Horsetan

...including principles. Just look at governments (and local governments) in modern times.

A fair number of British mainland shows have been much worse. Fortunately, all the ribald remarks about brutal BO seem to be getting through to the extent that the recent Scaleforum show was BO-free!

Yes, I have a number of these still for sale... *discreet kof*

I thought it might be loco-related. Just didn't know which one. Had hoped for the J15 with "Z" boiler option, as per 186.

Unless ye're really good at sawing up mazak, this is not a route I'd be trying. The Dapol 52 bogies/gear towers, motor and flywheels may be adapted, and the drive shafts will probably need shortening to fit inside the "A" shell, but the underframe and mazak internal casting are another matter altogether.

LOL. eBay rubbish is always amusing! "Gosturde" (his real name is Greg Diffen, he originates from Australia, and he owns and runs a big collection of American Studebaker cars) is infamous for the hilariously unrealistic price tags that he places on almost all of his stock. There's some real sh*te that he's been demanding over top dollar for - hence he's been stuck with them for years. See also "micmcn" of Cartmel, whose asking prices are also unreal.

Why be scared? The tools and gauges are available to help. The only thing that's different is the track gauge; all the other track-building principles remain the same. Hopefully the degree of rust on the rails - a characteristic of much of the network - will also be portrayed!

I wonder if that's loco-related....?

Thanks. Think that has fixed it now

I have always logged in at this address. Should I now change this to remove the "www" part of it?

That's what I thought, but I'm definitely having to log-on twice. That also makes me wonder: if I don't log into my photo albums, does that prevent everyone else seeing my photos?

Am slightly mystified by the requirement to log-on twice - once for the Forums, and again to see my photo Albums. If I don't log into my photo Albums, the Forum prevents me from seeing my own photos that are part of my posts. Is there a way of adjusting Forum settings so that I only need to log-on once?

Sure, 'twas going that way.

Should that not be "c-arse-tomers"?

One question (which maybe I shouldn't ask, but it's one that I have had personal experience of) that intrigues me: - with your collection presumably running into hundreds of models (some of them clearly very rare or one-of-a-kind), what arrangements will ye be making for the care of it "when the time comes"? Will it all go to a museum?

Here's an overview of the original Finney inside motion parts - some of which will find their way into no.171: The LSWR "T9" has 4-bar slidebars, matching cylinder glands and ends on the fret. The motion bracket also looks as if it could be adapted: ...but the real beauty is the pair of cast brass cruciform crossheads which lend themselves almost perfectly to 171's insides: Here's the connecting and eccentric rods fret from the GW 2721: ....the connecting rods, at just short of 26mm centres, seem almost exactly right for 171, though a bit of lengthening wouldn't come amiss. I was also sifting through the small pile of Brassmasters LMS loco kits that I have picked up secondhand over the years (never buy them new if ye want to save cash), and realised that the 4F also has working inside motion included in it, which almost immediately led me to consider if the motion bracket, rockers and reversing gear / counterweights could be adapted into the "S". I think I did hint that this wasn't going to be a quick build, but I'm so grateful to you for providing all those invaluable close-ups of 171's inside motion that most of us would never normally give a thought about.

It has been a journey - an essentially "simple"-looking 4-4-0 actually has quite a lot of parts crammed into it!

No need: ye use the same checkrail gauge available for "standard" P4. If the Stores has none in stock, use a 0.68mm spark plug feeler gauge as a substitute. If ye want it "dead scale", use 0.58mm. 21mm is just so much more convincing than "OO" for Irish 5'3", whereas "OO" is almost right for South African / Japanese 3'6"!!! "EM" is almost correct if doing Irish broad guage in "HO"/3.5mm scale. Some of the Australian finescale modellers who follow the Victorian Railways 5'3" in "HO" have gone beyond "EM" and have pushed out to 18.37mm gauge.

Looks like a standard 16-inch LMS/BR buffer. Not necessarily rare, particularly if you are in the preservation industry.

Märklin have always been quite idiosyncratic - still sticking to the 3-rail/stud-contact 16vAC system long after almost everyone else had abandoned it for 12vDC 2-rail. If you've ever been lucky enough to visit Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, almost all of the lengthy railway systems there are Märklin-based, so they must be doing something right. Very robust engines - think equivalent of HD/Wrenn, but to somewhat finer, more-detailed standards. They still insist on using quite coarse flanges on their wheels, though - possibly the only thing that detracts from the models produced today (mind you, Roco and Fleischmann aren't necessarily better in this department either). The commemorative edition of "01" pacific 01 150 is interesting. This was one of the engines severely damaged in the 2005 Nuremburg Museum fire, and was extensively repaired in Meiningen before being put back into service a couple of years back. 23 105 has also been cosmetically restored. I'm not sure how far advanced work on the other engines is, e.g. 45 010

Some more water has passed under the oul bridge. As I now do two jobs during the week, as well as helping to look after a Thoroughbred racehorse at weekends, modelling time has been severely cut down, but I haven't been totally idle. Richard McLachlan of the IRRS has stumbled across some clearer motion drawings for the "S" - these are marked Dundalk drawing no.s 202N and 203N. He initially thought that they dated from the time when the "S" and "S2" were rebuilt in 1938, but the markings clearly show they were done at the end of 1925. With some of the known dimensions, I managed to reduce one down to 4mm scale, and the resultant copy is tiny but still just about legible! The drawings also confirm that the distance between the frames is 4ft 8ins, so my original Maplin jig-spacer width of 16mm is almost there, though I am wondering if a few washers might help pad things out. There are still a couple more drawings that I need - mostly of the cylinder block (103S and 105S), which is where things get interesting because the SSM kit smokebox frame partly extends downwards into the space where the piston valves of the inside cylinders should be! I did manage to buy Martin Finney's inside motion kit for the LSWR T9, and was mighty pleased to find that the crossheads are almost exactly the right "+" cross-section for the "S", the matching slidebars and piston rod glands are adaptable, whilst the motion bracket looks like it could be split and widened to fit between the frames of the "S". I can use the cranks from the GW 1854/2721 inside motion kit as these are near-identical in shape to those on the "S". This leaves the connecting rods themselves; it's 6ft 6ins (26mm in 4mm scale) between the centre of the "little end" and the centre of the "big end", so whether I adapt the rods from the GW or LSWR loco is not that important - the plain fact is that both types will need modifying! At the moment the only scratchbuilt parts would appear to be the rockers and their brackets, as well as the back-end of the cylinder block. A bit of work has been done on the cab - mainly the front overlay and the rear splasher tops: It is important not to have any of it lopsided - all of the various holes and slots must line up with those on the inner cab structure, so it's out with the hairgrips again: I found it was better to tack-solder the overlay in place before trying to form the splasher tops.