Castle

Thanks David, I will report the success and popularity of the Edwardian Kitchen Restoration Project back at the shed. This is done occasionally at 81E on various engines but only when there isn't a cheeky member of footplate crew with his / her hand on the blower or regulator. You have no idea how quickly that bacon leaves the shovel but I can now confirm categorically that pigs CAN fly... Enjoy breakfast but make sure that you lot do the washing up before you send her home! All the best, Castle

Hi All, Wolsztyn Experiences Part 4 Narrow Gauge Safari The final driving turn we had in Poland was certainly the most esoteric and charming - a trip on the narrow gauge line at Gniezno. This is one of many 750mm gauge lines that once criss - crossed Poland serving both farms, passengers and industry for many years. The surviving lines have mainly turned to tourist traffic these days and at no longer part of the national network but a number have been kept going by either local authorities or private individuals. The line is about 20 miles long although we would only be doing about 15 of them. Before we went to the narrow gauge line however, we took a look at the old steam works beside the station. Imagine this: when Swindon, Doncaster or any of the other great railway workshops of is country closed, the doors were closed, the scrap locos were left where they were and they walked away. The whole of the steam infrastructure including massive roundhouses (with turntables intact)... ...a huge water tower, coal cranes, etc, etc, etc. its all still there! Can you imagine how excited we all would be by having something like this in the UK? How fast would the preservation order go on it? When you are lucky, a few of the narrow gauge lines still still have steam locos too... Like this little beauty! No. 1919 is a member of the Px 48 Class and is an 0-8-0 design first produced in 1948. They are 12.8 metres long, weigh about 21 tons, have 2 cylinders and have a superheated boiler pressed to about 190 psi. They are air braked as per the rest of the PKP network and have tons of character to boot! The cab is a bit cosy as can be seen here... Due to the very sandy nature of the soil in Poland and the fact that there is so much agriculture in the country, weedkiller is frowned upon so much of the rail network is kept clear via strimmers and other mechanical means. We're it isn't, then it becomes a bit grassy and the rural nature of the Gniezno line means that it is on the grassy end of the spectrum. I had the pleasure of taking No. 1919 up the biggest hill that there was on the line. Ok, we only had one coach but it was still great to hear her work a bit. She kept her feet very well too as it was quite steep and the only time she lost her feet was when we found a very damp spot under some trees which must have deposited a lot of sap on the rail head too. I caught it very quickly and she responded in kind, going up the bank as if it wasn't there and sounding like a little sewing machine. We had a photographer on board with us so we stopped a few times and did a couple of run pasts for him, each taking a turn at the helm! There are also sections that run alongside the streets and roads of Poland too where you weave in and out of traffic and hang on the whistle as there are no barriers or warning lights. Just when you thought it couldn't get any more rural, here is the run round loop (its in there somewhere)... ...and here is the water filling point (I thought it was the loo!). On the way back, we had the corridor door open so we got up close and personal with the engine at work. Then we stopped off at the bar for a beer before going home. I am not making this up and this shot is NOT staged. Needless to say those still driving got their beer bottled to have when we got back. And so ended my Polish steam odyssey. I had a brilliant time and the whole place is just a treasure house of railways. The crews throughout our holiday were superb, the host fantastic and the Polish countryside and people were wonderful. I knew it was going to be good when we were waiting for the train from Poznan to Wolsztyn and the wheel tapper worked his way down the coaches of the express that had just turned up... I hope you enjoyed that little lot - I did! All the best, Castle

Hi All, I know what you can do with him - get a model Austin 1100 estate in red and replace the hammer / plunger (could that be a hamnger?) with the branch of a tree and hey presto - Fawlty Towers homage! Coat on and heading out of door... All the best, Castle

Hi Nelson, Someone has beat me to it with the advice above on the rivet transfers - well done Mick! You should have a go with a brass kit - something simple and cheap to do first and the friendly faces here will be more than happy to help and advise. You can start like I did without the more expensive temperature controlled iron and see how you get on but given what I have seen thus far, you should do well. Please carry on with this and rename this as a workbench thread - its had a great start! All the best, Castle

Hi Nelson, That is an absolutely cracking job - well done! What is great about this is that you can see both your enthusiasm and you learning the skills very quickly as the job went on. Take on board the advice about the rivet transfers as they are as easy as they sound to use and lift any model to the next level. I have had a starter sheet for a while now and I still haven't used them all up - nowhere near, so they are not the cheapest but represent a sound investment. We will have you soldering etched brass kits before you know it... I am looking forward to watching the LMS NCC van! All the best, Castle

