Ruston

I have plenty of 16-tonners, all customised in one way or another. Mainly Airfix with a few Bachmann, but they're all with either post-1964 markings or TOPS numbers. These new Accurascale wagons will be ideal for the 1950s period on the new layout, where I won't have any comparison with the existing ones as the stock from the layouts will never need to mix. I'm going to need at least a dozen to form one train. Instead of two NCB internal users with crosses on the sides, it would have been nice to have a Yorkshire pack, with the white bands on either side of the centre door, in both black and red liveries. Did I hear @Islesy say ICI poo wagons in the video? What the..?

The thing that I never understand is that whenever I build a kit, or a scratchbuild, everything is quite precise when compared to the amount of slop in the mechanisms of RTR locos. As soon as I try to build in all that slop, in order to get them to go around tight curves, they cease to run. What was a silky smooth chassis won't even run now. How do they build things seemingly so sloppy yet get them to work so well? I've had enough of it. I've got an old Bachmann Jinty chassis, that has a fried motor, and I'm going to take a saw to it and make it fit the Lanky body. I know the Jinty wheels are too small but if I can make the chassis fit, Bachmann sell spare wheelsets and so something such as Johnson 3F wheels should fit into the Jinty chassis.

It might look good but they don't work. The rods just keep on binding at various spots and then they fall off because the nuts come undone whilst I'm trying to test it and work out what's wrong. I put it back in its box, before I reached for a lump hammer! I'm sick of the ruddy thing.

If I could have separated the two laminations I did consider cutting them and using the centre crank pin as the joint. It wouldn't be prototypically correct, but it would work as far as allowing the axle to move is concerned. I didn't feel confident that the rods would come apart without the parts becoming useless. I've tried that sort of thing before and with my soldering iron but it doesn't create enough heat. One end has cooled before the other has got hot enough to melt the solder. I tried it once with a blowtorch and the parts ended up twisted and unusable. One side done and jointed.

Not wth the way I make rods. Measuring the centres of existing holes isn't usually a problem because when I make rods I'm usually making the frames at the same time. I've just been in the shed and have made the first stage of a pattern for milling. I'll run off one in brass to check that the holes fit the wheels in their chassis and if that's OK I'll make the bit with the joint and its hole, then make the rods proper in nickel silver.

There are bigger problems than what identity to choose. The chassis ran as smooth as silk when power was put to the motor. As it doesn't yet have pickups I slackened the grub screw in for the axle the gearbox and attempted to push it around the curve at the end of the layout. It wouldn't stay on the track as there wasn't enough lateral movement in the axles. I pulled the wheels off, took out the fibre washers and pressed the wheels on and tried again. Now it would go around the curve until I tried it with the rods on and then it wouldn't because the one-piece rods won't allow lateral movement of the centre axle. I need to make some jointed rods, from scratch, but the problem is accurately measuring the wheelbase or rod centres. I can't find the wheelbase of the prototype online and even if I could there's no guarantee that the etches have been made to those dimensions.

SIXTEENTONTASTIC!

Oh no it isn't! 52461 turns out to be from a batch of just 7 that had shallow valances. My model has the usual deep ones. These old Lanky plodders are a minefield for the unwary. I'm used to industrials being different but I imagined that with main line stuff, one class would contain identical engines but it isn't the case with these. I will need to find another picture of a specific loco.

That has had to change. As soon as you start looking into these things in detail you always find out that you really didn't know anything. 52244's tender had strange upside down springs above the usual ones. It also had coal rails, which my model doesn't. The buffers seem to have been replaced with some that have rectangular bases and none of that tallies with the model, so I've had to find an alternative. 52461 is the perfect match. I found a photo of it in BR service. Normal tender springs, no coal rails, original buffers, Ross Pop safety valves. It was a Wakefield engine and is also one my dad underlined in his ABC. It lasted even longer than 52244, being moved from Wakefield to Mirfield in 1960 and finally withdrawn from Sowerby Bridge in 1962.

Progress with the viaduct. Two arches done, five to go. I'm not altogether happy with it, but I suppose it looks alright from a distance. It's made from artists mounting card that has been laser etched and so, unlike plasticard, I can't simply paint it the main colour and then run a wash of the mortar colour in to the courses as it simply soaks in, leaving virtually nothing in the way of a mortar course showing. I've had to use polyfilla type stuff to fill the courses. Getting the excess off is a pain and getting a consistent finish on the different panels is not easy. The top surfaces of bricks at the outside edges of the panels delaminate at the slightest knock and filling in the white spots seems to be a never ending game whilst the thing is being worked on. There is also the fact that my friend, who drew the CAD, made the sections join at the tops of the arches, which makes it very difficult to disguise the joints. If they had been on the pillars then it would have been as simple as an overlay to hide them.

Pretty much the same here. I had some visitors over last Sunday, after the EM exhibition, and ran CVMR for the first time this year. I didn't clean the track or rub the graphite stick and the loco that has been kept in its shed ran out and down the line without a problem. I never clean the wheels on any loco either. When I build one, or buy one RTR, I rub a section of FY track with graphite and also rub it onto the wheels of the loco and then put something heavy in front of it to prevent it from moving, whilst letting it run against it to get the wheels nicely coated.

