The Johnster

I stoutly deny either of those accusations... Many of my ex girlfriends will assert that I am anything but a gentleman, and my ex teachers will affirm that I am not a scholar! Glad to be of assistance, though, o captain my captain.

I believe they were allocated to Shrewsbury and Croes Newydd in those days, and are hence by no means impossible at Hereford, though they'd have struggled to time anything like a heavy train over Church Stretton; this was a busy main line and they would not have been popular with the signalmen. Borrowing for an out of the way goods only branch would be a matter for Rule 1, but it would certainly be in line with some of the work they did out of Croes Newydd.

In first class sausage rolls, freshly baked, of course.

I can't agree with the OP's original tone or the assertion that Hornby's Customer Care is lacking because they don't provide instructions in the fairly simple matter of dismantling coaches, especially as they provided the correct guidance to him. But there is a point to made here; it is increasingly difficult to get inside vehicles to add details or passengers, or crews in the case of locomotives. If you think getting into a Hornby coach is hard, try putting crew in the cab of a Bachmann 4575! Removable roofs on locos, especially tank locos and modern image including dmus, to get into the cabs and easier access to the interior of coaches would be a very welcome step in my view. Modern RTR modern image locos and coaches are moulded as single piece bodyshells that preclude this, and presumably a cost increase would be involved in providing removable roof or roof sections.

Have noted the serial numbers and I'll be putting in an order come pension day (Wednesday) for sheets BL 171 ex-GW coaches and BL 34 no smoking and first class sausages. Think some cut and shut transfers from BL 171 will be suitable for the E116. Thanks again Mr Isherwood sir!

Thank you John. I'd certainly be interested in a few 'TRAILER' transfers if you did them, and I'm fairly certain it's not just me. The numbers are useful for RTR, but not for these kit coaches (unless I cut and shut of course), but I'm wanting some RTR auto trailer numbers as well; will investigate your site.

With the A31 nearing completion, I'm expecting things to pick up a bit on this project soon. The first coat of maroon is on, but a second and possibly a third are needed to get an even finish; I am using Mr Hobby 'Aqueous Hobby Colour' Purple Red acrylic for the job. It's a good colour, pretty close to BR maroon and despite the name not at all like the awful purple of Airfix ere B sets and auto trailers, but coverage is not it's strongest point. But I'm out on the patio in the sun at the moment, and it's far too nice out here for modelling; maybe later... If you are following my A31 topic, then you probably need to get a life and stop messing around with this sort of rubbish, but you'll know that I'm running low on HMRS BR loco and coach insignia transfers, which I'll be needing soon for this coach. Their Transfer Sales Manager is apparently, and hopefully temporarily, indisposed and everywhere's out of stock. I've ordered but don't know how long it's going to take, so have ordered numbers and prefix/suffix letters from Fox to finish the A31 and number this coach so they can be put into service. I'll have to wait for my no smoking triangles and first class sausages from HMRS. My current sheet is donkey's (at least 35) years old, P C Models not HMRS! This means that I will not be attaching the roofs permanently to either model just yet, as I'll have to get in there to affix the no smoking triangles and first sausages. I'll be using my usual bodge for this situation, pound shop superglue, which will hold the roofs firmly enough for operational purposes but can be broken off like a cheese cracker when needed. You then clean up the remains and re-glue the piece, either with proper glue or more pound shop rubbish depending on whether you want a permanent join.

AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel for you, and hope that time and counselling have assisted a recovery...

Spraying done, we are now ready to start on the glazing, but it's too nice a day to be indoors modelling! Maybe later this evening. I've run out of Ws, and she's not got the suffix W on one side yet. HMRS transfers are out of stock everywhere due to the indisposition of their Transfer Sales Manager, hopefully temporarily. In the meantime I've ordered a sheet of BR coach numbers and prefix/suffix letters from Fox, which will do for this and the E116. It'll arrive when it arrives, and I'll put the remaining W on and dab a layer of matt varnish to seal it. The no smoking triangles will have to wait for HMRS to be back up and running as I've run out of those, too. The sheet is on order but I'm not holding my breath.

