sharris

This reminds me of the time when I’d just moved into my house and saw a load of police cars with the word ‘Police’ struck through with a strip of black tape. My first thought was that it was a very poor attempt at an unmarked police car, but it turned out they often filmed The Bill in my area and they were prop cars on the way to or from a shoot.

or even the POWSides kit if you don’t fancy lining up the transfers yourself.

Coming late to the party - this video might be of some interest - Fletliners are featured from about 12 minutes in. http://www.ampthill.tv/playvideo.html?id=242

So, went with the single ridge sloped roof. Now waiting for the glue to dry before I start laying slates. The rood in this section consists of a base layer of 1/16” balsa with a layer of 0.5mm card on top with guide lines for the rows of slates, which will be cut from printer paper.

It was more out of curiosity - bit late for me now as I’ve built them up from Evergreen strip and Ambis bolt plates.

You must have got to the stand before me and had the last solebars!

Do all the underframe moulds still exist for the MR coaches? I managed to find sides, ends, roofs, springs+axle boxes and some somewhat warped floors as separate items when Mr Dunn was still doing shows, but had to scratch build my own solebars and vacuum gear, and use Brassmasters Cleminson assemblies for W irons, as I never saw any Slaters components.

I believe there should be an end-door hinge too.

Thanks Dave - I was really hoping you’d chip in with a professional opinion! SWMBO is actually chiding me on to get it finished. Really she has no grounds for complaint as she’s set up the corner of the lounge as her workstation since she got a Cricut machine for her birthday - actually she’s on her second machine now, the first one broke down - I’m claiming it was entirely coincidence that I’d previously been experimenting with plasticard on it.

Things have moved on a fair amount with this project now, and has reached this stage (I really should have filled in more progress as I’ve been going along!): the vents on the end warehouse roof probably didn’t exist, but they do break up a large otherwise rather boring extent of plain roof! however, I’ve come up with a dilemma (or more accurately a trilemma) of how to fill in the centre section of roof on the main building. I’ve come up with three alternatives so far which I’ve mocked up: this one I call the ‘barely legal’ option. A single ridge, but the slope either side is only about 22 degrees, which, reading around is borderline for the minimum slope allowed for a slate roof. This one echoes the double peaked roofs of the boiler house and shed at the left end of the building (looking from the ground side). The pitch is a more sensible 40 degrees, and more aesthetically pleasing, matching the pitch of the gables either side. However what happens when it rains? like the second option, the front and back pitches are a sensible 40 degrees, but the water trap in the middle is replaced by a flat roof - but is that realistic for a building built in the 1870s? I’m not completely convinced with any of the options I’ve come up with so far. The side and end elevations in the article I originally linked, and the few photos I’ve found don’t appear to show the centre rising higher than gables either side, so a single ridge with a steeper pitch doesn’t seem to be an option.

They appear to be a wee bit busy reorganising their systems at the moment and trying to get orders out before they switch systems - I thought it best to ask here first. From the front of their website: “SERVICE INTERRUPTION OVER THE END OCTOBER / BEGINNING OF NOVEMBER ...We will be very busy getting the new systems in place so will find it difficult to answer the telephone and take phone orders during these few days.”

Thanks!

I’m putting together an order which includes some T-section strip. Where items are listed, e.g. Brass T-Section 2.0mm x 1.0mm, does anyone know, is that W x H or H x W? I’d ask them directly but they appear to be busy restructuring their internal systems at the moment!

Even then I put the small bottle in a glass ramekin padded out with plasticine to make it bottom heavy and hard to knock over. When I’m doing brass I swap the solvent for the flux bottle.

Window frames are now about 60% installed, and bricks are appearing on the walls (Howard Scenics embossed paper) and walls are now permanently joined in the two end modules. The centre module (the main building) is still a flat pack while I finish off the brickwork. However, it occurred to me that I actually have no idea how things would have come in and gone out on the railway line that runs through the site. There were large boilers in the building, so obviously a need for coal, but when it comes to raw materials (bits of dead animals) would that be delivered in general merchandise wagons? And just stacked up in the wagons or in sacks? Likewise the finished product, bagged up and sent out in merchandise, or loose a bit like bulk grain in hoppers? Does Anyone with an agricultural background have any hints on the comings and goings of a bonemeal factory?

Quite possibly - I’ll have to see how easy it is to disassemble. I do have an even older Antex 18W (or might be 15, can’t remember) iron from the 1980s that I used to use for soldering PCBs before I got the 690.

My venerable Antex 690 SD is still going strong after I’ve forgotten how many years, but has recently started playing ‘guess the temperature’ as 3 segments on the display have failed. (It’s supposed to say 350C) It’s the best iron I’ve used and still quite usable, but should it fail to the point where I can’t set the temperature in the future what would be a fitting replacement?

Would Dyson produce a model of Brunel's vacuum powered Atmospheric Railway?

How did you keep the roof laminations from warping? I tried something similar, but on a much smaller scale for a Micheline railcar and it warped horribly - I redid it carving and filing some balsa. (I suspect it might be down to styrene thickness).

Has any plastic kit manufacturer (at least in 4mm scale) produced a convincing wagon underframe? All my kits, whether from Parkside, Slater's or Ratio have had various bits of underframe replaced by bits from Bill Bedford, Wizard, Ambis, MJT, etc.

I have learned not to set up my work computer on the table next to the fridge.

Occasionally the office where my computers are has power cuts (it's a new building and the builders are still working, fitting out other floors). I can wake up one over the network, the other I have to get someone from building security to go and poke the power button. At least we're not working for NASA and having to worry about whether we can reboot something on Mars.