Caley Jim

It depends on what your skill levels are. Unless you are experienced in etched kit construction it might be better to start with one of these or another plastic bodied kit as then you will only have the underframe to solder up and for that i would pick one with basic brake gear e.g. 2 shoe Morton. Some of the underframes for more modern stock are more complex (not that i've built any of them - 'modern' means post 1914 for me!). Some of the etched body kits are quite complex, even for older stock, and involve a lot of small detail parts. Having said that, most are designed to be as straight forward as possible to build. Jim

Progress on the water tank. Base painted; drain assembled and painted (needs more dirtying); pipes fitted and painted and the tank and base united. Only the bag and valve operating chain to make, fit and paint and then several layers of polyurethane varnish to pour on for the 'water'. Jim

Feeling guilty at not having done much to the layout of late, I have spent the last few evenings building the water tank which will sit beside the turntable on Kirkallanmuir. The painted tank and the base ready for painting. The tank sides are an etch with a piece of 40thou styrene on the bottom with the edges rounded off and a false top of 15thou. The two wee holes are for the inlet and overflow pipes and there will be an outlet pipe, with a bag on it, projecting from the underside of the tank, below the valve lever. The uprights of the base are 50 x 50thou (scale 7½" x 7½"), made by laminating 10thou onto two adjacent sides of some 40 x 40 thou. the diagonals are 30 x 30thou and the top beams 40 x 60thou. The tank sitting on the base. I built an identical one for the group layout 'Sauchenford', but painted grey, which can be seen lurking in the background of some photos of that layout. In that case I fixed the tank on before painting the base. I'm not making that mistake this time! Painting the inner timbers was a nightmare! At least I can get access from the top this time. Jim

Just remember whose model it is and therefore who has to be happy with it in the first instance! Jim (see the first line of my signature)

The answers to your first two questions are 'yes' and 'yes'. Like all of our wide range of components the drop-in wheels are only available to members, but the starter kits, comprising a wagon/van and enough rail and sleepers to make a short length of Easitrac to sit it on, can be purchased from the Association stand at exhibitions, where you can also get free back numbers of the 2MM Magazine. Jim

Interesting. What length is the Farish motor and how easy are they to get hold of? In the past I've fitted a Faulhaber 0816 (8mm diam, 16mm long) into a four wheel tender and still had room to have a spur gear reduction to drop the drive shaft below the footplate ( I have an aversion to drive shafts going through the middle of cabs! ). The whole arrangement only took up 25mm length. Jim

I have to confess to suffering from the same addiction, having a rolling stock list of over 100, which only includes 10 passenger vehicles. At least in 2FS they don't take up as much space as in 7mm! I am strenuously resisting buying any of the LNWR kits advertised with the latest 2mm Magazine. I'm awaiting delivery of a test etch containing 7 different CR wagon types, so building them will keep me busy (and delay further work on Kirkallanmuir ) for a wee while! i reckon that K'muir will need around 50 mineral wagons to make the colliery sidings look well used so, with only just under 40 at the moment which could be considered appropriate, there is a wee bit to go. Jim

But a very good source of modelling tools! Wouldn't be without my No15 K-flex files or my Adams pliers! Jim

What you must remember is that Tim has spent his professional life sculpting materials, in both their plastic and solid states, into complex non-geometric shapes, often in somewhat restricted locations! Jim

The guy in the peaked cap behind the horse looks pretty 'static' too! Nice one Tim! And a Happy Christmas from me too. :-) Jim

Diagram books tended to quote the internal dimensions of a wagon. Remember, they were produced for the benefit of the railways operating employees, so that they could specify a suitable wagon for the load in hand. CR wagon diagrams include both external and internal dimensions. Jim

Not sure which Caledonian colour you are referring to here. CR freight stock was painted red oxide, while NPCS was generally a slightly browner shade than the purple brown used for coaches. Two distinctly different colours. Jim

I'm not familiar with the loco, but it looks logical to me. I presume there was a tab on the bracket to locate in a slot in the frames and they certainly wouldn't be the other way up and there would be no point in them going to the inside! Jim

