brian daniels

To do the curved yellow I use the 2 inch wide Tamiya masking tape. Put it on a piece of glass and use a plasticard former that I filed a nice 90degree curve on. I go round it with a nice new scalpel blade and hay presto a nice straight, curve, straight piece of masking tape Just sprayed some dirt on my 128 so will get the brushes out later and finish that weathering off.

Had a nice day at Bourne End today giving the Fruit D a run in a parcels train. I also took the blue 56075 for it's first run in blue and it's first run in over 2 years I wouldn't be surprised. Thankfully no one noticed an air braked 56 on a vac braked parcels rake was a bit out of the ordinary When I weather the grid I will put some black felt behind the grill so they are not see through.

The couplings are from Appleby, if you can get them. These were on my Warflats originally hence why they are green! The weathering will hide that. It will be running round the Bourne End running session on Sunday.

Very nice pics CME, wish I had a depot like that Varnished the Fruit D today. Looks a bit bright until we get some dirt on it. It was fun, not!, doing the wagon number and Max Speed from Fox single letters/numbers I did the ENPARTS from an old Letraset sheet I had that I cut each letter off one at a time and rubed them on. It was the only way to get them in-between those raised doors and ribs.

Stick those Diesel Depot pics on here CME and lets all have a look please.

Forgot to say earlier that find do have to file the ends of the axles down a bit unfortunatly. I have had a nice boring day painting little bits of models and the interior of my CK and putting the transfers on the Fruit D and my class 56 re-paint. Doing the Fruit D was a long job doing all the lettering and numbers one at a time with waterslide transfers and Lettraset for the ENPARTS lettering. Picture of the Fruit D to follow after it's been varnished. I have also been getting on with another JLTRT coach, a CK. The bogies took a day each to solder up For some reason this kit had an etch for the floor plan to glue onto the chassis. The other 2 of these Mk1's I have built have had a plasticard floor. One thing to note that is not mentioned in the instructions is that if you are using commonwealth or B4 bogies then you need to use the V hanger bracket with the straight edge and put it on the righthand side of the vac cylinder as in a pic below. On my RMB I removed the cast raised detail on the propane gas boxes and placed an etched one there that is on a fret from MMP that he sells separatly. This fret also contains the small cast plates on the ends of the coaches. On the end I used a CPL Emergency brake butterfly and pipework castings.

We must have been chasing each other round Germany in the 80's? I too gave up when the awfull pinky red covered everything. Hellfire times wasn't it chasing 194's on passenger and more steam heat than you could shake a stick at.

I quite agree 87029, blue and beige was a very nice combination on all the DB loco's. How do you fancy these liveries on the 111's?

The axleboxes where a tight fit as usual. I cleaned out the axlebox with a piece of emery paper and filed the surface of the W iron down a bit to reduce the thickness. They rattle about in there fine now. I pushed it round the garden railway and it did not de-rail so I must have done something right I don't know off the top of my head what the size of brass bar was as all I did was take the lazer cut plastic one to Eileen's stand at the Ally Pally show and went through their stock until I found a match to it. I could measure it if you want.

I went to the Gwilli Railway yesterday for a DMU driving day with a group of railwaymen from Oxford and guess what they have there? 2 Fruit D's So I got the camera under one to show what's left of the dynamo and pulley wheel on the axle. You could see where the lighting pull switch was fitted on the end but neither had this on them unfortunatly. As for the charging sockets, JLTRT do not supply them, even in their MkI's The MkI's at the Gwilli included 2 without window frames, just how many were like this in later days as every preserved line has one it seems?

Thanks for that Steve, I had not done the snip just yet I will leave it on now I think after seeing that picture.

How acurate do you want to be? Some of the South Yard track is concrete sleepered

Well I have had a go at making a light switch on one end. Must straighten it up a bit

Done a nice job there Adam. I think I will forward an email to JLTRT about the lack of a pull switch. A very nice person has just sent me some of Pauls Fruit D pics and you are right as I too can't see a dynamo on them! Out with the snips. When I was working parcel trains, amongst others, from 1974 to the end of them I never saw a shore supply for vans anywhere in sidings they used so what did they do?

