MrWolf

I can assure you that flying an aircraft is far more civilised (among many other things) than jumping out of one. All of my mother's brothers were RAF, as were my cousins and their sons too. My father's side of the family were Artillery or Engineer Regiment.

He's not the only one, if funds permitted I would be running late thirties with my existing stock and late fifties with probably a BR class 2 Mogul, railcar or DMU and the appropriate stock. The layout would need a change of road vehicles and that's about it. The old GWR paint wouldn't be a problem as branch line buildings only seem to be repainted in BR colours about a week before the closure notice goes up.

My misspent yoof consisted mostly of Ruddles County bitter or Kimberly brown ale. If you went to a party a couple of bottles of Thunderbird red label fortified wine always ensured a welcome. No point bringing cans of bitter, it's not strong enough, unless you can down a gallon and girls won't drink it. I have never been a regular drinker like some of the lads I went to school with, I couldn't afford it or see the point. We used to have a mad blowout at weekends, which looking back from middle age, did less damage to the physique long term.

Like walking into the Pegasus public house in Aldershot and shouting "I thought only fairies wore little wings!"

Now that is an interesting photo, it's not one that appears in The Shipston on Stour branch by Jenkins and Carpenter, there is a picture from the opposite direction that shows a catch point in the loop too. Longdon Road has a similar setup. Thanks for posting it up, and I will be taking some time to have a good hunt through the Warwickshire Railways site. I think that it was a picture on there of the tin goods shed at S on S that led to a picture of the shed at Little Muddle, which the memsahib was hugely impressed by and that led to page 1 of this thread.

That..... Is cool.

Tidy. (Bet you didn't know that I speak Welsh) I have some rubberised horsehair salvaged from a rotted out sidecar seat. All I have to do now is find the scissors that aren't Miss R's dressmaking pair...

La merd de la chein if you're using posh oil paints. I can't always remember what day it is. I know that you can get into trouble if you wake up in the morning and ask "Who the **** are you?" As different to 50s bathroom green or Shed green. You could always lie your a** off and say the bare patches in the bank are rabbit scrapes or plant a bush. There's no judgement here...

Feel free to post it if you can, I'll try to identify it. Manufacturers were using some almost custom looking metallic colours by that time to keep up with fashionable folk about town.

Yellow, red and blue in fact old chap. The green is very good though, I must agree.

A chainsaw on steel tubing from the days of making things properly? We'll all chip in for a wreath! 😀

I think that I have seen two. Given that I am of the Star Wars generation, I never saw the first film until I was in my twenties. And what the...... with Ewoks? Robin Hood meets The Teddy Bear's picnic? That was enough for me I'm afraid.

Well, that's nice. I go out for a walk at sunset with the memsahib and decide to post some more progress pictures on the model railway site that lets us share information, photos and talk about our modelmaking and I come back to bluster and thinly veiled threats. I've deleted the picture of the FPL cover, it's still freely downloadable from Google images, perhaps someone might have a word with RMWeb about locking all the images as auction and other sites do. I don't actually worry about anyone sharing my pictures, provided they're not flogging them on eBay as their own, it's fine. But if we are going to skip gaily down that road, consider that this site is awash with images from Getty, Alamy, Shutterstock, Francis Frith et al, all posted purely to illustrate and inform and absolutely not for profit. Do we really want to see this site closed down with subsequent legal consequences? I've seen the lack of reasonable give and take cause internet forums, car clubs and other special interest groups devolve into self aggrandising little cliques and ultimately fail. This is just a hobby, a group of like minded individuals who are good enough to spare time they could be modelling to stop, take pictures, create a little write up or do some research in order not only to record their efforts, but share all of it with others and receive help and encouragement in return. Let's try to keep it that way. After all would be much easier for us to just read technical articles and not bother to post anything.

Creative types were "Using the force" long before Star Wars. 😎

I wasn't trying to be over critical, the figures really do look the part, it was only a couple which as I said were in cruel close up and probably won't be noticeable in reality where the hands looked large to me and those are not wearing gloves in the photos above. I did have a good look through Andy Staddens website, the figures he produces are truly impressive and I was rather hoping to find some suitable for the thirties and forties among the range, as I would definitely be getting out the debit card. My bank manager is glad that I no longer collect military models, that's for sure.

Progress is progress, it's all good. I'm thinking as a distraction from the infamous level crossing, I'll take a leaf out of Graham's book and add some hedges.

The baby Triumph is an interesting little beast isn't it? Especially those fitted with a barrel carburettor and separate levers for air and fuel. I found the best way to slow down, given the band brake rear and spoon brake front (like a penny farthing!) was to jam your boot heel against the external flywheel as well as hauling on the brakes. I quite like the foot clutch arrangement on Harley knuckleheads and panheads it's a very relaxed setup for the kind of roads in its homeland. One American bike I did enjoy riding was a 1914 pedal start v twin 1000cc Yale. The gear lever stuck up from the transmission like something out of a Victorian signal box, complete with trigger. Pull the lever back with the bike on the stand, pedal furiously and start it, then squeeze the trigger, move the lever into the middle notch of the gate, this disengaged the clutch and gave neutral. Off the stand, set the throttle and pull the lever again, clutch opens, engages first and as you release the lever into the gate, up comes the clutch and the bike lopes forward like a Great Dane on a beach. Get up to about twenty and it's lever all the way forward and into top. Even the brake sort of worked!