Hi Ric, That is a great shot in Atkins et al isn't it? I do like the way it has the idiot proofing markings telling you which way round to put the girders! I guess it would be a bit embarrassing to get it wrong wouldn't it?! Thanks for the kind comments! All the best, Castle

Hi All, Out of interest, the first of the two POLLEN E pairs are now on Little Didcot here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/51212-little-didcot/page-21 Thanks for the help everyone! All the best, Castle

Hi Gruffalo, The thanks for the POLLEN Es is due to others - I just helped out a bit with the design work and applied my own inimitable style to the build of my version. This 3D printing thing is really weird when you see something like this come almost complete out of the box with all the undercuts and difficult shapes that would defeat regular moulding techniques. Great stuff! You may also be interested to know that I have the Post 1930 rebuilds sat on the workbench next to me right now... All the best, Castle

Hi MIB, Good to hear from you again as always! The chains and securing bits come from Ambis Engineering. They have a website but I must confess to buying from them at a show: http://www.ambisengineering.co.uk/ I hope this helps! I look forward to seeing your POLLENs on RMWEB - any idea as to what era you are going to set yours in as of yet? All the best, Castle

Hi Jaz, Thanks for the really kind words - I do appreciate it! I also appreciate how fortunate I am to have the kind of access that I do to the collection at 81E and the steam adventures I have as a result of it. It is a pleasure to be able to share it with fellow enthusiasts here on RMWEB either on Little Didcot or by organising the tours or whatever else I do. There would be little point in have a collection like the one at 81E if it wasn't shared with other interested people... All the best, Castle

