Zero Gravitas

That may be more relevant to Horsetan's equine friends.

As no as nobody mentions Ealing we might get way with it... Ah. I just did.

Tried that, if you recall. The great and the good decided it impinged on their google rankings, and moved the "less serious" thread to "Wheeltappers" - where absolutely nobody would ever think of going to discuss MRJ in any capacity. It looks like the option that p****s people off the least is the one in which we are currently indulging.

If Horsetan had MRJ posted to his country estate, the whole Ealing situation would be rendered moot...

Come now, in GWRJ terms it's still early! If we're still waiting this time next year I might consider starting to become mildly concerned...

By coincidence, our copy of the last edition was delivered yesterday. It is a pale shadow of what is used to be - reduced in size and under 200 pages: Before putting it in the recycling - as for us it serves no purpose whatsoever - I was able to demonstrate to my children that their father can actually tear a copy of the Yellow Pages in half...

For god's sake be careful! You never know when Lord and Lady Whiteadder, the fanatical puritans, will descend upon this thread and declare it fundamentally evil because it doesn't conform exactly to their idea of what a thread should be like. Oh, and it might do something unpleasant to something to do with Google, apparently.

I was checking the tyres of Mrs. Gravitas' Discovery round at the local Tesco at the weekend, and noticed this lying on the ground next to the air dispensing station: In case it's not clear, it's some OO gauge track base. And that set me thinking - have you every seen some piece of model railway equipment utterly out of context?

I tend to agree - and when the "Finescale Review" started it was such a breath of fresh air, it was like discovering MRJ back in the mid-eighties. It would have been interesting to see what MRJ would have done if Bob Barlow had not been taken from us too soon.

I would also recommend "Shiny Hardware" as a supplier - no connection except as a satisfied customer. I'd also strongly endorse Black Rat's suggestion about the metal cabinet in the garage - these are,after all, highly inflammable chemicals! In addition, if I might be so bold, keep the containers in a polythene box (like a "really useful box") big enough to act as a bunding just in case of leakage. As well as being inflammable, these are not chemicals that should be getting out into the environment.

To get a quick idea of the Parkside range, just search for "Parkside Dundas" on ebay. Not to necessarily buy, but you will get a good idea of what's available.

Some people did notice that my comment was intended as tongue-in-cheek. However... one the main arguments presented by the good and the great about the less serious MRJ thread was that it would skew the google search results and that people searching for MRJ content weren't finding it. Presumably people now searching for MRJ content are now going to find this debate that is not really related to the contents of the magazine. Surely this discussion (which is itself very interesting) should have been moved to the appropriate section of RMWeb? Edited for predictive text errors.

And people used to complain that we were off-topic when we talking about if the actual magazine had been published yet...

Call me Mr. Picky if you will, but the van on the right should have the brake lever with the Morton clutch on this side of the wagon. As it stands, moving the lever down will move the brake shoes away from the wheels. Sorry.

Probably to be replaced by work instructed by children demanding that their parents start passing on what would have been their inheritance...

And don't forget: https://pendonmuseum.com/news/post.php?s=2017-01-29-modelling-workshops-for-adults

"Colliers (inordinately long pause) heading home"... you've got me doing it now. MRJ is never going to be the same again. Thank you so much... PS: For the Lord and Lady Whiteadders amongst us, this absolutely a discussion about the contents. PPS: Check out https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xoWs8ER6PJo I promise your day will be better for it.

Well, we did try splitting it out into two threads - one for those who liked the side-splitting humour and pithy, useful observations; and one for those who preferred only discussion of the actual contents; but the great and the good didn't seem terribly keen on that. So we're back where we started... In the immortal words of Sheldon Cooper: "I informed you thusly".

It could feature a P4 Stonehenge.

And for the benefit of the guest editor who posted on an MRJ thread about the "countless complaints" he used to receive about MRJ threads, there were 11 copies of 255 in WHS Reading this morning. Hopefully that'll help keep the countless average up. (Edited to put a capital "R" at the front of Reading...)

Gordon Gravett makes yew trees in volume 2 of his series on trees, published by Wild Swan. In my opinion, they are pretty much the definitive books on making trees, and I would recommend them.

Rather than get all the intermediate sizes of drill, a set of cutting broaches will allow you to get the holes just right for a snug fit. If you're working with styrene, then there's no need to get an expensive set, and they will last for ever. I'm still using the ones I bought in the early nineties... Search for "cutting broach" on Amazon.

Pilot hole down through the buffer and buffer beam, then slice off the buffer (I take off the bulk worth Xuron cutters and then scalpel/file the rest), then drill out to 2mm is exactly the way I do it. Use a drill that is the sam diameter as the hole in the buffer housing to get the hole centred, then depending on the buffer shank diameter, use a smaller drill for the pilot hole. For starters, don't try and cut too much at once, e.g. Drill 1mm, then 1.5mm, then 2mm. You really don't need a power drill for styrene, drill in a pin vice is fine, and don't be too tentative - you want to feel the drill bit "bite" into the styrene. And you're drilling inside the buffer housing, so not much can go wrong. And do go right through the buffer beam. Daft as it sounds, a blind hole can be a problem as you can get air trapped behind the buffer as you glue it in, and the buffer will never sit right as the air pressure increase as you push the buffer in can stop it. Hope that helps.

You're welcome, and please don't think that we knew this sort of stuff when we started - generally we (or more specifically I) learnt the hard way when the buffers or some other small detail got knocked off as we tried to do something else. Almost literally the school of hard knocks. And always remember there are no stupid questions - learning by asking is a good technique, and if it saves learning by hard and bitter experience then that's a bonus :-)

Absolutely agree with this - but don't just drill the holes, fettle and dry fit the buffers (making sure they are flat on the headstock, the tail doesn't stick out the back of the headstock, etc), and then put them aside to be stuck on last. The general principle being to do as much preparatory work as possible when it is easiest to do - mostly before assembly.