Baby Deltic

Better, Iain. The veg needs to be on the receiving end of my airbrush. It needs toning down a tad.

Harford Street Station. Needs the sky painting in.

My mermaids arrived yesterday. Cracking models, well packaged. My only criticism is the fact they couple with the buffers about 8mm apart. This could easily be cured by fitting instanters or drilling another hole in the coupling pivot. I'm not too worried about the brass weight coveing the underframe detail.

This layout is coming on very nicely indeed. Good attention to detail on the brickwork and weathering. Keep up the good work.

Just ordered 3 of the black memaid's with different numbers. Can't be asked to build any more Cambrian ones.

Colchester Mascot 1600. Just kidding. The Colchester Triumph 2000 and Mascot 1600 were always my favourite lathes, with plenty of grunt for roughing out. Too big for domestic work. The Axemister and Seig do look good. With lathes, its 'horses for courses'. It depends on the size of the work you are going to want to do on the lathe. Obviously the distance between centres, the swing and the spindle bore/chuck size have to be big enough. If you only want to trim the pinpoints on OO scale axles and skim wheelsets, a Unimat style lathe would probably suffice. If you want to turn flywheels and drive shafts, and profile steam loco wheels, maybe a seig or Axeminster. For larger 'garage' lathes, you could look on Ebay, but buyer beware. There are often Myford Super Sevens, Colchester Chipmaster's and Colchester Students being flogged online. I say buyer beware, because some of these lathes are quite old, and may have worn slides and spindle bearings, and backlash in the dials. I've worked on a few old lathes in my time, and its annoying when you start taper turning because the slides are worn.

I like the BR blue TOPS number era, but I definately prefer the layout with the mixture of blue, green and maroon liveries and diesel hydraulics.

I've just pre-ordered D5700 in original condition, but I really need to get two and renumber one - after all, the Condor was usually double headed. Decisions, decisions............. and a shrinking wallet.....

I just dug out my Heljan class 14 for another look at the poor slow running. I loosened the screws on the bottom keep plate, as has been suggested by several sources, and miraculously it started to run ok.

This layout is coming on very nicely indeed. Nice detail and weathering to the stock and structures.

Good to see the layout on the new rmweb, Robert. I liked it in the transition from green to blue with the various mixes of liveries.

Hi Gordon, I hope your hand heals up soon. I have fallen victim to my own soldering iron on numerous occasions, mainly whilst building electronic gadgets. The smell of burnt skin which accompanies the pain always acts as a deterrent to touching the wrong end of the iron. The layout is coming along very nicely - I like the ballasting in particular. It'll be a cracking layout once its fully up and running.:icon_thumbsup2:

DHP1, the four engined 'Super Clayton' that never went anywhere or did anything.

Anyone heard D182 yesterday would appreciate diesel preservation. HELLFIRE!!!! .......as the bashers would say......... or is it MyLordz?.......

Hi Mike, I don't think a hymek ever hauled a freightliner in service. I think the freightliner flats were air braked, and hymeks were vac only. http://www.modeltrai....asp?itemid=484

Perhaps they could run the diesel loco on chip fat.

Just because the engine manufacturer no longer makes the engine or its components, it doesn't have to mean that all is lost once all the stocks of available spares have been exhausted. As long as engineering drawings exist, and there's the finance and expertise available, anything can be re-made. Almost all of the Sulzer engines used in british locomotives were made in britain by Vickers Armstrong, under licence from Sulzer. Whether the skills and expertise have died out since is another question. On the flip side of the coin, manufacturing methods and technology have improved vastly since then, and many components which took large amounts of time and skill to machine, can now be mass produced on CNC machine tools, once they have been drawn up on computer. Obviously castings and drop forgeings are gonna cost a packet no matter what type of loco they are for, be it steam or diesel.

Cocktail sticks and scalpel blades are also good for delicate removal of numbers without the paint, if you have a steady hand. Meths on a cotton bud sometimes helps.

I suppose you could ask the ultimate question "how long will the preservation actually last". Will the loco's be around in, say, 200 years from now? (Except the NRM stuff which probably will). How long will a Deltic or Bulleid be able to go on being overhauled, re-certified etc, for example. I've often wondered what will be left in 400 years time after we're long gone. What will the attitude to preservation be then? Will any loco's in preservation still be running?

I think BR in general began to regret the scrapping of 10000/1. One of the reasons D200 was selected for the national collection was the argument put forward by BR's CMEE that D200 incorporated some of the design features of the early diesels - the power unit was a derivative of the 16SVT MK1 used in 10000, and the bogies were based on the design by Oliver Bulleid for 10201/2/3.

I would be a 'luddite' if a new Baby Deltic were ever to be built, but beggers can't be choosers and I'm sure preservationists now look back with disbelief that the the last member of the class was allowed to be scrapped in the same way they regret the loss of so many steam loco classes. I would have loved to see a D16/3 for example, just as I would have loved to have seen a Baby Deltic or the North British built mainline diesel classes. As is the case with Tornado, if you want to see a dinosaur come back from the dead, you've got to make one from scratch.

The Flying Scotsman will always be a household name because of its achievement, as will Mallard and City Of Truro. Tornado is also a beautiful piece of engineering, but I, and many, do see it a little with 'luddite' eyes myself because it is not an 'original'.

The way I see it at the moment, many of those who remember mainline steam are still alive. In 30 odd years, it may be the case that the balance shifts, and we have an older generation raised during the corporate era of diesel and electric traction on BR, so the balance of interest in steam and diesel loco's in preservation may also shift. Sure, we are always going to have younger generations volunteering to get involved in steam loco preservation, and that's brilliant, but the general punter's interest and appreciation of heritage diesel traction may increase in time, with more wanting a 'ride behind the diesel'. The Deltic, Peak or Spoon may become the breadwinner of the future.

Its not my loco, its not my money and if it gets cut, it won't effect me in any way. I was merely pointing out the argument of what makes 45015 significant among other class 45's. I believe that the fact that 45015 was originally D14 and it had been built with gangway doors was one of the reasons such efforts were made to secure the 'hulk'. If someone wants to build a baby deltic, good luck to them. The engine is situated in the shell of 37372 anyway, so that's a head start.

I'm sure people asked similar questions when they were dragging wrecks out of Barry scrapyard.