Martin S-C

But it will ever actually get done? And will the base be hard board or a soft board? We could go on like this all week, someone, quick, post another picture of a train, or failing that, a renowned female British actress so we can get back on topic.

They'll start being called the Siamese Panniers soon.

You'll be sitting out in the sun?

Another political joke, one presumes.

That milk van has the look of a very early GW O.1 siphon about it. Note the door bracing of the drawing is different to that shown in the photograph and seems to be the diagonal brace depicted in Dalby's illustration.

The giant meringue suspended from the ceiling surely helps you get a sugar fix when the slow pace of various projects are getting you down. On the subject of colours on sheep there are some modelled on the Dartmoor scene at Pendon which are a brownish pink, painted that shade apparently, to represent the colouration left by the chemical dip of the mid-20s to mid-30s which was something I was unaware of, all the photos of inter-war sheep that I've seen show them as a pale grey.

We are all sinners to one degree or another. Perhaps if I take heed of the advice from the gathered parishioners I can make efforts to weed out the worst cases of grouping-itis or, worse still, toy-train-philia. I am keen to widen my knowledge of all things pre-1923 and really could use some helpful guidance. I have a huge collection of the various PO wagon books as well as those on the GWR and Midland but when I browse them I tend to look for interesting weathering opportunities and miss the details of things like axleboxes, door catches and hinges, and solebar furniture. I really need a crash course in pre-Great War freight and NPCS rolling stock. I too was wondering how you'd get the doors open on that Dapol wagon. Would you be able to recommend some small changes that would improve it? I expect your suggestion for getting the best from the Broadoak wagons would be to leave them in their boxes!

*raises hand in admittance of his error* Yes, I know, very post-1923 I am afraid. I just like them so much. I confess they do look odd alongside a rake of 9ft wb one-sided brake vehicles.

When I visited the Forest in May for a few days of drinking and eating research, I found that the local shade of Gloucestershire dialect reminded me quite a lot of Zummerzet. There was a gentle laid-back attitude there, and from museum curators and the steam railway guys a kind of "please yourself around the site, just don't do anything silly. Oh, and you can't go over there". 'Over there' being indicated by a random wave of the arm. I was happily shown the locking frame below the floor of the Coleford railway museum signal cabin and had to climb over racks of old batteries with broken tops full of black goo and pots of paint to watch, fascinated as the curator pulled the levers from above. If an NRM official had seen such a thing they'd have exploded. The locals however ranged from the intensely friendly to the cold and aloof. It might be that some were recent immigrants. There are a lot of 'local' pubs, all empty apart from five or six people who tend to go quiet when someone they don't know walks in. The history and sense of something weird and wonderful makes up for it. I be a Vorest Miner, we blue scars on me vace Born and bred a Vorrester, an proud ta be thick race I worked the pits, al or the Dean, Cyannup and Waterloo. Crump Medda, Strip an At It, Narthern and Eastern too It's bin a rough an dirty life the coal is ard ta win Me knees is bust me back is bent, me lungs as black as zin I zwung me pick both night an doy, I worked the twelve inch zeam An life is very divrent vrom all me childhood dreams When I wuz yung, I roamed the wood's az vree az any breeze Round Voxes Bridge an Lightmore Tump I'd wander az I pleaze Down Edges Scowles an up agyun, an round Shakemantles loop In rain an shine, in wind an snow, to vind me vathers ship Now I'm a mon I as ta work, ta veed me kids an wife So its down the cage to earn a wage, zurry what a life We all the years spent underground, I be veelin like a mole An in me yud the thought rings out, I hates this bloody Coal On Vriday night I comes off zhif, ta get me weekly poy An then off wum to divvy up, me vittern inta cloy For if its bin ashart owld wick, there yun much left vor we An I be vaced we ungry kids, an bread an jam ver tea But if its bin a good owld wick, I gooes off down the pub I no's me kids be warm an zafe, the pantry's vull ov grub I has a drink we me owld buts, then its wum across the tump Its slowly now I wendsme woy, me belly vull ov scrump Vor I be a Vorest Miner, we blue scars on me vace Barn an bred a Vorrester, an proud to be thick race I worked the pits all or the Dean, Cyannup and Waterloo Crump Medda, Strip an At It, Narthern an Eastern too http://www.kenmorse.co.uk/welcome/cameron-riley-johnson/old-forest-words-and-sayings/ http://www.deanforestmiscellany.info/myContents/FODM_Zurreeforesttalk.shtml Hi Colin, another gentleman of this parish has sent me an excel spreadsheet already that does amazing things. I thought a program would detract from the feel of things but pressing a button to get a new goods train set out in about 1/100th of a second sure beats the 3 or4 minutes of card drawing and dice rolling.

