CWJ

The interiors were tackled next. Barely visible through the tiny windows so I just used a dull brown to distinguish the floor from the red seats, then used silver to represent the handrails across the seat backs. If I were doing it again I wouldn't bother with the silver in this scale, the stripe is too thick. I also painted the screw pillars inside the body castings black so they're less obvious. Expecting to spray the bodies with an aerosol varnish, I knocked up a wooden jig to hold them: Pins with their heads snipped off slot into the screw holes in the base of each body. Unfortunately I discovered that the Humbrol varnish aerosols I have are (as far as I can tell) actually acrylic, so they can't be used over enamel paint. So out came the enamel varnish and a paintbrush. The tow truck was finished first, with matt varnish and a wash of dirty black to pick out the detail, mostly wiped off with a cotton bud: Oh, and that unconvincing crane moulding was also painted dirty black to try and make it less conspicuous! Nearly there now...

This HUDDERSFIELD label went on fairly well. Certainly better than my cream paint-blob attempt earlier: Here are the side and rear destination blinds: And here's the front end. My brush painting looks very rough at close range but I'm very happy with the number and crest transfers: That's the main visual changes done, now onto the finishing-off jobs...

I also needed white patches for the destination blinds on the front, side and rear. These were carefully masked, holding up one of the transfers to check the size, then adjusting the masking tape until it was just right: Here's one of the transfers going on, to show why the white patches are needed: This is a bit more difficult that using commercial transfers. There are two ways in which it can go wrong. This white patch wasn't quite big enough, so the first and last letters of HUDDERSFIELD have their corners snipped off: ...and in this example, the white patch is slightly too big: But, like Goldilocks, I did eventually get one just right.

Speaking of which, here's the tow-truck. Huddersfield Corporation had a similar one, now preserved, with a more modern body and a tower platform on the back, and there are photos online of it hauling dead trolleybuses. The model came festooned with decals for a brickworks or something, so I removed them and put a cream stripe on the sides. The masking tape didn't work because the paint flowed into the grooves, so I'll run some dark weathering into the grooves afterwards to hide the untidy edges. Going back to the trolley, I drew some graphics using Microsoft Powerpoint, starting off at ten times the size so that I could actually see what I was doing. The Huddersfield Corporation crest was found after a brief Google image search. I knew from experience that the ink tends to spread a little, so I made the black numbers skinnier and the white text bolder. These were then reduced in size and printed onto clear transfer paper: It's difficult to show in the photos just how tiny these are. The imperfections in the printing aren't really visible to the naked eye. I was really pleased with how the fleet numbers and crests came out - this process tends to work better with dark graphics on a light background. When using clear transfers there needs to be a light background, so I painted white patches: More to follow...

That would be an interesting feature, but I don't think my Dad would want to even attempt to model trolleybus wires in N scale! I'm going to give him a tow-truck so that the trolleybus can be posed on a journey for recovery/repair/scrap. Cheers, Will

I masked a straight line under the windscreens... ...and then applied the cream by brush: These close-up photos are very cruel but it looks neat enough and I will touch up the lights and number plate later. At this point I was hoping the cream paint would dry darker to match the existing stripes. It never really did, but it's not noticeable from a normal viewing distance. In the absence of any suitable decals, I also painted a patch on the bodyside to roughly represent the Huddersfield corporation transport logo: I wasn't happy with this and decided to have a go at making my own transfers. If that failed I could always remove everything with my trusty nail polish stuff. To be continued (again)...

I was pleased to find that the black paint came off with the nail polish remover, but it took a little scrubbing which also took some of the red off the raised parts. Not the end of the world as I intend to weather the roof a bit. So now I've finished removing things, this is the blank vehicle ready for Huddersfieldification. As you can see, when removing the LT fleet numbers next to the cab I took off some of the black paint around the front wheel arch: The main visual difference is the distinctive, cream 'streamlined' livery, so I rubbed down the front panel below the windscreens using a glass fibre brush: I then dug out a few cream colours from the paint drawer and painted some test patches to see which was a good match for the existing stripes: To be continued...

