Hi Keith, When drilling the drawhooks (which are stainless), you NEED a sharp drill. If it blunts it will rub and work harden the steel which will then be virtually impossible to drill again. As soon as it stops cutting freely, resharpen. A bit of RTD helps. I find the swarf comes off in fairly long...

Hi Gordon, Welcome, and congratulations on making a start. I admit I have never laid any 5" gauge track, but would still like to make a couple of comments. If you are using PNP garden track, then the sleepers, which are 22mm wide, would be laid at 100mm centres. Between each pair of sleepers (lookin...

I've made some more progress. The door operating shaft brackets were etched in steel with the side stanchions, they just needed a bush and strip of steel soldering in, then shortening. P1010519.JPG The brake lever guards are a little different from normal because the bottom the two legs are not join...

With all this good weather we've been having, I've spent more time gardening than building the hopper, but now with the change, I've got the side stanchions on. As suspected, reforming the soldering iron tip helped a lot, the soldered joints are generally much neater. 21t 2, joint.jpg I fitted the s...

At last I've made some progress on my hopper. Unlike Richard, I assembled mine by soldering the vertical corners of all four body panels together first, then bending them in and soldering downover. This may have been a mistake, as the opening for one of the bottom doors isn't as square as it should ...

Lovely job Richard, just like the real thing, will be a pity to paint it.

I've restarted on mine, made a new body as the old one was just a trial from scrap pieces. Will post some pictures after the weekend hopefully.

Wonder how Paul is getting on with his.

Regarding the spacing of sidings in pairs, I don't think it would be a good idea, what do you do if you want to couple a wagon on the next track but one, reach over a train of vans and struggle, or step over TWO rows of wagons and turn round. I think that idea is courting disaster. As Ballan mention...

I bought Brownlie's book years ago, hoping it would be help with model building, but it's hasn't. There's a huge amount of information, some photos and a few drawings, but nothing like what you would need to build a model, it's more a survey of crane development. If you come acrooss one cheap it may...

I have to admit that when you asked for IMS transfers I was a bit disappointed, it seemed such a boring livery, but now I've seen it I thinkl you've made a good decision. It looks great. And when you get the lettering on the solebars it will really look colourful. You've, made a lovely job of it, es...

Lovely job Richard. I can't find any information on the IMS colours, but the photos in LMS coaches suggest that the saddles and other above solebar bits were a lighter colour than the tank. This difference also shows on some other owners tanks, could it be that the LMS at one time painted the underf...

Well done to Dave Harris for finding the article, but I struggle to believe that the top flaps were to reduce the unloading height. Two things come to mind, firstly, imagine doing the job yourself. You've emptied the coal from the middle of the wagon, and there's the stuff left at the other side and...

Just an observation, but on the 24 1/2 tonner, the top flaps are so deep that when open they would partially obstruct the lower door opening. This implies that the size of the door opening was (at some point) less important than the benefit of an open top flap! A thought. If the bottom door was, say...

I don't buy that. If you look at the simple mechanics of it, the 16 ton wagon has sides just short of 5 feet high. That means that a man 5 foot 6 tall could look over the side quite easily if he had to, though I'm not sure why he would need to. Kevin says that with the top flap open "a person standi...

PS. Don't forget we're talking about the tyre diameter here, add the appropriate amount for the flanges.

Oh yes, as it's the middle of summer I had my special open toed safety sandals on! Just as there is more than one way of skinning a cat (or so I'm told) there is more than one way of converting to our scale. You did this. Our scale is 17/16ths to 12x16/16ths which is 17/12x16 which is 17/192 which i...

RE tyre size. The nearest bar I could get at the time was 110mm, the tyres can be finished anywhere between 3' - 7 1/2" and 3' - 6". Sorry you'll have to remove the waste, but you should have seen the struggle we had getting thre bar from the road outside our house where it was delivered, round the ...

I believe a London Traders door was a wooden wagon fitted with a top flap. The door was one plank less in height than the side sheeting, and the top flap (which was one plank wide) was hinged at one end. When closed, the loose end fitted into guides to maintain it's alignement, when open, it laid al...

Hi all, You should all recall that in the latest edition of Turnout, Doug Hewson wrote an article expressing his views on the way that the GL5 rallies have been run, and I supplied an answer. I thought that this would open the floodgates and that I'd be inundated with responses, as we both left ours...

Keith, the waterbased varnish used to apply the transfers needs a coat of spirit based varnish over it to protect it from the rain, otherwise it will slowly dissolve. I airbrushed my wagons on the outside with Precision Paints matt varnish, takes a long time to dry, but it gives the same reflectivit...

Yes Bob, this was normal, my drawing of the 1923 RCH 12 ton mineral wagon states that the holes were to be at "1/4" angular pitch" which gives an angle of just under 9 degrees.