Hi All, An outbreak of hay fever? Part One I was contacted by Hazelwood Models a little while back following comments on RMWEB about their Pollen C and having looked at Little Didcot, they sent me a print of the original end POLLEN E wagons kit to have a look at. This has led to more detailed survey of the Didcot wagons to improve the models. It has also led to the development of the 1930 rebuilt pair. Exciting stuff and it is really great for Hazelwood Models to have involved me like this so thanks to them is due. It has been really enjoyable and interesting to work with them on a kit. Firstly though, to the full size beasts... The POLLENs were a series of wagons that were designed for taking outsize loads of all kinds. The basic design was that of a pair of vehicles that could be split and each had a turntable that allowed them to act as bogies under the load. They were built around the beginning of the twentieth century. There were several versions from POLLEN A - D and there were 4 and 6 wheel versions. The last version if the POLLENs was the E series to Dia. A6 which was completed on 1909, which comprised of a single 4 articulated vehicle set that was initially intended to carry naval gun barrels. There was a special girder that went across the two turntables and secured the load for transport. They were numbered Nos. 84997, 84998, 84999 & 85000. The total load for a gun barrel was 100 tons but it the load was spread over the 4 wagons then loads of up to 120 tons could be accommodated. The operational scope of these wagons was expanded in the 1930s when the two centre wagons without buffing gear (Nos. 84998 & 84999) were rebuilt to a similar design to the two original end wagons and resulted in two pairs of wagons for outsize load traffic. And that is how they remained - for a LONG time! These wagons proved so useful that nobody could think of getting rid of them. And so they soldiered on being used as and when traffic dictated. So successful were they that they were still in active service into the 1990s and as such they were probably the oldest registered freight vehicles still in service by quite some margin. Alas, time eventually caught up with the mighty POLLEN Es but thankfully instead of a scrapyard finale, they were secured by the National Railway Museum and delivered ironically not to York (their last operational base), but to Didcot where they remain to this day. A star turn was made of these wagons a few years back when the crew for the Sherlock Homes II film used 81E as a set and they briefly carried replica gun barrels again, binging a century long story full circle. This is the first time I have worked with 3D printed material so it was going to be an interesting experience. The prints as received are excellent and show very little of the stepping and furry texture that I had associated with this process. There is a little bit, but this I guess is no different to a bit of flash on an injection moulded plastic kit. The photograph below shows the kit as received. It has the two main bodies and two turntables, a set of NEM couplings, 6 wheel sets, a smaller spruce in White Strong Flexible (WSF) with the flangeless replacement centre wheels on and a smaller Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD) plastic spruce with connectors, buffers and brake handles on. This is the kit for Nos. 84997 and 85000 which are the original end wagons only. Beware that the converted centre wagons are quite different. The close up shows the prints as received. The detail is excellent and the rivets are very clear. It is surprising just how many complicated curves and shapes there are in these vehicles - I visualised them in my head initially as two plate frames with a few bits in between but it 'ain't so! The turntables simply clip in place and will rotate without fettling or modification - I have to admit to feeling a bit of a fraud as it is so easy to do... The couplings also click into place without aggravation. Not that I need them as I use scale couplings but being a curious sort, I just had to see if it worked out the box like this. Now I REALLY feel like a fraud - I haven't fettled a thing yet! The turntables move very easily but being a coward, I figured that a bit of extra movement was probably required as I didn't want to build my layout one day and not be able to run them. All I did was to take the clips off the bottom of the turntables and shape the lower platform a bit to allow for the extra travel. I put in a bolt to act as the pivot as I had now negated the designer's clever and compact arrangement (sorry mate!). As a side effect however , it now means that I can easily lift the turntables off and replace them with unloaded ones and after I asked about it, these are now available separately on request. A bit more travel had also been added to the turntables on subsequent prints too. The axles need slight modification as they have to have the pinpoints on the axles removed with a mini drill and grinding disc. This has to be done carefully so that the heat doesn't melt the plastic insulation collars between the wheels and the axles. At last - some model making - I had to do something to make something fit! Hazelwood suggest the use of a file to do this but I'm a bloke and I had a power tool... As I put the bolt in as a new pivot, I had to remove some of the thickness of the middle axle. You will see here that the optional flangeless centre wheels have been fitted to see what they were like. I am yet to decide whether I need to use them or not but the net result is that they work if I do think I need them! So that is the basic kit 'built' but with a few minor Castle mods to suit my personal requirements. The buffers fitted after a bit of minor fettling and a dollop of cyanoacrylate to taste. Then I thought about what my wagons were going to carry. It turns out that after looking at Paul Bartlett's site, the idea of a bridge girder had lodged quite firmly in the fuzzy area known as my mind. I didn't want to just do any old Peco bridge sides - I felt that was too much of a cliche. A search of a local model store's website brought up these beauties. They are produced by a company called Central Valley and are of a 72' HO scale structure. In the kit you get two of these species for the bridge sides, the track bed and the lower girder structure to carry the track bed. As there are 4 POLLEN Es at 81E then two bridge sides for £12.25 sounded like a bargain! Another suggestion from Hazelwood is to use girders from the ex - Airfix turntable kit as a prototypical load. I have never seen a picture of this but they must have been transported to the sheds somehow and if you had a set of wagons like these, wouldn't you use them? Any thoughts on this would be interesting... They make into pretty nice models in their own right and don't look out of scale despite the HO origins. After all, how big is a bridge? If someone says it is not the right size for a railway bridge then I will claim it is for a road / foot / canal / mouse (delete as applicable or as comedy requires). I figured that some packing to reinforce the thinner plate steel of the turntable decks would have been used so a sample size piece of balsa wood was cut to form the packing that I imagine would be old sleepers. A bit of component balancing resulted on this picture. I then attempted to add some weight to the vehicles as the 3D printed material is very light. It took quite a bit of careful positioning of the Liquid gravity and some very judicious cyanoacrylate pouring to get the weight in place. Not a problem with the kit - much more to do with the complexity of the prototype and really the only fiddly bit of the build so far. Rolled sheet or chunks of lead would have been a better idea I guess but I had Liquid Gravity so that is what I used! Because I am a fussy, I took the thing a stage further and added etched brass D/ C brake handles (no reason to not use the moulded ones other than I had some that I wanted to try them out!) and a few etched odds and ends were used to do the brake details on the inner frame and the brake handle cross shaft that were not included in the kit. Most modellers will not be bothered by their omission I am sure but I was asked what I COULD do with this kit! This is one side... ...and this is the other. The end caps for the second cross shaft were not on my print and having revealed the error, the products have been updated to include these. This really highlights the brave new world that this product represents and kudos to them for using constructive criticism. I still think it is weird to think that you can interrupt kit production straight away like this and update it! Rather stranger, the 3D drawings were executed by Don at Penaluna Design Studios in Port Elizabeth, South Africa being assisted by me stood in a siding in Oxfordshire via Hazelwood models and then printed by Bart Veldhuizen and his team at Shapeways in Eindhoven! So we have a truly multi - national product here to get a British prototype model - cool isn't it?! I added four brass 'L' shaped angle brackets to the bridge girder for the lashing chains and tensioners to be fitted to and then I broke out the paint. A few layers of the traditional Halfords grey primer followed by a quick rub down with a bit of 1500 grit set of dry paper and a few passes with a file soon sorted out any of the furry texture that was still present after painting. This was the one thing I was a bit dubious about but it came out really well in the end. It really wasn't difficult... The black patches were a combination of black decal sheet and paint dependant upon where they were situated as the depth of the rivets were a little too large for the very old black decal paper I have to stretch even with setting solution. The livery information came from Russell's book Great Western Wagons as this is the only shot I have seen of the wagons in early BR livery. It took a while to work out what was going on but after a while it clicked - they had marked the pair of wagons as if they were ONE wagon. IE all the information was there but it was spread over the sides of both members of the pair. Easy when you know how! A spot of markings cobbled together from so many different sources I lost track (!) and some weathering powders got me here. There are some moves afoot to produce a decal pack for these vehicles. The photo shows that the wagons seem to have been coated in a thick layer of grease and oil to protect the working parts as they probably spent a lot of time in store, outside, at the end of a siding. The etched chains and hooks were purchased from Ambis Engineering and the scale chain came from them too I think. The completed chains still need blackening here. And this is the finished product. Well that was different... They make up into great little representations of the prototype with little effort and can be fiddled with and detailed with ease. They are not cheap but they are also not something the RTR people or mainstream kit manufacturers are likely to produce any time soon. As well as the existing full 4 wagon original 1909 format, a new version of the 1930 rebuild of the ex centre wagons have now been completed with a little help from yours truly and these are now in a box headed my way so look out for part 2 very soon! All the best, Castle EDIT: Like an idiot I didn't put up the contact details for Hazelwood Models(!). They have offered orders via the e-mail address below at 10% off kit price. hazelwoodmodels@hotmail.com

