ArthurK

Just give you a little encouragement here is my own Sentinal railcar. "Royal Charlotte" was one first that I remember seeing. To us as kids it was always 'Apple Charlotte' - well it was green! It was shedded at Tweedmouth just prior to WW2. Mine is totally scatchbuilt from plasticard which of course makes it very much lighter than the NU-Cast one. It was powered by a lash up motor, armature and magnet from an X04 (I think) pole pieces from sheet steel hammered to shape. It ran in this form for many years on my 16.5mm layout "Teesdale" (based on Middleton in Teesdale). Royal Charlotte was moved to Sunderland and was probably used on th run to Middleton. That is the only excuse that I need. The motor was later replaced by a 50p cheapo of the suare shape. The layout is now dismantled and the Railcar now sports a Black Beetle P4 power unit. It runs very well but hasn't yet got the cosmetic side frames replaced. Some day I would like to etch one of these.

Sorry but that is not an N10 that you have there. The front sandbox/splashers are totally wrong for that. as someone remarked above the N10 had a pronounced drop at the rear. Therefore it can only be an N8 or an N9. There was very little visual difference between these. The overhang of the front frame was 5' 6" on the N10. On the other two had overhangs of 5'3" and 5'9" but I cannot remember which was which. Some of the N9s retained the low tanks. All the N8s were increased in depth from the original build. The wheels on your model are certainly more than the 4'7 1/4" of the N10. ArthurK

If there is a way of introducing page breaks please let me know. My Photos thread has the same problem.

In my youth LNER brown coach livery was just that, darkish brown. The same, more or less that that house doors window frames and the like were painted in those days. Totally without character. Certainly all the pre-grouping coaches that I recall were the same dark muddy brown. It was only the mainline stock that was different. Those were always in the varnished teak livery, but even that looked dirty brown after a few years in service. The Thomoson teak livery (painted) certainly brightened things up for a while. As an aside I normally use precision LNER Teak paint for my models but to be honest with myself I have often thought that this was a degree lighter than reality.

Colour is a very difficult subject to bring back in one's memory. However having said that I know that some of the supposed 'Garter Blue' depicted on several RTR models is totally at variant with my memories. Many are much to dark (one example was bordering on deep royal blue, a sort of light navy blue). I saw the Coronation just prior to WW2 and from about 1945 these blue coaches reappeared and I saw these (without any train designation) at York on a number of occasions. They were certainly not the deep blue often seen on models. The Garter Blue of the A4s was a quite light vibrant blue and the coaches were much the same. THe Precision Paints A4 Blue is not far from that in my memory and almost certainly the best. Having said the my paint was bought a long time ago I can only assume that it hasn't changed. Some of the ColourRail slides show just the colour that I remember.