Jim Martin

No I haven't, but I'm assuming that DBS (and to a large extent Burkhardt, who was the person most responsible for the 66 takeover) know how to run their business and you're assuming that they don't. Jim

EWS weren't / DBS aren't running a spotter's benefit. Is there any evidence that not having the 56s or 58s in their fleet has interfered with their ability to run the trains that they wanted to run? Have you done the costings that demonstrate that retaining and maintaining a fleet of 60s would be cheaper, overall, than using a fleet of 66s (and some 59s, I suppose)? I like the 60s as much as the next person; I'm sorry to see their gradual demise; but that demise is neither farcical nor a sham. It's the way of things, just like the demise of the Deltics, the Westerns, the 9Fs and pre-grouping steam was. And I'm sorry to say it - and I know that it's hopelessly unsexy to say this - but what happens when accountants don't run businesses is that they go bust, usually in pretty short order. Jim

Still loving the JMAs. Combining them with that particular mix of coil wagons that you mentioned (which is exactly the same as the one that I'm working towards), can I take it that your modelling interests lie somewhere in the Warrington-Liverpool area, maybe in 2002-ish? Jim

I'm going to Algeres, which is just north of Cerbere, next week. My family have been primed with the idea that they might be without me for a day while I travel down to look at the border. Presumably it's all this faffing about that makes a day trip by train to Barcelona not really practical, despite the moderate distance. That "border stations" link (above) has an interesting page on Cerbere and Port Bou, too. Jim

In fact, there has been. I've finished the hood and detailed one of the ends, but I've been too busy to sit down and draft any deathless prose. I'm away from home at the moment, looking after my Ma, who's just come out of hospital; but once I get home I'm hoping to post an update and some photos pretty soon. I got hold of a couple of tippler underframes from Bernard Taylor, like you suggested: next job is to get them underway and start on the other three IHAs. Jim

Very cool. Are you leaving the NP livery in place, or will you be daubing the logos out with whatever paint comes to hand, like EWS did after they bought the wagons? Jim

After saying that more research might be needed, I did a (tiny) bit. I couldn't find a list of recipients of the AM online, but I searched the Times website archive for references to the Albert Medal in 1937. There are five instances of the AM appearing in the Court section (which is, I assume, where awards would have been noted). One of these was 21 May, which is obviously too soon after the event. The others were in the editions of 11 June, 14 October, 19 November and 24 December. You have to pay for the Times archive, so I'm going to have a look next time I'm in Liverpool Central Library. Jim

Thanks to everyone who replied. It seems surprising that the engine crew didn't receive some sort of official recognition. More research needed, perhaps. Jim

On Platform 1 of Liverpool Lime Street station is a commemorative plaque reading: Erected by their workmates at this depot to Commemorate Driver J Ball & Fireman C Higgins who sacrificed their lives in their devotion to duty 20th May 1937 Immediately below that, there’s another plaque which reads “This memorial, removed at the closure of Edge Hill MPD, was rededicated by BR management and staff, 1986†Does anyone know what the story behind this memorial is? I’ve tried googling various combinations of “railwayâ€, “accidentâ€, “driverâ€, “ballâ€, “higgins†and various years in the mid 30s, but not had any success. Jim

I'm just guessing, but I don't think that you're treating the tagging system as seriously as you might. Jim

You read the Daily Mail to calm yourself down????? Sweet Jesus, anyone with that much rage should be surrounded by some sort of exclusion zone until the storm has passed. Jim

That certainly looks a lot more like it. The 50s are my all-time favourite diesel class but I've never felt that the Farish model really caught the character of them properly. I suppose it's too much to hope that you're going to paint it in large-logo blue, rather than NSE? LLB on a 50 is the finest loco / livery combination of my lifetime, in my view. Jim

I have to admit that when I saw the first photo, I thought "how much must that thing weigh? He's made it out of breeze blocks!" Jim

