Caley Jim

Clever work as always Tim. I hope you didn't cause any squeamishness on here with that photo of the NiTi RC file! I'm just about to start on the wheel and handle for my Jubilee pug, but will be using a slightly different approach as it has proper spokes and not just four round holes. It might be a day or two before I get time to do it, but I'll post the result on my 'Jubilee' thread once I do. Jim

The type of bed was known as a 'Box Bed' or 'Set in' bed and was common in the 'Single ends' (one room houses) in many parts of industrial Scotland. Basically it was a bed built into an alcove in the room with a curtain which could be drawn across the opening to keep out the cold. 'Ra Wheeflet' was the local name for the area known as Whifflet. It got it's name from the fact that it was originally a relatively flat area where the monks grew their wheat, hence 'Wheat Flats' > 'Wheaflat' > Whifflet. To bring the topic back to railways, the Monkland & Kirkintilloch and Ganrkirk & Glasgow Railways both made an end-on junction with the Wishaw and Coltness Railway here. Jim

Returning to Coatbridge, Northroader said: 'I think the difference with Coatbridge, Jim, is that it was mainly centred on Iron, so it was fewer larger works, with ancillary metalbashing.' Far from it! I can't remember the exact figure, but at one time there were a huge number of open topped blast furnaces in the area. See this image from the 1858 survey of Dundyvan Iron works. Note the furnaces at right centre and the 'coal pit' in the centre of Long Row. I have seen an earlier map of this area which showed a row of blast furnaces on the opposite side of the road from Long Row where the 'Malleable Iron Dept' is shown on this map. A quote from Wikipedia: The town was vividly described by Robert Baird in 1845:[32] “'There is no worse place out of hell than that neighbourhood. At night the groups of blast furnaces on all sides might be imagined to be blazing volcanoes at most of which smelting is continued on Sundays and weekdays, day and night, without intermission. From the town comes a continual row of heavy machinery: this and the pounding of many steam hammers seemed to make even the very ground vibrate under ones feet. Fire, smoke and soot with the roar and rattle of machinery are its leading characteristics; the flames of its furnaces cast on the midnight sky a glow as if of some vast conflagration. Dense clouds of black smoke roll over it incessantly and impart to all buildings a peculiarly dingy aspect. A coat of black dust overlies everything'. I have seen it said that it could be difficult to tell whether it was day or night, so dense was the smoke. Jim (who went to secondary school in the town and later worked in the town for 38 years)

Another place which would have been in the same league is Coatbridge, 'The Iron Borough'! Jim

Very nicely done. Paint running into the plank lines is always a problem when hand lettering. Jim

I'm intrigued by the signal in the middle of the tracks at Hopewood on Sea, effectively putting it on the right hand side of the track it refers to. This was normally only done where sighting was an issue. Jim W

Pity the locos will most likely be green ones, but you can't have everything! Jim

The rear sandboxes and front sand pipes have now been made and fitted. The former were filed out of brass (a pin from a broken 13amp plug) with a small piece of etch tag soldered to the top rear slope to form the lid and a length of 10thou. guitar wire soldered into a small hole in the bottom for the pipe. The front pipes, which emerge from an 'S' shaped fitting below the front of the front sandbox, were cobbled up from bits of copper wire with the pipes again guitar string. These pipes thread their way between the front brake block and the guard iron and so are barely visible. I've made all the pipes a wee bit short to avoid the risk of them catching on any track irregularities. Jim

The boiler looks to big, and hence the chimney too short, for it to be a Jumbo. At least to my eye. Also, the Jumbos' cabs didn't have the wee bit of side sheet under the rear part of the cab roof. Jim

That certainly looks like a CR 812 class that's come to grief! The CR loaned 25 0-6-0's to the war department. One book I have says that they were 'Jumbo's', but I think 812 's are more likely as they were not only more modern, but also more powerful. Jim

