The Fatadder

Now feeling like I'm talking to the farmer down the road from my parents place..... Sticking it on the front of a Newton Abbot bound freight sounds as plausible as it's going to get. Just need a lubricator cover and chimney to replace the missing Hornby bits and finish it off now...

Very nice, can't get enough brown stock... Nice to see it going through the double slip into the yard, every time I go into the garage I think about starting the build before chickening out and them starting on something else. So today instead of building track I am reprinting a Hornby 42xx into wartime black, with standard GWR logos. (I think I'm right in saying that it was one specific (Welsh?) depot which did the simplified ones). How it has escaped from St Blazey and made it to Brent I have yet to work out a plausible reason...

Sunshine stock I believe, but not RTR diagrams

The 4mm list on there has a couple more options which would pass through Brent

One of the 4 place name type, ie the London Exeter, Plymouth Penzance type thing? Not seen any photos, so no idea on coach types, but the Kingsbridge direct coaches from London had roof boards.

Really like that. To the point that I'm now thinking that once I restart work on Kites Croft at some unspecified point in the future (certainly once Brent is much more progressed) I will be copying the cover design. Given the layout lives between the legs of Brent's fiddleyard, protection will be important!

I would assume not (I think the consensus is that Colour Rail's 1946 photo of a King in great crest western livery is miss dated!). However for me I do like a shirt button loco for rebranding, having a much smaller crest to remove (which is covered by the new arms transfer) making the job a lot easier. I may well get on with rebranding my current King this weekend (if I don't get tempted to do work on Brent instead...)

Hmm, that gives me an idea. It's my birthday next month, and I'm taking my (2 year old) daughter with me to the Steam show. If I were to come home with a Bristolian pack, I can claim she insisted on me having it for my birthday...). She did say earlier that daddy should get trains for his birthday (while my wife was trying to convince her I should get a toddler present...)

Bit of a shame it contains two brakes, given they seem to be the most common availability of the earlier livery (with the least common), I was half tempted by this set, and if as usual it ends up with another 30 to 40 pounds knocked off the price in 6months time I will be rather tempted. Definitely need another King, and more decent coaches is always helpful....

Definitely some workings in 1947 which had a mix of both lengths, the carriage working booklet for through trains lists the length when a 70ft is specified. I know there is at least one Paddington to Penzance service in there which has one 70ft break with the rest shorter

When's the layout due in BRM? Looking forward to seeing the rest of the photo shoot!

The more photos you post, the more I am referring this as a benchmark to try and match with Brent. Keep them coming!

Unfortunately as I expected last weekend's Tigermoth flight was cancelled due to the high winds (particularly gutting given how good the weather has been before / after). Anyway, this was as close as I could get to a Tigermoth.... Now rebooked for October... Having completed my charity walk between Wellington and Exeter on Saturday, (and recovered on Sunday), today was spent in the garage working on the layout. Work has progressed on the track at the Plymouth end, another Vee was fitted along with a continuation of the up and down main to almost reach the fiddle yard. This was a little tricky after spotting a big mistake in the alignment of the down main in the Templot plan which had to be corrected by eye. In order to avoid getting bored with only building track it was time to get on with something else, in this case the Avon bridge end section. This was the start point. the first job was to cut the ply track bed down to side, adding in a couple of extra ribs cut to a rough profile. Once screwed into place the track was laid, before making a start filling in the holes with pink foam. The other side really needs the basic frame of the bridge in place before I start building the sub frame / pink foam, and that can't be done until the Autumn / winter when the prototype is more visible. Next up will be more track building, although I am starting to think about building either the up platform or the vicarage road bridge...

Thanks for that, I didn't realise that 5071 had at one time the 8 wheel tender. I hope it had gone by 47!

A question that hopefully you might know the answer on, what's the best place to buy Lego parts? I'm in the progress of building my 80s/90s Lego with the plan of passing it on to my daughter when she's a bit bigger (or if I get away with it building a 90s town under the layout...) Anyway, almost everything is there, however there seem to be a few components that have gone missing over the years. So I want to get replacement bits to sort them out. Also need to replace s lot of the stickers, but that's a different story...

It's such a shame that such a fine model has been spoiled by such a silly idea, particularly given the manufuture and commissioning agent have been advised such with plenty of time to accept it was a poor choice and move on. I note that DJM are not proposing the same approach for names on their class 92, so clearly it's possible to glue a name on in the traditional way. if the 48 or 58xx ran through Brent, I'd be looking in a bit more detail as to how to fix it. As it is, they didn't so given I already have a heavily rebuilt airfix / high level for Kites Croft, I will be giving it a miss. The King however is a different story, and with a need for 1 or 2 more kings at a minimum I live in hope that they change the design (otherwise it will likely be a couple more Hornby locos added...)

I do like the finish you have got on your WD 280, mine is looking for too clean at the moment! Also good to see someone else has one on loan to GWR with the top feed cover (and presumably also with the fire iron tunnel). It's taken a lot of research so far, and I still haven't definitively found out if this was a GWR mod, or WR circa 1948....

Thanks for that, so logically it would be added to the next west bound train stopping at Swindon around the time the lner service arrived in Swindon. I think I've seen that time in one of the documents I've been looking at, so hopefully it will fill in the gaps.

Not remotely correct, if I remember rightly the guys that did the restoration thought it looked better. Personally I think it looks awful! (But still better than BR lined green!)

Speaking from the perspective of someone else modelling '47 Brent, I'd certainly welcome any further details on those signals. Thanks for sharing some interesting information there, it will certainly come in handy in another year or so when I have finished the track building and started looking at signals...

I still struggle to understand why these kits are so uncommon (before the Coopercraft takeover), Slaters clearly were pretty awful in marketing them. I think Coopercraft had sides for 2 more thirds and 2 composites, but only 2 more roofs and one set of ends. I'm rather regretting that I didn’t pick up at least one more while I was there. If I see Coopercraft at another show and they still have some, I won't make that mistake again. Given there was still a lot of talk about the ongoing legal action, I'm sure all of the Slaters parts on offer must have been old stock. Progress on the build is rather limited now, as in order to do much more I need to place an order for more parts (in particular the posts for the underframe truss, bogies (for which I need to confirm what type I require) and corridor connections. The aim is to stock up at While focus remains on the layout, progress will remain slow…

From what I can see it looks like it should be good, just need to get the rest of the point built and run some stock through it. Very satisfying seeing the first loco running through a point that you have built yourself! One hint (no doubt pinched from one of the track building threads) that I have found useful is adding a length of 0.6mm thick copperclad across the sleeper at the front of the vee, and then soldering the vee and the check rails/ short length between the vee and switch rail. I didn't do it on my first point and it proved a pain to wire up!