Martin S-C

Its working again now, though I have not restarted my PC. Maybe my internets. Odd.

Hi guys Today when I try to upload an image I am getting this error: "UPLOAD SKIPPED (ERROR IO)" I was able to attach images to posts okay yesterday. Has anything changed to cause this? Thanks.

Wonderful conversations. I am learning so much. Please continue!

Quite agree. I hate this corporate product naming rubbish with a vengeance.

My kits tend to get cleaned as they are built - the torrent of verbal abuse destroys all know grease and bugs.

Following a fascinating discussion about Lledo die-cast vehicles on Edwardian's thread I managed to secure, via e-bay, this little bundle for only £4 plus £3 postage. It includes the tram, pantechnicon and bus that all seem to offer the most potential in 1/76th scale, all horse-drawn.

I think both you and James are saying the same thing - that a modeller's interest determines what he or she is most likely to enjoy building and operating. That might be NG or it might be SG but only very very rarely is it both. Lots of SG layouts have a little bit of NG track feeder which in many cases is just a gimmick or another reason to move some freight about while many NG layouts have a token SG exchange siding so as to give the model some kind of reason for traffic, but its extremely unusual to see a modeller or a group of modellers have a wide enough interest to build a layout whose focus is 50/50 on the two gauges. Plus the space consideration for the latter as well.

Thanks. I will give 5A fuse wire a go.

You see? Now you've annoyed them. "No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being scrutinised..." [/Richard Burton]

Maybe its me but on the Lledo link page brack kindly provided the horses look to have potential for the bigger breeds, especially if you can trim a bit off their hooves and the horse bus also looks reasonable as well, apart from oversize rear wheels. The Lledo page shows it in the same photo as a motor bus and that is clearly well under 1/76th scale. The conductor looks too chunky but the driver and passengers, while on the big side (look at the amount of model driver's figure showing above the bus front railing vs the two drivers in the real photos) seem to be closer in proportion. I think with some removal of height (hat and boot heels filed down a bit) the conductor could be made to look reasonable, though still a "big lad" for his time vs the average human male. Seated figures can always be subjected to cruel corrective surgery about the lower limbs and hips so these are always useful. I'm going to have a look around on the Auction Site That Must Not Be Named to see if any of these come along. What might one use for 1/76th scale reins? The finest brass wire you can find? Household thread would be much too coarse.

I always wondered what scale the Days Gone series were and it seems they were not to any fixed scale but appear to hover around 1:70 or 1:64. Those three figures certainly look good for 1:76 though. Is the horse bus anything near 1:76th?

You could always build it and hang it above the layout. It will give you an in-character excuse for some aerial photographs as scenery progresses.

Plus their ground-breaking very small tension lock coupler. Years ahead of its time.

Can you spot my mistake with the luggage van? How does the guard look along the side of the train? I can't believe I missed that until after it was finished, weathered, photographed... and I'd cropped and resized the photo and uploaded it. Only then do I notice my omission.

Pretty terrible models these 90s Hornby things with their clunky mouldings and that dreadful over-scale wood grain effect they used for a time, but as you can see there is one very good reason I had to have a rake of these. The Dapol wagon was a bit better but needed renumbering and the lettering over-painting as I don't like the way Dapol print their PO wagon liveries. The writing seems too faint to me. Crediton is a weeny bit far away from my railway location but I suppose there could just about be a reason for the company to buy Forest coal over another area's output. Longitudinal floor plank mouldings. Why, Hornby design person, why? They did at least put planking representation on the sides and ends. Couplings changed. The insides look a bit bare. Basic iron bracing added to the doors inside and the floors covered up. The Dapol floor has a huge hole in it where the retaining screw to hold chassis to body to plastic load goes in. I put a piece of 5 thou plasticard in scribed with 3 planks to hide this. No.27 No.25 No.21 No.26 Off to the colliery to collect a load.

The freelance 4-wheel luggage brake is finished though I am not sure what I think of it really. As a kitbash/bit of fun it was a success and I learned a lot but the lining was a small disaster and I think it is really just too short. A scale 3 or 4 feet more would have produced a more realistic looking van. It may get retired into the engineering fleet as a crew van if I find something better proportioned to replace it. Somewhat annoyed with myself as well that I didn't really plan properly the lettering sizes I needed for my coach fleet and the beautiful transfers made for me by Fox are too big. Company lettering that is not carried within the waist panel just looks wrong. Grrr. Concerning the garage conversion all is now finished. I just need to get the interior painted but its been a bit wet and windy here recently. I haven't marked out any more of the floor grid because I am thinking it would be a waste of effort to draw the track plan on the floor since its not transferable to the baseboards, hence actually useless as a tool to aid with tracklaying. I am still pondering buying lining paper to hand draw it or sourcing a print company who can print the track plan life-size and that won't require me to remortgage my home.

Apart from the monster wheels those Airfix coaches still look good even after - what? Twenty five years?

You've just disposed of the ambassador from the Alien Yellow Grass Spider People who thinks the inhabitants of earth are very small, made of metal and like to keep quiet and still but the planet is also inhabited by giants.

I was thinking that if you bend the wire so it has some droop in it and paint it a dirty colour it would look like a brake hose.

Something that just occurred to me is that I don't recall seeing lines of telephone poles along the parapets of viaducts, might they more usually have stepped down into the valley alongside and then climbed out again, or would the S&T department have strung the wires along the inside of the side wall of the parapet along trunking or on dwarf arms to hold the insulators or something akin to that? I'm not suggesting a pole is incorrect, just that I saw this and started pondering.

I took some photos from the public side of the barrier on Sunday. It is certainly a very pretty layout and very unusual. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/135768-nether-madder-and-great-shafting-rly/page-15 Post #368

Yes, John, that confirms that I thought the simplest and shortest transition would work. Ten minutes on hands and knees atop the foam rubber garden kneeler with long spirit level and tape and I've squared off five feet at one end. Should easily get the rest done tomorrow. I'll mark out suggested baseboard edges and joins with tape.

No problem.

Thanks tebee, that is very very kind of you. Very useful stuff. As Kevin says I may not use the calculations but seeing the necessary end result will definitely guide me in how I approach this. Given that City of Truro allegedly touched 100mph in 1906 I feel sure that super-elevation and easements were in the engineers textbook before then. 25mph is my speed limit and at places it will be 15mph (on the branch and through some curves mainly). Nothing more than 10mph in the colliery. Even so I think what makes a model appealing is smoothness of track geometry so even if it may not have been a technical necessity I shall still try to smooth things out as much as space allows. Meanwhile, the loco coal wagon fleet is all loaded and ready to roll...

That fellow's looking a little jaundiced.