Nick Lawson

@RedTrain @jamie92208 I thought about trying to paraphrase Essery on this subject, (vol 2 btw), but doubted my ability to correctly convey the subtleties of diagrams, drawings and lot numbers to meet the exacting standards of @Compound2632, so hopefully he will be along shortly. However may I suggest, if you haven't already, that you also get hold of that learned gentleman's article on building Slaters Midland kits? (Model Railway Journal 286) The kits have some inaccuracies and there are possible improvements which are within the scope of ordinary mortals. (I had a few almost complete kits when I read the article. They are back in the works for attention.)

Electrical connection to tender Picking this up after a trip away: I had made it difficult to arrange an electrical connection between loco and tender that could easily be separated. This was as a result of: a. not having thought about this early enough and b. having gone off piste a number of times during this project. I have ended up with a less than ergonomic solution. Late in the day I set out to acquire some micro plug & socket pairs from the internet. The first attempt turned out to be bigger than anticipated. A second attempt was more successful. However these still couldn't be applied easily. The relevant factors are: 1. I had chosen to replace the original K's lumpy pin and bar physical connection between loco and tender with a more discreet arrangement that slotted through the “dragboxes” in the whitemetal bodies. On the loco, the connecting strip is held in place by the rear screw that holds body to frames, so removing this allows the tender to be detached. Therefore ideally the electrical connection would also be on the loco; but my arrangement of spacers and copper-clad board for loco pickups had not allowed space for this. (pic1). I didn't want to disarrange this again, so what about the tender? 2. The tender body is held on the frames by mounting points roughly 1/3 & 2/3 of the way front to back. (Standard K's practice). At the front the body sits on the frames, but there was insufficient material for a retaining screw that allowed the drawbar to be detached from the tender. Instead it is permanently pinned into the tender frames. This means that separating the tender body from its frames can only be done when the loco and tender are already separated; and the rear of the tender frames have to be angled down to allow them to be pulled backwards for the drawbar to clear the body. 3. I had positioned copper-clad strips on the tender frames for electrical pick up such that there was insufficient space to insert a plug between them up into the body. 4. I had chosen to chop the tender body to make a more realistic coal space. This of course means there isn't much space inside the front of the tender body anymore. 5. I had decided to add tender brake gear including a transverse main brake rod under the front of the body. Because there isn't much room in the tender front (point 5) I needed to mount the socket further back. Because the K's mounting points for the body need to sit directly on the frames in the middle (point 2), and the frames front semi-assembled into the body front (point3) this is effectively right at the back. This is doable as the plugs come with 120mm of wire which is just enough to reach to the rear of the tender even when it isn't connected to the loco. The socket has two short pins. I really wanted it mounted on the upper, copper-clad side of the pick-up board; but really it needs to be mounted on the clean side of the board, so the ends of the pins can be soldered to the copper cladding underneath. Consequently I made a small piece of copper-clad board, mounted the socket to it in this way, tinned the rest of the copper and then managed to sweat this sub-assembly onto the existing pick-up board without that all melting and falling apart. I was able to carefully enlarge the space between the front pick-up mounting block and frames (point 4) such that the plug from the loco can be slipped between the brake rod and frames and then pushed up at right angles into the body. (pic2) Tweezers are then required to pull the plug over the top of the body mounts and finally push into the socket. (pic3) Well it's not elegant, but it works! (pic4). No I won't do this again. Yes I will think about electrical connections sooner.

Depends. I know the various Islay whiskers nowadays travel to the mainland in road tankers (on CalMac ferries) for bottling somewhere near Glasgow. Although I seem to remember seeing on the telly that (at least in some cases) the empties are knocked apart by coopers at the originating end and reassembled by Scottish coopers. The inside surfaces of the parts may be flamed before reassembly.

I've never tried using them, but Markits sell axle nut covers separately. Available from Wizard, possibly others.

On our hols we had a day trip to Toledo from Madrid. I was quite taken by Toledo's "Moorish Gothic" station, so a few snaps. The memsahib pointed out the large number of modern trains sitting around doing nothing. Having posed a few "stationary exhibits" around my own layouts in the past, I wondered ...

A while back I thought a nice 1 April spoof would be "Gresley's Small Engine Policy", considering how much LNER time & effort went into rebuilding inherited stock. That would get the pacificos biting.

DJH kits are designed specifically for OO gauge - so need some more work to adapt to wider 4mm gauges. I have an unbuilt one which I started a while back - off the top of my head: the brass screw-together chassis is a bit basic; OO gauge; and has a slightly incorrect wheelbase. You can get a better replacement from Alan Gibson with "EM gauge spacers". Note that there isn't a standard EM gauge spacer width. Farmer Dave on ebay, (also of this parish) makes EM spacers which are wider than the Gibson product. It's up to you! Back to the J10 - secondly the front guard irons are part of the whitemetal buffer beam. For EM you'd need to cut these off and move them outboard, or make replacements and attach to the frames. So although DJH rate the J10 as an easy kit to build, it may not be quick to do. Over on scaleforum, Will L has an old thread on doing a full P4 job on this kit which may give you other ideas to consider, even if you don't adopt all of them. Have fun!

Is it possibly a part of the frames - a visible support for the underside of the boiler?

