Gary H

Yes, no problem John. The baking powder rapidly cures the super glue if you sprinkle it onto the glue whilst wet. When done, just blow off the surplus. Not recommended for a model application obviously, but it works well on something rustic like a tree branch. Mind you, i found that it still took some patience glueing all the branches back on, anything you do with super glue is not instant when joining the branches but the baking powder speeds up the curing markedly. Ive no doubt there many easier ways than my approach but the outcome with this one was satisfactory to my eyes atleast.

This is my first proper effort in actually constructing a tree from its raw materials. I have made many in the past from so called 'Kits', normally Woodland scenics Items that eventually ended up in the bin as I was never really happy with them. This latest thing is made from dead heather. I lopped all the 'branche's' off before re-atching them with cyno and baking powder to enable more of the bulk that a tree has rather than a long spindly appearance of the heather in its natural state. Not sure about the Noch 'leaves' that I added, a may omit them next time. Feel free to let me know what you think as there is always room for improvement. This is it planted on a removable section.

Another usefull picture of that windscreen slant that seems to alude all the models produced to date, shown to good effect here- https://www.flickr.com/photos/sydpix/5212738114/in/faves-93867311@N07/ It would be nice if Heljan could crack this one once and for all! JLTRT came close but still no cigar unfortuantely.

Thank you very much, chaps! Very helpfull info. In the end, I had some clear matt spary and then used some hair sparyi had knocking about for other scenery job's. I will post up my latest efforts later on.

Does any one know of a spray adhesive which does not 'string'? Ive tried a coulpe now, Evo stick and carpet spray adhesive and they both 'string' when leaving the nozzle. If you try using it on trees it looks like a giant spiders web mess.

A nice Leslie S5T too! A real monster of a horn.

Personally I'd rather see an avalanche of Templot diagrams than pages of endless wibble and throth about weather Peco, will, will not, maybe, deffinately etc etc etc. As for the the thread drift by certain contributors, it certainly breaks the above monotony!

Is this about right for one of these now?? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hornby-R3429-Peckett-W4-0-4-0-Loco-Huntley-and-Palmers-No-832/253008033986?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649

I know its very late to reply but anyway, driver who bought the 37 down from Bristol working in tandem with the 66 agreed to stay on it to Penzance. However, when it left PZ, the driver was out of hours so it returned DIT.

Those Laira chaps done some dam fine work to straighten out 803. There were a few that said it couldn't be done!!

Indeed. The Peak is fine. The worrying thing for me referance a 50 is the fact that since its Lima inception in circa 1980 ish, no one has yet managed to get it right. I cant honestly see Hejan being any differant. If I am wrong, il be one of the first to buy one. The one fundamental flaw in all of them is the slope downwards of the windscreens spoiling the 'face' of the loco.

Hmm, so Heljan are producing a 50. This should be good for a laugh!

I often wonder if that guy is still about and still a crank after 37 years?

Imust admit, I was somewhat of a latecomer to Deltics. I only had one for haulage on BR, that was #16 from York to Doncaster in 1980 whilst on an all line rover. From then on, right through their preserved line years, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, prefering 50's for the most part. Fast forward to 2016 when I had #9 on a railtour. From then on I realised what I'd been missing, totally blown away by "that sound"!!! 100 mph is something special behind a Deltic. I look at them like the E type Jag of the railways and I offten wonder what the guys at EE were smoking when they designed those lines of DP1- Nothing else diesel wise has that certain magic!

Thanks for the clarification, Jim. They'll underload them for the Cornish branches down here aswell for the same reason but we can use 66's on the branches. Ballast jobs on the main are normally 70'S from your lot these days too. Very impressive performance from these on the banks with 2 loaded sets.

Alot of times with these ballast jobs, its sometimes crucial that it is T&T or as Jim says, it cannot run. The majority of the time, running loco's round to the other end is impossible as there are simply no facilities to do so. Not saying that this was definitely the case here but it may have been a factor. Mind you, the planner involved needs his backside kicking. Expecting a single 37 to handle 2 sets on that line is stretching it abit. 1 set would have been more appropriate.

One of my pet peeves is some of my colleagues will call a Pandrol a 'key' rather than a clip.

That's a very nice touch by Colas! Someone obviously has alot of time for our railway heritage! Kudos to them.

I'm in some ways surprised to see loco A at the lowest being as its a fairly unusual blue livery variant!

The Pennsy Q2 was abit of a beast , nearly 8000 horsepower ,mechanical stoker obviously at about 12 tons of coal per hour! http://i.imgur.com/QPxk7xI.jpg The Q2 had more power than a 14XX Bigboy.

Pretty much why we use electric transmission. A traction motor can exert very high torque from a dead stop. Especially AC motors.

Very true. Once it gets away, adhesion and tractive effort become less of an issue. You need horsepower to get high speeds! I would think that in HP terms with the A1, you would looking at the diesel equivalent of a Class 47 or a smidge under in horse power terms. Has the loco had a dynamometer car behind it to measure its power? That's if such a thing still exists.

UTU train then. That'l please one of my colleagues (not!)

They did also undertake some braking tests aswell, Mike so I heard. Full-service application from speed etc.

No, nothing like that, Jim I don't think. I'm not sure of the exact details, had a chat with a Colas fitter who used the words 'some issues' and something about a poorly designed and wired switch somewhere causing a short. It was also having the park brake mods carried out at the same time. I also heard that one of them had some poor paint application aswell and had to go back rectification.