SRman

Thanks for the compliments. I was very careful with the choice of name/number to go with the 6000 gal tender. I consulted the Locomotive Profile book which lists all of the tender swaps for each locomotive - I wanted it in roughly 1954 condition. Tender 3343 certainly got around! p.s. The bent ladder on the tender was due to me putting it down on the table while I patted one of our cats. She promptly turned around and tripped straight over the tender.

And here's the Hornby Luggage Van.

New arrivals and visitors at Newton Broadway. Two new items of rolling stock arrived last week: a Hornby BR blue Merchant Navy, 35024 'East Asiatic Company' and a Hornby GLV / Cor PMV in BR crimson (edit: photo in next post). Both have been placed in service and are working in the same train at present. Seen with the Hornby MN is my nearly finished Golden Arrow Productions resin MN, to soon gain its 'British India Line' nameplates. We had a running session on Saturday with DougN and two other friends. This produced a few "foreign" items running around. Doug's L&NER J36 was hauling his three newly acquired North British Railway 6-wheel coaches from Hornby, seen running slowly past the camera. Visitor Rob ran his Hatton's GWR 14XX and Autocoach for the very first time, fresh out of their boxes. They also ran very nicely. I trundled a Bachmann Wickham trolley behind Doug's NBR train just for a bit of fun, to give it a run. Visible in the background is the new scenic hill I am working on. There is much more to do with this one yet.

I bought the blue 'East Asiatic Company' from Amanda Jane (AJM), and it arrived on Friday last. It looks superb. I have been working on the resin MN from Golden Arrow Productions and that is nearing completion. Something about the cab didn't look quite right, and I worked out when sitting besdie the Hornby model that the cab side windows appear to be a little too deep, reducing the sheet metal of the lower cab sides slightly. I intend to add some plastic micro strip to improve the appearance a bit. Here is the GAP product, soon to be named 'British India Line', on a modified Hornby rebuilt MN chassis, side by side with the new Hornby product. Amusingly, I have duplicates of several MNs, with a sort of 'before and after' theme, so, for example, 'East Asiatic Company' exists in my collection twice, as here in blue and as rebuilt, in BR green.

I have two Q1's with the lubricator linkage. One is fine, the other dropped the plastic pin at the lubricator end after a few years of running. That was no great disaster: I simply drilled a #76 hole and stuck a small length of brass handrail wire in, threaded the hole of the linkage over it and bent the end of the wire up in a tight 'L' shape. It has worked perfctly ever since.

Wishing you all the best.

I'm surprised London is not a destination on this too. Not so much for Paris to London, too short for a sleeper, but it would suit passengers from further afield such as Berlin/Hamburg/Copenhagen. I like this idea, anyway. Back in the 1980s, I wanted to get from Inverness to Leeds but wanted near-full days available in both places. I was travelling on a BritRail Pass, and found that to use a sleeper service I only had to pay the sleeper supplement - £11 at that time. So I left Inverness at 11:00pm (roughly), got to Euston at 7:00am, scooted across to Kings Cross and got the HST up to Leeds, arriving there around 10:30-ish, and I had had a full night's sleep. The bonus was that it was cheaper than staying overnight in a hotel.

I used to dress like that in Queensland in the '70s.

It was the exact model that they used as the basis for the Mad Max Interceptor, but they did add a few bits to the movie version, like rear wheel arch flares and jacked up suspension, plus the fancy nose cone and headlight treatment. I owned that hardtop for 34 years - I bought it originally for parts, at $AUS150 in 1985, when it was already 12 years old. I think I got my money's worth! In the early years I took it bush-bashing and into all sorts of out of the way areas. For a few years the under-dashboard area played host to a rather large huntsman spider that would pop out at rather inopportune moments to give me a scare. :-D

I had several interested parties "bidding" for it. I got a good price considering the mechanical work needed to bring it back up to scratch. Body-wise it was sound with only a few bits of rust in non-structural places. It was still roadworthy. As a base 500 model, it wasn't worth the huge prices genuine GTs are fetching.