It is a pretty engine isn't it? I love how clean it is. I also like that you get a view good enough to produce a model from, of the loco shed.

Where did Spiney Norman go?

Or perhaps, island with (or in) a round hollow (or low lying) area. Things have been named for odder reasons. I feel safe in suggesting that "bwl" and "bowl" share the same etymological root. Anyhow, enough of living life in the fast lane, here's a train.

As in English: "bowl" I imagine. Regarding appropriate wagons and so on, on my own layout I have a very wide variety but when I am at home I'm at liberty to enjoy some far flung liveries. If I were ever exhibiting I'd be very careful about what I ran and ensure it fitted period and location. I think when one is presenting a model to people who are paying to see it you owe them the courtesy of making every effort to be accurate (as well as polite and sociable as James discussed earlier).

Very entertaining. I notice you're well stocked up on buses for when you start building all the road overbridges.

Thanks. The loader is just a tin hut on legs, how wonderfully simple and effective. I have a Knightwings corrugated quarry complex kit that will be hacked about to provide the structures here. Presumably NG tubs are hauled up the stone ramp on the other side by a small winding engine. My own design will have the NG tub tracks arrive horizontally at the upper level, there will be a track to the upper level of the lime kilns too, for charging them. I was thinking of using some Z gauge track, or make something up from the smallest code rail I can find, which I think is 40?

Good gracious no! I couldn't possibly function with all that red tape and six managers watching my every move like hungry vultures. *shudder* Maybe if I'd been born in 1890 and managed the goods depot of a small country station in somewhere like Radnorshire I think that might have suited me, but then you need to put up with all the horrible facts of life of that era that our rose-tinted nostalgia conveniently brushes aside. I think I'll stick to managing freight in 4mm scale.

This is the back of that outbuilding. Much more interesting from that side. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.6407839,-3.3598632,3a,75y,42.67h,83.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJfkrIzDDli-K_ncXWsC9xw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 And the front. It seems to be a different building to the one on the model. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.6410104,-3.3601317,3a,75y,273.59h,83.23t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1saJU8siHyoCUA0OxkjplXTw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 I've snaffled a copy of that delightful quarry scene picture. The tin building is perfect for the small space I have on my own model and I have an old Mike's Models scotch derrick kit that I wanted to use at that location as well. EDIT: Looking at that second view again I noticed the grey stone civic building up the hill behind. It turns out to be a chapel. Quite beautiful, in its own way. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.6411473,-3.3601746,3a,75y,215.99h,97.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-JXapIs9XrYdiYsgge_YsQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Yes, there's all kinds of historical excuses and local rules but I think what people are commenting on is the speed at which a model loco will whack into a wagon, stop dead like a UFO and instantly go off again the other way, or worse still, continue propelling it down a siding at an unsafe speed without even stopping to give the shunter time to flip up its brake lever. While real practices did vary, there's no excuse for the train-set physics some operators employ in front of a paying audience.

Isn't it always, always the case that after you've finished a model, and photographed it, and cropped and resized the photo and uploaded it that only then do you notice things? The above view reminds me that I really ought to slice off those molded end door grab handles and replace them with wire. Gah. The interiors need some strapping too... It's keeping me off the streets. This kind of mental gymnastics does tend to stifle real modelling though. There's a pile of Celotex offcuts under the baseboards crying out to be made into lush Gloucestershire landscape that I have hardly touched in a fortnight and my 1/2 complete timber trestle smirks knowingly at me each time I go in the room.

