Jack

I'm awaiting the delivery of my 57xx number plates, but is there a similar deal for the buffer beam transfers? If not, where is the best place to source them from?

That'll be another one to add to my list of rooky mistakes then ... I had wiped it over with a cotton bud and some meths, but clearly that wasn't the ticket. Thanks

Thanks everyone. Just spent a pleasant afternoon blackening up the wheels that had already been fitted to the kits. I've brought Haywoods wheels for the unbuilt kits though. I had painted the brass coupling hooks on all bar two of the built kits. So I thought I would try blackening the remaining too rather than painting them (I figured it may be a bit more robust). However, the Birchwood Casey Brass Black did not like blackening the brass ... it was fine on the steel wheels, but just wouldn't play with the brass. Very curious. It is new and used, so I doubt it could have been contaminated.

Back in the day when the seats were comfy, you had leg room, and if the thing had past the carriage cleaning kit you might be able to see out of the window ... unlike today when none of the seats line up with the windows, so the train company don't have to worry about cleaning them

What do you use to blacken the wheels? I have found some Brass Blackening stuff for the couplings, but not the wheels.

Too shiney. I purchased some Haywood Wheels at Telford last year and they are so much better ... finer, and black. I have slaters four wagons which I built many moons ago and wanted to put Haywood's on them. However, when I tried to get the wheels out of one last nicer there was an ominous cracking sound, so I think I will leave it and get some paint today. If I'm using Humbrol Enamel, do I need a primer, or should I just put 2 coats of paint on? Ta

Obviously it was just a repaint ...

I've got some 7mm Slaters Wagon kits which have been built with the supplied wheels. I'd like to try and replace them with Haywood wheels, but i'm not sure if there is enough 'play' in the axle boxes to get them out. Has anyone had any success replacing wheels from these kits once built?

Spurred on by the fact i have not got any proper muddling done in the last 3 years, plus the Laughter Lines pic in the last issue of Railway Modeller has inspired me today. I have sorted out my box of 7mm kits. I have found a space to work on them, and I'm sorting out the last bits and pieces necessary to getting started. 2018 needs to be the year when this lot get built ... ... final purchase will be some Haywood Wheels for the unbuilt kits. I'll paint the slaters wheels already fitted to the built kits as I can't see an easy way of getting them off. I'm also intending on getting started on the P tank kit. Having never used a resistance soldering iron though, I purchased a Gladiator 16' Carriage Truck kit to practise on.

This pannier is small This pannier is far away ... ... sorry folks, been a long day! Love the layout Chris, and the pannier which arrived a couple of weeks ago

... make sure the dog collar is of the 'bib stock' style, and not a 'tunnel' or 'tonsure' ... you wouldn't want to be accused of not recreating the scene accurately Love the layout, very cool.

Skytrex did this as their first RTR loco (ref SMR400). Still, not been produced for years, and the Skytrex ones were quite basic.

Harvey’s dad started the old shop in the late 80s i think, in West Street. In the early 80s there was a shop on the corner opposite the Swan ... I think it was where the picture framing place is now. Nothing to do with Harvey and his dad, and there was a gap of a few years when Faversham didn’t have a model shop ... but that was in the days when Sittingbourn had two!

OK, who stole the last 3 years????? Nothing to update regarding progress, only that Gough's Yard has been out of its covers to play with some new toys recently. Top of the to-do list ... find some railway muddling time!

Popped into the new and expanded Hobby Shop last week. It has moved round the corner into Preston Street into larger premises. It makes a lot more sense as the new shop is so much more spacious and easier to manage. More toys can now be out on the shelves rather than squirreled in corners. Just need to get Harvey to buid a test track now he has the space

It'll be interesting to see if any more of the wagons originally announced here will see the light of day as "new" announcements. I guess the Iron Mink won't get done now Minerva are doing it.

Only function on the jinty i have discovered is #1, the firebox glow. I normally standardise on the Lenz Silver range because I like their built in shunt function (#3).

Yup, I'm always trying to "squeeze a quart into a pint pot" ... ... the problem with rural branch lines and small stations is that in physical terms, they were rarely that small. land was cheap in the country, so goods yards tended to sprawl over large areas. Therefore think about going to town (or city)! Urban land, even in the early Victorian era, was expensive, so they crammed more into a smaller space. This is why Minories is such a genius design, it's a small and plausible plan, but can allow for the running of big trains ... far bigger than Ashburnham. If you don't fancy a GWR style Minories, start looking around at other city track plans. And the tall buildings often make for great 'view blocks' if you only have space for part of your chosen station.

Interesting comments from Joel on the N Gauge Facebook thread - whilst the delay is obviously bad news for their n gauge following, they appear to be re-tooling the o gauge milk tankers to accurately represent the promised St.Ivel version (presumably 7F-031-005). No sign of this news appearing on the Dapol Development page or elsewhere though ...

There was some sort of update on Farcebook last week, but I scrolled past it because I was looking for something else. When I went back today I could find no mention of it there or here. It looked like a more developed sort of test shot, but seems to have vanished ... perhaps it was just the Jinty Celeste Did anyone else see it, or copy it?

Any ideas what this working would have been, or was it just a stock move?

I thought you were joking ... then I read the ex-LSWR thread!! ... still, they are also £20 more than the colletts, hawksworths, maunsells and Bachmann Mk.1s ...

Yes, this has to be one of the more interesting locos to put a kadee on! Sadly I don't think in the early days Bachmann understood that pockets should be at a set height. I've also had to replace all the draw bars on my Mk.1 stock, plus fettle loads of wagons, and a few GWR prairies. I've done a couple of the 4MTs. The front pocket was at the correct height on both of mine, so I just clipped a #19 straight in. On the rear I super-glued and screwed a #20 to the bottom of the existing pocket. This is a trick I'd used on some of the older Bachmann wagons with some success.

I have the opposite problem, I took mine apart to put a chip in and now can't get the pocket to stay on!!

Out of idle curiosity, how come these are now a full £20 more expensive than the Hornby ex-LSWR stock? Hornby's offering looks jst as exquisite to my untutored eyes. I understand the economics behind higher rrp on the inspection saloons and autocoaches because sales volumes will be lower, but should that apply to coaches which most will buy by the set load?