CloggyDog

They were 0-4-0 DMs, slightly shorter than the much more common 05s. BR Class D1/1 (all 3 were withdrawn before TOPS) and sadly the one sold on to industry before being scrapped in the mid-80s, despite a preservation attempt. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_D1/1 They've been on my 'to-do' list, so I'd be interested in how you tackle yours.

I currently have 3 (arguably 4, including the canal boxfile) layouts 'in progress' at the moment - Dounreay (H0) , Mynyndd y Ddraig (009) and Hasselhöf Nord (H0) - to join the 3 completed micros (Barbers Bridge (EM) , Reading Signal Works (OO) and Nové Město na Nedostatku (TT) and 2 completed boxfiles and the CROC Steampunk diorama. And then Hasselhöf Ost Hbf (H0) can be built. Then Harlem Transfer/B&O 26th St (H0)... haven't 100% decided which, yet. Oh... And something small(ish) in O gauge needs doing at some point... Layout storage space is becoming the issue, at least until the shed gets a tidy once the cooker moved from there to its rightful place in the kitchen! But I do really enjoy the variety of scales, eras and prototypes, plus the 'quick win' and cheapness of serial micro layout building. For me it keeps things fresh and interesting.

Les, not wishing to worry you without reason, but is the restriction on your venue 150 people total, or 150 punters plus however many exhibitors/stewards, etc., you have? Even a small/local show might easily have 50 assorted exhibitors present throughout the duration of the show, which drops your punter capacity down to 100 at any time, if the former scenario applies.

I didn't win, but had fun designing and building CROC and the cost was pretty negligible (using up stuff I already had to hand, including bits already pre-allocated to a steampunk build). The other entries (9 in total from the look of things, including mine) can be found on Bassett-Lowke's various social media feeds (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and are all to a very good standard, with some fun ideas and clever use of the supplied items.

NEM Kadees would be the easiest fit for modern RTR and I've found them reliable enough on my exhibition layouts. For buffered stock (UK and continental outline) I use a mix of #17 and #18. Shop around (including ebay) and you can get them for under a quid each. You don't have to use the bulky Kadee magnets, 3mm rare earth magnets set between the sleepers works equally well and are much easier to disguise. Other exhibition layouts I'm involved in use 3-link. Cheap, accurate and realistic. I have no problem with the hand of god. With both options, you ideally want to plan them into the layout - magnet placement, height of backscene/width of baseboard. There are alternative types of tension-lock (Spratt & Winkle, etc) as well as the more esoteric (Alex Jacksons) You don't say how large your fleet is, or what your budget is? Another thing to bear in mind is minimum curvature, some types are less reliable when trying to couple/uncouple on curves.

It's been a wee while, but while I ponder H0 motive power solutions for Dounreay, Mynyndd y Ddraig has been temporarily set up to test the trackplan and see what the stock capacity might be (loco + 4 + van), where the clearance points and allow some general tweaking/fettling of the plan. Plastic wriggly tin sheet and other bits on order for the buildings and I need to make a fair quantity of trees (something else I've not done before).

I've just completed a steampunk diorama, my entry to a competition run by Bassett-Lowke in association with Steampaper.

And it's pretty much there. A couple of open wagons loaded with gears (both ornamental inbounds and functional outbound), plus the odd pile of them scattered around the place and a little scenic tittivation with grass clumps and the like. I'll hopefully find out later this week how I did and get to see some of the other entries via Basset-Lowke's various social media feeds.

For the danglewagen, I wanted to repurpose some old Hornby 4-wheel coach bodies, adding the danglebits and a rear-mounted boiler/cylinder from Lego, mounted on a new frame of 4mm Evergreen I beam. A new window cut in the end allows the driver to see where he's going.

The premise behind my diorama is a gentle poke at the 'just glue some cogs on it and call it steampunk' meme - having been active in the steampunk scene for over a decade, I've long 'outgrown' the need to have decorative gears on All The Things So the Centre for the Repurposing of Ornamental Cogs* (CROC) was born. It takes those shiny decorative and Ornamental gears of no discernable purpose and fettles, greases and transforms them into good machine-ready gears, up for any type of engineering challenge. * and yes, I know it should be gears not cogs, that's another subtle dig Track was laid, warehouse and danglebahn track built, cobbles (a texture from the net, printed at home) laid down and it all started to come together.

Back in the spring, Bassett-Lowke announced a competition in SteamPaper (the monthly e-newsletter detailing steampunk happenings around the UK and beyond) 20 applicants would be selected to receive a bundle of items to then construct a steampunk diorama of fixed size 50cm x 50cm by the middle of June. I was one of the lucky 20 and started sketching ideas based on the bundle items (loco, length of track, 2 resin buildings and some paints) and the contents of my various crates and boxes and folders. I used a spare Ikea Lack side table as an 'instant baseboard' overlayed with 2mm eva foam sheet and with a 5mm foamcore display box surround. Scouring the hard drive threw up the Scalescenes factory kit I bought/downloaded back in 2007 for Ripper Street, and I also had some Wuppertal Schwebebahn laser-cut portals from Joswood.de, along with assorted Hornby track and stock always intended for a steampunk micro.

My friend Graham Clark captured one of the original SR trio, possibly withdrawn by this stage. I'll dig through his notes later and post the date/location. He also photographed 2 of the later Class 12s: 15218 at Ashford 15222 on shed somewhere

Hindsight 9.0 details and registration are up. http://speedwitchmedia.com/product/hindsight-20-20-9-0-registration/

Like Phatbob, I use them in my fixed rakes only, where they do give a good close coupling with virtually no 'give', so a rake of coaches moves nicely as one. For shuntable stock and at the outer ends of the fixed rakes, I use the NEM Kadees, #17 and #18.

