Tim Lewis

I haven't yet decided whether to give it a change of identity. When I was originally drawing up the list of locos needed for Coldstream, a D11/2 was a "nice to have" somewhere near the bottom of the list, but the appearance of the Bachmann one was just too good to miss. They didn't get south of Edinburgh too much I don't think, although they were occasional visitors to the Waverley route - I've seen a picture of Edie Ochiltree near Hawick somewhere. However, it my parallel universe, this will pull an Edinburgh-Newcastle via Galashiels and Kelso (a service which did exist in the 30s, but not for too long, and certainly not into the 50s). For now, it'll stay as Lady of the Lake, but may change later on - there's some good names to conjure with!

New Year, new resolution?? Finally, some progress on the workbench - converting a D11/2 to P4 using Alan Gibson components. There is a very useful 8-page set of illustrated instructions that can be downloaded from the Gibson website. Here it is before starting, precariously balanced between two bits of P4 flexitrack. Starting with the tender. There is a choice of using the Bachmann axles, or pinpoints provided. As in the instructions, I used pinpoints on the outer two, and the Bachmann one in the centre. Having glued bearings into the holes, the pinpoints are a sod to get in: filing a V in the bearing flange makes life easier, but still a strain on the fingernails. The pickups need bending to make contact with the new wheelsets. A nicer solution might have been to use shorting wires on the wheels and re-use the Bachmann split axles, then I could also have used the Bachmann pickups without re-shaping them: if I ever do another one I might try that. The bogie is pretty straightforward... Then the drivers. Removing the keeper plate exposes all the gears, and the Bachmann drivers can simply be lifted out. You need to get the gears off the axles: easier said than done. The instructions warn not to twist the gears as the axle is 'splined': what they don't tell you is that there are additional 'splined' sections at the end holding plastic bushes in place. It took a fair bit of faffing to get the gears off. The instructions then recommend rolling a biggish file across the axle to make a new 'splined' section to secure the gearwheel on the replacement axle. I had my doubts whether this would work, but it seems to have done. Once the gears are in their correct place on both axles, add the bearings and spacing washers, put axles back in the chassis and refit the keeper plate. Then the rods need to be bushed: ..and fitted (along with crankpin bushes obviously): Here's the finished item with a couple of re-wheeled Gresley suburbans. Quite pleased with this. It needs running in, but hopefully will run as well as it did before I messed around with it?! There is more work to be done: I haven't yet added the 'extra' bits provided by Bachmann, and there is now a cavernous gap between the chassis block and the P4 wheelsets which needs partly filling with some wider cosmetic frames: likewise the bogie. But as a quick route to a P4 D11, can't complain. It took about 8-9 hours altogether, including faffing, blackening wheelsets, fitting crankpins etc etc.

Ooh, this looks interesting (though personally I'd prefer it with lots of Q6s, Q7s and O1s!) There's a group building this in EM as well. Might be worth contacting them to see if they can provide any useful information.

Thanks Mark: yes, the curve does look nice doesn't it. Partly as a result of this, Coldstream has weirdly shaped baseboards, and will probably be a pig to transport, but I made the decision (rightly or wrongly) to prioritise getting the track layout "right" over portability considerations. You may be right about the ballast, although some photos of Coldstream suggest it was perhaps more of a small clinker ballast than fine ash, but a bit difficult to tell. As I noted above, I was intending to do some experiments with wood ash before committing to one method or another, but since then I've seen Blackgill, which has probably the most convincing ash ballast I've seen. Apparently it's crushed and sieved coal ash with a bit of coke ash for good measure, so I feel some more experiments coming on! I have seen (possibly on RMWeb - can't remember) people using DAS or similar to fill in between sleepers to represent ash ballast, but it doesn't do it for me. Sadly, no more updates to report at the moment. A combination of work, an overseas trip and having things done to the house have meant even less progress than normal for the past few months, either on the layout or on the workbench (although I did fit a chip in my J21). Hoping I might get a bit done over Xmas, but we'll see....

This may well have been linked before, but if it has then I missed it. Some great footage on here: there's only about 4 1/2 minutes of Waverley route footage, starting around the 2min mark, but its' great stuff, especially that at St. Boswells. Also lots of great shots from elsewhere in the country: a pleasant way to spend an hour! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXw_cQbr6Do

Only just found this thread: very nice looking J21. The Nu-Cast kit is a bit of a horror isn't it: there are some pictures of my J21 (and J25) on my workbench thread if you're interested. A bit late in the day now, but I also posted a load of detail pictures of the preserved J21 (but now I can't find the thread: it's probably on the 'old' RMWeb).

