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I went to the show on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed it (as usual) the selection of layouts meant something was available for all tastes (except perhaps O gauge live steamers). I managed to buy a few more N scale coal hoppers for moderate prices but controlled myself where a few other desirable items made my wallet itch! Many thanks lads, I had a great time until my legs started to give out - boy, was I glad of the lift to take me over the railway bridge to get my bus. Looking forward to next year's show.

I'm really sorry I missed it, thanks for all the photos and the video, it gives us absentees a glimpse of what we missed. Mind you it meant I didn't spend money on more stock I need like a third nostril.

Funny, but that's exactly the same way that I got started in N scale! I saw a B & O "President Polk" loco at a moderate price and bought it without noticing the N in the scale box. Now I have quite a large collection of both passenger and freight. Luckily the Mickleover Club Hillandale layout has a track for N scale (it also covers ON30 as well as OO/HO). It's quite satisfying to run my Kato Super Chief+El Capitan rig taking up most of the fiddle yard. Great advantage of N over HO to me is the lower weight of a big train is much less strain on my aged muscles getting it in and out of the car.

My P2 had the same fault of leaping into high speed from a standstill without steady acceleration that others have noted. I decided to convert it to DCC and, following the instructions, took the body shell off and fitted a Bachmann decoder. As a precaution, I ran the chassis bodiless up and down the test track and to my amazement it now accelerates slowly and smoothly in both directions. The main problem I had was fitting that wretched body fixing bolt back in place, I took about 20 or 30 goes before I managed to locate the screw into the threaded hole. By the time I had managed it I was using the kind of language that Corporal Dawson and Sergeant Lawrence used on us recruits at the Queen's Royal Regiment when our drill, kit, weapon handling etc did not match up to their stratospheric standards! For those trying this, I suggest attaching the screw to the driver by use of magic wax, the hole is too small to allow my usual choice of Bluetack. Worth it in the end though I think. Now the fine tuning of the CV's needs doing.

Hawick was a soldier's paradise in 1956, there was lots of work for ladies and little for men who tended to migrate away. When the little gaggle of us Ordnance blokes went into the Drill hall dance first time, there was an immediate announcement of a Ladies Choice dance, to our amazement there was a stamped of ladies across the floor and we wee all asked up right away. It wouldn't have happened in South Lancs where I lived at the time!! My girl friend paid me into the pictures because she earned a lot more than my £3/17/- per week, happy days.

Does the Drill Hall still exist, scenes of many evenings dancing for me? Also does the Common Riding Ball still go on? Some of us went - the rules stated evening dress, hunting kit or military uniform - we went in our battledress which was accepted but the majority of the military were the Lothians and Border Horse in their best blues, we stood out a bit!

I've only just found this thread but it stirred my memory. During the summer of 1956 I was stationed at Stobs Camp near Hawick serving in the RAOC who ran the Stores depot for the TA summer camps. Our buildings were near the railway station as goods arrived by train and were unloaded in a siding. I remember a party of Chunkies (Royal Pioneer Corps) refusing to put on chain mail gloves to unload a wagon of Dannert wire until their corporal knocked one of them down to put sense into their thick skulls! The camp was on two levels and we used to ride down illegally using the residual fuel in the jeeps on our vehicle park. Weekends saw the evening train packed with the licentious soldiery on their way to the dances in Hawick, where men were in short supply. The last train back was also packed as it was a long walk after an evening's dancing and canoodling, my girl lived in Newcastleton so she came back on the train with me. Sadly I can't remember what kind of loco pulled those trains, I had other (female) things on my mind at the time.

My P2 is the enhanced but not the sound version. I put it on my rolling road and ran it with no trouble at higher revs but like everyone else's it seems to jump away at low voltages. It had about 45 minutes running on the rolling road before being taken to the club and it ran round Hillandale for about another 1/2 hour towing a miserable five old type Hornby Gresley teaks with no problem. I think that when it's had a little more running I'll try it with a really long rake and see how it looks. I must say it looks great going through the scenery and I'm not complaining about the overall quality. As I tend to run them the packet of fiddly bits is in a drawer and will stay there. My kit earns its living by running round various layouts, not sitting in a glass case. With regard to the motor, it contrasts badly with the quality of motor/flywheel assemblies fitted to my Kato HO American stock. They are smooth as silk and powerful too; I've towed 50+ freight cars with no problem. Perhaps fitting a Kato motor assembly would be an even better bet.

