Tim Lewis

Thanks for clarifying that. Even if I end breaking the hopper on removal that's OK (just need to be careful with the cage).

I have the same "problem" (although I'm sure it's not difficult to get round one way or the other). I'm also guessing that you want a BR early crest version. The options are to buy one without hopper or Westinghouse and add a Westinghouse somehow or other (I'm aware a few different ones may be available, but then there's all the fiddly connections etc to sort out), OR, buy one with Westinghouse and hopper and take the hopper off. I spoke to the TMC guys at Doncaster the other week. He didn't want to take one out of the display case, but was "pretty sure" that the hopper is a separate moulding (makes sense) and therefore "should" come off fairly easily. So, I'm going to get the Westinghouse/hopper version and see what happens. You may also want to note that the two options mentioned have different buffers (one LNER, one NER) so you may want/need to take that into account as well. Cheers. Tim

Modellers in, or visitors to, Sweden, may be heartened to know that MRJ is available in the newsagent at Lund railway station, along with a good selection of other modelling and railway magazines: However, any purchasers may be less heartened by the price: 239 SEK is round about £19! Still..... worth every penny/krone.

Tony Geary's already done it - see page 7 of his Basford North thread.

Sorry to see you go Adam, I've enjoyed seeing your excellent wagons on here over the years - definitely a cut above most efforts. Good luck with the layout and future wagon-building!

Happy to be of service!

Looks like the number begins E196xxx which makes it one of the 10' wheelbase ones (diagram 122 from memory?). Highly unlikely that any of the LNER 9' ones would have survived this late.

Oh, a J21 - didn't see that one coming (although I suppose it shouldn't be a big surprise as Arthur already does a J24 and J25 and there must be lots of commonality). I already have a Nucast one that I built ages ago, and an LRM one unstarted in the drawer, but I can see me getting one of Arthur's as well as I suspect it will be superior to both.

Layout looks to be developing nicely,. What have you used for ballast?

Apologies for the delay in posting this. My friend Alan has asked me to thank all of you who kindly contributed to this thread. He still hasn't managed to find exactly what he was looking for, but has a few new leads to follow up. Thanks again.

You may well be right - I'm away from my reference books/photos at the moment, but my recollection was of seeing a fair few photos of screw couplings on unfitted wagons. My period of interest is later on (40s/50s) though, and it is of course possible that they could have been retro-fitted.

I believe that many (all?) unfitted cattle wagons had screw couplings, presumably to avoid the "snatching" of 3-links. Still wouldn't be allowed to be coupled to a passenger train though.

A belated very happy birthday Arthur! Some great reminiscences there - you've actually seen what most of us only wish we'd seen! As you probably know, the Sentinel railcar "Royal Charlotte" worked the Kelso branch for several years before moving away from Tweedmouth in (I think) the early 40s. Unlike Riverside's post above, I'm just getting ready to start one of my D20s (only been in the cupboard about 5 years), but I'm also looking forward to the Q7 and the C6! Happy Birthday again.

Thanks to all those who replied. Apologies for the delay in responding - I've been distracted by other things (including going on holiday!). I'll pass the information on to Alan (my friend), hopefully it will be useful for him. Thanks again.

Bit of a long shot, but who knows........ A friend of mine is very interested in the Boer War and has researched various aspects of it over the years. He is currently trying to find railway timetables from just before the outbreak of the war (11 October 1899 apparently). He believes that the railways essentially "stopped" at the outbreak of war (presumably he means as a public service, as I would imagine that they were put to military use during the war?), but that mail trains may have got through to Cape Town and Pretoria for another couple of days. He has tried Googling but without success (I don't have the details, but he says that several of the websites listed were now inactive) and has tried a couple of contacts in South Africa, but with no joy there either. I have tried a quick Google myself: I managed to find a timetable from 1882, but nothing else, but I don't really know where I should be looking. Does anyone on here have any information on this, or could suggest websites or other potential sources of information? Like I say, it's a bit of a long shot, but I never cease to be amazed by the collective knowledge on RMWeb! Hopefully I'll hear back from someone! Cheers for now.