roythebus1

Speaking to a friend at the local railway club who is a eurostar engineer at Stratford, he says the "all stations trams" between STP and Ashford keep delaying his trains as they are so well used. Mind you, with the very high winds we've had this week the all-stations trams suffered considerable delays and cancellation because of overhead line problems. Wrong sort of electrification for the south? You really can't win.

A bit like Wansford am Rhein in war films? :)

Having recently built my first couple of Finetrax kits, I must say say how much easier it has made track building. Yet people spend a fortune on today's super-detailed ready-to-run stock with lights, bells whistles, but run them on proprietary track and 3' scale gaps between coaches. Oh well, each to their own.

The Croxley Tip trains remained steam hauled until the end of steam on LT. I've recently made the SEC brake van kit and despite having pin point wheels it's very heavy to move around! Otherwise a good model.

I'd suggest the government wanted a bit of "feel good" news in the run-up not only to the GE next year but in the light of what has been revealed this week as the Covid Inquiry gets under way. This has shown them for what they really are, totally incompetent, to say the least.

From what I remember in my years in the transport industry, it's always been a case that that things that started before 01.59GMT ran at GMT time throughout. At the other end of the year, trains that started on BST ran at BST throughout. Staff never lost and hour's pay or gained an hour's pay as they were still only doing 8 hours or whatever the rostered duty was. I believe that is still the case today. According to a radio quiz the other day, Daylight Saving wasn't devised to help war workers in 1916, it was devised by some very influential businessmen who played gold in the early morning and realised that if they put the clocks back/forward they'd be able to get an extra hour of daylight for golf before work.

As the title says, smokebox door wanted for Airfix 4F 0-6-0. I've just made a replacement chassis fr the loco, it runs very well and with a bit of super-detailing is looking good. But many years ago it was converted to a Thomas style loco and I lost the original! Somebody kindly sent me a replacement about 6 years ago, but the carpet monster has eaten that one. Going through my box of round tuits and this one came to the top of the pile. Help anybody?

ISTR trying to motorise a Kitmaster BoB back in the 1960s when i got one in a set along with 3 SR coaches, all unmade. I used the plastic chassis and glued silver paper to the wheel treads. It sort of worked after a fashion, but at the age of about 13 money was tight!

You may well be right there to a degree. I got fed up with having to modify or super-detail everything British outline in the 1980s. I visited Germany in 1981 and made friends with a DB Lokfuehrer who I m still friends with now. I was impressed with the DB of that era and of the models that were available. As a result I built a small DB exhibition layout. As you rightly say it's only with the advent of the super-detail British stuff we have now that I've gone back to British modelling.

Thanks for that John, I've been following the Templot developments on here for the last few years. I note it can even print the track in 3D! I ought to get back to planning y next layout. As an aside, I've found some unbuilt K's motor rail bogies and transfers, are you still interested in them?

Markits do Romford-style Bullied wheels. you'd need some brass bushes as well as Markits/Romford use 1/8" axles.

When I bulit the track for the Folkestone club's Alkham Valley line it required a symmetrical Y. Templot made one for me, do't ask how, it did and it's been on the layout nearly 6 years now. Pity the layout's been in store since then! The Y is on the left, top point. IISTR it's a right hand B6 with the main road curved left. The layout was built to EM ad was left to the club by its builder. since nobody else in the club has EM stock and that was all sold off by his widow, the decision was taken to convert to 00. I built it to 16.2 gauge.:) Plain track is 16.5

If anyone's interested, friend passed away earlier this year and has left a small collection of Kitmaster French and German coaches for disposal. A couple are built, a couple more part- built and some fully built. there's also about 8 Interfrigo in similar states of build and a part-built Kitmaster Beyer-Garrett. I believe all the parts are there. The Kitmaster German coaches compare very well dimensionally and visually with the Roco equivalent in my collection. Back in the early 1970s I remember speaking with Charlie Skelton (who used to own W&H Models) at the Toy Fair at Earls Court. I'd recently got into making cast metal bus kits, but we spoke about "modern image" models for the UK market. the term Modern Image was by then over 10 years old... He said the European firms weren't interested as the UK market was too small for them. The Europeans collect models not to run but to collect. Anything HO would sell literally tens of thousands all round the world. Anything in 00 would only sell in the UK, the rest of the world wouldn't be interested. It wasn't worth their while doing. run of say a class 47 and struggle to sell 5000 when they could sell 50,000 of a French loco. Of course back then British liveries were quite limited, for diesels generally green or blue! And the reason for the lower detail standards was that the Brits wouldn't pay continental prices for decent models.

There were the Acton-Hither Green freights. th line was indeed very busy during WW2 as one of the primary routes from the north across London, when the other lot weren't bombing it to pieces. I've recently read a book about damage to London's railways during WW2 and, going off-thread a bit, the cross_London routes were Liverpool Street-Shoreditch-East London Line for trains from the east, Farringdon Street-Snow Hill-Holborn Viaduct, West London line, Acton Wells-North London Line to Brentford-Feltham yard. There was a limited amount of traffic that went Gunnersbury-Richmond limited due to weight limit on Kew Railway bridge. The next north-south link would ahve been Reading-Wokingham-places south. It's an interesting book, very worrying when you realise that Britain almost ran out of railway wagons because empty stock couldn't be moved back to where it was required. Cross-London passenger services never really restarted after WW2 until the late 1980s.

