34theletterbetweenB&D

Press C (=clear) then zero twice to get 00, and press enter. That sets to the analogue 00 address. (Alternatively you could press clear and then cycle through the entire address list using '+', and enter when you find 00, but that's likely to be many more keystrokes.) The rest as you describe, loadsa 4's, then two minute power off.

The swinging component 'at the top' is the expansion link, and the drive that makes it swing comes from the now bent 'eccentric rod'. As already observed the eccentric crank is now well out of position, may well have been moved to that incorrect position once the expansion link was jammed up under the footplate and the eccentric rod started bending. If you want to try repositioning the eccentric crank as 'toboldlygo' suggests, then the eccentric rod needs to completely straightened as well. This is because any bend will effectively shorten it, and that means that the expansion link can be pulled further back than it should be, which may result in a repeat incident. You may well find that the locating hole in the eccentric crank has been so much rounded off by its displacement that it will not properly locate any longer on the flats on the crankpin and just flops about, if so best to return to vendor.

Stepping away from Dapol's investment for a moment There's going to be cross-subsidy within any given range. It is perfectly true that a model tooled up and on sale 'before the price rises' that has fully recovered its research and tooling investment and made a profit, could then be sold at a much lower price than a newly tooled model introduction with equivalent content, that has to be sold at a price to first achieve investment recovery and then turn a profit. But instead of that, what you do is apply a pricing model that 'spreads the pain' over the entire range. The most dramatic price rises are on the smaller and cheaper items like wagons; especially the small four wheeled types tooled over fifteen years ago and which have sold in wheelbarrow-load quantities since then. There's a one piece moulded body, running gear assembly of circa twenty-five parts onto a moulded plastic frame, maybe three paint stages, two part packaging, done. Not too much hand assembly content in short. Which brings us to what Dapol might just take on. They already have some good legacy steam era wagon tooling covering types not otherwise available, and sell the bodies only for a small price at present. The running gear has been the weakness. Upgrade that aspect, and between relatively little of the expensive hand assembly that such product requires, and the much increased prices on Chinese production of equivalent items, there might be an opportunity. Wait and see...

The turnbuckles for your Quin set will be for the truss rod bracing, four per vehicle body. Cannot name a current source for suitable brass lost wax castings, but someone here is bound to know.

Considerations of whether it is on a plane surface apart... This has come up before, but cannot quickly find my way to any postings on here referring to it. The example I had that showed this effect, it was the seating of the front driving axle bearings in the block that was the problem, they were not going all the way home. (Tool wear reducing the size of the locations for the bearings? But why not equally affecting all the axles?) So the loco was supported on the front and rear drivers. A little material removed within the front bearing locations, and all straight and level, all tyres in rail contact.

Actually I feel that's adequately described as a cab forward, oil fired, double boiler Fairlie articulated, if it is all simple expansion as the cylinder sizes imply. A double boiler Fairlie doesn't need 'Garratt' added to the name, and if you take off the outer engine units that make the illustrated scheme more 'articulated' than the pair of Fairlie bogies that make it a Fairlie, that's clearly what you have, a double boiler Fairlie. Think that's fairly clear. Then if it is a compound, we might come to 'cab forward, oil fired, double boiler Fairlie-Mallet'. (Most North American so called 'Mallet' locos are no such thing as 'Mallet' requires compounding - the N&W Y6 types for example were true Mallet types - and are simply 'articulated' locomotives, as no specific designer name ever got attached to this scheme AFAIK.) Wonderful fun whatever it is named. You might want to put your name to it as designer, for a more compact title...

Something that has been very helpful and has undoubtedly prevented much mishap over the years in other industries with safety critical operations, is the practise of providing a secure anonymous error reporting facility. Would that already be in place in rail operations generally, and if not, why not?

Me too. The really, really, yellow brick of Kings Cross station and much early GNR construction is very difficult to make a convincing job of, as per other posts here. The trouble it seems to me is that it is just so improbable. There's that fresh mustard yellow base colour, and then all the other brick colours imaginable, here, there and everywhere, mainly thanks to the very crude 'clamp' firing: you can even find blue-purple fused patches. I have in the past gone down the route of mustard yellow, coated all over with a dark grey-brown filth, which isn't really quite right but doesn't offend the eye overmuch. It needs a sensitive artist's eye for colour palette, which I have not got...

LMR's 46237 City of Bristol, was operated on WR in spring 1955 to provide comparison data for the King class modifications to enable the Cornish Riviera to be acclerated to a 4 hour schedule.