You mean his baseboards were heaped with dead Frenchmen and a crowd of Belgians were picking them over and pulling the teeth from the cadavers? That is a quite extreme level of workroom untidiness. Nice to see Merstone again, even if it is only a scene of the back of the backscene. I wasn't helping crew it that time, too far north for me, though I probably missed out on a couple of proper breakfasts that close to the home of black puddin.

Its human nature to recall the good times and suppress the bad memories. We'd end up mental wrecks if we did both, presumably suppression of bad memories is an evolutionary benefit of some sort. We should invite David Attenborough into the thread to enlighten us on that.

Perhaps in a way many people model railways as they once were in a sort of silent plea to have things again that have been lost. There is a lot of nostalgia in what some of us do. Yearning for what has gone might be a part of the reluctance to accept change.

Hi John, so far no problems at all. I just drive locos around the triangle and the gadget does everything. Very pleased with it so far although for now the train timetable isn't very intense. It will mostly be passenger trains that need tender engines to face the right way and at the moment I'm hardly running any at all. Presumably it will be some time before you get to your installation so I'll give you updates if you need them.

Ian, I am always interested in operational ideas and systems, so feel free to keep shoving those tuppences in. When you get that system up on your website, please let us know. I'd be interested to take a look and I think others will. I have a friend who is a programmer and I am sure he could write a system for me, but I, too, tend to like the tactile aspect of cards and dice and writing things down. It was how it was done in 1919 (well, not the dice maybe) but while a program would be really quick I wonder if it might make things lose a bit of atmosphere. When I am happy the system is what I want I will approach him and see what he can do because I am willing to try it, but it is early days, I need to get the point motors installed and all the control panels and lever frames finished before I can really get my teeth into this. As regards stock failures I may or may not introduce these. I am not entirely convinced these features add to the key factor which should always be fun. If events throw up activity that becomes a distraction or even adds the wrong kind of tension to the operations I would almost certainly chop those out. The bottom line is I like playing trains, I don't want to be an actual railway freight traffic manager or the foreman of an MPD. Meanwhile I have done a bit of rolling stock modelling which was well overdue as I haven't picked up a paintbrush or a bottle of weathering powders for ages. The John Yates wagon is your basic Dapol 9ft wb one-sided brakes offering. As this small concern was at Monmouth I felt it reasonable that they would send their wagons into the Forest for coal. The model has received my very basic 30-minutes speed weathering job. As I have so many wagons most receive this basic treatment, I then do a bit extra on about 10% of them to give variations. Then we have the classic Airfix Broadoak, one of their very early wagons. The wb is a little long and probably there are other errors with this model but I have always liked this livery very much and since its vaguely in the correct region (GWR S Wales) I wanted one. Then three came along together. Two were e-Bay purchases off a couple of well-known weathering companies, the other was in boxed condition on a second hand stall at a show. Airfix made no attempt to depict a draw hook on this model, nor even the steel mounting plate, so the plates were made of scrap 5 thou plastic card and the hooks were white metal castings from somewhere-or-other. My other criticism of a number of RTR wagons is how manufacturers depict the end door hinge. Bachmann do it properly, though their glued-on part is very fragile. Hornby, Dapol and Airfix/Mainline mould them in plastic as part of the wagon body which I dislike, so out comes the scalpel and off these bits go. I then drill out the end irons carefully and slide a length of 0.5mm brass wire through, gluing at both ends and painting over. The hinge guides or supports are simply paper, cut carefully to about 0.8mm wide and folded over the hinge bar and glued down, then any excess is trimmed off with a sharp blade. A quick coat of my generic grot colour (rust red, tyre grey and black in a 2:2:1 mix) and the job is done. Two of them had the third digit of the fleet number removed and replaced using a 0.7mm white Posca paint pen, then shaded with a small brush and black paint. Lastly a few more Dapol offerings having the holes in their floors blanked off with rectangles of scribed plasticard and end door hinges modified. I'm not a fan of the Dapol "screwfix". A large screw goes up through the floor of the model holding together frame, weight, body and load. I immediately remove the plastic load because my arrangement requires it and the whole wagon then falls to bits. I glue it back together and conceal the hole in the floor. I wish Dapol would devise an alternative method of securing the loads in. The battered one on right with the replaced planks will join my 1950s fleet.

I don't think the D600s had them. My Kernow plain green ends D604 has discs, as does this one: