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Going back a few messages there was a discussion about Pilkington's wagon body colour. I owned a red Ford Saphire that was sent from Ford's in red. Each year I had it, I had to T-Cut it to restore the original red colour. The sun here in Cumbria does fade red cars even if some folk think it rains every day of the year. Around 20 miles as the crows fly is the Borrowdale Valley and it is recognised as the wettest place in the UK. Some Pikington wagons will look different from others as their red livery is bound to fade just like my Ford Saphire car. It got a new LHS front wing and it stayed in black primer as I could not get a match for the red paint and it was never going to have a total respray. I haved owned several cars painted in slightly different shades of cherry or maroon and they only faded slightly over the years. Gone are my thoughts of buying cars in red. I had a Red Skoda Octavia car and after 12 months from new, it too had faded. I dont care what shade of red my red Pilkington wagons turn out, for as a car owner, red was never a stable colour on cars.

Pilkington Wagon Transfers I'll send a message to RM Web when I have printed out a few spare. I have been trying to figure out when Pilkington started painting their wagons red. I notice on the HMRS website of photos to sell that the single stripe version was registered by the LMS, but was this wartime, pre-war or post war before Nationalisation? Single strip wagons that do not have LMS mentioned must be post nationalisation. In time I hope to have designed transfers for various Pilkington wagons, including hoppers and cullet wagons. Then there is the van with 2-stripes. I will have to do versions for the Dapol and Backman versions as wagon lengths vary between the makes. I have been experimenting with Dapol 9 foot 7 plank wagons by removing the door strapping and deepening the planking grooves. Diagonal strapping has to be added by gluing on Micostrip that has been indented to represent rivets.

Regarding the photo I posted. Someone asked ifit had been photo-shopped. Alass I don't know, although I guess it has. It used to be available from the HMRS photo collection but since the Corvid-19 pandemic I can't navigate their website. I now have a total of 5 Bachmann 3-stripe Pilk wagons and heaps of the current Hornby 6-plank single stripe version. The triple stripe wagon dates back 70 to 100 years and No. 1412 as Bachmann produced should have no side doors. I am working on producing my own decals for Pilk wagons without side doors for single and three strip versions. From the limited research I have been able to do the single stripe wagon was produced with side doors and withouth side doors. Wagons varied from 6-plank to 8-plank. I have uploaded an actual Pilk wagon and a Bachmann model for folk to compare. Even the numbers match and the original Pilk wagon does resemble a Charles Roberts one. The Bachmann model I think is based on the Charles Roberts POW wagon. When I manage to print some 3-strip waterslide decals that vary for different makes of model wagon. I will have a go at doing a range of Pilk decals, all in 4mm scale. I'll keep fellow readers updated. Cheers 4 now Tom Jenkins

Thanks for the reminder about double sided PCB. I encountered this in the 1980s and got around it by countersinking the top and reverse of the sleeper. Never had this short circuit problem again. Cheers Tom

Ever since PECO introduced code 75 Flexi Track I have been drilling holes where I choose when laying this track. I use a 0.5mm drill and track pins from Javis of Stockport or similar ones. The very fine Peco track pins were intended for soft insulation board which was never a sucess anyway. I never drill the middle of the sleeper as too much pressure when tacking down may distort and narrow the gauging. Instead I dril through the chair on the outer part of the sleeper. I use the same principle for sleepers made of PCB copper clad. A dab of acrylic track paint blends in the track pin.

Hi Dave The main trouble with 3 Amp feedback units is the pot getting tired or some of the copper tracks acting like a fuse and blowing. Give me an email at lms.railway@gmail.com to talk about repairing or refurbishing them. BTW - The letters LMS in my email address are the initials from my old model railway shop which I gave up the first time I retired. It was called the Locomotive Model Shop. Sounded much better than The Model Shop - Workington, for at the start we only sold model railways before we expanded. Cheers Tom

