David Holman

Fine work and only goes to show how satisfying it is to make your own.

Yup, Xuron works on track just fine, but wouldn't want to use my NWSL Chopper on copperclad - the blade is just a safety razor blade. Copperclad is not that easy to cut. Doesn't like a craft knife, doesn't snap, takes time to saw and hence often use a slitting disc. Xuron cutter ok on thin pieces, but needs cleaning up with a file after.

Whatever works for you may be the answer. I've used 145 solder wire for years. A half kilo roll cost thirty quid ten years ago and replaced it for over fifty quid last year. However, seriously more expensive if you buy it by the metre! Though I tend to use 145 as my go to (because it flows really nicely), also have a stick of both 180 and 80 (low melt), plus the standard 240 wire with a flux core. When you are adding details with a kit, it helps to have different temperatures to work with. That said, rarely use low melt, as prefer 5 minute epoxy to fix castings, not least because this gives you time to adjust the position of each piece. Likewise, find wire solder easier to work with that stick. The purists would not doubt say you shouldn't carry solder to the work on the tip of your iron anyway, though am afraid old habits die hard!

Steam locos in the USA often burned oil, notably the Mallet 4-8-8-4 Big Boys. At over 560 tons, the fireman would not want to be shovelling coal on a beast like that!

As Noel says, "Respect". There's been more than a few times when I've been building locos and got to that nearly there stage only to find something's not right. However, the bullet has been well and truly bitten and well done you. Scary stuff, but worth it! The loco is well and truly emerging now and definitely looking the part.

A grand train on a grand layout!

Lovely bits of detailing, which really lift the model.

Things continue to move slowly on, but the list of stuff to do is getting shorter. Made the tender buffers today, so first up are a few photos of the lathe, with a piece of 6mm brass rod in place. At the risk of sounding like I know what I'm doing [hardly!], here's what I've discovered so far, so feel free to correct if you know better, I won't be offended. The right hand end is called the tailstock. On this mini lathe it amounts to a steel cone, with a pin point tip, which is set in a ball bearing. A wheel/handle at the right hand side moves this up to the piece of metal you are turning. This needs a small hole drilling in the centre and the cone in the tailstock is pushed into this and fixed with an Allen key. The business end of the lathe is the headstock and has a three jaw chuck/collet to hold the metal you are working. This is tightened by two short stainless steel rods. Needless to say, it pays to remove these before starting the lathe! Went there and got the T shirt early on. No harm done, but lesson learned. Between the head and tailstocks is the 'bed' and in front of this is the small table, which holds the cutting tool - in this case, a piece of hardened 4mm square steel, ground to a cutting edge. Many thanks to Eoin/Murrayec for pointing me in the direction of getting additional cutters [see previous posts]. The cutting tool can be moved in and out and side to side by two hand wheels, rather like the GW Models rivet press and like the latter, one full turn of each wheel equals 1mm of travel. However, because this is a fairly cheap and cheerful lathe, there is a bit of slack in the wheels, so cutting is not 100% accurate and you are relying on your eyes as much as anything, plus stopping regularly to check measurements with a vernier gauge. I also use files to finish surfaces, though with the headstock spinning at 2000rpm next to your fingers, this certainly requires care. Indeed, using the lathe certainly demands respect. I must admit that some of my modelling tends to be a bit cavalier at times, so the new lathe is forcing me to take my time, wear eye protectors and think things through a bit more. No bad thing then. The other photos show what else has been going on: On the boiler, have fettled a white metal, safety valve casting to the appropriate shape and added the operating lever from the cab from a piece of NS. Inside the cab, a piece of plasticard has been fashioned & scribed for wood planking for the floor A hinged 'fall plate' has been made from some 10 thou NS, with a piece of brass tube soldered to it. Two split pins have been set into the end of the footplate and a piece of NS wire goes through these and the brass tube, to make the hinge. On the tender itself, the spring hangers have been added from micro strip, fixed with cyano, while more plastic sheet has been used to make the front of the tender. Looking photos, it seems that wooden planks form the front face and surround the coal chute Finally, for now, made a tender brake stand from a piece of copper tube, into which a white metal casting for the handle has been fitted. So, getting there and have just heard from ABC that a motor/gearbox is on its way, so hopefully will be able to get that fitted soon, along with pickups, wiring and so on. Still waiting for thicker brass bar for the chimney and dome though.

