SRman

I was thinking along the same lines as Rick: they don't look out of place at all. Change the signals to somersault types and you have a little slice of Victoria.

Nice photos, Rick. Is that Matilda in the train too?

Don't forget to fire up the barbie too, Peter.

Who????? Oh, wait ... that's us!

For Sydney and Brisbane, I recommend mixing a little Dettol into the glue for card/paper buildings, or into the plaster for scenery. Silverfish and cockroaches don't seem to like the taste or aroma of Dettol, for some reason! Since moving to Melbourne from Brisbane, I haven't noticed the problem anywhere near as much, so haven't bothered with the additions to the mixes with my layouts here.

I was just down the line from you, then, John, and up the line from Colin. I lived and went to school in Pound Hill, just the other side of the line from Three Bridges. Of course, we also now know why the Welshman is interested in SR electrics!! It seems we all have connections along the same line! (With apologies to Colin for hijacking his wonderful model building thread!).

I live in Australia, so just as bad!! My excuse is I grew up in Southern Region territory! What's yours, John??

The brown was often described as 'umber' but, to me, it always seemed to have a slight reddish hue ... when it wasn't caked in dirt, as most were!

We'll look forward to seeing yours in due course, Norwenglish! Hopefully my blow-by-blow account will assist you to avoid any traps or errors I have made. You may also find better ways of doing things than I did. Good luck with yours, anyway.

They may have to wait a bit longer before I model them. Another thing I want to model but haven't worked out any easy way to achieve is the cable arches that LT use rather a lot on the underground.

Hi Doug. That's pretty much what I had in mind, although to allow for fully automated running, I may have to reconfigure the section breaks so that there would be four sections for each track rather than the current three per track. Four sections would allow for two trains per track actually running, with the necessary signal overlap. Signalling for the plain sections of track will be easy; it's the station loops and reversing crossovers that are taxing my mind, working out how those signals will interact with the others on each side as well as with the point settings. I have approximately 100 reed switches available, bought for the old layout but never used. I have around 40 very small rare earth magnets suitable for mounting under trains, and the ability to easily purchase more from the same supplier on eBay, so all of that is easily possible. I won't even have to bury the reed switches in the ballast in the tunnel sections!

Hi Rick. Currently they are non-functional but they come with the LEDs already soldered to the circuit board stem at exactly the right spacing. The stem extends through a hole in the baseboard (enlarged slightly from the previous hole for the wires from the old signal) and has three well-spaced solder pads at the bottom to allow wires for the common return, green and red aspects. I will get around to soldering wires to these and to the point motors in the near future as I have the school holidays coming up soon - I changed my employment contract recently so I now get all the holidays, albeit at a slightly reduced salary, but it means I will have a little more modelling time available. Being the London Transport lines, these only require 2-aspect signals, but I intend using a mix of working semaphore and 3-aspect signals for the main lines.

A while back I ordered a few of the budget Train Tech colour light signals to try out. They look to be quite decent kits and the prices are right. I got around to constructing one of the 2-aspect versions today, to replace one of the 'place-holder' Australian signals currently on the layout. Construction was pretty straightforward, although I found the ladder and safety fences rather delicate when cutting them off the sprue. The circuit board that forms the backbone of the signal seems robust and very simple to wire. I haven't. as yet. wired up any of the signals on the layout, although I have tested them briefly to make sure each o them works. Here are a couple of photos to show the new addition in place. I will certainly be adding more of these signals from Train Tech in the future, replacing hotch-potch of signals from different sources. One of the Australian signals is visible in the background in that first shot.

Hornby have, indeed, modelled two different patterns of buffers as appropriate for the different production batches of the real BILs.

Here's one I intended to post ages ago but couldn't find the original footage. I have now edited it a little, although the shaky camera work remains as I was operating both camera and train at the same time! This is Heljan's model of HS4000, Kestrel, fitted with Howes' sound. It completes the Sulzer set, with my class 24 (6 cylinder from Howes), class 33s (8 cylinder from Howes, Digitrains and legomanbiffo), class 47 (12 cylinder from Howes), and now Kestrel with its 16 cylinder engine.

I use "black-tack" - actually Homelux Bath Seal - which is stickier than Blu-tack and slightly less visible, being black.

The very reason I chose the 350/1 as my base model when doing the 450. I removed the pantograph and also the 25kV module under the pantograph car - Bachmann have very kindly modelled all of the underfloor modules separately and left them so that they are easily removed. If you start with the 350/2 model, there are modules missing from under the driving coaches, as well as the third rail 'shoe beams' (height limiting bars). The point is, though, that Bachmann already have all of the correct bits to combine into a 450 if they wish to make one themselves, either for normal release or as a commission.

