Regularity

As far as I can see, we have lost the young train-set oriented part of the hobby, which bought toy trains with relatively little discernment (I am certainly speaking for myself, here!) but the model railway oriented adult segment is still there, albeit possibly smaller. The dominant sector now is more aware of the real thing - perhaps with a link to the preservation movement - and does not want to buy “mere toys”, but authentic scale models which are fundamentally the right shape and size and have a fine level of detail. As it happens, manufacturing developments have coincided with this to make small production runs more economically viable, too. Look back over a few decades, using a couple of examples. The “Jinty” was a staple of the Triang-Hornby range, and the body was a single moulding with the buffer heads and safety valves the only extra components. Hornby Railways, as they had become, revised it in the late 70s: glazed windows, wire handrails, etc, but it is only with the more recent Bachmann model that a really good looking model can be bought off the shelf. Compare the latest “Duchess” pacifics with the version Hornby put out in the late 70s/early 80s or the Hornby-Dublo die cast model. No comparison. We will gloss over the earlier version of the LMS streamliners, which completely failed to capture the impressive bulk and presence of these magnificent (but largely unnecessary!) machines. Look at the history of the class 25 models: Hornby’s pretty good but basic model of the late 70s, to one body variant, Bachmann’s misshapen effort 20 years later which included class 24 and the later class 25 body shell, and finally the SLW model, needing only Laserglaze to set it off, and available in EM or P4 for a small extra fee. OK, 25s are still to come, but... The point is, the hobby may be smaller, but as it has become more adult focussed, it is no longer about shifting boxes and boxes of toys with a sometimes tenuous connection with the prototype, but about treating the customer base as an adult audience prepared to pay more for better quality and greater accuracy, and at last the pedants have been listened to. The downside, of course, is that the need for detailing and conversion kits has declined, as has the skill base to support it - a bit of a vicious circle, that one. Whenever I hear or read about how the hobby is on its deathbed, I just move on. Except this time, obviously.

Was it being propelled, or le(a)d?

Pardon me, I was quoting from the Plastruct website:http://plastruct.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/MSDS_PPC_2.pdf Didn’t realise there was a difference, to be honest. Edit: can’t find a data sheet for the EMA stuff, which is why I ended up on the Plastruct site despite putting “ema plastic weld” into google. I find the lack of easily found information rather more alarming than what the information probably is. (I was mentally scarred at a young age by an episode of “Z Cars”, where they couldn’t rescue a lorry driver from a crushed cab, as one of the barrels that had fallen on him was devoid of any markings. It turned out to be dried egg powder, but too late as he had died from his injuries. Well, That storyline has stuck with me since I was in short trousers, and whilst I do think people go overboard on the elfin safety, it is only good practice to be aware of what you are handling. MEK gets a hazard rating of 2, and DCM a 3, neither of which are cause for concern unless you are in an enclosed, unventilated space and leave the top off the bottle. Probably doesn’t need to be said, but just in case: Don’t smoke when handling chemicals! It’s not just the fire risk, but the heat can lead to chemical changes, and you can inhale far worse than just the usual tobacco crap.

It’s like most things: handled with reasonable care and common sense, then the actual harm is a lot less than the potential damage.

If you know where I can find the spare cash for one...

True: I was quoting the CDC classification when checking up on details: my knowledge of chemistry is a third of a century old. Edit: add url.

No. But he did popularise it.

MEK = C4H8O = 2-butanone.CH3-CO-CH2-CH3 (CH3- the methyl group, CO- the ketone, CH2-CH3- the ethyl group. I suppose it should be MKE? ) You may recall testing to see whether a chemical was a ketone or an aldehyde by heating in a test tube with Fehling’s Solution? I tried an alternative version: squirt each chemical onto the desk, play Bunsen burner over it. Whichever catches fire is the ketone. I was told that this was an interesting way to test for oxidation states, but not one which had a great deal of practical application, and to at least use a heat proof mat next time...

There’s something wrong with that... ...it’s not mine!

...and MEK is also known as butanone...

Plastic Weld is essentially 85-90% dicholoromethane and these is MEK.Old-fashioned Tippex thinners might work!

Leighton Buzzard Light Railway, anyone?

This is a bit scary: I was going to make the same points re the wars of the three kingdoms (I prefer Simon Schama’s phrase to “civil war”) but thought I might be going on too much, even for this thread! And of course the word “tory” came from Irish Roman Catholic supporters of the Stewart cause, from the Erse “tóraidhe” meaning a bandit. Quite funny that the puritanical profanity checker has hashed out the word “d0ng”...

