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Here's a URL to the Gallery pages of the UK S Scale Society http://www.s-scale.org.uk/gallery.htm This will give you some idea of what UK S scale modellers do although it is worth seeing an actual layout at an exhibition to appreciate the increase in size from 4mm scale (about +17%). Here's a list of S scale layouts at upcoming exhibitions over the next month or so - hopefully you might be close enough to at least one of them to be able to visit. Jas Millham's Abbey Street at the Bury St. Edmunds exhibition - 22nd September Jas Millham's Abbey Street at the Chelmsford exhibition - 20th October Trevor Nunn's "Trowland" at Beckenham and West Wickham exhibition - 20th October Trevor Nunn's "Trowland" at Spalding exhibition - 3rd/4th November Trevor Nunn's "Trowland" at Portsmouth exhibition - 17th November My layout "Jameston & Leven River"at the Thornbury exhibition - 17th/18th November Jas' and Trevor's layouts are scratchbuilt British outline layouts whereas my layout is North American style using mainly RTR locos and rolling stock from the US, but with scratchbuilt track and buildings. Jim.

Martin got in first. :-) The chairs were designed by Len Newman and bear a remarkable ressemblance to the Exactoscale 4mm products, apart from size. The rail was specially drawn to scale and the chairs are designed to fit the rail. Jim.

The costs of selling to the public from a specialist society are a serious consideration. Sales to society members can be packed in a basic fashion with no documentation because the products and their use have probably been covered in the society's journal to the members. As soon as you start selling to the general public you would have to consider proper packing and literature to minimise complaints from customers who don't have the information that members have. And, as you note, you might have to start employing someone in some form to cope with increased sales if products become popular. This all costs and are these costs to becovered by the society membership subscriptions, or do you increase the markup on general public sales so that the additional costs are covered? Jim Parts Officer, S Scale Society

I wonder if Exactoscale will be supplying the parts in bulk and not ready packed to the societies. That in itself would justify a cheaper price to the societies. Jim.

All the individual chair systems I can think of incorporate the rail inclination. Our original whitemetal S scale chairs of 40+ years ago had the appropriate inclination and our present plastic ones - also designed by Len Newman who designed the C&L and Exactoscale products - hold the rail at the proper inclination. I've also just checked some Cliff Barker G1 products and they have the rail inclination. It's not too difficult to adjust a gauge which has a deep parallel slot. Gradually take the edge off the non-gauge side of the rail slots with a needle file ( with a safe back) until the gauge fits easily on the rails when held in the chairs. You would probably require a lathe to do the same job on a Rolagauge. Jim.

Any hopes of the Caledonian/Stevens signal finial scanned at Bristol, 2017 :-) Jim.

Tony, The S scale tyre profile comes directly from a scaled down prototype loco wheel tyre. Ian Pusey's methods of generating an exact scale set of standards was to scale the prototype by 64. :-) I have supplied the same scaled drawing of this tyre to Newtech to get our form tools made and also to David White at Slaters to get wagon wheels provided to the standard. The flange width comes out at 18 thou and flange depth at 18 thou. It was more than likely that the Manchester people were working from the same, or similar, but found that 16 thou flange width and depth was a step too far with rigid suspension and that 18 thou width and 22 thou depth was a workable solution. They weren't the only ones looking at finer standards. Some years ago I saw some S scale locomotives built by the late Richard Harwood around 1960 which had, to my eyes, pretty well scale flange dimensions and I know that he wasn't the only one experimenting. I believe that Ian Pusey's drawing up the S scale exact standards in 1963/64 could have been to pull together the work of all the people experimenting. The EEM group in 4mm were doing similar around the same time. Jim.

