NCB

What I heard was that, as is common with hotel fires, the cost of rebuilding the hotel would vastly exceed the commercial value of the hotel, and that the owners were offered compensation related to the commercial value. Don't know how accurate this is.

Yep, two bits of reasonably hefty intermediate strapping on each side. Don't look like old hinge straps. The Quarryscapes bodies in my pic higher up this (previous) page give the idea. Looking at the plans I get the impression that there were corner plates both inside and outside the corner. Re the dates I was getting mixed up with a couple of drop-side plans. One of the fixed side ones is dated 1904 and the other undated. I can't see any difference between them; both show wooden blocks behind the buffers. They're drawings 9015 and 9016 in the NRM OPC lists; the lists describe 9015 as drop-sides but it's not. Nigel

I've a couple of copies of original Cambrian drawings dated, if I recall correctly, 1899 and 1902, of 2-plank fixed sided wagons. The only difference is that one has the wooden blocks behind the buffers, the other doesn't. To me this implies that the Cambrian built 2-plank fixed sided wagons from new, not just as conversions from drop sides. I'm not sure there's any advantage in using drop-sided wagons for slates, if they are manually loaded as I suspect they were.

Looks fine to me, Mike! So our thoughts above that slates were stacked facing across wagons are wrong after all. Nigel

Achnasheen from the north 31/5/2002: Seen on the very steep descent from Fionn Bheinn.

Garry, John, thanks for the replies. John, it seems that the person in question was directed to your site and is now happy Nigel

Hi Garry What did transfer did you use for the BR totem, later style, on the BoB tender, and the diesels? A non-Society person has been asking. Cheers Nigel

There's a good few images of Achnasheen station on Geograph: http://www.geograph.org.uk/browse.php?gridref=NH1658

Yep, the Kinlochewe Hotel when I first knew it around 1976 was an upmarket place. The "bar" was in a separate outside building which always seemed closed. The hotel did have a snug which us sweaty hillwalkers were allowed to lurk in for a pint or two. It was lucky in that when it was sold it was to a couple who had a good idea of how to run a pub. The main dining room became the bar, with a good fire and well furnished, and a decent range of bar food was available. The outside bar was converted into a walker's hostel. Did good business and is still going today, albeit under different owners over the years. It had just one poor owner, who rarely opened lunchtime because he was out fishing; he and his wife did a moonlight flit, with the banks on his tail. "Hotels and bars of north west Scotland" could fill a book! Nigel

For 1938, roofs would have started off white. Depending on time since last repaint they would tend to a greyish colour. Plus any acquired soot etc. There's a well known pic (forget where) showing the carriage sidings at Old Oak Common, where there's a fair amount of white but also some very dark roofs. I've heard it said that the "brown vehicles" had grey roofs but I'm unconvinced. I too model GWR around 1938. For goods vans I use a technique of spraying the roofs with alternate passes from Halfords white and grey primer cans. The dots mix to give a sort of grey with a slight grain, looks reasonably convincing to me, and each roof comes out a slightly different grey, some nearly white, some almost the grey primer colour. However, tried it on coaches and it doesn't work anything like as well, something to do with the larger area involved. So for coach roofs I stick to white primer and my story is they've all been recently repainted. Here's an example of 3 similar GW vans done using this technique: a rebuilt V4, a V12 and a V14. The wagons themselves will receive further weathering when I'm in the mood for it. Nigel

Dimension wise, how close is it to a Merchant Navy or Battle of Britain? Or to put it another way, could it be converted to a reasonable representation of a BB?

Nope, it's a Brynkits (Brian Golding) kit. Think it's excellent; an awful lot of 2251 models look a bit odd. This one has captured the firebox/boiler/smokebox spot on; that bit and the tender body are resin castings, otherwise etched brass for the bodies and etched nickel silver for the chasses. This pic will give the idea: The only problems I found were that the cast smokebox saddle is a bit high and needs to be filed down, and the firebox inside is a bit narrow, although I managed to squeeze in a Mashima 9/16 open frame motor, attached to a High Level Compact+ gearbox. I had a bit of trouble doing a neat job of attaching the coal sheets to the top of the tender, as the pics show. The chasses and tender are available separately. 3SMR may have some but I think Brian has now taken back marketing and selling his kits. I built it with a rigid engine chassis and a sprung tender, with the springs being pickups on top of the wheels and split axles to isolate things. It works but overall I'm not too keen on the arrangement; the tender wheels drag a bit. At the moment I'm experimenting with a compensated engine chassis and an 8x16 coreless motor to see how that works. That should also improve haulage; the resin castings do mean the engine is a bit light. Nigel

I have an EDG7 (I think) LMS 0-6-2T train set packed away. Keep on meaning to get my old Dublo out to see how it runs. It was originally my brothers but I managed to take it over when he lost interest. Coming to think of it, he was never that interested. Strange. Seem to remember the front coupling on the 0-6-2T didn't work that well; gave problems on curves. The rear one being on a pony truck was OK.

