31A

Thanks Chris, I will look forward to that! Cheers, Steve

Gilbert did say "some of the larger stations are instantly recognisable", but in taking note of that, I did find myself on Darlington station a few evenings ago en route from Bishop Auckland to York and was thinking how unchanged it was on a dark November evening, albeit nowadays very clean and smart, and as such fit for the 21st century with very modern information displays etc. It still has a proper Station Buffet too, which seems to be a vanishing facility! Obviously the acrid smoke from the steam engines has gone, but from within the train shed much seemed unchanged. Slightly surprising that they still haven't found a use for the plinth that "Locomotion" and "Derwent" stood on until nearly 50 years ago! I am always impressed by Newcastle Central, not least by the fact that it dates from 1850 when railways were in their infancy, only a few years really after the Stockton & Darlington and the Liverpool & Manchester Railways opened, yet has been fit for purpose ever since, and indeed remained so after the construction of the King Edward Bridge which could hardly have been foreseen when it was built. Perhaps it could be said to have set the pattern for so many stations which followed.

Did anyone take any photos of the specimens on display at Warley?

I think the remaining GN buildings at Newark North Gate and Retford stations retain quite a bit of the original 'atmosphere' (if that's the word); Retford on the Up side and Newark on the Down side, where the original buildings remain. Newark is much busier than it would have been in the past in terms of passenger numbers but also in terms of train movements as there would have been no Lincoln trains from there in steam days, and the Anglo Scottish trains call hourly as well as the 2-hourly York trains. Further north, Berwick station is very nicely preserved, having been rebuilt by the LNER in the Grouping period, and I suspect probably looks much as it always has (?) as the loco depot and main yards etc. were at Tweedmouth on the other side of the viaduct.

I think the signals visible are the junction signals for Starbeck North Junction; the one on the left which is pulled off is for the route towards Harrogate (the line which is still open) and the right hand one would have been for the curve towards Bilton Junction, joining the Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton ("Leeds Northern') line there. The Leeds Northern closed to passengers in March 1967 but Starbeck to Ripon and Melmerby remained open freight only until 1969. As the gates are across the line, quite possibly the box was indeed switched out. Even if Harrogate-Northallerton was still open to passengers when the photo was taken, I doubt whether the Starbeck-Bilton Jn. curve had any passenger trains by then anyway.

I think weighing machines on stations were usually red.

Nice hybrid DMU!

And congratulations to @Jesse Sim !!

Hi Tony, I hope we can agree to differ on this! What I did wasn't difficult; the steps just needed a little taking off the leading edge, and the corners trimming as below - not really visible when the loco is on the rails: To me the Hornby wheel actually looks better; at least the centre is flush right across with a 'dimple' in the centre as per the real thing, whereas the replacements on your 61175 have a prominent ring in the centre, presumably the axle end and the end of the insulating bush. The outer edge of the Hornby wheels looks thicker if you paint the wheel, as you then 'lose' the bright edge of the tyre. I find Hornby bogie wheels perform more reliably on my layout than Gibson ones; the track is a mixture of Peco Code 75 flat bottom and bull head. Markits ones aren't always easy to get! I did fit Gibson bogie wheels to a Black 5 a while ago and it led to all sorts of problems. To get it to stay on the rails I put a soft coil spring on the centre of the bogie but this upset the loco's centre of balance (the rear driving axle is sprung) so I had to add weight at the front to get its tractive effort back to where it was before! I haven't done it again as I decided it was too much effort for a very small gain.

I also have laid the track on my layout with a minimum radius of 36", but I think the curved parts of Peco Double Slips are sharper than that - about 30"?

Regarding front footsteps, I've sometimes had to resort to some subterfuge, the Hornby B1 being a case in point. I removed some material from the leading edge of the step (where it butts up against the buffer beam) and also chamfered the inner rear edge of the lower step, so that it just clears the front bogie wheel on curves. The loco will now go round the sharpest curves on my layout, which are the curved sides ob Peco Code 75 Double Slips. I don't know how similar this would be to a "Nelson", but of note, the B1s footplate tapers inwards towards the buffer beam so the steps are closer together than they might be on some locos. Hopefully this is not too noticeable!

In view of the emblem on the tender side, probably a bit later than 1952?

I hope it does now!

Thank you Phil, I don't know why that should be. I'll probably have to change some settings. I must admit Youtube is a bit of a mystery to me!

Not much modelling today, but a busy day at my local station with no less than three steam specials arriving within a couple of hours; one from Carlisle and two from King's Cross. All behind LMS 4-6-0s! First to arrive, from Carlisle: Have Hornby got the shade of green right? "Insurance" on the other end, soon to be used as ECS pilot: Dragging "Scots Guardsman" backwards at a rate of knots; I wish I'd videoed this as an example of scale speed shunting! I did video the first King's Cross arrival, which had come via Lincoln behind 44871: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj0--MByi0g And was closely followed by the next which had come via Retford; oh no not another Black 5 (45231): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrPTp3QqkZU

I thinks saying it's cost driven is an over simplification. Trans Pennine will be keeping all their Class 185 DMUs, whereas under the original franchise plan a lot of them were to go off lease. So in effect you could see the Mark 5s as being replaced by the 185s which would originally have been lost (although I don't know how the numbers actually stack up), which at the same time will greatly simplify their staffing requirements. I do believe the main driver for this is the need to stabilise TPE's reliability and hopefully regain some of their credibility (which is also having a negative effect on railways generally in the North), rather than being cost driven.

Thanks Chas, glad you like it. To be honest that kind of metalwork is a bit beyond what I usually do!

