31A

Thanks John, that's a couple of others to look for then. My brain couldn't cope with remembering all those, I need to start a shopping list!

Thank you Andy; I was quite surprised by how well those pictures at Pickering came out! The last one wasn't a great shot of the loco but I like the way the steam filters up into the roof ironwork. Ford Rosso Red - that's the one! I haven't got any of that, but will try and remember to look for it when I go to Halford's next. Cheers!

That is very handy to know Lez, as I was wondering where I could keep such a thing if I got one!

Thank you Ian, glad you like the photos. I think the Pickering station restoration maybe one of the best things the NYMR has done!

To blow away the cobwebs a bit, I had another trip to the NYMR yesterday, squeezing as many drops as possible from the Annual Pass. It's often the 'closed season' for heritage railways but since Christmas and up until tomorrow, they have been running one Pickering-Whitby & return round trip daily. It had to be booked in advance, and yesterday's train was well filled. The timetable allowed for a couple of hours to look around Whitby which made a nice change as on recent visits with the normal timetable, I have usually come straight back on the same train. Yesterday the Black 5 5428 "Eric Treacy" was doing the honours. The 9F 92134 was also working, hauling the Pullman Dining train on what seemed to be a private charter. I do like Pickering Station since they've restored the overall roof, and in the twilight it was very atmospheric. I suppose the Christmas lights are a bit incongruous really, though!

Hi Lez, many thanks for this; I really must give some thought to buying a spray booth of some sort, it would make life a lot easier when the weather is like we've had so much of lately!

Thank you, it's very kind of you to say so! Impressed with your layout too; I'm quite a fan of the urban terminus format, and I like the conductor rails. I carved up a Knightwing footbridge, too!

Thanks Chas, yes I thought it odd too. I couldn't really think of any difference between the treatment of the two sides. I had cleaned the whole body with Cif before spraying it and coated it with Halford's primer and then Railmatch enamel both sides at the same time (so both sides had had the same amount of time to dry), then I sprayed the Halford's Lacquer onto both sides, again both sides at the same time. I can't exactly remember but I think there was quite a long interval between the enamel and the lacquer; as I spray things outdoors in the back yard it's often a case of waiting for suitable weather! So I can only assume I may have been more heavy handed on one side than the other. Anyway, as Lez said, it seems to be a lesson learnt!

Apologies for that, it's not a pretty sight is it. I'm still working up the courage to do something about it.

Thanks Lez, and now I seem to have found out the hard way too! 🙄 Luckily it doesn't seem to have attacked the plastic, and with a lot of brute force and language I was able to get most of the paint off again. I hadn't got anything suitable to use as a paint stripper but it mostly came off when attacked with a glass fibre pen! Strangely enough, on the side with the reasonably decent finish it seemed easier to get the primer off back to bare plastic, whereas on the side with the 'sun burn' the primer was more reluctant to come off.

It certainly gives the impression that something like that has happened doesn't it Lez! There aren't any clues on the can as to what kind of paint it is. It's described as "Universal Clear Lacquer - Gloss" and it says on the front of the can "Provides a durable gloss finish that protects and enhances paint finishes including cellulose", and on the back the only clue as to what it contains is where it says "Contains: Acetone". I usually use Halfords paints for finishing coaches in maroon livery (which are acrylic I believe) so I imagine it would work OK with them; I only used Railmatch enamel on this one as I haven't got a Halfords colour for crimson livery.

So anyway, that's the Underframe taken care of; moving on.... One reason why I wanted another Stove R was that I've never been very happy with the rendition of BR Maroon on the one I've already got, it seems to dark. I thought a BR Crimson one might look better. So, the second hand one I bought in Hull was in LMS livery! No problem, how difficult can it be to repaint it to Crimson. Once I'd managed to break into it, it all unclipped nicely. It's quite a clever design really; the glazing is held in place by lugs in the floor, and the roof clips into that. The glazing was glued in place (although this doesn't seem to be really necessary) but the glue was easy to break without damaging anything. I couldn't get the buckets out but masked off the windows in them with slivers of masking tape. I sprayed the body in my usual way with Halford's Red Oxide Primer, followed by two coats of Railmatch BR Crimson enamel from aerosol. Still trying to be innovative and shorten the process for painting coaches, I thought I'd try and then produce a gloss finish ready for the transfers, and on a visit to Halford's had picked up a can of their Gloss Lacquer. Oh dear. Well one side wasn't too bad: The other side was more like somebody who'd been on the beach for too long without any sun protection. I'm not sure whether the photo really does it justice. The paint had crazed and bubbled, and could easily be scraped off with a fingernail! Why one side was much worse I don't know and can only guess that I may have kept mt finger on the button a bit longer. Anyway, it all had to come off again!

Thanks Phil, perhaps that's where I got the idea from then....

Annoying, isn't it. With 60700, I cut off the outer end of the drawbar and soldered a brass washer over the shorter position. I think I might have had to open out the hole in the washer a bit with a round file so that it fitted over the shouldered part of the pivot bolt, but the shouldered part seemed to be plenty long enough that the bar would still pivot freely. I think I have turned it end for end too but no real reason for that. On some other locos, I've just cut off the outer end and just left an open ended hole in the end. This is on a J15; looks crude but has worked OK so far! On some other locos I have made completely new drawbars, Bachmann A1 and Hornby O1 spring to mind, but as you say, the Bachmann adjustable mounting seems to have been the best. I'm not a fan of the 'new generation' with inbuilt connectivity really, it seems to be over complicating things (but I don't use DCC), and you can't adjust the 'gap'. I went to a lot of trouble to remove them from my new Bachmann V2s!