Tender body now primed. (pic 1- where autumn sun nicely picking up the dust which has already landed on top). I haven't done lamp brackets yet, but otherwise the only other things to fit to the tender body are the couplings. I have hand painted the buffer beam, but it looks terrible, so I need to work it back and try again. Luckily it is masked in the picture! I'm using Sprat & Winkle couplings. I had thought of trying using http://www.5522models.co.uk/ brackets to mount the bar beneath the buffer beam, but the tight fit of the brass chassis against the inside of the buffer beam means this would be too much extra work to retrofit, so maybe next time. Consequently I drilled the buffer beam to take the wire bar. By the time I did this I'd forgotten why I was doing it; so then found that I'd managed to drill through in line with the guard irons I'd added to the frames, such that these would prevent me bending the wire ends down. There was enough space though to drill new holes further out from the centre and closer to the buffers. I also want to fit cosmetic couplings. I had been thinking of three link couplings, but looking more closely at the available picture, I see my intended loco had screw-links. I dug out some old hooks which I rejected as overscale and have made up a pair of Masokits couplings, (pic2). These have the benefit that they allow construction of the shackle-bolt-through-hook used by the prototype. I realise that I missed the opportunity to assemble them with the bottom link tidied up over the screw bar, as sometimes seen in photographs. I sprayed them and they still need another spray, but they're looking a bit blobby already so I think I'll scrub them off and use brass blacking instead, as I did for the S & W bars.

Perhaps starting a trend of Southern English, railway modelling incomers to the Hebrides, taking advantage of both the available space for really big sheds and subsidies from the Scottish Government to the crofting community, to encourage the development of their modelling skills to provide a service to these incomers?

A while back I made a toolbox from plastikard as the original was missing. As I had opened up the coal bunker I needed a visible means of support for the box. Bob Essery's article in the July 1964 Railway Modeller says toolboxes in this position were supported by angle iron brackets. My free interpretation of this was to make a pair of brackets of arbitrary dimensions from square section point-rodding. (pic1) These were to have fitted either side of the coal hole, but in order to span the gap I had to fasten them to the ends of the box rather than underneath. Hopefully this won't be too noticeable. However when I came to fit the box I found that the water valves, identified by Mike Edge above, were in the way. (pic2) These were rather lumpy castings and didn't have handles anyway, so I filed them flat; filed in the sides of their bases to accommodate the toolbox brackets; soldered brass wire handles on for the water valves and then glued the toolbox over the top. (pic3). The apparent lean on the toolbox is just a photo perspective. I haven't managed to capture the curved shape of the toolbox lid, but I might risk a bit of filing to try to improve it. I have also now fitted the off-side handrails on the tender front, although they still need some finishing off.

Fascinated to discover McAlmont & Butler's previous career... without that doubletake I would have missed Allthis and Moore. Superbly done!

@t-b-g Ok, take 2. I have used your idea of tubing, but slightly differently. I cut a short length of 0.7mm o.d. tubing and cut a notch into the top of it. I then slid my existing skinny brake column into it so that the handle is embedded in the top of the tube. The skinny column was then fed through the horizontal L-shaped handrail, faked up from scrap etch, then a longer length of tube below the rail, down to the floor. As the prototype had a bearing in the handrail for the column, I cut three slivers of 2mm o.d. tube to slip over the inner tube; one either side of the handrail, and a slightly thicker one down at the base. This lot was glued together. I drilled out holes in the floor to take the brake column and the bottoms of the two handrail stanchions. I superglued the brake assembly in place, then dropped in the two handrail stanchions. The end result is slightly off - the brake column seems slightly too high and the handrail stanchions are not as parallel as I'd have liked - but I'm going to leave well alone; at least until I accidentally bang into the tender and knock this lot off again!

Yep, as indeed modelled recently in this thread by @jwealleans which was what started me wondering.

As a general aside on the subject of load securing - when I was young chained loads on trucks used to have ratchetted lever tensioners, known sometimes as "sylvesters". I don't know whether these were ever used on rail loads, and if so, when.

@t-b-g Ooh, I like it. I'll give that a go!

Thanks @Michael Edge that's really useful to know.

@Chas LevinIt's Carr's Hot Tape from Phoenix/Precision. I hadn't heard of Kapton, but having just googled I see it seems to be much cheaper than Carr's, so maybe next time.

The other day I applied some black satin finish paint from a rattle can. This served to beautifully highlight some glue blobs I had missed. Wah! Some touching up called for, (mostly on the other side of the loco from pic 1). Also I have been trying to work up the brake handle/ tender handrail arrangement. The kit provides two brake handles, of differing heights, with short handles atop chunky, free-standing columns. According to the MR diagram "http://www.midlandrailwaystudycentre.org.uk/documents/77-11807.jpg" the real thing had longer handles on top of more slender columns, supported by the tender handrail. I tried faking up a replacement brake column/handle from brass wire (pics 2 & 3). As always my soldering doesn't bear close inspection, but I think this gives a better effect on the size of the top, although the column looks too slender, so I'll try again with some thicker wire.

"I am not a number I am a fr... oh alright, yes I'm a number." I faked up this smokebox numberplate from scrap brass, then found my available transfers are the wrong font and a nightmare to position with shaky hands; so now talking to @railtec-models instead.

@railtec-models Steve, ooh! Actually something more like 1908 - 4 digit "curly numbers". I've put in an order. thanks, Nick

I have the HMRS sheet of Midland Railway transfers, but this does not include small white numbers for the late period smokebox numberplate. I have small white numbers (approx 1.8mm high) from another sheet, but these are a modern font, unlike the old-fashioned "curly" numbers used by the MR. Does anyone know where I can get something nearer to this look?

Could the boxes be the crew seats? I can't find a suitable picture now I want it, but I believe the inside of the cab stepped up twice from the floor, once over the wheels and then again for the seats. The other bit looks like it might go round the fire hole - if the kit has one!

Looks like a poster for "Midland Railway" - the Schwarzenegger remake.

@t-b-g Tony, thanks for your encouraging words. You have listed some interesting prototypes. Maybe one day!