SRman

True, as long as there were two members on board, as per steam. Single-manning would not be allowed with the long hood leading.

For north eastern area, as per Northmoor's list, Metro-Cammell class 101 would be ideal, and also the very similar looking, but mechanically different, class 111. For class 101, Hornby have the ex-Lima model in two or three car formations, with a much better motor bogie and DCC-ready, and Bachmann have a much more sophisticated and more recent unit as a 2-car only. Slightly more restricted, but found on the Trans-Penning corridor through Leeds, York and Hull were the class 110 BRCW units. Hornby's model was good in its day, but really needs a mechanical upgrade now. It is also easily modified to class 104, which could be found in the Newcastle, Darlington and Durham areas. They were robust units and weren't included in the refurbishment programme, but mostly remained in plain blue, although there were some livery variations, including blue/grey, Mexican bean and Network South East liveries (none of which are appropriate for your premise). Classes 123 and 124 were mixed on Trans-Pennine services after the 123s were transferred northwards, but I'm not sure off the top of my head as to when they were retired. The only model of class 124 was the old Trix one, which was underscale and only modelled the Driving Motor coaches. Class 109 was the Wickham built units, one of which survived as a General Manager's saloon. Similarly, a Gloucester class 100 car survived long after the rest of its class had gone, and was paired with a Cravens class 105 car. These units could travel around a bit, but were not used for revenue passenger service. I hope this doesn't muddy the waters too much for you. If all else fails, there's always rule 1 to fall back on! Class 114 Derby Heavyweight units found their way between Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire, but I don't think they strayed much further north, at least, not in the desired time period. These can only be built from kits or conversions. Classes 116/117/118/121/122 were not usually found in the north east at all; a pity as there are decent models either just coming out or still in the pre-production processes (Dapol/Bachmann). Hornby has the older ex-Lima 121, which is not a bad model and has a decent motor bogie. I have been buying up cheap bargain bin or second-hand ones to repower some of my earlier DMU conversions, such as a Swindon class 120 built around the old Lima class 117 unit. Edit: Crossed over with Legend's post - I was still typing mine out at the time! I did a quick search on Google for "class 104 Newcastle" images and the first photo that came up was on Flickr and showed a 104 unit in 1980 outside of Newcastle, with added information that it was soon transferred to Darlington (just to reinforce what I said above).

Thanks for the New Year wishes, Mark and Peter.

You have been busy, Mark. I have no use for 'normal' Gresley coaches but still couldn't resist buying one of Hornby's BR maroon Gresley BGs to run in a mixed parcels formation. They are attractive designs, especially when in the varnished teak finish. What livery will yours be when you have finished them? I am down for the March BRMA meeting, but hopefully we'll catch up well before that.

Thanks for that. Yes. I'll check CV29, as it is quite possible I have used the decoder before then fitted sound to a loco - that has happened a few times over the last couple of years.

The platform tops are plastic card, painted with a bitumen effect spray paint as used by wargamers. I made a 'skrawking' tool out of some brass offcuts and scraped the paint off along the platform edges; the tool also scored parallel lines into the edges which allowed me to paint them with a very pale grey enamel, thinned to flow along those score marks. The CO/CP Stock is all white metal kits from Harrow Model Shop, with some parts added from Radley Models, such as the underfloor equipment moulding in resin. I have some of his resin seats to go in as well. There is one more car to build, to take it up to a 6-car train (2 x 3-car). The F Stock train is a mixture of Harrow and Radley, with some white metal and a resin body. Both centre cars are awaiting glazing and some detail painting, such as black door dividers. Both of these, and a 5-car Q Stock train (all resin from Radley and other sources) use two Black Beetle motor bogies to power them, with both motors wired to a TCS T1 decoder in each motorised car. There is a Radley Resin A Stock set under construction that will also have two Black Beetles, but mounted individually with one in each DM car. I have an unbuilt C Stock train from Little Bus Company to do after the A Stock.

