Captain Kernow

Hi David - have you decided what route you are going to take to build a model of 1608 (I am assuming this is part of your plan?)...

Superb effect with the painted stone, Paul - how did you achieve that, please?

Chris - thanks for that bit of video, I could even access that on my work PC! Could you kindly just reiterate what the ordering process will be for non-MR subscribers, please? Many thanks.

Have a look at this Irwell Press book on the 16XX panniers - http://www.irwellpress.com/acatalog/GREAT_WESTERN_RAILWAY.html Should tell you all you want to know about the 16XX class - it's a super publication! Otherwise, I agree with Mr Stationmaster, when shedded at Newton Abbot, any diagram that was within the loco's suitability would be fair game - that may have included (for example) the Ashburton goods.

There is unrestricted parking within a radius of 200/300 yards in residential roads, if you are really stuck - probably just check Google!

Those of you who know Simon Castens from his exhibition appearances with the Titfield Thunderbolt book stand, will be pleased to know that he is opening a new railway bookshop in Bath this coming Saturday, 13th November 2010. More information can be found here: http://titfield.co.uk/ A number of major railway publishing companies have been very supportive and it looks as if Simon is going to carry the full range of these publishers, such as Millstream, Wild Swan, Oakwood Press etc., plus good stocks of most other major railway publishers. He also has a good stock of quality second hand railway titles. In addition to the books, Simon will also carry a stock of modelling supplies - a small range at first but hopefully growing, including Peco products and general craft modelling supplies. An opening event will be held this Saturday 13/11/10 and has been mentioned by Neil elsewhere on this forum, because he will be taking 'Shell Island' to the shop for the event, this being the last public appearance by this lovely little layout. Other modelling items, including some gauge 1 models by Simon and others, will also be on display, and 'nibbles' will be served at lunchtime! Author Jeffery Grayer will be there on Saturday, signing copies of his new book 'Sabotaged & Defeated Revisited'. Simon hopes in the future to also hold other events, such as modellers workshops, book signings and specialist displays. The shop will be open as follows: Sunday and Monday Closed Tuesday to Thursday 10.00am to 5.30pm Friday (late opening 10.00am to 6.30pm Saturday 10.00am to 5.30pm Never one to miss a free sausage on a stick, I shall be there on Saturday and hope to see as many others as can make it!

Same here - incredible! Fantastic bridge on 'Torrington' as well, mind, Darren!

Nice windows, Stu - where do they come from please?

C&L should do them...

There are one or two places along the backscene side of 'Callow Lane' that call for a half-relief building or two. Due to the semi-urban setting of the layout, I decided a while ago that I would put a half-relief factory or warehouse between the end of one of the retaining walls and the level crossing. The basis for this structure is the ever-useful Scalescenes range. They do a free download warehouse kit, which I am using as the basis for this structure. Because it's right next to the railway, I decided that I couldn't really put the opening doors in place, but this left a rather blank area of brickwork. The answer was to convert it to a rail-served factory, with a small wooden loading platform and a large sliding door behind that. It's all a bit basic at the moment, but the following photos give a flavour of what it will look like. Please excuse the large gaps underneath the structures shown - all have yet to be glued down! The large sliding door isn't on the building yet, because it's currently being pressed down by several heavy railway books and a Gaugemaster controller, whilst the glue holding the printed paper to the backing card sets! A bit more work has been done on the basic structure: I also decided that an awning over the rail loading platform would add to the appearance (apart from primer it's not yet painted nor finally fixed in position): I also decided to extend it at both ends with corrugated iron type structures, so far I've made a start at one end: 28/11/10 A bit more done now - the corrugated iron extensions at either end have been painted, as has the canopy over the loading platform:

This coming Saturday (6th November 2010) sees the High Wycombe model railway exhibition at John Hampden School, High Wycombe. 'Bleakhouse Road' will be there, and should be located right next to Chris Nevard's lovely 'Combwich'. Chris and I have been discussing how we may effect some kind of 'through running' between the two layouts. Due to the time constraints and logistics, however, a permanent link during the show was ruled out quite early on. The solution, hopefully is a 'Transfer Cassette', enabling trains to be run onto the transfer cassette in my fiddle yard, and then lifted out and carried over to the Combwich fiddle yard for it's onward journey. Chris gave me the dimensions of his fiddle yard, which has a sector plate/turntable. Fortunately, this can be moved completely to one side, to enable the transfer cassette to be put in place and butted up to the layout track of Combwich. The exit from the fiddle yard on Combwich is at an angle, due to the way the sector plate works, so the transfer cassette had to have this replicated at one end. The other end is a normal 90 degree join, where it will abut the cassette docking station on the BHR fiddle yard. First of all, I drew up the following very basic plan: The depth of the transfer cassette could not be more than 6mm (not including track), due to the dimensions on Combwich, but over the weekend I quickly found that I didn't have any ply of that thickness, nor did I really have the time to go to the timber merchant to get some. What I did find, however, was some 5mm foamboard! By laminating that with some 1mm stiff card, I could get the required 6mm depth. Despite some initial warping caused by the PVA, the cassette was straightened and held down with some heavy weights when I came to glue the track on it. The sides were also formed of the same 1mm card, glued on with PVA and pinned in place with brass lacemaking pins. The ends of the rails were soldered to copper clad sleepers, epoxied in place. Finally, some sections of brass were epoxied in place on the ends of the side sections and electrically connected to the rails. This at least matches my fiddle yard cassette connecting system, and hopefully Chris will have some wander-leads with crocodile clips or similar at his end! Cruel close-up of the 'Combwich end':

As in the 'Barron Knights?'.... Well, anyway, I was very sorry to have missed this session.

