Most of the owners of the track which was used at Shildon last year are upgrading it by putting it on boards. They will all need track gauges. At least one of them is interested in building turnouts, so will need machined switch, stock, point, splice and check rails, and tie bars. If the club has a ...

Do you mean the Ejector?
If so, you'll probably have to build it yourself, but Don Young drew one up for his A3, drawings in Locomotives Large and Small.

Brilliant, when can we come and play?

Brent is dead right. Try as we might, we all compromise somewhere in building a model. So, if you scale up from a model, you are starting from someone else's compromise. If you scale up from a 4mm scale model, any error is multiplied by almost 7 times. Many small models are injection moulded, and al...

The van is definitely not scratch built, it is one of my kits, and as the seller doesn't know that, he's probably bought a job lot of stuff. There are a quite few parts missing, brake parts, tie rods, axleguard ties, coupling chains, roof, and body detail, but so long as it's been put together prope...

One plate would be the owners plate, lettered Gloucester, Railway Carriage and, Wagon Company Limited,Owners, xxxxx commas denoting a new line, the xxxx of course was their ownership number which would not correspond to the wagon number painted on the side. This for a wagon on hire. One plate would ...

Keith, I use a slightly different equasion, but it of course gives the same result, yes, your tanker should have no problem on 21 foot curves. In fact, it should go round significantly tighter ones as you have not allowed for flange clearance, the gap between a flange and rail when the other flange ...

Filling from the bottom to avoid frothing makes sense, but my LMS drawing shows a 4" BSP inlet on the top as well as the manhole. The bottom connections are marked as 3" milk cock . Perhaps the inlet (that's the word used on the drawing) was piped to the bottom internally. But why 4". If a 3" connec...

Hi Jordan, and welcome.

Back issues are available from Liz Cooling, her contact details are on the home page.

"I might leave giving it a coat of lacquer until after Gilling."

I'm pretty sure that the word laquer implies that it is cellulose (or similar) based. That will certainly make a mess of your paintwork.

The lack of clearance was always a worry, as was the possibility of getting things in the wrong place, hence the use of the 3/32 rods through the body and underframe. Entirely unprototypical, but useful insurance. I'll admit that I had to get the grinder onto mine to improve the clearance, but that ...

I've just received this from Dave Smith in Australia. "I've just discovered the GL5 Forum pages. Great stuff! Re your comment about corrosion of your soldering bit when assembling that hopper wagon. One wrinkle I know to prevent tip corrosion/erosion is to take out the tip, file it to the form requi...

You are perfectly right Richard, weight needs a mention. Lets do some more sums. The coefficient of friction between steel (rail) and steel (tyre) is about 25%. If a loco weighs 100lbs, then it can not develop a pull at the drawhook of more than 25% of that, ie 25lbs, it will just slip. If we imagin...

Whilst Ballan is quite right when he says that model 08s use four axle hung motors, you must also remember that the top speed is 15mph, as he said. According to the Charlatan drawings, it was designed to pull 8 adults at 8mph. But we don't want anything like that. For our purposes, it would be much ...

I was pleased to see that you'd made a start on the yard, how is progress coming on, and do you have a track plan which you could put on the forum for us to see, please.

Derek's funeral is at 1pm on Friday the 31st of December at Orton Gospel Hall, Malborne Way, Orton Malborne, Peterborough PE2 5LX. If you need directions please call Derek's son, Simon, on 07786 701 475. Derek's wife, Barbara, has asked that instead of spending money on flowers, could folks make a d...

Sadly, Derek passed away peacefully while watching Country File on TV yesterday. He, and his wife Barbara, were strong supporters of GL5 and the Ryedale Mainline Rallies, he had a knack of finding jobs that no-one else realised needed doing, and was a valuable asset to the group. Our sympathies go o...

Blackgates loco (Charlatan) is something of a compromise though they will supply drawings separately, if you want accurate drawings, the NRM definitely has a good GA. Obviously it's not 5" scale, but it is well dimensioned.

A pair on wheels mounted on the axle - Would the holes in the wheels be in line with each other or just ramdon - ie as pressed on but not in line. Don't know with carriage wheels, but Paul Hutfield has looked at lots of photos of wagons with 3 hole disc wheels and concludes that they were in line. ...

Eddy wrote, "On side float, my experience with locomotives and carriages is that there was no intentional float in outside axleboxes, the brass sat between two thrust faces, and any side float, in say the middle axle of a tender was generated by widening the distance between the front and back of th...