An old friend on mine, now sadly gone to the great record shop in the sky, back in the 70s remarked that a vinyl album, with the sleeve and artwork and all the rigmarole, was a possession, whereas a cassette, and later a CD, was a mere chattel. He'd be horrified to learn that none of my current collection of music physically exists in any form other than electronic algorithms, 'streamed' (whatever that is) on demand... It certainly saves space! But playing a vinyl album on a decent (ish) hi fi deck was something like a ritual. After having set the deck up, itself an occult rite, you then removed the album in it's inner sleeve from the outer cover with a suitable flourish as if you were holding the Holy Grail, with due reverence, meticulously took it out of the inner sleeve, looked carefully on both sides, wiped the dust off with an anti-static cloth, and, being careful not to contaminate the playing surface and holding it by the edge, placed it as precisely as you could on the turntable platter. Then, with the greatest possible care and reverence, you started the turntable and lifted the arm, very gently placing it on the lead in groove at the edge of the side you were playing, breath held in case you made a jerky move. Then, you withdrew from the Holy Record Deck, gently closing the smoked plastic cover, and listened. Tell kids that terday, they don't believe yer. Who needs all that, now.

I, too, would have no issue in returning and demanding my money back for badly misrepresented items, but there are grey areas. I recently bought a K's B set coach kit (E116, plastic kit with cast whitemetal bogies) described as used, although the packet had never been opened, and in good condition. The roof moulding was broken. Now, it was a clean break and I can repair it easily enough so that the join will be all but invisible on the finished kit, but it is still minor misrepresentation. I decided the sensible thing to do was to suck it up, buttercup, not complain, but make a note of the seller's identity (100% rated by the way) and be very reluctant to buy from him again. This was a bidding war which I 'won', and the price I paid was probably ball park reasonable for the item in good condition, but you can't really say it was in good condition. The photo was of the packet with the parts visible inside, but the roof was hidden by the instructions. I would be very reluctant to accuse the seller of deliberately photographing it like this to hide the broken roof; it was a perfectly sensible way to show the majority of the parts. Some while ago, I bought a 'Buy It Now' 56xx described as MIB; it had been resprayed BR black over a previous GW green livery and unicycling lion crests poorly applied. Worse, the cab windows were oversprayed black, and resisted all attempts to clean the paint off without fogging them; they had to be binned and replaced with 'Glue and Glaze'. I will have no reluctance in buying from this seller (another 100%er) again because none will be needed; I will never buy anything from him again. To be fair, the price was a bit low by about a tenner for a properly MIB example, so may be regarded as fair for the model actually supplied, and I'd probably have bought the loco anyway, but there is an unpleasant sense of dishonesty about the deal. If one is buying stuff one has not actually physically seen, absolute trust is necessary and the unfortunate case is that this does not always happen on 'Bay. OTOH, online ordering of new items from the trade has been 100% reliable and I have no problems with it.

I understood it to be a standard unit of 2 firkin. 2 firkin long, 2 firkin heavy, 2 firkin slow, etc...

Thinking valves; whooda thunk it! Thank you guys for these last few posts, which have been very highly educational for me. Educational in that I've learned that I don't know as much about basic steam loco matters as I thought I did... I had never considered that cylinder inclination made much difference beyond clearance and loading gauge issues. If you have big cylinders with small driving wheels, like on a 9f, you need to incline them or they would be too low and wide. I clearly need to do some thinking about this, and it's exactly the sort of mental exercise I indulge myself with when I'm trying to sleep or waiting for a bus.

My spray booth is equally high tech; cardboard box on the patio, sits on top of the chimenea when in use. Nice day for it, and I will be putting the final coat of rattlecan acrylic on the A31 auto trailer today before glazing in, as the numbers are now on.

It's got curtains! How cute is that?

I have completed the inside and given the underframe and ends a coat of matt black, and will put a coat of maroon on the outside before I go to bed. This coach is progressing almost by accident...

I've just provided a screed about bogies over on the E116 K's B set kit topic, and the upshot is that I will be using the K's cast whitemetal bogies from this kit under W 207 W, with added tiebars whatever I said before. Currently resting my eyes as I'm putting the numbers on, a job that I find very fiddly and tense, but once finished the coach will have a proper identity and I'll be able to spray a topcoat of rattlecan matt varnish on, and she'll be ready for glazing! Does anyone know anyone who makes transfers for the 'TRAILER' lettering that is just above the solebar at the left hand end of the coach on each side; it's way too small for me to do in individual letters!

