Oldddudders

Thanks for your cotinuing assistance guys. I checked the wagons against the coupler gauge and they are spot on. I have checked that the NEM is right home on the 25 and it appears to be.

The Kadee is still sitting low and the trip bar is lower than the plate on the coupler gauge not mucg but enough to be noticable and catch it.

Kadee sell trip-pin pliers, which I have found useful over the last 20 years - but they aren't exactly cheap. Long-nosed pliers, gently squeezed, will get the pin bending a little, but do it in the middle of the curve, so there isn't too much strain on the pin-head joint. It's the end of the pin that needs to be lifted, to avoid baulking on checkrails etc. The rest of the curved part of the pin will usually glide over obstacles even if it is still a bit low, and the plastic NEM shank should obviate risks of shorting.

I tried an 18 and it sits to low, that's what prompted the question really.

 

E

Sadly for you, all four of the Kadee NEM-fitting couplings - #s17-20 - are the same height, suggesting that the coupling box is wrong. If you want to use Kadees, you may be faced with altering the mounting, and using a US-standard model. Check their website for heights and over- or under-shank types.

...but it does look just like the real thing

Do we get the overall roof AND the columns? Please?

*facepalm*

..and you could probably assemble them for less by using the spare parts from East Kent Models.....

It seems unlikely from the murky image that his day job is as a photographer, either!

Miles Davis - The Birth of The Cool.

"Squeaky Balloon" jazz can be a bit hard to listen to, but this is still good stuff, even fifty years on!

Crikey! Someone likes real music! Have that album somehwere, but at this precise moment I have something by MD with Billy Cobham playing. Recently been using Deb's car to visit her in hospital (gallstones) and had elderly compilation CD playing. Fave "oh, yeah!" recall tracks on it - Don Ellis's Turkish Bath (from Electric Bath album, 1969), and a remix of Lola's Wax The Van (circa 1987). Unknown to an entire RMWeb readership, I'm sure.

Playboy Magazine, which in the days when I saw it was actually a very upmarket publication, full of good stuff, very classy advertising and only a v small % of T&B, used to publish an annual awards section for music, films etc. They got votes from readers and industry peers - e.g. an All-Star guitarist voted for by other top guitarists etc. In the Spring 1970 awards, the Electric Bath album came second out of a very long list - behind Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, the most influential jazz and crossover album of the age, and indeed perhaps starting crossover as a category. I seem to have Bitches Brew in all three formats - vinyl, cassette, CD.

With the 4CEP & 2EPB being done I think that it wil be a matter of time before the like of the 4TC get's an airing. Ideal was to lengthen many of the unit formations and can be used with the 33 or 73 in MU mode - I remember that there was a 1980's service 4TC & 33 from Cardiff to south coast.

The 4TCs were an essential component of Southern Region's abolition of steam on the remaining route from Waterloo-Weymouth in July 1967. Not exactly new units, being endowed with previous-generation underframes I think, the TCs were intended to run as the leading units from Waterloo, with power provided by the 3,200 hp 4REP pushing. On arrival at Bournemouth, a push-pull fitted BRCW Type 3 - aka Crompton (or Class 33 to modern folk) - would be attached to the leading TC, and off they would go over the non-electrifed route to Weymouth. On the return journey, the Crompton would push the TC onto the rear of the 4REP, uncouple, and back to Waterloo they'd go. Often 2x 4TCs would be used, although only in peak times would they both go to Weymouth. In service, it was quickly found that pushing 8TC produced some discomfort in the leading vehicles, and so the REP was then typically marshalled in the middle of a 12-car train.

Southern Region train planners being a clever lot, and the engineering having been designed to be as compatible as possible with other vehicles, the TCs found themselves being used on other routes, including as you say Cardiff, and Waterloo -Salisbury, as well as the Kenny Belle from Clapham Junction. Extension of the third rail to Weymouth in the late 80s, together with the arrival of the 5-WES (Class 442 if you must) spelt the end of the TC's natural environment.

Before the TCs were used, the usual maximum number of passenger vehicles propelled in regular service in the UK was just 2, while the TCs were intended to - and did - operate as 8 cars being propelled. Southern innovation!

I think this item is apeing colour light signals, where the red is always placed lowest to be closest to the driver's eyeline. So 'tis said, anyway. The fact that this is two signals on the same post is obviously a concept too far for the vendor.

