Andy W

I've decided to upgrade my RMWEB membership to Gold. However either I've totally failed to understand the signup procedure, or there's a bug. As an existing RMWEB member, when I'm ready to check out and pay, I need to login as a member to link the payment to the existing account, even though I'm already logged in? If so, the system doesn't recognise my email address and password (and yes it is the correct password, as I'm logged into the forum now). Nor will it send a password reset email. So - am I doing this wrong or is there a fault? Andy

The Warships appeared on the Exeter line trains after the end of steam, but not on the Bournemouth line, which went directly from steam (helped by a few Class 47s at the end) to electric. There were certainly catering cars on the steam hauled Bournemouth trains, with the red band at cantrail level as well as lettering on the side. Of course not every train had one, just as after electrification you could be unlucky enough to find a train made up of 4-VEPs instead of the 4-REP+4TC+4TC formation.

But was it normally inaccessible? When I lived in Leeds after the concentration of train services on what was effectively Leeds New in the late 1960s, although the modern main concourse was the other side of the railway-owned Queens Hotel block, the Wellington concourse still existed as a passageway from the then low numbered platforms to City Square which anyone could use, and lots did. All the facilities of Wellington had been closed and shuttered up, but the concourse itself remained as effectively a pedestrian tunnel under the Queens Hotel, with occasional glimpses of parcels vans in the old Wellington platforms through grimy part-glazed doors. Of course it wasn't really a tunnel as it was all on one level and that was the same as street level outside. There were odd signs to barbers shop, left luggage etc though these only pointed to locked doors. Now what I never found out was where the ticket office had been. Maybe that was what the conservation officer had access to.

Just to clarify, anyone reading this thread and thinking that the transformation of AutoLoco into Smiths Models, Sheringham is complete and the new owners are trading from the premises, they aren't. I walked past it yesterday and the windows were still whitewashed over. Occasional imperfections in the whitewash reveal that the interior is far from complete, let alone stocked up ready for business.

Then there was Taunton, where the Minehead and Barnstaple branches joined the main line at Norton Fitzwarren, which was 4 tracked from there to and through Taunton. Branch passenger trains used a pair of bays at the west end of Taunton station, and I've certainly been on branch trains that ran directly into a bay or directly out of one. What I can't remember is whether there were any runround facilities or whether another loco was required. As Taunton had a significant loco depot on site, this wouldn't have been too much of a problem. But Taunton was remodelled in the 1930s, I believe, by which time facing points were much less feared.

Railcars 1-17 had no capability for hauling anything, and to confirm this, they didn't even have buffers. This includes parcels car 17 Railcar 18 was intended to haul a short tail load, and was the last of the "streamlined " design body style to be built. It had buffers. 19-38, with the more angular design bodies, had buffers and could pull a tail load. However some cars were single ended and could only work in pairs (intentionally) or with a specially adapted loco hauled coach inserted between the two powered vehicles. The haulage capacity would be different if running as a 2-car or 3 car formation, and the single units were different again. Personally I never saw one hauling anything bigger than a Pasfruit D van, but I've also never seen the actual loading table, which I suspect varied by route to some extent.

You would want to avoid parking anything other than the station pilot in the shunt neck because this was also used for transferring stock between platforms - most commonly vans being removed from the back of a train that has just arrived and placed in a different platform for unloading, but dmus for example were assembled from different arrivals to make up a longer train - sometimes then heading off to Newton Heath or Allerton ecs, though I also saw on odd occasions units being pinched from 2+2 formations to strengthen a weekend or Bank Holiday service to Blackpool when demand exceeded supply and there was nothing that could be extracted from Allerton in time. To this day, although the shunt neck has long gone, as have parcels vans, units are transferred between platforms by shunting out onto running lines that have limit of shunt indicators and position light signals for the purpose, usually only when something has gone wrong

The line between Stafford and Wellington closed to passengers in 1964, so not much in the way of diesel loco hauled passenger trains ever happened - in my memory 2-6-4 tanks were the favourite passenger power up to the end for those trains that went through to Shrewsbury. Now Wellington to Shrewsbury was and is a very different matter. Because up to 1967 this was part of the Paddington-Birkenhead main line which was late in the dieselisation queue, you'd see first Westerns, and then Class 47s on passenger turns, although many services were steam hauled north of Wolverhampton, initially with assorted GW 4-6-0s, and later with Black 5s, and the services that didn't work to or from Paddington were mostly DMU. Turning to freight, the line from Stafford to Wellington closed to through freights in 1966 as the section at the Stafford end closed completely. Again, that meant there was little diesel freight in the days of a through service as steam was still used, what there was would probably have seen Class 24s and 25s. Once the route became a freight branch, worked from the Wellington end, and progressively cut back nearer and nearer to Wellington, Bescot area allocated 24s and 25s would again have been the power after steam ended. The Wellington to Shrewsbury section saw these too, of course, but also 40s and 47s. Really these classes were all that were allocated in the area and all that drivers were trained on in your era, apart possibly from Class 20s. During the period before Shrewsbury to Wellington passed to LMR control Hymeks worked some through freights on that section, and I've seen a picture of a Warship on one too.

