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Yes, I know I've not finished either of my other two builds here yet. Yes, I know I have a problem, but it's not going to go away any time soon! We had a running night at the model railway club the other night as a family were coming in to donate some models that belonged to their husband/dad/grandad, and we felt it was a little better to show things running rather than stand around drinking tea and occasionally hitting a trackpin with a hammer or soldering some wire to rails. As part of this, I took in my embryonic parcels train and ran it on the club's N Gauge layout. Parcels trains in the steam era were typically made up of a wide range of vehicles from multiple different railway companies, often quite dated looking stock too - the only criteria was that they had to be able to run at express passenger speeds, and at least some vehicles had to have guard's accommodation. This webpage gives a very good overview if you're interested: https://www.steve-banks.org/prototype-and-traffic/167-parcels-traffic-in-br-days The upshot from a modelling point of view is that a steam era parcels train, particularly from pre-nationalisation days (i.e. pre-British Railways) is that there's a lot of visible variety in terms of build style, size and colour. I'm planning on modelling the Settle & Carlisle line in the 1930s-1940s period which means a train would be made up of a majority of London, Midland & Scottish Railway and ex-Midland Railway stock, but also with Great Western Railway, Southern Railway and London and North Eastern Railway vehicles too. Many are available ready-to-run, but at the moment there doesn't seem to be much in the way of appropriate LNER stock. However, the N Gauge Society do offer an appropriate kit! The kit comes in a plain white box with a printed sticky label on the front, and contains a lot of small sprues and some reasonably detailed instructions steering you towards which part is which (I have to admit to only being partially familiar with the anatomy of standard gauge coach gubbins). The first step is to remove the bogie pivot from the underframe (bottom centre) so that a replacement piece can be installed to space the bogies slightly further out (the underframe is a Dapol one from a ready-to-run coach, clearly not with the correct bogie centres!) After this, all of the underframe gubbins were added (brake rods, cross-trusses, piping of unknown purpose, battery box and dynamo). Next the buffers and cosmetic coupling hooks were added to the ends, followed by fitting the coupling mounts and springs (which I failed to lose - huzzah!). Hey presto, we very quickly have a rolling chassis! Might need a smidge of lead in it for weight though, as it feels rather light and might struggle to stay on the track in a long rake of coaches, particularly on tight curves. The next step should have been to cut the clear windows to size before starting to fix the body together... but I skipped that, before thinking better of myself! This is where we sit now; I need to cut the windows to size, and I've just ordered some paint to try and replicate a varnished teak finish...

Here is my second (or is it second and third) entry in this GB, as it is a bit more mainstream than my first. Encouraging to see a number of threads started for model railways so my additions are: Both of these will have a place in my WW2 themed never ending diorama, and before the end of this GB I might add couple more. The brick wagons were built to carry bricks from the Fletton brickworks in Peterborough to KIngs Cross goods yard, but during WW2 they were repurposed to carry rubble from the blitzed areas of London to provide hard core for the many airfields being built at the time. Tom understand the purpose of the trestle wagon you need to know about "loading gauge". Many people know about four foot, eight and a half inches as the UK gauge but what is more important is the overall loading gauge set by the edges of platforms, the size of bridges and tunnels etc. This gives the space in which all items carried on the railway had to fit. Those who know the London Underground will appreciate this, all the underground is 4' 8." inch gauge but the trains on the pure tube lines are much smaller than those on the Circle, Metropolitan and District lines - they have different gauges, both of which are smaller than the general main line gauge. This site explain it better than I have https://www.igg.org.uk/rail/2-track/02track3.htm Simple geometry says that the diagonal across a rectangle is longer than either the height or width, the trestle wagon makes use of this fact, which meant that items such as aircraft propellers could be carried by train. More commonly items such as glass plate might have been seen on them.

In his comment about my recent Dapol Rocket build @stevej60 said ",it would never get through in a million year's but it would be nice to have a static railway GB taking in all aspect's of railway modelling locos, rolling stock, building's etc," Well nothing ventured nothing gained - so I offer this up as a suggestion and see what comes up. We have until the year 1,002,019 to prove @stevej60 wrong in his prediction.# Good to see @stevej60 join us as you will see from the above it was his challenge that started this thread. We need one more to get this into the Bunfight. Why not be that one? Thanks to @bianfuxia and @Bobby No Mac, who have both offered nit GB rail related entries, this proposal has now met the target to get into the bunfight for 2022 - only 27 other contenders for slots! The question is do I book a world cruise for next year or not? UPDATED - 15/4/2021 Potential Members: 1 @Paul821 2 @Rick Brown 3 @Ray S 4 @desert falcon 5 @Bonhoff 6 @Tim R-T-C 7 @Brad 8 @John Masters 9 @FortyEighter 10 @Corsairfoxfouruncle 11 @robvulcan 12 @Robert Stuart 13 @MarkSH 14 @gregg136 15 @vppelt68 16 @Ozzy 17 @Mjwomack 18 @helios16v 19 @Harry Lime 20 @Hockeyboy76 21 @nimrod54 22 @psdavidson 23 @2996 Victor 24 @Marklo 25 @fightersweep 26 @Swamp Donkey 27 @theplasticsurgeon 28 @bootneck 29 @stevej60 30 @bianfuxia 31 @Bobby No Mac 32 @TonyW 33 @airfixpeter 34 @Beggsy My original thoughts were that we would keep this GB to "anything that "ran on rails" - which could even include rail launched items such as the V1. To encourage more people to sign up - I will add vehicles (including lorries, buses, ships and aircraft) owned by railway companies and buildings directly linked to operating railways. The title has been amended to reflect this. In addition structures that don't meet that above criteria but were marketed as accessories for model railways will be allowed as long as they are to a recognised railway scale. Therefore the Airfix/Dapol building kits are allowed as are the Model land series sold by Triang. Please keep signing up

In between doubling my Vampire collection got sucked in by this. Based on livery/condition around 2000 I've repainted Hornby 08 and similarly mangled a Bacchy OBA. The 08 repaint was relatively straightforward in spite of not being able to remove any hand rails. Both were done with Precision paints, a mix of Fox and Railtec decals. Weathering is based on assorted photo’s in a continuing effort to improve my artistic interpretation of the real things rather than something more generic. The 08 was inspired by http://www.flickr.com/photos/55938574@N03/10141192855/ . Anyhow it kept me out the pub…... sort of! Thanks for looking Stu