The Johnster

Well, I don't but I'm sure somebody with the necessary chemical knowledge to explain it will be along shortly to explain things. To some extent it is used up, of course, small amounts of it being transferred off the lubricated surface and lost, but some presumably evaporates over time as well. The reason the grease is used when new models are assembled is, I am told, because it will not contaminate other areas and is not flammable, both considerations to be taken into account for insurance purposes when the models are packed and shipped. I recall my first ever Triang Black Princess train set, which came with a small glass bottle, about ½" high, of Shell 'High Grade Whale Liver Machine Oil', with a pin attached to the lid to aid application; I was very impressed with this and thought that I was in the presence of real precision engineering, not a description I would now apply to a Black Princess...

There are several sources of waterslide transfers to do this with, and I can recommend HMRS, Fox, and Cambridge Custom Transfers having used them. HMRS are a sheet of individual numbers and 'D's along with BR totems and electrification warning flashes. but the others may be able to supply you with complete numbers for D5532. I'd suggest painting out the old numbers or scraping them carefully off and using new complete numbers of this sort rather than just changing the 1s to a 2s to avoid any possible issue with slight differences in the colour or shape of the numbers drawing attention to themselves, and of course this will help you to get all the individual numbers evenly spaced and level. The websites of these sources will show you what is available and in what form. If you Google 'model railway transfers' these will all be listed along with others. Make sure the surface you are applying the transfer to, in this case the lower cabside of the loco, is clean and smooth; I wipe mine with lemon wipes and allow them to dry thoroughly before starting work. Try a few practice runs with a piece of plastic sheet to get the 'feel' of things before you attack your loco; you will need a sharp craft knife to 'lift' the transfer from the backing sheet, some cotton wool buds to dab water on to it while you are moving it into it's final position, and some tissue paper to blot the water away when you've finished. Leave them a while to dry out and coat them with a dab of varnish to seal them in against handling damage. It's all pretty straightforward stuff, but needs a bit of care and patience. Be in a relaxed mood to start with and take your time and you'll be fine, and very satisfied with yourself when you've finished! But be warned, this sort of activity can be the top of a very slippery slope, an entry drug that ends up with you scratchbuilding live steam Z gauge Gresley pacifics with fully working scale conjugated valve gear...

At the risk of being contentious, I don't like grease lubricants for my drive trains. They attract dirt and clog things up, some sooner and some later but they all do it eventually. And they seize up if stored for any length of time, not that this is an issue for my at the moment but it has been in the past. I use Expo Fine Grade Oil No: 74326, applied with a hypodermic type syringe, for all my lubrication. This does dry out about every 6 months, so occasional checks to see how it's doing are made and the loco cleaned and re-lubed if necessary, so this is no good if you want a 'do it once and forget about it for ever' solution, but I really couldn't say what is... Brand new locos or second hand ones that still have the grease applied when they were assembled in the factory have it cleaned out with rattlecan switch cleaner, the spray driving most of it off the model. Matters are then left overnight while the switch cleaner evaporates off, and fresh lube as described above is applied. The hypo is brilliant for limiting the spread of lube; you want the bare minimum necessary to do the job. I have had my Expo lube for about 2 years, and have used about an eighth of it, which suggests it will last me another 14 or 15 years. Operation takes place most days on my layout, though 'mileage' is not high and speeds are low due to the BLT nature of the track plan. Locos are taken out of service about every 10 working days for boiler washouts, and the timetable means that locos are in service for about 6 months of real time, about when they need a looking at. A thorough cleaning session is indulged in, and lube applied if it is needed. For some reason, Hornby locos seem to need less lubrication than Bachmann; I have absolutely no idea why! All are steam outline and drive through worm and cog gearing with brass or nylon worms and nylon cogs.

There are, it is alleged, other things in the world besides Collett non-gangwayed compartment coaches despite the fact that these have been my principal obsession for most of 2019 so far, and some of the Woodland Scenics foliage has sprouted. It is about the colour of Hawthorn or Blackberry, and a stretch along the station approach path does not keep it's berries for very long once they are ripe...