Must have forgotten what you said! It's been a while.... 🙄

I had that problem too, my layout was originally meant to be steam only and it worked fine, but when I 'updated' it a bit and wanted to run diesels as well, I found the Bachmann 08's coupliing rods (or the crankpins) were catching on the platform in a couple of places. No biggie, I just have to remember where they can't go, but I should think you'll find steam locos will be OK.

It certainly puts into context what you're watching on the video!

Thank you Lez, yes I did know, but I wanted to make the most of what I'd got in the RTR model. The first van that I did (in the picture above) runs perfectly well with the outer axles fixed and the middle one floating in its slot. After all, the overall wheelbase is similar to the Hornby LNER 4-w CCT or Southern four wheeled brake, for example, so I don't think "steering" axles are really necessary for vehicles of this type in OO. Maybe different in P4 or EM. The design of the Dapol Stove R seems to be an attempt at a 'half way house' with outer axles which are free to pivot but are not guided in any way, which seems to be a contradiction to the rule which is always stated in articles about building rolling stock, to make sure the axles are parallel to each other and at right angles to the longitudinal axis! I think this is the main cause of the poor running of this vehicle as supplied, while the middle axle doesn't have enough vertical play to cope with irregularities in the track. There are also six wheeled underframes for this van available from Comet and Ian McDonald. I have made an Ian Macdonald kit for an LNER BZ (which uses a Cleminson type arrangement) and it runs very well. There are also plastic mouldings available from Chivers, which I believe are from their LMS 6-w Fish Van and would be suitable for a Stove R. I have built one of these Fish Vans as well, and made the middle axle floating in an MJT axleguard suspended from a longitudinal wire (an idea copied from a D&S GN six wheeler kit), and that works well too.

Some projects don't go as expected ..... A little while ago I bought a Hornby Magazine / Dapol LMS Stove R six wheeled brake van, at the Hull MRS show on Remembrance Weekend in November. I thought it would make a nice little quick project. Most people you talk to about these say something like "Nice model, pity it doesn't run", but I've always had a soft spot for these vans ever since I had a Hornby Dublo one (and that didn't run very well either). However making the Dapol one run properly isn't difficult; basically you need to fix the swivelling "axleguard units" that carry the outer axles so that they no longer pivot and the wheels run in a straight line. Then you need to give the middle axle a bit more vertical play. It's held in place by a clip which you can unclip, then remove the middle "Bearing block" by undoing the self tapping screw in the middle of it, taking it out and deepening the slot in it with a file, so that the axle has more "up and down" to it. If you're happy with the wheels being wagon sized rather than coach sized, that's all you need to do. But to me the wagon sized wheels look silly on a coach, so I set about fitting bigger ones. I had done this before, when the model first came out - here's one I did earlier: In order to fit the bigger wheels you need to remove quite a lot of plastic from the pieces (formerly swivelling) that join the axleguards. This leaves them quite fragile, but as they no longer need to swivel, you can glue the axleguards to the insides of the solebars. The brake shoes are moulded flush with the outsides of the axleguards rather than being in line with the wheels, but having fitted bigger wheels they now look even more incongruous. So I cut them off, and replaced them with some whitemetal ones (ABS) glued in line with the wheels. I know there are various options for replacing the whole underframe of these vans with better parts, and that may have been a sensible way to go but I was trying to use what I'd got as far as possible, plus the underframe as supplied has a lot of quite nice detail on it (battery boxes, steps etc.). This does make the van ride about a millimetre higher than it previously did, but as it'll spend most of its life in Parcels trains mixed up with all sorts of vans, I can live with that. One can also invoke new wheels / stiff springs etc, if you want to justify it. As I was hoping this would be a quick project, I thought I'd try out one or two different techniques which I could use in future to speed up the painting of brass coaches. With brass coaches I usually spray them first with primer, then spray the underframes black and weather them by hand brushing. I thought I might be able to cut out the black spray stage if I sprayed the underframe with Railmatch Frame Dirt from an aerosol. The way this model is constructed also lends itself to spraying the roof with Railmatch Roof Dirt while it is separated from the body. The Roof part went well, but the Frame Dirt paint isn't the colour I'd paint a vehicle's underframe! To me it looks far too much like a chocolate brown colour. I've been told some people use this colour to spray track before laying, which seems like a much better use for it! So, it was back to square one on that score, hand painting an 'underframe weathering colour' in my usual way, which is a mixture roughy 50:50 of Humbrol No. 29 Dark Earth and No. 33 Matt Black: Anyway, so far so good (reasonably). More to come....

Thanks Manna, same to you!

Thank you Chas, and the same to you!

Midland House, I heard ....

You start to make in and somebody will announce it. Mind you, yours would be finished first!

Decent Gresley main line coaches (some Scottish peeps could use them as well).

Hope so, Steve!