First off, the model was dismantled into its component parts: I was pleased to find it was assembled with screws rather than rivets. I have already removed the printed advertisements from the sides of the top deck - here's how: In the background you may just make out a pink bottle of Sainsbury's 'Advanced' nail polish remover. They also do a not-so-advanced version (blue bottle) and an acetone-free version (green I think). I knew that acetone was the active ingredient when it comes to stripping printed graphics and thought the Advanced type might be more concentrated. It was certainly strong enough: To my surprise, the brown roof colour also came off easily, perhaps it is printed rather than painted: Now for that patch of black gloss paint at the back, which wasn't on the Huddersfield trolleybuses - but I'm out of megabytes...

I was born in the 1980s so sadly I've never experienced what it was like to travel around British towns and cities by trolleybus. My Dad, however, can remember them in Huddersfield, but I don't believe a suitable model is available in his chosen N scale (note: 'his' chosen scale... I can't cope with anything smaller than OO!). It's his birthday soon so I've decided to convert an Oxford Diecast model of a London trolleybus into a Huddersfield one. Here's what we're aiming for: Copyright Alan Murray-Rust and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons licence. And here's what we're starting with: Copyright Oxford Diecast (www.oxforddiecast.co.uk). Now if you're looking for fine detail and high quality please look away now. My time and skills mean this will be a minimal re-livery, so I'll be turning a fairly crude model into a fairly crude model with an amateur paint job. If this were in 4mm scale or above I'd be tempted to add some extra details and aim for a better finish, but this thing is so incredibly tiny (to me) that I need to keep it simple. I'm also aware that it's a different type of trolleybus, but it's near enough to look right from a distance. Now that my Blackpool Tram thread has been dormant for several months while other priorities have distracted me, I've decided to write this one up after finishing the model, so you won't have to wait long for updates! Cheers, Will

We're drifting off-topic, but just as a quick warning to anyone contemplating their Christmas shopping with dread, Sports Direct wins first prize for Best Hidden Checkout every time. It will be in an obscure corner right at the back of the shop, ofter round a corner, and completely hidden by floor-to-ceiling racks of clothes.

No, that's politicians 🤣

Working with younger colleagues is a privilege, and one of the best aspects of my job, but there are downsides. My team's Christmas do this year is at - wait for it - an escape room. I mean, come on. If I wanted to try and find my way out of a bafflingly unfamiliar space I'd put on a blindfold and walk into the middle of Marks & Spencers. Cheers, Will

This post hits the nail on the head in my opinion, as proven by the length of this thread despite the OP's question being answered earlier on. We railway enthusiasts do seem to like putting things in orderly categories, and there's nothing wrong with that. The logical structure of the railway can be a satisfying diversion from the chaos of real life. But the real railway is part of real life and has its own share of chaos. It really doesn't matter what number a vehicle is given, as long as it is unique (or unique enough for those that operate/maintain/own it to identify it by). An HST power car could be renumbered '37401' and named 'Ivor The Engine' and it wouldn't matter to anyone other than enthusiasts. (But boy, would that cause some flustered spluttering!) ...in fact some fleets have a messy mixed bag of vehicle numbers which are not from a consecutive series. Similarly, some types of train are a hybrid between LHCS and multiple-units, they don't want to be pigeon-holed! Examples might include TPE's Mk5a carriages or the Southern Region 4TC sets, both of which are premantly coupled and have remote driving cabs, i.e. more in common with a MU than loco-hauled stock. Or we could blow our minds by looking to the Swiss metre gauge where railcars/EMUs haul long mixed trains, with the traction unit anywhere between the front and rear of the train! Cheers, Will (former professional HST tinkerer and current DMU keeper) PS. RMWebbers had inadvertently given their verdict just before I replied...

Christmas IS a birthday, isn't it? 🙂 While I'm here, another one for the rant list: polar bears and penguins. What have these creatures got to do with a bible story from the Middle East? Come to think of it, what do they have to do with the more recent continental festivities that brought us trees and Father Christmas? Cheers, Will

