SRman

... or an N1 or U1 (neither of which is available RTR)! This is the current state of the G16: (With apologies to Norwenglish for hijacking his thread!)

Good question Barry! I haven't achieved this yet, although I have filed the shape down a bit on the existing 8F cylinders - mine are still too rounded in profile at this stage. Someone suggested getting some Hornby N15 cylinders as being a better shape but, from the pictures I have seen (eg on Peter's Spares website), the mounting will require quite a bit of modification to fit the G16/8F. I should take apart one of my 'Arthurs' but, since they are not broken and work perfectly well as they are, I am reluctant to do that. I note that the OP is in Norway; I am in Australia, so we both have the problem of not having easy access to these things to actually see what we are getting.

Yes, any of the loco drive ones will do it. If you look on Golden Arrow's website, the kit instructions are available for download so you can see what is required in the way of cutting/hacking of the chassis. Because Hornby's catalogue numbers run on from each other, when you are buying online it is difficult to tell, sometimes, whether the item you are looking at is a tender drive or a loco drive one. If you can pick up a cheap 8F from a swap meeting you have the advantage of being able to examine it first. I am currently putting the finishing touches to a GAP G16 which also uses the Hornby loco-driven 8F chassis but I wouldn't mind doing a 'Z' too but that is dependent on getting another 8F at a reasonable price.

Work is proceeding slowly on converting the Bachmann class 350/1 into a SouthWest Trains class 450,, with the second coach now pre-painted then having had the Electra overlays added. My back has been healing slowly so I can spend longer per session at the workbench but I am still only dealing with one coach at a time. I have been painting the whole coach with a thin coat of dark blue as a primer coat (the driving coach used a Revell colour but al subsequent ones are using/will use Humbrol #15. This is followed by a coat of the 'Barbie' blue on the roof and ends and lower solebar panels. I have now realised that the red of the doors stops a little short of the footboards so I will be painting the door bottoms red before applying the next vinyls and will have to do the existing two coaches as well. Anyway, here are two hurriedly taken photos of the pair done so far. I do still have to redo the pantograph well and file, patch or fill the holes left over from removing all the 25kV equipment.

Very nice, Peter. For the transfers, you could check all the usual 'suspects', like Modelmasters, Cambridge Custom Transfers, Fox Transfers and HMRS. There are several dealing with departmental wagons (although I'm not sure of the Salmon specifically) in at least two of those ranges.

A drunk driver hit a tram (actually on light rail at that point) on a level crossing after trying to beat the boom gates on the Port Melbourne line: report here http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/tram-derailed-by-car-20130726-2qppl.html Picture here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/4846972-3x2-940x627.jpg No doubt at all who was at fault here!

Put it this way: the Underground hasn't reached as far as the real Newton Wood (or Newton Heath, Rick!!) but it still sounds good as a name. As I haven't actually turned on the colour printer yet, I can still add Newton Heath, Rick.

I have just been composing some LT roundel station signs in Word. I'll print them out on glossy photographic paper to represent enamel signs. I have tried Arial Bold and Gill Sans MT bold as being reasonably presentable representations of the LT signage - I'll decide after printing which is better. The LT bullseyes are made from two filled circles, the bottom layer 13mm in diameter in red and the upper 8mm diameter one in white with the border also changed to white. These were then centred then grouped. A dark blue edged and filled rectangle, 20mm by 4mm, was overlaid on that, centred and grouped. Finally, a text box was created and set with a clear background (the border was also changed to no colour but after I had positioned it - this allowed me to see what I was doing!). The text was typed in, centred and turned to white after dragging the text box over the blue rectangle. Font size was set to 5 point, except for the Gill Sans Newton Broadway which had to be reduced to 4.5 points. Just for the record, for anyone who hasn't realised it, font size in Word can be selected down to 8 points but you can actually type in a number and hit 'Enter' to get it down to whatever size you want, within reason. Hedging my bets, I have made sixteen of each of the names Newton Broadway, Newton Green, Newton Road, Newton Bridge, Newton Wood (actually a real place near Epsom!), Newton Lane and Newton Park, half with Arial bold and half with Gill Sans bold.

I clicked on the photo of 4306 and there's no sound!! Actually it would be nice if you had been able to capture the sounds but they are very nice photos anyway. It looks like the weather was being very kind too. Those 43 class were a very unusual combination of manufacturers.

Last post on this topic for today! I have added a little of the 'Barbie' blue along the bottom edges of the sides, retouched the 'swoop' stripes around the front and touched up the black on the 'buffers' and gangways. The stripes are sill very rough and the vinyls require trimming around the tail lights but it is taking shape. That isn't a stain or patch on the sofa behind; I doctored the photo to remove a distracting red and blue bag on the sofa! For anyone wondering, here's what you get in the pack from Electra Railway Graphics (great service from Adam, too!): It includes the one-piece side overlays for four coaches (the missing pair from the photo are the ones I have already used, of course!), the roof red and orange flashes (two but only one in the photo because I have used the other), pantograph well blanks, gangway door covers, unit end numbers and a heap of destinations in dot matrix style. The vinyls are actually clear so the windows go straight over the existing ones on the model and include the interior stickers ('no smoking' and the like), all pre-cut and self-adhesive so they only have to be peeled off the backing sheets. The second side on this first coach went on more quickly than the first (practice makes perfect!), although I think I may have stretched it ever so slightly so that the windows on the second set of doors didn't quite line up perfectly and the last two side windows had the tiniest amount of the factory colour showing at the lower edges. The discrepancies are very small and won't show when in service on the layout, especially as the underlying colour of the doors and window surrounds was dark blue anyway.

