Buckjumper

As Paul says, they are setts. Cobbles are traditionally small, round water-smoothed stones, whereas setts are quarried and dressed blocks in a rectangular shape. Cubes are another class of sett, but are...cubed. Here is a useful page and this gives a useful insight into laying them, including (about halfway down) edge sets for drainage. All relevant stuff for me as I'm trying to decide the best way of representing what may turn out to be a few thousand of the things. After seeing this post I'm definitely going to give the Harrap/CK/Tetrion method a go.

Nick - No. 741 had all the full stops. I've sent you a PM.

I like the results you've got with your experimental scribing Tim, though they could probably be described (pun intended!) as setts rather than cobbles...who would have thunk there were rivets to count in cobbles eh?

Google Zap Formula 560 Canopy Glue and you'll come up with a lot of suppliers including Amazon and ebay. I bought several boxes of slips of different sizes on the net a few years ago, but Pat Legg of CPL can supply both the scriber and glass 24 x 40 x 0.13~0.17mm from stock. Like cutting tiles it can take a while to get the hang of it, but perseverance pays off.

Hi Dave - I've been using glass microscope cover slips, which are (so sez the box) 0.13 - 0.17mm thick, in the windows of all the stock I build - even those commissions that have to be delivered by courier - for a number of years now and haven't had any problems with breakages. The glass is surprisingly flexible which may contribute to it being able to withstand more abuse than you'd expect. I've been using canopy glue to fix it from the start, and again this works very well, and after 20 minutes any excess can be scraped off with a sharpened cocktail stick. I think this gives a pretty good impression of the end result. I use a diamond-tipped pencil to cut the shape required - even circular pieces for cab spectacles. A single stroke is made then flat-nosed pliers to snap along the line, though sometimes you have to nibble away at it carefully. Success rate these days is up to about 70% (it was much lower at the start), and on a lucky day (not often!) a circle of glass will pop straight out without any extra fiddling.

Fantastic Dave; some nicely restrained touches with the weathering, and my favourite of all the rolling stock you've posted on here so far.

Thanks for the positive comments Mike and David, and thanks for all the 'likes'. Jan: As far as I know the first cab for many years to get the treatment was Ipswich shed B12 61535, and this had a cream roof with chocolate sides. This was followed by 61566 which went all-cream, and then the driver of 61253 went one better and had the cab painted ultramarine blue. J15 65447 followed soon after with an off-white roof. After that it spread and various suburban N7s got the treatment . Just how many bucks were 'creamed' is debatable - by this time they were very much second-string and generally not well cared for, so I suspect very few, so not like the the good old days when all GE locos had tan coloured cabs. As for the tools - well I usually arrange them as if they've been chucked out of the window by an exasperated fireman, but thought that for once I might make them a bit nearer. It must have happened at least once. Surely... ;-) Thanks Mikkel, always appreciated.

J65 no 8211 was the penultimate survivor of twenty locos. Built as GER no.155 in 1889, it spent much of its life alongside several others of the class working the Blackwall line from Fenchurch Street (hence the class nickname 'Blackwall Tanks') until rusticated by the LNER in the late 30s. It then spent the rest of its life vacillating between Ipswich and Norwich, with spells at Cambridge, Colchester, Yarmouth and Yarmouth Beach until withdrawn in November 1953. For almost all of its life it ran as a 2-4-0T with the front coupling rods removed, remained solely Westinghouse braked throughout its existence, and somewhat unusually, retained the old GER wooden roof with low, single arc profile front and rear weatherboards. The model is largely scratchbuilt - I have more than a dozen 'buckjumper' kits, with etchings and castings in a pile from which I can grab what I need to make any given loco, however the J65s are sufficiently different in most dimensions from the larger J66-69 classes that little was scavenged for use here. All the GER 0-6-0T classes shared one diagram of boiler and I had a spare from a J67, which was useful, and the castings came from Connoisseur, Gibson, Ragstone, CPL and Laurie Griffin. The wheels are AGH, the gearbox an ABC three stage spur & helical gear set, and split axle pickups are employed. The livery may seem to be anachronistic with the wartime NE on the tank sides and the BR number and shedplate on the smokebox door, but chronologically it was possible. Numberplates were introduced to the class in 1948, and 8211 remained in the wartime NE livery until March 1951 when it received the early 15½" emblem. Photographs of bucks in this period show this and even stranger combinations - with this species I learned a long time ago to never say never as someone will soon produce a photograph! In this period the smokebox of 8211 was flush riveted along the front seam but had snaphead rivets along the rear. The old District plate of 1915, located under the cab roof on the rear weatherboard, was removed from most locos in the 30s, but 8211 was one of the few to retain the plate. This may be because the weatherboard never received the extension to raise the hight so that an LNER steel roof could be fitted. As usual, nothing looks more like glass than glass and my usual 0.13mm microscope slides look the part. The cab is fully detailed with all the crew's paraphernalia. Tank top clutter and the inevitable pool of water. Boiler cladding bands are 2 thou strip which are within a gnat's of being to scale. Nothing looks worse in 7mm than boilers without cladding bands...except perhaps boilers with grossly overscale cladding bands! It's unlikely the J65s ever had their cabs painted cream - by this time they were far too lowly, however, it does make it easier to see the detail inside. At the end of the day.... In profile they were quite a handsome little class. It's a shame they had all gone before the preservation movement got into gear as they were the go anywhere loco and perfect for lightly-laid branchlines.

