Barry Ten

Not for a week or two, Tony. Due to the logistics of getting back from York, I've left the box down in Cardiff with Dave for temporary safekeeping, although I hope to collect it soon. Not this week for sure! I'm in musical theatre all week, with three small parts in our local production of "Made in Dagenham"! Dress rehearsal tonight, then the first public performance tomorrow.

Here is my Mainline 4MT, purchased from (I think) a Carlisle model shop during a family visit to the Lake District in 1980. To put that into perspective, the other thing I bought that day was the special "Borchester Market" edition of Model Railways which I still have. The 4MT is a bit noisy but it runs quite well apart from that, and for the hell of it I converted it to DCC (a bit tricky due to the way the motor brushes work) but not too bad. The weathering was acrylics, brushed on not long after the model was bought.

If you've used bearings, and you're feeling brave, you can resolve this with a soldering iron. Put the wagon on a flat surface, identify which bearing needs to be adjusted down (you only need to adjust one side of one axle) and then remove the relevant wheelset. Warm the iron and then touch it to the bearing, applying gentle pressure in the desired direction until the bearing just starts to move in the softened plastic. Remove the iron immediately and assess whether the wheels are now closer to level. The plastic will reharden quickly so you can have another go if things need further adjustment. Don't dwell with the iron or the plastic will melt all the way through to the front of the axlebox. It's a method of last resort but I've found it works if done with care! I had to do it on on one or two Dapol cement wagons with the soapy plastic.

The Battle of Britain/WC was always loco drive, as was the B12.

I've been on the same plane as Mungo Jerry (aircraft, not astral).

Nice vid, Jesse (and Foo Fighters of course). Some friends of mine were at Thirlmere on Easter Monday.

A few shots showing Paynestown as it now stands. Over the last few weeks I've been adding some smaller details to try to bring the scenes to life, such as a telephone box, street lamps, greenhouses etc, from various firms (Langley, PD Marsh, Severn Models, Southwark Models, York Modelmaking etc). Still a lot more that could be done, but I'm trying to strike a balance between detail and open areas, so that it doesn't end up too cluttered. Ta!

Just the "Class B" drugs for me please.

I went to Ally Pally a couple of weekends ago (I just happened to be in London) and spent three days at York as an exhibitor. York was by far the more interesting exhibition, in my view. Granted, one can't always see as much when showing off a layout as when one is just a normal visitor, but I felt I'd "done" Ally Pally after two hours whereas there was plenty at York I still hadn't seen properly by the time we had to leave. And, the trade support was far superior.

My Powercab was bought in the UK circa 2010 and didn't really work reliably until I swapped the power supply.

Was chatting to a mate recently - we'd both built one of these from the Dapol re-reissue, and both encountered the same problem of ending up with holes needing filling in the sides of the tanks, either due to an issue with the instructions leading us astray or something being not quite right with the mouldings (can't remember which). Other than that, we both agreed that they still made up into really nice models, as yours illustrate.

There's no oil involved in this either, it just uses ordinary water.

Only F1 and tennis for me, and not much of the latter since Federer retired (in fact it's my wife who was the main tennis fan, but I used to absorb a lot of it by osmosis while she was waching). I find Sky's F1 commentary team to be excellent across the board, with Martin Brundell's observations a particular highlight, combining technical insight with wit and passion. I'm not sure if it's a Brundellism but I particularly like "enthusiasm exceeded adhesion" whenever someone spins out.

That looks very nicely done, and I've always liked that regional livery.