Hi All, By the way, Hazelwood Model's kits for the POLLEN Es should be on Little Didcot tomorrow after I have got some chemical blackening to sort the load chains out - I haven't forgotten the GWR you know... All the best, Castle

Hi Mallard, I will have to got there next time... All the best, Castle

Hi Mike, That is interesting. Perhaps they are a bit like the 9Fs here - designed for freight work but found to be good for passenger work? The PKP designation system for locomotives means the the 'T' bit of TKt 48 stands for Freight so that must have been the original intention for these fine machines. It must have been brilliant to see these beasts in service! I'm still too young to have seen that and remembered it as well unfortunately! As an aside for everyone, the numbering system was something I found quite interesting while I was out there so here is the basics for non Polish steam enthusiasts. The three first letter options being: P - fast passenger (Polish: pospieszna) O - mixed traffic (Polish: osobowa) T - freight (Polish: towarowa) The captital 'K' stands for tank locomotive, the lower case letter 't' is the wheel arrangement (2-8-2 in this case) and the 48 denotes that it is a Polish designed locomotive that approved for production in 1948. There are some other arrangements for foreign designed and built engines. There is a rather comprehensive Wikipedia page about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKP_classification_system#Steam_locomotives All the best, Castle

Hi All, Wolsztyn experiences Part 3 Polish Didcot - More Tall Tales of Poland As there is a public holiday in Poland on the Thursday and Friday of our trip, there are no main line steam services on these days. To make up our 5 steam turns, Howard organised two unusual experiences which really made our trip to Poland a little bit different to the usual WE thing. The first if these was to Jaworzyna museum shed. This really is the Polish version of Didcot. An original PKP roundhouse has been set aside for the museum and is now home to one of the largest collections of locomotives in Poland. These range from beautifully restored examples of rare machines to scrapyard examples held for spares. The journey from Wolsztyn is extensive and took a few hours but enabled you to see a great deal of the Polish countryside and also the rail network. This for example is the recently and very beautifully restored station at Wroclaw Glowny. This is the sight that greets visitors at Jaworzyna - good isn't it?!? This is their current live locomotive used for demonstration runs on site. She is a TKt 48 No. 18. This is a monster 2-8-2 tank locomotive for hauling some serious heavy freight. Think 72XX with all the factory extras... The driver's view is about like this. It is a lovely engine to drive and again, it steams on a candle like its Ol 49 brethren. Here we are out on their demonstration line, the starting point for which is the other side of the turntable... Carefully over the turntable at 5mph then a quick sprint, hit the brakes and then take her back. Punters in the 4 wheel van out the back, loose coupled of course. Jaworzyna is also home to a number of interesting locomotives including this which is Tr 202 No. 28. These are also known as the 'Liberation' class. This 2-8-0 type was built by the Vulcan Foundary and was sent all over Europe after WW II to help with the rebuilding work. The engine shares a lot of similarities with the WD 2-8-0 and 2-10-0 designs by Robert Riddles. There are also a pair of Tr 201s there (Nos. 296 & 51). Which we would more readily recognise as an S160. Tucked away in the shed was this little beauty - an 0-6-0 tank of Prussian descent that had outside Stephenson valve gear. Also there was this - Tp 2 No. 34. This little German freight 0-8-0 was probably the closest thing to traditional UK practice I saw the whole time I was there! Despite all the fantastic work by the gang at Jaworzyna, another fascinating element of a visit there was to go out the back to see the unrestored scrap locomotives out the back. I am far too young to have seen Barry Scrapyard at its height but having been able to take photographs like this I now feel that I have been able to see what it was like... Get over there while it is all still there guys and girls - it really is that good! All the best, Castle

