roythebus1

It's always been the way on the railway. Having been a guard on the Underground in the early 1970s they were always short of staff due to seemingly low wages. I asked why we couldn't work overtime to keep the job running and boost earnings. I was told by the union rep that we should get decent wages without the need for overtime and rest day working. In the end I had to leave the job because housing was unaffordable (nothing new there). A year later saw me join BR as a secondman. There were staff shortages as they'd made too many redundant after the end of steam. there was something like a 20 year gap when no new footplate staff were taken on. I left railway employment in 1988 as I was as it turns out one of many who were got rid of because I reported defects and was on the ASLEF branch committee. They were short of drivers then but cut their nose to spite their face. I've found since the advent of the internet that around 100 such "examples" were made at that time. The result was the shortage of drivers we now see, no new secondmen taken on, train people from off the street to do everything. The advent of Eurostar at Waterloo meant that drives there could take a short walk across the concourse and almost double their money working for E* rather than go round the houses working for SWT. That is when real wages started to rise for train drivers. The abolition of the old steam-era PTR agreements were replaced by the free-for-all we see now, private companies nicking each other's staff. Drivers only have decent wages because of the unions negotiating better rates for them. For those outside the industry who are envious of the well paid drivers of today I say "join a union". Train driving can be the most boring job in the world. round the houses looking at chimney pots, station, shut off, brake, stop, ding ding, open up, station, shut off, brake, stop, ding ding...Express work, just as tedious at times, sit watching signals go past at 140 miles an hour all day. An old workmate went on E*, done it for maybe 20 years then transferred to Chiltern Railways at Marylebone, a far cry from the glamour of driving trains across Europe at 200 mph. Why? Because if he wanted to see scenery go by, it was better done at 100mph than 200 mph, at least he could enjoy what he saw at that speed. He retired early on a good pension, like a lot of them, he was fed up with the job and the pressure.

I heard this from a chap I work with on the buses, his other job is as a train manager trainer for Avanti. He told me how much Avanti are wasting on training, some £3k a day for taxis taking trainees from the station to their training place in the midlands on trains that aren't yet serviceable. All this goes to show that there IS money to be thrown at these problems especially with an election coming and the government wanting to get rid of the train strikes problem. Good luck to all the workers who actually DO the job who get this sort of money.

Rummaging through my drawers as is my wont, I found a large-scale official drawing of a Dreadnought coach. some smaller sheets were copies sent to my many years ago by the chap who i think invented protofour, he also produces some plasticard sheets for the Chesham set. Sadly I never got round to using them and got rid of them many years ago, the task of cutting out all those windows was daunting! I think his name was Joe Brook-Smith The smaller sheets were detailed drawings from a late 1890s copy of The engineer showing cross-sections of the bodywork and bogies. If I can ever work out how to get my applemac to allow me to share photos on here I'll copy them across for interest.

Thanks for that David, I find it difficult to get to grips using anything on iphone, it's too small for my big fingers. I use an applemacbook and there seems to be an inherent problem with the OS. It used to be easy to share pictures to here and FB from the macbook, under the "photos", pictures and anywhere really. The lastest versions the "photos" option gives a very limited amount f irrelevant picture, the "pictures" option, give a totally different lot of stuff I've scanned in, the photo library with over 3500 photos vanishes! I've been on to the apple help desk, they say there's no easy way round it!! Do this, do that, do something else, at my age I need something simple and easy to use. even the Apple forum has run out of ideas.

I still regret not keeping a few of his 1938 tube stock brass etches just to how how awful they were!

I note on the latest Hornby email newsletter they're offering the "skinhead" 31 in green for £139.99. Few left... a big drop in price from £214-something. I hope the latest incarnation doesn't suffer zinc pest like my other one did. The mech and bogies for that are now in a Lima body and chassis.

Good luck on this project, something I thought of many years ago!

What a fascinating read, the link t the Tring History group.

Also use a good quality degreasing agent on the ali surfaces.

I tried 5" gauge. It could be copied straight from the 1:12 scale LT drawing with a bit of give for the gauge.

Looks good. I'm still trying to get the ends to stay on my MTK Cravens parcels car! Araldite is the latest weapon.

