Ravenser

Crossovers are reverse curves and therefore "worst case scenario". The Americans actually recommend that you use "the next size up" of pointwork at crossovers.

Setrack points - as you are discovering - are extremely tight and that comes with a significant cost. Even Streamline small radium are rather tight. It really helps to use the largest radius pointwork you can - though if you have a cramped area there may be severe constraints. But the tighter the curve the bigger the problems it poses. I have had some nasty experiences with Setrack points in the past.

Also what you describe as "frog-shock" could well be a result of very coarse wide flangeways on Setrack points (which then doesn't do its job properly), and something rather tighter on Streamline. I found this 25 years ago , and while I suspect Setrack may have been tightened up since, if you are using old pointwork you might be affected.

I would be more than a little tempted to replace the crossover at the back on the Woodland Scenic risers with Streamline, to ease the curves. But if it's all fixed down you may be committed....

Electrofrog is more hassle to wire , but greatly reduces stalling . If you can get your head round it - and clearly you have managed to, its worth having. A decent point motor will provide the polarity switch

If you have already laid the track, providing a hole through the board for the rod that throws the point will now be very difficult. Always drill these holes before laying the track.  Peco have I think introduced surface mounted motors which may be your only option now

The boxfile wiring box looks neat

hope this isn't too discouraging...

It's even more fun if you put the etch in a safe place.....

I wonder if Archer rivet transfers might help with the replacement strap?

I had to fabricate replacement hinges all round (because I had put the etch in a safe place) and used microstrip "cube" rivets . The result was a touch chunky and 1950s Triang but did the job. On the basis of my experience - I'd recommend rivet transfers instead

Just out of interest , what did you do to the 108?

7 hours ago, Barry Ten said:

Over on Wright Writes it was suggested that soldering the cranks should work, provided all is clean. I gave it a go (first cleaning off the all the gunk from oil and Loctite residue) with alcohol, then used 145 solder and Carr's Green Label flux, and it worked very well. I don't know where I'd got the idea that I couldn't solder to steel, but it turned out to be one of those fallacies. I'll know in future.

Regardless of the actual bond, it should presumably be an effective filler, thereby creating an interference fit??

The main issue with the body to my eyes is the handrail - the handrail knob on the second boiler band behind the chimney is a little too low , and distorting the line of the handrail. 

Any way this can be tweaked without going to the extent of building a new body?

I have heard that Modelmaster are stopping producing transfers....

These days most sales are probably to those modelling the postwar era so I can understand the decision. 

The varnish coat is now on, and the SE Finecast glazing has gone in this evening. It's not ideal stuff, but it's a great deal better than the starting point. The cab front windows and quarter lights have been left unglazed as obviously the SE Finecast glazing won't fit the Shawplan etches. I will therefore have to fret suitable glazing out of clear plastic , and this is a job I'm really not looking forward to. I drew card templates for the glazing by drawing round the inside of one of the etches  before it was glued in place. However how I hold these securely in place on clear plastic sheet while I cut round them - but without damaging/smearing the said clear plastic , and still allowing the template to be ? peeled off? afterwards I'm not quite sure.....

I found the completed van had a distinct tendency to wobble on it's bogies . The layout is ultra-minimum space - though it manages not to look it - clearances are often tight, and it had a nasty habit of clipping the bridge abutment as it left the fiddle yard . I had to tighten up the screws - which required a little effort to tackle this

In the absence of Corporate transfers and the presence of green plastic "very grubby green" may be the way to go

Mine was built some years ago before the Hornby model was released - I think I scrounged transfers off an HMRS sheet

An old blog post of mine may help https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/4320-news-and-parcels/

The grills behind the windows were Roxey etches I think

There aren't alternative doors. While the kit is perfectly buildable, it is very much more laborious than any of the other Ratio kits - which do have one piece sides. The etched parts include etched chalkboards for the sides, door handles, etched hinges to the doors , and etched droplight frames to the doors. [I think the doors were loose in place when this photo was taken]. I still think making the sides a single injection moulded piece with all door furniture included would have simplified the kit a lot  (I wanted a 50' van on the layout rather than a long term project)

Transfers for BR  Blue are not provided - like me the builder seems to be a modern image modeller. I recall a certain amount of ingenuity was required to find suitable transfers - possibly the HMRS BR sheet

I was simply trying to warn gently that this is probably the most elaborate plastic coach kit on sale, and not an "easy starter kit", lest the builder get discouraged during a slow build and blame himself...  I remember this taking a looong  time, not helped by me mislaying the etch at one point

It's not a simple kit. I'm still trying to work out why they didn't just do one piece sides...