Handrail pillars and rails fitted and the whole thing etch primed. Wheels fitted. I need to paint the wheels and then sort some proper fixings to keep the rods on. I won't be using the Gibson crank pins and may just solder bits of brass tube over the screws and file them down.

I don't exhibit, so I can't really advise on that. I only clean the track if any work has taken place on the layout, otherwise it's just the occasional rub over with the stick.

It wouldn't be the first one to be deliberately done wrong by Bachmann and others. I've got a Goldendale one where I'm sure the prototype wasn't an RCH 1923 spec. wagon, but I'm not too fussed to be honest. I've got the wagons and they're too good to not use - why let facts get in the way of a good weathering? 😁 Today's job has been to make the waste tip. The form of it was done some time ago, using card and papier mache. It has now been covered with crushed shale, sand, broken brick coal dust and some model ballast for good measure. The glue isn't dry yet, so there are white patches everywhere.

I collected the parts for the viaduct, yesterday. Unfortunately, the arches and the front panels were supposed to have been altered to English Bond, with the arches themselves having headers instead of stretchers, before cutting. They have been done as on the test piece and are NBG. The abutments and all the other parts have been done to the new spec. and as a result this is as far as I can go with the RH side. The abutment for the LH side can also be taken to the same stage but no further.

The 27 had an overnight bath in paint stripper. I managed to get the handrails and their pillars off the boiler. Both rails and pillars were obviously oversize, so have gone in the bin.

The thing that's always put me off EM is having to build my own track. Points in particular because even though there are point "kits", none of them will be suitable for tight industrial trackwork and everyone speaks a foreign language when discussing them. A B4 or whatever! What does that mean? It doesn't say how tight the curve is or what the overall length is. I'd have to scratchbuild them and spending days building a point only to find everything derails on it because I've messed up really doesn't appeal to me.

Progress has been made with the Lanky Class 27. I couldn't see how the old motor was held in place at first. Then it appeared to be held in by two screws that went through a crossmember and directly into the motor from underneath. There was no access to the screws, so I assume the bottom plate in the frames was added after the motor was screwed in. I had to use brute force and destroy the motor in order to get it out. I then cut out the mounting plate to allow the new motor, A High Level coreless type, to lay slightly between the frames. The gearbox is a Roadrunner plus 60:1. With the motor laying in the position shown, there will be space above it for a decoder. The plan is to fit a speaker in the tender and everything else in the loco itself. I think this kit has been the abandoned project of more than one previous owner as the standard of soldering on the tender and loco body is superior to that on the frames. I kept looking at the brake gear and knew there was something wrong and then it dawned on me that the hangers and brake blocks were all inside out! The blocks were all there but facing inwards and couldn't be seen. Taking it apart was easy as most of the soldering fell apart by itself. The little etch tags, where the parts had been cut from the fret, hadn't even been filed off the brake parts either. And now for a kit that I bought a couple of years ago, partially built. An Impetus "Hawarden" type 15-inch Bagnall 0-4-0ST. This is as far as I've got with it after four sessions of taking it out of the box and doing a little bit and then putting it back. The frames hadn't been assembled but the motion brackets had been soldered to the frame plates. Unfortunately, it seems the previous owner had intended to build it to EM as the motion brackets proved to be well inboard of their correct place once I put the frames together at a spacing for OO, so they have had to be cut off and bits of brass soldered in to space them out. I did try to remove them but I don't know what temperature solder has been used to put them in but my iron wouldn't melt it. It's back in its box again for now.

August 1956 and a motive power shortage at Wakefield (25A) meant borrowing a visiting Nuneaton Super D for a working from Blacker Lane D.P. to Normanton.

The layout will be run as different time periods by changing the engines and rolling stock. These ex-PO wagons will serve for the 1950s. I have 8 more to weather yet and these will also be joined by some more POs and a few steel-bodied 16-ton minerals. The 14 that I have at the moment have been stored in a box since I sold Nant-Y-Mynydd and have now received extra weathering and BR 'P' numbers.

Bagnall-built Austerity 2761 propelling a short rake of ex-PO wagons toward the screens at Blacker Lane opencast disposal point, August 1956.

Cheers, Rob. Today I have been painting the crews for the BR engines.

I can't seem to make one last more than a year. I start off with good intentions - don't do any painting or gluing on it but within a fortnight that's forgotten and it's a mess.

You are absolutely correct. I hadn't even noticed that.

Work on the viaduct has been delayed after someone pointed out that it ought to be in English Bond, rather than Plain Bond, so it's back to the drawing board for my laser etching contractor. Power lines and static grass. After Charlie's yard this seems like such a huge waste of space with no railway in it. Signalling cables. And the store hut has been turned 90 degrees and moved off the concrete simply because it got in the way when taking photos from the top of the embankment. I do prefer it like his now.