Regularity

Just supposition/guesswork on my part.

I think the scoop is the right way around. There looks to be some kind of shroud around it, presumably to deflect water that didn’t make it into the scoop back into the trough, rather than spraying it all around?

Oh poop.My back head is in need of rather more detail.

That’s what I have done in the past. Anything to help with simplifying painting is a Good Thing.

Better photo of my model: Tender body wrapper was a Stan Garlick cast off (still don’t know what was wrong with it!) I cut the mainframes, but Trevor Nunn spirited the bits away to do a “couple of jobs” in return for the hundreds of hours I spent helping with Wicken and East Lynn. It cam back largely complete, bar boiler bands, detail on the backhead, ash pan operating rod, screw-jack and brakes on the tender, and paint. I wasn’t complaining when I said, “But I thought you were just going to help out with the open splashers.” He told me that the engine was quite different to how GER engines were put together, and he got carried away... Being S Scale, it is handbuilt, of course. EWJR number 8, by the way. Unfortunately we only found out about the earlier Ramsbottom boiler dimensions after it was finished. I was gratified (and amazed) by the number of people who recognised it at the Leamington show circa 2003. I must, at some point, get around to building one of the outside framed 0-6-0s to go with it - already have a 2-4-0T and some goods stock.

Not clear in your photo, but does the smokebox lamp bracket have a hole for the chain used to hold the door open?

Be careful. The Lanky batch were to Ramsbottom’s original design, with top-hinged smokebox door (slightly dished) and a boiler two inches greater in diameter, pitched 2” lower (and it does make a difference to the looks) and with a shorter firebox than the LNWR rebuilds. They also remained unfitted. The locos that the Knotty had were full Webb rebuilds, and vacuum fitted. Some early rebuilds had the Webb boiler, but retained a Ramsbottom smoke-box door. Not all DXs were rebuilt, and most were not vacuum fitted to become “special DX”s. The last was withdrawn 1930 ish. I think that given its longevity, and capability to be converted to similar engines elsewhere (with varying degrees of accuracy, but all to a smaller percentage error than 00 track), and the beautiful original blue livery, the Caley Drummond 0-6-0 would be a good prototype.

It’s “fewer than 10%” and not less, by the way. But that statement was made outside of our special interest area.

Bit at a time, and it is surprising how quickly things get done... Glad your daughter is getting better.

I got one of them.

It is the reaction to the turning force being applied to the drivers: if, on starting, an engine is “opened up” too much or too quickly, then it “sits back” on the rear wheels. If there are no trailing wheels, then the load on the combined driving wheels is pretty much constant, although unevenly spread which might increase stresses on the Franklin’s. With a Pacific, a gentler touch is required, as the load will be transferred to the pony. Even a momentary loss of adhesion causes the drivers to slip, and once they have slipped, it is not easy to regain control.Properly designed, a 4-6-2 doesn’t lose out on a 4-6-0, but only when it is properly driven!

Well, it suggests that “modelling” has become replaced with “buying”: there is nothing to stop them from actually getting down and dirty with basic tools and materials - there are plenty already doing that here.

Ewe are terrible.

Hey, even I know that’s a good and proper name in some parts of the world. (I was born and bred in the same town that harboured the now-renamed area called, “Buttock’s Booth”. We never sniggered at it. Not once. Unfortunately the inhabitants placed as part of “new town expansion” objected.) Can I take this opportunity to point out that as the rest of you keep talking about “pre-raff”, I must obviously be the riff-raff?

I think the grammar here was worse than either...

Oil the bearings (a quick wipe with a cotton bud) before painting, and less paint will stick. Obviously you still need to clean and re-oil afterwards.

Yes, to allow/encourage drainage.

I can’t answer that.I’m not allowed to. (In my defence, it was a parody of what happened recently elsewhere, taken to reducio ad absurdum limits. Or possibly beyond.)

How low are they?

If yours is as thin as that...

Well, I think that Romeo and Juliet should be banned for promoting under-age sex. Even if it wasn’t under-age at the time. I also think we should ban bananas and cucumbers for being phallic, tomatoes for looking like orchids, and for obvious reasons. In fact, any food that isn’t cuboid in shape. I mean, why stop at art? Why not expand into literature? Why stop at all...

I’m with Jim: just the D-link. But if it was a screw coupling, then there needs to be something for tightening the screw, and is the tommy bar. What we have as an incorrect representation of something which isn’t there...

My industry (as in actually making things) is still imaginary!

Where’s the tommy bar for tightening the screw coupling?And why is the wheel profile so poor - it’s not as if it will fall off the track.