Hammer

Me thinks someone put a decimal point in the wrong place.

It's a fantastic model, and must have required many hours of works...but...It just doesn't have the elegant lines of Gresley's x-8-x's. Now, with Coronation-style streamlining...

I was about to ask what the Saddle Tank was as well. I was guessing a Hornby Cally ST with considerable bashing. Good work anyway, it looks very convincing given it's origins

Unless you really are desperate to part with the best part of £200, then you might as well give GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) a go instead. Same idea, but free. Can be downloaded from www.gimp.org.

It is a completely normal wagon. Like other small shunters, there was a good deal of improvisation to make up for lack of bunker capacity. According to the LNER Encyclopedia, a number of Y9s did end up with wagons coupled on a drawbar. Right now, I have no idea why the rear of the tender was cut down. I'm going to try and do some investigation in to it. Hopefully a trip to Bo'ness might be able to answer the question.

After buying a couple of box files a few weeks back, I had to come up with something to put in them. Pondering on the matter (with some assistance from RMWeb) has led me to the conclusion that Victoria Quay in Leith is the ideal prototype. This has the advantage of track still being in situ (and can even be seen on Google Maps), along with original stonework, or at least similar to how it looked in the '50s. The downside is that most of the area is now occupied by the Scottish Government offices, which is also known as Victoria Quay. There are, however, original whisky bonds still there which were restored into rather pokey flats. I'm not planning to directly model Victoria Quay as it was, but a fictional area of Quay adjacent to it. This allows me to experiment with the track a bit more and have a track leading into one of the buildings parallel to the up and down lines on the quay itself. I was thinking I might name it St Andrew's Quay after the Scottish Government headquarters on Calton Hill. It should be a fun little project anyway. Obviously, I also need something to run on the quayside. I have, in my collection, a J94 and few Hornby Class 06s, but I'm not sure either of them is quite suitable for Leith. Luckily, a £20 Smokey Joe, a £10 Five-Plank Wagon, a pot of black paint, some tools and the right copy of Model Rail allow me to create a near prototypical Y9 with tender as ran on the real thing. There's a few pictures of the Y9s at Leith, 10097 in 1946 and 68092 in 1946, as well as the only surviving example of the Y9s (although similar private owner examples also exist) at Bo'ness. All ready to go when I get some spare money and buy the track, plastikard and few extra tools. Edit: Of interest to modern image modeller, coal trains continue to run to Leith Docks (the part that isn't shops and flats). I doubt there is much to model there however.

A picture says a thousand words: (Original image, fell free to reuse as you wish - more here, although most are badly framed and rather indiscriminate) The GNSRA book on the Deeside line includes a good few good photos of the stations on this line. Ballater, the Cambus-o-May Halt and the GNSR-built Braemar Bus Station are similar in style to Knockando, although I'm not sure how useful Ballater is as prototype.

That website is proper conspiracy wonk stuff. It's good to see a nice debunking of it.

Googling the book's title lets you access a GNSRA sales list from 2008, in which the book is listed as a "Bargain".I suspect, if they were attempting to sell off stock, then they weren't terribly good sellers and a reprint isn't planned. I would suggest, however, that it might be worth contacting them in the off chance that a few spare copies are still around. Failing that, maybe putting up a classified advert on here?

Development of such a model isn't going to be over-night. I think, realistically, if anyone commissions one of these models we're looking at late 2011 as the earliest possible delivery date with 2012 much more likely. I'd also be happy to settle for a Jones Goods, a D40 or even a modern standard version of 123 While I'm happy with the consensus reached above, a start is a start. Sorry to be blunt, but we've had thread after thread where we sit around and take guesses at tooling costs for these things (often because someone quite fancies trying to bankroll their pet locomotive). If we just sit around and suppose that it'll be too expensive for anyone, then we'll still be waiting for the eye of Hornby and Bachman to turn on Scotland ten years from now. We've had a lot of positive support in the efforts to get a modern, high quality Scottish steam locomotive, including from manufacturers and magazines (as seen above) so it's very much of a case of Carpe Diem now.

