Poggy1165

I was thinking of not renewing. So they put a fantastic GCR layout in issue 272, and my cheque is in the post. Crafty so-and-sos. They may not have up-to-date attitudes to technology but they can obviously read my mind. Sad that the renewal is only for four issues though, as that means and extra stamp per year. Perhaps they think inflation is going up a lot!

Those of you on Facebook who join the OA&GB Group will find a photo of Boulton's Siding Signal Box. This was on the OA&GB at the point where the line to the Boulton's facility diverged. I gather that the original belongs to Tameside Public Libraries, if anyone is interested enough to want a copy. I suspect this box was abolished circa 1911, when the GCR west curve to Ashton Moss was put in, and I certainly have not seen a photo of it before.

Tower Models is quite a small shop in the back streets of Blackpool, but they do have a pretty decent stock of O Gauge. Offhand I can't think of a better place to go. Relatively few model shops exist nowadays and the few that do tend to have a limited amount of O Gauge at best.

Occasionally, and I mean very occasionally, I somehow manage to create a wagon interior that looks the dog's wotsits. But I have absolutely no clue how I manage it and I can guarantee I shall not be able to replicate it next time. If you can consistently get a finish as good as this I don't think there's much to worry about in the scheme of things. It's possible someone, somewhere, can do better, but the other 99% can't.

Depending on which 2-4-2t you choose, numberplates can be correct. The best bet is to work off a photo. Mine is 578. She definitely had plates when she had a round top boiler as I have a photo in that condition. So it's 6/4 on she had them when rebuilt with a Belpaire. The only way to be absolutely sure is to find of photo of a loco in the year (ideally) that you are modelling. I was actually told that a numberplate was "wrong" for 578 when I actually had a photo proving it was right! If you get stuck, drop me I line and I will look through my photo collection for you.

There are plenty of photos of GCR locos, especially goods locos, in dirty condition post-1914, indeed some that look like everyday BR. At the risk of being boring I don't recall seeing photo of a J10 with an oval number plate. Most seem to have had painted numerals, a few (late batch) the rectangular version. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were exceptions. Most of the 2-4-2ts (Class 3 GCR) had painted numbers, but just a few had the oval number plates. I have a model of one such, complete with round-top boiler! I am wary of being too definitive about GC locos because there seems always to be an exception. Sometimes I think there was a company policy that no two locos should be exactly alike - but that's probably putting it a bit high.

Superb work, as ever. There are only a few kits that get near this standard, and still fewer for the earlier periods. I sort of understand the bloke in Leigh, as there is so little scratch-built stuff exhibited these days, and much of that little is of the locomotive nature. It's very rare to see scratch built wagons and even rarer to see them to this standard. Long may this inspiring thread continue.

As to the Parker stock, I believe it was originally etched privately for the Whetstone layout, which was famous in its day. I think the GCRS has the right to produce them and may have done so. (I have rather lost track on 4mm matters.) The Worsley etches are another product again.

D&S definitely did some plastic GCR stock at one point. I used to have a whole pile of them before I changed to 7mm scale circa 1991. They were Robinson mainline and suburban stock, plus Barnums. My ex-coaches may be circling someone's attic as we type! They were quite decent models by the standards of the time, though not up to Rocar quality. Great pity such things are no longer to be had as they were a lot simpler to build than any etched kit. But the world has moved on... 3D printing may be the thing if it eventually becomes cheaper. Or maybe laser-cut timber/card/whatever will be the new technology.

Very exciting; good luck finding info on WM&CQ goods stock though. Hobby horse droppings are plentiful in comparison. I always thought the former Buckley Railway was an absolutely ideal prototype for anyone who likes obscure bye-ways.

Re station posters. There are quite a lot if you search on the web. These can be photostatted down in size although (unless you've got a very classy sort of copier) you will probably have to reduce them several times to get them right for 4mm. That is, you will have to reduce something already reduced. Kirtley Models do some in 7mm, complete with "headings". These could be photostatted down to 4mm very easily, and might even look better in the smaller scale. The only thing is you will find some are "foreign" posters under GC headings, which is wrong. What is not wrong is to have a few "foreign" posters under "foreign" headers. There are photographs showing (for example) Great Eastern posters on GC stations - but always on boards headed "Great Eastern". But these are, of course, always in a minority, and I suspect it was chiefly at the more important stations. My example comes from Guide Bridge.

Am I right in thinking the 1903 livery is grey with big letters?

Thank you, Andy. Since taking this photo I have applied some acrylic "soft black" to some spots, and this has also helped. BTW "soft black" (which I got from a craft shop) is a very useful colour that I have found any number of purposes for. I suppose it's really a sort of very dark grey.

