Arthur

They're the Wills granite setts Gordon. As you probably know, the sheets are quite small, you can make out a slight gap just to the right of the glazing, by the inset rail, where two sheets are joined. They were painted with Tamiya acrylics, if I remember correctly, Buff first, then a thinned grey/ brown run into the joints followed by some light dry brushing to highlight the sett tops.

Here it is in use at the River Don Works itself; I did read some instructions, issued by BR to staff in the Sheffield area, concerning the movement, over BR metals, of large, hot, forging ingots. I cannot, for the life of me, remember where.

So, back to the glazing. Here are the four 'window' sets as they fell out of my model. As it's made, there is a central square of plastic in the centre. You can see on the side windows the three thin 'lugs' which connected them to the centre bit. The front and rear windows were similarly attached. From a factory assembly viewpoint it's a neat solution, push and glue the centre piece up into the cab, the windows follow it and are just pressed into place. I would think that removing the glued bit might be difficult and, as I said, when I pushed in the windows they just came free. Not a problem, no damage, but they'll need securing with varnish or the like. Edit; looking at them it looks like the lower lugs were glued to the cab sides but they came free readily enough.

I know that you are not modelling the actual River Don Works Dave but I thought a bit of background about the real one might help set the scene. It had been a major armour plate rolling plant and during WW2, under the ownership of the English Steel Corporation (ESC), it had been worked hard. ESC invested heavily post war to bring the plant up to date. Nationalised in 1967, ESC being one of the big fourteen British iron & steel companies, it came very close to closure in the early 1970s when the BSC and, the still private, Firth Brown were sorting out who did, and owned what, in the Sheffield area. There was a dearth of orders for heavy castings, especially from the heavy electrical engineering industry. In 1978 it was part of BSCs Forges, Foundries & Engineering, part of the Sheffield Division. The equipment at the plant was two, 12 tons/hour cold blast cupolas and two 8 ton induction furnaces, all for melting pig iron, total annual capacity 30,000 tons. Steel making facilities were one 90t and one 30t electric arc furnaces, total annual capacity 102,000 tons. There was some sort of vacuum degassing equipment, not sure what type, to improve the steel quality. One 10,000 ton, one 2,500 ton and two 1,300 ton forging presses. There were both iron and steel foundries, the casting pit being capable of castings up to 350 tons, heat treatment plants and various machine shops. Plenty of scope, then, for a range of inwards traffic, pig iron, coke, limestone and scrap. I suspect, in reality that the coke (around 200-250 tons week) and limestone, possibly even the pig iron, arrived by road in the 1970's, but it's your model...

The glazing is actually a single piece, a central, curved panel, which is glued into the roof and the front sides and rear hang off that on pairs of thin links. So, as the central part is pushed up into the cab, the other bits bend down and are moulded to push into the window reveals. They are not glued. I pushed them back in with my thumb nail and they snapped off the central, glued in bit, and fell out. The individual front, sides and rear panels were not damaged and are just popped back in, a bit of Klear or gloss varnish will hold them in. Does that make sense? I'll post a photo or two tomorrow to clarify how it's arranged.

A thought about re-assembly. If you do take out the side panels you will probably find that they don't fit back quite so well. That's because of the dried glue left behind. Clear out the slots in the footplate with the tip of a scalpel blade and clean up the lugs on the bottom of the side sheets with a needle file.

Easy enough. You need to remove the coupling pockets, they prise out. There are two screws recessed into the chassis block, one fore and one aft. Remove them, the small bonnet just lifts off, the cab and long bonnet needs to be raised and tilted forward to disengage it from the lugs above the buffer beam. The ends of the handrails need to be released from the sides of the buffer beams, they just pull out. The side panels are more difficult, they have two locating lugs but they're glued in. You need to work on them, carefully, with a scalpel to loosen them before prising them out. They will release but take it slowly.

Dave, pm sent but the air reservoir just pulls off, it has four round locating pips which push into matching holes, no glue is used, well certainly not on mine.

