Hal Nail

Ben, You have a tricky job and I'm sure we appreciate your individual efforts, particularly as in the case of the gears, for example, you were nothing to do with Heljan back then. Two gears on my barely used 33 failed recently and there are none in stock. Yes its an old loco and only a few early types but a lot of people have them. To be totally honest Heljan have only got themselves to blame for the flack they get on this given, not withstanding the difficulty of production slots and batch production, doing sufficient replacement gears at some point in that 12-15 year window would have saved an awful lot of ill feeling. I do think this is an entirely different issue to some of the things that get raised around shape and details etc where I have far less sympathy as no one forces anyone to buy something that doesn't look right. Equally I agree that there are 3rd party options for sound fitting and the like. We cannot reasonably be expected to predict and fix a design fault in the mechanism though. Ian

I'm not really familiar with North American practice but after a holiday to Canada 4 or 5 years ago, where I had cause to try and identify what I'd photo'd, I was struck by how there seemed to be a whole succession of locos all using the same cab/structure etc, so at first glance they look the same. I'm not sure if they are thrashed and have short life cycles or if they are cascaded down to other users but the implication seemed to be that the Union Pacifics etc were upgrading fairly regularly. Naturally being a Brit this struck me as odd whereas completely reinventing the wheel, as we have traditionally done, makes total sense!

They possibly weren't interested historically but in a relatively short space of time we've had the 4 mentioned and the RT is actually two tools - closed and open top. You wouldn't expect them to flood the market with loads all in one go so perfectly possible we will see more new ones trickle through. For what its worth I'd like a Southampton City AEC Regent V rear entrance but I think that might be stretching things.

While the transfers on the china clay dry, I've been working on my Dapol BR brake van. I bought this off eBay cheap as it was literally the worst repaint I've ever seen. It hadn't been primed so 10 mins in IPA and the paint literally fell off and bar a tiny area where the bauxite had blistered (I think from the previous owners abandoned attempt to strip it), it wasn't far off the original Dapol Trump orange. I brush painted a Bauxite base and the usual weathering. Many of the brass details were missing, so a pair of Slaters lamp irons have gone on the ends and I made up the brass doorway handrail you can see. I have 2 of the side lamp irons still and will bodge the pair that will be largely obscured by side lamps. Eventually I will replace it with a brass kit from the stash but its a nice side project in the meantime.

I was involved in a pro tennis tournament during the first lockdown for 6 weeks. One player, Billy Harris, played 42 days straight, which is pretty impressive. Even more remarkable was his 42 consecutive Spoons fry ups. Breakfast of champions, evidently.

Or tall. If you scroll the photo down so part of the offending skirt is off the bottom, it looks about right!

Various Dapol O gauge sound versions have taken months to appear recently, so yes, they are guessing.

Resurrecting this thread as have a question arising from my 7mm build. Does anyone know why they were fitted with tie bars given they are unfitted? I wondered if it was to counter the extra stress on the underframe when using the end tippers at Fowey?

Just occured to me, I wonder if its to do with them being operated on end tippers at Fowey? That would probably have put additional strain on the underframe?

Cheers! Its the old Cooper Craft 5 plank, now sold by Slaters. The original bagged ones had moulded buffers and since I needed to replace with self-contained anyway, I've been picking the kits up whenever I saw one going cheap. I must have had this particular one over 30 years and the hinges came with my first ever wagon before that! Yes oddly these did have rod type tie bars. They were built with those unique to GWR (?) brake levers right at the end but did have tie bars even back then. I cant remember which exact flavour they were to start with but they ended up with independent brakes and normal levers. That said the best photo I have is a rare one with a Morton clutch. Decent photos are quite scarce and aside from the very similar BR built fitted version, I'm pretty sure there were some similar ex private owners kicking around as well which didn't have tie bars. With a cover on and the whole lot white, it's often hard to identify what type you are looking at in photos taken from any sort of distance.

Thanks! Yes see photo. As an aside, the plastic bit showing is just cut from one of their chassis sprues which makes both me and my spares box weep at the wastage.

Interesting that they are doing these again. I seem to recall these were heavily discounted by the end last time and unlike some classes, prices haven't gone bananas once they were scarce. I guess given sufficient time has elapsed that some people will now come back for a second who wouldn't so near to buying their first etc. Maybe given the tooling exists and there are a few new livery options, its almost a shot to nothing for Heljan.

Nearly there on the first 013 china clay. I saw some of these on a layout years ago and the guy said it was a lot of work: he wasn't exaggerating. The bolts on the door banger straps were carved off another wagon but I lost the will to live and drew the rest on! The brakes and end door hinges were all from the spares box - will need to find a load more for another 6 wagons (anyone know a source of 9ft brake levers?). I just need to put in a false floor with the planks running lengthways in this one. Paint shop next.

Paul, Responding to your post on another thread really but thought it better to comment here. I left work with a package about 18 months ago. I have a fair way to retirement but hadn't been enjoying work for a long, long time so wanted a break - obviously I hadnt factored in covid at that point! I found having time to cook meant I ate better and cheaper, I made and sold most of my stash of kits - and one way or another got by and worked out what it actually costs to live when you have to be careful. I have now picked up a 2 day a week job on far less than I would have dreamed of working before but means I break even every month (with no frills admittedly). My perspective has totally changed. What I'm trying to say is you might find getting through that year or two you didnt expect to fund can be slightly easier than you imagine.

Supporting West Brom.

Father Christmas?

The second of which worries me more than the risk of catching covid (let alone getting covid badly) to be honest.

Indeed. The perfect antidote - marvellous modelling.

Double economics on thursday afternoons remains an all time low. Elasticity does ring a bell though so I must have jolted awake periodically.

Where were they built? Just sayin'...

Its the E145 with 9 foot - same body as the E140.

Thanks - prompted me to check and immediately picked up two up for £15. 33% discount on that auction!

2 sets of Peco 7mm buffers, normally around £8 each new, so £16 the pair. Not hard to come by. Were £4 with an hour to go, went up to £10 with a minute left, late flurry saw them sell for £21 plus postage - well over the new price. Given it is a bit foolish to wait till nearly the end but then leave a minute for people to outbid you, i do wonder if the £10 was a tempter to get someone bidding higher - which has obviously worked in this case!

Continuing with the theme of 9 foot wheelbase mineral wagons, I have finally kick-started a project to build a rake of china clay wagons by adding end doors and altering the strapping buffers and brake levers on the old Cooper Craft 5 plank. I will also be doing the BR version. I have accumulated three made up 5 planks, one 7 plank I could convert and 4 unmade kits. This particular one was one of my first kits and I'll probably do the works on this in terms of bolt heads (not sure yet whether rod through holes, or just slivers of rod) but I think the rest will have tarps so I'm only going to sort the bottom couple of planks worth. I do like these Peco self contained buffers but they aren't cheap. On that note, I'm missing 2 plastic shanks. These are unused parts in Peco's 4 plank and permanent way wagons I think, so if anyone has a couple spare please let me know!

Just out of interest, what is the advantage of using set curves rather than just getting flexi? I had assumed the issue was around whether you can get points in a tight radius rather than curves.