Next up was to assemble the cosmetic frames which also carry the brake gear. These are half etched over almost all of their area and rather flexible, so I soldered lengths of 10thou steel guitar string along the top edges between the wheel slots to stiffen them slightly. Once the brake gear is fitted they become much more rigid. Two lugs at the back hook over the back of the chassis with a pcb spacer soldered across the back which buts up against the back of the chassis. To attach them, the cosmetic frames are then swung up and fixed at the front by a 14BA screw into the front frame spacer. Here I ran into an unforeseen problem, partly due to lack of foresight and partly to having had to change the body assembly arrangements for reasons I described in an earlier post. The cosmetic frames have to be attached to the chassis before it is attached to the footplate assembly, with the smokebox/tank/cab being attached last, the latter held by a screw through the front frame spacer into the smokebox. The problem I encountered was that the front spacer of the cosmetic frames partly covered the latter screw! Cutting this spacer back to clear the screw was not an option as that would have left it too fragile. The solution was to make a new spacer, extended backwards and incorporating a hole for the screw into the smokebox and use a longer screw. As the two screws are very close together, the hole for the 14BA one was deeply countersunk so that its head would be well clear of the 12BA attaching the smokebox. Despite not having the wheels yet (but see later) I decided to attach the brakegear fitting a pair of 8.5mm wheels I have into the front bearings and lining up, by eye, the edge of the brake blocks with the edge of the flange. This was repeated for the rear wheels with the centre blocks being aligned using the outside pull rods as guides. This should leave sufficient clearance for the 9mm wheels. The cross rods are 10thou guitar wire long enough to hold the pull rods. Inserting a set of wagon wheels into the slots in the cosmetic frames allowed me to workout how far these should be spaced out from the brake hangers. Once the pull rods were attached, the cross rods had a small section snipped out of them and short lengths of insulation off decoder wire slipped over the gap and flooded with cyano. On the wheels front, Nigel C came over here last Monday and, with my guidance from the drawing regarding dimensions, we drew up the artwork for the wheels, which has now gone to I-materialise for printing in stainless steel. They will be delivered to Alan Smith for fitting the rims and axles and, with any luck, I should have them before the turn of the year. Meanwhile there are plenty bits and pieces still to be made and fitted! Jim W

And the hat on the young chap on the right on the footplate seems to be balanced about 2" off to the left of his head! Jim

I agree about that footstep 'ghost'. The spokes appear to be 'T' shaped in cross section, similar to those on several CR Drummond ST pugs, including the one I'm currently building, but of lighter section. Jim

I'm not familiar with either the Lone Star track or Peco N-gauge track, but would Peco N-gauge fishplates do the job, or be capable of modification to suit? Jim

Second handrail knob from the left. Were you able to retrieve the broken part? If not, will you still be able to achieve an apical seal, or will it require a retrograde filling? Jim

The CR also had some open fish trucks, modified from Dia15 open wagons by being fitted with Westinghouse and vacuum brakes and oil axleboxes. Also some built on old carriage underframes. Jim

Now with buffers and coupling hooks! Jim

There's plenty about that here. Jim

How long is a shirt length? Jim

And then the CR put on a blue loco at Carlisle! Jim

In the latest MRJ Giles Favell,a theatre production manager, recommends black as this concentrates the viewers eye on the layout itself. Jim

And that's the 'cut down' version. They had to reduce the length by some 2 metres to fit it into Roy's shed! Jim

I'm currently half way through the top one of these. Where are all the others, though? Wagons, livery etc., etc. Jim

A charity needs to be formed to fund research into a cure for that! Jim

I would think that there would be too much play as the brass will be 0.3mm thinner. I assume you are talking about fixing outside cranks on driving wheels, in which case, how are you planning to replace the axles already in the wheels? Or have I got that wrong? I have never had any problem soldering N/S to steel, in fact I'm in the middle of soldering steel buffers to my Jubilee pug. Jim