Hi Jaz & Kal, Its tough ripping out stuff that you have spent so much time on and scary too but just keep looking at the end result which I am sure will be another great addition to your layout! If you weren't happy with Mk 1, you weren't happy with it and I look forward to seeing Mk2. I have no doubt that it's going to be good... All the best, Castle

Hi Nelson, A cracking job good sir - keep it up! All the best, Castle

Hi Brian and Mike, The TKt is a lovely engine - bags of character too with those big dumbo ear smoke deflectors too! Edit: I also love the spring loaded seats that can be swung round so that you are almost sat outside the cab - I kid you not! I am very jealous of you and Brian's chap driving one of those monster 2-10-0s, they look the business. Now, let's see if I can find me a 9F to play with... All the best, Castle

Hi Mallard, Quite right - I could smell the prairie all the way - like GWR bloodhound! That is the place - train rides in an unfitted van for the punters! I have had a look but I can't find anything definite on the Ol... I will keep looking though! All the best, Castle

Hi All, Do I sense a common phenomenon here, a non GWR fan assuming that anyone with a love of the Great Western never looks above the parapet and appreciates anyone else's railways? I'm not having a go at Stewart here, he was making a joke and I laughed when I saw it! However, a steam engine is a steam engine and they are all to be treasured in my book - I ended up at Didcot because it is the closest place with the sort of projects on that I wanted to get involved in and I model the stock there as I have unlimited access to it. This might be Little KESR if I lived near there or Little KWVR or Little Mid Hants. I'm not saying that I don't think that my project engine is the best one in the world but that's because she is MY project engine, you get attached to the old girls! I think that this rabid following of the GWR thing has become such a stereotype that it has now got to the stage whereby its becoming much more of a thing for everyone not modelling the Western. How many times have you heard someone say or write 'oh no, not another GWR layout' and yet have you ever seen someone write 'oh no, not another BR (LM) region layout'? I often wonder if something as superb as Liverpool Lime Street would have received the accolades it has if it were based on a GW or BR (W) prototype... I have a passion for railway preservation and I have a passion for model making. I don't care if it is a diesel, electric or steam, if its good, it gets a Castle 'like'. As preservationists and / or model makers we are in the same game together so let's enjoy each others company, achievemnts and skills and not get hung up on this sort of thing. At the end of the day though we all know that a Black Five is just a Hall with outside motion, a Duchess is an inside out King with extra wheels, the A3s and A4s were transformed by the use of GWR long travel valves, the boiler technology on the BR Standards owed a great deal to Swindon practice and, well, I can't think of a Southern gag right now because I'm such a Western geek but I'm sure there is one. The net result is that Swindon engineering rules the universe and everything else is a mere pale copy or a development of Churchward's technology. Green paint, copper caps, brass safety valve bonnets - yippie! What do you mean there are other railways? How very dare you! All the best, Castle Purveyor of multi region, multi national tall tales of steam. Stereotypes reinforced at no extra cost.

Hi Phil, We did get a go at servicing the Ol at Poznan - really clever bits of kit including the long plungers and so on to do the oiling up. No pits and crawling in the dirt for these guys! I would love to go at another time of year but I suspect the job would preclude it... The TKt was at the Jaworzyna museum. Only a collection of about 40 locos on site although some are basically scrap... I would love the Ol 49 kit but it seems a bit pricey built. Do you know where it comes from and if it is available unmade at all? I know its all a bit OT but I pray people's indulgence and hope its ok with the moderators. Its just nice to keep all the Didcot related steam adventures in one place. Two more instalments to come, Jaworzyna (Poland's Didcot) and my narrow gauge safari. Good to hear the wings are flapping again! All the best, Castle Edit for spelling.

