Scalefour Forum

Jol, Accurascale definitely know the difference between the three gauges in the scale. For example, they consulted with us over their first 4mm wagon. If you look at their press announcement, it says: We are also actively investigating offering EM and P4 wheelsets as an additional option for custome...

A couple from Scunnie from last year.

That is an ellipse. The change in radius that would be inherent in having two different arcs would be clumsy from a structural point of view. You can probably prove this by loading the photograph onto CAD and tracing an ellipse over it. If you know the overall dimension of the span and the height of...

Thanks for the photographs Ralph. It was a neat little kit and a great deal elegant than the MSE/51L equivalent. Whilst Noel has pointed out I have built the wrong one (!), I do have another layout I am to build signals for and it definitely has LMS standard ground signals, so I will probably be bac...

Hi Iak, Yes, it is fairly durable - I tend to make all my models thus as I am a bit of a clumsey oaf if given a chance! The chassis is solid because it has an entire floor which is a sheet of metal and the solebars fold up off this (and are laminated). The roof is also a sort of tube with a plate at...

Although not Highland vehicles, these full brakes have a strong association with the Highland's branchlines in the post grouping years.  Once the LMS took over the Highland's system in 1923, they seemed to have been horrified by the state of the coaching stock that they inherited!  Portions of the H...

These may help. I was interested to see the date of introduction given as 1938 or later, which I didn't know. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/84244-lner-signals-controlling-movement-from-sidings-to-running-lines/ https://www.signalbox.org/signals/lne.htm https://www.wizardmodels.l...

That maybe an "oh bother" moment as I had thought I had found a picture of what looked just like an LMS ground signal and went from there!

I will look at the photographas again and think about it. I hope I don't have to make another of the little blighters!

Good to see you back too Mike. Looking forward to another board or more appearing in due course.

If you (or indeed others) need etches for the NER heavy signal brackets - 2, 3 or 4 doll - contact me offline. There would be a wait, but I have done the artwork for them.

A couple of my modelling friends (whose blog you can find here - https://otcm.wordpress.com/) are in the process of putting together entries into a competition to build cameo layouts being orchestrated by the publishers Titfield Thunderbolt. To be fair to Oly, his entry is largely complete as long a...

Mark, Fine looking vehicles (in both senses of the word). :thumb What would the braking system have been, manual, air or vacuum? Cheers, David A manual scotch brake actuating on one side to one wheel only. Scotch brakes are simple levers, whereby the action of the brake lever is transmitted to a sh...

Don’t worry – this is not announcement of being turned to the dark side of modelling “Green With Rivets” (aka the GWR)! Instead it is a reference to a week’s trip to the extreme west of Cornwall to support my wife who was appearing in a musical that was running for a week at the Minack Theatre – htt...

CDGFife wrote:Don't mention the booths Mark.....

As if....................

But you know what modification you need to do...............

Jeremy Good wrote:I suspect mainly because he's fed up of hearing about all my ideas and wants me to get on with something (thanks, Mark)

Dave, I share your pain....................



Regrettably, I also have to share your solution - lots of paint stripper.

If there weren't enough excuses to go to Scaleforum already, here is another........ I am pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of volume 3 of my father's series on railway cranes. This will be available from mid September on the 23/24 September and will be formally launched at Scaleforum ...

I get stuck on this phrase "the consistency of skimmed milk". The other way to approach this question is to remember what it is you are seeking to achieve. When air-brushing you are seeking (normally, sometimes a more textured finish is what is being looked for) that the paint droplets be...

Thanks to John and Noel. The book that John points us too is definitely helpful and will be bookmarked for future use. I have a couple of other Scottish vernacular architecture books which I will share details of when I get home over the weekend. The asbestos slates shown on page 107 (scan)/162(book...

Noel, I did them in a relatively welsh slate colour so whilst there is a bit of blue in them, it is not as blue as the picture suggests. The asbestos slates that we see are extensively faded, so I did not think the creamy grey we now see them to be a fair reflection of the colour (because I am model...

Progress with the Pharmacy building has continued and the roof is now nearing completion. I preferred using sheet metal (in this case nickle silver) for roofs as I find it is the easiest was to then include gutters. In this case, I designed the roof as a simple fold up etch and subsequently the gutt...

My apologies for not posting on this for some time; despite not only not having given up modelling but also not having given up blogging. So if you want to see what I have been upto, by all means to my external blog at http://www.highlandmiscellany.com. It is a fair time since I built my last buildi...

Well done Tim

I suspect like me; you won't bother with any other technique going forward.

[ Can I ask you one more question? How do you open out the axel boxes when using BB sprung W irons to allow the waisted bearings to move up and down freely. Tim Sorry Tim, I have not been near a computer for a bit; so I see others have got in here first. Actually I use a cylinder burr cutter in a p...

Hi Tim, I wrote up how I did this - essentially using the same method that Bill describes - in my external blog. You can find this here: https://highlandmiscellany.com/2018/02/20/sliding-axles/ and you can see that they really do work (around a 4 foot curve) here: https://highlandmiscellany.com/2018...

David, I also found problems with the switches of Exactoscale turnouts. To be fair to them, I actually think it is how we build them the gauge tends to push the switchblades apart slightly, giving a false feeling that when the solvent goes off they are correctly gauged. Exactoscale's gauges have a +...