I think the problem with the LNWR coach is that the overspray inside and on the underframe is very light and pink , and is colouring your overall impression.

I suspect that a coat of matt black on the underframe and a suitable brushpaint job inside (you won't see it close up , so finish isn't critical) will improve the effect a lot

P.S. - the wretched tiebars on the bogies may need replacing with wire

Be careful - the NEM pocket on the Hachette is well above correct height. You may be ok with the tension-locks supplied but anything else and you have an issue

Phoenix Precision do a plastic Mk1 underframe truss which I've used

I'm assuming it's an Advanced Consist .

If it was an Old Style or "Brute Force" consist, then the information is stored in the PowerCab not the decoders , and if you take the locos off the track it should clear it.

For an Advanced Consist, press the Clear  button in the little panel of buttons marked "Consist" near the bottom of the PowerCab

(Diagonally up/right from ESC)

Enter one of the loco numbers at the prompt,  and press Enter

Instructions on p28 of my PowerCab handbook

TBH Consist is more relevant to DMUs and those afflicted by the MR's Small Engine Policy

Can I be very awkward...?

"In the winter 46 / spring 47 timetable ..."  You do realise that from late January '47 to mid March '47 we had possibly the most savage winter weather of the 20th century , followed in the second half of March by severe flooding as the whole lot melted... ?

This was the time when the LNER borrowed a jet engine off a nearby RAF station to see if it would clear the snow on the line across the Lincolnshire Wolds. (The experiment was not a success....)

So a snow- plough train really ought to be on the list.

There's also the question of how you are going to do the scenics - winter trees with no foliage? A snowscape - as it actually was for 7 full weeks? 

A packet of Hornby 14.1mm disc wheels may be your best option. Remember to adjust the B2B with a gauge - they are normally sold tight

The trailing axle looks well out of line , I'm afraid. I'm not sure how this can be dealt with. The hole would have to be drifted downwards somehow, which looks like it means "into the keeper plate". How you then stop the axle migrating upward into the vacant space I don't know.

While in concept you could drill out a much larger hole and fix a length of brass tube in it at the bottom as the "new bearing", and fix it in place with expoy, the centre for that hole would probably be right on the split between the keeper plate and the chassis block - which is probably not a practical place to drill. And how you'd ensure the brass tube was dead square and level I'm, not sure.....

There seems to have been a whole complex of goods facilities right along from the bottom of Darling Harbour to the tip of Pyrmont . I presume Pyrmont power station was rail served - it was coal-fired and intermittently in use into at least the mid 80s 

Your photos sound interest.

Thanks for the info. The prices are a bit eye-watering though - AUD595 + postage for the C30 (that's about GBP340), and AUD775 for the Z19. Austrains website seems to have evaporated, 

I now hav e the full set : J11 (Bachmann) , N5 (Millhome kit, built but needs motor replacing) and C12 kit. 

It looks as if the Scalelink wheels are the way to go . Bogie/pony wheels should be 10 spoke but Markits and Scalelink both only do 12 spoke

What's nagging at me with the cladding is that the only evidence Catch Me Who Can was wood-clad is the Rowlandson watercolour - which only exists because Trevithick made a public exhibition of himself in Euston Square (ie this is the late Georgian equivalent of celebrity culture). Take away that print - and the evidence for Catch Me Who Can is exactly the same as that for the earlier locomotives.

But the earlier locos were never going to be illustrated by an artist/cartoonist of the fashionable London scene... As the phrase has it "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" , especially when the evidence is patchy and limited as it is with these -is there positive evidence that the earlier locos weren't clad? O

I do have a modest collection of coffee stirrers , though the build would certainly be simpler if I didn't fit them and didn't need to work round spraying black before they go on.

I think you may have misunderstood something? It seemed a very odd statement, for several reasons, so I've just checked Eileen's website. It appears that Eileen's will now stock Peco products, and will offer EM/P4 wheel options which Peco won't. It doesn't mean that Peco - who must be the biggest wholesaler/distributer in the model railway trade, ahead of Gaugemaster - have withdrawn from wholesaling their own manufactured product and subbed out the job to Eileen's 

To be honest, Parkside is the one range of kits you could be reasonably confident of finding in most model shops - along with Ratio, another Peco-made product range . Every model shop must be dealing with Peco because of the track ranges    

Quote off Eileen's website below

ex Stephen Poole kit for the Y5 , dates from the early 1970s. I presume the motor is an X04. Nu-Cast took them over in about 1975

I have one in the cupboard to do at some point, when I actually learn to build a chassis  - but it will have a modern motor and modern wheels . Mine cost a tenner at Leytonstone show about 10 years ago. Presumably if the motor was replaced with something decent you might be cooking with gas?