Without wishing to provoke a Holden vs Ford argument, the HQ/HJ Holdens had a soft, wallowy ride, and weren't that well tied down on the road. Ford Falcons at the time had a better ride, eventhough the rear axle still used cart springs. The Fords were not so good on corrugated dirt roads though, with the rear end trying to wander all over the place, or even trying to overtake the front end! Yes, I've driven both types. HJ Holdens also had the dire emission controls that caused overheating, but by the time they got to the HZ, things were much better, both for the engine reliability and for the "radial tuned" suspension set up. Going to later model Holdens, the suspension was really well tied down, but my VR wagon really didn't like cross-ridges , where my XB Falcon would sail over those very smoothly. Get a lump like a tree root on a curve, though (there's one on our main road about a kilometre down from us), the Holden would jiggle but maintain its line, where the cart sprung hardtop would soak up the vertical movement but the back end would skip sideways. You can't win, either way! There were no perfect setups or combinations, and each had their strengths and weakneses. I only sold the XB Falcon hardtop in 2019, to a friend who has the skills and energy to restore it as it deserves to be.

Is that Mount Hood? I know that was the one visible from everywhere in Vancouver WA when we stayed with my wife's sister there. Or Mount St. Helens?

On a more mundane level, my OH and I went out to get some hardware items from Bunnings a few days ago, still under partial lockdown conditions. As it was lunch time, we went a few hundred metres further down the road to pick up some of our famous (locally) Rolf's pies and some coffees, then took them another 100 metres around the corner to Wurundjeri Walk parklands to sit and enjoy them. We were joined by some of the freeloading local population. The birds are purple waterhens (correction: swamphens), which are quite common on the east coast of Australia and also in the far south west.

I had a K's rebuilt MN: all of the 'carrier' wheels were dreadful and off-centre. The driving wheels were not too bad, but as you have inferred, can't be repeatedly removed from their axles or they get very loose. I used a Triang (loco drive) 'Flying Scotsman' chassis under the K's product, in the end, with Triang Bulleid wheels. My Millholme part-built MN used Romford wheels with Kemilway brass etches over them initially - the etched wheel overlays also came from W & H. Of course, that becomes academic now I intend using the newer Hornby 5-pole MN chassis.

I haven't lost anything over the edges yet. It is mostly carpet underneath, and the tracks along most edges either have some 'land' between them and the edge, or there are bridge walls and parapets. Even the underground lines' trackbed in the tunnels have a generous ledge to land on before the drop-off.

I have an unfinished Millholme kit, the same as your version. I could never get the chassis to run properly, so have a spare Hornby chassis to shoehorn in, eventually. That will take a bit of hacking to get it to fit. I do like the shape of the side casing on the MIllholme kit, but as you say, the cab roof seems much too rounded. I did have problems deciding the right level for the upper lining on my GAP model. I chose the tops of the cabside windows as the datum, but the upper tender lining seems a tad too low to me. I made sure it lined up with the cab and casing lining though. I have a second Millholme kit for the 1st series locos still untouched in its box. Incidentally, I still have memories of calling into W & H models in London to buy that first kit, and having a clearout of boxes of old papers and magazines just a few days ago, I came across a W & H catalogue from the early 1980s.

Something I started a long time ago was this Golden Arrow Productions resin original style Merchant Navy, mounted on a Hornby chassis. The model pre-dates Hornby's own releases of the original air-smoothed MNs. I am including a photo that shows it in its raw form, together with an intermediate stage, plus some new ones showing as it is now. I have repainted it with the correct post 1954 BR green (previously it had GWR green), and spent yesterday evening putting the lining on, then added the crests on the tender this morning. It will remain unnumbered and named for the time being: I had allocated 35029 'Ellerman Lines' to it, but 'Ellerman Lines' spent a large proportion of its life with a shorter 5100 gallon tender, so I will have to revise that plan as the tender I have is a 6000 gallon version. These 6000 gallon types were originally allocated to all of the 3rd series MNs, but tenders got swapped around fairly quickly. It is still a little rough in places, but starting to look the part, now. Amusingly, I have a few duplicate names and numbers between original and rebuilt MNs, as a form of 'before and after' models.

Another video session from me, this time showing off a trio of Bachmann 4 CEP units, all in BR(S) green travelling around Newton Broadway high level, with the camera wagon propelled by a Heljan Hymek diesel hydraulic, following or overtaking the 12 CEP formation.

