MrWolf

I couldn't agree more. American car collectors have a saying: "The more there were, the less there are" The workaday items that 30 years ago were everywhere, are now gone. Most people know that Mk1 Ford Escorts are now silly money, initially the 2 door saloon, everyone wanted and other variants were mercilessly broken up for parts to the point that there were virtually non existent. This has caused their values to rocket in comparison. My models are bought to use as intended (otherwise why bother putting electric motors in them) I remember a workmate in the 1990s collecting all the limited edition Lima diesels, when he decided to sell, he found that everyone and his dog had done the same thing and struggled to get his money back. I have vintage bicycles and motorcycles, I ride them all, regularly. I remember a complete stranger at a petrol station indignantly telling me: "You shouldn't be thrashing that about! It should be in a museum!" No amount of reasonable argument that I had pulled it out of a hedge and spent three years rebuilding it to perfect running order and if I blew it up, I would rebuild it again made any difference. So my parting shot was: "Would you marry a Hollywood actress and then sleep on the couch every night?" Just my $0.02!

It happens. If it was any other sort of addiction, doubtless charities and the state would shower you with help (and cash) but our affliction remains unrecognized. I have been honest with my significant other from very early on. She even knows how many motorcycles I have (though possibly not how much I spend on them!) In my defence, just how many shoes she owns is one of the great mysteries of the world. She collects antique bayonets and military knives. Maybe I should be worried. I dunno... In reality, we only have to justify our hobbies to ourselves. If you like it and it isn't robbing food off your table to do so, buy it and run it. My layout can be run by two locomotives to be prototypical. There's no law about which two though!

Change that seven locomotives to eight as of ten minutes ago. Curse you eBay!!!

Thanks for clearing that up, didn't think I was going daft. I lived over in west Wales for a while, near Ammanford and a lot of motorcycle trips involved tracing the remains of disused lines. A lot of the ex miners I knew used the term paddy train for anything that the miners rode in, including the underground trains that took men to the coal face, so you'll excuse me for that one! If it helps, I thought I only had five locomotives. Change that to seven.

The Ynysybwl branch being a good example to research if you want an excuse to run loaded / empty freight past your normal traffic terminus. There would also be paddy trains ( good excuse to run outdated, ramshackle stock, as if I needed one!) and a good number of supply trains bringing up timber, spare parts and the occasional outsized loads of machinery. Of course you will need more locomotives and probably another one or two belonging to or assigned to the colliery / quarry. Any excuse. Just don't tell the domestic authorities. My friends wife thinks he has "about ten" vintage motorcycles. It took two of us a week to shift everything when he moved house.

That is pretty much all I have ever seen bridges painted in. I am ignoring bridges that have had a revamp in the last thirty years because they are a landmark, such as the long disused Derby Friargate bridge or the bridge that crosses Lancaster LNW station. Thanks for your input everyone. I will also have to look at some way of giving the paint that faint sparkle over the matt finish.

Thanks, that will save a bit of work! I have seen a few bridges on layouts over the years with fancy paint jobs. I had a feeling that even Swindon wouldn't be OCD enough to give bridges in the middle of nowhere a tricky to maintain paint job.

Now that IS interesting... Certainly something to bookmark for a future project. I'm sure I can concoct some justification for it appearing on a line up in the Marches... But for now I am reminded that I have a workbench full of every other coach I own, none of which is complete and I also have a layout started upon which we cannot test run any trains yet! Thanks for clearing up the mystery everyone, something that would otherwise have been binned will now have a new lease of life with an arc roof and swearing blind it used to be Cambrian Railways property. That does leave me with the figure of the motorman and the gong removed from the not all that Clifton Downs coach as a prompt to have a go.

