Adrian

Woo hoo! Two lads sorted!!! Although Lord knows how I feel when they pass their driving test! Seriously though I hope you enjoyed the celebrations.

Thanks for that, I'm already subscribed to his blog. With him restoring a D.E. version I never thought to contact him but will make tentative enquiries.

Yes very interested - as long as it's etched nickel-silver and not resin. I've a few extra's I want to fit internally for a future project so as much room as possible, hence my aversion to resin. As far as I remember the one at Ribble Steam, St Monans, is a straight back cab. It's local to me if you need any photo's or dimensions. Were there any GA drawings available from the Sentinels Drivers club archive? I'm after a good GA and wondered if you had a reference number? I did find a short article in the Model Engineer, dated 11th January 1955, on the 100HP Sentinel. This is a 4 page article with a rather nice 2 page simplified GA drawing with all the essential dimensions. The magazine was A5 format so the plans are A4, they are very similar in detail to Figure 145 in the Sentinel book but much better quality and I can read the dimensions! I hope this helps.

I'd have been tempted to name it "The Pedent and Armchair" just to for the full wind up, as for the licensee the best I can come up with is Noah Tall.

Is it just yourself or family as well? It depends what your party's interests are. As for a few suggestions we went in April with our two lads (9yrs and 7yrs), we avoided Disney and did Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure instead. Glad we did as they loved it, Harry Potter world was stunning, if you go there try the frozen butterbeer! The water rides you will get soaked so we did one day in swimming trunks. Probably spent 4 days just at Universal. Aquatica is much better than Wet'n'Wild for a water park. Busch Gardens again worth it, kids enjoyed the "safari" ride, feeding the giraffes etc plus some stunning roller coasters. Kennedy Space Centre is a must, I thought this'd be one for me with the engineering but the kids loved it as well. We were lucky to see Endeavour on the launch pad but there's still plenty to see. The scale of the Saturn rocket was stunning as was the relative small size of the early rockets. You can have lunch with an Astronaut if you book in advance, again interesting for the kids, although we got a guy called Tom Jones, so we had the usual jokes about missing the green green grass of home etc. What else to do? Seaworld, Crocodile world, Airboat ride through the glades etc. Get a ticket for the Basketball - Orlando Magic. I'd like to have got tickets for NASCAR but there were no local races on when we visited. You could get to Daytona but they seem to only have a couple of races a year.

That'll be The Scissor Sisters.

OK I've "seen" John Otway, what can I say? Ok it's different, but improvement? I don't think so. Obviously inspired by SAHB but somewhat off the mark, IMHO. House of the rising sun was no better, for that the cover version by the Animals is the definitive version.

Some great covers there, many new to me. So to add to the mix one of my favourites is the incomparable Sensational Alex Harvey Band and Delilah, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0fT9BHpImI

You must have a different definition of free of charge - me I still get stung the best part of £150 for the license fee.

For something that small you could try making your own. What material are you boring and to what depth? For boring out some 7mm axleboxes I made my own D-bit. This is basically a bit of silver steel bar, with a flat filed on it and then hardened and tempered. As posted here with axlebox boring

I know Gerald Wingrove turned out several fine models with the help of a Unimat.

For info, addition, I've just acquired an excellent G.A drawing of the postwar 100h.p. Sentinel loco. "The Model Engineer" 11th. January 1951, p59-62 100h.p. Sentinel, An Unusual Steam Locomotive by J.N. Walton.

Why not have a go and scratchbuild one? That's what I did in 7mm, if you can get a spud motor unit about the right wheelbase then the rest is easy to build. I had to turn the buffers but the rest of it was built just using the minimum of handtools, a piercing saw, riveting tool, scriber, steel rule, square and needle files. A few details are on my website along with a basic outline sketch (7mm) which you could use to build your own model. http://www.cherryclan.com/locos/y10.html it really isn't that difficult and the satisfaction of building your own loco is brilliant.

Sorry not been following too closely - which lathe do you mean? If it's the Mini-lathe then "The Mini Lathe" book by Dave Fenner has chapter (10) on fitting DRO's and roller bearings to the mini-lathe. I bought my lathe with them fitted and they are all self contained so no cover required. Adrian

I would recommend them, I bought a secondhand one last year for £350 - with a few extras, I've since probably spent £150 on tooling and extras, tipped tools, parting off tool, knurling tool, magnetic base and dial gauge, centre drills etc. so just within your budget. All the links from Bertiedog show what is available for the lathe. Plus there are numerous articles on modifying and improving the lathe, using the drive gears as a dividing head etc. The workshop series book on the mini-lathe by Dave Fenner has a few suitable projects. Regards Adrian

