Barry Ten

I'd assume that somehow a current path has opened up between the track voltage and the motor feeds, but how that's happened after a period of running, I won't know until I get the body off.

Less and less as I go on. I include all the bits and might put a splosh of basic colour on them, but there's no point going to town on stuff that will be either barely visible or not seen at all. I learned this the hard way with the Trumpeter 1/24 Hurricane where the fuel tanks are totally invisible once the kit's finished.

What is it about pride before a fall? I was very happy with resurrecting my Grange last week, but during ordinary running last night it stopped dead, emitted a sound like a terrified gerbil, and then did a very creditable impression of having a smoke generator. That was a brand new decoder, so twenty pounds down the sink in one puff of foul-smelling blue. Sir:1, DCC:0 I think.

I very much agree, Mike, it's just that, if anything, Hornby's photos always suggest a richer/deeper finish than the things have in reality, at least in my experience.

Flashing back to these plug and socket thingies, I recently had the challenge of swapping the order of wires over for a piece of radio control equipment. I didn't realise until then that it's relatively easy to get into these items, should one need to: Perhaps this might be helpful to anyone (like me) who has inadvertently damaged one of these plugs in the past.

It's in the eye of the beholder but that still looks quite dull/drab to me, albeit a bit glossier?

I'm not sure if you're aware of this pre-existing thread, but huge amounts of 1/72nd aviation stuff already in it if you're interested. Perhaps you could post your work there as well as it would be nice to see it featured? Of course there are also a lot of cars, tanks, ships, spaceships etc to wade through in addition to the planes. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/42805-non-railway-modelling/page/58/#comment-5272963

Prompted by the talk of Granges, I thought I'd have a look at one of my two that's become a non-runner. I've got a GWR one and a BR Black one - not sure what the name/number was originally, but mine has etched plates, running as 6873 Caradoc Grange-*. It wasn't running and my notes say I put a decoder in it (I also put a dab of red paint under the chassis) so since it failed to respond to any attempts to reprogram or reset the decoder, I assumed something rather catastrophic must have happened. It didn't buzz on DCC, so I couldn't have removed the decoder, right? Or so I thought. When I opened it up, there was just a blanking plate, indicating that I had indeed pinched the decoder out of it. As to the mystery of why it didn't buzz - or run on DC - one of the wires to the motor needed resoldering. Once I'd done that, it started up again but was very stiff, with the motor running hot - maybe not surprising in that it hasn't run for a while. I gave it some gentle re-lubrication and running-in on the rolling road, and it suddenly loosened up very nicely. I whipped in a new decoder and set it to 6873, and then had the "fun" of reassembling it. Once done, though, it ran well and had no trouble with a 20 wagon freight. I can only imagine that I must have snagged the motor wire when putting it back together after pinching the original decoder. *-chosen for the local connection to "Caradog", Griffith Rhys Jones, an early exponent of the male voice choir, who was born in Trecynon and still has a statue in Aberdare.

At the moment it's just by pulling gently on the buffers, but the intention is to make some shallow card trays that the whole loco slides out on, when I can get around to it.

I do like a challenge. Here's my entry, some foamcore. I'd got into the bad habit of leaving locos on a Billy bookcase shelf, fine itself, but there was too much temptation to start a second layer, with no more than a sheet of bubble-wrap between the two. Hence this wine-cellar type arrangement, knocked up over a few evenings last week from a few sheets of foamcore. The interior width of a Billy is about 30 inches, room for 15 engines. I made the partitions 2.5 inches high and 11 deep, which is enough for all but the biggest locos. The whole lot was assembled with PVA.

Lovely picture. A friend of mine worked at Aston's around then (he worked on the DB5, at least).

I think the Grange, Arthur and Schools are among the worst offenders for this - perhaps it was a phase Hornby were going through with over-tight body fittings? You certainly need a stiff drink to get into them, and then another once you've got them back together.

It's the long rakish tail that does it for me, as exemplified above! Reminiscent of 1950s car styling. Fabulous looking beasts.

I used Chris Leigh castings for the bogies, and Genesis ones for the ends (they were a tiny bit crisper than Chris's castings) but I think Genesis offered the bogies as well. I suspect they all had their origin in the same mouldings.

Although I didn't take any pics, there was an absolutely gorgeous (and huge) Rapide at this weekend's Large Model Association show at Much Marcle, near Ledbury. It flew like a dream and to suitable musical accompaniment over the PA.

Here's my much older 1/72nd Airfix Sea King, without doubt one of the most challenging kits I've built, because the fit of parts was so ropey...just getting it into some kind of finished state was a relief! I think they issued a re-tooled 1/72nd model a while after I bought this one.

Agreed, I've been waiting for a decent 1/48 Westland Sea King for a long time... it looks like a fabulous kit from the reviews I've seen.

One of our resident sopranos:

I guess there's no danger of hearing the Portescap whine😄

A bat got into our house just before lockdown, ending up on the inside of a bedroom window ledge. I phoned the Bat Conservation Trust and was advised how to safely handle the bat and take it to a rescue centre. From that experience, we ended up becoming members of the trust and buying an inexpensive bat detector, which is great fun. Our bat was a soprano pipistrelle, by the way. After a few weeks it was back to a healthy weight but rather than release it back in our area, it was released from the centre as by then the travel restrictions were in force. We've had a serotine bat near us, too, as well as the two species of pipistrelle.

I've got some serious foreground view-blockers on my French layout, as illustrated here where the track runs behind this block of buildings: I tried various permutations of the scenery (I'd already made the buildings) but it didn't "click" until I tried putting the buildings in the foreground. In the case of this layout, it's not so much about getting unobstructed views of trains, as replicating those encounters with the railway one gets when travelling through a city, often little more than tantalising glimpses of over-bridges, embankments, sidings, trains in the distance etc. It wouldn't work for everyone, but it encapsulates my experience of French railways where it's tended to be the frustrating glimpse rather than the long, studied view. That said, there are bits of the layout where the trains can be seen much more easily.

I like a "looking up at the loco" angle if I can get one.

Many thanks all. I'm quite pleased with how it worked on the day; no major issues but one or two things that could benefit from a tweak or two. It did pick up an invitation to another South Wales show next year so this is unlikely to be its only outing. However, it's going up in the loft for now, not because I'm fed up with it, but because it's stopped me working on any other modelling projects for a while and I like to hop around!

I enjoyed taking Paynestown to the Barry show organised in support of Alzheimer's UK. It was a very nice day out with plenty of friends involved with other layouts and just helping out, with much thanks due to Brian and Paul Rolley for instigating the event and making the whole day relaxed and convivial. By happy coincidence I was also collecting for a separate Alzheimer's event so my bucket was plonked on the same table as the layout! I brought along a rubber mallet, not to scare people but to give a gentle tap to the back of the layout in the event of any locos stalling! It proved quite handy and presumably an improvement on the hand of god! Thanks to Dave Stone for the pics above, and for helping out with operations. It was also good to see our chum Roger drop by for an hour or two. I also took a few general snaps of the layout in action. Thanks all who dropped by, and who left some money in the bucket!

I took my valleys-themed layout out for the first time today, to a small show in Barry organised for Alzheimers fundraising. It was great fun and the layout performed quite well. Many thanks to Dave Stone for helping out. I brought a rubber mallet to scare the layout into behaving itself. Seemed to work! Al