Northroader

They were Alco built in America for British Steel at Margam in South Wales.

Bob, pay more attention.

You’ll be needing another track on the front of your diorama then?

Put “NCC” on the tender, and folks will be none the wiser.

You are reaching true enlightenment.

Cooking foil does it for me.

I’ve heard of Cheops, which dysentery was Maslow?

I’d be inclined to ditch the right hand crossover, just a straight entry into the back siding from the fiddle yard through just one point out of the loop? On due consideration, you would lose the private siding aspect, so maybe not, perhaps something like Ruyton Road, plus the engine shed? https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/154530-ruyton-road-revisited-what-to-do-with-an-old-classic/ sorry, I always think Iain Rice added at least one more point than necessary, now that Whitley could lose a siding, and keep it all compact and less points, and… (why don’t you just shut up, Bob?)

And you can get close ups in colour of the old green scheme here.

You could get the blue and red on Mark 1s as well. The story goes there was this derailment up Ebbw Vale steel works. Some 100ton bogie oil tanks broke loose and went out of the end of the siding. They were loaded with 3500’ oil which was being warmed up for discharge, and one of the pipes underneath got knocked off, and all the b***** oil ran out and set. When it’s cold it’s thicker than tar, very black and very sticky. There was a blizzard going on, so it got covered in snow. The breakdown gang got the tanks back on the line, by which time oilskins, boots, were completely f*****, and the inside of the two coaches (old bow ends) ruined. so we got two mark ones in the wagon shop, strip out, mess, riding, tool, and packing store conversion. No drawings, you just wing it. To finish off we just painted out the grey upper panels, and did them red, as an arty hand book “the corporate image of BR” said that was the scheme for service vehicles. Once they were seen out and about at Canton the people at Derby Tech centre complained we had taken their livery, and we should have done them plain red, but red and blue was how they stayed.

Very good pieces of research, well done.

Sorry to see Brookhall Mill go, I think it appealed to me for its compact nature, and also you captured a very GNR look to the scene. Also admire your confidence of setting a timetable for your modelling, and on your capable output it looks quite achievable. NCC narrow gauge here we come!

No real engineering tolerances here, it’s really what you can lay your hands on at a show. Pick up a bit of rod, or small tube, and slide it in and out of a bigger piece, trying not to have a suggestive leer as you’re doing it, to find a sliding fit, not force. I think the rod in the picture was Slaters .050” brass, and the tube is around 3mm outside diameter, but do check the fit. The rod ends up slighted cocked over, with rounded end, and will transfer the electrics as well, which will simplify the job.

I like using cork tiles 3mm thick, a foot square, with an adhesive back. They come from Wickes builders merchants. I think the EU has a thing about cork products, they’re not so common these days. At board joins the track is soldered onto a wide piece of copper clad glass fibre strip, with a securing screw in the middle (where the cladding is filed away.) There’s a thin ply packing strip underneath to make up the level with the cork underlay. If the track is fixed securely at both ends of the board like this, you must allow for expansion due to temperature change along the track, somewhere along its length on the board. The track locates across the join using lengths of brass tube soldered on the outside of the rail web, with a brass rod having a sliding fit in the tube soldered inside the tubes on one side or the other of the join. (there’s no securing screw in the picture, as the track is glued down on a 10mm foamboard baseboard)

I would be inclined to hang my hat on the backscene. Those big grey hills shrouded in cloud, a stretch of calm sea, a rocky foreshore with some drystone walls, just like what appears in your photographs. Have that behind, and folks will say that’s Fenit, however you juggle the trackwork. Keep it simple, bare minimum for what you want to operate, don’t worry too much about how long things are on the full size job, and how many sidings there should be.