doilum

Given the amount of money that we spend on track, point control systems, sound chips and limited run rolling stock, £10 to ensure perfect alignment of two baseboards is as they say, " a no -brainer". If I could time travel back 50 years and give my teenage self one bit of railway modelling advice it would be to use pattern maker's dowels .

As l may have said elsewhere,.a word of caution about tee nuts. The industrially fitted ones are perfect. I have had mixed results with the DIY type. A habit of working loose, especially when scenery makes them inaccessible. Two options, first is an extra beer mat of thin ply to trap them in place. The other is to get a tame welder to fix an M8 nut to a 40mm repair washer. A case of beer should be enough to get a dozen or so done. Three small holes are drilled in each washer to fix them in place. A matching plain washer is fixed on the other board. I like to open the plain washer and holes to 9mm making for an easy fit. Accurate location is down to the dowels. And if you already have tee nuts, don't let the guy with a socket in his Makita anywhere near them.

Just a simple 2 bus operation. With a dozen busses you might need an operator's license!

Oil had to be paid for in dollars. The British economy post war was in dire straights and even had to introduce bread rationing as most of the hard wheat came from North America, paid for in dollars. By the 1950s.the new NCB had its act together and was rapidly introducing mechanical coal cutters to most collieries. Given that most of the railway infrastructure was coal centric it is unsurprising that BR stuck with coal to the end of steam.

I'm not sure if the tank I modelled will have survived the rebuild. It had a unique pattern of rivitted platework possibly dating back to a recorded wartlime visit to the factory. In the end the individual plates were cut from shim brass and overlaid on a slightly undersized tank. I really need to get round to ordering a couple of the powside wagons to go with.it.

I prefer bolts with large washers screwed to the end boards. The bus bars terminate on the washers. Another dodgy cable eliminated.

This isn't good. My Teak addiction was in remission. Now if d myself going out to the shed to take a close look at my pre war example. How hard would it be to build another Kirk buffet to post war condition?

Definitely need dowels with the spring type fasteners. We are using them on our friends Selby project. With 30 boards the speed of connection is appreciated.

Assuming you have bought your boards pre assembled. If not, end boards are best pilot frilled in pairs on the bench. Better still if you.have access to a pillar drill. My preference is for.18mm.ply ends.

School caretakers stored ash for use in winter on icy paths. Made a disgusting mess in the corridors and classrooms . Now they close the site on H&S grounds.

I had forgotten about the loco ash. The products of twenty fireplaces would be small beer compared to twenty locomotives on shed.

Ferrero Rocher About 40 of the standard size at the last count. The large flat.square presentation boxes are ideal for dismantling mechanisms where small components might be easily lost. It also means that half assembled assemblies can be safely put away at the end of the session.

Liking the idea.of a separate ash bin. Each day the previous day's ashes would be cool enough to throw into the rubbish wagon and the cycle continues. I have volunteered to build the rubbish wagon.

But if you had to empty twenty?

As I admired the box of 20 3D printed fireplaces a daft question crossed my mind. A station like Selby would have had around twenty open coal fired some of which must have burned around the clock on winter. Some poor employee would have had the early morning task of raking out the grates and disposing of the ashes. Having been brought up with this task as a child I appreciate the volume of as involved, perhaps two or even three barrow loads on each platform. What did they do with the still glowing ash? Selby apparently had a rubbish wagon parked in the end of the horse dock, but glowing ash would have quickly had it burning. Sluice the ash and shovel the sloppy mess? Has anyone previous experience of this thankless task?

My wife had an SJ for a while in the early noughties. White with a pink stripe and (gospel truth) it came with a tape of I'm a Barbie girl jammed in the radio cassette player. Everyone loved it and years later youngest daughter has had a continuous string of small 4x4s.

The prototype was beautifully simple. Perhaps this hydraulic solution could be modelled using two srynges and a bit of tube. I recall a mid 60s Blue Peter which featured a layout using this method of point control on third series Triang track.

From memory, I had the pivot closer.to the rail end. I experimented with balance weights but ended up with a simple mechanical linkage to bring the empty wagon back to rail level . Even in 7 mm it is impossible ito scale down momentum. The spur on to the drops was on an incline allowing the empty wagon to call back under gravity. I still have a never finished second version of the layout in the garage rafters.......

Thinking back, my experiments in 7mm started with a 3H wagon chassis and an attempt to make a working hopper wagon. After much trial and error my brother and I gave up and went for the end door option. I still have the three scratch built wooden wagons built on Slaters underframes, and a random 3H wagon the a big square patch on the floor. Older visitors to the Normanton show might remember the small working layout which also had a pop up appearance at the newly opened Ridings shopping centre. To the very end the late Norman Hughes was pulling my leg about the mess it made on their floor. Happy days

Back in the day, one brother used anthracite beans. The other had access at work to a grinding machine that could reduce any mineral to a size accurate to 0.1mm. It also washed and dried the sample. I was aiming for 7mm size coal but the principal is the same if you know anyone working in an industrial laboratory.

For the benefit of anyone tempted to try the Triang method in 7mm. The bolt can be extended by cutting in two and soldering each half into a suitable length of brass tube.

There is always the Triang solution. This also gives you the excuse to drill out the whitemetal chimney and fit a proper blast pipe...

Mice are very crunchy. As I type,Teaser is under the dining room table making short work of a mouse. Very crunchy. I now need to go and clean up the gizzards. The rain has passed. Might be a five mouse night.

Fair enough. They certainly wouldn't last too long using power tools to whizz the bolts out. Iike the idea of tapping out a short length of steel. I also use the joining bolts to connect the busbars between the boards........

Excellent project well researched like a good historical novel. Great to see proper baseboards under construction. One comment on the use of T nuts. My experience is that they can tend to work loose. The industrially installed ones are fine on furniture but the diy version leave a bit to be desired. My solution on Houghton Street was to glue a small offcut of ply to sandwich the T nut in place. Subsequent layouts use a a nut welded captive on a 50mm washer but that is another story. I look forward to following this build, I still have the books on Rosedale from a never built layout 40 years ago.