Rumblestripe

For acrylic washes I like to add something to aid the flow of the wash. Personally, I use Windsor & Newton Acrylic "Flow Improver", for modelling purposes you'll only ever need to buy one bottle it costs £7ish for 125ml and only use a drop or two at a time. Basically you mix your wash on a palette and then add a drop of "Flow Improver" and you will see the surface tension of the liquid collapse and instead of a meniscus the liquid will flow easily across the palette. Your wash will then settle much easier into the crevices and joints of the model. Some people can get away with using IPA or washing up liquid but I find for the minimal outlay the proprietary preparation is most efficacious! No advertising intended!

Those are mighty handsome chuffers! Lovely job.

Looking good! Might I suggest that you secure the logs with a couple of coats of matt acrylic varnish. Just get a nice runny one like my favourite Windsor and Newton and just slap it on and it should pool where the logs contact each other and then fade into invisibility as it dries out. Don't go too mad you don't want pools of it on the wagon floor though! It aint super glue but it will stop the load shifting too much and once set allow you to position the chains a little better.

I was called through to our Sales Office this afternoon to attend an incident. This little fellow had flown into the windows at work and was spark out on the pavement outside, None of the ladies in Sales would touch him, fearing him an ex-Kingfisher, happily he flew off a few minutes later hopefully none the worse for his experience! I did notice some possible damage to the tip of his beak but hopefully not enough to impair his ability to feed. Good luck out there little chap!

A new convert here! Just stumbled across this thread after catching up on a couple of other layout threads I follow. The DMU ride video grabbed my attention. I'm slightly younger than the creator and my memories of travelling the lines around Teesside are more from the seventies than the sixties, the DMU ride sucked me right back like a mental Tardis and dumped me back on one of those rattly, smelly, smokey trips of my youth. I was back there riding from Darlington to Stockton, I'm wiping condensation off the windows to peer at the passing world, I can almost smell the stale tobacco and feel the horrid grubby seats! My Dad was a railwayman so I had a card for cheap travel and used the trains more than my mates. For that reason I'm on my own. Tonight, it's winter, I'm wearing a duffel coat, jeans and trainers and my hair long, there is a group of rather drunk "Teddy Boys" who are "taking the mick" out of my hair and I am worried they are going to give me kicking when we get off. I have never been able to fathom what "Teds" were doing in the 70s - perhaps some temporal displacement of their own? Any how they are obviously looking for someone to pick on and I'm it. So, at Eaglescliffe I make dive for the door at the last minute and as the DMU pulls away into the night I can see their sneering faces at the windows. Eaglescliffe station in the 70s was a desolate place, all that remained of the NER station was a bridge to the island platform and the platform (I think there is now a bus shelter?) still it's not too far to walk to home in Stockton and I'm not getting a kicking! Then as I start my walk home it starts to snow, right in my face, it's coming straight out of the north, I hunker down into my duffel and walk. When I get in, the front of the coat is completely white and I'm frozen to my core. All that from watching a video of a model train. Thank you. That's not just a model it's a time machine.

I had the pleasure of a prolonged hire in a Rover 75 2.5 V6 and loved it. I probably had it for seven or eight months, I didn't care to work out the fuel consumption as the company was picking up the tab and I might have felt guilty if it was as bad as I thought it probably was! It was a rather nice thing to be in, well built and with a lovely engine. It was a lot faster than it looked too. There was (probably still is) a stretch of road from the M1 towards Rotherham which was dual carriageway with loads of roundabouts in it. I used to have huge fun watching BMWs (for it invariably was one) pull into the outside lane as we went into a roundabout with a view to out dragging the lardy Rover out of it. She could really pick her skirts and skoot could the old girl!

From my trip to The Great Goodbye at Shildon, some detail/creative shots of the assembled A4s Lucky with the lovely light on the day and a great day out with most people being very accommodating for us happy snappers.

I am seriously coveting that "Lufkin angle tool" (it's probably in contravention of a Commandment or two). Lovely thing! Nice work Mike

Regarding the partition, I was told that it was due to "canny" farmers ordering small cattle wagons in the knowledge that there weren't many of them on the system and that nine times out of ten a "large" would turn up, so the Midland put in the partition which was locked in place to prevent said "canny" farmers magically enlarging the wagon. Translation for Mike: "Canny" is a northern English expression expressing the admiration of one who is cleverly miserly with money.

Just catching up on this thread (not sure how I've missed it till now) and I'd just like to add to the positive vibe on here. I'm enjoying watching the modelling as I am just contemplating dipping my toe in O gauge. One thing that crossed my braincell as I admired that rather lovely wooden caboose kit is that we don't seem to do wooden kits in Blighty at the moment and yet what better way of representing wood! With CAD/CAM laser cutting it should be possible to make very accurate sides for wagons (out of thin birch ply or mdf) for example and add the fittings in etched brass and white metal. You then get the benefit of the textural qualities of the correct material and that tactile element that is a big aspect of modelling. Hmmmm. Keep on keeping on fella!

