Corbs

Tears rolling down my face as I write this. I never got to meet Neil in person but he was a lovely person to talk to online and I am such a fan of his modelling. I'm really happy that he got to see his creation in print. He will be missed.

We are chuffed to bits at Michael Russell's build of our 16" Manning Wardle saddle tank kit in this month's issue of British Railway Modelling! Michael has gone the extra mile with this version, adding the reversing rod, modifying the wheels and even including DCC firebox glow. AND open cab windows, the absolute madman.

Maybe it's a sign of my age but I can't read MICA B without the voice in my head putting it to the theme tune of 'Byker Grove'.

Well….

Was so lovely to talk to so many fellow rmwebbers and see great models, plus no public, what a luxury! 😄 Thanks so much to @NHY 581 and the team. Here are some choice pics.

That's the same system as on my OKI laser by the sounds of it. The main problems are: -Laser printers use dot dithering to print colour (so no colour is truly solid). -The white toner is last in the printer whereas for decals you actually want it to be first so that it can be the base colour. As it stands, you have to print colour decals upside-down and flip them over, using a ton of setting solution.

Adam and I are planning to come to this :) I seem to remember something about name badges, I was wondering about doing it anyway as sadly I no longer have the cat-eating-pizza-in-space hoodie from my avatar.

Yeah I removed the cab and then cut the back of the footplate off with the razor saw, then glued the Stanier cab and running plate on. I don't remember exactly how I did the previous tender coupling but it involved styrene and I imagine this one will too.

These are left over from a Frankenstein Class 31 conversion, they worked when they were removed from the loco, a bit filthy though. Surplus to requirements so am selling in case they are useful for anyone else. £5 posted in UK.

Sooo Wilbert and his brother George wrote up a big history of the island, notable people, and the railways, as well as drawing up the map. He used to give a lecture on it, the notes for which are held at the NGRM in Tywyn as part of the Awdry study. I've taken the background of the stories and most of the book, then mixed it up with some of my own ideas, changing dates, numbers etc. to suit what I want to model. I think he was partially constrained by framing the stories as if they were happening contemporaneously, so I've just rearranged things to how I want them to be. I enjoy the world-building aspect of it. Any accusations that I do this in order to justify building more locos are well-founded.

New crankpins arrived so No.300 has been wired up today and tested. Shown here with No.300 to show the relative speeds. 301 has slightly more top speed it seems, but a badly quartered wheelset means it's jerking a little. Much happier with the speed and controllability. It's a strange thing that such a cheap and readily available chassis is so well suited to RC. What you see here is top speed! It was about time I used the other two custom nameplates for Nos. 704 and 503. Colonel Henry Regaby features the crossed gauntlets and rose insignia of the Sodor Regiment (hence the commemorative green livery) while Duke of Gordon bears the crest of Clan Gordon (stag over a crown). The metal I've had them etched in is quite thin so I stuck them to styrene to stiffen them. Also, I got bored of looking at the plain white NW on one side of the tender, so I peeled them off with a fingernail, gave it a bit of wet sanding, and then applied some NORTH WESTERN lettering with one of the NWR crests designed by Luke Ryan. Much posher now....

A burst of modelling recently due to the Nailsea Show (weekend just gone). I was helping out with Adam's layout 'Erebus Pit' and got to bring along a few of my RC and DCC locos to include in the mix. It was a lot of fun to operate between 2-3 people at a time. The DCC could be controlled from a Roco handset or from our phones so with someone operating the points, we could keep at least two locos moving most of the time. A few Sudrian interlopers were on the layout and took over duties on Sunday morning. NWR 301 and BHS Co. 16 are seen here. NWR No.106 'Perseus' is pictured alongside Adam's SCOW Bagnall. One loco that didn't make the show was No.300, the E2 with enlarged hopper bunker. I could not get it to run well, it was still much too fast on RC even with diodes to drop the voltage. Low speed operation was impossible. On Saturday evening I tore into it to see what could be done. Originally I thought that it was down to emulsified grease in the drivetrain, but now it seems to be the Bachmann 3F motor. When I try to rotate it by hand, it feels like a cement mixer. Given that the Hornby motor and chassis on No.301 performs excellently on RC, producing a lovely crawl, the obvious solution is to replace the chassis on 300 with a Hornby one. I had this old thing in my stash. Comparing this photo to the one above shows where I have razor sawn out chunks of the chassis block to fit around the body. A nice fluke was that the fore and aft screw holes actually line up with the styrene mounts I had already fitted to the body, so it easily screws in. I managed to find a matching set of wheels in various boxes, the Margate-era ones are far too chunky. Unfortunately I am missing one valve gear screw so am waiting on a new set to arrive - incidentally these things seem to be quite rare as I could only find one person selling them. Posed on the new chassis alongside its classmate. Note that 300 (photon-printed) is bent along its length compared to 301 (shapeways-printed and much older). Might need to try the hot water trick to reduce the warp.

Adam and I will be at the Nailsea MRC exhibition this weekend with his layout 'Erebus Pit', featuring plenty of Railway Mania kits including the two new Avonsides. If you are coming to the show it would be great to see you!

Awesome work on that 13-tonner and fixing up those vans, I need to do something similar to the old junk I have lying around.

Starting to doubt myself now but I think I removed it by putting a screwdriver in the boiler and ramming it on to the desk to pop it off, but the body isn't hard to take off the chassis, just a few screws.

The smokebox door is separate :) one of the things I considered was cutting off the 'dogs' around the door and replacing with a conventional smokebox door dart to change the look of the front end. Hope it goes well!

It’s bending history a bit but I like to think that the LMS standard cab design was adapted from the NWR house style, a nice big cab with double side windows is surely nicer when most of the line is exposed to the Irish Sea…. So this is the same reason that the ex-ROD 2-8-0s are initially rebuilt with NWR cabs years before they gain 3C boilers.

Maybe if you take all the letters in the spelling mistakes and put them together it spells out a secret message…..* *(it doesn’t)

Something fresh, a deal on a second hand Bachmann N Class. The cab was stubborn but eventually came off along with the deflectors. A little chop here… …. a little chop there (Margate-era 8F body from one of the drawers) Some choice cuts mean the cab fits to the N class running plate a lot better than the previous conversion which used the N backhead. It has a solid front unlike the other one. After some Araldite, it starts to take shape! Tender is from one of the ROD conversions, either the Garratt or the 2-8-4T. Need to make a hybrid coupling bar up between them. This one might become Edric, or possibly Sigurd. Maybe another altogether?

It's a snow day here in Bristol so have a retro pic of BHS Co. No.16 during a blizzard.

I actually went there looking to see if they had the ones that come on the Class 20s but alas I think those are moulded into the bodyshell, so hope the 7F one is of use!

Ahhh yes that must be it - the lining.

I could be wrong on this but I seem to remember reading that 1501 never got a crest and stayed in plain black during its entire working life with BR up to the point it was sold to the NCB, the lined black with crest it has now being a purely preservation-era livery.

I think Graeme King made some resin conversion bits for the A1/1, not sure if they are still available but might be worth asking?

Hi mate, would the 7F tablet catcher be able to be adapted? It's here for £1 https://Bachmann-spares.co.uk/product/7f-tender-tablet-catcher-31-010/e3101-mis-012