Good to see you back in full swing Mikkel. With a skull that size are you sure aunt Augusta wasn't a Titan? Next up; Mr Woodcourt and the Argonauts...

Hullo stranger - you've been a bit quiet of late; good to see you back again

Thanks for your comments - much appreciated. J15s are a bit of a staple at the moment and two more are progressing through the works at the moment- an Essex pair that found work on the Brightlingsea branch, numbers 65432 with a tender cab and 65448 one of the bog-standard Westo braked variety.

The flush stonework is a big improvement, and the scale looks much better to these ignorant eyes

And here she is. Had a slight misfortune with a drop of oil on the boiler 12 hours before delivery which was carefully removed with IPA soaked cotton buds. Fortunately no weathering was displaced, but oil did seep through the first couple of extra coats of weathering which meant more IPA...still, I won out in the end and delivered on time. 65389 was one of the last steam-brake only J15s and spent most of its life pottering around the East Suffolk byways. Dick Riley caught with a series of colour photos on the ESL branches in May 1958, and this is the condition I've weathered her.

Oo-er! Glad you like it!

The Great Eastern R24 'buckjumper' has now departed the works to earn its employ on the Tottenham & Hampstead Joint Railway.

I think there are just two choices for both classes; the Ace and David Andrews kits. Ace kits can be divided into the 'goes together quite well' (LBSC Terrier...provenance ex-Ravenscale) and 'bordering on unmerchantable quality' (LT&SR tank...provenance gawd knows where), and from comments on the 7mm Yahoo group over the last decade suggests the Ace N is at the 'frustrating' end of the scale. At Telford seek out the Guild Technical Information Officer, Bob Alderman (he'll probably be on or about Stand G6), as I believe he built an Ace N several years ago and will give you chapter and verse. Personally I'd avoid the potential frustration and dig a little deeper for the Andrews kits which are always competently designed and a pleasant experience to build.

Not too late to drill them out and glue in some stubs of blackened brass rod... ...just kidding!

Nicely done, Ian. One question: The rivets on the solebars look like 'innies', not 'outies'. Is that a trick of the light?

I feel like an impatient child waiting for Christmas morning. Happens every time they put the teasers out...

The big advantage the GER had over its fellow constituents of the LNER was the legacy of nearly 40 years of standardisation instigated by James Holden and continued through to Grouping. So for example, of the 29 classes extant in 1923, there were six standard boilers covering 20 classes - 89% of the total loco stock - with 9 non-standard boilers for the rest. Likewise there were five standard motion and cylinder types covering 23 classes - 97% of the stock with six non-standard types covering the remaining 3%. As locos became life-expired, any parts which were still in good condition could be stockpiled and reused later. Tenders could be moved from loco to loco, even across the class divide, and were even stored for years until needed.

No, none have come this way yet, though I could very easily be tempted by a Buffalo or the 645/655 saddle tanks, and the J8 and J9 single bolsters would be useful. However, there are plenty of threads on here which show Scorpio kits being built such as here, here, here and here. With this last one, the best thing to do is open the thread, then in the search field on the top right change the drop down list to 'this thread' then type in scorpio and hit the search button - you'll get a long list of individual posts from Ken's thread highlighting wherever Scorpio is mentioned. You'll see Ken likes them very much, but you'll also find comments about certain kits within the range which need more fettling and work than others.