doilum

Excellent!!! I think we have Antwerp, S134(with the ladders) and either Astley or Jubilee the 15:" Hunslets. The track laying makes Frydale look perfect! If the cover photo is Astley I need to think about those custom weather shields on the cab. Maybe the engineer had an old MG.

Perhaps your best bet now is the local library. Sadly local councils digitised what they needed and binned the paper copies. With the downgrading of town planning many of these departments have been merged and relocated, again losing paper copies. It is a shame that the maps have little monetary value because if they did, there would be a market pace to find them.

This is a too personal question to have a single answer. The height of my modelling bench was determined by trial and error using a pair of tressles and a length of old worktop. The most useful addition to the final bench were large shallow drawers on roller runners and another set at 90degrees so that'll my hand tools are within reach. I too use a roller stool rescued from the school skip. This batch were not a good purchase as the backs of the chairs lasted only a couple of years before breaking.

Definitely not one to put anyone off colliery modelling. It is surprising just how large most collieries were especially the "modern" deep mines sunk in the late 19th century. It is possible to find examples of earlier smaller operations that somehow hung on into the 1960s. There are several outstanding attempts at colliery modelling under the Standard Gauge Industrial Railway section. I recall a 2mm FS thread where the winding wheels or sheaves were discussed at some length but cannot remember the name! Also recall ( I think it was Mike Williams once of Agenoria ) a prototype etched brass headgear on display at York. Beautifully modelled it was the size of an HGV axle stand. If you search for the National Coalmining Museum of Yorkshire at Caphouse you will find modeller friendly sized headgear. When I built Houghton Street the colliery is off stage and I concentrated on the headshunt that cut through the terraced housing of the pit village.

If you look on my Frydale thread most of the colliery is on the backscene. This was my simple decoupage approach to copy, cut and paste. It really depends on which part of colliery operation you want to model. Unless you have that sports hall and a lottery winner's budget.......

Time to search through Google images for collieries making notes and sketches of what you like. Unless you have a sports hall to fill you will have to be pretty selective in your choice of building. In one sense they can be pretty generic but with a closer eye each one is absolutely unique. A bit like modellers I suppose.

Not sure. I have just measured my pair of ,X2s and dividing by 7 get an overall length not including buffers of 25'. The wheelbase is an equal 5'1''+5'1" and the first axle is approximately 4'9'' behind the buffer beam. If it helps, the cab is 8'7'' from cab front to rear buffer beam. Driving wheels are 3'9''.

It is an X2. This is the loco shown on the Mercian kit instructions. In the photo it is the one on the left. This was part of the journey to building the survivor Ackton Hall no3. Newdigate had at least two nos 3&4. Like AH#3 they had a factory overhaul during the early war years and were finished in flat black. Post war factory visits saw all three returned to Pecketts factory green.

And there was I thinking that they were " borrowed"!

Can you tell us more about Standard Wagon

S134. I think these wagons ended up in the Wheldale collection. The red 16 T wagon may have been a transfer from the North East. There were quite a few of the side tippers with the three chain links Londonderry logo.

It is a hairy fabric on a Hessian backing. It can be soaked in PVA to form a complete layer. Alternatively, bitscan be torn off and applied to create patches of rough vegetation. Once dry it can be teased and trimmed and painted. It is getting a bit hard to find but there is probably someone reading who has stashed a shed full of the stuff. Sadly I am down to my last few scraps!

Have you tried old school carpet underlay? This is an ideal base for an overgrown embankment.

Running a shuttle service between Kellingley and Ferrybridge. The design was based on the much larger examples that ply the Rhine. What I had failed to notice in period was that the empties were towed.

When I ran a Spitfire in the late 70s the going rate for a Herald engine was £10. For another fiver the breaker would leave the gear box on and help you load it!

For those interested. Look on YouTube for Aire and Calder Freight part one.

Old school. One inch =6 feet. The little guy in the cockpit is one inch tall. In a truly imperial world this would be the scale below S gauge. Running on 19.6mm track!

Not sure what happened to it but, as a small child I remember my grandfather having an all black wooden model of a DC3 Dakota. When I made some comparative comment about it not being as good as the tinplate Comet he explained that it had come from the Home Guard and was for recognition purposes. I think it had a wingspan of around 15".

That's the one! Thanks.

Sorry I have done what I should have done to start with. The Google image of the Plasmore Fowler isn't the one in the picture I was shown. This is a ,0-4-0 in the Thomas Hill style. It looks a bit like the one at Prince of Wales Pontefract. The picture was taken on Saturday morning. I really need to learn how to move images from one part of the tablet to another!!

Thanks. It was a question from little brother who lives around there.

Quick question: is the green shunter at Plasmore Great Heck one from Thomas Hill?

Bear in mind that pre 1968 much of our motorway network was yet to be built. Had we staged the infamous Top Gear race in 1960 I am confident that a non stop express would have been in Edinburgh before the Jaguar reached Ferrybridge. Road freight was similarly restricted both by road layout and vehicle performance. I have spent a full four hours in the cab of a Thames 10 tonner to go from a factory in Castleford to recover a ladder from the MD's home in Moortown in 1974. The top speed of around 20mphmwas not considered unusual. Life was more sedate then.

Depends on the glue and how many clamps you have. One approach is to regard the screws as removable clamps. This will make it much easier to fill and smooth the outer facia. A good eurathane ( sp?) foaming glue will achieve a good strength in ten minutes and full strength in half an hour. This does require fast accurate clamping which is why many stick to PVA and pins. Perhaps one day I will get round to trying the 21st century approach with cynoaccrylates and accelerator spray.

Just rode it the once in 1976. After the wedding of a college friend we left the hired morning suits at her mother's and caught the train back to New Street.