Martin S-C

If the field hospital made the sound effects I'd be providing, the wounded would go elsewhere - probably limp back into the fight and keep going.

All the lambs I know look like this.

Very soon after this accident I would hope!

I feel fine! I am just making so many terrible sounds it would be socially unacceptable to spend 72 hours in a wargames room with 8 other people.

There is the old Lord of the Isles (or is that the Achilles that you have referred to?). There's also the City class and the old Hornby 4-4-0 County class but these are hardly good examples of workaday 19th century GW locomotives. I see a problem possibly developing here with the increase in pre-grouping interest. The gWR falls into a crack that as far as I can determine, hasn't been spotte dby anyone. Its because the GWR ran right through from 1838 to 1947 without a name change. The pre-grouping RTR scene has focussed on companies that ceased to exist in 1923 and, for some odd reason, mostly those south of the Thames. I have a horrible feeling that since we have a shedload of post 1923 GWR engine models the manufacturers think we don't need any pre-1923 ones. However a goods 0-6-0 (outside cranks, curved frames?), a small tank loco (0-6-0ST? 517 class? Metro?) and a small passenger engine, perhaps a 2-4-0 to ring the changes vs the 4-4-0s, such as the beautiful Barnum pictured above, all from the 1890s would be wonderful to fill that crack and bring pre-grouping GW modellers into line with those who model the LBSCR or SECR.

James, did you get my PM? I fear it may have got lost in all the others.

This is waaaay more than I want (or think I need) to think about. I just want the bloomin' engines to haul the blasted trains up the ruddy 'ills! Anyhow, a foul cold that has wrapped its moist clutches around my tubes for the last two weeks now, ever since some unknown carrier gave it to me at the Milton Keynes show (thank you so much, whoever you were, not a wise idea to take your germ-laden self to a huge public gathering was it?), I am now making the most revolting coughing up phlegm noises all the time so have chosen to cancel my weekends wargaming in France, which is a real blow as we only do this 3 times a year and each time its an extravaganza of great food cooked by the host and his lovely wife, fine wines, cheeses and so on... plus beer, friends and wargames. So I'm very annoyed indeed to miss it but I can't inflict the noises I'm making right now on my mates all weekend. This means I'll be at home and will do some more testing of locos and weights and things. I think I'll start by creating a train of fixed (desirable maximum) weight and having all my engines pull it. Those that fail will be given a base plate magnet bypass operation.

That would take me a while to answer, I have numerous ones but am planning to work through the entire stock and check each one.

I hadn't spotted that issue with the iron filings mixed in ballast, but while that suggestion is well outside the box, I am not sure I want to go there, it seems to bring in some negative possibilities the thin steel sheet system (below or above sleepers) does not. No, the ferric material does not need to be continuous. There will be at least 2 magnets under each loco so gaps in the sheets can be bridged. It saves cost of steel sheet parts too. An alternative to steel sheets is steel flat headed nails inserted between the sleepers and just below the level of their upper surface. More work but it gets the steel attractant for the magnets a critical couple of millimetres higher without covering the sleepers entirely, which on second thoughts is something I am not sure I want to do in the visible areas. In the tunnels its fine. Of the 7 gradients in question, 3 are in tunnels. I hadn't but that method strikes me it would push the cost up by several orders of magnitude! You can't stick steel strip under the locos anyway as the undersides are rarely flat and brake gear gets in the way. I am a good way down the investigative road and have gone past all the mileposts you're highlighted already. All plastic wheels are removed and Bachmann metal ones fitted. I don't alter RTR axle bearings, my experience is these are extremely free rolling. All my kits use brass bearings. After models are weathered I pop the axles out and check for free rolling, cleaning where needed. There are a couple of iffy kit builds I bought second hand but if I can improve loco hauling power up the grades these single vehicles should not be a problem. My conclusion several months back was that lack of loco power and weight was the issue, which is what I'm addressing. Weight has been added where it can be which is frequently none due to lack of room. Of course the root of the problem is the steepness of the gradients but now that my poor planning has come home to roost I must press on with methods to overcome my earlier mistakes. My wagons roll fairly well, though of course some better than others. The newer RTR offerings are particularly good runners. To clarify and focus things, there is no problem on the level, whether straight or curved. My trains will be short and light. No more than 2 bogie coaches and a couple of vans or 4 four wheelers and a couple of vans in passenger trains and the freight train maximum is 8 short wheelbase wagons plus brake. Several passing loops have been arranged specifically with these lengths in mind. A typical RTR coal wagon weighs only 20 grams, this rises to 40 grams with my standard coal load added. So a loaded coal train is only about 360 grams if we allow 40 grams for the brake van. Only a few of my locos have haulage problems. I have a 1950s set of rolling stock as well including many diesels and since these models are very heavy they can haul huge trains up my 1:30 grades. Even the DJM J94 at 165 grams that some claim is underpowered can haul 590 grams up a 1 in 60. The problem lies with a few very light engines in my Victorian/Edwardian era collection and then only on the worst grades. The steel plate method is only being used under the gradients, not elsewhere.