Yes, it's Hornby, originally a red Esso version. It was stripped down, primed with Tamiya white surface primer (a white primer is essential to get good coverage with yellow) and then sprayed with a Humbrol aerosol. Just a bright yellow, I'll check the reference tomorrow. I bought it for another project but it gave such a thin coat with good coverage that I used it for this. The decals are home made, printed onto Crafty Computer Paper clear decal sheet, and settled down with Solvaset. The logo was scanned from a BSC document and I work it all together with Serif PagePlus software.

Talking of BSC Sentinels, I've one in the shops at the moment; I'll post some more photos when it's finished.

The coupling rods, Andy? Yes, it's been commented on a couple of times, an interesting development!

It's not without some truth. Yes, any UK based model of the US or European scene will be using H0. Commercial support for British outline H0 has been, and is, minimal. Fleishmann had a Warship and some Bulleid coaches at one time and, of course, unless you build your own track, H0 track is used for 00. Other than that, British outline H0 accounts for, probably, considerably less than 1% of UK modelling, and little of that will be RTR or kit built.

One for me please Doug.

Perhaps, like allocating all of the English Caprotti Standard 5's to Patricroft, it was seen as sensible to concentrate all of the experience with them at one location?

Thanks Gordon, nice Brit by the way, DJH? So in that photograph, the green cast is clear, was that ballasted with the CK method and it's the Woodlands ballast itself which makes the difference? Edit; Hadn't heard that Pete, about the detergent, interesting.

Aspirational track work Gordon, I've long admired it on your Eastwood Town thread and that's a great tutorial which you have provided, thank you. The Woodlands ballast, it is granite chips? This method seems not to give the ballast that 'green cast' which the traditional dilute PVA dripped on method does, which is a real improvement.

Colin, search for Pritchard Patent Products, that should find it. They're in Seaton, Devon.

Not so common as Mickey said, Brian. However, as an example, by the early 1970s steelworks locos were being fitted with directional lights, indicating whether or not they were moving, and in which direction. Working in the gloom and uneven lighting of melting shops and casting bays, it was a useful feature.

Like Aldi, these 'special buys' generally stay in individual stores until their allocation is sold out. That could be a single morning to several days, even a few weeks, depending on local popularity. They re-run them every so often.

Yes, email from Hattons saying that their first batch arrived today, second batch due early 2014. This was referring to my pre-ordered Esso version, no info on the others.

We're talking here about the valves, not the valve gear. The valves are internal and themselves are not at all visible. The steam chests in which they operate do differ, slide valves usually running in roughly rectangular 'boxes', piston valves in cylinders. However, on an inside cylinder loco, like the D16, the steam chests are also between the frames so are barely visible and the valve gear driving them is the same for both types. So, unless the D16 has some particularly unique features, then I'd suggest it will make little difference to the model.

Now that looks right at home.

I was quite liking it being just scrub, that bare, uncluttered look, maybe just a bit of railway junk. If you do 'ave a 'oss, don't forget a drinking trough/old bath, and the ground in front of it, in front of any shelter and by the gate will be poached (bare of grass). Horses make a hell of a mess of paddocks. Oh yeah, a few piles of, er...manure dotted about, absolutely essential.

Who 'owns' that land Jason? In the photos it looks well fenced off already and, as far as the photos show, there is no other obvious owner such as an adjacent house or business. Just wondering whether it could be considered railway land and wouldn't therefore need extra fencing?

I built an M&L Grange body line kit, designed to fit on a Mainline Manor chassis, a good while back. The casting of the footplate was shocking, huge amounts of flash integral with the rivet detail and big moulding pips on the valences. I was both surprised and disappointed as they otherwise had a good reputation. I ditched the cast footplate and made my own from nickel silver sheet and just used the cab and boiler castings. If that was anything to go by I can well see why nobody would consider reintroducing them, maybe the moulds were/are just life expired.