Crewe for a French company and the drawing somehow found its way to St Rollox (there were strong links between the two works through Alexander Allan in the early days). I believe the Caley were the only British company to employ outside cylinder 0-4-2's with 5' wheels and the horizontal cylinders in line with the wheel centre. They had several such classes and found them useful in colliery and industrial areas where tight curves abounded. One of the later classes were even Westinghouse fitted and one was used as a station pilot at Glasgow Central. Jim

Here's what an 0-4-2 should look like. And in model form (see my avatar for a head on view) Jim