Hi Adam I will admit these vans are way out of my comfort zone. I have one picture in a book of one as an ENPARTS van but you can't see the underneath very well. Since Paul Bartletts fotopics site went belly up I'm lost on these old vans. So it got built as per what's in the box. If the vans have internal lights, which the large pull rod switch on the end would intimate then there would be a batterybox and dynamo to charge it. They would not use a shore supply to charge batteries as they were not dotted around the railway network willy-nilly. Were there Fruit D's built without lights and some with? As I said earlier the kit does not have the end pull switch. Anyway it's in the paintshops now and will end up in olive green with ENPARTS stencilled on the side as per the pic in the book I have.

After a very nice weekend talking and actualy doing some modelling at the Ally Pally I just about finished building a JLTRT Fruit D kit. I drilled all the holes out at home last week and then made it all up at the weekend. The buffers are just pushed in at the moment as the chassis can be removed to paint it separately only when the buffers are removed.One small job to do is drill some holes and use wire to represent the fixing bolts at the bottom of the axle guards. In the kit the stretcher between the axle guards is a piece of lazer cut plasticard but a quick trip to Eileans Emporium to get some brass strip was called for. One little problem though was that the steps are made of white metal and bent very easily. I stiffened these up with a piece of brass at the back. There are no parts in the kit to make the lighting on/off handle that went across at one end I seem to recall. As I am going to do this as an ENPARTS van in BR Blue I doubt that the interior lighting would still be working so I will not bother with the dynomo belt either just make out that it fell off some time ago. All in all a very nice kit to build and really looks the part.

A bit of a do it yourself job under here isn't it. I used plasticard to build up the bolster and put the coach up against some other stock you know to be ok and see if the buffers match. Or I could look in the MK1 Coaching stock book for the correct hight dimension later.

I have not glued the sideframes to the chassis but by fixing the front and rear stretchers and associated brakegear on the corners it is all locked together so might as well be!

I have had one cog split on my 47309. Got a spare from Howes and "split" the bogie to replace it, easy job. Just hope one doesn't go on 47091 with the MMP sideframes that are glued round the bogie

Finally got the camera out today on the 33/1. I never used to like cromptons but since Heljan produced this I have had to change my mind. Can't wait for their 31.

Seeing as Heljan are working on one Pete I think it will be a long, long time, unfortunatly

Thanks for the pictures chaps, you can never have enough can you. Mike, glad you put that picture up of your GUV as I was racking my brains as I remembered seeing it before but could not remember who made it. Richard, I have now removed a coil from the springs and just glued them in the bottom of the equalizing beam so they can drop a bit now. Shame the springs are not as tightly wound as the real ones. When I get some time in daylight I will take a picture but work is getting the way at the moment I have also weathered my 33/1 at last! Pics to follow.

Yes David these commonwealths are whitemetal. I do think the springs are a bit strong but that might change if I cut them down a bit as at the moment the axleboxes are up against the bottom retaining bracket so they can not drop but only go up (well they would go up if the springs were not st strong!) This is an old kit that I bought secondhand so maybe the springs supplied now are not so strong?

Doh! Now why didn't I think to make the springs shorter? Now should I do it to reagain the gap between the top of the bogie and the bottom of the solebar. When I bought this it was secondhand and the bloke had already made one bogie up. To be honest until I had made them both and got the coach sitting on them up against another I did not know they were going to be a bit tall. Still, we know now ready for the next one I do with commonwealths.

The 56 re-paint has taken a back seat at the mo as I am building this JLTRT RMB. When I bought this I did not relize that the Commonwealth bogies are actually sprung! Mind you it needs a bit of weight on it to compress the springs. A little problem to overcome was that the coack rides hight on the bogies so i had to remove a bit of the bolster under the coach. The BSK I did earlier with the B1 bogies had to be packed up as that was too low! I have been busy painting the interiors at the moment but will soon be able to glue the sides and ends to the chassis as I did for the BSK. I have replaced the vac cylinder and dynamo with some spare Westdale ones I had.