Barclay

Hi you might want to look at Ruyton Road, a classic tiny light railway layout - I believe it is 42" long:

Our recently-departed and much-missed friend Geoff Ashdown used to take a step of his own making when exhibiting Tower Pier. On one occasion he was astonished to see a customer taking it with them when they moved away, presumably thinking it would be useful for viewing other layouts! He had to chase after them to retrieve it.

I must admit that as a teenager I tried to snap off the spigots on mine and ended up with a hole in the top of the boiler, which stayed there until I recently rescued it from my Mum's loft and repaired it - goodness knows why, I might put a chassis under it one day (6 coupled, perhaps?) Of course I didn't have a Dremel in the 1980's !

When I first started putting some stock together for a small American layout I was astonished at the cost of new RTR stuff, good as it is. To be honest that would have provided very little enjoyment for me anyway. I obtained my stock mostly from ebay 'tat' bought quite cheaply. Everything in this motley collection was very cheap, except the brass one and even that was so rough that it was cheap too before the postal costs and taxman had their way. 2 of these are now detailed and painted, which has been most enjoyable, and the others will go the same way I hope. DC - no sound, just simple stuff. The J17 in the background is a friend's, an old Bec kit from Hattons, didn't cost him all that much. I improved the body and put a scratchbuilt chassis under it, and it's come out half-decent. The 'thing' in the box is a cheap old Reidpath casting, with a kit chassis and some details. Cheap but fun to build. I hope all this shows, as others have, that you don't need to spend a fortune on this hobby, and the more of your own effort you put in, not only do you get more out but it usually costs less too!

The interweb has a great variety of spur gears available, normally either brass or Delrin, etc., though they usually have a metric bore, but perhaps they could be bushed? The key dimension to consider when looking at suppliers' websites is the Pitch Circle Diameter which is the effective diameter when meshed. If you use 2 identical gears this will be equal to the centre to centre dimension (motor shaft to output shaft). They are often sold by number of teeth and the "Modulus" which is a kind of size standard for gears I think... Number of teeth multiplied by the modulus gives the PCD, so a 16 tooth gear in the common 0.5 Mod would be 8mm PCD. Price and quality vary hugely from proper industrial stuff to cheap plastic from China. Materials like Delrin and Hostaform are specialist plastics designed for this kind of use - they would certainly quieten that Tri-ang bogie down! Sorry if you know all this already but it's just stuff picked up whilst searching for gears for a loco gear train.

Looks great - I think Airfix/Kitmaster really nailed the look of this loco. Mine has an etched chassis, Comet, I think.

In an old thread of mine @Miss Prism posted this very useful link which tells us which loco's had brass or other types of plates. Sadly my post-war pannier didn't have brass ! http://www.trainweb.org/rcn_uk/gwcabs.html

Seeing this coach reminded me of the Mopok BR CCT I built many years ago. The self-adhesive sides have their limitations but I could never do lettering and lining that well!

I think that little bit of post and chain fencing looks really good. I wouldn't change the wall myself - the existing one fits into the landscape very nicely.

Thank you all - much appreciated

I bought a litre of MEK off the web a few years ago for less than £10. I keep it in the garage and use it to top up the old square Humbrol Liquid Poly bottle that I use at my workbench. This is pretty stable and it's a shame they went to the taller conventional bottles (I have managed to knock one of these over). For anyone with a large quantity I would recommend checking the cap, because mine split, allowing the vapours out. Fortunately the smell is very distinctive.

I'm sure I'm not imagining this, wasn't there a time when you went to a thread you would automatically be placed at the first post you hadn't previously read? (where the blue line is of course). This was very useful and no longer seems to happen, or is it just me?

I quite like the look of it, though it must be seriously out of gauge in TT. I still think that a 2 Nellies Cut 'N' Shut would make a very imposing 0-8-0T, but can't bear to cut them up!

Hi inside bearing devices for compensation are available from MJT (Part of Dart Castings). Whether they will suit the smaller wheels of a Loriot I couldn't say!

Interesting - shame they don't do 1/8" !

Hi it's just wire insulation. Slightly thicker wire than that used in the loco. If you get the right thickness, and warm it slightly, you can get a nice close fit that can actually be screwed onto the crankpin.

Is the assumption that the original builder was perhaps using some rather fat Romford wheels in EM and widened it to fit them in? If they used 70 degree low melt solder then putting it into boiling water will remove this and give you back your original parts.

Where were we? I have made a pair of new buffer beams from 10 thou brass, riveted in the GW Models press, and fitted with couplings and Gibson Collet buffers. They were then Araldited into place. Springs are Gibson - a little too long, and injectors are Gibson too. The chassis has been fitted with pickups of brass wire soldered to PCB pads Araldited into the frames, and these are joined by a bus-bar of brass wire. Onto the layout and it ran! With some tweaking of the pickups and cleaning of the wheels it has settled down nicely, running smoothly and quietly. I just need to try and make it look nice now! These aren't the roundest Gibson wheels I have ever used, and there is a slightly rolling gait to the loco as it speeds up, but at least the compensation is keeping all the wheels on the track.

This is a problem??????? I do understand actually, because sometimes our brains just love to dwell on the negatives. The bright side is that you have a layout room that most of us could probably only dream about, and probably live somewhere really nice too!

I too, think the platforms on the curve may cause you visual difficulties. If you made the scenic section one long gentle curve, instead of that dip down in the middle, this would lessen the severity of the curve through the platforms, and may even give you room for the goods facilities to be at the front, as mentioned above?

I would encourage you to keep trying with kits, and that doesn't have to mean a brand new expensive one - have a bash at something cheap from ebay or whatever. A case in point is my last loco project, which is an old 1960's K's kit from ebay. It didn't cost much. Now I won't kid you it took an awful lot of after-market bits to bring it up to a reasonable standard, so the total spend was probably not far off what I would have had to pay Bachmann for a RTR example, but this money was spent over a period of time, not all at once. During this period of time (5-6 months in fact) I wasn't really spending anything else on the hobby, just working away at this thing, getting extra bits, or solving problems that arose. This problem-solving aspect has great advantages in terms of well-being too. It makes you feel better about yourself.

Is that the Richard Gardner who wrote articles in Model Trains and Scale Trains in the early 80's? They were very inspirational to me, as were the other 2 gents! Heard nothing of him after I stopped buying Scale Trains in the mid-80's though.

I built an LMS brake van from the Parkside kit about 25 years ago, and, because I had recently photographed the interior of one at the NRM I added an interior. I have never seen it since, can't see it however hard I try, and can't supply a photo. I haven't repeated this extravagance!

Hi did you make any progress with this?

I am fond of these. Some time ago you were kind enough to supply some basic dimensions for scaling purposes on a drawing of this class that you had posted many years ago. Stupidly I have lost track of where this drawing was (it may even have disappeared in the great picture loss). Is there any chance you could re-post it? Thank you