Daddyman

Yes!

Brass even in BR days I'd say - see Yeadon p.55 centre for a grubby loco yet still with brass visible. Did I read somewhere if workshops painted them black crews scraped the paint off to reveal the brass? Also, definitely brass not steel:

Mine are all 1.0. If you think about it, the pipes are more likely to be 3" on the real thing than two-point-something inches. I think what spoils an ejector is clumsy bends - I nick the rod behind the "knee" with a triangular file.

Lifting points.

Agreed - they are very nicely done. I did a double-take on the first photo too!

A heroic bit of modelling - well done! Nice to see someone else who doesn't take any crap from kits.

Must have missed it, yes, Chas. I'd have rolled on a mouse mat, in order to make the rolling effect gentler (the workpiece will sink into the mat and therefore de-bend more subtly and controllably). Be careful rolling, over-rolling, de-rolling and re-rolling too much as the N/S may be soft now, but it will harden with working.

The photo isn't displaying Rich (at least not for me) - might be why the undoubtedly deserved "likes" aren't coming!

Nice work, Chas - the curve looks very even. It's very subtle on the real thing. I'd suggest gently rolling over the outside of your bend with something round - brass tube of 25mm or so diameter usually does it. It will be a useful technique with this tool in general (cab roofs, etc) - you're often going to over-roll things. Regards, Another vice-free user of this tool.

It's starting to look nice, Paul. Respect for getting the b. springs in behind the splashers on the BTP. Mine's still in a box. I'm hoping my dad's forgotten it... Do you need any long steps for the carriages? I don't use D&S ones so have millions lying around in boxes. Can I just be a tiny bit pedantic? The D&S instructions, and indeed many articles written in early issues of the Express, suggest that (all) these vehicles went from gas to electric lighting in LNER days. They didn't. I keep harping on about this, and apologies if you've heard it before, but the actual progression was from lit by gas burner to lit by incandescent mantle - and that's it. The vast, vast majority of clerestories would never have gone beyond that - there was certainly no programme under the LNER to retrofit expensive electric lighting to old carriages. I would guess that what few clerestories were electrically lit were built like that, or possibly converted in NER days, and the LNER did nothing more to them. I just mention it because I've seen a model in the past year or so with original pre-incandescent gas-lamp tops (obsolete from 1908) on the roof, and battery boxes on the underframe, so if you're fitting lamp tops you're hopefully removing the battery boxes? Incidentally, I've only ever found one picture of an electric-lit clerestory - Ernie's Brampton thread again:

Hard to say, isn't it? I'm sure I had a good reason for painting it duck-egg on the 60, but I can't now find that reason. And as you say, once weathered...

Nice work, Rich. Were the compressors light grey or a sort of pale duck-egg blue? Certainly on 60s I've done them the latter colour, but I know even less about 56s than I do about 60s...

I've found that when using IPA to strip Bachmann class 37 yellow ends, where the paint is very thick, I seem to be able to leave finger prints. However, the prints can be washed off with IPA, so perhaps I'm not making prints in the plastic itself, but just in the IPA and paint gunk mix?

Sorry I didn't point it out before, bit it was painted by the time I saw it, by which time I didn't want to criticise your work. What about doing it with Sellotape? - cover the relevant part of the sides with tape and trim it around the top edge of the tender side. Then paint over it.

Can anyone clarify the use of the word "new" in this announcement? It (the word) seems to be doing a lot of work, being used for both all-new tools and for things that seem to be reissues of old models. Is the key to Bachmann's use of the term that "brand-new" (as used for the Class 31) means "newly tooled" whereas simply "new" actually means "old model"? Basically, are the Mk1s being retooled? They're described as "new" but from the photos it doesn't look like it, with the window frames still missing, and the gashes where the ends meet the sides still seemingly visible in the small shots on the video. There just seem to have been some bogie tweaks and the end steps removed. "New" seems to mean "old" (and also "tired") where these carriages are concerned Apologies if this has been mentioned above - I haven't read all 7 pages.

I'm afraid I have to agree with Mick there: there's no strip on the real thing; what you're seeing is the lower edge of the lap-jointed upper part of the tender, which most GS tenders have. If you have certain RTR locos they will have this lap joint, though not all of them - the K1 (correctly) doesn't.

Weathering notes... 2007: Guess where!

Yes! Every. Single. Day. Time to "Ignore this topic" methinks, and come back in a couple of months when the ETHELS might start coming in.

Yes, that's what I understood, and it shouldn't be near the hook, even the rear part of it:

Looks quite a heroic bit of modelling, John! Re the tank, I wonder if you might be causing yourself more problems by putting the tank too far forwards. In reality it protrudes rearwards beyond the bufferbeam. It shouldn't be anywhere near the coupling hook either, so I suspect you have it too high as well. On my Bradwell tender I think I mounted the tank on a "stilt" of wire (0.6 or thicker) with one end drilled into the tank and the other into the underside of the footplate - or in your case the chassis stretcher.

Some of us want more than value; we want acc... acc.. accura - cough - accuracy.

I'm late to the party too, but thought it was one of the best issues I've seen for a long time. However, it seems the English has well and truly gone down the pan, with comma-splicing, missing apostrophes and dangling participles now seemingly the norm (these are all Key Stage 2 errors - i.e. points that children are expected to have mastered between the ages of 7 and 11). There were a few sentences in one article that I had to read several times. That's not the author's fault (they're modellers, not English teachers); the editor should be catching these things - and used to do so.

It looks like you have the same crappy files as me, Rich! They don't half make jobs harder as they're not particularly sharp, and their cutting faces tend not to be flat (convex or concave), which means you're always filing to correct damage that the file has done. I'm too tight-fisted to have many good files, but it is very liberating to use the ones I do have. Another thing that might help in a job like this is having a file with one side ground off - you can do it with one of the attachments in your Dremmel. When filing a corner, the ground-off face protects the part of the model that you don't want to file. I had some kindly given to me by @micknich2003 and they make modelling so much easier in so many situations. Can't imagine doing square corners without them - a small triangular one with a ground-off face is particularly useful for that.

The captions to these photos on Flickr are well worth reading too, as are all of Spannerman37025's Eastfield photo captions.

I'd go along with that. I've always argued that the bodies were new, and I think you're right on the width. Yeadon says the rebodies were 3900, though, so some capacity is clearly lost somewhere. Possibly necessitated by spring strength? That bodge at the front is weird, though, especially when they had an elegant design for the D49 rebodies, with the tender sides curving in at the front to match the cab width. I briefly wondered if they'd kept everything from the front bulkhead forwards, including a section of the old tender sides supporting the handrail. However, your 8'6" width argues for a new front bulkhead, so those handrail plates are unlikely to be part of the old tender sides. That then raises the question of what pattern bulkhead - NER or GS? I'd go for GS given that the tender rear followed GS pattern.