Isn't part of the problem nowadays that, with smaller production runs, often to satisfy pre-orders with few 'overs', by the time a review is published, said model has long since sold out. So many modelers are buying having perhaps only seen a decorated pre-production model (or CAD). On that basis, are reviews actually superfluous, aside from informing the pre-owned market?

While the 'dressing up' is certainly a big part of steampunk, the scene encompasses all sorts of creativity, with many steampunks very much into physical 'makes' including models. One of the chaps in the ME exhibition pic is Herr Doktör, one of the top steampunk makers in the UK. I was part of the steampunk contingent at the ME show and we attracted a lot of interest across the weekend. I'm also a part of the 'Ministry of Steampunk' group who exhibit at the big comic conventions in the UK and will say that these events are easily bigger than any UK model railway exhibition - 100000 across a weekend for the big London show (twice a year) , maybe half that for the biannual con run at the NEC (the November one occasionally falling the same weekend as Warley). Even the smaller steampunk events that the MoS run attract numbers that any model railway exhibition would dearly love to see (and yes, I organise model railway shows too...) Cosplay (and I'll include steampunk in that term) is just as creative as model trains, the skills and focus may be different, but the passion and enjoyment are the same. The age profile of Steampunks is very wide, from pre-teens to octagenarians with 'twin peaks' around the late-teens and late-40s/early-50s.

I use one strip each of warm and cool white on my micros, just the regular cheapo strips off ebay. They are wired together and fed down to a 2.1mm jack/socket pair, standard on all my micro layouts. I run them off either an 8 x AA battery pack or a 9v wall wart.

The cranes do slightly overhang the deck, based on the photos on Paul Bartlett's site: https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/p737727572/h24cb414e I'll dig out my unbuilt Salmon and compare it to the dimensions on the weight diagram, but I don't recall the Cambrian kit being out by very much at all. Edit: Cambrian Salmon measures 31mm across the deck (over the outer face of the solebars) or 7' 9" in 4mm. BR weight diagram says 8' 1.75" overall width, though its not clear as to what that is, it could be the brake wheels or over the outer edge. So potentially the Cambrian could be just over 1mm underwidth?

Here's one on another of my layouts, with the fiddlestick plugged into the diverging road. I hope you can see how the rails are cut to be square across each road.

Some 30 years ago, a friend (who does post on here, so I shall spare his blushes) built an small EM Gauge exhibition layout, which I helped operate and provide some extra stock. We occasionally had wagons with the finer wheels sets drop into the four-foot, but it was only occasional and so we didn't investigate too deeply. I subsequently acquired said layout and ran it for a time, before stripping it back to bare boards sometime later. Upon doing so, I realised that some of the SMP flexi was actually marked '83'...

Hi John, Yes, Ian has made his H0 buffers (48 per set, 12 each of 1'6" spindle, 1'8" Dowty ribbed and unribbed and 1'8" Oleo, all with the 13" head) and 5'6" Gloucester bogies available through his Shapeways shop: https://www.shapeways.com/product/LM6X2FHA7/br-huo-hopper-wagon-buffers-in-ho-scale?optionId=191062682&li=shops https://www.shapeways.com/product/M8X8TF88G/gloucester-5ft6in-bogies-in-ho-scale?optionId=159123089&li=shops Having ordered both in both Smooth and Smoothest Fine Detail, I'd say the cheaper option is just as crisp and good as the more expensive. The bogies are set up for a 24.5mm standard H0 axle. Hth

I had a Peco elecrofrog code 75 short Rad point where the tiebar had either snapped, or one blade had come adrift, so no loss to try cutting it down. Saved about 4" I haven't altered the wiring at all, the fiddlestick just plugs into whichever road I want to use via fishplates with the power leads to the controller soldered to the underside.

I've been working my way through a number of the wagon types I need for Dounreay (my FNoS micro terminus). Being H0, of course it's a mix of scratchbuilding and utilising ancient Lima and Jouef/Playcraft RTR. Lima Vans and Brake Vans are pretty much usable as is, just new wheelsets, Kadee couplings, minor titivation and a decent paintjob. The Lima chassis are also useful under the resin cast bodies I've produced (16t mins, 13t opens, other types of 12t van) The Playcraft stuff is generally junk, body-wise (though the big min can be hacked down to make a very passable 21t min), . The min chassis can be fairly easily cut down to the correct wheelbase/length o/h, which is what I've done to make a pair of Grampus, with scratchbult bodies from plasticard and strip. The longer chassis can also be utilised for the LNER/BR 1/445 22t Tube on the long chassis pretty much as is, while on a chassis shortened to 15' wb and with new headstocks, the 22t Plate wagon is easily done with strip and sheet bodywork. Evergreen channel section, microstrip and sheet are also very useful for more comprehensive scratchbuilds like the BoBol Cs and E, along with the (scale length) Salmon. The Bobol Gloucester bogies are 3D prints kindly scaled up from 3mm by a friend, while the LMS 8' bogies under the Salmon are very hacked-about Jouef BR1 coach bogies. Buffers are a mix of modified 4mm items, plus some proper H0 ones (Oleos, spindle and Dowty) from the same source as the Gloucester bogies. Future plans include some 35t tank wagons and some Insul-Fish

The GE and Woodhead routes were both electrified in the early 1950s...

Based on the list on Tower Models http://www.tower-models.com/towermodels/ogauge/Dapol/dapolwagons/brakevans/index.htm 003 and 005 definitely suit 1952-1960 002 and 006 are technically the post-64 style, but could be backdated fairly easily with some small modelling effort.