Bulleid 1Co-Co1 diesel-electric 10201 is seen paused in Newton Broadway station with a 3-set of Bulleid coaches and a 'loose' BR mark 1, plus a BY van, all in crimson and cream, or plain crimson for the van. O2 30182 is seen beside the train with gate stock pull-push set 363. On the other platform, a London Transport train of 1938 CO/CP stock can be seen. Please ignore the out of period stock visible on the upper level.

I have used toilet tissue as curtains for a touring coach and as beach towels on a diorama. I paint the tissue paper first and let it dry (which doesn't take long!), then cut out the shapes I want from it. The paint makes it more robust and able to retain shapes too. For the shapes you require for the 108, you'll have to refer to any photos you can find in books or online.

Anything above and to the right of Watford is wilderness, I tells ya, wilderness!!

I have a can of a colour labelled "LT Bullock Maroon", which is a deep purple maroon colour. I think this might be the correct colour for the works stock. I'll have to dig the can out to see whose it was, but I think, from memory, that it was Cherry Paints.

I have used quite a few of Electra Railway Graphic's overlays over the years, in OO scale. The trick with raised detail is to put the overlay on and use a hair dryer and soft cloth to mould and settle the vinyl over the details.

I have used 5-minute Araldite on all of the white metal kits from Radley that I have done ... in fact, for nearly all of the white metal kits I have ever built from many different manufacturers. Just exercise some patience while building the kits, allowing each stage to set properly before doing the next bit. Mix only small quantities of the glue at any one time.

Markw may be correct as I was confusing the MX644 with the MX634. With the MX634, programming 3 into CV8 gives the C, or 4 into CV8 gives the D version. You could try this with the MX644 but it may not work. Apologies for any confusion I may have caused.

The lights all come on with function F0, with physical switches for the cab lights buried under the cab air conditioner pods. The Bachmann decoder should be adequate. For my own three units (two converted from class 350/1 units and the third a 'proper' class 450), two have ESU LokSound v3.5 decoders and the third has a Lenz Silver+ 21 decoder.

Some new arrivals at Newton Broadway: A Bachmann class 101, a nice model but a little overpriced (IMHO), but worth every penny when in the bargain bin (Rails had them for under £90), and a Heljan class 28 Metro-Vick Co-Bo. The DMU fits in with my side collection of various DMMUs, but I have no excuse for the Co-Bo 'Wonderloaf' except it fills a gap in my range of diesels. I have fitted a Hither Green headcode for a cross-London goods from the Midland Region, but I very much doubt these ever actually ran onto Southern metals. Rule 1 applies here! My Kernow 10201 arrived this morning. After a suitable running in session on the rolling road, I fitted a Lenz Silver+ 21-pin decoder, which works beautifully, although forwards seems to be the non-radiator end. I know I can change this by adding 1 to whatever value is in CV29, but has anyone else noted this on their Bulleid diesels when DCC fitted? Anyway, I posed 10201 with my ancient MTK 10203. 10203 will never run on DCC with its current Mainline 'Peak' chassis! I didn't do too bad a job with the MTK kit, but it does show up as being a little oversized when compared to the Kernow model. 10201 is shown here straight out of the box - I'll change the headcodes later. For running qualities there is absolutely no comparison - a Rolls Royce compared to a lawn mower!

My 10201 arrived this morning. After a suitable running in session on the rolling road, I fitted a Lenz Silver+ 21-pin decoder, which works beautifully, although forwards seems to be the non-radiator end. I know I can change this by adding 1 to whatever value is in CV29, but has anyone else noted this on their Bulleid diesels when DCC fitted? Anyway, I posed 10201 with my ancient MTK 10203. 10203 will never run on DCC with its current Mainline 'Peak' chassis! I didn't do too bad a job with the MTK kit, but it does show up as being a little oversized when compared to the Kernow model. 10201 is shown here straight out of the box - I'll change the headcodes later. For running qualities there is absolutely no comparison - a Rolls Royce compared to a lawn mower!