In UK S scale, Ian Pusey's exact scale standards, which we all use, stipulates an 18 thou flange width with a 28 thou (0.7mm) flangeway so a narrower flangeway would have been possible in EM. I suspect that they stuck with the wider flangeways to retain some compatibility with the BRMSB EM standards of the time. Mike Sharman used to provide wheels to "Manchester" profile which were much used by S scale modellers as the flange width was compatible with our standards. The flange depth, at 22 thou, was a bit deeper than the 18 thou of the SSMRS flange, but some S scale modellers preferred the deeper flange to give a bit more leeway. The slightly narrower wheel width - 80 thou instead of the SSMRS 88 thou - still worked OK at common crossings. I believe that Colin Seymour provides the "Manchester" flange profile in his wheel range. Jim.

I found much the same. I couldn't get the focussed dot size of the G7 as small as I could with the standard lens and reverted to the standard lens. My G7 lens (second one) was a bit more efficient but I got better definition for another pass or two with the standard lens. I might have another go with the G7 lens and see if I can get any better results. Jim.

Here's my laser head showing the compression spring fully seated and projecting 2mm from the casing of the diode. This gives adequate friction to hold the lens in place. It also gives you and idea of the gauge of wire used in my spring. If you have got one with a much lighter gauge then there might be inadequate spring force. You can also see the projection of the diode case from the alloy extrusion of the head assembly. Originally the diode case was flush with the end of the extrusion and I was barely engaging half a turn of the lens thread when at optimum focus. The lens was also able to "wave about in the breeze" because of the minimal thread engagement and I wasn't sure that this wasn't happening during cuts giving loss of registration and accuracy. I pulled the diode case out by about 2.5mm from the flush position and that required about three-quarters of a turn engagement at optimum focus which really cut down the waving around. You will note the brass 8BA screw locking the diode case. This replaces the grub screw at the rear of the head (you can just make out the hole for that screw) and this allows me to take the complete head assembly off for lens cleaning without having to remove that grub screw and possibly disturb the diode setting. I suspect a problem that Emblaser might have is that the positioning of the diode in its housing is variable and this would alter the back focus. Maybe other diodes have a slightly different position that meant the lens screw engages several threads for proper focus. Jim.

I suspect that my lens fit is much the same as yours but my compression spring is strong enough to provide a fair bit of friction on its movement. It might be worth seeing if you can lengthen the spring by stretching it a bit to increase the pressure on the back of the lens. I would go careful with thread tape since the thread is quite fine and you might make it too stiff which would make adjustment quite difficult in situ. I'll see if I can get my head off tomorrow and measure the uncompressed length of my lens spring. Jim.

Giles, Thanks for that. I'll look at getting the larger fan and see how I get on. Jim.

That is a problem a few of us seem to have. When the focus is correct the lens is barely holding on by one thread. I got round this by moving the diode down to poke out of the alloy housing by about 3mm then the lens had more thread engagement when focussed. By loosening the grub screw at the bottom rear of the diode housing, you can move the diode down then re-tighten. If your diode is a tight fit in its hole, take off the fan and push it down from the top. Jim.

Why the bigger fan? I've run my E1 on quite long cuts - up to two hours continuous - and I don't seem to have had any overheating problems. In fact there are times when I wish a fan wasn't needed - like when cutting window frames out of thin card and the fan disturbs the cutout parts and blocks the laser beam. :-) Jim.

Go for it. :-)

I believe that Halford's red oxide primer is a pretty good match. I suspect that there would have been a bit of variation on the prototype as the paint aged and was affected by smoke, soot, etc. Jim.