Won't know until we see the release, because the livery sample may well be based on earlier tooling. I still see cast chassis block with socking great eye-catching shiny spinning gear shaft end, in a location where there should be daylight under the boiler, on the sample in the photographs. Expectations have moved on rather since this mechanism layout was introduced, and the other eight coupled freight heavies in their range are all significantly more refined in this respect. 'Could use improvement', wait and see if Hornby have acted. Tender underframe: for modelling purposes the 4,000 gallon Stanier tender underframe is constant, whether the nine ton or ten ton bunker bodywork sits on top. So if the new underframe without spurious valance and thus having correctly proportioned spring and axlebox detail is fitted beneath a 9 ton bunker body, that will be a step forward.

It is the first truly successful steam express design in the UK, and the foundation for all that followed. The format of a leading bogie, cylinders between the bogie wheels, makes for a stable fast loco, and not significantly improved upon thereafter to the end of steam. All the subsequent UK single and 4-4-0 designs are more or less copies of this format, which then progresses along several lines of devlopment into 4-4-2, 4-6-0 and 4-6-2 types.

I think not. An EP is undertaken to show where the fits need work. The running plate is a tad high relative to both the cylinder head and top slide bar, Get that footplate snugged down on these components and the gap between smokebox fairing and cylinder closes up too. It was the socking great crankpin that jabbed me in the eye, but I am sure that's just a 'fit together' component rather than representative of the final appearance. Go back to the underside photo, (a couple of pages back) and the bogie splashers are positioned 'outboard' for the negotiation of our tight model curves. If I understood the text correctly, the splashers are to be poseable, inboard for correct appearance but the model then confined to near straight track, outboard to get around curves. Good solution for what is otherwise 'impossible'.

Wait and see on that front. I'd guess the flanged wheelset is being provided for 'showcase' purposes, and only useable for any modeller in the happy possession of 4' and up radii on the layout; that is if the past pacific releases I own are anything to go by. The recent MN has a fixed truck and unflanged wheelset in the photos I have seen: does it come with a flanged display wheelset included in the packaging for the owner to install?. It is no legend. There's film of the NYC Niagara (400 ton 4-8-4 and seven axle tender ensemble) with roller bearings everywhere including on the rods, being kept rolling - very slowly - by two men. What with physics being the same both sides of the Atlantic... the brakes had to be properly off, cylinder cocks open and track level. This is the secret of the iron road, very little energy is absorbed in rolling friction, starting from a hard and elastic tyre on a hard and elastic rail. (Elastic in the sense used in physics.)

Despite the trials reported, that's a fine looking result that has been achieved. It captures the solid and purposeful appearance of the class and shows off the late LMS lining scheme very well I think. Is articulation of the tender to apply weight to the loco rear, feasible as a solution to the lack of weight in the boiler and firebox?

Mr Stirling would probably agree. He wouldn't have a brake standard on the front of the 4-2-2s while he held office, they were not to run double headed! Whatever, the underside view reveals that with the front bogie wheel unclipped the pocket will easily enough be cut away. That will be my choice. If there is any future owner he or she may cement it back on! (I usually leave such small deleted parts in the bunker space so they stay with the model.)

Lovely result, now I have caught up with this thread. That's the definitive 'rain dance' that has spurred Dapol into action do we think? The other easy alternative for OO types if a cheap Bachmann 24 or 25 mechanism can be obtained, is to fit that inside the Hornby mouldings. The top sides of the stripped clean main casting has to be attacked with your coarsest mill file to give it the necessary taper, but that done it practically builds itself.The Hornby body and underframe mouldings - with a little internal and fully concealed hacking for fit - clip around the casting, and the cosmetic bogie frames given locating holes to match the lugs on the Bachmann gear tower, just clip on. It really is that easy to upgrade to an all wheel drive and pick up.

All too true. Apart from this prototype's importance to UK express power development, and its outrageous beauty; not least of my interest in a purchase is seeing how Rapido get around the many 'inconveniences' that Mr Stirling's design visits on those required to produce a set track capable OO model. Having a representative of Rapido prepared to discuss their doings 'ices the cake' on this project.