Well, I respect the right of those that argue in favour of the WHHR to do so, but in my experience on the 'big' railway (nearly 30 years and counting), the correlation between 'immature' and 'lacking in competence' is fairly secure. I see it regularly in terms of the longevity/experience of the various (smaller) railway organisations that I deal with on a work basis.

While, compared to the Captain, I am very out-of-date in terms of those who run the industry, I do see a dramatic difference in the management style of the two "adversaries" in this most unfortunate confrontation. The WHHR, who could be seen by their connection with Russell to have "got on site" first by quite some years - 1964? - seems to me to be an organisation composed of decent, hard-working, genuine enthusiasts. Sadly for them the FR people are hard-nosed businessmen, the sort of folk who bankers and others representing European Union interests prefer to deal with. As a result, the FR got the nod and the cash, and I do not think that the WHHR would have made the same success, even if the field had been clear - as it was in 1964 when the Russell people began their then-lonely quest.

We are, as they say, where we are, and everyone concerned needs to look forward and forget the injustices or otherwise of the past.

Ah, look at the seller name. SMCtoys aka the late (and very much NOT missed) Southampton Model Centre who shut up their real shop (if you could call it that, they used to shut on a Saturday including the day when the model show was in town!!) and now concentrate on flogging well overpriced Lima tat on Ebay. They also list a lot of the other annual wagons as well and upwards of thirty notes a piece, avoid these cowboys like the plague!!

I remember them! They had double-page ads in RM/CM, seeking to buy surplus trains in any known configuration of scale/prototype etc. So in 1998 I rang 'em, offering some US HO. Yes, we'll buy it, quoth he. So I travelled from deep Kent to the Solent (yes it was free, yes it was 1st Class, yes I was staff) and was offered less than £1 per vehicle for quite nice US freight cars. Natch, common sense said take the money, and I did, but hearing that they have moved into this line of legal but marginally-moral vending is no surprise. Wotever, their measly £47 for 52 freight cars helped me finance my move into Digitrax DCC, which I have never regretted.

Looks like you've produced a plausible silk purse out of a sow's ear here. Skills & patience in great evidence! Hope the client appreciates your commitment!

Charming stuff. The attraction of this utterly freelance world is that it is limited only by the builder's imagination - nearly anything goes. Nit-pickers and pedants - many of whom are so constrained by their quest for authenticity that they accomplish very little - pass you by on these layouts! More please.

So perhaps we should just get on with enjoying, when the opportunity arise, what we have got - a new railway through a spectacular part of a fascinating country running decent size trains which can carry enough people to hopefully make the operating finances stand up?[/i]

Thankyou Mike. A typically balanced view, seeing the bigger picture - which in this case is simply enormous, being the re-opening of 25 miles of narrow gauge railway dead for more than 70 years. The WHHR also has a lot to offer, including Russell, and all this in an area not famed for its affluence, but outstanding in its beauty. RMWeb has no locus in this deplorable dispute, but let us surely agree that a solution to provide the most opportunities for enthusiasts, families and other visitors to the area is now the only objective worth pursuing.

 

Also to do all this work I have had to take some of the locos of the layout so I thought I would photo them.

 

Crikey! Most sales stands at shows have a lot fewer locos than that!

Ever heard the phrase "measure twice, cut once"? Well mine is "Measure twice, mark it out all wrong and cut once".

Certainly doesn't apply to your fine models but I think the professional version of this is :

Measure with a micrometer, mark it with chalk, cut it with an axe! Probably less inaccurate in scales somewhat larger than O.....

Yet another cracking model of a Scots prototype. Seems Scotland brings out the best in some people's skills. Well done!

I'm sorry, but I don't entirely understand the situation.

What will happen to the WHRL's headquarters at Porthmadog? Is it to be swallowed into the FR/WHR running line or is it to remain?

Will the 'new' WHR still be able to run into Porthmadog (FR)?

You are not alone in not "entirely" understanding the situation - that applies to most of us outside the immediate parties' top teams and advisers, including me. I think the WHRL Porthmadog site is secure, but they had hoped to run trips over the newly-reconstructed Welsh Highland route towards Beddgelert and Caernarvon. It is that aspiration which appears dashed by the FR decision. The FR-owned WHR services will reach Porthmadog in due course, having already moved/removed part of the WHRL trackbed in the approaches to the Network Rail crossing, which has hardly endeared them to WHRL. There may, I think, still be an interchange station between the two railways, but the WHRL would regard that as limiting their appeal - and hence income - compared with track access further north.

Weren't the WHR people down by Porthmadoc station against the new FR/WHR venture?