Will Thanks for the kind words I'm going to try and do some of the other side so that rather than dipping between the supports, the hood bulges out slightly and comes back in towards the support. I think that's do-able. The other thing I'd like to try - if I could work out how to do it - is an effect like this, where there's a pronounced "pull" in the hood. I'm not sure that my filler-based method is that well-suited to it, though, because the filler can be a pain to work with. It might need something that can be "carved" more easily. Jim

Filling in the gaps between the hood supports has started. This proving to be much harder work than I'd expected: there's a lot of sanding away then filling back in where I've taken too much off, or where there are surface blemishes. Nevertheless, I do think that it's getting there: When the filler first goes on, it looks as rough as hell: But it does come together - eventually (bear in mind that these photos are far bigger than life-size: the whole wagon is just on three inches long): I commented on my last post that I was going to remove the 30-thou lettering panels and replace them with mounting pads, so that I could add the panels themselves after all the sanding was complete. I've done that now (note the absence of the panel on the second photo above), albeit at the cost of stabbing myself in the finger. Another lesson that I'll be taking on board for the other three wagons is that I won't be adding any detail to the underframes until the hood is complete. That includes the strengthening ribs and even the web along the lower edge of the u/f. As it is I'm having to clean off stray bits of filler as best I can and it would obviously be better to have a flat surface to work with. I'm not expecting to make any progress on this for the next few days because I've got a lot on at work. I'm reasonably happy with how this is going, though. Jim

David The train is great - I agree with Ben that some additional roof detailing would be worthwhile, but I take your point that it can be added at a later stage. The base, though, is just insanely cool. I've never seen anything like that and it is brilliant. Jim

Ben Very interesting. I need to order some more bogies and ferry fittings etches from TPM / ATM soon, so I'll enquire about the u/f mouldings when I do that. Paul Thanks. I must admit that I didn't make notes at the start of the project, but it occurred to me that it might be a good idea before it was too late to remember what I'd done. I now have pages and pages of notes and little diagrams. The other three wagons will be built in a single batch, hopefully without going down some of the blind alleys that I've followed with this one. Jim

Jo Thanks. I have the MR article with me as a key reference while I'm working, along with a set of drawings that used to be on the SNCF website. These show some differences from the article. In particular, there are two different types and the ones that are 12.29m long overall are shown as having the asymmetrical underframe that I've built into my model. Unfortunately, when you try to get to this page now you just get an SNCF page header and "Erreur 404: cette page n'existe plus". I remember your model well. Have you ever done anything about weathering it? Your eye for colour is so good that I'd be fascinated to see what you made of the browny-grey that the hoods take on. I've already learned one important lesson here. In my last posting, I said that the lettering panels would be mounted on pads set into the filler. In the event, I decided to fix 30-thou panels (i.e. 10-thou thicker than the hood supports) directly to the structure, thinking that I could sand around them and be left with panels standing slightly proud of the hood. You can see how chunky they look in the photo. This has proved to be a Bad Idea: the panel gets in the way of the sanding and the sanding ruins the definition of the panel edge. I'm cutting off the three panels that can still be removed and replacing them with 20-thou mounting pads, as originally planned. The one that's too deeply embedded to do anything about will be filed down with the filler around it until it becomes a 20-thou pad by default. That'll teach me to try and cut corners. Jim

More progress on the IHA: the hood supports have been added, as have the lettering panels and small pads for the hooks that hold the hood shut to mount on. The next job is a key stage. The area between the hood supports has to be filled and sanded back to create the surface of the hood itself. I have trialled this idea on a very crude test piece and it came out all right, but if it doesn't work in practice then not only has all the work on this wagon probably been wasted, but the entire IHA project will have to go back to the drawing board for a major rethink. This is the current state of play: The general tagginess of the model isn't really a problem. All of the grotty bits should be covered over with filler by the time it's finished. So long as that's all that's covered in filler, everything will be fine. Jim