I think I've got myself in a bit of a muddle with the bogies, and am writing this down to sort myself out as much as anything else, so bear with a confused elderly gentleman and his senior moments, please, and indulge his foibles... The bogies on E116s, according to the Pendon Gandertons and photos from Ms P of real ones, are fishbellies with tie bars and footboards, as far as I can see identical to the Stafford Works/Shapeways prints. The fishbellies on W 207 W (see the other topic) are also fishbellies with tiebars but no footboards. They are also apparently shorter than the E116 type fishbellies, but I've decided not to worry about that for now. So, the best way for me to proceed now is to use the K's cast whitemetal fishbellies from the E116 kit for W 207 W, and add tiebars, which should be a fairly straightforward job. The Stafford printed bogies are perfect for the E116, better than the cast K's ones that came with the kit, and have the correct type of footboards (there were several variations of footboards as well), so these will find a home underneath this coach. I've managed a little progress this afternoon in between work on the A31, as the weather is perfect for spraying on the patio (I know it's a patio and not a yard because it's got patio doors...). The bodyshell has been done inside and out, along with the roof, and is now ready for painting inside and out.

I'd have been happy with the yellow glow for carriage lights. The real thing was so low level that reading lights were provided in compartment stock, very low wattage bulbs feebly casting light through frosted bulbs, at 24v IIRC. Modern carriage lighting is much brighter, and colder in cast, even through tinted windows, and one of the most common errors on exhibition layouts IMHO, even modern image ones, is lighting that is much too bright.

I have a reluctance to part with money before I have seen the thing I'm parting with it for in it's physical manifestation, having been burned before! This is not an approach compatible with modern modelling where so many items have to be sourced online; they were always available mail order of course, but back in the day could be got hold of more readily in model shops or at shows. My worries have been completely unfounded when it comes to online sourcing new items from the trade, though there is a very considerable disparity in delivery times and I don't 'get' why one firm can happily deliver this week and another might take 28 days; that's life, I guess. But I also buy some stuff on 'Bay, the only place to get it if I have to have it or a saving of money if you want a loco for a donor chassis. I don't think I've ever had what I'd call a 'bargain', where I have paid a lot less than the thing was worth on the 2nd hand market, but a donor Bachmann 57xx chassis, for example, runs at about £40-£50, not far off half full price for a brand new 57xx. This seems not unreasonable but the idea that cheap good stuff is available on 'Bay is, to my view, a delusion. It looks seductively tempting, of course, especially with very low prices being quoted for auction items; you never pay anything like them and risk getting burned in a bidding war in practice, during which tracking the item has sucked time better spent modelling. I only bother with auctions for items I particularly want now, and restrict myself to 'buy it now' for everything else. And I've been, not perhaps burned, but singeded, twice, with items not as described and slightly damaged or badly resprayed. On both occasions it is the more irritating because I'd probably have been willing to pay the asked price for the items had the seller correctly described them. In both cases, they were faults that are within my ability to rectify easily, but might have caught out a more inexperienced modeller or anyone not comfortable with repairing or repainting. Nothing can be done beyond noting the sellers and avoiding them in future! I would not be bothered with the amount of faff involved in selling anything, though I have given stuff away to friends who stated an interest. I've in my turn been given coaches and locos to work up as well.

Nowt wrong with a bit of positive reinforcement.

Despite being brought (dragged) up and ejumacated, allegedly to 'O' level standard, in the imperial 'old money' era, I never really mastered it as a mental exercise in terms of weight, or some of the odder area/length units, despite repeating it by rote in primary school until you had it pat. You didn't have to, as we all had 'Silvine' school note books with times tables and all the imperial units on the back cover as a ready reckoner, and jobs such as wagon checking that used the units regularly had their own versions. When curmudgeonly old so and so's like me moan about millennials and their dependence on calculators or digital time, this should, I think, be taken into consideration. But I knew a bloke on the railway, a shed labourer, years ago, who claimed he could not do arithmetic, it was too hard for him. Well, perhaps, but he could tell you what you'd get for any sum of money in pounds, shillings, and pence, for any horse at any odds for any bet, with the tax correctly deducted, in his head and in a few seconds, assuming the nag came in of course. I'd have trouble doing that with a calculator, a device by which I can get any sum accurately wrong to 16 decimal places.