Quite a good idea. I appreciate the 'well glued' caveat. I can still forsee endless cleaning of metal particles off the magnets though, well laid plans and all that. Yes, discs may be the way to go. Bearing in mind that under some locos like the Beattie 2-4-0 there's only 1mm of space to play with before the magnets foul point switch blades. However magnets this thin are available, its just they have lower and lower power the smaller their mass (obviously). But correct orientation of the magnet poles should help. I am not sure how heavy a load a Beattie well tank could haul up a 1:32 grade on an extremely tight curve. The curve is tighter than any real railway so perhaps therein lies the answer. I have selected some of the freest running wagons I have and am adding weight to them as a test. I should probably try again using a more empirical route and use as few wagons as possible, each carrying a heavier load. Ideally I should use 1 wagon and load it up with a huge weight. I have some lead pieces in my 'weights for rolling stock' box I can use to investigate via this route. This then brings the issue down to one of mass and reduces the effect of rolling resistance. I have noticed that a loco can almost always haul, on a curve, a greater weight in 4 wheel wagons than it can in bogie coaches. I presume this is because a bogie coach suffers a higher value of angular forces over its length vs its wheelbase. The rear bogie is being pulled sideways more by the body of the vehicle and so more energy is converted into friction by the flanges, etc. I would need my hand holding and step by step guidance through the conduct of a drawbar load test. I haven't done such a thing before. Thanks for the info but replacing wheels on locos or re-grinding them is not for me. My model railway interests stop a good way short of miniature engineering. If I get a loco whose pulling power is almost useless and I cannot find a duty for it on the level it will go in the resales box! Gluing magnets to locos and steel plates under track is what I'm doing now. I haven't found a less time consuming or disruptive method yet. This option came after a discussion several months back of banking or pilot engines which I discarded as looking silly on such short trains. I'm sure this is going to work, I just happen to have selected a poor loco as my first test engine. I am leaving tomorrow morning to go away to France over the weekend partaking in my other hobby - wargaming, where I and some mates are continuing our Eastern Front 1941 campaign that we've been playing for many years using 15mm miniatures. Back on Monday and I will see how the J15 performs. I'll also try to bypass rolling resistance by using the shortest train I can while adding greater weight to it. Soviet forces roll (and canter) forwards in a counter attack near Borisov. A Soviet headquarters occupies a small forest village. Wehrmacht armour and motorized infantry move out of a forest past a burning railway station towards a Soviet fortified line. And before you ask, yes, when we lay the scenery I am usually tasked with properly laying out the railway lines! These are TT track pieces laid on a hard foam base and ballasted and look fairly effective. The game's ground scale is 1" to 100 yds so TT pointwork is very over scale and we usually represent junctions by just butting up one track piece to another as you can see in the burning station above. The game scale also use bases of infantry mounted in pairs to represent a platoon of 30~60 men and vehicles represent a platoon or battery of 4~6 vehicles or weapons. The Henschel 126 artillery spotter plane in the pic above was mounted using magnets on a clear plastic pole standing on a flock covered round base but I photoshopped that out.

Colin, its the DCC Concepts Power Base, so its ferric steel, about 0.3 to 0.5mm thick. It slides under the sleepers. I can definitely feel the magnetic attraction when lifting the loco wheels from the rails. I am wondering if the steel strips could be cut in half lengthways and laid atop the sleepers between the rails. I have plans to lay an ash ballast effect, burying the sleepers so that's a possibility.

Thanks James, beautiful pictures. I confess to being consumed by envy if you got permission to get inside the exhibit. What's incredible to me is how fresh the colours are and how dust free everything is. Anyhow, I though I'd drop this here and see what the reaction of the parish council is. I found it on a Facebook group and have gleaned a few scant details but I think the experts here should be able to reveal more.