That's confusing. If he means some kind of event at the Great Central Railway in the UK, like the annual Model Event held in June, it's news to me that there is anything more than a normal running weekend on those dates in October, and I work there! Of course it could refer to some other event somewhere else and he's got the name mixed up, or the dates mixed up. Now the weekend before is the Autumn Steam Gala at the Great Central - lots of visitors and lots of stands.

Any chance of changing the thread title and contents to reflect that the model involved is the N class 2-6-0? Sounds pedantic, but Hornby have a model of an N2 (in this case a GNR/LNER origin 0-6-2T) and it certainly confused me at first reading.

Include me as well, please. Trying to recreate an unexpected trip I had in Wren when it appeared propelled by a 64xx, substituting for a failed DMU.

Now there's a big difference between the 56xx and the 4MT 4-6-0. The 4MT quite early on received a brand new chassis from Bachmann which fitted the Mainline bodies perfectly, and they even sold chassis separately so people could replace the Mainline ones. But the new Bachmann chassis, although far better than the dreadful Mainline one, was still a split-chassis design and suffers from splitting of the plastic insulating parts connecting the stub axles, and also gear-splitting and axle bearing wear. It also needs to be mostly dismantled in order to fit DCC. So a more modern conventional chassis eventually appeared. and models released over the last 10 years or so have this. The body was also at least partially retooled at the same time to allow both single and double chimneys, and also around the cab area and as a result the chassis isn't a direct replacement for Mainline bodies and requires some surgery to get it to fit. On the other hand it is DCC ready. The 56xx didn't appear in the Bachmann range with a split chassis, it went straight to conventional chassis, and as others have described, the body tooling was modified at the same time so the Mainline body is not a direct fit.

The USA 0-6-0T loco made by Bachmann for Model Rail has a 6-pin decoder socket. Blanking plugs for these are available from as little as £1.95 on line - look for a NEM651 blanking plug. Again, Bachmann dealers may have packs of these on their spares rack, possibly under their Graham Farish brand name as these are commonly used in N-gauge locos. If you're quite certain you will never ever want to use DCC, then get a blanking plug. The unwanted decoder can be sold on ebay.

Quite possibly, but it all depends on which Bachmann shunter it is - they've made quite a few over a long period and there are several different versions of each around. Early versions of the "08" for example had no DCC socket and any that are DCC fitted would be hardwired, I did one myself. Always possible to reverse the hardwiring and rejoin the wires to the factory state, if you know what you're doing. Later "08"s did and do have DCC sockets. In this case, remove the chip and replace it with an 8-pin blanking plate. Bachmann sell these as a spare part through their dealer network. "03"s and "04"s have an even longer history and it would be best to give more details. Then there's the Junior range shunter, and of course you might have meant one of the many different steam shunting classes they have produced.

If you're going to throw insults at what was intended as a mere factual correction, at least read what you linked to before posting. On your wikipedia definition, London is not in the South East, on a common sense one it is, since the areas wikipedia says comprise the South East almost entirely surround it. But the same wikipedia definition includes part of the route of the WCML within the South East, so the APT did in fact run in the South East by this definition too. Are you in fact telling us that Melmoth's (and your) definition of the South East is actually BR Southern, Eastern or Western Region territory within the SE? That might be a perfectly reasonable definition of the area of one's modelling interests, and then would indeed exclude APT-P. My concern was and is that the way the original post was worded might put people off who might have modelled an APT because they would be led to believe they were never seen on the southern WCML, whereas my personal experience is that they were, and indeed operated over the entire line between London and Glasgow. Now did they get to Birmingham, Liverpool, or Manchester? I don't know.

APT never ran in the south east at any point in history? Are you sure? Euston is in the south-east of England by any possible definition, and the several journeys I had on APT-P between Euston and Preston were all my imagination? There was a regular Friday afternoon departure which effectively acted as a relief. I even have the boarding card for one of these journeys. You can't even say that APT never saw the 3rd rail network, because Euston had and still has 3rd rail electrification into some platforms.