Again more of a 'what's just come off my workbench (AKA desk)'. When fellow member of the Forth and Clyde Area Group Colin Brady passed away suddenly earlier this year, the group took on the task of dealing with his modelling things. Among them were 6 of the resin kits I produced many years ago for CR Dia 21 mineral wagons which Colin had partly built but not finished. I obtained them and have just finished them off. They needed some repairs and refurbishment as some of them had suffered a bit of damage. These repairs are not too obvious, especially once they are painted and weathered with a liberal coating of 'coal dust' (black powder paint). 4 of them have been modelled as 'empties', returning from the docks loaded with pit props and the other two loaded with coal. They were painted with a new tin of Precision Paints 'CR Wagon Oxide', but it seems to be a little darker and browner than the previous tin I had dating from the 70's and which had finally got to the 'unusable stage. Seen here sitting in Kirkallanmuir exchange sidings. Jim

I'm with Ian on this one. Apart from anything else, using layers of slates allows you to have the odd one slightly raised, with a corner broken, slipped, or missing all together. All of these in moderation help to take the 'perfect' look off the building. Of course if you want a really dilapidated roof you can go to town with it! the roof is, after all, the most prominent part of a model building in most circumstances. Jim

Have you compared the length of the new axles with the ones you took out? If there's not much in it, i believe you can solve the problem by giving the bogie sides a squeeze in with the axle in place. this will drive the pinpoints further into the plastic and when you release the sides, the axle will spin better. I've never had to do this myself, never having rewheeled any rtr vehicles. Jim

Anything and everything as far as I'm concerned, but get your priorities right - wait until after the game!! :-) Jim W

I recall hearing a story of members of the LNER Society who had found the 'recipe' for LNER wagon grey and got hold of an old retired painter from Doncaster works. They presented him with the ingredients and asked him to show them how he mixed the paint. He started taking a shovelful of one pigment and then some of another when they said to him "Hold on. How much of each pigment did you use?" His reply was, "Oh! we didn't measure anything! We were only painting wagons after all. The bosses were only fussy about the colour of the top link locos!". So grey wagons could be a variety of shades, even different from day to day coming out of the works depending on the mix. Plus, as Steve has said, the smokey atmosphere in which they operated affected the pigments of the day. So, yes, you are being a colour pedant and, just get on with it! After all, who is there that can tell you exactly what shade of grey they were! Jim

Thanks, Angus and sorry to do that to you! Jim

I fully agree. Finescale (in any scale) is a 'state of mind' and doesn't necessarily relate to the track standards you adopt, though that state of mind makes you want to use those closest to and best portraying the prototype. And, yes, it is your model and it's up to you how you do it. ;-) Jim

I think it depends on the ink used and the paper. Brian Taylor of Smart Models recommends using matt photographic paper to print on He had two versions of one of his kits at Perth, one printed on 80gsm paper and the other on matt photo paper. The difference, not only in the detail, but also in the colour was quite noticeable. the reason is that on plain paper the inks tend to run together to a small extent, while this doesn't happen on the photo paper. Below are a some photos of the Station, Signal box and Goods shed roofs on Connerburn, all done with 80gsm strips. Jim

The livery comment in the LNWR book would seem to contradict that in the WCJS book, which is surprising given the authors of the latter. Perhaps that information came to light after the WCJS book was published. I have never heard anything about WCJS plates being blue! I feel a query on the CR Assoc forum coming on! Jim

I did the same for the sides of the turntable well on Kirkallanmuir. For other buildings, though, I'm planning on using the downloadable brick and stone papers from Smart Models. Apart from bull-faced stonework, I feel that using embossed plasticard is 'overkill' in 2mm scale, having seen the use of printed surfaces on Wansbeck and the Metcalf kits we used on a previous group layout. I'll still use paper strips for slates, though, as a bit of texture helps there. Jim

I forgot to add in my earlier post (#27), for the benefit of those not in possession of the book, that these 50 vans were, like all WCJS, dual fitted. Jim

'A Register of West Coast Joint Stock' by Casserly and Millard (HMRS 1980) states that 50 refrigerator meat vans were built by the LNWR thought to be similar to their Dia 46. They were numbered 287-336 and appear to have been painted in a plain dark grey livery with no markings on the body, although it is possible that in the c19th they were inscribed WCJS in small letters in the lower left corner. The ownership and running number were on the usual cast iron plate on the solebar - so, yes, presumably an oval plate. Jim