It is a long-running and complex dispute. I think they (WHHR) knew the limitations of their own likely future expansion, and recognised early on that they risked being steamrollered by the FR machine. It is a shame that the two companies can't work together for the common good and, as PaulRHB points out, at grass-roots level there are probably plenty of FR/WHR people who would welcome doing just that.

There was a previous RMWeb thread on this in which many views were expressed. I just think it's bad for all concerned, and ultimately may mean less money being spent by punters overall, which is silly.

Very sad that a few people are playing politics like this to get things then go back on the earlier deals on minor technicalites. Yes the WHR-FR needs to run it as a business but there do seem to be one or two up top who like pushing their weight around, this certainly isn't true of the operating staff though.

You'd have thought an offer to let them run even a limited amount of trains in the gaps in the timetable would have been better PR to at least show some willing.

I suspect the sums of money involved in the rebuilding mean that the FR "Business Plan" drives everything - including regarding the WHHR as lice in their hair, to be eradicated. In that respect, the recession can't be helping anyone with their income stream, and thus deeper trenches get dug. My impression from more than 30 years ago, gained from talking to people who knew a few on the FR at the time, is that FR's success has always been based upon a single-minded approach, and to the casual customer that has been seen to work. Turning off the enthusiasts and volunteers who are the lifeblood of the preservation movement seems, however, to be counter-productive in the extreme. All very sad.

Sorry to report that the festering row about who runs trains where on the wonderful Welsh Highland has been resurrected. Details on Barrie Hughes's excellent but unofficial site http://www.isengard.co.uk/#News

I wouldn't fancy taking the steps with a skin-full, though I did accomodate a landing half way up for a breather!

Apologies for hi-jacking your fine thread with these irrelevances, Craig, but it is kinda nice to find fellow-path sufferers! I knew a girl who spent her honeymoon at Trebarwith, while her father, now deceased, was busy managing the rolling stock fleet for the South Eastern Division!

So just how "small" is the layout Andrew?

I think the thread title says 9' x 2'?

Pete

A lot less interesting than the other detailed replies you've had to date, but border crossings in the passport sense hardly exist in Europe now. I live in France, but when I drive into Begium, or Germany, or Luxembourg - each of which is still a sovereign state in its own right - I only know I've arrived there because ther MAY have been a sign by the road! Minor roads lack even those, so it is only roadside "furniture", names and general signs that tell you you've crossed over! I believe this is in some contrast to the US borders with e.g. Canada, where friends have indicated delays can be long and tedious, and officials can get decidedly "funny".

Oh, yes, there is one crossing that is still regimented in Europe - getting back into Britain, where I was born, still takes a check with passport and steely stare from an official at the Eurostar terminal in Paris! The UK has not signed up to the "no passport" agreement common to many other EU states, so naturally the states that it borders with via the Channel take a similar view of Brits entering their land, too!

And an amply-proportioned balding gent to represent Doc Martin if you go with Port Wenn - sorry - Port Isaac

Bit slow on this, sorry. Port Isaac is aka Tresoddett, courtesy of Posy Simmonds (sometime Grauniad cartoon strip artist, e.g. The Silent 3 Of St Botolphs) who lives nearby. As for the pub, yes boozy evenings in the Golden Lion, before staggering up the hill. Wherever you stay in Port Isaac, it's always uphill from the Golden Lion!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RARE-Hornby-DUBLO-3-RAIL-D1-SR-GOODS-VAN-MINT-BOXED-/400121791049?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item5d291e0249

Sincere Dublo enthusiasts and other suckers kindly form an orderly queue. Oi! No shoving, there!

US modellers have been at this sort of thing for years. Given the enormous number of railroads that have operated in that continent, adding one of your own devising is hardly likely to cause disturbances. Thus a number of the most feted and successful of US model empires have featured imagined companies. Two that come to mind are W.Allen McClelland's Virginian & Ohio, and Tony Koester's Allegheny Midland. Each identified very closely with a particular area of the US, reflecting topography and traffic from that region, and was scenicked accordingly. Locomotive liveries - steam and diesel - were intended to be "typical" in design, reflecting the era of the model's assumed prototype. Freight cars were - just as would be the case in the UK - a mixture of "fictional home road" lettered cars, and faithful models of actual prototypes from surrounding railroads, the ones with which the fictional road "would" interchange traffic.

Unquestionably this is tougher to do in the UK, although the proliferation of TOCs has helped a little. Tougher still in the steam era. Needs some careful thinking through, perhaps.