57xx

I glued the buffer heads on to the Y11, took one look and thought, that looks so wrong! So I then dug out some Lanarkshire Models buffers from my stash (1' 8.5" self-contained) and made a very quick decision that the kit buffers will have to come off. I can trim them back to the packing plate and stick the LMS one onto them.

You could always make one for your go-kart...

Mikkel, Halfords paint is actually acrylic, though the key difference is that it is a solvent based one (I have yet to find a suitable solvent to dilute decanted paint and soon gave up on the idea). I'm thus guessing it's down to Vallejo being water based (right lines of thinking, just a subtle difference).

Patiently waiting for delivery after my notification of dispatch last week. It'll be here when it arrives. :)

That is a good looking train with an eclectic mix of carriages, Graham.

Luckily I have a very good Asian supermarket near me and brinjal chutney/pickle is readily available and one of my favourites. :) I picked up some lime pickle and some green chilli pickle last time I was there. Mmm mmm.

It's actually dictated by the execs and far from new. They call it "mobile first" (along with their "cloud first" push to get people onto a continuous revenue stream they call subscriptions). They have a bizarre vision of people doing their work sat in a sunny Californian park with their mates, using their mobile phone. I have never and would never use my phone to do anything on Azure Portal. It's bad enough trying to type a text without fat finger syndrome kicking in, let alone doing something that could affect the whole company's ability to operate.

#MeToo. Invariably, even with some of the better quality kits, the LMS ones are far superior. Spookily, I'm doing a Parkside kit right now too. I thought the buffers looked OK and was set to leave them as they are packed out from the buffer beam. Once I put the heads on though, they looked awful so I'm about to root through my stash of LMS ones for suitable replacement.

Between herself and John Peel, as R1 DJs they helped form my music tastes during my formative years. She will be sadly missed. RIP Annie

Apologies if I trigger an influx of "Where's mine?" posts, Graham 😀

Email received today about an order being dispatched, i only have one order with Kernow. 😀😀

One of the reasons my Parkside Mica is still in the To Do pile.

That's a good reference pic for new wood. I feel wood can often get done too "brown", I'm guilty of it myself in the past and now tend towards those lighter creamy tones and grey/silvery for sun bleached. Obviously context is everything though, the bare wood in a coal wagon for example is going to be pretty grubby in comparison.

So to get the ball rolling, here's yet another one I started over Christmas whilst down visiting family. It's the Parkside Fruit D that I think I picked up in a job lot off someone from RMWeb. Built in 1939, the prototype just scrapes in to my Mid to Late 1930s era and so will probably be fairly pristine when finished, with just a light bit of weathering. Here is the state of play so far: I'm keeping the kit supplied buffers as my usual LMS ones don't (I think) have a set with the built up base to the self-contained buffers. They needed a bit of filling due to some dips in the moulding, as did the gas cylinder. The supplied shell vents were just round blobs with no trace of the shell so these were replaced with ones from Comet Models that have been in the parts box for years, finally a use for them! Then there is the cock up on the underframe... There is an X and a Y side, X being nearest to the camera and where the vac cylinder sits (on the rib to the left side of the centre door). The instructions say to remove the vac cylinder mounting lug from the Y side, so rather than being patient and waiting until I had assembled the underframe, I cut it off one of the solebars on the sprues. By the time I had fitted the microstrip to space out the solebars so they didn't splay with the wheels in, I had forgotten about the fact that one of them didn't have said vac cylinder lug. Sods Law then kicked in and I fixed the solebars on the opposite sides to which they were supposed to be on. 😖 I'll have to carefully part the other one off and glue it to the side of the cylinder. Other than that, so far so good. The side and end mouldings are very crisp and the corners go together very nicely. Trying to decide on how much weight it needs, I suspect an 18' wheelbase will need a fair bit more weight than my normal 30g for 9/10ft wagons. Maybe somewhere in the region of 50-60g?

Sounds very similar to what I was thinking, Graham. Though with the printed block you could also incorporate the U curve at the top into the jig.

I was thinking a flat block with a hole in to locate the bottom leg (like the holes in the BB handrail jig), then a groove (or former to push against) to form the large curve. Then put the vertical bend in at the top and form over a curve at the top of the block. I would have thought brass wire would be quite easy to form on it. Hard to describe, but I can see it my head clearly.

Practice makes perfect?

There must be an opening for an entrepreneur with a 3D printer.

Holy cow, that was unexpected. Very sad to hear and my thoughts are with those affected by the closure (Staff losing their jobs that is, not people wondering about their toy trains).

Get Into The Groove(y) - Ciccone Youth

I'm hoping McLaren continue their upward resurgence. Whilst I'm not as partisan as some fans towards drivers/teams, I've been following them since the 80's and always had a soft spot for them.

Whilst they both use the Chromium engine, there are more than just cosmetic differences. There are yet more Privacy intruding measures being implemented by Google on Chrome that Ms are not (AFAIK) putting in to Edge. Google were also caught with their pants down last year harvesting user's browsing data from Incognito sessions, despite the claims that nothing is tracked in them.

They can also mean overscale "detail". Look at the hinges on the filler cap of the Manor for example. I'd much rather have scale hinges that look good and don't work than oversized kludges to please 0.001%* of purchasers * 84.5% of stats are made up on the spot.

Depends on the stanchion depth, Fig 394 shows the W5 as 7' 5" over sides. W8 (fig395) and W10 (fig396) are indeed shown as 8' 4" over stanchions.

That'll be one of each making my wallet groan then.