spikey

Gosh, what a good idea! Thank you for that. I may well end up using ready-printed paper though, so I'd still like to see what folk recommend by way of glue. Maybe the answer is a spray adhesive, but I have no experience of using one ...

It occurs to me that the plastic card building I'm making will blend in better with its neighbours if I face it with brick paper rather than the embossed styrene I was going to use. So ... having never used brick paper, I now have to ask - what's my best bet for sticking it to plastic card?

The only one I can answer from memories of my trainspotting days is that rear lights were constant. It's not easy to make an oil lamp flash ...

It's probably just somebody at Margate trying to fathom out how to change something on their website ...

It does indeed. Thank you. All I need to know now is am I right in thinking that, generally speaking, pre-WW2 the roof surface would be asphalt?

Thanks for that Ian. Never thought of that one! Looks like the parapet's often only 6 courses deep at the most, and at least now I'll remember to put in a trapdoor for access.

I need to scratch build a small factory building of the brick walls, Crittall windows and flat roof type, and I'm confident about all aspects of the build except for one - the roof. I know my Google-fu is not strong, but even so I've now tried for over an hour to find a photo of such a roof so I can work out roughly how high the parapet needs to be and how the drainage is done, but to no avail. Can some kind soul please point me at a picture (real thing or model) which will enlighten me? And am I right in assuming that pre-WW2 the roof itself would be asphalt?

... and what a delight it is to note this morning that Morrisons have at last got a variety of Xmas puds and Xmas cakes on the shelves. No more laying awake at night now wondering if they were leaving it until the last minute. Is this the only country in which Christmas starts in late September?

So given that it's down to a snag in the software, about which I guess not a lot can be done, has anyone found a workround? Seems a bit weird that it only started happeneing recently ...

Kelp for sure. Trust me. I know this stuff!

You'll need one

That's the bit that's always puzzled me, since I never once witnessed it at the time. Surely if you have a wagon with a loose load (coal, sand, mangels, whatever) and the first thing you do is drop the side door, part of the load immediately hits the deck? Or are we saying the idea was to get a lorry with the side/end already down as close as possible alongside first? ETA - Having moved more than my fair share of 2 ton loads of manure over the years, I can well imagine what it must have been like shovelling a wagonload of the stuff over the side - particularly in the rain.. B****r that for a lark!

Thank you, sir. (What kept you, btw?) Gosh, that bottom picture would horrify a few millenials, what with the risk of flies getting in, to say nothing of the risk from passing birds. It's a wonder any of us old gits are still alive ...

Mrs Spikey has once again asked me a question which I was unable to anwer. Suppose an ordinary 5 or 7 plank wagon loaded with sand or gravel turns up in a small steam-era goods yard, the local builders merchant having ordered it. He sends his lorry to collect it, and that pulls alongside the wagon. Two chaps get out armed with shovels. I seem to have gone through my entire trainspotting period without ever witnessing what happens next, so what did? Was it really a case of hop up onto the load and start shovelling over the side until the door could be dropped without significant loss?

Sorry, only just found this interesting thread and I now need to know ... how was the pumping done i.e. did the road tankers have the means to pump it up to the rail tanker's filler, or what?

I actually posted the link to that video last week, thinking that if nothing else it might go some way towards explaining why some of our toys cost what they do. But how about a new forum rule which says that if in the future anyone wants to start moaning about the cost of locos and rolling stock, they have to view both this Bachmann video and the Roco one before they start typing, then explain to the rest of us why they still think we're paying over the odds?

Thank you, gentlemen. For some reason I hadn't considered limestone as a building material! All I could think of was agricultural lime, which I assume would have been transported bagged. Off now to find that thread about wgaon loads ...

My railway's a pre-WW2 branch line with a small but busy goods yard and a factory with private sidings. The business of the factory is indeterminate. What justification if any could I use for the appearance in the goods yard of a couple of private owner wgaons loaded with limestone?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49680943

Horrible things, foxes. If they're not trying to kill your chickens, they're waking you up with their barking in the night. Or depending on time of year, their excessively noisy intercourse. And don't get me started on people who feed them. And badgers. And wood pigeons ...

And I'm now wondering about that pentagram, which obviously had completely different connotations in those days!

As in PO wagons branded "Joe Bloggs & Co Wagon Contractors" or whatever. I've always assumed that these belonged to companies that leased wagons (short-term?) to smaller firms that weren't bothered about not having their own branding on "their" wagons. But is that right?

Another possibility, particularly since they're brass, is one of the weird threads that used to be used by clockmakers.

Especially when you consider that £33 of that £200's VAT, which leaves £167 to cover production costs and overheads, packaging, shipping, warehousing and whatnot, new product development and both manufacturer's and retailers' profit margins ...

Just found this interesting and very well produced video of model loco design and production processes ...