Clive martin

Hi this looks like its going to be a fantastic layout,your wratting road layout was built to a high standard,Belstead bank is a great location to model ,are you going to include the road beside the bank? I look forward to seeing more of this layout,flickr is a great place for finding inspiration over the last few weeks i have been working on a lot of anglian traction ,today i have just started work on 47 579 and have found over four hundred photographs of this loco on Flickr!keep up the great work

What a credit to GBRF how well turned out 69 002 looks,large logo blue was always one of the best BR liverys but apart from Stratford most depots did not seem to be able to prevent the grey roofs going black within a few weeks of service!its great to see the freight companys turning out locomotives looking so smart.

Hallo Eastern O sorry to hear about your wrong purchase of a cravens power twin ,have you thought about seeing if you could swap your unit for a eastern region power trailor set ,the wanted section on rmweb might be the place for you to go best of luck with your search!

I am enjoying seeing your build of Ipswich,you will need plenty of freight liner flats,also vtg cargo wagons i was so pleased now that Heljan have done a second run them,thats the problem of short production runs,a couple of days ago i also watched the priceless video of Ipswich in 1987 its the little details from this era like the class 101 with metro train branding that was so typical of the east anglian railways back in those great days ,if only i had a time machine come to think of it thats what you are doing!

For me the game changer was the early 2000s when Bachmann Heljan and Hornby introduced diesel outline models with much improved drive systems,throughout the 80s and 90s i used to enjoy detailing rtr models but as people have said ,often let down by poor running chassis,for me it was a dream come true when i was able to purchase all the odd ball and short lived classes of locos class 28 class 15 etc all types i had always wanted but never thought we would see as rtr models!

Hi Dons minature new Street was built in the heyday of the pancake motor bogie, so i guess he had to double motor his locos, i think Dons layout had some quite severe gradients !

Their is a classic bit of footage of Dons minature new street on you tube ,just key in Birmingham New street !

Hi Andy your layout looks superb, it has the look of a railway in the landscape,you could have put down a lot more track in the space have,but in this case less is more,keep up the great work i look forward to seeing more updates!

Some great class 58 pics ,its sad that wnxx are reporting the start of scraping the stored 58s in France ,i wonder if 58 050 is one of them as it has been reserved for the national railway museum,its tragic the way these fine locomotives have been thrown away post privatisation of the railways!

I dont want to start a debate about how much we pay for our british outline models compared with european HO ,but the price of a Bachmann class 47 is now over the 200 pound mark,i dont think these sort of prices are cheap,so i dont think it is much to ask for a little bit of thought about simple tasks like oiling to be thought about in the design stage of these models ,despite this i am very happy with the way most of my british out line models perform with very little maintenance ,the roco v90 model i spoke about that is very well designed, is not an expensive model ,it is a roco start model that i payed about 50 pound brand new!

Yesterday i decided to change the stock on my layout from pre tops era to 1980s tops era ,one of my Bachmann class 20s was not running very well so i decided to give it bit of a service thats when my problems started ,after removeing the body shell i thought i would take a look at the gears in the bogies but after much effort i could find no way of removeing the bogie base plates this resulted in the whole bogie tower falling out on closer inspection it looked like the locos previous owner had repaired the half round tabs that hold the bogie onto the chassis ,so the only way to get any oil into the gear train was to remove the top of the bogie tower ,this explained to me why when i bought this loco it was well over oiled i guess out of desperation the previous owner had flooded the gear tower with oil as this seems to be the only way to oil this model ,idont think any of the mainstream manufacturers design models with a bit of thought regards maintenance ,why is it that european HO stock seems to be far better built in this regard i had to change a traction tyre on a roco v90 it was so easy the bogie frame just unclipped with out any problem, I am sure roco etc seem to put more thought into how their models are to be maintained ! ,

Today i cleaned the wheels and removed a bit of fluff etc from the pick ups on one of my Bachmann class 47s that has always been a great running model,for the first time today she showed a few signs of needing a bit of tlc ,the model in question is the pre top s rail blue D1547 ,i am quite amazed that this loco is nearly 15 years old and this is the first time i have ever cleaned its wheels,i thought it might need a complete overhaul but with just a wheel clean she now runs like a dream a real credit to Bachmann !

My grand design dream layout that i will never build is Peterborough set in the 1984 to 1986 period ,must have trains would include the european boat train for Glasgow, Birminghams hauled by class 31s lots of hst action and the afternoon fly ash hauled by a railfreight grey class 58s etc!

that looks fantastic,on the now rare trips i have into Ipswich i always have to have a look at the remaining admin building and i cant help myself thinking about the long gone days when this was an active depot and home to BTH type ones etc and for a short period NBL built machines before they went to Scotland,the late doctor Ian Allens classic book diesels in east anglia has some superb photographs of the shed ,your shed building looks superb so typical of the diesel depots br built in the 1960s,i look forward to seeing more updates !

I have just watched your latest you tube video of Llanbourne and enjoyed every minute,just perfection !

I am not sure everyone on this forum will agree with me ,but since the advent of the what i describe as second generation models of the last 20 years for example diesel outline models with central motors and cardon shaft drive bogies, these models are much more reliable than the old pancake powered models of the past ,but i dont think maintenance was thought about in the design stage of many of these models ,sometimes what should be a simple task of lubrication requires quite a bit of dismantling and with models becomeing more and more detailed the risk of damaging detail is always a worry!

I must be very lucky ,i have had to do very little to keep my models running well, some of my Bachmann class 24 and 25 must be 20 years old ,all i have had to do has been to clean their wheels once or twice,my 3 Bachmann warships are the only models that i have had to take apart for a major overhaul ,while these locos were in bits i drilled holes through the bogie base plates in the middle of each axle so the gear train can be oiled without the need to dismantel the loco,the only model i have dead in a box is a Heljan class 14 that after running in ran quite well until its motor just packed up without warning,one day i will see if i can get a replacement motor for this model!

That looks superb ,building your own stock adds an extra bit of enjoyment to our fantastic hobby ,their is plenty of inspiration from some very talented model builders here on RMweb ,

Those 2 limbys are superb ,although the old lima pan cake motors are crude and somtimes poor runners limas body mouldings are very good and with a bit of work can look very good ,i love what Hornby have done with the old lima models with improved drive units ,i look forward to seeing your china clay layout with these locos in service!

Hi your class 47 looks very nice ,back in the early 90s i used to rebuild detail Hornby class 47s i was always on the look out for scruffy second hand examples,i used to pay round about a tenner for these ,i spent many happy hours removeing the paint guide lines on the body sides adding wire hand rails etc,i also built an example in parcel sector livery 47 533 i was quite proud of the bang up to date livery on my model but it soon became historic as 47 533 did not last very long in this livery as it was involved in an accident and scrapped! I look forward to seeing some more of your work !

Hello angry scots man ,are you new to scratch building modifying stock,if so your BUO looks very nice this will look superb once you have fitted the glazing and added decals!

Its great to see this rail blue interest group coming to life again ,at the moment my work bench looks like Doncaster works nearing completion i have stratfords 31 148 with its infamous broom cupboard door stratfords 37 245 and old oak commons 31 121 a machine i just had to build a skinhead with snowploughs, this year i hope to build one of stratfords named eth 47s and a couple of 37s to renumber into east anglian allocated for a future layout based on Beggers bridge,

I agree with you i remember useing humbrol rail blue in the 1980s and i always thought it was a very good match,i thought i would try out humrols latest rail blue as a cheaper alternative to railmatch but was rather disapointed as the old humbrol range from the 70s 80s was a much better shade,so back to good old railmatch ,