Horsetan

It may still be worth asking Chris if he'd be willing to sell the LongRider etch only, so that you can experiment with other motors. I have two full LoRiders/LongRiders for my Derby Lightweights, but would probably need more etches for other purposes.

I still have the problem of bushing the AGW P4 wheelsets down to 1/1.5mm dia. but think I might - just might - have a solution that's been hiding in plain sight all this time....

Feeling a little cross?

Some of them might have become nuns.

Having now acquired the appropriate press tools from Fohrmann, the IRM Mk2 bogie wheels have finally been removed from the axles without damage.

The wheel has come full circle. It used to be the fashion to replace plastic moulded detail with whitemetal/brass/copper/nickel-silver, but now we seem to be reverting to plastics, albeit 3D-printed

I've still got the popcorn out....

Mark Seward seems to be able to find these half-forgotten things. He now has Blacksmith/Mallard, David Geen rolling stock, Haye Developments, the oul K's Milestones kits, and now a bit of Worsley Works. That's quite lot of things to have on your plate...

There seems to have been an unhealthy adherence to grey, possibly because it was cheap. The seat backs in the photo appear more blue than grey...

Pity there wasn't the use of colour film for those

Not anymore it's not!

Unfortunately that works both ways. A couple of years ago, I picked up a part-built Backwoods Miniatures kit for the Industrial Garratt. Whoever had built it (to OO) had used Araldite throughout - body, both chassis, cylinders, the lot. It took at least a month to carve and scrape the dried Araldite off and separate all the parts for proper solder re-assembly; the stuff was everywhere and had set very hard. A proper nightmare. Dunno why people do it that way.

...ironically, that's why FREMO works, because it's an exhibition in itself.

There have been a small number of useful layouts meeting these requirements, including: Borchester Market (OO) Ambergate (originally EM, but now P4) and from time to time magazines such as the now defunct Great Western Railway Journal would publish articles on operations at real locations such as Penzance, accompanied by a track diagram. I still think a FREMO network would give everyone the best chance of operating to a common standard, with trains visibly going from place to place and covering quite a distance in the process.

It certainly feels like that even for P4. I attend three shows a year: ExpoEM Bracknell, RailEx Stoke Mandeville, and Scaleforum - and that's mostly for kit and parts buying direct from the traders, rather than online ordering and waiting for the post.