We had a couple on New Annington back in the day. I had one numbered 31401, one of the FP locos I worked on at the time. the Triang 31 was wonderful when it was introduced in the early 1960s. Part of their advertising highlighted the legible lettering on the makers plate on the cab side. I don't recall any other models having that level of detail and that old model stands up well to some of the modern equivalents, like no zinc pest. I've just done a Lima model with Hornby mechanism. the Hornby one succumbed to zinc pest. What's missing from the super-detailed models is the secondman's feet in the cab window.

It was a centre pivoted bogie. I started making a live steam version back in 1974 but had to leave it in 1976, bus restoration and family got in the way! There's odd bits I remember from the official LT works drawing. I converted a Triang M7 into an E class back in the day. It didn't look too bad in those days.

When we built the MRC's New Annington layout in the late 1970s we used the scale 6 foot way IIRC. It was ok on straights and large radius curves, including the famous curve with superelevation. Things missed each other. Then along came Joueff with scale-length Mk3 coaches to go with the Hornby HST power cars. They didn't miss each other. Then we discovered 24.whatever wasn't enough for Mk3 coaches, so we had to lift the outer track and relay it a few mm further out. The superelevation didn't help! Things to remember for the future. :) Maybe Wayne could do a track pack for a modern branch line terminus for a plank diorama with 2m of plain track? After all if he's going over to single lines, he'll need a source of income if we all follow his advice. :)

I've got the tracing, scanned and loaded to usb stick. This is necessary if you are using Templot on Applemac on Crossover or similar as Templot is windows-based. Then import the jpeg to Templot from the usb stick. The problem now is remembering how to do that!! The trouble with getting old is having the memory in my head for so many computer commands which is why I will stick with DC control for my layout. I am not of the computer generation.

I didn't copy the headline of the year from RouteOne bus trade mag...Yuton electric coaches...trailblazing... they withdrew the headline email item pretty damned quick!

Looking at this logically, the six foot in 00 should actually be 28.46mm between rails. 18.83-16.6=2.23 2x2.23=4.46+(6'x4mm)28.46. if my maths are right. None of whic answers my query about Wane's single slip curving to about 60" radius...I've got a tracing of the hand-built one but as usual computer won't let me load it to Templot, blame Apple for that!! Pah.

Think yourselves lucky you're not in the bus industry, £500,000 worth of battery buses all unusable because of defects.

Maybe I'll give that a try, it's all too confusing for me, even the Apple help desk are confused and don't know why when I want to use the box below that says "choose files" it doesn't show my "pictures" as an option. why are Apple such a pain?

Yes, quite, but I had no idea where the builder made his datum, everything didn't easily transfer from EM to 00. Just a warning for others really. At least on my own layout we start from the same datum and Templot. :)

I don't know, I never got to meet the builder, I just got to converting it to 00 gauge. What I'm trying to say is if it was designed to 00 with scale track centres, then laid to EM on the 00 plan, the track centres would be too narrow. But converting back to 00, they are still too narrow!! He also didn't allow for a 10' cess on the outer edges of the track. But it'll look all right on the night as they say. It's only track anoraks that would notice. The next club project is to re-lay the track on the Hythe layout, another superb bit of modelling. the track on that is laid to 16.8 gauge for some odd reason. It looks right but is falling apart and doesn't run particularly well. I'm hoping to do that with Wayne's kits, it's all plain points on that one. :)

Thanks, that's helpful. I suspect the Romford drivers I got are 22mm, not 20.-something. If I use 20mm wheels it seems to sit at an acceptable height. Maroon fades with age.If I could work out how to get a picture from my iphone onto here I'd show you an example on my GS bus, painted maroon. It's faded to a browny colour after about 10 years.

The builder made the six foot way too narrow, probably 20mm between running rails instead of 24mm. I suspect something may have been amiss if the original track plan was done to 16.5mm gauge.

Quite, it alters the geometry of switches and crossings as Martin Wynn has pointed out many times on his Templot forum and on here. It alters the six foot way which on the EM formation was too narrow anyway! Platform clearances were "quite tight". It suggests the gent who made the layout was a superb modeller of buildings and scenery and the basics of track, but didn't quite get it right in places. ISTR the track was made with steel rail which had shown signs of being stored somewhere damp over the years.

The difference is between 18 mm and 16.5 gauge. It alters the geometry of the switches.