SRman

Possibly related to the lack of definitive information/pictures of the model: will it have fairings in front of the cylinders (removed from approx. 1951/2 onwards), or safety valves positioned forward or behind the dome?

OK, now I'm just jealous!

Hi Julian. I have added a second edit to the previous post with the details.

There was a tour using a 14 car Hastings DEMU. That was made up of two complete 6-car units plus two extra power cars back to back, to give extra power for the gradients., which meant anyone riding in the two car unit had no toilet access. I'm not sure of the individual unit numbers off-hand - will try to find them for you later, if someone else doesn't beat me to it (hint, hint!). Edit: it was named "The Long Thin Drag". 2nd edit: the units involved were 6L 1011 and 1032, plus the two power cars from 6S 1001. It ran on 12th April 1986. 1032 was originally a 6B with buffet car but was reformed to became just another 6L well before the railtour took place. Under TOPS, 6S were class 201, 6L were class 202 and 6B were class 203.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? ... and so on, ad infinitum!

I have been constructing four non-working Ratio ground signals for the crossovers. They aren't entirely accurate for London Transport, but they will do for now. There is a little more tidying up of paint to do on the signal faces. Also, in a quite unrelated operation, I used some T-Cut on cotton buds to remove the printed Dodo nameplates on the pale green Peckett, in preparation for the eventual arrival of etched plates from Narrow Planet models. All of the Pecketts will be getting changes of identity using fictional names and numbers, but accurate Peckett works plates - just not necessarily correct for the names and numbers!

Beautiful, Rich (the locos, not you! ).

A small improvement to the terraced houses on Hill Street in the village: I painted most of the doors different colours, rather than all of them being in the default blue Hornby chose. I also painted the back doors, but not necessarily in the same colours as the front doors. I may yet paint one of the house fronts in a different colour (all are the same brick colour at present), and all require floors and walls or curtains to stop the see-through effect from front to back.

Gordie: I suspect I got the last Huntley & Palmers and Dodo in Australia, and DougN got the last MSC, at least, for those available online. Metro Hobbies here in Melbourne had the H & P and MSC ones, but after Doug and I purchased ours from them, the website shop went to "not in stock" and "pre-order" only for both. I then scored Dodo from Mighty Ape (mightyape.com.au), price-matched to Metro Hobbies, but that, too has gone to "out of stock" status. I wish you luck in getting one; you never know what stock lurks on the shelves of the smaller, out of the way model shops, or when a local modeller has a change of direction/change of heart and sells their unused models bought earlier on a whim. eBay prices seem to go a bit silly, but it is still probably worth checking there. Try typing in a few mistakes - people listing these things don't always get it right.

You're always welcome to drop over, Doug. I think the spell-checker kicked in on your post; it changed MSC to MAC! I wondered if Hornby are now doing Windows and Mac versions of all their locos!! It would be nice to pose and run all three liveries together. We'll definitely have to make sure we record it for posterity, in photos and videos.

Continuing with the private owner industrial theme, I have now fitted a TCS M1 decoder into Dodo, and given her a test run hauling the new Hornby Golden Arrow Pullman Guard cars. I strung a short video together showing Dodo on her own, then in tandem with the Huntley & Palmers version. The jerkiness in the video is due to the combination of the limited frame rate using a mobile phone to take the footage, and the compression from using YouTube. The locos themselves run very smoothly and sweetly. Note that Dodo had not even been run-in at the time of the video.

Having previously described modifying the plug and wiring for fitting non-Hornby decoders to the Hornby Huntley & Palmers Peckett W4 and Sentinel diesel shunter, I failed to take a photo of the decoder actually in place to show just how easily the TCS M1 fits inside. Being smaller than the Hornby 4-pin decoder, there is room to spare, so I use a small blob of Blu-Tack to stop the decoder moving around. Having just received a second Peckett, this time the Peckett pale green Dodo, I went through the same process again, only this time it took half the time to do and came out a little neater as well. The blue, white and yellow wires are neatly bundles out of the way with a spot of heat-shrink tubing. If I ever want to add lighting or other functions, the wires are still available for use.

Yep! School holidays - they give me a little extra modelling time.