Well, it'll work fine. My criticism is that it looks a bit trainsetty, and if if were me I'd improve with a bit of pruning. Unless you insist on having two trains running at the same time, in which case you won't be able to shunt the sidings without fouling the inner circuit, I'd dispense with the inner circuit's R605 curves at the left hand end of the plan. This gives a feasible single track with a goods yard/private sidings/factory off it. You can use the money you've saved on the R605s towards another crossover so that you can run around a train to change direction. At the top right of the inner circuit, replace the R605 with R604 and R641, to connect to the right handed version of R641 (R640? R642?) coming off the top straight on the outer circuit, where you replace the R601 with R600 and the right hand turnout. Now you have a layout on which you can operate 2 trains, though not simultaneously, prototypically holding one in the passing/run around loop you've just created while the other runs around the circuit, or alternatively leaving one running continuously while shunting out the yard. There is scope, if you are building this on a rectangular board, for short sidings off the outside of the circuit into the corners; if you have one in each direction this means more running round to access them, and more operations to perform; it's potentially an interesting little layout to work. It's possible to replace the 'upper' crossover with curved points on the right hand curve, but I'm reluctant to recommend this as they can lead to problems because of the long dead insulated frogs, especially with the smaller locos you'll likely by using. The layout can be expanded by the outside sidings already suggested, and there is room for a short siding off the inner circuit/loop at the bottom straight R600, but this might make things look a bit crowded in there. Turnouts off the outer curcuit//'main line' to the edge of the board can connect to further baseboards if room ever becomes available, to be used as fiddle yards or extensions to the layout. My proposed run around loop at the right hand curve can be incorporated in to the double track plan if you wish; it's worth doing IMHO as it's make for more realistic running round instead of uncoupling the loco from the train and then running it around the circuit to couple to the other end... Welcome to the madness, I mean website, Berryman, and good luck!

It is vital that the centres of the crankpin holes in the coupling rod are identical to those of the axle holes in the frames. If your High Level kit included coupling rods they should be identical as supplied, though there is a little scope for inducing 'slop' by opening out the coupling rod crankpin holes slightly. These centres are critical and liable to inaccuracy as they do not sctually exist once the respective holes have been drilled out (!) and the drilling may have induced a bit of error especially if it was done by hand and not with a machine tool where everything is held very solidly in position. There may also be a little error if you are using coupling rods from the original RTR model; I am not wholly conversant with what is supplied with a High Level kit. The answer, as you seem to have found, is to ensure everything is square and as close as possible to it's intended position, and allow sufficient play or slop for free running. As David says, if you do 'ease' the coupling rod holes keep them circular, and check every so often for wear if the loco is used for heavy high mileage work, though this doesn't sound like an 0-4-2T's job in general... Slop on RTR locos is often considerable but they have to be capable of running round much sharper curvature than you will usually be using on an EM layout, not to mention being designed for convenient volume production and assembly, and you can probably get your loco running perfectly well with a lot less slop than this!

Not just night shots, either. I have a long term intention to provide some lighting on Cwmdimbath, inspired by a very wet and dreary afternoon waiting for the bus connection at Cwmmer Afan in 1969. Low cloud made the scene something like a large grey gloomy room, and the lights were on in the buffet (still in operation under the name 'The Refresh', which it was always known as, signal box, and some rooms in the station buildings. This enhanced the general gloominess, at the same time providing evidence of warm, dry, lit place where one could get tea and biscuits out of the rain. Even the sheep looked fed up as opposed to just bored; this was Valleys atmosphere on steroids, and one could almost here the male voice choir over the gurglesucking of the drains and gutters. I want this for Cwmdimbath. My lighting can be switched between 'warm', 'cold', and mixed and there are 3 levels, so low level cold would be good for this. Interior details would need to be provided in the lit station rooms and signal box. And the Abergwynfi branch on which my WTT is based had a late night auto from Bridgend that got in at 23.55, connecting from the last down Paddington-Swansea of the day (try getting up there by public transport at that time of night nowadays!) and presumably picking up any revellers from the Bridgend or Maesteg fleshpots. I imagine the platform lights were left on but not much else, and the train departed at 00.01 (probably sooner in reality) ecs for Tondu. In terms of trains, I can probably get away with a dedicated battery lit auto set, with head and tail lamps. The trick will be to keep lighting levels low and subtle, as Kevin has done with these railcar shots. But there are plenty of other projects to do first!