SRman

Absolutely correct, Jamie. I did mine recently enough to remember! I inserted a small flat-bladed screwdriver from the front of the bogie, pushing it past the gears and levering gently as it approached the clips just behind. Once you can get one side loose, the other follows easily.

I can't remember if I ever posted this before. Apologies if I have acquired Alzheimers!

I'm sure I've been there!! To quote Dave Allen's character, James the butler; "More bleeding stairs!" I do like that shot, Baby Deltic. Atmosphere a'plenty. That's not to denigrate in any way the previous posters' photos either; Superb work guys, one and all.

Sounds really good. the thought occurs to me that by adding a dwell time at the "through station" it would then be better suited the fiddle yard - terminus - return to fiddle yard style for Peter.

Yes. A sequential presentation would be ideally presented in Powerpoint but a random screen would be a little more difficult ... perhaps something like a screensaver program might do. Or possibly a picture slide show presenter that allows random sequences. It is certainly "do-able" anyway. Going back to Powerpoint, you could also record station announcements to play with each slide.

Great idea Gary. We can make a good layout even gooderer! Just remember though; Mrs PCM reads (and even types) a lot of this so we may need to don some heavyweight armour!

Present!!

There should not be any need to remove the buffers or buffer beams on a Heljan 47 as they don't impinge on or impede the body / chassis connections at all.

It is held on by four clips roughly near the cab doors. Simply spread the body and let the chassis drop out. If it is a little tight you may have to pull down on the chassis while holding and spreading the body but don't pull on the central fuel tanks/battery boxes as they also are merely clipped in.

I am open to correction here but didn't the South Eastern use a different feed-water system on some of its locos that looked like a Westinghouse pump at the front of each of the tanks. The R/R1s may well have featured this as well.

Funnily enough, I was looking at the R1s I have and wondering whether to detail one or two of them and replace the original magnets with neodymium versions to make for better running on DCC. As I have picked up a few very cheaply (one was given to me!) with minor damage and poor repaints, there would not be any major loss of value to a collector! The discussion here has given me food for thought, and Graham's finished and detailed model doubly so (excellent work, there Muz).

I thought the Westerns simply had an insert in the standard wheels to give the dimpled effect. I received the wheel packs I ordered from Howes and have now swapped over three of the four locos I needed to do, ready for the exhibition next week at Caulfield (Melbourne).

Sounds good, Doug (oh, a pun!). Does the coal space really have to hold water? Just tell that fireman not to hose the coal down! I'll look forward to hearing it soon - probably on Saturday week at the exhibition.

Well, Doug didn't get that enclosure done last night, largely due to my talking to him on the phone when he "should" have been modelling! I have to agree with Doug's assessment of the ROD sounds, having now had a litle play with his ROD on my layout leftovers. It really is a lovely sound package, Bryan has excelled himself. As Doug said, the speaker installation leaves the sound a little tinny at the moment but a few minutes work with some plasticard, glue and Blu-Tac should see a major improvement in the output quality - he may well have done that by now, even as I type this!

Mike King, in his book on Southern coaching stock, lists some Maunsell coaches that were fitted with "standard" gangways at one or both ends, usually for use on inter-regional trains. He also describes what could happen if anyone forgot to undo the adaptors for mixed gangways when separating the coaches!

Any scale works for scratch building. It depends entirely on your skills and what materials you choose to use as to what is suitable and what is not. There are no hard-and-fast rules with scratchbuilding: if it works, it must be right!

Ditto the above. Mine arrived from The Signal Box, and they are superb! There are differences between each coach, such as matchboarding or sheeted sides, different door and end window shapes, different main window ventilators, and different brake gear arrangements. Very thorough detail work from Hornby.

Well, Doug, the Pullmans frequently got swapped between the SR and the LNER/ER - it won't be too hard to make up a little white lie to excuse them running on your layout! I'll bring some malachite green over to "recolour" one of those LNER machines of yours to match (p.s. It might even make them run better, too!).

I had pre-ordered the coach pack from Rails but got an apologetic email recently saying they had been short supplied and could not fulfill the order. I got straight onto The Signal Box (thanks for the tip, Ian J.!) and my credit card has now been debited so it should be on the way. Looking forward to getting this as I particularly wanted the 12 wheel brake. Nice video clip, robmcg.

Add to that the Melbourne trains are a little wider than BR stock too. Ironically, Sydney trains are wider and taller than Melbourne's loading gauge allows, even though New South Wales uses standard gauge while Melbourne uses Irish 5' 3" gauge. That's why the four-car Double Decker set that ran on the Lilydale / Belgrave lines for a while, even though it was based on the NSW Tangara design, was shorter, lower and narrower than the NSW stock. There are details of this train on the VicSig site (mentioned earlier) too.

Just a thought, seeing as I assumed HO scale to start with. If the OP is modelling in N, then maybe some of the lovely Japanese EMUs from the likes of Kato and Tomix could be adapted to resemble Melbourne's trains.

I don't know of any models that are remotely similar to the current trains, be they Hitachi, ComEng, Siemens or X'trapolis. There was a firm called Black Diamond Models that was going to produce original style ComEng units in HO but their website seems to have disappeared so I don't know what happened to them or the models. For earlier stock there is a modeller who appears regularly at Melbourne exhibitions who converts Lima South African coaches into very passable Harris trains but these are probablt way too early for your tastes. If you go down the scratch building route, I'd suggest the Siemens trains as being possibly the easiest as they have smooth slab sides and are completely devoid of any character (IMHO). They only have two sets of flush-fitting double doors per side whereas all other types have three pairs of recessed doors and curved tumblehomes on the lower sides, not to mention fluted panelling on the ComEngs and Hitachis. Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

That 150 really looks good, Peter. I'm really jealous now, because I want one of those but just cannot justify it with all the other stuff I want but can't afford as well! Your pic also shows that Hornby's colours on the 142 were pretty close to accurate, even though they appear rather bright in the flesh (unless you have repainted it). Your progress is amazing. Keep up the good work.

Yeah but don't forget the sound ...