If you haven't heard these guys yet, put that omission to rights tonight, ladies and gentlemen, The Treetop Flyers

A Sense Of Place

Black Five 45428 "Eric Treacy" working hard up the bank from Grosmont towards Goathland Saturday 28th September 2013

NYMR south of Grosmont (not sure what those cottages are called?) near Beck Hole

US S160 simmers (well perhaps a little more than a simmer) outside Grosmont shed, Saturday 28th September 2013 More here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rumblestripe/sets/72157636042696055/

Following kind suggestions from MikeOxon I have re-worked the above image, I have desaturated the image but added a slight warm tinge and cropped the frame square to remove the large black area at teh bottom of the image. I think it really lifts the image Thanks Mike!

Patient Rust: a tank engine awaits restoration at Marley Hill on the Tanfield Railway, the sapling sprouting from the coal bunker suggests that this little locomotive hasn't moved recently. Photo taken 30th May 2009 so perhaps this has moved on in the four years since?

A Class 101 waits in the gloom at Redmire Station 28 Dec 2012

There is (slightly different model) NER birdcage brake van in preservation on the Tanfield Railway The wheels do look slightly larger than standard 3'1" This shot shows the brake standard itself. Though whether it is visible in 4mm through those ickle windows... The end of the van is at the right of the picture. I assume though it isn't clear from this shot that there was a door through into the rest of the van? Anyway nice work, keep us posted.

Had a lovely day out at Raby Castle Classic Car Show (near Darlington) and here for those who do still like to see ridiculous old tin and non-conformist motoring are some piccies... A rather depressed looking Vauxhall Velox pick up (which surprised me, is this a custom job or a rarity?) A Nova (kit car based on a VW beetle floorpan) some additions of dubious stylistic merit but I've always loved the shape of these and the aircraft lifting canopy for access to the passenger compartment! It's a Mini, Jim but not as we know it! Great name too! A Mercedes model W108. An absolute delight for the aficionado of "proper" engineering, just ask the own of one to shut the door and watch it carefully it is engineered to close in a rather lovely way and listen for the THUNK! Just lovely! My, my, my... look at the bum on that! Now this is the back end of Frazer Nash, there was no-one nearby to ask (quietly) "Is it the real thing?" I don't think it is. BUT it was superbly built and detailed, there are other pictures of this and some other lovely old tin (and GRP) from my day out on my Flickr photostream. https://www.flickr.com/photos/rumblestripe/sets/72157635125309305/

A few photos from Shildon Classic Car Show, which sadly for some reason was not as well attended as last year. However, there were still some nice cars on display and a wander round Locomotion is always pleasant! The "Sphinx" mascot on an Armstrong Siddeley Hurricane The beautifully patinated steering wheel on an MG TC (might have been a TD)! The back end of a Morris (I think! This is the only shot I took of it and that putative identification is from my increasingly unreliable memory!) The engine of a Dino 308GT4. Owner declined my offer to eat my picnic off it though it was cleaner than the nearby picnic tables! Fuss pot! Enjoyable day out and lovely weather (which might explain the poor attendance as last year Shildon was preceded by several shows which were complete wash outs and this year has been unfailingly clement). Anyhoo hope for a better turnout next year.

For those who might like to combine a wander around Locomotion Shildon with a few classic cars. It is Classic Car day at Shildon tomorrow, last year there must have been well in excess of a hundred classics including a couple of buses. Free in, usual Shildon attractions, looks like decent weather (dry, warm, overcast) plus if you see a chap driving a red 1982 Porsche 924 come and say hello! http://www.nrm.org.uk/PlanaVisit/Events/shildon_shildonclassicmotorshow.aspx

On the subject of scavengers, my favourite bird is the crow. Wonderfully intelligent they are. On the field where I walk my dog there is regularly a pair on the ground, looking for whatever the everyday folk leave behind, and they know that my dog is on a "flexi-lead" so instead of taking off if he makes a lunge towards them (as he tends to do) they simply hop a little further away. It drives him nuts! With other dogs that are loose they take off and move a more respectful distance away! Watch them on motorways "tidying up" after a roadkill, watch how they understand the movement of traffic, how they know they are safe on the hard shoulder. Clever birds.

Your "War" with the grey menace brought to mind my Dad's attempts to "dissuade" (permanently) the local squirrel population from pilfering his peanuts. He constructed an elaborate (and not a little dangerous) electric device, basically a plate that sat on the bird table with a split down the middle and 240V AC direct to the plate! For some reason (the kind of adaptability that has allowed them to thrive in this country) the little grey nut nickers would not venture onto the table when the device was powered up. So he used to sit beside the switch as and await the pesky yank rodents. He finally did "get" one but the full force of the national grid was only sufficient to make said rodent hop off the plate in pretty quick time. The device was then abandoned. Sciurus carolinensis 1 Home Sapiens 0 And on the subject of garden birdies, I managed to capture this rather lovely Greater Spotted Woodpecker on the feeder at work.

Thanks to whoever posted the Coast album "The Turning Stone" currently my in car entertainment of choice. Good call sir! (Or indeed perhaps madam?) In the spirit of a shared recommendation try The Dunwells "Blind Sighted Faith"