Thanks Gus (and Tom and bri). Ah yes, ballast. A tricky area. Some time ago (looking back through my records it seems it was actually four years ago - time flies!) I started to do some experiments with ballast. Most commercial offerings look to me to be either too big, too light, too dark, too uniform etc. for what I need, which is nominally 'ash ballast', but from photographic evidence it doesn't look to be especially fine ash ballast. I'm no expert by any means, but I suspect it may be clinker or some such thing. Also, some commercial ballasts are cork or rubber-based (I think) and I've heard that this can be difficult to get to stay in place using my intended 'diluted PVA applied with dropper/syringe' method, as it tends to float around. Anyway, I've got some really nice brass laboratory sieves (my company were actually throwing them out many years back now), so I did some particle size analysis to allow some sort of comparison (i.e. apart from purely visual) of some commercial ballasts and other alternatives such as chinchilla dust and bird sand. Please note that I'm not saying that these sizes relate to the prototype ballast, but visually I decided that I wanted to use only particles that would pass through the 425micron sieve. Off-the-shelf, size wise, the best bet was Carrs Ash ballast, but I'd be looking at throwing half of it away, and it's pretty expensive (and I think probably also prone to 'floating' although I don't know this for sure). On the other hand, chinchilla dust is pretty cheap, so even though only around 30% of it satisfied the size criteria, it would be more economical. (The size distribution seems to vary between brands: a friend has 'discovered' some generally much finer stuff in a different pet shop!). Bird sand was another possibility, but in tests, I preferred the way that the chinchilla dust absorbs paint (I use ordinary cheap black poster paint) such that the colour doesn't end up too uniform. So, my current intention is to use this, but I also want to do some experiments with sieved wood ash as well, so nothing cast in stone (excuse the pun) as yet. This gives an idea of what it will look like, but bear in mind that this test piece is not tamped down or glued, just loose.

A bit more work done on the track over the last few weeks. I've now got the track base (Exactoscale foam) laid on all the remaining track sections (apart from the turntable and the road underbridge at the Kelso end), glued down the Templot plan and have laid the sleepers on the two main running lines through the station. Have laid some more track on the Kelso line, including one half of the main crossover and have started the turnout to the down headshunt. Here's an overall view from the Tweedmouth end, in the now familiar environs of my living room (yes, SWMBO is away again!) and some lower level views: hoppers on the down headshunt, couple of cattle wagons in the yard. And this is what it looks like from the other end: Slow progress as usual, but it's becoming a bit easier to get a feel for what it will look like. Will probably concentrate on getting more turnouts done next.

Oh dear, more expense! You're right: it is "the one we really want". Despite having an unbuilt Chivers kit in the drawer (which I know Arthur designed), I could still probably do with another couple. (And where did that N10 come from: don't really need one of those, but it does look nice!)

A long time since I made any progress on Coldstream, but done a little bit this past few days. I finally bit the bullet and reconfigured the crossover between the two running lines. When I laid the sleepers I hadn't realised that a point rodding run had to cross under the track in the area where the interlaced sleepers are: this resulted in a conflict... The red line is the approximate route that the point rodding needs to take: you can see that there is no way it can cross the track here, as the other adjacent turnout gets in the way. There was nothing for it but to re-lay it as a 'timbered' rather than 'sleepered' crossover. (Photographic evidence isn't sufficient to determine what it really was, but the rodding definitely crosses here, so I guess it must have been timbered). I ended up removing quite a few more, in order to get rail length ends in sensible positions. Here's what I ended up with.... There are actually four runs of rodding that cross here, but there is now room for this to happen. This is what the whole thing looks like: I'm happy enough with this, and it provides a nice contrast to the interlaced turnouts. It took quite a while to do, but at least now I can get on with a bit more track construction.

Yes, several of the ex-O7 Austerities had British Railways in the tender, whilst sporting their 63xxx or E3xxx numbers - photos in the relevant Yeadon. There are no pictures in there of ex-O7s numbered in the 90xxx series with British Railways on the tender, but that doesn't necessarily mean there weren't any (likewise for any non-O7 Austerities.

As you say, not the best of images, but zooming into it, I could just about convince myself that it might be 63030, one of about 12 WD/O7s shedded at Tweedmouth at Nationalisation, and the very one that (one day) I've decided to make a model of (the Dave Bradwell kit has been in the drawer for around 10 years now!) It is highly likely that some of the Tweedmouth Austerities worked over the Waverley, especially considering that several daily East Coast freights were diverted along the Tweed Valley line for a period of about 3 years following the floods of 1948.

Excellent - I'll look forward to seeing it in Wakefield. I have seen it before somewhere (Leatherhead probably), but it seems to have come on a bit since then. Top notch weathering!

Here's some I made earlier... Not much activity on the workbench for some time, but with the imminent release of Hornby's Thompson suburbans, I though I'd better post some pictures of a couple of coaches (that I made in EM originally about 25 years ago): they are in the process of being converted to P4 (and have been for ages!). But wait....all is not as it seems... I think there is a fairly widespread mis-conception when it comes to suburban coaches that Gresley = wood and Thompson = steel. These however are Gresley steel-sided stock from the mid- to late-1930s. Can't remember the diagram numbers off hand. Built from Kemilway kits with MJT bogies. Amazing to think that the Kemilway kits are 35 years old now, and still up there with the best of 'em as far as etch quality and prototype fidelity goes. One day I'll get round to finishing them off.

Yesterday (or was it the day before?) double headed 70s went past my window at work on one of the Rugeley-bound (I believe) coal trains. I wasn't really paying enough attention (one of my work colleagues was discussing something with me at the time- very inconsiderate), but I think they were 70010 and 70003. I guess one had failed.

