paulbb

I agree with Brittania , above, a very pleasant show with friendly exhibitors and a good selection of trade stands and some nice layouts . Whithorn and Baston Rue De Clervaux were my favourites. A hearty thanks and well done to Macclesfield MRG for putting on a show in such adverse circumstances, hope to go next year!

I found that taking each eyebolt on the sprue and impaling it on a pair of fine pointed tweezers and then cutting slowly from the sprue; sometimes the bolt comes away without any cutting. Then opening the hole for the bolt in the locos roof ever so slightly ; insert impaled eyebolt into hole still holding the tweezers and then quicly drop a tiny amount of mek liquid adhesive on it when it is in position. Slowly remove tweezers. Repeat about 20 times. I have done this on two class 43's now. Very character building...

Marlyn you could be right, but the 3 jinties and 3 standards and a crab suggest somewhere else; the shed in the background looks big for Barry tho Paul

Love the card mock ups.. where is this place?

Yes Mike I have hadd the 0000 problem too. Thanks to you and others above for your kind advice, and I will certainly try the POM approach with the decoders.

I have tried to reuse four 8 pin decoders taken from locos that were sold on a year or two ago. On the sold locos the chips worked fine. They are 2 Hornby R8249 decoders a Bachman 8 pin and a Lenz 1035. The Advance Prodigy unit that set the old addresses on these chips now seems unable to either read them, or readdress them. When I try to the read the address , I got lots of random values , typically '18' '36' '0127'. I have tried to reset the chips to the manufacurers defaults using CV8, alas to no avail. When I try to reset CV8 the next read returns no addresses at all.Seems strange that 4 DCC chips should all behave the same way. Could they ALL be faulty? The Prodigy itself is 6-7 years old and I have always found it takes a couple of tries to get the right addresses programmed, and the 'read address' function on it also has never been 100%. Is this unit simply a dud that should be replaced, or can chips have such a short life?

Looks more Basildon Bond than James Bond, you know, stationary (sic). yours feintly lined

Those of you modelling the current scene will have to paint the track VERY carefully now, witness the PW at Navigation Road Greater Manchester; see below

Did any of the green O3's have red coupling rods in BR days?

Rob Many thanks for your reply. Are the facia boards ply ? Paul

I like the look of the facia and general presentation, and even the fiddle yard looks very posh. Also where do the controller wires go to, a Din plug/ socket arangement? Can you give me any details on how you did them , please. Regards Paul

The two market big holes for 4mm -in steam the WR Manor 4-6-0, and in diesel an updated class 06 shunter....

Very happy with my Dapol class 21 so far; it seems slow a slow and reliable (unlike the prototype) runner. It would be great if the 3rd batch of 21's delivered to 61A Kittybrewster with a recess for a tablet catcher would be in a future release from them. Bachmann tooled their class 20's to allow for Scottish variants-with larger windows too, so does anyone know if Dapol have made their tooling flexible enough to allow for this?

Markyn, yes I did -all six screws were removed but the top chassis black remains stuck to the roof or so it seems. Thnaks for the tip but it seems its just a bad un; will return it to the retailer

On a different note, the Bachmann 24/1 that I just got had the main (upper) part of the chassis seemingly glued to the body and impossible to remove. Yes I removed all the screws holding the chassis to the body too, and only the lower chassis/running gear appeared to lift out..oh dear. Anyone else had this problem?? Not seen this in many years of chipping Bachmann locos. Have I got a dud?

Just like to say that I ordered a new Dapol class 21 Diesel loco in OO gauge yesterday-wondering when it would arrive- and it arrived to day. Well done to Hattons for first class service- oh and Royal Mail too.

On the 23/2/2018 I recieved an email from LLC (Steven Leathers) which discussed crowdfunding for the class 22 and invited my participation. One of the risks was stated quite clearly; 'Another risk is that LLC could cease to trade for whatever reason. In that case also you would lose access to all paid sums, and depending on the nature of that cessation you may not receive any payment from the liquidation of LLCs assets.' this and the fact that the technology for the loco looked , well a bit ambitous made me 'wait and see'.

Overall quite a good show, with a goodish variety of layouts and reasonable trade support, with the exhibitors largely friendly and chatty. After about 1100 on Saturday it got very crowded and warm in the main area, and the room with the lego and Thomas stuff seemed way too small to hold all the younger modellers and their parents. I was kicked in the head twice, I believe, although accidentally. The exhibition manager, again firiendly and approachable, seemed very aware of the sites limitations, especially in terms of space, but I agree with him that suitable venues for the MMRS are getting rarer in Manchester. Unless you can hold a model show over 10 floors of large luxury appartments of courrse, which is what seems to be being built at the moment.

Layouts are difficult to sell on Ebay as I have found; very large layouts dont often attract buyers due to transport and space factors, and people will not pay any more than £100 for small layouts (around 8'x2') or less as it does 'look' like a bargain-one potential buyer intimated that he wanted some thing 'that was not too good' so he could tell his mates that he built it! £4500 seems a very large and optimistic amount-though on Ebay you can ask for any price-just dont expect to get it. Even with rolling stock you can expect ON AVERAGE maybe 55-70% of your original buying price, unless of course you have a cupboard full of Hornby Clans. I suspect that this % will fall too over the next 10 years as the baby boomers pass away. Believe me it is better and probably easier to recycle the timber and wiring off a layout and flog off the rolling stock, and maybe better for the planet as well ??

I think that many of us that been in the hobby for the last 20 years will have much of the items that they want/need/always wanted, and we have been truly spoilt in 4mm . This applies to wagons/coaches/locos even buildings and other scenic items. Meanwhile much new product continually pours like a torrent from the makers. I wonder how sustainable it all is really, especially with the demographic of the hobby being what it is. Guess that Ebay and its ilk is and will be increasingly flooded with surplus items; there are a lot of old Lima items for sale and people are not getting rich from selling them, from what I see from the prices-unless you have HO South African stuff possibly.

Does anyone have any images of the Oakhill uncoupling hook ? Thanks RexAshton but the Dingham couplings dont really do it for me...although I will revisit the concept.

Many thanks to all the above, most helpful. I will give each of them a try. Where do you get 'magnetic screw drivers from, Birdseyecircus? Is it just an ordinary one that has been magnetised?

Has anyone come up with a quick and reliable method or tool for coupling up wagons and locos fitted with 3 link couplings? Uncoupling is of course much easier. I have tried using tweezers, bits of wire with hooks, and even considered using HO/OO Kadees-which dont look right of course and have buffer locking problems too. The wagons being coupled are the usual mix of BR types from Dapol, Parkside and so on that are unmodified. Does anyone make magnetic links for them? I really want to keep the look and the actions produced by these wagons during shunting, as nothing really beats 3 links for looking prototypical. I am sure there are other people as cack handed and short tempered out there just like me struggling to cope!

Fair enough-but did Heljan satisfy the DP2 market...not bad but it did have a few wrinkles