I can just about call the Parkside ex-LMS CCT complete now. Perhaps a small amount of rusty brown on the underframe to represent brake block dust could be added, but otherwise I'm happy with the effect. It is seen here with a Bachmann Fairburn 2-6-4T, which I renumbered to a Three Bridges (SR) locomotive and lightly weathered a few years back. Both sides of the CCT are show in the photographs; there are slight differences in the brake gear on each side.

A minor update on the scenic side of the goods yard. I have been experimenting with different types of fencing to protect the main running lines from errant lorry drivers, and have finally settled on some double rail stanchions from Ratio. They are a little fiddly, but nowhere near as bad as the fence I built in situ on the other side of the lines. Painted a nondescript grey, I think they look reasonably appropriate. There are a couple of bent stanchions and I could straighten them out, but they look as if they have been doing their jobs in preventing wayward lorries from encroaching on the tracks. On the rolling stock side, continuing the story of the Parkside ex-LMS CCT, this has now had transfers put on and a couple of coats of matt varnish. It is currently sitting on the workbench with a black wash to enhance the planking details drying. The photo shows it before the black wash. The class 30 was a much earlier project: a Hornby first release with the eggshell cab window surrounds painted out and yellow warning panels added, plus a full renumbering. This one had to have its chassis block replaced because of the metal rot. Another much quicker project was to update an early plain green 4 CEP unit with yellow cantrail bands added for the first class portion of the composite coach, and number '1' door insignia added - (one '1' on the other side got damaged so I'll have to replace it. It is seen here in the middle unit of a 12 CEP formation.

Just a little further progress with painting the ex-LMS CCT. The sides and ends have had another coat of the Revell red, and the ends and underframe have had a wash of dark grey, while the roof has had its first coat of paint (Humbrol #66). Also, newer pics of the previous two wagons I was building. First, the ex-GWR gunpowder van, then the BR 12T fruit van. Many of the other wagons in the photos are also kit-built, including the 21T mineral wagon (Parkside), ex-LNER trestle wagon (Parkside), and ex-SECR 'dance hall' brake van (Cambrian kits) in the first photo, and the ex-GWR Mica B (Parkside), and Palvans (also Parkside) in the second. In the meantime, back to Newton Broadway and the patches of DAS clay, I dug out the Hurricane grey paint and painted those bits in, plus some of the bare woodwork between the goods yard access road and the engine shed building.

It is an interesting photo, with so much peripheral detail as well. Things like the bollards in the centre of the road are fascinating for their ornateness. I always love the period shop fronts in photos like this. Buses are ST, STL and LT types that I can see. They all seem to have retained their rear white circles for visibilty during the war at night. The STL has a reduced blind display.

Having sat down and looked at my own photos and video, I went back to the train room and fixed up a few things highlighted in those. The dead point frog was traced to a loose wire - I may well have disturbed it while I was still poking around under the layout before. Tested with a Hatton's Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST and it passed with flying colours. There were two rough spots of track where I had left small spots of solder; a flat needle file took care of those. I removed the baseplate on the Heljan 07, pulled the wheels out and tweaked the electrical pickups. I replaced the wheels and ensured the pickups were all touching the wheel backs properly, even on their full side to side play, and then tested that through all the points. Again, it passed with flying colours. I still have to check the Arthur's pickups, but that can wait. Then to those board joins and rough spots on the roads in the goods yard and level crossing areas: a bit of DAS clay has been spread around the bits that needed filling. Once dried and painted, they will look a lot better. And finally, just to show how the video was done, here are a couple of shots of the SLW class 24 D5000 with the camera wagon. D5000 was allocated to Hither Green for a few years. Edit: additional: I inverted the N15 the morning after posting this. I cleaned the tender wheels and checked the pickups, then tweaked the contacts on the loco to tender coupling. 'Sir Uther' ran perfectly through everything after that.

Work has started on building a hill in the far corner. This will be a little lower and more gently curved than the initial shape suggests. It will give the road along the back of the engine shed somewhere to go (marked by a couple of lorries and cars approximately where it will go, in the photo), with a bridge over the railway line. The temporary scenery along the back will be revised and a more permanenet solution added eventually, with the narrow road meandering along up a gentle slope towards the bridge. That whole area between the level crossing and behind the yards will also slope very gently up towards the back, leaving trains mostly visible along that stretch, apart from behind the embankments leading to the road bridge. That's the plan. It's a long way off completion, though! Now for a well deserved sit-down!