Thank you for this confirmation, Jane, my coach will be numbered somewhere in the 5672-88 series. To be fair to the Comet picture, if you blow it up on a computer screen it it difficult to be certain what the second number is. As I have recently built a Comet C66, I thought I recognised the 54xx series as belonging to that diagram, I'd actually numbered mine as 5461!

I suspect that the reason Araldite/Devcon won't adhere well to some plastic surfaces is that such surfaces are quite smooth and shiny, and do not provide a good 'key'. An abrasive will improve matters, increasing the surface area for the adhesive to grip to at a microscopic level, which may be necessary if this is a load bearing bond.

It never was, though, and because some milk always spilled when the tanks were loaded and unloaded, they stank, especially in warm weather! The glass lined insides were kept spotless of course, and were very thoroughly hosed out when the tanks were unloaded. Interestingly, they were, I presume, more stable when they were loaded, as they were allowed to run at 55mph loaded and 45mph empty, though of course this may have been down to their greater braking power when loaded. Exterior cleaning would have been more than just hosing down though; the muck was quite sticky and would have had to be cleaned off by physical effort. Those tanks with company branding tended to be kept cleaner than others because of the advertising value of course. Milk tanks were subject to what I think is a unique arrangement whereby the vehicles were owned by the railway but the actual tanks were owned by the dairies.

'Several new, as-yet unannounced models on course to be launched by Bachmann on the day'. What does this mean? On first reading, it sounds as though there are actual products ready to be put in the shops that are being launched, but this would be very unlike Bachmann's previous behaviour. OTOH they may have stuff up their sleeves to counter Hornby's January surprises, some of which are already in the shops and many of which are very close. If so, I doubt it will be anything major, just reliveries or very minor alterations to existing models, but it'll flag up a future ability and intention to abandon the announcement followed by a very long lead time model that they have traditionally used. This would IM very HO be a good thing for them, as the likes of me have criticised them very heavily when models with long lead times are further delayed, sometimes through the arising of unforseen situations outside Baccy's control admittedly, but one feels that they are 'laying claim' to some models in order to dissuade competition, a kind of market manipulation that does not sit well with me! Hornby's January announcements were very aggressive and may have made Baccy feel that it appears a bit slow and complacent. If, however, this is more announcing of announcing, and all that is to be announced is an intention to produce a model in several years' time, then it is normal service being continued. And I'll continue to criticise the long lead times. I would like to see a situation where models are available to buy within a year of being announced, for several reasons. One is entirely selfish; I don't trust TBA or expected availability dates having been let down too many times (especially by Bachmann and especially the 94xx; come on, you all knew I was going to mention it sooner or later, but it is at least firmly in the pipeline now and I'm feeling a bit more relaxed about it!). I also feel that this would improve the level of trust between the manufacturer and both the trade and the modellers, and the manufacturers would be able to deal with production problems before the model is announced, so their estimated deliveries could be more accurate and reliable. Hornby have shown that this can be done; clearly it requires a level of secrecy, but it is not the traditional Bachmann way of doing things. My feeling is that Bachmann have been doing things with a reasonable amount of success for a very long time, and have an 'ain't broke, no need to fix it' approach, which has resulted in some lead times getting out of control. This is not good for them as costs increase and the market situation that lead to be model being developed in the first place changes. In about a decade, the number of us who remember 94xx locos in service will be dropping rapidly... The original market research needs to be capitalised on as rapidly as possible to maximise returns, and I think this applies to modern image as well, as livery changes are frequent these days. None of which will diminish my interest in whatever B has announced they will announce...

Such cynicism in one so young...

Except that 5472 is listed as a C66 on the GW site, and the number range for C63 is 5672-88. So, for the moment, it's somewhere in that range until somebody tells me otherwise. I'm sort of considering the vehicle as a C63 despite it's differences from that coach, and will proceed on that basis. Onwards and upwards...