One of our Mickleover Group's youngsters had the problem of one motor failing and again Hatton's came up trumps - the replacement was running in on our Hillandale layout last night. Hatton's really are good for service I've found.

I too don't understand how cellulose thinners can etch brass. I am a retired chemist and can see no reason how this could happen; on the other hand I would caution against soaking brass in caustic alkalis. There is a phenomenon called de-zincification which can occur with brass in alkaline solutions and even, over a time, in very soft water, which tends to have a higher pH than hard water. Under the microscope the surface appears to be like a Swiss cheese with holes where the zinc has dissolved leaving only the copper lattice holding the component together. I know from cleaning caked on castor oil from model aero engines that it pays to be cautious in your choice of cleansing product to avoid pitting. Aluminium, like zinc, is amphoteric and can dissolve in both acids and alkalis.

In a novel by Mario Puzo (the Godfather author) describing life among poor Italian immigrants in New York in the 20's, one of the characters has a job where he rides a horse through Hell's Kitchen waving a red flag to warn of the NYC train coming through the tenement area to the main rail yard. Now that would make an interesting diorama! For the life of me I can't recall the title, I did read it a while ago but the rice pudding between my ears won't regurgitate the name.

I think I have done Hattons a service unintentionally, I got mine as soon as they first came out and have been happily driving it round the MMRG Hilandale layout to the admiration of all. This has stimulated two of the junior members to pressurise their doting parents/grandparents/uncles etc into buying them one. So now we have three circulating on Hillandale - not always at the same time though. I still wish it was Gresley's monster but am happy with it as it is, well worth the money even though I have paid less for several 'as new' USA Mallets with DCC sound on eBay. Incidentally the sticking front bogey wheels seem to have responded well to a drop of oil and are now rotating in both directions of travel.

I've found my Garratt goes on the track OK using the long Peco rerailer - a lot easier I might add than getting a recalcitrant Big Boy or Cab Forward on the rails. As for the loco lifts, I use them on most of my American artics, I buy three Peco lifts to make two, if that makes sense. I saw one in half and then graft it on to the other whole one using small sized aluminium angle. Admittedly I call on my brother to mill down one side so it doesn't foul the rail; I use some small self tappers to fasten it and this seems to work OK for me. Not as elegant as the MPD beauties, I agree, but functional and a damn sight cheaper.

My Hatton's Garratt arrived in perfect condition and has run superbly well except for one small fault, the front pony truck wheels don't seem to rotate all the time when going forwards, but do when in reverse. Never mind, when it hauls empties (40ish) round the MMRG "Hillandale" universal club layout everyone remarks how good it looks and at least one other member has bought one and one of the juniors is hoping for one! I remember seeing them when I lived at West Bridgford, Nottingham around the end of the war, like everything on the railway then they were pretty manky. As for the smoke in the cab problem, the Southern Pacific solved this with their "Cab forward" Mallett design for Rocky Mountain haulage. When in Kenya in the fifties, during my military service, I rode from Mombasa to Nairobi by the overnight train hauled by a metre gauge Garratt. The loco and rolling stock were immaculately clean and the driver and his assistant were Sikhs wearing white uniforms, white boots and white pugris; they also carried rhino hide sticks tipped with ivory that they used to encourage the black stokers to get on with the job!! I wish I knew where the photos I took have got to - something else in my Bermuda triangle! I've been an articulated loco maniac ever since, mostly American I must admit.

I am a recent convert to model railways from flying model aeroplanes, age and decrepit knees meant that I had to bow to the inevitable. At least wind, rain, snow, extremes of temperature and other cataclysms of nature don't tend to affect railway modellers too much. The type of model flying I loved was control line team racing but that gets expensive at the top end with Kevlar and carbon models. RC can get even more expensive a TV programme showed the British RC aerobatics champion with his £6000 model! Bear in mind that the unforgiving ground can reduce these to pulp in the event of pilot error or component failure. I saw the demise of a scale B52 at the Nationals some years back - it was reputed to have cost nearly £20K, the mushroom shaped cloud was something to behold when it went in! The cause, pilot error he overbanked his approach and the resulting sideslip and spin did for it. As for other expensive hobbies, I paint and spend a fortune on materials; the occasional sale of a picture doesn't remotely pay for what I spend but what the hell you only live once and time's flying past.