These are going to be built somewhere; as far as I know it hasn't yet been decided where: https://www.modernrailways.com/article/northern-plots-new-train-order

Thank you Phil, glad you like it. There certainly was some muddling!

In case anyone thought I'd lost interest in this project, an update. There have been a few setbacks on the way, but at this time of the year there's a lot of waiting around for suitable weather for aerosol painting outdoors; also there's been a lot of painting fiddly bits and touching up, etc. Anyway here goes. Being cheap, this J15 didn't include the Accessory Pack and I had to make a vacuum standpipe for the tender buffer beam. This time, I used some thick mains cable. To represent the ridged flexible part, I put a steel 10BA nut into a pin vice, and used t to cut a thread on the copper wire. This makes quite a subtle flexible pipe, in fact probably so subtle it'll disappear under the first coat of paint. Then, the setback. The Isinglass drawing shows the front of the tender cab being level with the front of the tender side sheets, and that was how I made it. I also made the tender cab roof as per the drawing. Conveniently, this meant the cab could be glued to the back of the front coal plate (which is a separate piece on the Hornby model). But, looking again at photos of the real thing, it seems the front of the tender cab was further forwards, and the cab sides extended down in front of the tender sides, to footplate level. If I'd realised this when I started I would have made the brass cab sides long enough, but I didn't. So, I detached the tender cab from the coal plate, glued it to the front side of the coal plate, then glued the coal plate in position further forward. To represent the lower extensions of the cab side I stuck strips of 10 thou plasticard to the front of the tender. Bit of a bodge; it looked like this: But then I put the loco back together and coupled up the loco and tender to see what it looked like. Disaster. The tender cab clashed with the loco cab! Looking at photos, I suppose it's possible the loco cab roof was shortened on these locos, but both the Isinglass and GERS drawings showed the roof the same length as the Hornby roof (which I intended to use). After cogitating, (and not feeling inclined to re-make the tender cab) in the end I pretended I hadn't looked so closely at the phots, and put the tender cab back to where I'd first put it, per the drawings, and took off the plasticard extensions. So I'm afraid it's a bit of a bodge up really or at least compromise. Anyway, after painting and transfers, here is 65424 (as she now is) in the Finsbury Square loco yard. Not easy to take photos of a shiny black engine; I'll take some more when I've done a bit of weathering. Also, I need to get her a smokebox numberplate, as well as sort out a crew and some coal. Anyway, I'm fairly pleased with the result (notwithstanding the above); it's loco that looks a bit different to the majority of J15s.

Thanks Gilbert; glad you like it! I built a pair of these vans, one for Gilbert and one for myself. They were pretty straightforward, but when it came to door details it dawned on me that these vans actually had more doors than the "All Door" Corridor Seconds I'd made previously (albeit with fewer droplights)! If anyone's interested in how I built it, I've described it on my layout thread from Page 45 onwards: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/83030-train-spotting-at-finsbury-square/page/45/

Excellent! I was wondering when it would be my turn to flex my bank card ..... 😊

They do run for a calendar month, i.e. from 1st of the month until the end of the month. I'm not sure about when you need to cancel the subscription to stop it automatically renewing. I used the one that I bought from 1st to 6th June, then cancelled it when I got home after that so you could well be right. There may be something about how far in advance you can buy it; I tried to buy it well in advance but couldn't get it to give me one for June, until I tried again nearer my date of travel, when I found I could. I have to say I'm not by any means conversant with using my phone or Apps to buy anything let alone railway tickets, but in this case there seemed to be no choice and it all seemed to work OK in the end!

I got one in May from the Bremen Verkehrsverbund: https://www.vbn.de I had to download their App to my phone, then I was able to buy one using my British bank card (like buying anything else on line); the ticket was then downloaded to my phone. The main part of the ticket is a QR Code. I took a screen shot of that and saved that in 'My Photos' on the phone. When asked by ticket inspectors, I showed them the screen shot which satisfied them and worked their readers. Otherwise, you can retrieve the ticket from the App when required to show it, but that would probably take longer. One thing to remember is to cancel your subscription after you've got back to the UK (or anyway finished with the ticket) otherwise it will automatically renew itself and you will be charged another 49 Euros for another month, which may well wipe out any savings you made with the first ticket!

Cabin fever. Time to think about the vertical cab handrails. I had hoped that the original plastic ones that are attached to the footplate casting could be retained, but they didn't really line up properly with the cut outs in the new cab sides. In anticipation that this might be the case, I had left the copper wire beading to the cab side cut outs overlong at the bottom with the intention of being able to curve these round and make supports for the upper end of the handrails. This worked well on one side, but obviously these dangly bits of copper wire were quite vulnerable during construction and sure enough the left hand side one broke off. So on that side I had to make a new U-shaped bracket for the top of the handrail, get it to line up with the beading as best I could, and solder it to the cab side. This couldn't really be done until the two parts of the body had been reunited, as the bottom of the handrail passes into holes in the footplate part. Soldering this in place wasn't easy; as well as being very fiddly, I guess the die cast body to which the cab sides are now attached was acting as a great big heat sink! Anyway, that probably stopped the other soldered bits from coming off. Having reunited the two parts of the body, I added strips of 5 thou styrene along the bottom edges of the cab side to represent the angle iron which attached the cab to the running plate. Whilst doing plastic stuff, I made a new cover for the reversing rod on the side of the firebox. This covers the front end of the reverser where it passes through the cab front; most but not all J15s had these and most but not all Hornby models do too; this one doesn't, so I carved it from a lump of 60 thou; it's a strange shape.