Back to the bowended 'all third'; today has seen the gap filled with Milliput, the ventilators cut off one end, and holes drilled for the new ventilators. I'll have to wait now for the Milliput to go off before smoothing it down before repainting the coach, and nothing is planned for tomorrow so I might well do it then. While I've got the grey out to do the roof and the new ventilators (Comet, that I had in stock anyway), I might as well give the A31's roof a coat. But no more for tonight; it's pub time soon! It'll be a couple of weeks before this project is finished as I have to order decent buffers for it; the silly little blobby plastic Airfix ones will not do at all, and ultimately I may well replace the bogies with Stafford Works Shapeways, or even the superb Hornbys if I go for 7 footers. Bogie choice will depend on number choice, or vice versa, and I still need to some basic research re numbers! Current front runner is W 5472 W which appears as a crimson liveried C63/5 all third on the Comet site, about as close as this mongrel is going to get to being anything, so 7' bogies will do. It really shouldn't be doing service as a spare single coach at Tondu, having it's work cut out in 5 coach sets in the Cardiff Valleys in reality at this time, so I'll run it with the E116 which also has no real right to be there...

That makes good sense, John. I hadn't considered the point of TT having failed because it didn't 'undercut' sufficiently. TT of course stood for 'table top', an indication of how firmly Triang, who promoted it, was wedded to the train set concept. Perhaps it was a few years ahead of it's time as well; N seemed to be the answer to the space problem for a while and some of the models turning up in the shops from the Continent were astonishing for their time and wouldn't have been bad in H0. Working lights, full valve gear, how do they make motors and gears so tiny; it was all a bit miraculous. I first saw Eggerbahn H09 running in Hamley's in about 1964 I think; I had never dreamed that such a thing might be possible with such tiny mechanisms. About a decade later I went through a 009 phase and had a loco with an Arnold 0-4-0 mech with full valve gear, an Avonside Swansea side tank body kit with an Airfix pug cab. It ran like a little sewing machine, on a par with modern 4mm RTR. When we saw British outline 2mm RTR, prototypes we were more familiar with and more critical of, and that it couldn't even match the not very high standard of concurrent 00 RTR, the cat was out of the bag, and 2mm was very rapidly relegated to 'scenic' models where the landscape overwhelmed the railway and fine detail was distracted from. Copenhagen Fields, which has been on the go since God was in short trousers, is proof that it can be done properly, but the sad truth is that most N gauge layouts are not very 'scale' and such 3mm as one sees is merely scaled down 4mm; the scale never seems to have developed it's own 'identity' or culture. Fine scale 2mm exists, of course, and is remarkable, but beyond what I would consider to be the average modeller's ability. It's certainly beyond mine!

Does this loco have traction tyres on the rear drivers? If so, getting rid of them should cure the rocking, otherwise try to file a little top play in the bearing for that axle so that the wheelset can ride up a little. But wait until the loco's out of warranty...

Clinton is said to be responsible for the following; on being sworn in as president, he was invited to a film showing by the Legitimate Businessmen's Association. Shown into a screening room, the lights went down and the Zapruda footage of the Kennedy assassination screened. Then a man came in and said 'Have you got any questions, Mr President?'.

Working to the principle that railways are long and narrow, but too many layouts end up being fat and wide (as do some modellers, yours truly included), hillside sites where the real railway was constrained by the geography might be some inspiration. You could do worse than Okehampton for general principles. Worth a visit if you're down that way, nicely preserved, friendly tea room, and a good little bookshop! Machynlleth is another one.

You need a washing line as well.

Cardiff boy, old enough to remember trolleybuses but not old enough to remember trams, Brian. I'm 67, and not quite sure how that happened...

Ah... They were all BR Sulzer Type 2 Bo-Bo diesel electrics in pre TOPs days, and in my Combined Volume.