Anything requiring access to the various goods depots under the city or south of the river via Holborn Viaduct from the Met would use that crossover. Trains from the Midland or Eastern would be on the Widened Lines all the way. The Snow Hill line to Holborn was very busy until WW2. Passenger ervices ceased at that time as the track capacity was required for cross-London freight.

I'd never have the patience to do ply and rivet, then have to put half chairs on every sleeper. I like Wayne's kits!

To quote Pete Mac Farlane above, Southdown' is definitely a LBSC I1x class, the curved cab roof was to allow them to work on ex-SECR lines. No idea why a bus company is operating LBSC tank locos though.... Simple answer, Southdown is run by Stagecoach plc, Stagecoach plc also run railways. :) or used to!

Well, the 2nd hand loco from Hattons turned up today, looks good and runs well. even the b-t-b are right! someone may have doctored it a bit in the past. apart from the tender to loco coupling pin being a bit broken, it looks the part. I don't like the big BR1 tender with it though, I may well use th Dapol tender instead. So if anyone wants bits of a Kemilway chassis and valve gear, let me know. Thanks everyone for your help. I've just had a delivery of wheels from Markits, so maybe my Wrenn R1 with new chassis will get done, I started that project in 1974 by super-detailing the body and fitting Romford wheels; then there's my Metropolitan F class 0-6-2T to finish, and an Airfix 4F with a new chassis...

To chip in with my 5p worth, BR's cost-cutting on the WCML included recycling copper. A lot of steam locos had copper fireboxes, which explains why a lot of the locos at Woodhams survived the torch for so long and live on, because they had steel fireboxes. I've read that all the copper had to be retuned to BR for use on the OHLE. As for the economic case, there was an economic case for closing the "other " route north out of London to Manchester, Sheffield etc in the 1960s which had that view ha more foresight, never have been closed. I'm talking about the GC route, of which is being "recycled" for the new HS2. No government in this country has ever thought long-term. Maybe the electrified Woodhead route at 25kv would have provided a better link across the Pennines.

Wasn't there a more recent incident with Tornado wheelslip at Durham, motion was badly damaged when it reportedly got to 140mph whilst not moving and the driver broke his wrists trying to move the reverser.

Paint.

Gibson used to do wheels with Lima length axles, I got a load of 12mm years ago for LimaDMUs. The Lima pizza cutter wheels won't run on code 75 or flatbottom rail without running on the chairs or ballast. We discovered this back in the early 1980s when we had trouble with Lima stock on the MRC's New Annington layout. One of the members took a bogie home and turned the flanges down to BRMSB and the DMU ran perfectly afterwards. If anyone needs 12mm disc brake wheels, I have a large stock of these I had made for my VGA kits in the mid-1980s. they were made by Romford, axles are 2mm diameter, 26mm long. Tread and flange is to NMRA standard. they have etched disc brake centres. Drop me a pm if interested.

Well, I've decided to give up on this kit. Other bits have become damaged over the years, I'll take out the High Level motor and gearbox and the Romford wheels and chuck the rest in the scrap bin. It's taken up far too much of my time trying to get it to go right. Although I enjoy these old kits I'd rather concentrate now on getting my layout not so much finished, but running roundy-roundy. I've found a good secondhand Bachy model on Hattons at a sensible price. Anyone want an unmake Dapol kot or an Airfix tender? I may keep the tender as I prefer the loco with a small tender, though maybe not right for a Southern loco.

That sounds about right, Practical Model Railways. I done the write-up along with Nick Freezer. Len Weal took the photos. I've got a copy tucked away somewhere. The 321s came along after my time in charge, I provided about 5 Trix AL1s, a couple of Hornby 86s and a Lima 87 when the wires went up! It was a fantastic layout to operate, always trying to keep something moving. 2 trains on the main lines, at least 1 could move on the branch, another into the local lines and another shunting the yard.

It was in an earlier magazine which went out of production, all I remember it was based in Brentwood. I've got a copy of it somewhere. It was built with the intention of being a steam/diesel era layout. there wasn't much modern stuff around in 1978! We had the Triang Brush 2, the Hornby Dublo Bo-Bo, Trix Warship and Western, Lima hadn't been invented, not had Mainline! Airfix were just getitng into things with their Brush 2 as well. Oh, and the Trix AL1, and a couple of not very accurate diesel shunters. As the layout progressed more modern traction became available, so the layout never actually ran with any steam locos even in the early days. TriangHornby had just brought out the HST and things started to change. Lima came along with some good for the era diesels and DMUs which led to a lot of conversions. Hornby with their Leyland National railbuses, Lima hopper wagons, Hornby MGR wagons etc. Spoilt for choice so we thought. As the "modern image" became the norm (modern image being coined by Cyril Freezer in 1961) the layout changed with the times, track layout modernised, colour light signals, OHLE, etc. At one stage British Railways wanted to use the layout to be filmed for their signalling training programme as the signalling was ever so correct. Sadly nothing became of that.