Indeed. Point timbers could be 12 inches wide, whereas plain track usually had nine inch timbers.

Thought he did. Wonder if it is still available? Suspect the main problem will be working out how to fit a mechanism - although at least the sidetanks will help.

Have worked my way through to the tank engines section and the intriguing notes about 0-4-2T Sprite and its Pay Carriage. It appears that for pretty much any layout depicting the period 1873 to 1927 (ok, probably not many!), a model is essential. The combo ran 1.2 million miles on a two week circuit of the whole GSWR system. It was on the road six days a week from 7am to 4.30pm. Remarkable for an engine weighing only 21 tons and with a tractive effort of just over 2000lb. The fact that it appeared in Sligo every other Thursday has inevitably got me thinking about building a model for Belmullet, although not until the mail train project is completed of course! Then there is Pat, the 0-2-2 tractor built for the overhead gantry in Cork. Tractive effort is stated as 495lbs. One wonders how it managed to pull itself along, nevermind the 120 tons of coal that was it's day job.

Apart from the sharp curves, there looks to be plenty of operation potential here, with up to five sidings to give traffic variety. My exhibition layouts keep me amused with just a loop and two sidings, plus another deemed off scene, so should be lots of fun to be had here. Enjoy!

Good advice! Alternatively, depending very much on the overall plan, consider building a specific section like a branch terminus, then gradually add other sections as you go along. Cyril had some great ideas for track plans, though if your preference is more for freight traffic, look at Iain Rice's diagrams. Cyril preferred passenger traffic on most of his and was happy with tight curves too.

Slow progress on the D16, as is often the case with detailing. Many thanks to those who have provided help with info on the tender, especially Leslie [of the Syndicate] and Mayner. I think I've got the general idea for the front, though it still needs the timber cladding to be added. The overall shape is quite complex, so much faffing about has gone on with various shapes cut from thin brass and nickel silver. Other tender detailing has included the axles boxes and springs. The former came from butchered white metal wagon W irons, while the latter came from the scrapbox. Neither are perfect, but hopefully pass muster for now. The loco buffers are the result of my first experiments with the new lathe. The main body is 6mm brass tube first tapered with the cutting tool, then finished with files and sanding sticks.. Next drilled the narrow end to take 1.6mm brass tube, which was itself drilled out 1.2mm to take a drawing pin for the actual buffer head. This was turned down to 8mm diameter using files in the chuck of a mini drill. Crude, but it seems to work. This assembly was then soldered to a square of brass, with a rivet punched in each corner and then the whole thing stuck to the buffer beam with 5 minute epoxy. Am quite pleased with the result, not least because it shows how a complex shape can be created by breaking it down into basic sub sections. However, the buffers are nearly a scale two feet long overall, which caused a minor panic when I tried the loco and tender on the turntable. As can be seen from the photos, clearances are [very] tight, but it will just fit - albeit invoking the Westport rule again as, like that prototype, the loco will foul the running line when being turned.

I'm terrified of Ikea as a whole for the same reason.

Very much the Beyer Peacock face. Those rivets just keep on coming, don't they!

All gleaned from the good Mr Gravett. If you've seen Arun Quay, you'd never believe there was a join down the middle, such is the way he's used the car body filler. There's always Iain Rice's jigsaw joins, but they don't lend themselves to crating up for transport.

As it is a slate roof, I'd be tempted to use either strips of photocopier paper, snipped every 4mm, or one of the downloaded printed sheets.

Top quality running! The track looks really good too.

Fantastic! Reeks of atmosphere and feel sure Pat Whitehouse must be lurking somewhere.

Good to know there were slips, Paul. As for the backscene joins, nothing fancy here, I just hide them behind trees or buildings. Another trick on a painted backscene is include a church spire or similar, with the join between two angles coinciding with the baseboard join. Easy on a made up layout, where you can choose where to put things, but less so if copying a prototype, where there may be no convenient view blocker to use. That said, the backscene doesn't have to line up with the baseboard joint, while following the likes of Gorden Gravett, one could always use roller blind material to make a full length backscene. Bit of a faff to set up at shows though. Check out my Fintonagh thread where I've used many of these tricks to hide the join.