A further file note because this is starting to look as if it might have legs....

Construction of the main board would be based on single-plate ply/stripwood girder like Blacklade, with the plates extended upwards on 3 sides to form the backscene. That will mean stiffening strips at the tops and in the corners, otherwise the ply will warp - as it has at the top of Blacklade's side backscenes. Since this would be up against a wall, those strips must be internal, and at that point a boxed -diorama presentation becomes inevitable, with the stiffening strips serving to support a lid which carries the lighting (LED strips?). The "proscenium arch" would be a separate unit added later above the front member , for ease of cutting, working etc

Trackwork to be the "mainline" OO9 from Peco - I note that John de Freysinnet's County Gate site inveighs against Peco Crazy Track points and recommends the larger mainline OO9 points for reliable running. (If I use modern Farish 0-6-0 mechanisms I should be immune from his attack on the reliability of much OO9) The station plan would be fairly similar to that from Steve Fackerill in this month's RM, and the Ratio concrete provender shed might make a suitable goods shed. There's a possible station building in the Peco timber station shelter

Since the station is supposed to serve an RAF station over the dunes, some suitable tankers and vehicles may be needed. I should have an old Airfix RAF refuelling set stashed away somewhere - I think the vehicles survive. And there's a very promising Airfix RAF bomber support set, with useful vehicles, a bowser , and various munitions. I'm very tempted to have an aircraft hanging from the lid on fishing nylon - coming into land. As it happens I bought an Airfix boxed set of 4 kits, being sold off cheap two Christmasses ago - none of them have been built as I've nowhere to display them, but the smallest is a Hurricane Mk1 , which is just in period...... If the nylon is tied round a penny washer, with a slot in the "lid" to pass it through, it could be hung, removably . This implies an 18" high boxed diorama , 18" deep. (3" for the base, 12" for the scene, with 2" for the top arch /lid and an inch below it for a Hurricane coming in to land - 12"=300mm = an altitude of 75' = not impossible...) That will go in the car across the back seat, so this becomes a potential exhibition layout  

The curve will need to be about 95 degrees , so the station slants a little across the board, generating more width behind for buildings . Two of my Skaledale buildings (Forbes & Masons Arms) look promising, and several of the card buildings in the Dover Press "Build an Irish Village" I've had for years look adaptable. ("The George & Anchor" maybe?) A pillbox nestling in the dunes , facing the sea...

I'm not committed to building this, of course. And the whole thing would be predicated on decommissioning the old desktop PC , which is unlikely to happen this year. But still - it is looking surprisingly plausible.

Having surfed the internet looking for TT gauge 0-6-0 mechanisms - it's looking rather problematic for OOn3. Add to this advice from the OO9 Society stand that whitemetal loco kits are normally a tight fit round N gauge mechanisms and getting a larger TT gauge mechanism in might be quite difficult... And having seen the Bachmann and Peco OO9 stuff in the flesh at Stevenage - they look rather nice.

So it looks as if I'd have to go to OO9 after all. This would mean the Dogger Light Railway becoming a 2'6" gauge line. The RN did use 2'6" gauge at ordinance factories and on the Chattendon and Upnor , so the gauge fits. The Welshpool & Llanfair and Leek & Manifold were both to this gauge, and fairly substantial operations. And Beyer Peacock (who apparently had a 2'6" gauge works system) converted ex WD Baldwins to 2'3.5" for the Snailbeech & District and 2'4" for the Glyn Valley. A 2'6" gauge conversion is therefore credible. The Bachmann model would be a good starting point for the layout

Kits for decent sized locos are available in OO9 to take N gauge chassis- RT Models do a Harrogate Gas Works Peckett,  Dundas do a Hunslet 2-6-2T, there are a couple of ex Chivers kits for 0-6-2Ts    and among the large range of OO9 stuff on Shapeways is a Manning Wardle https://www.shapeways.com/product/XZQXNCWJR/00n3-kettering-no6-8-manning-wardle-body?optionId=61609377&li=marketplace, as well as some Cyprus Govt Rlys kits from Roxey. Throw in ex WD Baldwins and Simplexs, and genuine RNAD 2'6" diesels and rolling stock and a credible "house image" representing a more substantial narrow gauge railway becomes possible. Rearmament in the late 1930s would provide a legitimate excuse for second-hand purchases of ex L&B rolling stock and even ex Leek and Manifold equipment.

A setting in 1937-8 should justify a busy peacetime railway with passenger traffic and plenty of military traffic too