Northroader

Glad you liked the cartoon. Have you ever met anyone from England who could actually speak Danish?

It's a best- seller already:

Phoenix do the red oxide, as I say, it is more of a brown than a red.

I wouldn't say PO wagons had a "standard" colour, it was down to the owners preference, with an eye on the cost of the paint. Thus red oxide was popular, a very brownish red, but if the owner fancied a colour nearer red such as your Meakins wagon, usually termed London red, more red pigment could be added, which pushed the cost up. The popular colours related to lead based paints, red oxide, black, or various shades of grey, which all tended to darken with age. Any of these were quite common, but owners could go for other colours, blue, green, yellow even, but these were rarer. The end door of the wagon gives it a particularly Scottish look, but you could quite simply say a Scottish builder had made it for your owner, as this did happen.

You'll know that this thread tends to wander away from the business of creating my model sometimes, which is just as well, given the pace I do things at. One day this week found me walking along the shingle banks and muddy creeks of Pagham Harbour, near Chichester, and ending up in the "Crab & Lobster" with a pint of Sussex Gold, as you do. The bay is a favourite spot for twitchers, I saw two white Egrets fighting, I suppose over territory, or wimmen. Why can't birds be more like us yooman beans? Looking at Google maps afterwards, I realised I'd actually gone along half a mile of the old route of the Selsey Tram, which set me off on research, and I came across a managers report. This was one of the best reports I've ever seen for being a factual, concise account of the how's and why's of a small struggling independant railway in the 1930s, what was on offer to make a living, what it was doing right or wrong, how it was staffed, (and how much went into their pay packets- ouch!) I got it off the colonel Stephens museum site, where you can get bogged down quite happily. It was written by the traffic manager of the Southern Railway, considering whether it was worth taking over as a branch, and I'm afraid we know the answer to that, but I do recommend it as a good thought provoking read, so here's your homework for tonight:https://www.hfstephens-museum.org.uk/other-railways/selsey-tramway-in-its-last-days

While we're on about thingy, as usual, she wasn't on the 'call the midwife' trailer for the new series. What's happening? We need to know.

I'm a bit worried about that poor dobbin, it's going to get totally discombobulated if it's looking one way and finds it's moving backwards when it starts walking forwards.

With more work done, it's looking great. What I was on about, the curve under of the boiler is done to a very limited degree for as you say, the motor is in the way. Here's one I've done fitting an On16.5 body on a Nellie chassis. The wrapper is nicked behind the smokebox and in front of the firebox, these areas staying vertical, then incurved in the barrel area until it gets in the way of the motor, then trimmed back. You can just make out the bottom of the motor. I'm having second thoughts on my micromodel suggestion, what you spend for what you get is questionable and you've managed quite well with what you're doing. So instead here's a link to a boiler fittings site:http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/101647-has-any-one-ever-made-there-own-loco-chimney/

The speedo design is very poor, measuring voltage of an axle mounted generator. The meter is of the type in which the response diminishes as the voltage increases, so that the needle moves a lot at low speeds, but the really critical bit around 15mph plus, there's very little extra movement. There ain't much margin in the traction motor design to overspeed and burst the windings above this, as several guys have found running light on the main line. The LMS, who pioneered the design with English Electric pre WW2, had two parallel versions, one with a single motor and jack shaft drive needing a longer wheelbase, and the one we know with motors on the outer axles giving a shorter wheelbase. This was dearer, but the BR powers that be went for the short wheelbase for tighter siding curvature for a standard.

As a first try in brass, you've done great in a few days. Keep on trying and you'll want to do the lot in brass with ease. Think about having a cutout for the underside of the boiler with the curve as far as you can get it. The motor will get in the way, so stop short of this and paint it Matt black. The splashers and springs will help disguise this anyway. I don't suppose you've come across micromodels http://micromodels-london-ltd.uk/railway.html, they're a very small scale, and I see the price has gone up tremendously, but when I was a kid I loved making these up into small locos from a flat sheet of card. They're interesting for giving you a basis to form a 3D model from a sheet. Perhaps I should declare that I'm not an interested party as to agency or anything for them.

Talking of steam Railways updating corporate indentity, one good example was the prewar Irish Great Southern railway (black engines, lake coaches) merging with the Dublin buses to make C.I.E. with dark grey locos and coaches in the bus livery, dark green with light green bands at midriff and cantrail heights. What if an independant Scottish rail company had merged with Glasgow buses?

I was trying to say that it's me who's dull(-witted) for not spotting this thread earlier. Really nice job, nick.

Mmmm, Do you hold the copyright on that name? Washbourne could need to cross the border into Wales sometime in the future...

Looking good, I could've put a picture of a LNWR 040st in which is very similar, and there were quite a few in shunting use.I'm a big fan of 040t engines, the old Hornby prewar tinplate range made extensive use of them, as the track had to be really bad to upset them. In Germany and associated countries, they saw extensive use on the nebenbahn, equivalent to our light Railways. Really there should have been a BR standard 040t. Anyway, rant over, good luck with the build, you'll have a nice looking engine quite suitable for Oak Hill at the end of it.

She didn't say, "Ducky, my Ducky"???

It's Cambrian Railways, and they were used on branch line working, not just shunting, so a Really Useful Engine. I'm sure that Mr Craven would have liked at least one of these.

Mikkel, you'll have to be really desperate in your thirst for knowledge, but you can have a look at post 114, page 5, which is where the "broom cupboards" job kicked off, one of the more surreal parts of this thread, so I'm very proud of it. I'm sure we can reach even better flights of er, ??, in 2017, though. Just don't mention "pantiles". Edit: as I typed that, I happened to be watching the spelling checker. Another mystery solved!

The other way, which should reduce the work needed, is to shorten the back end. A lot of 040s didn't have a bunker, but rather had a coal box behind the cab side sheet on the opposite side to the driver with his reverser lever, like this:

Possibly move both the wheels forward so's the rear axleboxes and crankaxle aren't immediately under the firebox grate?

Only just spotted this thread. Dull, or what?

Scale is?

RAF Ballykelly in Northern Ireland needed to extend the runway to operate anti submarine Liberators in WW2. The runway was built across the main LMS (NCC) Belfast Londonderry line, and all working needed to be coordinated with the signal boxes and the control tower. So you can have the runway planes going over the railway if you wish.

Slaters do an etch for brass numerals in 4mm and 7mm, parts 4965 or 7965 respectively. Intended for their MR loco kits, but quite suitable for GWR usage.