I wouldn't classify myself as an expert but I do use the lathe for various projects. However there's so many thing to cover it's a case of where to start? What do you want covered? As in the earlier thread I'd recommend Gerald Wingrove's book on Unimat projects - it takes you through the basics on turning and takes you through 10 simple projects. They build up so the later projects use the tools you've just made in the earlier projects. Adrian

I couldn't agree more - I wear safety googles and use the guards - I might look daft but my eyesight is too valuable to lose. I think you're probably right, there are more turning jobs than milling but depending on what you want to do there are still several "milling" jobs after the frames and spacers. All the motion, especially if fluted, fly cutting fittings, various boxes and brackets. Fortunately the vast majority can be done on the lathe with a vertical slide. Adrian

Pre-emptive strike - Please don't feed the trolls! Adrian

The wheels have arrived for my next project which has spurred me on to get this Jinty finished before I plough into the next job. So having finished most of the etched detailing I've given it a clean before starting on adding all the whitemetal castings. So this is the current progress, the chimney casting was carefully drilled out before fitting so there is a decent sized hole down into the smokebox, sanding pipes have been fitted to one side and a few of the other castings have been added. So there are the final few details to add - handrail to the smokebox door, vac pipes, safety valves and whistle etc.

Nice idea - although I'm not sure it'd work, Scale7 standard gauge and narrow gauge (32mm) might look a little incongruous! Regards Adrian

Nope - that's a new one to me as well. Lighter fuel works fine for me so I've never tried anything else, as Bob explained it to me the lighter fuel is lowering the surface tension of the paint - it's not intended to thin the paint. The paint does flow nicely using lighter fuel so I've stuck with what works for me. Adrian

Actually Bob Moore's lining pen was specifically designed to run neat humbrol enamel to ensure a good colour density on the line. If it's not a fresh tin of humbrol then a couple of drops of lighter fluid to ease the surface tension is recommended. Adrian

Apologies for the late arrival - but funnily enough it actually did sound fantastic - Dave went for the full audio visual experience with Exebridge Quay. IIRC I saw it at a Bristol Show, in the days before DCC sound chips, so all you could hear across the hall was Dave and his damn seagulls. Great if you could see the layout but it got a bit tiresome after a couple of hours. Adrian

That's impressive, the excellent scenics and subtle weathering really lift it, despite the smallish size it has a nice open feel to it. I presume you just have a sector plate behind the halt feeding three rear lines through the bridge? Congratulations. Adrian

As can be observed from the deafening silence, things haven't progressed as quickly as I'd hoped. I've done the usual trick of offering to help on numerous things, not thinking that all of them would be taken up. How wrong I was! Fortunately some of them are modelling related so I'll report back on those once I've sorted them out. Still I've been making some limited progress on the layout, so a quick update to show I'm still in the land of the living. I'm about half way through building the baseboards which I'll cover in another posting. I wanted to try a test piece for ballasting the track, this is the method and the result. So as a brief recap I'm using Exactoscale steel rail and chairs together with full depth timber sleepers from Perfect Miniatures, with modelling the shed scene the sleepers will be exposed in a number of places hence the full depth items. So a simple Templot print of a short straight is sellotaped down to a thick worktop offcut leftover from the kitchen fitters. I then put a couple of strips of double sided tape along the length and stuck the sleepers down. The sleepers were stained with Rustins wood dye - dark oak. Even with a couple of coats it still looked a little light so I tried the ebony wood dye which seems better. The sides of the steel rail was treated to a coating of Casey's Gun Blue before loading with the chairs and then glued to the sleepers with Butanone. Once dry the track panel was lifted and the template peeled away. It was then stuck down using copydex on to sheet of cork laid on a short MDF offcut. I then used some Railmatch weathered black to paint the chairs, not bothering too much about full coverage as there'd be more weathering to do. I was in Hobbycraft and spotted the Games Workshop paints which others had recommended so I thought I'd give them a try. Browsing through snot green and rotting flesh I found a vermin brown, this was dry brushed over the chairs. More copydex was painted between the sleepers and Woodland coarse cinders were brushed into place, this didn't give that good a coverage so I followed it up with a good dose of the fine cinders which seemed to work quite well. This being the result. Finally the ongoing research unearthed another gem from Transport Treasury. I've finally unearthed a photo showing the line from the mill by the river up quay street up to the site of the old B&G station. in the foreground left is the road bridge to the mill which can still be seen at Tewkesbury. In the distance can be seen the two GWR box vans at the site of the old station. The two cars parked on Quay street seem to be the same two parked down on the quay side in the other photo's I've found.