Wickham Green

Lanarkshire suggest that most of your locos would have started with 20'' buffers - and the 350HP shunter 16'' ..... possibly replaced with 22'' later : http://www.lanarkshiremodels.com/lanarkshiremodelsandsupplieswebsite_138.htm ........................................ shame they don't offer them all drilled for springing !

Hasn't a well-known manufacturer - not totally unconnected with Oxford - announced some tinplate stuff ??!? ........................ improvement that ain't !

Simplest thing would be to copy what Bachmann or Heljan provide ..... unless that doesn't look right on a particular loco !!?!

..... and what's that peculiar infill between the brake hanger and safety loop ? But if Oxford are listening - it's a very good start !

Phoenix again : sales@srg.org.uk .................................. but I don't know why Weddell attributes them to Ashford when they're only an inside-frame version of the earlier 'Ironclad' bogie.

OK traffic's stationary on the main route .............. but what about the trains ??!?

Did seem to be an unnecessarily long wait for a green light ........ BUT !

Looks very finely balanced - especially on metre-gauge tracks ........... one puff of wind and it'd be over ! ( not spinning a'la Garsdale )

I think the vans Keefer refers to had a brake valve on the balcony so the guard could apply it there rather than having to dash into his cabin when he neared the stop blocks ......... but I've a feeling these vans had wasp stripes on the ends in addition to any other markings.

Yes, it's usually 1 in 20 in the UK - but most of the world uses 1 in 40, i believe ...................... so you'd need even wider tyres for the coning to be effective on three-metre gauge .... and lots of gauge widening !

If the south east tunnels you're thinking about are those on the Hastings line, this was absolutely nothing to do with funding. The contractors only lined the tunnels with one ring of brickwork instead of the specified four - so the only way to rectify them was to line them down ........... OK, maybe if the railway hadn't opted for the lowest tender ( i.e. funding ), they might have ended up with reputable contractors .... but ............ Anyway - back to track gauges - 7' gauge may have been the broadest that was actually installed ( other than for dockside cranes and the likes ) but there was a proposal for three metre gauge high speed lines back in the thirties ....... the idea of some chap called Adolf .........................................

........... er - but none of those were EVER malachite green ! ( Or was ONE 5MT done in 1948 ? )

The simplistic answer is probably 'NO' .......... up until the sixteen tonners' heyday aggregates for road building would have been sourced locally if possible and what crushed stone the railways carried would have been in hoppers of one sort or another - most of it for track ballast. When, eventually, there was found to be a surplus of sixteen tonners they were tried as spoil wagons but - most stone being denser than coal - they were easily overloaded ( until modified ).

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread - but is there another one dedicated to the LNER 'extra long' CCTs ? - a search didn't find anything ! My question - whether here or somewhere else - concerns the LNER 'teak paint' models : Should the ends be black ? - non-gangwayed passenger-carrying stock had black ends long before these were built. Ah - found it ! :

For EM gauge, I added pieces of 30thou Plastikard in the floor slots and butted the brake mouldings against those after removing their tabs - overall length locates them nicely - finished off with Comet yokes in 0.5mm holes ......thicker Plastikard might be necessary in P4 - but, with thinner wheels, maybe not much thicker. Beware if fitting Lanarkshire buffers ! - the bases are a little over size and need trimming to fit between the body's corner stanchions.

Indeed ...........

............ and before anyone asks - NO, they were NEVER YELLOW !

Which raises the the interesting question of who's got the copyright !!?!

Usual story of deep re-ballasting I guess ...........................

Guessed as much when I saw the scaffolding ....

Not necessarily the driving wheels ! .............. but it's rather unlikely anyway.

No E4s retained Maunsell lined green at Nationalisation - or I'd have renumbered a Bachmann one myself .... apart from 1948 Maunsell livery survivors ( black & green ) the old Livery Register lists 'interim' liveries, showing that E4s 2497, 2562/7/81 received unlined Maunsell green with Bulleid lettering between 1939 & 1941. When it's published, the NEW Livery Register should show which of those survived to ( or beyond ) 1947.

But we've managed to reach the two hundred page landmark all the same !

That looks familiar - though on a different occasion ( Feb.'85 ) when there was snow on the ground according to my notes ( MUST get the slides scanned ). There were diesel locos stabled there too and 4498 had to shunt 45.026 out of the way as it had flat batteries !

Wishful thinking there ! ................... you might expect soft seats then a 700 or 800 series turns up !