At one time MJT made a cast whitemetal insert to convert Romford disc wagon wheels to three-hole ones. The holes were deep enough to be convincing. Obviously purpose-made 3 hole wheels are now on the . market. I see no reason why anyone who needs to enhance the appearance of Lima Western wheels couldn't do something similar in white metal or 3-D printing. With the wagons the extra metal was useful weight low down, less of a problem with something the size of a diesel loco.

A self-imposed deadline of 6pm on the 1st of May. You must have failed to notice, but today is the 30th of April....

Duplicated

Duplicated

For your loco wants, Bachmann can supply a large part from modern tooling. The MR 0-4-4T should surface next year as a brand new model. The 3F 0-6-0, 57xx, Ivatt 4MT 2-6-0 and 4P 4-4-0 are either in the current range or so recently last produced that examples are still in the retail channel (57xx reissue imminent). Hornby has a Fowler 2-6-4T and a 2P 4-4-0. So it is the "Stanier" 0-4-4T (really signed off under the interim leadership of E.J, Lemon before Stanier arrived, so a "Lemon" in every sense) that would need to be kit built, and maybe the Bachmann MR 0-4-4T chassis, when it appears, would save a lot of work. How easy any/all of these are to convert to EM I don't know, but I'll bet a search within RMWeb will tell you. Now some detail alterations might be needed to suit specific locos - very few of these classes, even the more modern ones, had every example identical. Your push-pull stock would need to be kit built, or maybe use Hornby LMS non-corridor stock as a base. Again, a search in this forum will show others who have successfully modelled them. Certainly the basic design of the general non-corridor stock varied little between LMS PII and PIII, so the same problem you have in identifying exactly what you're looking at in photos will affect anyone looking at your models. Class 20s weren't allocated in the area during the steam-diesel transition period - they kept themselves to the ex-LNW lines in the West Midlands until after the routes you're interested in closed. The only diesel locos around would be running through Ashchurch on the main Birmingham-Bristol line, or through Evesham on the main Worcester-Paddington line. The Evesham loop was mostly worked by Bourneville and Saltley shed steam motive power, with some help from Gloucester MR shed. DMUs did reach Redditch from Birmingham, it would be surprising if none reached Evesham, but maybe they weren't regarded as worth photographing. Mark 1s were very much mainline stock in the 1960s, and were still being delivered in 1963 when passenger services ceased on the MR route through Evesham, they wouldn't have found their way onto what was by then a minor crosscountry route unless mainline trains were being diverted over it. I'm surprised you haven't found any LMS P1 or PII corridor stock in your researches though. You should find sufficient corridor stock in Hornby's modern Stanier P3 and Bachmann's Porthole ranges.

Then there are Swanage (still there and still in use), and Ilfracombe, But it is arguable whether Ilfracombe is actually a branch line terminus or the very end of a secondary main line. Throughout the 1930s the LMS had a policy of making economies by closing small sheds (including ones at through stations!) and transferring their work to larger ones if this could be done without incurring excessive empty mileage. Of course this wasn't always possible. You could also look at the number of branch line termini that actually existed for each (pre-grouping) company, and how many of them had passenger services into the BR steam era. As soon as all you had was goods traffic, the cost saving of running services from the main-line end became irresistible.

Terry Essery tells this story in one of his "Firing Days at Saltley" books - the loco was the Birmingham New Street Midland side station pilot, and the occasion was Christmas Eve, when everything was closing early and travellers had little hope of finding any food until they reached their final destination.

D for all LNER 4-4-0s or SECR 4-4-0 class or Deltic, D for Drummond or Dean, D for Doncaster Works or Derby Works, D for Duchess of Hamilton? You're in a cryptic mood again.

Yes you can, but don't underestimate how long it takes that influence to take effect. You might successfully exercise a negative influence in persuading Bachmann to cancel some or all of the models that won't arrive until 2020 or later, and write off anything they've already spent on developing them. But you can't get them to bring arrival dates forward, because for that to happen they'd need to be further along right now than they actually are. This week I read an interview with Simon Kohler of Hornby, who said that when he returned to that company as part of the new management team, there wasn't much he could do about the 2018 model release programme in terms of adding new items, all he was able to do was to delay some of the models already under development so that they appeared in 2019 along with complementary items. I imagine one of the projects he had in mind was releasing a new GW Large Prairie and the non-corridor coaches for it to pull, all in the same year. Now lots of people posting here had always said that matching locos and the stock for them to pull was what ought to have been happening all along. Nothing happened until someone who already agreed with that got into a position where he had enough power to make it so.