I have started a small layout project after a lengthy break in railway modelling. Part of this involves two girder bridges crossing a river. Pretty much all surviving minor bridges are painted in a high zinc content grey to hold back the rust. But if we wind back the clock pre WWII, when railway companies painted anything that stood still long enough, did the GWR paint their bridges in the standard stone colours and if so, was there a formula; eg: Panels light stone, reinforcements in dark stone? Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

I have been looking around for prototype information about GWR lamp huts, so ended up here, whilst I am sure that if you can find something close enough / adapt / scratchbuild to suit your location it's down to: How far do you want to go. Whilst I am in no way an expert on the subject, I tend to look at things with an eye to does it LOOK right? I had a look at the Wills lamp huts with the long rear window and the ventilator on top and it looks identical to the one standing just off the platform end at Loughborough Great Central station. It's been there since at least 1975, probably been there longer. If it isn't an original fitment, chances are that it was rescued locally so would be likely of LMS LNER ancestry.

And not enough scrap brass in those buffers to make it worth a 300 mile round trip to the local junkyard either. I have a similar problem whenever I see a worthwhile vintage motorcycle project for sale, it's almost always located in Cornwall or the Scottish Highlands. In fact, the last one we collected involved a trip to the most southwestern point of Wales. About a 600 mile round trip. Not much of a journey in Canadian terms, but with the price of petrol in the UK and a 63 year old van, it was quite the adventure. I have found Dean pattern coach buffers on the Dart castings website. MJT IIRC?

Because you had mentioned doing just that, I was inspired to have a go. Otherwise I would never have known. I think that the quality of build and finish on your example far outweighs any discrepancy in the panelling.

On the subject of dead clerestories, I ended up with this in an eBay bundle that included a "Kit built" toad. It wasn't, it was junk. But cheap junk with scale wheels and metal handrails. Obviously, this coach started out as one of the all second coaches. It appears to represent some form of autocoach. Does anyone know what, how close it is to any prototype and is it worth my while repairing and improving it, or should be junk it, fit a spare plain end I have and use the body for something vaguely ex-Cambrian Railway?

I am certain that they would have been fitted in a jig with a press tool in the factory, to stop them falling out. Triang toys were always robust. I have just found six buffers in the junk box. That sorts out both the D15 and the M&SWJR brake van. I have had a look on the 247 Developments website and not only found the bogies but also parts for a locomotive project I have on the back burner. I have just swapped the scruffiest clerestory I have ever seen for a used kick-start spring. My mate got it at a swap meet. It does at least have scale wheels. If I can get the paint off...

Thanks, I'll have a look for cast buffers, but not before I have had a look through the box of wreckage, which is starting to resemble the aftermath of the crash at Quintinshill. Anyone else noticed how Triang brass buffers are easy to pull out but a @#£%&*?! to push back in?

Thankyou for the encouragement, getting those old panel divisions scraped flush takes a bit of concentration and as the plastic changes colour slightly once you cut away the surface it's tricky knowing whether you have removed every last trace. Priming should show that up. As for bogies, I may have to go down the white metal route or printed if I can find them. I am tempted to try cutting down some plastic bogies just as an exercise and not worrying too much about strict accuracy. I will also need to remove the triang bogie mountings and create bolsters for the new ones at correct spacing. I have also removed the end handrails to fit wire substitutes. Any advice you can give me on buffers? The plastic Hornby ones make the original brass Triang items look like something from a P4 exhibition layout.

Having read through the thread again I decided to sort out the panels either side of the luggage doors and scraped away the ribs once I had cut away as much as I dared using a very sharp curved blade. After a couple of attempts, I cut new panel divisions from 0.010 plasticard. I am going to let them harden overnight before cleaning up any rough spots and priming.

As it was me who went slightly off track and left this topic upside down in a field of sprouts, I thought I had better be the one to re-rail it. As an antidote to the New years day ritual of meeting groups of like minded idiots on antediluvian motorcycles at a tea stall in the middle of nowhere, I have been sat in the warm and happily committed creative atrocities on another tatty clerestory. The body was good on this one, but the roof had been painted with what I can only presume was a cake fork. It is though, my attempt at a D15.

