gc4946

Maybe paint your trams in Salford livery https://www.flickr.com/photos/gmts/26510237929

By 1947 some of their trams looked woebegone http://modelengineeringwebsite.com/Salford_trams.html

I wish you luck. The Swilly had pretensions to mainline status and owned the only 4-8-0s and narrow-gauge 4-8-4 tanks in the British Isles.

If they were preserved, they would have really stood out!

AFAIK only one bogie carriage survives in preservation.

After a long time, I got hold of a Railroad R3062 D49 (not the version currently being offered as a concession exclusive).

The chassis has now been swapped over with the Margate bodies.

However on the loco body, I had to cut away some of the boiler underside to accommodate the motor suppressors.

Also I enlarged the main fixing screw hole on the diecast chassis to fit the original Margate screw because its size is different from that of the Chinese version.

I've still to buy a pair of etched plates, but the loco runs much better compared with the original Margate tender drive.

Chassis replacement and etched name fitment will be on my "to do" list. It's just that their Railroad version sold out quickly at most retailers.

Yes, it was in L&Y livery during its time with the Wirral, except that the Wirral's oval brass numberplates replaced the L&Y crest.

I bought two postcard prints of the loco, one of them shows No. 6 (the 6 is obscured) on the front bufferbeam, but haven't yet come across anything showing the rear bufferbeam, but photographic evidence from other Wirral Rly locos show they also had No. x painted on the rear bufferbeam.

Due to its late arrival at a time of economy measures for the railway, the loco never carried the full Wirral livery.

I may consider painting a wagon and/or model a carriage in their livery to redress the balance but I didn't want to pass up an opportunity to model a loco that's available in RTR which represents something personal to me.

I only mentioned Showbus because it was another big event I attended which illustrates my thoughts about how I prioritised what to see and do because I only had limited time at my disposal.

This year I considered going to Warley but in the end didn't. If I went, I would have gone on Sunday and focus on seeing the layouts. I would have skipped the traders except to visit Bachmann, Dapol and Hornby to see what they had in their display cases.

This year I went to a similarly-sized event, Showbus, arguably the biggest bus gathering in Britain, at Long Marston, based on part of a former airfield larger than the hall used to host the Warley show at the NEC. However I only knew about it happening a few days before my stay in Warwickshire and admission was

I have photos of all my locos bought so far as part of this collection on this blog:

The J17, Terrier and M7 all appear in part 4;

The 28XX and J72 all appear in part 5;

No work have been done on any of the above yet.

however the J17 will now appear in authentic plain GER black, numbered 1217 (the preserved loco)

the 28XX with GWR roundel rather than "G W R", but I've yet to decide which 28XX number to choose (it's currently 2847 as made by Hornby, but will change it to an ID of a loco currently in preservation)

and the J72 to appear with a pre-1946 LNER number.

It's a question of finding time to spare for repainting and re-numbering without rushing things and making a hash of them, and ordering suitable 28XX numberplates.

In any case, I'll post up photos of finished models for all to see, photographed individually, and to a better standard, rather than in groups.

This is a long-term project, I see this like a marathon, rather than a sprint. Some of the locos I want to buy such as Bachmann's Midland 4F, J11 and L&Y 2-4-2T won't be released until next year at the earliest.

I'll repaint my loco in plain black in this case, as it was bought secondhand painted in GER blue (a photo of it appears in part 4 in the series) In any case, I'm not entirely happy with the model's finish anyway because of its lettering and lining.

When it's overhauled and repainted, it'll receive its number 1217 (LNER 1217E, 8217, 5567, BR 65567)

I thought of Oxford, but my BR(S) loco fleet consists of Terrier, M7, T9, Maunsell N, unrebuilt West Country, and rebuilt Merchant Navy.

The only SR tender locos I've seen in photos taken in the Oxford area were King Arthurs and Schools.

Pre-WW2 I could run B17s as the Footballers first worked on the GC route, but what about B12/3s and J17s??

I also own LMS pacifics they AFAIK never ran in or around Oxford.

All my steamers represent one of each class that were allocated to depots and which are represented in preservation, or those named after towns and cities, where my family and I lived over the years.

Re Portsmouth suggestion, the Navy was more active there rather than the RAF.

There's a huge advantage in modelling 1968/69, even though steam had finished, there was still a lot of steam age infrastructure, you had older liveries and "modern" corporate blue/grey livery and ex-SR EMUs were still running as well as BR designs, including new 4VEPs in all over rail blue (like Hornby's planned model) and 4CIGs in green. If you moved on a year later to 1970, you could then have 4CIGs running in sparkling new blue/grey.

The local buses, Portsmouth Corporation and Southdown still wore their traditional liveries, too.

I'm in the process of renaming a Hornby Coronation as Princess Alice after my daughter. But there's a "real" one to go on. Does that count? I'm also going to have to have Princess Charlotte - again, there was a Star, but I may fudge that one and pretend she was rebuilt as a Castle and kept the name...

I have two cousins, Lisa and Debbie, I know 73 206, owned by GBRf, is named Lisa, but haven't unearthed any locos named Debbie or Deborah, so far I haven't done anything as they may think I'm favouring one of them over the other, I'll have to pretend that another GBRf loco was named Debbie and commission a special nameplate.

I've been experimenting with sound on an N gauge mallet chassis recently. Initially is seemed like a great idea, but the more i listened to it the more it just sounds wrong and not accurate enough for my liking so I'm giving it a miss. I do think that diesels are far better served than steam as far as sound goes.

 

It is fun being able to blow the whistle/horn - that really appeals to my inner 8 year old!

I agree that diesels are much better, my Black 5 is likely to be my only sound fitted loco for quite some time yet. There are a lot more variables such as chuff rate and volume in steam sound compared with diesels and the current ESU chips don't quite have enough programming and memory capacity to bring all that together.