Ken A.

Progress is slow, the track is down although the number of works sidings on left have been reduced to one.  The main reason for the lack of progress has been the sheer amount of work required to dismantle/scrap the old American layout and the large volume of waste generated.Needless to say, I completely underestimated this!

Besides laying the track, the construction of buildings is well under way.

More later,

Ken

Rather than a passenger station, how about a private siding serving some typical industry? Or is that too much like an American switching layout?

Well, after dismissing your idea out of hand, it sort of niggled away in the back of what passes for my mind until itmanifested its self as the offering shown in Blog post (#4).  You were right all along!

You mentioned brass overlays for these coaches, do you know who made them?  

They are nice coaches, but I would need to repaint them in GWR lake livery for my layout...  which would not work very well.

Thanks Mike, I'll take a good look tomorrow.  

Thank you,  you wouldn't know the name of the mine, would you?

The sad thing is that British Railways had just finished renovating the Bumble Hole line stations in an attempt to attract more passengers when Beeching ordered its closure.

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Very nice work, I'm impressed.

Thanks, Mike, I'll add that to the list.

Small world, DonB, my dad was born and grew up in Daisy Bank and I remember traveling from the Daisy Bank and Bradley station with my mom back in the 1950's on our frequent trips to visit relatives in Dudley.  It was on one of these trips that I saw really old fashioned loco in Dudley station - it looked small with a very tall chimney and really stuck in my memory.  It didn't have a smoke box number plate and was very unlike the GWR locos that I was used too.  Years latter I realized that it must have been one of the last LNWR cauliflowers in existence.

I also remember that school, although I went to St Martins.

Thanks for bringing back memories,

All the best,

Ken.

Thanks Mike, I bit off more than I could chew the last time: this time its 'baby-steps' all of the way.  As for the grime, the three railways that I intend to utilize employed female cleaners during the war and so maintained standards.  Light weathering yes but no grimy rolling-stock.  The buildings...  Now that is another matter.

Ken.

Thanks, SP1, I was Bilston born and bred, but one of my grandmothers came from Dudley.  I look forward to seeing reports of your layout as and when.

All the best,

Ken

Hi Mike,

Thanks for showing me this method of comparing drawings...  Never thought of doing it on the computer (Durrr!).

I used this method to compare an outside frame 1076 Buffalo with an early version 57xx pannier.  Turns out that except for the dome and a slightly different sized cab, they are virtually the same loco...  So this is going to be a really easy conversion.

I'd have posted a picture but I'm new to this site and haven't worked out how roo yet.

All the best,

Ken

The sad thing is it was the method of attaching the two trucks that was probably a failure and not the locomotive generally (which was sadly untested), however with such a small proportion of the machine's weight available for traction she would have been as slippery as wet grass!

I've got to have me one of these little monsters........ The only difficulty is justifying it on my proposed Great War era layout...

Nice model and description, thanks for sharing.

There are also the Australian Black Beetle 4wh drives that I came across when modeling American railways.  I've never used them but have heard a lot of good things about them.  They aren't cheap but they are made in a large range of sizes.  Here's a link:

http://motorbogies.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_24