31A

Very atmospheric Tom, you can almost smell the 'clag' from the locos!

I see the BR Late Crest (weathered) version shown on the Hornby web site for release later this year is 67759. In my trusty 1959 Locoshed book, this one is shown as 51L (Thornaby), so could have been a candidate for working to Whitby from Middlesbrough.

Why thanks Nidge, glad you liked it! I was just playing around with the camera in my works Blackberry (which is usually rubbish for taking pictures of models) to take some shots from normally-inaccessible viewpoints, and that came out. In case you might think that's an uplighter to the left of the station building, it's really the brewery chimney adding to the smog..... I like BD's one of the Metro Cammell, especially the shored-up retaining wall. B) One of the benefits of copying a real location; who'd have thought to put that feature on a fictional layout?

A murky night in the Smoke: Or, Box Brownies never were much good at night!

The reason this occurred to me was that I've recently ordered a set of destination blind transfers for a Limby Metro Cammell I've been tarting up (attempts to make my own blinds having failed miserably), and whilst I could easily think of a real station name as a suitable destination for the outer end, the terminus on my layout is fictitious so this obviously wasn't covered by the transfer sheet. Then the penny dropped, all the dmus I've worked on whilst a Guard had (should have had... ) the same destination on either end! In case this was a recent instruction, custom or practice however, I looked through the British Railway Pictorial volumes 'First Generation DMUs' and 'First Generation DMUs in East Anglia' to check, with the results described above. When you think about it, a passenger boarding the train at most termini (and often trains in bay platforms) would only see the rear blind, never the front one. Not so long ago, having carefully put the destination up on the rear blind of my train, I was approached by a punter passenger customer who looked up at the blind and asked 'Is this train for York?' I bit my tongue and replied diplomatically in the affirmative, to which he replied 'Oh, I thought the display on this end showed where it had come from'. OK it may well not have applied in all cases, but at least it got me off the hook for my model! Prototype for everything though Ian - when the GN suburban workings used the headcode to identify the route rather than individual train, it would have been in order for a 'Cambridge Buffet Express' loco to correctly carry 1B66 on both cabs!

No, I don't think so - the blinds should read the same either end, i.e. the destination of the train the unit's working. After all, imagine going through the barrier at Hull and looking for the York train, and being confronted with a row of cabs all saying 'Hull'. I say this as an ex dmu guard myself, but checked through a couple of albums of first generation dmus and in the majority of cases where a tail lamp is visible and the direction of travel is evident, the blind on the rear shows the train's destination (of course there may be cases where the crew forgot / didn't have time / couldn't be bothered / blind broken), yet every ready to run dmu model gets this wrong. I realise working blinds aren't really possible on models (yet!), but if your layout portrays a terminus it would be fine to put the 'other' destination on both ends of the unit, the crew having swung the blind before arrival, ready to go back.

DMUs with different destinations on either end.....

Spot on there, Rob! What the photo doesn't show as well, is that 67722 has 4 rows of exposed rivets across its cab roof, which are absent on 67772 - presumably this varied depending on where the locos were built? Looking at the picture again, does anyone think the sliding cab roof ventilators are a bit thick? I may consider replacing them with thin metal (non-sliding) ones; in reality they appear almost flush with the cab roofs. Thanks for you kind remark Mr. Cutler, I'd like it to be in a magazine, but need to get the rest of it up to a presentable standard first!

Well this is a good game, and I'm still playing it - has anyone who's got both BR versions compared the cab roofs? Apologies if the above photo isn't clear enough to show what I mean!

As an early Christmas present to myself, I toddled along to Monk Bar Models this afternoon and collected my late crest 67722. A splendid model, very well pleased with it! I was interested to see, however, (under a magnifying glass) that the smokebox door carries a 30C (Bishops Stortford) shed plate, rather than the 'provisionally' announced 31A . Not that this particularly bothers me, but I was interested because I'd been discussing this a little while ago with a retired Cambridge engineman friend of mine, who was a fireman in the 1950s and kept good records of the locos he worked on. My trusty 1959 Locoshed book shows 67722 (and a few others) as 31A Cambridge, but my chum couldn't remember them being allocated there. He suspected they may have been Bishops Stortford locos, displaced by the Liverpool St. electrification and possibly were only at Cambridge for a short while. Anyway, that's just a little aside really which might be of interest to some people as I hadn't seen the change of shed plate mentioned elsewhere. Not meant to detract in any way from the delightful model, and I'm currently playing 'spot the difference' between this one and the 'early crest' 67772!

