SRman

After a period of inactivity on the G16 project, I have now done a little more detailing work. This was to add a wire run (or is it an oil pipe run?) from the front of the tank to the bulge over the cylinders on each side plus the start of what will be the clack valves on each side. For the latter I have used a thickish brass wire with some fibre washers intended for valve gear applications. Next, I will add a little Milliput to the tops followed by another of those fibre washers. The photos show this work to date, with apologies for the blurriness of the first pic. Those wire/pipe runs are deliberately kinked and wavy - photos of the real ones show this to be so.

I have been on school holidays for the last two weeks and have made a small amount of progress with the layout building, although not as much as I had hoped/planned for! I have done some further levelling and grading of the polystyrene landscaping at the village end. I am generally happier with it now. No photos of that to show at this point but I will take some soon. I have been fiddling with the track diagram for the LT lines and have now printed it and laminated it, ready to mount behind some clear acrylic (also shown in the photo). I will then drill holes where he switches will go. Normally the track section switches will be left on for DCC but sections will be able to be isolated for DC analogue running. Apologies for the reflections. I have been giving some thought to the Oxted line bridge - part brick arches and part under-line lattice girder. I have not found any suitable bridge kits from the kit manufacturers (Faller, Vollmer, Kibri, Walthers, Atlas, etc.) but I hit upon another idea; the Ratio Pratt truss signal gantry! I am ordering four such kits to play around with. Each gantry on its own would not be sufficient to support the bridge span (in real engineering terms) but two or three side by side should look the part, in conjunction with some plate girders ... I hope. Google Earth street views are quite helpful in visualising this, if anyone wants to look.

They obviously didn't follow the modellers' rules for weighting of wagons! A bit of lead in the bottom of the wagons may have prevented the derailment!!

I will have to dig through my reference books but I have a feeling that one (possibly two) of the earliest narrow cab wedge fronts had the two side window arrangement before three were settled on as the standard. Graham (Muz) may be able to save me a bit of time though as he is a mine of information.

The trouble with a loco shed is that it actually hides models! Mind you, the shed itself can be a work of art ... and I'm sure that any such thing that you build will be just that, a work of art.

I have a Hornby BIL bought cheaply from TheModeller .com that I intend to paint BR blue too. Straight away your post has allayed any fears I had of cracking windows as I remove them. I will be watching this topic with great interest (as with all your other topics, for that matter!!). Once again, I am happy to watch others' efforts and errors (hopefully not!) to learn what I should do.

I had to do a double-take on those shots, Sandhills, just to make sure they weren't real. The only giveaway I can see is in that last one with the Peak: the curved catenary wires. That's not intended as a criticism, BTW. Excellent work - actually, that applies to all of the contributors.

I had forgotten the Scottish Bulleids! They were mostly repainted in maroon but at least some ran in green for a while, which looked a little strange in Scotland. There is certainly plenty of photographic evidence to confirm what John said about the set numbers sometimes being left on the ends of the coaches even though the combinations of coaches clearly shows that they were no longer in a set.

None that I now of made it into blue and grey. I am open to correction but I think the last examples were withdrawn in or around 1968.

My set arrived today. I have assembled it on the layout using the Dapol couplings for the time being but may change it to something better in the near future. It hasn't actually run yet!! I am still admiring the detail and thinking about a little weathering.

I will try to record it in the near future. It is only recently that I have been able to catch up some of my previously unrecorded sound locos on video. Some are on YouTube and some in Photobucket. For a couple I am still working on editing the files. I can't say it's a particularly exciting sound but it does give me something different to the other hydraulics I have (a Hymek and a Western). I usually do several circuits of the layout, with the start up and power up on the first pass, full throttle and spool down on the second pass, then coasting to a halt and shut down on the third, although that can be varied a bit to suit particular sound projects if they have other features. I then edit the video to cut out the 'dead' tunnel running behind the scenes. However, some recordings I took on my phone (an HTC Sensation XL), while perfectly viewable in themselves, don't take to editing in Pinnacle Studio 12, especially when adding transitions. I think the frame rate may be lower than when I use the 'proper' video camera and when Pinnacle adds the transitions it can't cope with fewer frames so jumps back a few frames at the end of the transition.

Now that I have a bit of an idea of what I'm doing with the viaduct double-track conversion, I have commenced work on the second arch. It is posed here resting on those containers (again!) because I haven't done the next supporting pier yet. The photos cruelly show the rough spots, particularly the inner arch lining on one half having slipped - I'll have to trim it and reseat it. Note from that last pic that I have also been straightening out and levelling the station canopy.

Hey, I'm always happy to help someone else spend their money!!!

I have a 120 with the Craftsman brass sides and ends on Hornby/Lima chassis. Not a difficult conversion but it can take some time. I also have a reprint of a 1962 Ian Allan ABC which has a picture of a three car class 116 made up with two motor brake second coaches so, while certainly not typical, it does show that such a formation could, and did, occur.

I also have the Howes sound in mine. I tried a bass reflex speaker, a bass enhanced and a normal rectangular/oval speaker with a large sound chamber and found there was very little difference with this particular sound set so settled on the standard speaker, saving the bass reflex and enhanced ones for other projects where they may be of more benefit.

Something to be wary of too: I think the first two (prototype) units had a different design of buffet vehicle to the later production runs. The roof details could vary somewhat as well as the first units had 1951 EMU controls with external roof conduits on all vehicles. Early on, the production batch from 7002 onwards had the bogies on the buffet vehicles swapped to the Commonwealth type. The second production batch had Commonwealth bogies from new.

Yes, I managed to place an order later on: I ordered a 2 BIL, which may possibly end up in blue with yellow ends, and a Hornby 08 with sound for 113 pounds - not bad considering the decoder alone is worth that.

I have bought stuff off them before so I think it's just the website itself that's dodgy, not the trader!!

Hmmmm! Their website appears to be having problems right now. I'll have to try again later.

At that price it is tempting, despite the known faults in appearance and some reports of inconsistent running qualities. I have one each of the blue and NSE liveried examples already, also bought at good prices ... but not as good as the Kernow price!

Kangaroo steaks on the hop!

As Rick (Gwiwer) said, next time let us know you are coming to Melbourne. To get to Puffing Billy by train from Flinders Street you would have passed through my local station at Blackburn. There are quite a few interesting and worthwhile layouts around here, including Rick's. As for artizen, yes I have done that trip in the past and reckon on two 12 hour stints with an overnight stop in Dubbo. With three drivers and two kids it wasn't too bad as we rotated at roughly two hour intervals: two hours driving, two hours in the back with the kids and two hours in the front passenger seat.

Well ... I do have that Knight Rider bus I made from two EFE RT models ...

If they use the German V100 power train then some, or even most, of the problems caused by NBL trying to use imperial measures to build metric engines would disappear.

Yes, on DCC the cab light at one end comes on with function 1, and at the other, independently, on function 2 - except on those with sound decoders where the lights are remapped to higher function numbers (F1 is usually sound on/off and F2 is, by convention, horn sounds). On my Howes fitted 22 the cab lights are on functions 14 and 15, from memory. It is a nice refinement when compared to Bachmann locos which have both cab lights switched on or off at the same time.