To illustrate what I said in the previous post, here is a photo of the front part of the red and orange 'swoops' modified to show nearer where they should be going. I have subsequently trimmed the lower orange bit and reseated it at a slightly better angle. The point of the red should end under the headlight and intersect the tail light while the orange should pass under the taillight with only a very slight overlap of the rim. Fixing this will entail a little hand painting although that's not too bad to do. The ERG vinyls take a lot of the drudgery out of doing this livery. For completeness, I will also have to add some red stripes around the inner ends to continue the lower body stripes. Edit: I took a quick (rushed! Sorry about the blurriness) photo of the corrected angle and position for those front stripes. There is too much red and orange showing still but it gives a better idea of what should be. As can be seen, in daylight the 'Barbie' blue is slightly different but it's as close as I will get to being correct for now. I think it is better than leaving the roof in the dark grey it left the factory with, and likewise at the inner end it is better than leaving the light grey.

For anyone who may be interested, my workbench blog is here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/965-srmans-workbench-blog/ Let me say from the outset that only a small proportion of my entries are relevant to the pre-grouping era. My most recent entries have included an LCDR/SECR brake van from Roxey Mouldings and a class 350 / 450 conversion (ultra-modern privatisation era!). Also in my fairly recent offerings is an ex-LSWR G16 4-8-0T, albeit in 1960s BR guise. I hope to have a look soon at some of the other links people have been posting here.

Thanks, guys. I have only seen the real ones in photos and videos but they do look impressive to me. The SWT colour scheme seems to suit them well and Electra have mostly captured that well, with the minor exception of those front stripes.

I have now added the first vinyls to the Bachmann SouthWest Trains class 450 (ex-Silverlink class 350/1). I was a bit stuck for the right shade of blue to match the SWT blue on the vinyls so as a preliminary undercoat for any exposed edges, the inner end and the roof I used a Revell dark matt blue, then followed it with some Precision Paints First Group 'Barbie' blue, which has turned out to be an almost perfect match for the vinyls. I also pre-painted the leading end of the roof with red and orange to roughly correspond with the Stagecoach 'swoops' so that the holes in the roof vinyl overlay for those colours where the vents go through would match. I have applied the first vinyls to just the one side at the moment so I could assess which edges need to be pre-painted on the other coaches.The instructions say to apply the roof flashes first so I did that carefully, then added the unit numbers on the cab end, over the windscreens. While I was at it, I added a destination over the relevant windscreen. There are a few small air bubbles present and I may try the previous method used for Electra Graphics to smooth the vinyl over any raised detail, that is, I'll try the hair dryer heat on it to see if I can improve things a little. Overall though the effect is quite good. From normal viewing distance I think it looks great. One other thing I will be altering though is that front end sweep of the orange and red: the ERG version is set too low so will be cutting it off at the corner and hand-painting the remainder. The red stripe should intersect the lower part of the tail light and there should be a band of blue across the bottom of the cab front (already painted earlier when I did the roof, in fact!).

Just a quick update on the LCDR brake van. I have added the buffers plus several more coats of paint. The white roof in particular needs many light coats to prevent it looking too clean and white (I used a pale grey as a primary coat for that reason). Still to be added are the footboards and brake gear, the latter being particularly frustrating for me as I can't make head or tail of the instructions! In addition, I don't like the etched brass 'wooden' brake shoes so I think I will have to use them as templates to cut them out of 40 or 60 thou plasticard with wire mounts. Even so, if I don't get this spot on, those full-length footboards will hide a few discrepancies (or short cuts!!).

The Mainline model set new standards in appearance. It was a great pity that they never seemed to run well at all ... mine certainly didn't and neither did any of the others I saw! Bachmann, of course, introduced a very decent mechanism into what was already a good-looking model so it could actually run as well as it looked.

Some nice videos there, faulcon1, and an interesting looking layout. I hope you won't mind me commenting on the class 30 though. As your model is in original, as-delivered condition, it should have a Mirrlees engine. Bryan of Howes actually responded to the challenge when I made a passing comment about the unlikelihood of getting the correct Mirrlees sounds into a sound project and came up with the goods by using a mix of archive footage and existing Mirrlees sounds from the re-engined class 37 'slugs'. As you may have noticed from my earlier posts I have both class 30 and 31 sounds from Howes in different members of the class: D5513 (renumbered and updated in livery from an original Hornby D5512 release) and 31 233 in Railfreight sector livery (reblown from the original less convincing Hornby sounds). Anyway, please don't take this as any form of criticism as I like what you have done.

When all is said and done, Skaran, it is your layout for your enjoyment. At least using MR and LNWR stock would not entail changing any scenery, signs or road vehicles - they'll be of the correct period already!

Well, if I call it Newton Broadway (which doesn't sound too bad at all!) then the woods can become Falcon Woods!

The GWR did have a link to the Metropolitan Railway in early years, to the extent that much of the western part of the Hammersmith and City line was built for broad gauge. Just a little food for thought!! At the moment, while I am still constructing the main lines on the upper level there is limited stock storage on the LT lines. Basically it is a free-for-all at the current time but I will exercise some discipline regarding period settings and matching stock, scenery and road vehicles as best I can when things are a little more complete.

I have just gone through an uploaded many (but not quite all) of the missing photos. I will try to locate the rest in the near future.

Bif: if you are still around, I sent you a PM with a query on July 15th. Not sure if you had noticed it.

Broadway had not entered my mind, I have to admit. Still, another good idea to put into the melting pot.

That's really taking shape, Peter. Lots of progress there.

No, Michael, you are right. Photos on the first five pages seem to have dropped out, probably because I was using a different site to host them. Most later ones are hosted on Photobucket or in RMweb itself. Give me a few days and I'll wade through and fix them up. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.