Mike and others; The letter N in the model number confused a lot of people at first. My friends included. Julian did a run off of 1/2 Amp (500 mA.) controllers for sale at exhibition for N and 009 modellers. The cut out was too weak for 4mm and HO so increasing it to 1.0 Amp was the right thing to do. Some 00 gauge Helgan engines consume near to one amp and older machines slightly over. To counteract this a 1.6 Amp cutout was installed. I find that this model is somewhat unusual - in fact most unusual to come across an exhibition standard, N gauge, KPC controller with fine speed output of around 8 volts max. As for the new controller that is presently under development, I am using one of the prototype units on my St Helens Glass manufacturing and NCB layout. I am running a Dapol Sentinel and it creeps along fine. It handles a rake of 9 new style Hornby Pilkington wagons as if they were not attached whatsoever. There is a Group committee that decides when we will begin marketing these new controllers. They have a 1.0 Amp cut-out that trips with an overload. The model name we have chosen to market them under is the "C-Plus" model name. I will make an announcement on this site when the C-Plus becomes available. Thanks for showing an initial interest. Just when I thought I would settle into a relaxing retirement I am one at the cutting edge of controller design and development. Regards Tom

Kent Panel Controls is now under new ownership with some management changes. There is no official email address at the moment while the new owners are getting things together but we set up "kpc.model.rail@gmail.com" to keep in touch with potential customers and our trade suppliers. I was once the joint owner back in 1969 when the firm was set up. We manufactured a range of solid state controllers but production was sparse. My partner operated the firm from a static caravan on the shores of the River Kent part way between Kendal and Arnside. When my partner moved jobs we wound up the business in the mid 1970s and I sold the feedback controller design to Julian Holland of Compspeed. Later he bought the company name from Richard my co-owner and Julian then went on to set up a new KPC. He then moved to Scotland but driving from Nairn to the south of England must have been tiring for him after soing a few days selling at exhibitions. After his death in 2008 my original partner tried to buy the KPC firm that had migrated from Kent to Nairn in Scotland but he was unsuccessful. Eventually he ended up being one of a group of folk from Carlisle who restarted up the company. I was asked to be a partner but refused as I didn't have any capital to invest. The company was a few folks from the Workington MRG but they kept running into problems. Around 2012 they resumed manufacture of 1.0Amp controllers and used a different model number. The old KPC feedback controllers were available in 0.5Amp, 1.0Amp, 1.6Amp and 3Amp versions. and if the one in question a KNH must been modified to give an output of 0.5Amps this explains the problem. The letter N in the model code shows it is an N gauge controller. Over the last decade the model numbers have changed to a new style to show the firm who does the manufacturing. I have been talked into being the Guru for the new KPC and they asked me if they could use one of my recent designs for a new kind of analogue controller. The new KPC owners are working with me on the new controller that does not use back EMF feedback but output voltage feedback. It is in the trial stages at the moment. I can be contacted directly at "lms.railway@gmail.com" about the early KPC Feedback controllers. The design is in the Mk4 stage now and we are debating if we should resume production. The Mk 4 upgrades are identifiable by a large gromit supporting the supply cable instead of heat shrink sleaving and a blue output LED. I hope to send more details at a later stage. Regards to all Tom Jenkins of Workington, Cumbria

Marc Love the FR cattle wagon Tom From Workington

Hi Guys, I may be new to this forum but since 1970 I owned a model shop and built layouts professionally. I am passing on my experiences and techniques I have used for the last 46 years. First with Peco code 100 and now with 4mm fine scale track like Peco code 75 and Scaleway EM Gauge track. Oh I forgot to mention Peco N Gauge I use on my award winning layout of bangor North Wales back in the 1980s. I use a mini drill such as Mini Craft or similar low voltage modelling drill. I use a surplus and cased Kent Panel Controls feedback controller to vary the speed. I prefer a 0.8mm drill bit in a 3-jaw mini chuck. I calculate the depth of the hole and slide a piece of wire insulation onto the bit to ensure the hole does not go too far into the baseboard. The depth of hole depends if I use Javis cork roadbed or nor. I only pin the track on the outer section of the sleeper and slightly countersink the hole in the sleeper with a 3mm drill bit before driving in the track pin. Prior to ballasting I fill the countersunk hole with some Wilko no nails adhesive that I thinned down slightly with water and coloured with track colour acrylic paint. I always spray paint the side of the rail after pinning it down then apply a dirty rail colour to blend in any PCB sleepers that I may have added. In the past my customers have noticed that there are no visible pin heads and I explained what I have written above. I discovered almost 4 decades ago that pinning flexi track in the middle between the rails would distort the sleeper profile and effectively reduce the gauge by upto 1.0mm. That is why I pin the extremes of the sleepers because I hate derailments.