Speaking in generalisations only, there were many stop-gap numberings and letterings. The Southern used Bulleid sunshine letters and numbers to firstly add a small letter 's' in front of locomotive and multiple unit numbers, plus 'British Railways' in full on tenders or tank sides, then slightly later, the extra '3' in front of locomotive numbers - Bulleid locos had full numbers added in the BR series, with new-build locos carrying the BR numbering and lettering still in Bulleid style for some time. The same principles would apply to ex-LMS locomotives too. Workshops and depots would still have the transfers or templates revise existing numbers with the matching styles. Later on, Gill Sans came into use, something that suited the LNER as they already used that typeface! There are photos of locomotives with extra prefix numbers crudely painted onto smokebox number plates or buffer beams. Ex-GWR types were probably the least affected, although even some of those got the 'British Railways' tender/tank side lettering. Coaches and wagons may have carried their previous markings fro some years after nationalisation - even some locos did too. As a very rough guide, the cut-off for older railway insignia and styles was approximately 1955, but even that is not entirely true; for example, ex-SR passenger stock could carry the Southern Railway greens right through to the late 1950s due to the SR/BR(S) habit of revarnishing rather than repainting. Going back to the original question, you could certainly paint out some 'LMS' insignia, but it would not be out of place to leave one or two still completely in LMS livery. It took years to eliminate older railway or regional markings, with 5 to 7 years being the usual limit from past histories.

One other contributor to class 20 reliability that hasn't been mentioned was the lack of train heating. In many of the diesels earlier days unreliable steam heating boilers featured prominently in locomotive availability figures. Class 20s had no such problems because they didn't have steam heating boilers. Of course, in later years when steam heating was superseded, many of the surviving types became more reliable (or more available, if you prefer), while earlier unreliable types had been withdrawn and scrapped - some such as the baby Deltics and Co-Bos were unreliable from the getgo, regardless of steam heating!

I have been running my SECR H on the gate stock set lately, and found that the running was slightly erratic and inconsistent at times. Investigating this, I noted that the balance over the rear driving wheel is slightly biased to the rear (not good). While the rear bogie takes the weight and keeps the front driving wheels on the track, there is room for them to lift very slightly when running. "Simple", I said to myself, "I'll just add a small lump of lead ahead of the motor in the smokebox". Nope! Upon lifting the body, I found that the motor housing and flywheel occupy every bit of the available space in the front part of the boiler and smokebox. However, I noted the gear tower cover behind the motor was lower, and had the capacitor sitting occupying some of the air space. It is just over the rear driving axle, so doesn't offer much scope for rebalancing the loco, but I felt there was nothing to lose by trying, so I removed the capacitor, then glued two thin strips of lead (tapered slightly towards the top) so that they occupied the space between the gear tower and the boiler. I biased the strips towards the front of the loco, pushing them hard against the motor housing. The balance is still slightly "iffy", but is better than it was, and the running has become far more consistent. I hasten to add that the actual motor and mechanism were always perfectly smooth running, it was merely the weight transfer that was causing it to hesitate or slow slightly once in a while.

There are still some sound projects available for v3.5 from legomanbiffo and others. An email or PM to him might yield a list of those available.

Four of them had Mirrlees engines.

Reuse them as you have suggested, but definitely keep them as a reminder of how far you have come. I still have two scratchbuilt card buses I made when I was 13 and 14 years old. They weren't too bad but have suffered many knocks and bumps over the intervening decades. They weren't all that accurate either, but at the time I was working from a couple of fairly distant black and white photos. Those you have done are not bad, but, as you say, they don't stand too close a comparison with the professional/commercial jobs; what you can say, though, with pride, is "I did that myself."

David, I like the idea of the express blue, but the LNER green could be interesting too.

At least the MX644D can be converted to MX644C by a simple bit of CV programming. That's not an excuse for Dapol getting it wrong, but it does mean that their customers aren't wasting their money by buying Zimo MX644D decoders.

Hmmm, sounds like we need another topic for Those Who Fear Coming to Melbourne!