I bought the upgrade to Cut2D Laser V9 a few months ago when it was announced. I also use Cut2D Desktop for CNC work and its update came out a few months earlier. Probably the biggest change in both was more drawing facilities. I normally do all my drawing in CAD then transfer to Cut2D for the tool path generation but I now find that I am doing adjustments and alterations to drawings in Cut2D with the better drawing facilities in V9. But I still prefer a CAD program for complex drawing work. Tool path generation facilities have been modified somewhat and there is a small bug in there which I've told Vectric about. If you generate a profile tool path either inside or outside a vector, then if you recall the tool path using the Edit button, it is reset to "ON" the vector. This caught me out once or twice when I wondered why a good fit had changed. :-) If you use the "Recalculate all tool paths" then all positions are set to "ON" the line no matter if they had previously been set to "INSIDE" or "OUTSIDE". I haven't heard any further from Vectric and I'm hoping they bring out a free bug fix. I haven't used Laser Picture in the tool path facilities as yet - my main interest is parts for buildings. :-) They have also included double sided cutting facilities which I haven't used as yet. I've normally worked out my own double sided solutions in the past and I haven't yet had an opportunity to try out their facility. There's a new version of VTransfer which now works well when cutting directly from the toolpath facilities in V9. I could never get the previous version to work and used Universal GCode Sender instead. I think I remember the very original VTransfer working very directly - i.e. when you sent a toolpath to the Emblaser, the Emblaser started cutting right away. With the new V9 version, the file is transferred to VTransfer then you have to hit the CUT button on VTransfer to start cutting. if you haven't seen, there's a "What's New" page on the Vectric web site https://docs.vectric.com/docs/V9.0/Cut2DLaserDesktop/ENU/Help/Whats%20New/Whats%20New.html There's also a video on the Cut2D Desktop for CNC which covers the new drawing facilities which are the same in both Desktop and Laser versions which might be of use. Jim.

I can confirm that. I remember filming in the Dalmellington area in the early 70s and being woken early morning by an NCB tank working wagons on the Dalmellington line. Jim.

VAT is a red herring. My business was VAT registered and all the accounts were done in net amounts. The VAT was done as a separate calculation by the accounting software which generated a VAT tax report to get the amount to pay (usually) to HMRC. If you started getting VAT mixed up with any of your business calculations then you would get in a right mess. You had to keep an eye on the VAT in case the payment to HMRC might give you cash flow problems. Jim.

Keith, These proceedings can take some time. One receivership took over four years to pay me something and by that time I had retired and closed down the company and I couldn't receive the money. The cost of re-opening my company to get the money would have been about the same as the amount I would have got. :-) Another receivership is still ongoing and that will have been about eight years. It's got a touch of the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. :-) But I would have expected JLTRT to be a compartively quick operation since there would probably not be too many creditors and debtors to account for. I'm not going to comment further until the liquidation is completed and the full facts are known. Jim.

I can't remember from other threads, but have you registered your claim with the liquidator and has he/she responded with any indication of whether your claim would be settled in full or otherwise. That should now be the only way that you will see your money repaid as an unsecured creditor if there are sufficient funds to do so. I speak with experience of being an unsecured creditor with several businesses which went into receivership or liquidation. Jim.

I remember that well, albeit in absence. :-) I left Dumbarton to start work in London just before the electrics started and I came back the following year when they had started running again. But a good friend regaled me with the stories of the hurried replacements with a fair variety of steam motive power trying to reproduce the electric timetable. But on the Gresley stock, I do remember that in steam days there used to be a morning non-stop commuter train from Helensburgh to Glasgow Charing Cross each morning (might have had one stop at Dumbarton). That was for the city gentlemen resident in Helensburgh and that would surely have had a high proportion of first class stock. I think there was a matching return train in the evening. I think I remember that these trains were carried over into the electric's timetable when they started although the hoy-poloy in Helensburgh would have to have put up with much reduced first class accommodation. :-) Jim.

Gresley 51ft stock was used on the North Clydeside lines from the 1930s until the arrival of the Glasgow Blue trains in 1960. I cannot remember any first class compartments being de-classified on the stock. I think all the stock used on the Clydeside routes was scrapped at Faslane shortly after the electric trains arrived. Jim.

Stephen, I was able to access the website this morning and I only got the "Website Moved" message when I tried to access it again about 12.30. So if the change took place some time this morning, it can take up to 24 hours for the DNS changes to wend their way round the web. So we might have to wait till tomorrow to be able to log on again. Jim.

Possibly plus the fact that it was post WW2 and the UK was broke and using home produced coal (for steam) rather than imported oil (for diesel) made economic sense at the time to keep the balance of payments more favourable. Jim.