London cambrian

Ha no, the 5 inch is only temporary. We bought the track for doing the acton show (see earlier in the blog), its just laid down on the carpet so we can put the coaches out, and sob that we (especially he) have created a monster.

We did have some sections of track and a point laid out on the floor a little shile back, and shunted back and forth 5 wagons for several nights. We called it testing!

Was a little wary might be too many images and getting abit samey but obviously not!

Cheers

Mark

When using the riding truck, loosely based on the Met railway Milk van but on a longer chassis, we have a plug in controller, which goes in the top headlight, hence if you saw the loco, the rear one doesnt light up at all!

We hardly use this anymore. Its visible in the shot of me on a local passenger at gilling in the second last post. We tend to use radio, mainly cos its easier. But for tracks where it fgoes out of sight we sit behind, and drive as normal.

The Milk van may get its own post or two soon, its in need of a heavy general, having suffered from near on 10 years of batterings and ridings, means the springs are going flat, the buffers are beginning to give trouble and its generally tired, 10 yrs no maintenance beyond urgent repairs. Hopefully we'll also fit it witha water tank for our pannier tank, a seperatewooden roof and scale footboards for when we arent using it, it can be a parcels/milk vanm in a train

Mark

Ha there are a couple about.

Its been tempting i tell you to lay a track to college, Theres a big dip as the path drops to meet the road as it climbs again, but nothing a nice model of glenfinnan viaduct couldnt sort!

Hopefully get another post up soon, the last few bits of the dreadnoughts are being done, and some work on the loco.

Cheers

Mark

cheers paul,

yeah the guys at gilling rigged up a coal drop for the 5 21 ton hoppers which were there. I didnt get any vids/pics, but there is a vid on youtube when the first hopper was demonstrated at lindsey last summer.

Gutted over AGM. Its gonna be a good one, brent has promised to arrange some good weather! But if your ###### something else, well i suppose you'll be allowed off!

The western is an impressive beast, its twice the length of our electric, but what was even more impressive was the pair of 37s that were there at the weekedn. both are using really good deep sound systems and when they were double headed their throty rumle was really something else. I'll se i fi have a vid of them, post up a bit later.

Alright all, may post part 2 later.

Mark

hi all.

Typically, during exam periods I am laid up ill so I'll put in this response.

Indeed most people don't have that many in 00, this is the result of anything upto 30 yrs work, for the older wagons, and about 40 members who were there.

thanks for your responses, its fairly easy to get involved, we always need shunters, signallers and organisers, so join up, get our magazine, come along to a rally. you don't have to have wagons or an engine really, if you just wanna watch or get involved in the operating side of things.

cheers Paul, good luck with the exams too, maybe see you at the AGM at brents in 4 weeks? this was my first mainline rally, missed last august and had only just started really last May. I'll try make it to the august one.

Hey John, good to see you on here. I mostly missed your beast of a western but I'll try and put up a part two, with a best of the videos and and a few more shots, your western makes it into a few!

Anyway, cheers guys.

Mark

Hi again, didnt make it into blog, late by abouit an hour but this is fresh out the shops

Hi, would volunteer, but all this 5 inch stuff makes regular stuff a bit difficult! Any, nothing really near, got battlefield line, and severn valley but there still 20 miles+.

Nah i like running the 5 inch boxes, The greystones one is pretty good, the levers are miniature replicas and the signals all give a satisfying club. Also, far more action than a real preserved railway! Much more laid back as well! You can leave the box to supervise shunting in the knowledge nothing is likely to go wrong because its a short distance and nobodys in a rush and others can take over easily. Theres another box i ran back in december, over in cambridgeshire, all the lever frames are Ex London transport (courtesy of my signaller friend, the one with the other metrovick) That we had bell codes between boxes going, which reminded me of the Pendennis railway i occasionaly helped with, massive 00 system with interlocking signals, timetable working and bell codes. Great fun. Featured in RM the othe year.

Cheers,

Mark

Hi paul cheers for that.

I never met Gordon Dando but i met his son glyn a few times. he was good friend with my dad for a while, and my grandfather, (peter gardner, chief engineer at frimley if you know him, everyone else seems to!) knew Gordon well, through 2 1/2 gauge society (gauge 3 to the modellers on here! ) and actually knew nigel through that route as well! Its a small world we live in!