Hi, I am over the worst of the depression now and things are much better, thank you for asking. I am having a testing session at the moment, first results are disappointing but that I feel is due to the loco I used as a guinea pig - in retrospect a bad choice. I am using a 1 in 32 grade on a 4 ft radius curve as a test and a DJM Beattie WT as the loco. The problem is the loco is so tiny the DCC Concepts neo magnets won't fit under it. My fear is this is going to be true for a lot of the smaller models. I have therefore used some of my own stock of different sized neo's that I got on e-Bay. These are wider but thinner and not so strong (12x7x1mm vs 12x5x2.5mm). I have found room to glue four of them under the baseplate of the loco but clearance over point switch blades is a problem. I'd hoped to mount these in pairs making a double magnet 12x7x2 but even this doesn't give enough clearance, so it was down to 4 fittings of 12x7x1. Lifting the loco off the track I can definitely detect the extra pull but as far as my tests so far have determined this extra adhesion hasn't increased haulage power at all. There are some pick-up problems with the loco plus, perhaps, as its so light or the motor is low powered the effect isn't apparent. The DCC Concepts thicker magnets are probably more powerful than the thinner ones. I have set this one aside and am starting to test with a Hornby J15 0-6-0. Loco: DJ Models LSWR Beattie Well Tank: 100 grams. Train weight unassisted up 1 in 32 grade: 205 grams. Train assisted with 4x magnets up same grade ... 205 grams. Loco: Hornby LNER J15 0-6-0: 235 grams. Train weight unassisted up 1 in 32 grade: 510 grams. Train assisted with magnets ... still to be tested. I can see that the J15 has plenty of space for 2 of the DCC Concepts magnets so my initial reaction is this system is not aimed at small tank locos. I will need to test more of them - perhaps the well tank was an unfortunate example.

Thank you James, I had no idea this was a test bed for new technology/production methods. Exciting times ahead!

The FPLs in my case are just graphics on the diagram but I'll keep mine due to what Nearholmer suggests. I agree the NM diagram is too cramped. I will see about spreading it out a bit and giving it more room to breathe. That way the borders may become less invasive and confusable with the tracks. I could also do the borders and curly corners in another colour, brown maybe. It had struck me that I could colour code the diagram borders by original company. NM and SJ would then become bottle green. PB and GS Prussian blue and the three branch stations wine red. The exchange sidings would be brown and colliery would remain black.

You snuck in some steam train sound effects there. Well done.

The whole young hero to adulthood story is in the first film. The rest was money making.

Roye England's biography has some very upsetting sections where he was working as fast as possible measuring rows of half derelict thatched cottages at the same time that workmen were pulling them down. Thank heavens this would never happen today but before we entered this age of the recognition of the value of these things, far too much was lost.

Thank you very much for the images of the scotch blocks and the signalling equipment. The early GW has always been my first love and I probably only never went into BG modelling due to limited skills with metal kits and soldering irons. I have always liked the early GW signals and a number will adorn my own layout. I have an actual functional use for the scotch blocks at one location so may incorporate a working one. Another of my favourites is the early rotating ground signals of which I installed several working copies on my digital Highworth branch in MSTS many years ago,

I am pondering the logic of this. If you use a digital zoom lens camera at the widest lens setting, your 4000 pixels across the image cover, say 10 feet on a model. If you zoom in your 4000 pixels cover say 3 or 4 feet, so surely zooming in should give a far crisper image? Or am I confusing digital and optical zoom? If digital zoom works the way you say then it seems entirely useless. You may well be right but I can't see how such a technology can even exist.

I haven't purchase one or two of these due to no pre-grouping livery which seemed a really curious decision. I hope Dapol will be releasing an SECR one in due course.

Blast you Sir! You've sunk my aircraft carrier.

I had never noticed before what a splendid pickelhaube Oliver Reed has. I do trust he's not in command of a fleet of shallow draught vessels currently moored in the Frisian ports with designs upon the Wash? That would be most hunnish of him.

Interesting load in that third wagon.

Harry Potter is the exact same story as Star Wars in terms of its structural elements: the unknowing young hero who must find himself and prove himself, the aged wise mentor figure who ultimately dies so the hero can determine his future alone, and the classic figure of evil. J K Rowling merely stretched it out over multiple volumes because of the money.