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Rather expensive donor, although the body might be worth a bit to a P4 modeller. Older M7s are more readily available and comparatively cheap. Alan

No! They only do phosphor bronze rail joiners for bullhead, sorry. Might be worth giving them a ring, though to see of their insulated ones will stay on bullhead. Alan

DCC Concepts do some as well. Alan

Ahh, the Horwich school of measurement. Alan

No he didn't. As you indicate it was a development of Walter Smith's designs for the NER. Alan

Are you sure? 17mm is 4'3", 4'8" is a little more than 18.6mm. 56 inches at 1:76 is 0.736" x 25.4 gives 18.7mm. Alan

The Gibson catalogue gives axle diameters for a good number of RTR locos to assist with re-gauging to EM using Gibson wheels. If you're building a Wright-rigid chassis you should be able to drill out for the Hornby bearings but sprung or compensated............. Alan

RTR axles seem to vary in diameter and not many (if any) are either 2mm or 1/8th which are the sizes of bearings for use in kits and not all RTR wheel sets have bearings in the original model. With a lathe or drill press you might be in with a chance of opening a set to the right size. There is a huge saving to be made, I'd be interested in hearing how you get on. Alan

None at all as the LMS phased out air-braked stock almost entirely before 1939 either by natural wastage or conversion. I must confess I think almost exclusively in pre-Nationalisation terms when addressing these sort of issues. Alan

Hi pH Without being too acidic in my reply😉 those appear to be steam braked examples which were for goods traffic only and spent their lives doing what those pictures illustrate. The discussion above focussed on the 17 Westinghouse fitted 812s as modelled by Bachmann/Rails which could haul passenger stock, the Caley being an air-braked line. Obviously removing the pump creates a standard 812, but I wouldn't want to do that to a blue one and then have to paint it black and line it. Alan

You're right about the initial 17 being needed for passenger work at first, although in practice they were split between Clyde coast passengers and passenger-rated goods (fish) traffic, the 5ft wheels helping in both regards. The Caley had stated on the initial order that they were "Passenger Goods Engines". The developments in 4-4-0s and 4-6-0s pushed them off their initial passenger routes. The smaller Jumbos that were built under McIntosh's tenure (70 odd) also had Westinghouse apparatus. The addition of vacuum braking to ten of the 812s was completed in 1929. It's a puzzle why none of the main batches or their developments (including the 2-6-0 version) were not Westinghouse fitted, excursions and Glasgow Fair traffic could surely have warranted it. So 828 is not really typical of the class, but does mean it can quite properly head either a passenger or goods train. Chunky tender flare aside, let's be grateful for it's existence at all. Alan

The transmitters are Droitwich as stated on the frequency strip of thousands of radios. I don't think Bromsgrove could be lumped into any version of Birmingham, the Lickey Hills being a physical impediment. Alan

Many, many thanks, Jason. Alan

Please do. Alan

Trying to support @Flying Pig in their efforts to clarify boiler fittings. There is the "dome the shape" and "the dome the device mounted on the upper surface of a locomotive boiler" and these do get confused when people talk about combined dome and top-feed which was a dome shaped top feed casing. The dome on a locomotive boiler collected steam and regulated its distribution and in early Stanier engines this was done up top in the firebox with no dome involved. Stirling and Smellie designed domeless boilers in the late 19th century without a top-feed too as @Wheatley will ken well. Alan

My two penn'orth is that would be a hasty move at present. The system has only had a few weeks in the wild and there is much to be learned and tweaked and there do appear to be stability issues. Unless and until there are reliable connections that allow bluetooth/app control via a connection with existing systems and if the HM7000 then recognises individual decoders within its app architecture allowing CV alteration your other questions are unknowns. Other stay alive units are available and maybe could be hardwired directly to the chip with dexterity and a tiny tip or the wires on a Hornby unit could be snipped and the plug soldered to the wires from another brand. Does the B12 have tender pick-ups? If so, I doubt whether you need stay alive, if it doesn't fitting some would be a cheaper option. Alan

Not that light! Loose-fitted wagon loadings depended very much on the line being worked, but 35 or 40 behind a 3F rated loco is quite conceivable. Locos a that power classification (and also 2Fs) did a useful job of work all over our railways into the early 60s and that meant hauling a revenue earning load.

I've actually got some sympathy for the civil engineering departments, get it wrong and the consequences are catastrophic. Just before the Great War, when heavier locos were being built or considered the capabilities of the existing infrastructure was not readily ascertainable and issues like hammer blow were not fully understood. Deflection on bridges could be detected but even the Bridge Stress Committee in later years ended up relying on loading a bridge with locos to see what happened. The companies everywhere were lucky that, for the most part, the earliest bridges and viaducts were very well built masonry structures that still do the job today but the Tay Bridge disaster was then only 40 years earlier and so caution was understandable. The report into the Accident at Hebden Bridge in 1912 involving a superheated 2-4-2T Radial Tank on the LYR makes interesting reading in a number of respects. https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BoT_HebdenBridge1912.pdf Lt-Col Druitt is clearly not enamoured of radial axles, or tank engines on fast passenger workings at all for that matter (the Radials had actually displace Horwich 4-6-0s in Manchester on the majority of workings) and seemingly ignored George Hughes confidence in the loco deciding that excessive speed on a tight-ish curve and the weight of the loco had spread the track leading to derailment. He noted the track was recently laid and of high standard. The superheated Radial had almost the same weight on coupled wheels as a Compound and was about 5 tons heavier on the carrying wheels (3 1/2 tons of that was dead weight to counter-balance the superheater). There were discrepancies between the speed the train crew estimated (there was a 45mph limit on the curve) and that estimated by lineside workers that Druitt doesn't go to town on, save to note that estimates are unreliable when restrictions are applied that are not far below line speed. One of Druitt's theories, unsupported by any evidence, is that the front radial axle seized up creating an unsustainably long rigid wheelbase but a civil engineer on another company would have been very concerned about an accident where nothing really untoward had preceded it. Weather was good, the train was only a little behind time; track was only a year old with a newly aligned transition curve and inspected that morning; the loco was less than a year old, but the type was well proven. Notably, however, since introduction by Aspinall in 1889 as a saturated short bunkered locomotive it had been developed and, by the time the loco in question was built to a Hughes design, it had gained 10 tons. Every so often one reads of a decision that "proves the civils wrong" such as the Rivers returning to the Highland and this creates a picture of jobsworth bean counters who didn't know the worth of the CME's latest brain-child. I think they get a bad press. Alan

Was there passenger access to Trent Junction? Alan

Hi Tony When you use the Poppy's Woodtech jig how do you raise the centre axle that smidgen? Alan

Hi Farren, I saw your remarks on the main HM7000 thread. That seems quite a glitch as Hornby have been priding themselves on the origins of their sound files (often with good reason). I wonder if it's a fat-finger issue during the uploads as mixing a four cylinder with a two isn't easy if your ears are attuned. Did you try the Duchess sound file? Alan

............I opened this thread. Alan

Castles didn't come south of Perth except the two sent to the Oban line in LMS days. Alan

I think one ended it's days after a good few years as a steam heating boiler at Blackpool (maybe). I suspect the WNR is still a foot-warmers line, however. Alan

Would this do as a basic power supply? 15V at 4A and without the wall-wart size issues. https://www.poweradaptorsuk.co.uk/4000ma-4a-15v-60w-mains-regulated-switch-mode-acdc-desktop-power-adaptor-392-p.asp Under £12. Alan