Hi Quacks, No passenger main line 2-8-2s, the Pt 47 is away being overhauled unfortunately. There were only 3 main line turns too due to a public holiday but the two other driving turns were, although hugely different, just as enjoyable! Lezno isn't used much these days for W.E. trips but it will be over this winter as the second section of the Wolsztyn - Poznan route will be relaid. It was all Ol 49 action this time round too as the pacific is out of ticket now and there needs to be extensive negotiations between W.E. and her owners, Warsaw Railway Museum, to get the right deal in order to ensure the correct usage contract before overhaul can begin. I am sure they will get there though. I drove a TKt 48 (think Polish 72XX) at their Didcot and the sweetest little narrow gauge 0-8-0 you ever did see for the final turn. You are right about the experience - there really is very little to match it for the average punter here and those early morning turns are simply brilliant. Anyone even vaguely interested in steam HAS to go ASAP! I hope you are feeling better - I am still coughing, sneezing and spluttering a bit but I don't feel like I have been run over by an Ol 49, err I mean a 43XX, anymore! All the best, Castle

Hi All, More Tall Tales from Poland - Wolsztyn experiences Part 2 The most amazing thing about Polish steam is that there is so much of the locos and infrastructure left. It isn't that long since the end of steam in Poland so it really still is about 1969 in UK terms! Wolsztyn shed is a case in point. The roundhouse, turntable, coaling stage, watering facilities, workshops and everything else is still there and in working order. This is the view from the turntable. The loco men's hostel is just to the right of this and is now used as accommodation (where I stayed - how cool is that?!). This is the coaling plant, watering facilities and ash plant. Unlike Didcot, it's all very labour saving with cranes and conveyor belts and so on to make life easy for shed crews. There are one or two treasures in the shed too. At the rear is Tr 5 No. 65 which is a 2-8-0 freight design and another Ol 49 - this one is No. 69. A third Ol 49, No. 7 is also in the shed. There is another one in scrap condition in the yard too! This is appropriate as Wolsztyn used to be home to over 20 of these machines. Note the wheel drop and the shed heater. There are two of the Prussian designed mixed traffic 4-6-0 class Ok 1s at Wolsztyn. Closest to the camera is No. 359. The next engine on is Ok 22 No. 31 which is another mixed traffic 4-6-0 type of German origin. The last treasure in the shed is a biggie - this is Pm 36 class pacific No. 2 otherwise Known as Beautiful Helena. This holds the same place in the hearts of Poland's enthusiasts as No. 4472 does here. Sadly she is out of ticket and it seems to be requiring a great deal more negotiation before overhaul can begin. She is one of only two of her class built and the other loco was built streamlined but disappeared during WW II. Perhaps it is in Box tunnel with all those Granges? Outside there are more locos on display or stored. These include some Ty 43 class 2-10-0, this is No. 92, which is a version of the German WW II Kriegsloks. Also outside are two of these monsters, one restored, the other a bit ropey. The Pt 47 is a 2-8-2 passenger design and while No. 106 here is slated to remain as a static exhibit for now, the good news is that No. 58 is undergoing overhaul at the moment. Imagine that on a 2 coach train - they were designed for loping along the main line with 600 ton sleeper trains at 60 mph ! I think I might be going back... Well, that's enough for now... More Polish prattle from myself later in the week and perhaps with a sample of British POLLEN too! All the best, Castle

Hi Nelson, Nice one - see, told you that you could do it! Having stuck the glazing in, make sure you buy yourself some maskol as you will be able to paint that in and mask it off very successfully without having the paint creep under. Great stuff! All the best, Castle

Hi Paul, Thanks for the input. The frames appear to be grey but the weird thing is that the axle boxes and the springs look black. I suspect, as it looked to be VERY rough, that it is due to the fact that they have been covered in grease and oil to preserve them. They must have been on a very occasional use and spent long periods of time sat outside at the end of a siding so lashings of gunk to keep the oxide monsters at bay was probably the order of the day. The black gunk is also on the pivot points for the brake cross shaft and the pivot for the brake handle too. I wonder if the position of the numbers seen on the pictures on your website would have changed as the paint looks pretty old and the D has definitely been added. Perhaps I will just do the number and 60t in a black panel on the rear of the wagons as they are in your pictures, the wheelbase in a little panel at the front like Russell and choose a space between the axle boxes (probably the forward one) for the GIRDER WE markings. Any thoughts? This seems best guess... All the best, Castle