Ben Thanks for the kind comments. I certainly agree with what you say about the wagon sitting level: My KFA, on which slow progress has been made since I posted some photos of it on the old RMWeb, lurches over to one side at the drop of a hat. In truth, that model has some other issues (serious warping, about which I intend to post on the forum once the IHAs are out of the way) which I need to fix first, but once it's finished it'll need very careful ballasting to get it to stay level. I'm intrigued by the TPM tippler underframes. As well as the IHAs I want to build a pair of JSAs, which are rebuilds of redundant tipplers: what does the TPM u/f consist of? If it's a spine with outriggers that end in those angled tabs that are visible beneath the wagon, then they might save me some time and aggravation. Started on the hood supports this evening: they're all marked out and the first couple are in place. I should have some photos on Sunday. Jim

Yes, just ten short weeks have passed since I started this blog and already I've made some progress! Go Me! High fives all round! In truth, I did virtually no modelling at all for the first half of that period. Real life came crashing in in the shape of a family bereavement which took up all my time and didn't really leave me in the mood for wresting with tiny shards of styrene in what little spare time I did have. In the last few weeks, though, things have been getting back to normal and I've been (by my standards) quite productive. The plan was to construct four IHA steel coil wagons. Moria pointed out that there is actually a kit available for these wagons from Ian Stoate. I hadn't realised that, but I've decided to press on down the scratchbuilt route. If it doesn't work out as I'm hoping, I might fall back on the kit; but for now I'm still committed to building my own. I'm building a single prototype model so that I can iron out the build sequence, note any pitfalls etc. Once that's completed to my satisfaction I'll build the other three as a batch. I expect to make mistakes with the first wagon, so there'll probably be a fair bit of fiddling with the design as I go along. For a start, the original underframe needed beefing up considerably with a hefty stiffener of 40-thou sheet. Here it is in its current state: The mass of filler is the result of trying to build the body section straight on to the underframe without taking proper measurements. In the batch-built models I'm going to assemble the body separately and then attach it to the underframe when it's done. That should be a lot easier than the way I've done it here. Above the bogie on the left, you can just see where I damaged the flange at the bottom of the underframe while I was trying to get the roof to sit down properly. This was more difficult than it needed to be because I made the roof too thick. On this wagon it's 30-thou, but it'll be 20-thou on the production batch. The end platform will go on the left end of the wagon. You can just see that the underframe extends beyond the end of the body to form a shelf which the platform will rest on. The idea is to lay 20-thou rod up the sides and across the roof at the points where the hood supports go; then fill between them with filler, which will be sanded back to create a degree of sag between the supports. The hood will extend as far down as the lower edge of the strip that runs along the side of the underframe. After that, there's detailing to be added to the ends, various lettering panels on the sides (those on the body will be attached to mounting pads set into the filler), the hooks that secure each end of the hood (also attached to pads), ferry fittings, buffers and a few other bits and bobs. In this photo the wagon is just placed on top of the bogies: I use acrylic rod to mount ATM bogies, because I've never found anything else which is quite the right size. Short lengths will be superglued into 4.5mm holes already drilled in the bogie bolsters. Here's the model alongside a Farish BYA. This really illustrates just how dumpy these wagons are: More on this as things progress. Jim