Quite. I can picture the Ducking Giraffe furtively hiding the wreckage of his Eurostar and the Triang trophies inside a fake air vent like Clint Eastwood in Alcatraz. Just when he thinks he's gotten away with it and starts to dream about souping up a lima HO LMS 4F, (are there any left?) a shadowy figure appears in the cell doorway. Peering into the gloom, Giraffe realises that the figure isn't shadowy, but monochrome and dressed in a 1930s postman's uniform. He recognizes the ghost of Dave Riley, spirit guide and Jedi master to railway modellers.... "Yer wastin yer time! He announces. Giraffe replies with a start "Well, what are you doing?" "Just watching you wastin yer time..." "Well you waste your time and I'll waste mine!" Undeterred, our hero pushes ahead with his master plan. He knows that he has the skills to stop the tyres falling off an Airfix Prairie tank and once even straightened out a warped Triang shortie coach (by sticking it under the grill with his dinner) I can't wait to read about The Great Escape, no doubt it will be more convincing than the Guy Martin re-run. But that's another story. Nothing to do with model trains, although the bike used was a plastic replica of real vintage British iron....

Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a go. It's likely to be this phone having an embolism as much as anything. I know that as soon as I navigate to the home page it crashes on me. I had a rather short window to get the boards built and in the house so posted it here. I will be hacking up another clerestory shortly as penance and will post pictures! The bike is a 1949 BSA ZA7 Star Twin, which as you probably know was BSA's flagship sports bike in the 40's. It's kept shiny but is my regular transport and definitely no slouch!

Back to work after the Christmas obligations (Though we did manage to go out on the motorcycle Christmas morning) and we are almost done building something to run the Triangstein's monsters on. It needs bracing on the legs and is only loosely bolted together here in the shop as the floor was apparently designed for modelling rollercoasters. It's five 1200x600 boards, which gives me plenty of scope for a decent run of single track in an uncluttered landscape. I know this isn't the right thread for layouts, but I can't navigate this site without it crashing for some reason.

Superelevation on curves and the correct angle of ballast shoulder should also be checked as well as sleeper spacings before they proceed. You'll be rebuilding the wobbly sugar cane railways of Trinidad by the time they've got to your house. Probably using secondhand Hornby Dublo three rail.... Hope I didn't offend anyone who is actually from Barnsley. I'm from darkest Shropshire, so it's generally assumed that I can play the banjo with my feet...

Barnsley? I've been there. Once. Even people from Barnsley won't tell you they're from Barnsley. I'd get rumbled straight away.

I don't see that as a problem, more a task awaiting a solution. Anyone objecting to your storylines, or indeed my decision to mix dare I say it, finescale scenery with code 100 track (albeit with large radius points) so that I can run whatever old junk I choose may take up the matter with Miss R. Riding Hood in our complaints department. She bought me the track.

You might all be sniggering about all this, especially you committed finescale modellers, but have you considered all those people who have been charged with"historical crimes"? Are any of us safe? I have stuck my head above the parapet and come out of the closet as a railway modeller after a 20 year break and I am worried about the sins I committed against historical accuracy, scale and even country of origin! I felt so much weight come off my shoulders when Miss Riding Hood and I first got to know each other. We were sitting having a romantic bacon butty with a bunch of other motorcyclists near Ribble viaduct and she said: "I have a dirty little secret, I used to go to the Harry Potter conventions...." She gave me the Bambi eyes look that said "Please don't laugh at me and leave me stranded by the roadside". I buckled, I could no longer hide behind the oil stained fingernails and swastikas on my leather jacket. "I like model trains!" I blurted. I expected her to reel back in horror, but she hugged me, "It's okay, I know Hogwarts Castle should have been painted green." So I have started building models again, just something simple we can hide in the privacy of our bedroom - consenting adults and all that. BUT. Might this new found joy be short lived if the wrong people find out that as a teenager I ran a Triang Dean single and a Hornby Brittania on the same track? Worse still, a Lima GMC diesel appeared at times, pulling 3 Triang clerestories, 2 Hornby Pullmans and 2 Airfix B sets? Have you ever seen Lord of the isles dragging a re wheeled Hasegawa WW2 German railway gun? Damn me for using my real name on here. It's not Robert Wolf, it's Neil and I am from Basingstoke!