I've no idea who took those photos, although they must be fairly recent. They're just what I found on the internet whilst working out what goes where, the first one was only of interest due to the position of the crossing boards relative to the FPL cover, in fact it was the only one I could find. The second one is and was chosen as it was easier than trying to scan and magnify the pictures in the N gauge society booklet. There isn't an awful lot on the net that I could find that was relevant.

I've never seen one in the flesh, let alone ridden one, but I do have first hand knowledge of the type of engine that would be fitted. It's what is known as a hit and miss engine. At tickover and at whatever speed the hand throttle is set, engine speed is governed so that the rod which opens the ignition contacts in the cylinder head (there's no sparking plug in the conventional sense) misses the latch which trips the contacts, the engine stops firing until the momentum of the flywheel, in this case the rear road wheel slows and the ignition latch re-engages. The inlet valve is probably automatic and only opened by the induction stroke, the exhaust operated by a pushrod with a built in valve lifter or a separate decompression valve. To start the bike, given that a hit and miss engine is very low compression, you would set air and fuel levers, (no twist throttle) set ignition to retard, lift the decompression and walk or paddle the bike along until it fires. Stopping is a little trickier, although you have a brake of sorts, decrease the throttle, brake and pull in the decompressor, or there may also be a way to interrupt the ignition latch, the momentum allows you to pull away again. Stopping completely would mean stopping the engine, but after the initial start you would just paddle forward with a hot engine and drop the decompressor. Something like that, or I just rode into the side of a theoretical tramcar... Those Megola bikes with the aero engine in the front wheel must have had some kind of clutch, I don't know for sure, but I did read that a number of them were used as pace machines for cycle velodrome racing.

No problem, lots of people on here have shared their railway knowledge with me, so if there's something I know about that's of use to others I'm more than happy to share it. Not a thread hijack at all, we do our best to make our trains as accurate as possible and when we want to build a layout around them, the same rules should apply otherwise the illusion of reality is lost.

Early bikes with rigid frames had a spring loaded rear stand which pivoted just behind the rear wheel spindle, it was spring loaded and retained by a spring clip on the end of the rear mudguard. You would push it down with your foot and drag the bike back onto it using a hoop formed by the upper mudguard stays. The problem was as bikes got bigger and heavier it was harder to control the machine from tipping sideways. This was particularly a problem as a lot more women rode in pre WW2 days and they weren't as, um... sturdily built as many today. The centre stand began to appear on some of the lesser known and lightweight marques in the mid thirties and became pretty much universal by the end of the forties. The front stand on the model (actually a German NSU, hence the hand gearchange being on the left, British machines were on the right, but I wouldn't let it bother me!) is actually an extension of the lower mudguard stays and is normally held up to the bottom of the mudguard by one or two bolts. The intention is to support the front of the bike by wedging into the ground and pushing the machine backwards. Its purpose is solely for emergency use should the front wheel need to be removed. It is not a parking stand and should be in the up position if the bike is in use. These were still a useful feature on new bikes until well into the 1950s. When parked, the foot of the rear stand is just forward of the rear wheel spindle, so that the weight of the bike keeps the stand in the down position. Once you started the bike and paddled forward, it would roll off the stand, which would then snap back up into the locked position. No need for fancy stand position sensors that fill up with rain and dirt before cutting out the engine back then! Railway service will be resumed shortly!

That's great news, well done! That's quite the prestigious opportunity. I'm busy getting my act together for an exhibition in a commercial gallery near home, date to be confirmed next week, but it should be mid September. Nobody danced around the totem pole, it was in the middle of a plum orchard, it made the scrumpers nervous!

Actually, I think that is a genuine example of the monotonously talked about but seldom seen in any practical respect "making art accessible to the wider community", so it gets top marks from me. At one place I lived, I had a railway sleeper stuck upright in the ground, it had a chair bolted to the end still and I painted it up as a totem pole with a gargoyle face with the rail slot as a red mouth. It terrified the neighbors children who thought it was some pagan / voodoo idol. That wasn't helped by the occasional garden party and bonfire attended by lots of folks on motorcycles if I'm honest!

It will definitely be far easier than separating the real thing from a bike

What was left of the Luftwaffe by the time of the Normandy invasion was occupied defending the Eastern front. The big problems that the Allies faced in the bocage were MG42 "buzzsaw" machine gun nests and PAK40 anti tank guns hidden in the hedgerows, only our superior numbers eventuality drove the Germans out and at a massive cost in men and machinery.