Just considering the steam loco boiler, not least of the attributes of a well designed multitube, exhaust blast draughted, boiler is the ability to work with reasonable efficiency over the likely range of power output demanded: when placed in the hands of a crew who knew what to do. What's rarely mentioned in the peak output trial of the Princess Coronation is that when those two firemen put the coal on at the rate to produce 3,300 drawbar horsepower, the boiler was well outside the efficient operating range, coal consumption was about 60% higher per dbhphr. Useful 'stretch capability to have for a short period in normal operation if the fireman was strong enough! (The all time achievement is credited to a French chaffeur who in the trialling of a Chapelon design managed a firing rate of 180 lbs a minute for 20 minutes.) On the East Coast operation the A4s on the 400 mile runs were typically well overfilled, a 2' peak above the bunker top, generally reckoned to be worth somewhere between 11 and 12 tons of coal in total on the tender. In the winter with the demand for train heat, headwinds etc. there was an incident where an A4 had to come off at Htichin (roughly 30 miles short) as the bunker was empty. I believe the LMS managed a PC out of coal by Nuneaton, not sure if it was going North or South ;-). (For comparison the really fast operations on the other side of the Atlantic. The F7 'Hiawatha' on its 400 mile 6 hour schedule route had a 27 ton bunker - which was refilled half way along - and the Niagaras on the 1,000 mile 16 hour water level route had a 46 ton bunker, and were also refilled half way along! The train weights were much greater than in the UK, heavy cars and many more of them. Good footage to see what this looked lke on Youtube, search on 'NYC water level'.) Alternative explanation: the adhesion is sufficient, until it isn't. The little 4-6-0 didn't have sufficient force available to reach the adhesion limit, while all pacifics always very definitely do.

You mean this will be a RTR OO model where I won't have to fiddle around with carrying wheel springs to optimise performance? (In all fairness both Bach and Hornby have shown significant improvement of late in this matter.) Really interesting to see and read what has been achieved in the process of development of this model, thanks to those who made these recent posts. Mr Stirling's high stepper properly looking very sexy indeed.

The 8P pacifics in good condition and with a crew that knew how it was done, could produce outputs in the 2,000 to 2,500 hp range in regular service. That's why a special diesel design able to produce that much at the drawbar was required to enable fast schedules previously successfully worked by steam to be maintained on Eastern Region. The power production task required of the fireman was in truth always excessive on the really fast high power demand schedules. In the prewar period there were instances of the LMS and LNER pacifics burning off all their nominal nine tons of coal before the six or six and a half hour run was complete. The bursts of maximum power output required the fireman moving coal at a hundredweight a mile, and maintaining water level against the high demand from the engine: any pretence that he was also able to fully assist the driver in keeping a lookout for signals while under the cosh like that was just that, a pretence. Power is force multiplied by distance travelled per unit time. For any given power output, that means high force at low speed, much smaller force at high speed. Churchward's famous target for his express loco is an expression of this, two tons drawbar force at 70mph, equivalent 836 hp. The drawbar force at speed is much smaller than the tractive effort estimate at starting, which was circa 12 tons on Churchward's Star class. (And once more, the tractive effort estimate is no power indicator, it is a starting force estimate only.) Actually, one of the key features of the steam engine which made it ideal for mechanical power purposes in an unsophisticated engineering environment is that it can exert full torque at a dead stand indefinitely with no risk at all. Your electric motor in the same circumstances quickly requires a large blower or other cooling arrangements to prevent meltdown. For all its limitations, the steam engine has some characteristics that were key to getting a large scale mechanical power based civilisation properly underway.

Counter suggestion: Then again, it's getting crowded 'down South', with a fair number of competing recent releases, and several announcements in the pipeline. We've seen a retailer commission for a large and popular express class from that area dropped recently, and no-one wants that sort of thing repeated. The spending power isn't infinite, good though it may be. While there's a zillion prototypes without models from the Sheffield area northward, and much less competition to be anticipated. And there is some regional preference observable in purchasing choices, I am told. Lovely prototypes available from Cowlairs, Darlington and St Rollox, with not a hint of RTR models.

Certainly makes a very handsome model. This must be the first high standard RTR model of a clerestory roofed coach. Two in a decade even! Keep the faith, the NER's star had to rise sometime...

I thought this was the GWR design of dynamometer car, but as built elsewhere. Relivery opportunity?

As models get closer to replicating the prototype, small deviations which would pass unnoticed on a lesser model start to become very apparent. For my money, the glaring item which needs tackling amidst all the other refinements are coupler systems. Of the RTR autocoupler choices for HO and OO it's the Kadee (and clones) where that suits, and that's it.

It works remarkably well doesn't it? From the appearance of your pics, mine has the mechanism set slightly further back, so that neither front or centre wheel is perfectly aligned with the splasher, the positional error 'shared out' between the two. From all viewpoints except side elevation the eye passes over this. I did think about the full 'Iain Rice' treatment of sawing out the underboiler skirt and the splashers, in order to create light under the boiler and the splashers aligned with the (correct!) mechanism wheelbase. But the test assembly of the modded body which just push fits onto the mechanism with no screws required, resulted in victory being declared at that point. Life is too short to stuff mushrooms... Although I must put a piece of masking tape over the hole in the back of the cab, (quality job, spared no expense) that has daylight shining through it in an unexpected location.