When I arbitrarily chose a running number for the private owner pannier tank, I selected 8, forgetting that I had the London Transport (ex-Metropolitan) Bo Bo #8, Sherlock Holmes. To prevent clashes with both locos being selected at the same time, I renumbered the pannier to #9, an unused number in my lists. That follows on from the Huntley & Palmers Peckett ('numbered' D, which I translated to 4 for DCC purposes), and precedes the Sentinel diesel shunter which is #10 now. For the pannier, I used Southern Railway transfers (they must have been bought by the private owner company as surplus materials after nationalisation occurred!): Bulleid style for the cab side numbers and rear, and Maunsell style for the smokebox plate. I have just received a second Peckett, in Peckett's own pale green. This one will be allocated number 5, and having checked my spreadsheet first, that does not clash with any other items in my stock lists.

And a small amount of further progress: gutters added to disguise the joins on the brick arches, extra strips of distressed bitumen added to the road surface, and a brick wall added at one end. The road surface is too glossy at the moment but a spray of matt varnish or similar will fix that.

Today I decided to make the scenery for "The Arches" area at one end of the layout a little more permanent. I have long had the Wills arches sitting Blu-tacked to the high level track bed, acting as place-holders for something to come. However, I do like the Wills arches so have decided that to make them more permanent and better suited to the location, I worked out that the ground level needed to be raised. This was done yesterday with some expanded polystyrene. This morning, with the glue having dried overnight, I painted it with the usual 'Hurricane' grey acrylic paint. That was also allowed to dry before printing out some Scalescenes road textures and a little brickwork (I'll explain later!). The photos show the progress from this morning's effort, firstly with the paint still wet, then with the road surfaces added, although there are several joints to disguise on both the road and the arches. One little trick I tried (successfully!) was to use a solvent based contact cement to glue the Wills arches to the MDF high level track bed, with a small amount of the glue also added to the bases of the arches, knowing this would attack the polystyrene beneath; this was to get the arches to bed into the ground. This was a risky strategy, because if the glue had been too aggressive I would have had to redo the ground level foam again, or perhaps needed some filler. I will be adding some weeds and dirt along the edges as part of the finishing work. There will later be a backscene along the edge of the layout, starting where the right hand arch brickwork ends. Now for that brickwork I printed earlier; the left hand edge of the left-most arch lines up roughly with the tunnel mouth for the low level tracks on the other side of the high level track bed. to cover the gap under the track bed, I needed a brick wall. Because it is mostly hidden and in darkness, it didn't need to be a full relief moulding, so I was happy to use some printed brick walling (actually viaduct / bridge supports from Scalescenes). I do wish to allow photography through the arches to look along the low level underground lines, but where these arches are corresponds to the underground lines tunnel, so the filled arches are the go here. Those to the left of this scene (to be done later) will be open arches or girders. While I was busy scenicking, I decided to add one small extra touch to the church area by adding a garden bed to the end of the church farthest away from the car park. This was simply cut from one of the Model Scene grass mats - one called 'blueberries'.

I keep an Excel spreadsheet listing each locomotive and the decoder it is fitted with. Unfortunately, I don't add notes to say what modifications (if any) I did to fit the decoder. Maybe I'll have to start doing that too.

I have a TCS DP2X-UK in my 700. I can't remember off-hand what I did to fit it; I may have shifted the weights, but for confirmation I'll have to open it up to check.

Looks good, Rick, with a nice variety of trains. Perhaps 'The Overland' should have been renamed 'The Overseas'!

Such dating errors may occur with some frequency (referring to railway photos in general, not specifically those of the Bulleid diesels). I have noted one photo of a class 73 on test, from the same photographer in two different books with two substantially different dates attributed to it in the respective captions.

Sorry it took so long to find such a photo: I knew I had seen it in one of my books but couldn't remember which. There is a photo of 35026 attached to a light pacific tender, which is in a slightly darker malachite green than the loco on page 26 of Railway Liveries: BR Steam 1948 - 1968, by Brian Haresnape (revised by Colin Boocock).

There was a brief experiment with a pair of regeared class 37s on the WR, where they were allowed 100 mph running. It wasn't deemed successful enough to persevere with, but I don't know the reasons.

The before and after: run the train with the original into a tunnel, wait a few minutes then run the same train out of the other end with the rebuilt one on the front.

Yes, a group of us in Melbourne talked to Simon many years ago now. He pointed out that Hornby (or Triang-Hornby) tried this idea long ago and it did nothing for their reputation with badly applied transfers/stickers, or those with peeling edges. It wasn't worth their while to continue the idea. Clan Line also has the modelling advantage that it was the last to be rebuilt, in 1959, allowing a mix with other rebuilt MNs. Ideal for we modellers!!

I don't think you'll regret the purchase. They are nice models and pull well also. There have been a few bargains recently, and they have been tempting but I have resisted, so far. One 700 is sufficient for my needs (my 'wants' are an entirely different kettle of fish!).