Horsetan

Same on mine. The interesting thing about the box that mine came in was that it was labelled "J26 - October 1976"!!! Did Terry MacDermott start drawing the design as early as that? The Glasgow tank eventually became part of the Perseverance etched kit range, I think, which became part of the Puffers brand run by the late Chris Parrish. One kit came up on eBay last year and sat around for some weeks. All of the Perseverance/Westward/Puffers kits and parts effectively died when Chris passed away. There was some talk a while ago that the range had now found a new owner, but it will take many years for anything to be relaunched as the chassis designs are now mostly very old and need to be redesigned - most were the work of Rod Neep, whose design techniques tended to worsen if the chassis was complicated by outside valve gear. I remember buying a Perseverance chassis kit meant tor the Ivatt "2" 2-6-0 and 2-6-2Ts, and then realising the frame profiles were completely wrong in front, and the motion bracket design would obstruct the operation of the valve gear! So that was 25 quid wasted. Likewise the kit for the Bulleid Light Pacific could not be built properly due to design mistakes in the crosshead and slidebar - 20 quid wasted there.

Problem half-solved, so. I think Branchlines still sell a split-axle conversion kit, so that could help with the cut-and-shut.

Might be better to start with a set of Romford "EM" axles, although good luck finding a supply of those now that Markits is dead.

The subsidiary signal is "off", so it looks like the ECS is being directed to the carriage siding/loop rather than going all the way to Belfast.

For the Irish countryman in that period, a decent pair of wellies was an everyday must. Maybe ModelU could be encouraged to expand their line of 3D-printed agricultural figures to include Irish farmers?

Ultrascale will make you correct length ⅛" axles (should be around 25.2mm long)....if you can wait 6 months. I had this done for the S-class and B1a, and will likely do the same for the J15. On the other hand, if you have suitable ⅛" steel rod (or even Sharman overlength axles that you trim yourself), and a back-to-back gauge, you could cut your own axles using nothing more than a piercing saw. I'd be interested to see what a modern J26 chassis kit via CAD would look like today. You'd certainly have the facility to design the forked coupling rods.

Jaysus, 10 years.... Too many other distractions, including an oul Citroën (now 38 years old and very nearly road tax exempt) in the intervening time. I really must get 560 back on the road. I did the High Level hornblocks - admittedly the easiest part of the build - but took a long time to decide which generation of chassis to use. I prefer n/s, but the original brass one was much friendlier. The coupling rod design didn't help either, when I realised that real J26s had rods forked on the crankpin. Looking at the leading section of the nickel-silver rod, this actually matches the brass one, so I thought it possible to "cheat" the forked rod by making a 3-layer sandwich, the nickel-silver layer being on top/outside of the brass ones. That's about as far as I'd reached before life got in the way. I'm after getting the box out again this evening and reviewing what I was going to do next.

....and yet this is the way that almost all chassis kits were designed in the 1980s onwards, rods jointed on the crankpin, even though most actually had the joint on the knuckle. For the real-life J26, the front section of the coupling rods were in fact forked on the middle crankpin, and the rear rod section fitted into the fork, so the fully-assembled rods were then fitted all in one; this can't have been an easy job, requiring at least three men to lift the full length of the rods as a single unit. Fun fact: on the LNER, the Gresley D49 4-4-0s had a similar arrangement in which the connecting rod big-end was forked, with the leading boss of the coupling rod fitting into the fork - they were apparently called Woodard connecting rods, after the name of the patent holder.

Sharman wheels had the one advantage of having a wider range of wheel diameters and wheel centre types than everyone else put together. I really need a set for an ex-LNWR Claughton, and Sharman were the only wheels that correctly reproduced the outsize wheel bosses. I didn’t think the moulded-in crankpins were much good, though - they were too short if you had an outside-cylindered locomotive and wanted to fit connecting rods that had full-width big ends. They were fine if you were modelling an engine with inside motion, needing only coupling rods.

Probably for DikTok likes

I'd be waiting for the finescale version: Proto120 or ProTTo3

Christ.

I imagine it may have been similar to when Christ fed the 5000 using only loaves and fish....

That's basically Lord Mandelson, no?

The owner refurbished the shop front a few years ago, as it was visibly down-at-heel. The shop window display is still UV-faded, though!

Be careful what you wish for.

Some model shops go on for decades owing to the fact that the original proprietor may have bought the freehold to the premises. My nearest local model railway shop is Junction 20 Models, Kings Langley; in fact it's the only one of its kind left. Although most of the interesting stuff is in the secondhand area at the back of the shop, they do have plenty of new items out front.

Smethwick's isn't bad either.

It's my view that the Class 35 Hymeks are still the best all-round that Heljan ever produced. Their Class 17 Clayton was the most realistic 'cos it kept breaking down, just like the real things. However, the spare parts were the best bit about Heljan - incredibly useful for lifting / modifying other models.

I have two-and-a-half Heljan Hymeks, half a Western, and one of their 1366 class pannier tanks. All bought at substantial discounts, and all for conversion to P4. When Howes of Oxford were running the Heljan spare parts service years ago, I frequently hoovered up whatever they had available, including a set of spares for the Met Bo-Bo, as they were useful for detailing a resin Bo-Bo body. Likewise, the Hymek bogie casing is the correct overall wheelbase for a CIE Sulzer.

I notice a fair few retailers - AGR, Rails of Sheffield, etc. - have come out with quite verbose "Support your local model shop" press releases on antisocial media in the last 48 hours. Could this possibly be related to the Accurascale takeover? I think we should be told..... The Markits wheel option is dead in the water as supplies are no longer available.

I suspect Heljan spares will become unavailable. This is a shame, as they were useful for other things.

It'll be waiting like a Quoiled spring

World domination can come at considerable cost, as I'm sure the Middle East might agree at the moment....

David Geen kit?