Carl

Hi Beast,

Have you looked in the first edition of the Quail track plans book ?

Unfortunately not, but I do have several hundred pictures of the area and images of the signal box panels at Deal Street, West Junction and East Junction. The confusion with the light blue track in the image above is that it appears in some images and not others, so presumably was removed somewhere during the period my photos cover. I'll need to narrow down the year and decide to go with or without it accordingly.

What year was Quail 1st edition published? I thought they were a fairly recent thing? (IIRC, the earliest I've seen is 2002.)

Regards,

Carl.

Hi Jim,

How much does each assembled 4' x 2' baseboard frame weigh (roughly)? I'm considering using these too - my precious time being better spent on fun things like building stock, laying track, scenery etc., than on carpentry.

Gooooooood question. I would guess they are something like 6kg with the MDF end plates, but that's really just an estimate taken by comparing it's weight with a couple of things I know the weight of!

Regards,

Carl.

I bet you're rather pleased Dapol have anounced the 142 (or that Worsley Works do an etched version of it) - plenty of them to be seen at Victoria in the late 1980s.

Yeah, very pleased. I have an unpainted and unglazed, but otherwise working, Worsley Works 142. You can see the powered car running here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE-95NwnK0s.

There was a thread on the old RMWeb which included quite a few photos of Victoria in the 1980s including class 25 haulled parcels trains made up of GUVs or CCT. Might be worth finding them.

I was watching that thread closely, and probably was the thing that sealed in my mind to model Victoria! I think I downloaded all of the images, and even bugged the author (DerekEm8, IIRC) for high-res versions of some!

Never seen anyone store their books by the colour of the cover before

I thought I had more books than I did, but I still think it looks OK!

Hey Missy,

Have you got a track plan or something you can post?

I've just posted (an incomplete) one!

Regards,

Carl.

Hi Grahame,

Exciting stuff, and of great interest to me to see your develoment. It looks a nice big and bright railway room and I spotted the stock of Farish boxes in the bookshelves. Are they all to be re-wheeled?

The plan is to convert them all, yes, although the 2mmSA have low stocks of a few types of wheels, so the conversion will have to happen in stages. I do have quite a lot of stock which doesn't belong at Manchester Victoria, let alone Manchester Victoria in the late eighties, but I will want to run them all the same.

I saw your "The Next Big 'Un" post, and the fact that it really requires you to move house to dedicate a room for it - That's exactly what I did to get the room you see in the photos, and is part of the reason it's taken 9 months to get where I am!

Regards,

Carl.

Hi Peter,

Are they by the brilliant baseboard company?

Yes, they are. They're quite expensive, but I don't think I would have been able to build 20' x 4' of baseboards myself in any kind of reasonable timeframe, and have them as accurate. I'm using 6mm ply on top of them, so each individual baseboard is still really light.

Regards,

Carl.