31x10? Sounds wonderful! Enjoy!

Thanks Eoin, have been looking at the Banggood site, so much checkout Arcueurotrade too. Another bit of learning as I go along!

New Toy I now own a lathe! Ok, probably a good idea for proper workshop people to look away now, because this is certainly no Cowan's, or even a Unimat. And it is small too, with a footprint barely bigger than a sheet of A4, but it only cost me £200, a third of the price of a Unimat or Proxxon and, fingers crossed, will do what I need. Had spent several weeks before Christmas musing over this 'mini lathe', which comes from the land of Amazon, aka China. The bed is max 135mm and the largest diameter it will turn is 50mm, but given that what I want it for is to do things like chimneys, domes, buffers and so on, then this should be more than enough, plus it is rated as man enough for brass and aluminium. It took me several weeks before I took the plunge, because I couldn't decide whether it was better to: a] do nothing, because my model club has a proper lathe b] spend real money on a 'proper' lathe or c] take a chance on this basic machine In the end, another Lockdown sort of forced my hand, as I can't see me getting down the club until Easter, plus the reviews I read of the Proton and Unimat machines didn't suggest that spending the extra money would ultimately do any more than this model. Time will tell... I wasn't expecting it to arrive for at least another week, so was somewhat surprised to be given a well wrapped box which my wife had found in the garden waste bin! Usually on these mail order things, you get multiple alerts on line and by text, telling you of progress - as per the new LSWR locomotives book. Just as well we did some gardening, prior to the bin men coming on Monday. From the Amazon web pages, it appeared that it would be a kit of parts, but everything comes pretty well assembled and it just needed bolting to the baseplate. However, instructions left a bit to be desired, so for once, I resisted my usual temptation to set up and start using immediately and instead reached once more for Geoff Holt's loco building book [part two] where he takes you through basic lathe operation. Indeed, it was from reading this in the first place that I decided that a small lathe might be something I could cope with - plus this mini lathe certainly isn't going to take up much storage space. The only problem this morning, when it at last was time to have a go, was finding suitable material to turn, not least because my order of brass road from Eileen's hasn't arrived yet. Eventually, managed to find some 5mm brass rod and, carefully following instructions in Geoff's book was able to spend a happy hour reducing the rod in diameter in various ways. Have since managed to turn two tapered buffer shanks for the D16. The main downsides thus far is there doesn't appear to be an option to add a drill collet to the tailstock and there is only a single cutting tool, which currently makes 'parting off' difficult. Hence, need to go on line to see what I can find, but even so, am confident I should be able to use my little lathe to turn up things like chimneys, domes and the like, while it is certainly happy enough with brass. Guess the main question will be how robust and long lived it will be, but hopefully, if I treat it carefully, I should get some good use out of it.

Makes sense to me Phil. If you really want the gauge to look right, then Irish EM is a sensible compromise. Yes, P4 has been shown to work well in 'standard' gauge, but it is arguable that it took many years to get there and many exhibition visitors will attest to the fact that layouts that ran well in the early days were pretty rare in P4. There are many more aids available now, especially through the Society, but the facts remain that an extra degree of skill is required to make P4 work compared to EM. Some may disagree with this and I'll be the first to apologise if I'm wrong! My own experience is that I started off in EM, with no prior experience, and was able to build an effective exhibition layout having only basic tools and no prior workshop skills whatsoever. One of the most important aspects of doing Irish EM for me is that wagons, coaches and especially RTR diesels are fairly easy to adapt. Yes, track has to be hand made, but even then, C&L do point kits, with ready made crossing vees and machined point blades. While neither of which are that difficult to make, if you've not done it before, then a kit is a great way to learn, not least because there are instructions to follow. The key component is of course the track gauge, so finding someone to do a suitable roller gauge is essential. After that, there is nothing that should deter an enthusiastic beginner. A final thought, which I read somewhere recently is that when you buy something, you are the owner, but when you make something you become a creator and I rather like that!