Les Green

The power of social media never fails to amaze me at times. Details of the theft of all the locomotives on Liverpool Lime Street model railway was put on Facebook and here on RMWeb. The posts had 500 shares and reached over 14000 people. Some comments received gave us information that may help retrieve the models. This information has been passed on to the police who are actively looking into the case. In addition one of the persons we reached sent us a surplus EM gauge model of a Black 5 loco to replace one of the stolen locos. Such generosity amongst the model railway fraternity shows how we come together in the face of adversity.

I got the Vitrains bit wrong on the 10000 kit. It is, as correctly pointed out, an FIA trains diesel. Still missing though! Les

Definitely ViTrains!

Yes it was one of yours. I made it for the layout. And it was the most powerful loco on our layout. It was the only loco that could pull 30 comet coaches! Les

Thanks for the reference to Ebay. Sadly it is not ours. Wrong number and ours is a Judith Edge kit. Surprisingly similar though, even down to the KD Couplings! Thanks for looking and getting in contact. Keep looking! Les

These three locos were amongst those stolen. Probably the most recognisable of the stock. The steam locos are kit built locos to EM gauge. 10000 is a ViTrains model modified to EM Gauge. We will probably post more photos later when John has finished listing all that is missing.

Today the Lime Street crew hosted a visit by five gents from Folkstone, Manchester, and the Isle of Wight. The day started with a talk by John Holden about the history of the layout and the involvement with some of the operating crew. This was followed by the usual Lime Street crew operating the layout. After lunch at the local pub the visitors spent the afternoon operating the layout. A good day enjoyed by us all.

A good day operating Lime Street today and we were treated to a bit of sunshine on the layout!

Looks good and runs well Steve. Well done.

Nice one, Steve.

It was announced today that our layout of Lime Street Station has won the 2020 Railway Modeller Cup. A big thank you to any of our RmWeb followers that voted for us.

Another loco completed and ready for Lime Street post lockdown running!

Definitely not idle! A Comet model of an Ivatt Class 2 loco for Lime Street. Now in the paint shop.

I regret to inform all our RmWeb readers that Brian Pickersgill passed away last week. Brian was one of the main men on the Lime Street model in the early days. His engineering skills resulted in the sector plate and turntable at the fiddle yard end of the layout. The sector plate and turntable were both driven by stepper motors and the sector table was mounted on a ball bearing system all designed and manufactured by Brian. Thirty years or so later the whole system still operates flawlessly. Brian was also a member of a demonstration team, demonstrating model loco and rolling stock construction . The other two members being myself and John Holden. We demonstrated together for forty years or so at exhibitions, mainly in the North of England. My lasting memory of Brian will be sat beside him modeling at exhibitions. We learned so much from each other and had such a good time together. He was always willing to help fellow modelers, and, as all good demonstrators do, he preferred the chat to the modeling at the shows. RIP Brian.

Nothing was done with the 6 wheel bogies. They are pin point bearings and run quite smoothly. A drop of oil may be applied later if we have any running difficulties. The couplings are just a bent piece of 1mm wire with some 0.5mm wire soldered on to represent the vacuum and heating pipework. The bare vertical part just fits into a tapered hole in the base of the adjacent coach. All home made and simple enough. The coaches at the rake ends are fitted with KD couplings. All of our coach rakes are permanently coupled when on the layout. Hope that helps Les

Another three Comet coach kits completed for the Glasgow to Liverpool sleeper train.

Another ongoing task during these sad times is the construction of an extra three coaches for the Glasgow to Liverpool sleeper train. A sleeper first, a sleeper second, and a full brake. The three coaches are comet kits modified to have internal lighting when completed.

See Liverpool Lime Street, this time in Railway Modeller May Issue. On sale from April 9th.

The Liverpudlians on the layout would love to come to your layout. Problem is there are no flights from the UK to the USA at the moment!

Unfortunately,due to Coronavirus Liverpool Lime Street has had to close down for the duration of the pandemic. All exhibition attendances for 2020 have had to be cancelled. It is the fault of the local people ignoring recommendations to social distance themselves and non essential shops being still open. We have realeased photos of the offending people and hope they learn to behave themselves.

That is quite true. The real station front is not straight but has an angle of about twelve degrees between the two front arches. The model station front has an angle of only four degrees. The model station had to fit on fairly narrow baseboards and the track plan was modified to fit the baseboards. If you look at the real station it is built on a curve. We built the model station straight, but with the correct taper on the throat end of the roof. We didn't want to have parallel front arches with the straightened station so i managed to put in a relatively small angle in the alignment of the front arches. The photo shows the slight angle (not very clearly I might add!) between the two arches.

See Lime Street Station in the January 2020 issue of Model Rail. On the shelves now!

The Lamp Store fresh off the 3D printer. This will located on the front of the layout adjacent to the turntable. And painted ready for the weathering stage.

You should have been a prostate surgeon!!

Finally the boiler house is installed on the layout.