Will enjoy Gilling, esepcially station pilot duty. Secretly think doug just wants to have a good look at the engine on radiocontrol, especially as he recently confessed to finding LT fascinating! Also rumours of double heading on radio control with mike Aherne, should be fun!

Exams not over yet, last day on friday but got another 5 weeks till exams are over, all 10 of them! Wish me luck, gilling will be a welcome break!

Cheers paul and all

Mark

yeah great fun.

beginning to like tuning the signal boxes as much as shunting.

off up to gilling this weekend, my first mainline rally, word is we have station pilot duties and some local passenger turns. perhaps a pick up or k class freight turn as well.

should be fun, will put pics up next week

if you can find them, look back through the last few editions of model rail, I'm pretty sure they did a bit recently on modelling them. if not, I know there is something in my library at home, see what I can find for you.

of course there's always the rtr scaledale stuff from Hornby

if you can find them, look back through the last few editions of model rail, I'm pretty sure they did a bit recently on modelling them. if not, I know there is something in my library at home, see what I can find for you.

of course there's always the rtr scaledale stuff from Hornby

Hi scanman, when i get the dates i will post them on here, but someone will probably do it anyway, most of the people on the london underground section go there.

We'll be there next year, hopefully with more track and rolling stock.

Its in March, everyyear but they may move it from its regular second weekend of march slot, because of the Met 150 celebrations.

anyone who wants to see the models in the flesh as it were can give me a pm and i'll see where we are next. Track down in swindon i think is the next stop. the trouble really is we run at a lot of private tracks so opportunities are limited!

Hi all and thanks

Matloughe, if your 00 stock is Met, maybe get in contact with the london transport museum depot at acton. they're on the lookout for as many met models and layouts for next years march open day, especially what withit being Met 150 next year.

Building this stuff can be very satisfying,but at times infuriating. Theres alot of cleaning and preparation before each part is made, and when you come out of the workshop after 2 hours of an evening and realise all you've made inthat time is 4 little brackets, it can drive you up the wall!

Wood work however is the best bit, it tends to show large results quickly. especially in a wekk or so i can have a complete van body almost done. Its also interesting to see how the real ones were done and you realise many wagons didnt have much in the way of carpentry in some areas because it weakened the structure. some mortice or tenon joints but mostly they are held together with long iron tie rods.

Iron work generally we have laser cut though the two main suppliers in our hobby, Doug Hewson and Dave Noble do supply iron work, or kits of iron work, especially like w irons or v hangars, and complete sets of brake gear. fortunately most wagon have a fairly standard underframe, except the Met, which had to be different!

wheels however are a different story. Doug hewson supplies rough castings for wagon wheels but you have to machine and tidy them up yourself.

Slaters are the other supplier of 5 inch wheels but for a while they only supplied finescale wheels which are not much good i hate to say. A wheel flange and its tolerance are not something you can scale down so they wont run properly through points we have to use. However they now do what they call coarse scale wheels to GL5 profiles which run really well.

for this I'll probably hewson castings because otherwise this van will be so light it will just fall of the track over any irregularities

cheers

Mark

Yeah i think you might mike! Your lovely little O2. Is it lined yet? hows mattys one?

Good to see you on here.

Any news on greystones? pm me back

Hi Ian.

Have you got his name i may well know him. My grandfather is in farnborough and is chief angineer at the Frimley club where i spent a lot of time until about a few years ago. If hes not already tell him to become a member there. Bit of known person i'm afraid is my grandfather but more than willing to help those with an interest.

Cheers

Mark

ha yeah you'd be lucky to a coach bogie in a boxfile let alone a wagon!

no condensing gear on the Pannier as the London transport ones never had them. the only panniers ever fitted with gear were the much modified 9700 class. the had cut back tanks but the rear half were extended down to the footplate.

people often ask why LT didnt buy those panniers, you'd have thought them ideal. It was because they were too high for the majority of the sub surface network. they were the later type Pannier with high roof, so too high for everywhere except the original broad gauge tunnels around paddington where they worked on the smithfield meat market trains.

condensing gear on a 5" engine would be interesting. the Pannier would be ideal because it really powerful for its size, and would be less affected by the gear...

But anyway i have enough to be getting on with.

Cheers Nigel

most people dont have a garden big enough and with these latest wagons we'll be struggling for space as well!

Next blog should hopefully be a stock list, then i'll get down to workbench and future projects stuff.