While there is no harm in approaching retailers with the idea, I recall it being said that Harburn were extremely cool towards the idea in 2006 or 2007 when it was discussed on the previous forum. No reason why someone who knows chaps there doesn't sound them out on it though, as we are looking at a very different market now. I do think that the previous idea of approaching Strathspey Railway or Glasgow Museums (as owners of surviving examples) is an idea with legs and should certainly be pursued.

That sounds a lot like heresay or media rumours concocted to fill column inches. Neither the EU nor the DVLA would ever be that daft. Not least since it directly counters their existing drives to cut fuel use and emissions. Not that it stops some numpties anyway.

No-one seems to have told Lothian Buses or First Edinburgh/First Glasgow.

There are a lot of plausible could-have-been locomotives. I remember seeing mention of a BR Standard shunter, which was planned but which was dropped due to the large number of 0-6-0s and the success of diesel shunters. Brian Heresnape's book on Gresley locomotives also has drawings of three proposed LNER tank engines which are quite interesting.

I did see Missy's idea, and I certainly approve, but I like the idea of being able to fold up a diorama as well. Who know, I may go for a larger scenic plank like that instead.

Well, I've already got the small layout ready to go, but I want a dry run before I break out the PVA

Since my last blog post, I've only been home once. I had been hoping to make progress in ballesting, painting and maybe doing something to counter the current billiard table effect. Annoyingly, I wasn't able to get any of that done due to other time commitments. With the problems of job hunting, dissertation and so on, I'm not going to get near it again for a few months. So, I've been pondering making a box file diorama with a duel purpose - to let me take pictures of models against something other then my room or white paper and to let me practice ballasting and laying grass before I do something larger. I'm not thinking of doing anything at all complicated. Just a length of track, maybe on a slight embankment, angled diagonally across the box's flap, a cloudy back-scene and maybe a very small building. The only at all interesting thing I was thinking about doing was mounting a light or two in the top of the box to aid photographic efforts, but that would be a late stage addition I think.

You never know

The Macintosh and the Cally Jumbo heading up the LMS category in MREMag poll with the J36 ending up 16th overall. Another half dozen LNER 0-6-0s also polled highly as well. Also worth noting that the P2 - a very Scottish class - also polled highly. I'm not sure how likely that class is to be picked up though, since there were a good few major variations between the members of the class. (Not that that stops me form voting for it). Not too bad at all.

I've been enjoying watching the progress on this layout. It's absolutely perfect, and reminds me of home. Spent a good few journeys eagerly awaiting what might be sitting in the yard at Aberdeen as my train came in.

I don't particularly want to see more engines go to the cutter's torch, but equally there are only so many steam trains and preserved diesels the country can support on-track. I'd suggest looking at things like donating engines to museums abroad or museums here which could house non-working engines in clean, protective environments, if not on display. I do think that we could do with another transport museum dedicated to trains, complimenting the existing facilities in York, Shilingdon, Barrow and Swindon. Maybe in Scotland given the national collection and the Glasgow City collections both have a vast amount of railway items which won't fit in the new, ship-focused Glasgow Transport Museum (Not to sound like a one-trick Scottish pony or anything... ). Of course, while it's an idea which might have legs in the long run (the Government being big on funding these things), it's shackled by the recession just now. Can't help feeling that it might be something to genuinely take to Holyrood via the e-petitions system though. /tangent

I can afford to muck up quite a lot of plastikard and wills sheets in order to do suitable buildings. I can't afford to muck up a single £200 kit in order to provide suitable locos.

Stathspey (as far as I know) are in the final push for funding for the extension line, so this might be something they'd be willing to try to raise funds for it. Equally, they might consider it too risky just now. Worth a try anyway.

Thank you very much. I shall investigate those. I'm hoping to find suitable examples for some fitted and unfitted wagon, because the quality of the Parkside buffers does let them down a wee bit.