Can remember the remarkable collection of whiskies lining the shelves behind the bar. Somewhere around 1977 myself and three friends spent a very comfortable evening there working our way along; it was late October and cold outside. We were camping at the Nature Conservancy campsite near Kinlochewe and the Kinlochewe Hotel for some reason wasn't open. Very sad when the hotel was burnt down; a place of character and centre of the community. Nigel

This pic shows the current stage of the second board. Nothing is yet fixed down. The water tower is Airfix on a scratch built base. The wooden coaling stage I'm not too keen on and will be replaced by a stone-based structure. There'll be a signal box just off left and beyond it the main line will disappear under a bridge. The layout is L shaped; the final two boards were built over winter. The line curves round 90 degrees on the third board and that and the fourth board provide a base for cassettes. I was thinking of some scenery on the third board but can't get something I like, so instead the third and fourth board, as well as holding cassettes, will be a useful extension to my workbench. Next thing is to get the track needed for the third board down, plus a few cassettes to test it. Can't really do more to the second board until that's fixed. Nigel

Yep, the goods yard details, a bit more coal and activity in the coal yard, a few more people around... that's the sort of stuff needed. I've in mind an annex tacked on to the back of the engine shed, if I can do it convincingly (the back wall is slightly warped, so maybe not). I realised after I got stuck into it that the point rodding would have been a great addition, but the design doesn't allow it to be easily added (things a bit too cramped). Likewise the signalling is really just token signalling, because if I added all in that should be there it's too cluttered. In retrospect maybe I should have gone for a simpler, less crowded design, and design in everything I wanted at the start. Next time, maybe ....! Nigel

Had intended to get around to doing something in one of the other sections, such as 3mm/ft. However, here's a taster. The layout has taken a long, long time to develop, mainly because I get distracted by building rolling stock. This one is after the basic track has been laid, and a couple of buildings built and positioned to see how they look. The layout is called Port Aeron, and is a take on Aberaeron with a suitably modified history to enlarge operations. Period is GWR immediately prior to WWII. Here's a shot of the end board while scenic stuff was being developed. Here's more shots of the end board, which in essentials is now complete, although more detail will get added. Not much has been done on scenery for the second board, yet. The white-balance on the 2nd and 5th pics is a bit up the creek.

Interesting. My own feeling was that dimension-wise the Peco coupling was different from the Dublo version, which perhaps this explains. Never understood why Hornby changed to plastic couplings.

Just measured a Jinty, Merchant Navy and BrittanIa. Pretty inconsistent. Metal driving wheels are about 10.0 btb but can be wider. Plastic wheels much greater variation. Flanges anything from 0.5 to 0.65. I assume the track was designed with high tolerances!

Is the Triang flange thickness really only 0.5mm? Don't know, just interested. Nigel What kits are we talking about?

That's why I didn't like them! Especially on transfers with fine detail. P.O. wagon transfers from Powsides weren't too bad. Nigel

I tend to use different transfers for different purposes, mainly waterslide or methfix. Methfix I found OK provided that they weren't too fine; have had a lot of trouble with the GWR shirt-button totem. There's quite a lot of Modelmaster transfers available in 3mm from 3SMR; I use the big-four wagon numbers a lot. I think they're fine. Don't get on with the rub-down ones too well, although have had some success with the 3mm ones from Powsides. I used Pressfix OK a long time ago, but can't remember how they differed from rub-down ones.

Looking at the wagon, what I can see is lines going across the wagon. I was assuming these were the edges of the slates? Cheers Nigel Edit: just read the above comment. Yep, the lines being between rows of slates would make sense.

Very useful. Looking at the pic, my interpretation is that the slates are stacked facing the ends, rather than the sides, the opposite of what I assumed. There seems to be a small gap in the middle which presumably is filled with some sort of packing, such as timber.

Methfix transfers: the PC Models transfers ended up with the HMRS. Here's the 4mm list: https://hmrs.org.uk/transfers.html?transfer_group=6540&transfer_scale=11883&transfer_type=11885 PC Models also did quite a lot of methfix transfers in 3mm/ft for the 3mm Society. I use them quite a lot, for things like GWR buffer beam numbers and other loco markings. Took a quick look and can't find lining; strange, I thought there was some. Nigel