At the moment, any specialist colours (rail or bus, for example) are almost impossible to get because of the postal embargoes on paint and other liquid substances to overseas destinations. Fortunately, I already had some First Bus 'Barbie' blue, which turned out to be only a half tone different to the SWT blue on Adam's vinyls (hint for anyone doing the conversion!!).

Just in case anyone is contemplating going down the route I did (Bachmann 350/1, ERG vinyl overlays), Hattons have just listed the Silverink unit for £109 here http://www.ehattons.com/stocklist/New.aspx .That's the same unit I started with.

While acknowledging that the 33/0s weren't perfect, I did something about it in terms of modelling by reshaping and repainting the cab roofs on all three of the 33/0s I own. The superb Heljan running qualities far outweigh the downside of the somewhat inaccurate roof profile and cab windscreen issues, so I do own three of the inaccurate 33/0s, two (more accurate!) 33/1s and a 33/2. For all that, I think Heljan still deserve the criticism they received because they were advised at the pre-production stage that the roof didn't look right. Without the criticism, we probably wouldn't be getting this improved version now. ​I still considered it worthwhile to fit sound in two 33/1s (Howes and Legomanbiffo), a 33/0 (Digitrains/Paul Chetter/Zimo), and a 33/2 (Howes). Oh yes: I also sold all my Lima 33s, including one I converted to 33/1 ... I was quite proud of that one but compared to the Heljan model it looked a bit sad! As for these new ones coming out, I'll have to get at least one of the earlier style with roof silencer in one of the green variations. I still won't sell the existing ones though.

I did mine using trimmed headcodes from the Heljan class 53 (Falcon). These are a little undersized for the Western but that allows for the small rim inside the headcode glazing on the Dapol model. I used a little Kristal Klear to hold them in place, which will make it more difficult to change them if I change my mind later. Note that I deliberately chose parts of the headcodes to make up Southern Region destinations (letter code "O", more usually similar to a zero "0") and class 6 and 8 trains to allow for this model to haul inter-regional freights. The headcodes are fictional because I used existing numbers from the class 53 sheet.

The whole roof profile was too flat and shallow a curve on the 33/0, made even more obvious by the 'shoulder' moulded into the cab roof edges. If you look at the photos posted earlier of the new moulding, you'll see that the cab roof should flow smoothly into the upper cab sides over the windows, interrupted by the gutters but these don't break the actual line. I took some photos a few years ago of my 33s, 33/0 with the cab roof edges filed down to disguise the shouldered effect, a 33/1 and a 33/2.(much nearer correct profile). If you look at the grey central translucent panels on my models, you can see the much flatter profile on the 33/0. I don't have any 33/0s in original Heljan condition to show, unfortunately. I have modified all of mine to the same standard as the blue one in the photos above. With apologies for taking this topic off on a slight but partially relevent tangent.

This should be the last entry on my two Western diesel-hydraulics for a while. The Heljan one, D1007 Western Talisman, now goes around my tightest curves, so it was time to patch up any damaged paintwork and weather the bogies, brake gear and skirts. The result is shown below. The leading brake blocks still need a little bit of wire or plastic rodding to anchor them more securely but it runs well as it stands. The weathering used the now usual mixture of black, leather and metallic gunmetal in varying proportions. In the meantime, I decided to try adding headcodes to the insides of the Kernow/Dapol Western, D1037 Western Musketeer, instead of the supplied externally applied self-adhesive labels. The spare Heljan ones would have been my ideal but they were a fraction large for the aperture, allowing for the thickness of the moulded clear plastic rims on the insides of the headcode 'glasses'. A bit of digging around showed that the Heljan class 53 (D0280, Falcon) printed headcodes would fit when suitably cut down to suit the split apertures of the Western. They are not perfect but look better to me than externally stuck on labels. See what you think. I deliberately chose class 6 and class 8 headcodes to suit freight workings. As with everything else, compromise is needed as only two headcodes can be displayed while ten, or more, fitting trains are available for it to haul!

Continuing the Western brake saga, I have now cut away more of the brake hangers to clear the skirts. This has ended up leaving the leading ones unsupported, so the pull rods are supporting them, rather than the other way around! However, Western Talisman has now completed several circuits without derailing ... on the inner, tighter radius circuit! I still have to touch up any unpainted edges and paint those brake shoes and brass wire pull rods. I may try to add some wire supports behind those leading shoes on each bogie just to tighten things up a little. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the result as the Heljan model always looked a little bare around the bogies before. It is now a fitting companion to the Dapol/Kernow model and almost indistinguishable from it at normal viewing distances.

I did a bit more grinding and filing last night and Western Talisman has now been able to complete laps of the outer circuit and go through the crossovers without derailing. A little more work and I hope to be able to use it on the tighter inner circuit too.