A little bit more track done. Track on 3 roads now crosses over to the next board. For the latter two I've used SMP (I think) fishplates for temporary alignment: these hold the rail quite tightly. I don't think you can get them anymore - luckily I borrowed a few from a friend. Obviously they'll be removed, and the 'mis-placed' chair sorted, when I take the boards apart. I've also laid some of the sleepers on the third board, which is parallel with the second (if you see what I mean). It's the three sidings on the right of this picture. The middle siding goes to an agricultural merchants store and now has sleepers along its full length. The two either side go to the front and back of the cattle dock (where the Copydex bottle is). I've currently stopped sleeper laying at the cattle dock, as I'm not sure what the track base should be. I don't have any decent pictures (either of Coldstream or any other cattle dock), but I have heard that the track bed was often paved, with drainage to get rid of cattle urine etc. Does anyone know if this is true, and if so how widespread it was? Also, are there any decent published pictures anywhere? (I've tried searching, but to no avail).

Across the Great Divide! (well, onto board 2 anyway) SWMBO is away for a couple of days, so I took advantage and made a mess of the living room. I don't normally have room to join baseboards together in my study. I wanted to get some track across the baseboard join. Didn't get as far as I'd hoped (surprise), but got one road done. There is an awful lot of trackwork on the next board, so once I've got all the alignments sorted, it'll take quite a while to complete the board. Hopefully a bit more progress soon.

Yes it was all done in Templot, which is a wonderful program once you get your head round it. I constructed my own templates for NER turnouts (1 in 6/7/8 and 9) based on information from the NERA standards book. It took quite a while, but I can (obviously) re-use them as many times as I need. I believe that you can now download some from the Templot site (which, if Martin's done them, are probably a better job than mine!!).

With a bit of scenery to tie it all together, it's really beginning to look the business - nice one!

A while since my last post. Slow progress as usual, but the first turnout is now more or less complete, at least the bits above the baseboard. Not the most perfect piece of point work in the world, but a passable interpretation of an NER sleepered turnout I think, and a test vehicle seems to run through it OK. I was fairly happy with how the 'narrow' chairs turned out (no pun intended!), i.e those where there's two on the same sleeper. These are cut down GWR (aarrghh!) 2-bolt chairs, which aren't the correct pattern, but give the right impression. Cutting them down was a bit fiddly. You can see that I still need to add a couple of back-heel chairs. You can also see the phosphor-bronze wire providing electrical continuity between the switch blade and the tongue rail: I didn't want to rely just on the heel joint itself (which is an Exactoscale brass fishplate). This has taken quite a long time, but I've learned a lot as I went along, and I hope that things might speed up a bit!

Another tiny bit of progress. Today I made a pair of loose-heel switches, seen in the not very good photo below. You can't tell from the picture, but the rails on the left are 10ft switch blades. The brass fishplate is soldered to these rails. The joint (heel) is hinged by filing off one of the fishplate boltheads, drilling through the fishplate and rail web and inserting a piece of 0.4mm nickel silver wire, carefully soldered to the fishplate only. Seems to work OK (and looks better in the flesh than it does on this picture: it looks like the fishplate is proud of the rail head, but it's not!)

Not much has happened in the last couple of months: work has been gettng in the way too much. However, did manage to find a couple of hours today. Just after Xmas I completed laying all the sleepers (of which there are many ) on the second board, and today I dry-brushed them with a pale grey to tone down the 'brown-ness'. You won't be able to see it on the picture, but I think it is a slight improvement when you see them for real. Eventually there will be further toning down/harmonising with some overall weathering. This shows the rather nice optical effect given by the interlaced sleepers, but I've also realised there is a problem. The point rodding (eventually) needs to transfer from being between the two main running lines, to being between the down line and the down headshunt, and this happens part way along the main crossover between up and down lines. At the moment (as I didn't have any conclusive photographic evidence either way), the crossover is lain as interlaced however, this means that there are too many sleepers in the way to allow the point rodding to do this. I may have to relay half the crossover as timbered rather than sleepered. Still, better to realise this now rather than when the crossover is in position! A bag of bits (special chairs etc) arrived from Exactoscale the other day, so now all I need is some time to make some turnouts. (Incidentally, on another post, people have been saying that delivery times from Exactoscale are quite long: well, my chairs arrived 6 days after I posted the cheque, which I reckon is pretty good, and hopefully indicates that the backlog may have been cleared).

No, 'fraid not. I lived in Preston at the time, and was staying for a weekend at my uncle's in Manchester, from where he took us to Crewe.

When I was a lad my uncle took me to Crewe station (and Crewe North) one afternoon in September 1963. It was memorable not only for the blue electrics but also for the three warships (D802, D822, D835), one western (D1006) and one Hall (6960), not forgetting Duke of Gloucester. I was too young to pay attention to what workings they may have been on, but a great days' trainspotting!

Yes, the end-on view emphasises how close the interlaced sleepers are (and also note that there are varying track panel lengths in use as well). The spaces between some of the sleepers are pretty small, but they are built from NER plans, so should be prototypical.