Rob Pulham

I went up to Saltburn Friday night coming back to Wakefield tonight so this morning decided to build a couple of Roger Chivers excellent LMS Tube wagons that I picked up at the Hartlepool show. My wife supportive and encouraging as she is suffers quite badly from solder fumes so she prefers me not to solder at the cottage as it's quite small and there is nowhere to get away from the fumes so any modelling done there is plastic kits. I built them straight out of the pack and had them together in no time my only problem being that for some reason one of the V hangers was missing. Roger offers replacement parts for anything missing or even damaged during construction but I didn't bother I just used one from a Mainly trains etch. These are now ready for the paint shop when the weather permits. I also finished at long last on Thursday my WCJS Postal Sorting van. I was unable to get a picture of these vans in LMS days only the number range supplied in the kit so I have used a bit of modellers license to apply the transfers. Of course now someone will find a picture to correct any mistakes

Hi Ian yes I will be featuring it on the bench - I am not sure if I have mentioned that mine is the DJH kit as well and my first white metal loco build. I have my first foray into 7mm in the form of an LMS period one full brake that I received from my good lady for my birthday.

Thanks Jonathan, yes I agree it really is satisfying. Thanks for mentioning the wheels it hadn't struck me that they were unpainted - amazing how you can stare at it for so long and not see things. The body has had Klear to seal the transfers/lining and will be sprayed with satin varnish as soon as I have a fine day. I also need to glaze it and add a crew. If I can find a picture I may line my Black N2. As you say they really do look well with it. Sadly it still has the original mainline chassis and motor (you can hear it in the next street when I run it). My intention is the put a comet chassis under it and a green liveried one at some point in the future as time/funds allow.

As promised a picture of the Thompson BG and a couple of pictures of my completed Claud Hamilton. This is my first completed loco and gave me a real good feeling when I finished it yesterday.

That looks excellent Darren, all I seem to hear are negative comments about Falcon Brass but this looks to be coming along nicely. I have a couple of wagon kits and a L&Y Railmotor in the to build pile. I hope I can do them the sort of justice that you are doing. I look forward to seeing more as work progresses

Over the last few days I have done further work on the WCJS postal sorting van and also got my Mailcoach based Thompson BG finished at last. I started this before starting a Comet one on the old forum. No surpirse that I finished the etched one and put the mailcoach kit on one side. I have kept doing a bit and ended up replacing the plastic underframe with a scratchbuilt one from brass angle, battery boxes vac cylinders etc from Comet and MJT. I also wasn't happy with the fit of the roof so I fitted one from MJT using milliput to correct the difference in end profile. It's now had transfers etc and it drying. I will post some picture tomorrow.

Mick, I forgot to mention that I have ordered a set of Fox tranfers from Coopercraft - I believe from Mike that there are enough to do the full train in a set. I will confirm once they arrive.

Mick, I was just having a closer look at the pictures and it looks like the skirts are fold downs from the floorpan rather than the seperate pieces on my MARC models ones is this the case? Mike Radford has just sent me a few interior shots of these coaches if they are of any interest let me have your email address and will forward them on. This website has some useful impressions of the outsides - http://www.elegantsteam.com/index.html

Mick, If you follow the instructionss on the help pages you can view the pictures by either modifying your borwswer settings or temporarily using a different browser

Stick with it Mick, I am looking forward to being able to view these, I just got all the underframe parts for mine so I will be going on with them once I have cleared the other part finished projects on my bench.

The gas tank wagon is now painted and ready for transfers. I have also made good progress on the WCJS TPO sorting van chassis. Just needing buffers couplings and finishing the paint job on the body.

Cheers Jonathan, I suspect I stand more chance of getting one from CSP than from Falcon at the moment. Which is a shame as they have quite a few items that I wouldn't mind not withstanding any build challenges that they might present. I have couple in the pile and having built the GWR wheeled fish truck have learnt a few of the pitfalls

Thanks PinkMouse, the coupler are Masokits, they are slightly fiddly to make up and need a bit of speed with the soldering iron (I have several solid sets where I lingered too long)but they work well and are quite robust. You also need a source of supply for Brass pins but I just Googled them and found some that would do the job and bought enough to probably last my life time. They also make quite good T handles if you file them down a bit. Jonathan, thanks for the info on the Cordon Gas tanks, I hadn't realised the NE had had some. I seem to recall someone doing a kit for them - CSP Model marketing list one (Falcon used to list one as well I believe, unless it's the same one). Another one to add to the list, I have a soft spot for gas tank wagons.

Hi Michael, Thanks for the feedback. The picture that I worked from said ex GNR rather than NER, I did a two tank version earlier in the old thread that was based on an NER one (on the opposite page in the Tatlow book and what gave me the initial idea to have a go at t three tank version - not really sure what the origins of the kit are. I suspect it's so generic you can adapt it to what you want.

After trying unsuccessfully to transfer the last page from the old RM Web I have decided just to start again (everytime I try the old database is off line). The LNER Gas Tank Wagon that I started on my old workbench is now ready for the paint shop. I have even made some progress at getting the art work ready for the transfers. To give a bit of back ground (apologies to those who have read this bit before on the old bench thread) the basis for this is the SE Finecast kit for the twin tank wagon. I built one one these some time ago and was quite impressed with the triple tank version in a Pictorial Record of LNER Wagons by Peter Tatlow. So I picked up a second kit and contacted Finecast to see if they would sell me the parts for an extra tank. These combined with some scratch built strapping and pipe work, Mainly Trains etched brakes. have resulted in what I have so far.