Burkitt

The resemblance to the Western is no coincidence - apparently the class 59 cab styling followed the Western's at the request of Foster Yeoman, as the hydraulics had previously been used to haul their stone trains.

Or steam with blue and grey coaches in its very last days?

More of a future livery than an alternative one... Image by Paul Burkitt-Gray, based on a photo by Sunil Prasannan, published under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License. One of the new Stadler Variobahn trams ordered for Tramlink, as it might look on the proposed extension to the system. Crystal Palace hill can be seen in the background. Paul

Thermohaline Warts!

I made this O scale model of the Knight Bus for my sister, an ardent Harry Potter fan. It's based on a Corgi Guy Arab Utility, with the middle floor added from plasticard, and the door relocated to more accurately represent the description of the bus in the book. The interior has about twenty beds soldered up from brass rod, and is illuminated with LEDs. Paul

To start this year's results on a high note, my sister just got 3 A*s! Paul

All the tram clips appear to be from "The elephant will never forget", a short film about the end on London's trams which is freely available on the London Transport Museum website http://www.ltmcollection.org/films/film/film.html?IXfilm=FLO.0009&_IXSESSION_=oiElpSGBTwT Paul

Copenhagen Fields by The Model Railway Club features a Leslie Green features a tube station with a Leslie Green red-tiled building at street level and a cutaway platform below, with a Standard stock train shuttling back and forth. Pecorama has a cutaway tube station on one of it's layouts, using EFE stock. The London Transport Museum has a huge collection of models of tube trains, buses, trams, stations etc in a wide variety of scales at Covent Garden and Acton Depot.

Hornsey Broadway by Kier Hardy, currently under construction, will feature a tube station with EFE 1959 stock. There are some photos of the work in progress at http://www.emgauge70s.co.uk/model_omwb40.html .

Here's a micro layout which I really like, The Brickworks by Arthur Budd http://arthurbudd.webs.com/thebrickworks.htm . There was a thread about it on the previous version of the forum http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7716 . And my own micro layout under construction, Claverton Engineering http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/3355-claverton-engineering-0-165-micro-layout/page__p__24433__fromsearch__1&do=findComment&comment=24433 . It's now got a website at http://clavertonengineering.wordpress.com/ which is a bot more ordered than the topic. Paul

I remember Avon Junction from East Grinstead, it's a very good model. Here's the video I took of it there, hope you don't mind me adding it to this thread. Paul

Kenton, I've started a topic on my tube train project over in the scratchbuilding area: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/37685-n-scale-london-underground-1995-stock/. Paul

Kenton and Neil, many thanks for your help. If a tram can manage six Mk1s I'm hopeful its mechanism will cope with a tube train of the same length. Paul

I've got a Portram I'm hoping to use to power an N gauge tube train I'm building at the moment, and I've got a few of questions about the bogies that hopefully someone can answer for me. Firstly, are the brass tabs which stick out the top of the bogie part of the pickups from the wheels? Would they be a good place to attach wires from extra pickups on the unpowered bogies to feed into the motor? Secondly, can anyone recommend a good way to attach the bogie to the chassis so it rotates freely? Trying to recreate the tab system seems a bit tricky, and anyway it only allows fairly restricted movement, suitable for a short articulated tram but probably not a longer tube car. I'm wondering if maybe gluing a 12BA nut to the top of it, into which I would screw a bolt passing through a hole in the chassis, would work? Finally, just how much weight can a Portram bogie pull along the track? I expect a six car train would be too much for a pair of them but do you think they could manage a four car unit between them? Thanks for your help, Paul

Thanks Poggy1165. Building completely from scratch is pretty slow but it's pretty good fun. I'm finally getting somewhere close to finishing painting the railcar, though there's still quite a bit to do. I initially used colours which looked right in the tin but wrong on the model for both the red and the cream, so they've needed a lot of coats before looking right. They seem to look about right at last though. I'm really hoping that when I remove the masking from the windows it won't damage the paint too much. Paul