Don't think so. The fireman's duty obligation to look out for signals and so on is part of the Rule Book, and to the best of my knowledge the wording of the GW's book in this matter is the same as the other railways', as directed by the RCH and Board of Trade. In practice, WR firemen working on LHD BR standard or LMS designed locos may well have been asked by their drivers, who were ultimately responsible for this sort of thing, to sight signals more frequently than those on other regions, but it would not have been codified in the Rule Book and would be difficult to quantify. A GWR shovels were longer at the business end than other companys', though the handles were the same length, to enable coal to be more easily delivered to the front of the long, narrow, Churchward fireboxes (though I'm not sure what came first, the long shovels or the fireboxes, chicken and egg), and it is possible that RHD was continued on the GW at least partly in order to give the fireman room to swing the thing within the confines of the cab (not a lot of room on a 42xx or 56xx) without hitting the driver accidentally with it. Hitting the driver on purpose with it may well have been a temptation for some of them on occasion, but that is outside the remit of this discussion and I will refrain from comment...

Not exactly the answer to the 2 or 3 brackets on the rear of LNER vans, but more about side lamps. They were only required on unfitted or part fitted trains, and a fully fitted train (Class C freight, later 6) only required a single tail lamp (of course it had to have vacuum pipes and a gauge in the van even if it was only 'through piped'). They could be reversed to show a red light forward, a signal to the loco crew that you wanted the train to be stopped for some reason, and loco crews should be in the habit of looking back especially on curves to ensure that their un- or part fitted train is still following them. It is quite possible that the GW was still fitting side lamp brackets to passenger brake stock as late as the 30s because nobody had told the carriage shop specifically not to, but I'd be interested to hear if there was another reason.

Didn't they work the Tyne Dock-Consett iron ore trains double headed after the 9Fs were withdrawn? These would not have appeared on the bridge, of course.

Nice little Danygraig engine. Powlesland and Mason's contractees, the Swansea Harbour Investement Trust, renamed themselves the Swansea Harbour Trust when the acronym was pointed out. My dad told me this when I was 10 and I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard; still makes me smile a little.

Doing a bit of cut and shut myself at the moment; an ancient Airfix B set being forced to resemble a Collett all third of sorts. I've already got one minor regret, not zigzagging the cuts so as to follow a compartment divider line on the roof but a door line on the side, but it's too late now and I'll live with the thing, which is never going to be a scale model of anything real anyway. Your Annie and Clarabelle look the part. For now, I am intending to fill my gap with Milliput, but if this is not to my satsifaction I'll break it apart again and use your plasticard sheet method. For a brake vehicle I'd do a bit more than paint over windows; fill them with Milliput and fill the door gaps as well, don't forget to remove door handles and grab rails. Some 4 and 6 wheel brake coaches had only a small guard's riding compartment, with the handbrake and his office, and very limited luggage/parcels space.

And a Diagram N auto trailer; very bad news indeed for my wallet! A diagram N, specifically No.38 photographed at Bridgend by H C Casserley on an Abergwynfi working in the 50s in Lewis, is going to be impossible to resist. There's no room on my layout for a full Cardiff Valleys 5 coach set of bowenders and I'll prolly learn to live with the Hornbys. I'd forgotten about Mousa, and will be looking into this!

Opportunity lost a very long time ago, sadly. But H0 is also a compromise; it looks better in terms of track gauge, but is no better in rail profile, and coarse overscale wheel profiles, flanges and flangeways, and set track curves mean that clearances behind cylinders must still be out of scale and couplings must be on bogies, a very major compromise to appearance on locos with fairings. Splashers are less common outside the UK, but hiding motors behind high running plates on steam engines becomes more of an issue. Coarse scale 19mm gauge 4mm scale would suffer the same compromises if set track is to be used, and the major RTR players will never tolerate anything else. The traditional UK approach has been to make 4mm closer to scale with EM or P4, and the advantage of these disciplines is that you can build a model according to the drawings and lay track according to the plan in the knowledge that it will run reliably, but you have to use scale size curves, which have enormous radii to the 00 setrack eye! And the finer flanges and wheel profiles demand compensation to be able to cope with track joints. Sideplay must be compensated as well; all must be as on a real loco because the model has to cope with the same problems in the same way; 'slop' cannot be tolerated. If you build models of these sorts of sizes and want them to run reasonably realistically, then the less fine scale your standards the more compromises you have to make; imagine a T scale model scaled up to 4mm. It would look very crude and toylike, no better than a Rovex Black Princess and it's stubby Stanier coaches.