SRman

Don't forget this one too: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-20/swedish-train-to-be-named-trainy-mctrainface/8729284

Thanks for the compliments, 4railsman. For those parts of the walls that are fixed in place (not many actually!), I tend to use PVA glue, undiluted. My most common branded one is Aquadhere. Some parts of the walling are still loose (or held in place with nothing more than a few spots of Blu-tack) because they are not yet in their final positions; most only need minor tweaks to their locations. The walls near the tunnel mouth where most of my photos are taken are resin castings of unknown provenance, bought from a local swap meet. The bridge supports are wood (pine) with Vollmer embossed card brickwork glued on with PVA. I use the N scale brickwork as the HO scale stuff seems oversized to me. The filled arches on the other side of the bridge, opposite the platform came from International Models, alas no more, and are also glued in place with PVA, apart from the bit adjacent to the overbridge, as that needs a little adjustment too. At the other end of the layout, none of the walls are glued in place, and some are merely placeholders until I get the final pattern walling in place.

Hi Rick. I did something of the sort to my Warship, because I wanted to retain couplings at both ends, but thought the open area below the buffer beams lost some of the character of the locomotives. I used plastic card, filed to shape and glued in at the lower level while leaving a slot across just below the buffer beam, sufficiently deep enough to allow the coupling to move up and down a little with the bogie and not impeded when moving laterally (as when the bogies were turned). A lick of maroon paint and a spot of weathering soon blended them in. I think it looks a lot better than having an empty open area below the couplings.

It's still Spencer Street to me ... Southern Cross means nothing and refers to no geographical feature at that end of Melbourne's CBD. Personally, I think the new city stations should reflect the stations they adjoin to make interchanges more logical for visitors - Flinders Street and Melbourne Central. They will just be deep level adjuncts to the existing stations. How would (say) interchanges at Kings Cross be if the ex-BR station and the Underground stations had different names, or, even worse, the names for the Metropolitan Line, Northern Line and the Victoria Line Kings Cross-St Pancras had been chosen differently? I'm willing to bet there would be a lot more confusion and many more enquiries from travellers unfamiliar with the system.

I think the worst thing on mine has been my constantly knocking the cab steps off through careless handling!

True: not mentioned before, but they had very distinctive large roof vents.

With a name like GWRrob, you should be thoroughly ashamed for posting this! p.s. I love it, and the 'Flying Cucumber' name from BlackRat.

Answer 1: in case you wish to run it around on its roof. Answer 2: so I can pick that there is a nail missing from one plank and jump up and down about it. 3:)

Jamie is really good at responding in a helpful, friendly and timely manner. SLW get full marks from me.

Narrow Planet can do the plates (I ordered some a couple of months ago together with name and works plates for several other industrials). I was planning ahead as far as the Janus is concerned, because I ordered the Port of London one, which isn't out yet.

I don't know about the half dozen, Alan, but if they tool up for a 24/1 with headcode boxes, the 25/0 would be a logical variant. I have not seen this in print anywhere, but my impression is that the 25/0 group were using up pre-existing class 24 shells with the uprated engines fitted. Most of the details, including the fuel tanks and battery boxes, match the previous 24s. Other common details include the valances (retained behind the buffer beams but later removed from under the body sides, just as for the 24s), fishbelly lower cab front shape, recessed cab doors (EDIT: Correction: the non-recessed doors, i.e. flush-fitted cab doors), and shallower cab windscreens.

I'm only guessing, but the ends probably started out black, then in the mid-1960s any repaints would most likely have had green ends. In either case, once they weathered a bit, they would be like the old Southern vans, just a nondescript dirty grey-brown. I'm enjoying this build of yours, Brian.

I fitted a Hattons mini direct decoder, which seems to work OK. I think it does need a small direct plug-in decoder, and this fitted the bill, being the only 8-pin direct decoder I have left at present in my stocks. For similar installations in the past (such as Hornby's M7 locomotives), I have used TCS DP2X-UK decoders and a few DCC Concepts Zen Nano decoders.

My latest project is a Dapol DRS class 68 fitted with legomanbiffo sound and a Zimo "double dumbo" speaker from YouChoos.

Ahh, but was that before or after the customs people had removed the contraband from the model, Ian?

Damn! Does this mean we'll have to add some weight back into our locos when we get them??

Just a thought, but with that joint (good idea, BTW), if you had any doubts about its strength, you could drill straight down through it (#75 or 76, perhaps) and glue a very short length of brass handrail wire through it as well.

No, that's what the cat is for!!

Right. That's not confusing at all: 'S' for Southend, not Shenfield!

So you're 101 years old????

Mrs SRman also has a problem with switches of any sort: once they are turned on, they stay on until I go around and turn them off again! "Oh, but it saves electricity of you turn a fluorescent light on and don't turn it off." I have been through this many times, but she has the fixed idea that, no matter how long it is on, a fluorescent light will use less power than turning it off, then back on when it is needed. And don't get me started on opening external doors and leaving them wide open while the central heating is on in Winter, or doing the same in Summer when we have the inside of the house nice and cool but it is 40 degrees C outside!

Depending on how good your soldering skills are, you could hard-wire a decoder into the Sentinel, giving you a much wider choice of brands and types. For my own Sentinel diesel, and three Pecketts (in which Hornby also saw fit to use the non-standard 4-pin decoder), I fitted a TCS M1 decoder (which is smaller than Hornby's intended decoder) by wiring the decoder to the 'blanking' plug. The metal sockets can be pushed out using a small screwdriver to lift the plastic retaining tab. Otherwise, Hornby make the only 4-pin decoders that I know of, so they have tried to create a captive market.

I agree, they are very nice models. I have quite a few of the variants myself (original and rebuilt, WC, BoB and MN). I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect they may be multiplying in the darkness of the drawers they are stored in!

That should work, but it does confirm what I said about it being tricky as we have to resort to a resistor in one line, as well as trying to keep them all in phase between three coaches.

My two-car 158 has Howes sounds on an older ESU LokSound v3.5. Bryan very kindly added an extra engine start routine for when the decoder eventually gets transferred into a three-car class 159. I was planning to add connector plugs to operate the lights at each end from the one central decoder, but it would be easier to put separate decoders for each of the dummy cars in the 159, especially as I am working on enhancing the lights to include marker lights as well. I do like that idea of putting a separate speaker in each car - a two-pin plug and socket would do the job between coaches (as I have done with a pair of class 20s with one sound decoder between the two - one powered the other unmotored). I'm not quite sure if I can do that with a three-car unit as the impedances could be tricky to get right.