It's well known my many on here that I have a habit of making up fictitious railway histories and palming them off on an unsuspecting public as if it were 'fact'. My OO layout 'Bleakhouse Road' is one such case in point. It's modelled on a real area, albeit one that never had a railway in that particular location, and the name is completely made up. Imagine our surprise, then, when we took the layout to the recent Blackburn show. We were sitting in the Wetherspoons in Burnley having our breakfast one morning (why Wetherspoons for breakfast - long story - don't ask! ), when a bus came by, that purported to be going from Lancashire to the Somerset Levels!....

I think they're both superb and very realistic views, but in fact, I think that the colour photo has the edge on the BW one for believability.

Just found this thread, Brian - most impressive. Any more progress to report, perchance?

One of the 'great things' about this hobby (unless you are incredibly clever in the Forward Planning Department) is that you learn lessons as you go along. Once you've made something, you find that you've left something else off it, or perhaps you should have built it in a different sequence or added some part earlier... Thus it was with the cosmetic tiebars for Callow Lane. I had originally planned to use a Scalefour Society etch but this turned out to be designed for older-type flat bottom pointwork, and not really suitable for bullhead track at all. I know that Masokits do a delicate etch, and Craigwelsh kindly showed me an example he had built up last weekend at Blackburn. But, in the end, I decided to scratchbuild them from brass strip. Having already built, laid, painted and ballasted the points, I found that adding the cosmetic tie bars would have been much easier at the construction phase, when the points were still easily worked on, on my workbench. The actual operation of the five point ends on 'Callow Lane' is via under-board tie-bars, which connect to the blades above via nickel silver droppers. These are firmly soldered to the blades (don't want any coming adrift at exhibitions... ) and under the board, they slot into brass tubes, which in turn are epoxied into robust plastic tiebars made by the P4 Track Co. The whole lot is operated by Tortoise point motors. Anyway, having previously spent some time setting the point blades up so that the motors threw them 'just so', I didn't want to have to undo that work again, so I opted to solder the cosmetic tie bars to the droppers. Or rather, to one individual dropper, so as not to set up any unnecessary strains when the points moved. The resulting soldered joint on one side only is perfectly adequate to hold the whole cosmetic tie bar in place. Not totally prototypical, but better than nothing and at 'normal viewing distances' you can at least see that 'there's something there'... On this particular set of points, you can also see the balsa wood sleeper extensions that I've put on, to take the hand lever. I wonder if there's a market for the likes of the P4 Track Co to market longer bearers where handpoints are involved?

I don't really like having to re-visit work I've already completed, and when things on exisiting 'operational' layouts need fixing, I tend to grit my teeth and resign myself to getting the repair done asap, even if it's something quite small. Last weekend, we took Bleakhouse Road to Blackburn and had a super show, thanks to the hospitality of the Blackburn & East Lancs club. Unfortunately when removing the (very lightweight) dust covers on Sunday morning (at least, that's when Captain 'Clouseau' Kernow thinks it was done), the cover snagged on the bracket signal next to the signalbox and the finial on the main doll - that carrying the signal arm - got broken off (albeit we didn't notice until much later). The signals on BHR are made from Model Signal Engineering (MSE) components representing Stevens signals. The finials are lovely, delicate whitemetal castings like this: The signal prior to the damage looked like this on the Saturday (I've taken the liberty of copying one of Worsdell Forever's excellent photos): The original casting was firmly epoxied into the etched lattice doll, so I didn't fancy trying to remove it, as this would probably have caused even more damage, so I elected to make and glue a replacement finial on top of the original finial. The break had occurred where the top white bit meets the four red curved sections... I drilled a 0.3mm hole in the top of the remaining casting, to take the new finial. The new finial was made up of a piece of 0.3mm N/S wire, around which some epoxy had been 'blobbed' and allowed to set hard: This was then turned down in a pin chuck mounted in an electric drill (haven't got my lathe yet!), and then glued into the hole in the existing casting and painted: And so that's it, the signal was replaced onto the layout and tested OK. It's not quite as delicate as the original casting, but that was so slim that I couldn't have drilled it's base even 0.3mm to take a spigot, hence adopting this solution instead. Why not just shrug it off and pretend that the real thing had gotten broken sometime in it's life - that would have been much easier and it did happen. Somehow, though, I couldn't just leave it, and I'm glad it's all done now. I also took the opportunity to do a couple of other minor repairs to the scenery and the layout should now be ready for High Wycombe in a couple of weeks time.

Whoa!! Where did that lovely signalbox spring from, Gordon - you've not just been busy with the scenery! Superb!

Gordon, I use pretty much the same methods as Paul, albeit using Heki foliage matting instead of the Woodlands Scenics stuff. I'd agree with the suggestion for rubberised horsehair - check out Re6/6's brambles on 'Matford' using the horsehair, sprayed with a combination of matt black and red oxide aerosols and then covered with Noch leaf material (very fine stuff) - the result is excellent.

This is also going to be a right 'stunna' - better keep the piers in strict order, though! Which pier is going to feature the 1960s band 'posing?'....

Nice sweeping curves, should be a 'stunna' this one. Not so sure about the arable farming effects next to the station, though - the fields look a bit too regular in size.....