mike morley

I built mine a few years ago. It ended up as a more-or-less static model because I found it too narrow to get brass top-hat bearings in, so the axles run direct in the whitemetal axleboxes. Can't remember why I didn't simply stick the axles in the electric drill and shorten them slightly.

I've used the freezer method more than once. It makes the glue brittle, so a little waggling is needed to make it snap. It won't break without a little assistance.

The first time I used it was within days of buying it. Subsequent uses were spread over a few years but without any significant difference in the way it performed.

Almost forgot. I noticed that for some months after it had eventually gone off, a hot, humid day could make it go cloudy. That phase does eventually pass.

A bit late to this, and I'm afraid to say your experience is typical. WS's Realistic Water is notorious for many things, not least of which is the considerable time it can take to set. I believe they claim it sets in two hours, but I found it would go off in two days if you were very lucky, but two weeks was more like it and two months far from unknown. It also shrinks considerably when drying, resulting in a pronounced meniscus around the edge, and it wicks badly, too if it gets within sniffing distance of any ground cover. I realised it was a bad buy the first time I used it but because it was expensive I persevered with it rather than taking the sensible course of action and throwing it away. I've since bought a tub of Mig's equivalent but have not yet used it to find out how it compares. It cannot possibly be any worse.

I've never seen an explanation why, but I do know that for some reason compensated locos are far more likely to be unsettled by uneven weight distribution than locos with rigid chassis. Some years ago I built a compensated EM gauge Avonside SS (Trojan) that ended up with a CofB just a couple of millimetres away from where it ought to have been. The result was a loco that was capable of prodigous feats of haulage in one direction but could wheelspin when running light in the opposite direction. There was no room to correct the balance by adding more weight at the light end, so I had to remove weight from the heavy end, and even though I ended up with a loco slightly lighter than it was before it is now capable of out-hauling the prototype in both directions.

Punched granite? What's that?

Ah! That's why the actual hopper (the only bit I've actually done) has some unconventional interpretations on the subject of 'square' when it comes to the corners. My tube of Squadron Green's dried up, too. Thanks for the warning!

I'm half way through building my first. Is there something I should know?

When first created they were a useful place to post whimsical, light-hearted asides and wry observations on life, the likes of which most hobbies need if they are not to become too introverted and/or anal retentive. It still occasionally gets used for such postings! It's only in the most recent incarnation of the forum that they have become used for what quite definitely ought to be either PMs or threads within the main forum. This, I suspect, suggests that the part of the website where status updates are made does not make it anything like clear enough exactly what the area is intended for and where anything posted there will end up.

The postman has just been, but there is still no sign of Issue 138. Has anyone else got theirs yet?

Some time ago there was a layout called, IIRC, Teetering-by-the-Well where the owner got around exactly that problem by removing the visible bits of every other sleeper. He left the web beneath the rails untouched so the structural integrity of the points was retained. When the layout's owner (Dave Balcombe?) died a few years back his family kept his website, on which he detailed what he did and how, going but it now seems to have disappeared into history. Perhaps someone with a better memory than me can recall what he did in better detail? I'm not sure if he improved the somewhat skinny appearance of the remaining 4mm scale sleepers by adding a wider, cosmetic 'sleeper' of thin plasticard or if that was something I thought of/suggested.

Smartphones had been around for getting on for ten years before I finally got one and I very quickly discovered that a degree of existing knowledge that I simply didn't have was automatically assumed and that I was too far behind to stand any chance of catching up. I'm now in the early planning stages of a new layout and was considering going DCC, but am rapidly coming to the conclusion that exactly the same thing applies.

I think we ought to re-name Giles 'Doc' and club together to get him a De Lorean.

I think reversed 'N's were quite common on the Western - particularly on the '1-in-xx' of gradient posts. I recall seeing more than one photographed by Ben Ashworth.