Mine has arrived. It's such a pretty, delicate-looking engine that I'm almost afraid to touch it. Splendid value.

Not perfect - and it probably needs another coat - but better, I think. The paint used is Railmatch "Frame Dirt" which happened to be to hand. The 3 planker is another of my second-hand purchases and built by the same chap who did the diagram 6B. This is a Charles Roberts wagon and on hire, as the number, prefixed by "0" indicates. There is a photo of this prototype wagon in the HMRS collection. When I bought it the ironwork below the solebar was in "photographic grey" but I decided it would not have run like that and went over it in black. Again the camera's eye is merciless. In real life the coupling chains look delicate. In the photo they look untidy and in need of replacement!

Thank you. I will try a dark brown, maybe with a hint of black added. The funny thing is, in real life it doesn't look too bad, but when photographed - ye gods! Blue pencil awful. There is a moral here. Possibly "don't photograph your models." I have found by experience that the camera lens is very unforgiving. It has made me more tolerant of the defects that show up in so many photos of layouts, and even more admiring of those layouts/models where no defects appear.

This slightly cropped view convinces me all the more that the rail colour will not do! Any good recipes for rail colour?

The siding track looks better now it is ballasted and painted. Why, I have even added some cosmetic fishplates. The diagram 15 van is from a D&S kit. This particular van retains its roof doors. Some had these removed even before grouping, and I believe they all lost them eventually. Some were, of course, reclassified as fish vans by the LNER. Quite an old van one of the first kits I built in this scale, circa 1993. It really should be "weathered" after all that time! I think this is the one I had to rebuild after it came off the road at high speed. Lesson learned that day, crashes in 7mm scale can do damage! In the background the goods shed has received a coat of red primer, over its initial grey primer coat. Now just the small job of picking out individual bricks remains. PS the ballast is meant to be ash. Photos suggest that the GC used ash ballast on the Sheffield Barnsley line - of which this is supposed to be a twig - although limestone was more normal on the main line. Not 100% happy with the rail colour, I think I need to put on a coat of something slightly different.

The problem is (as I see it) many members of the Establishment still see us a First-Class power, able to project power anywhere. At the same time, they are not willing to pay for the cost of such pretensions. So what you get is inadequately-funded posturing. I really can't say much more without becoming very political, but my view is that we need to be more realistic about what we as a country can do within the resources we are willing to allot. I certainly would not regard waving the flag in the Far East and provoking the Chinese as a very realistic policy.

I suspect a major factor in the choice of braking arrangements was cheapness and what was the minimum that they could get away with. PO wagons seem to have almost all had one brake until it was made mandatory for them to have a lever on both sides. Even some railway companies seem to have been more "careful" than others when it came to spending money. Given that wagons could be shunted randomly, so that all the single levers would not necessarily be one one side, I should imagine that pinning down brakes at a location like the top of Worsbrough bank (to give up one random example) was no sinecure, especially not on a wet and windy night in February.

This layout is lovely.

I remember saving up for about a year as a kid to buy a Britannia by Triang. From memory it was about £5, and although the body was reasonably OK, the chassis was dogs' droppings and it was about as reliable as a Trabant with a dodgy cylinder head gasket. You have to factor in quality, and I am in no doubt whatever that in appearance modern RTR is multiple times superior to anything available back then. (Whether it will prove as mechanically robust as Hornby Dublo 50/60 years on is a more open question.) Most people back in the 60s had small branch layouts with just three or four locos. Only wealthy people, Lieutenant Colonels and their ilk, had the sort of massive collections of locos one quite commonly sees now, e.g. 75-100 locos. I would suggest the hobby is as expensive or as cheap as you choose to make it. Also things like DCC and sound (never dreamed of in the old days) add a whole new layer of expense that cannot be compared to back then. Against this, you can walk into a model shop and buy (for a relatively modest price) a loco which back in the 1960s would have been drooled over, and been the product of the very finest craftsmen of the day. Such engines were only available to those who could build them, or who could afford to pay a substantial price in real terms.

I seem to be up and down like a bride's nightie for no apparent reason in recent weeks. Just now I can literally feel myself going down. No obvious cause, unless it is word from a friend yesterday that her dog, of whom I am very fond, has cancer and will shortly have to be put to sleep, as the saying goes. Life just seems to be a constant struggle; it's just the change between struggling to get a jam jar lid off and struggling to shift a bolt that has rusted solid. I really am quite sick of it. Objectively my depression is much better than it has been these last ten years, but I just get this feeling that I shall never be completely free of it and that it could develop into its old dark self at any time. Currently I am trying to keep myself busy, not because I want to be busy but just as a tactic to push the darkness to the back of my mind.