Okay, here we go... At one time or another, I've been into N-gauge modern (when "modern" meant "1982"), 3mm finescale Great Central Railway and N-gauge Union Pacific. Through much of that time I didn't pay much attention to what was happening on Britain's railways. Back in 2002, though, I travelled down to London for work and returned to Liverpool in the evening. I was quite surprised by the number of freight trains that I saw; and particularly impressed when my train stopped at Stafford alongside a container train. Immediately outside my window was a KTA "pocket wagon", something that I'd never seen before, and I was hugely taken with the sight of the brake gear all clanking away in plain view on top of the end platform. After that I started looking out for freight trains a bit more; then "considering" modelling some of them until eventually I decided to switch over entirely to modelling the contemporary British scene. One day, I'd like to build a layout based on Edge Hill, the first station out of Liverpool Lime Street, as it was in the period between 2000 and about 2006. This would be a huge undertaking, but that's what I'd like to do. In the meantime, I have several layout ideas based on the Bootle Branch, which runs from Edge Hill to Liverpool docks. These would give me somewhere to run trains which could later be used on an Edge Hill layout, if that ever came to pass. Building these trains is going to be a long business, for two reasons: (1) I don't max out my credit card on vast fleets of RTR wagons and locomotives, because I don't have the disposable income to do it and I'm not really the kind to go over my pretty rigorously-enforced budget on model railway bits; and (2) I don't assemble large numbers of scratchbuilt or kit-built stock all that quickly because I work quite amazingly slowly, as may become apparent as this blog goes on. It isn't just time: people with less time than me seem to get on quite well. I'm just a very slow worker, end of story. I'm kind of hoping that writing this might encourage me to get on a bit more, but only time will tell on that one. Over the last few years I've assembled a varied collection of N gauge stock, nearly all of which was appropriate to the dock branch, without ever getting very near to assembling any complete trains. Earlier this year I decided that this was no good and that I would separate my rolling stock requirements into particular groups and concentrate my buying, at least, on one of those groups at a time. I'll still build odd things "out of sequence" for light relief but the bought-in stuff will be in accordance with The Plan, unless there's a good reason to do otherwise. The first group I decided to concentrate on was the steel coil traffic. At the moment these trains only run a couple of times a week, often combined with scrap metal workings, but they used to run more or less daily. Trains of empty wagons would work across from Warrington, collect loaded wagons from Gladstone Dock steel terminal and return. The empties would be loaded in time to form the following day's train. From the train formations that I'd seen myself or had seen photographed or recorded in the Liverpool-Rails Yahoo group, I settled on three. These were formed: 1. BYA (x4), IHA, KIA, IHA, JSA (x2) 2. BYA (x5), KIA (x3) 3. IHA (x2), KIA (all the links above are to Martyn Read's very splendid UK Rolling Stock fotopic site) I chose these for several reasons. They're all prototypical, they cover the extremes of length for these workings and although they're varied, they include almost all of the coil wagon types generally seen on the branch - they're reasonably typical in that BYAs (and the externally-identical BRAs) are the most common types on these trains. They also have a good balance between available RTR (the BYAs from Farish and the KIAs from Dapol) and what would have to be scratchbuilt. As much as I enjoy scratchbuilding wagons, even producing the six wagons required here is likely to take me months. The KIAs are all on hand (courtesy of Hattons' recent sale), as are most of the BYAs, so I've started on the IHAs. The prototype model is based on Robert Stephens' article in the August 2006 Model Rail and the drawings that used to be published - but aren't any more, sadly - on the SNCF website. The most striking thing about them is that the underframe is longer at one end than the other. The end platform is at the long end, which should make it a bit easier to attach the etched (by TPM) platforms. I did take some photos, but they didn't come out too well: I'm going to try again in daylight tomorrow and see if I can do better.

Burkhardt certainly didn't rate BR's motive power very highly. He seems to have practically despised the Class 47, for a start. It has to be said that the first GMs arrived because of Foster Yeoman's dissatisfaction with British locomotives. The 60s were presented as being the UK's answer to the 59s, but their introduction was marred by numerous faults whereas the 59s (and later the 66s) seem to have worked more-or-less straight off the boat Jim

Ed Burkhardt gave an interview to Rail Express back in 2007 and he made this exact point. This was after he'd left EWS, so he didn't have an axe to grind (or if he did, he'd probably have been looking to stick it to EWS's then-management). In the early post-privatisation period, I think that there was a reasonable argument to be made in favour of forcing EWS to put redundant power up for sale. At that time the only UK source of off-the-shelf main-line locomotives was second hand sales of ex-BR power, EWS had sole control of that supply and they could use it to exclude possible competitors. That isn't the case today and I'd have thought that anyone who wanted to acquire a fleet of locomotives could do so relatively easily without going cap-in-hand to DBS. In the same interview, he also said "EWS should replace the Class 60s as soon as it possibly can, unless it has plans to shrink its participation in the UK market even more". Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Personally, I'm a lover of the 60s and consider myself lucky to be living in an area that was one of their last strongholds, but the practical arguments in favour of the Class 66 seem overwhelming to me. Jim