Another qualified electrical & electronic (albeit not audio) engineer here for a giggle. I wonder if chemists have a similar giggle when they see shampoo adverts? You know the sort, lots of scientific-sounding buzzwords and chemical structure diagrams. I think Bill Bryson got it right when he said, shampoo, shower gel, etc. are all the same stuff, just in different bottles. Back to hi-fi audio, in my experience the things that matter are those which you would expect to matter. The diameter of the speakers, the bandwidth of the amplifier and the base quality of whatever you're listening to. I guess some people got all that right decades ago so they now need something else to spend their money on. (Incidentally, slightly off-topic but as some people have mentioned hearing tests: just try finding out enough technical information to confidently choose a hearing aid! They deliberately withhold any technical data whatsoever, presumably in the hope that customers will think they'd better get an expensive one in case it's better. Not as bad as the snake oil technique but equally unhelpful). Cheers, Will

How strange! There seems to be some damage to the bodyshell so preumably it's being recovered after a derailement. But why on earth would they assemble a custom-made winch and track to haul it up to a single line perched on a precarious ledge when there seems go be good level access to the bottom of the hill where it started? Perhaps it was a deliberate training exercise to find out if they could recover their heaviest vehicle type in difficult terrain? Sorry, I'm not being very helpful. Cheers, Will

Oh yes, we need to add that to the list. People referring to Christmas as 'the winter holiday'... Who are these people? Do they really think non-Christians would be offended by the C-word? It exists, get over it! Yours merrily and brightly, Will

I've made a note of that phrase for future use. I once went to a genuine German Christmas market in Dusseldorf. Imagine my delight on discovering it was selling EXACTLY the same stuff as in Manchester. They did a very good sausage though.

I like Christmas, I just wish people would remember that it is a day of wholesome kindness and celebration, not three months of fake sentimentality and brainless over-indulgence in the retail sector. I enjoy all the silly music and gift-giving (not so much the receiving any more), on the whole. If I could pick one pet hate it would be feeling obliged to buy gifts even when you can't find a particularly good one. I wish it was socially acceptable to only buy someone a Christmas present when you find something they'll really love. So you wouldn't get a gift from me every year, but when you did it would be a corker. But people like me are just miserable Scrooges apparently. Cheers, Will

Ah yes, the West Riding at Dewsbury. They've always had a good range of ales on when I've called in, and I think they do food. Cheers, Will

I saw an MPV come through Huddersfield yesterday morning and, with this thread in mind, noted the strip lights were all on except those on the back of the cab bulkheads, as discussed above. Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to take down its number or take any photos... 🫢 Sorry! Cheers, Will

The Brewery Tap just outside Leeds station is very convenient and always has several ales on. Last time we ordered food it seemed to be an on-site posh-fast-food arrangement in a cardboard tray, but very tasty. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Head of Steam at Huddersfield station which has a wide range of ales, decent food, and railway memorabilia on the walls of one room. The exit directly onto Platform 1 has saved me missing trains on at least one occasion... Many railway staff will be familiar with both the Brunswick and the Alex just outside Derby station, although it's years since I went to either. The Vat & Fiddle near Nottingham Midland was my regular at one time, albeit 20 years ago when I recall being more interested in the barmaid than anything else, but still looks to have a good range of beers on. And finally The Boltmaker's Arms, a short walk from Keighley station. It may be small but they have some of the less-widely-available Timothy Taylors ales on tap. Cheers, Will PS. If there was a thread for best-bacon-sandwich-shop-on-a-station I could nominate several of those too!

Just the weight I believe. They're RA5, so the effect on any unsuspecting elderly underbridges is like a string of speeding Class 37s several times a day.

Re. Differential speed restrictions, I believe the same problem affects the Hope Valley. Re. Gloriously indulgent and uninformed speculation about the future, in my opinion these sets would be best paired with an electric or bi-mode loco on routes without frequent stops. That way they could efficiently spend most of their time at 100+mph and their single-leaf doors wouldn't delay too many station dwells. Both the coaches and the loco would need modifying for compatibility, but then that would be true for any loco that isn't a TPE-hired 68. Cheers, Will

Visitors to the K&WVR can avoid irritating or amusing the staff (depending who's on duty) by pronouncing the stations correctly: Keighley = Keeth-ly Ingrow = exactly as in 'ingrown toenail' Damems = Dam-emms (emphasis on second syllable, as if in French) Haworth = How-uth (not Hay-worth) ...and as for Oxenhope, just be careful not to ask your coach driver to collect you from Oxenholme at the end of your ride. It's been done. Cheers, Will