His grandmother, the (in)famous Marget Beaufort, commented when Henry was young and his older brother, Arthur, was still alive and likely to become king after Henry VII, “God help us if Henry becomes king”! Or something similar. Scarily prescient: although Henry was undoubtedly gifted in many fields music, languages, literature, for example - he was headstrong, wilful and ultimately selfish. Do not forget that he considered himself a Catholic and not a Protestant until his dying day: he simply wanted to be rid of any “power” betwixt him and God, so made himself literally supreme leader of the Church in (not so much as of) England & Wales. Division in the country was largely about whether or not you supported his authority over the Pope on spiritual matters. But Henry created an environment of division and factionalism, which he was not around to deal with. It was his children, Edward (very Protestant!), Mary (very Roman) and Elizabeth (surprisingly tolerant given the fervour of the times), who caused the real problems...

It depends partly on how you wish to make your points. You could use the old ply and rivet system, and apply the chairs cosmetically (first cutting them in half) using almost any glue you fancy: it wouldn’t have yo be very strong. You could have just a few such timbers, to ensure that you are maintaining gauge, and again use most glues. Or go for glue all the way through. You could use superglue, but the issue here is how strong the bond might be: too weak, and it is useless, too strong and you can’t adjust it. It might be worth trying out UHU or Bostick clear and Evostick impact. I would suggest using the former pair “wet”, allowing for readjustment, and put a little weight on the rail for the pressure to help strengthen the bond. Not sure about Evostick: probably use it the same way. In both cases just a small dab of adhesive. I would recommend considering 24 hour epoxy: you will have up to an hour to adjust the position, and then place a book on top of it overnight. You could use one-hour epoxy, but it will go off very quickly, and you won’t get much time to work. Even more than when using solvent, you will need to pre-curve your rails pretty accurately, to help reduce stress on the joints. Two key (sorry about the pun!) points (sorry, another one): Each glue joint does not have to very strong, as it is the combined impact of lots of small joints which gives it the strength; I have found it possible, when using solvent to join plastic chairs to wooden sleepers and timbers, to break the joint by carefully sliding in a single edge razor blade.i see no reason why this should not still be the case, although it will be less easy to put some more glue in between the base of the chair and the wood, then re-flooding with solvent. So, repairs are not impossible, and a few chairs unglued will not be the end of the world (or at least, the layout). Best thing is for you to lay a few sleepers, times how many glues you have available, and try glueing the chairs down with a short length of rail. 4-5 sleepers should be enough, but lay both rails (can be different glue on each side) and put a small book on it. Let us know how you get on.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke. 1973 ‘Witchcraft to the ignorant, … simple science to the learned.” Leigh Brackett. 1942

See what I mean? It is comforting to know that we can turn our pedantry to almost any subject, arguing for an underlying personality defect that surely relieves us of much of our responsibility for this behaviour. When we stand convicted of pedantry, diminished responsibility must be our get out of jail free card! Not at all, not at all. I am proud of my pedantry, and freely and grandly accept the persecution which follows. It is entirely because of pedantic critics pointing out the errors that off-the-peg-shelf models gave improved so much over the years - a fact which those who use “pedantic” as a term of abuse so easily forget whilst they enjoy the long-ripening fruits of our criticism.

Going OT (on this thread?) but friends who are also military modellers tell me that these issues cause internet rows that put our “rivet counters” into the shade.

Ah, but whose tongue in whose cheek?

I have always found Yorkshiremen extremely generous.Especially when it comes to giving me their opinions on how great Yorkshire is... A Scottish friend’s father told me once that he had traced the myth about Scottish parsimony to a music hall act: one Harry Lauder, who did at least have a light railway named after him... He also told me a lovely Scottish saying, “Pockets deeper than a Fife miser’s”! So, it may be that stereotyping is fine, as long as the target is someone else...

Does that mean that you would want to charge, or decline to pay?

75% is most, to be pedantic. Sorry: wrong thread.

But he wanted to charge people to see it, and since it was being shown in Yorkshire, no one wanted to pay... (I should add that my wife is from Yorkshire, and she and her family are very generous.)

Not really, or at least not quite.There are plenty of individual stations which had a (usually) single oddity about them: Ashburton’s lack of a signal box, or at least proper interlocking; Wells on Sea’s goods shed at the back of the engine shed, accessed by a shed road generally only used overnight; Wells in Somerset with its adjoining stations, with the goods yard of one intersected by the main route of the other, etc. The point is, it is possible to take some features on the “prototype for everything” example, plus invocation of rule 1, but to have them all mixed together on one layout in an attempt to cram a quart into a pint pot would produce a poor caricature of a railway, rather than a model railway or even a model of a railway. (Not the same thing!) To create a credible model railway requires knowledge of prototype practice, and an understanding of why and how exceptions arise. That’s quite a demanding requirement. Building a model of a real railway location might sometimes be easier!

National Lampoon produced a spoof book, called “Bored of the Rings”, which iirc had “Di1do Bugg3r” as the main protagonist.