Having been slightly critical earlier, I feel I should say that my L1 has now settled down to being a Really Useful Engine, and very reliable performer. My earlier comment about the balance being questionable was evidently premature; the loss of adhesion that I experienced occurred because I thought I could 'get away' with fitting the front scale coupling as well as the auto coupler. However interference between the scale coupling and the auto coupler was causing the pony truck to lift the driving wheels sightly over cerain track irregularities! Having realised that and just fitted a drawhook into the hole in the front buffer beam, it now runs, and pulls, perfectly well. I haven't experienced any derailments of the pony truck on my layout, which is laid with Peco Code 75 and includes various slips, and curved points. I fitted the front steps (as per Coachmann's lovely picture) and whilst I can't really say they exert a controlling influence on the pony wheels (I don't think the pony wheels can touch the steps), they do seem to at least make its strange behaviour less obvious to the eye.

Just to correct myself, although I did initially fit the scale coupling at the front end and thought it cleared the auto coupler, I've realised this evening that it was impeding the vertical movement of the pony truck in such a way that the leading drivers were being lifted slightly in certain circumstances, and losing traction. So now I've taken the scale coupling off the front end again, and will just fit a drawhook, the same as at the rear end. Does anyone else find the balance of these locos a bit strange, with the ballast weight in the boiler front / smokebox making them front heavy?

It all depends how sharp the curves are that you intend to run it round. If using sharp curves you may need to leave the front footsteps off, although I was able to fit them-the sharpest curves on my layout are the curves in Peco double slips. I even managed to fit the front screw coupling as well as the auto coupler; if you hook the bottom link up onto the drawhook, it clears the auto coupler. Can't imagine what your 'toolbox' might be though I'm afraid, and still not managed to break into the cab!

Has anyone figured out how to get inside the cab yet? I'd like to add a crew. It looks as though the cab roof is a separate piece, but it doesn't sem to want to come off very easily! One of the black ones arrived in Finsbury Square this evening; I had to tweak the bogie pick ups so that they all rubbed against the wheel backs before it would run reliably. Apart from that, I'm more than pleased with it!

The RCTS 'green book' Bible part 9A states that nos. 67701-67716 were originally numbered thus: 9000-9003, E9004-E9012, 69013-69015. All were renumbered into the 677xx series between April and July 1948, and subsequent members of the class bore numbers in the 677xx series from new. 9000 was turned out in LNER green livery, initially lettered 'NE', but then repainted in 1946 with 'LNER' in shaded characters. 9001/2/3 were painted similarly, but with unshaded characters. E9004-12 were turned out in LNER green livery but lettered 'British Railways', as were 677017-22. 67723 upwards appeared in BR lined black livery from new, and the others were subsequently repainted to match. Several photos in said publication prove this (I don't think the internet was around at the time ), as do pictures in other publications, e.g. (to name but one) 'Locomotives Illustrated' no. 120.

Of the two electric lamps in the bottom middle position (above the coupling), one was red to act as a tail light, the other one, and all of the other three, were white and used as required to display the standard lamp headcodes.

Class 23s were very common in Cambridge, and I'm pretty sure I've read of them working to Ely; at least they could have easily done so at the time when one of the King's Cross - Cambridge Buffet Expresses was extended to / from Ely. Good for Heljan for sticking their necks out with this, and I'll certainly buy one as I have fond memories of them and their smoke effects, but hopefully in due course they'll also make an original condition version which I would prefer for compatability with my GN-section steam locos. As someone else has mentioned, we're still waiting for a Pilot Scheme 26, which I would also love to buy if it were available.

I'm sure one will find it's way to Finsbury Square, to relieve the 03 on the West Side Pilot turn!