Video

I'm guessing the model companies are going for a slightly later era than the first horse drawn wagons. I'd imagine that by the time of the first steam locos, they were probably using cast iron wheels, but my knowledge of that earliest period is a bit limited. Remember that these wooden wagonways were still 100 years before the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

@@century_bombers Yes you could be right about the wheels but the FR has brakes on there Gravity train. Quarries however are usually flat bottom with rope inclines so some railways would not have brakes but may have chocks (or stones) to stop wagons moving under gravity?

@@briancooper562 Many years ago, I volunteered on a rope haulage railway, manning a level crossing on the incline.

From memory, they were 7 inch squares. After 12 years, I returned the Dodge to olive drab, so can't check on the sizes.

Thank you.

You would need to speak to the museum curator, who I think is still Ron Batley, who took me around the site.

😁 It's a text to voice app, reading from my script. I'm terrible at fluffing lines and it requires too many takes if I'm reading!

@@century_bombers ah I couldn’t tell! It’s great! The video and research is awesome too of course. I live 30 mins away from the airfield and hope to visit soon.

Thank you. It was a lot of hard work and several other people have said how they encountered underground obstacles that made the groundworks so much harder! You have to just keep focused on the end goal and on days where things aren't working out, take a break and come back fresh another day. Also, don't make the design set in stone, as once you start using it, things may have to change. That's one of the reasons I didn't bury my cables in a duct in the pier. I don't remote image and move around with my laptop as the sky changes. Having cables and power supplies that are free to move works for me better than a fixed position.

@doc8178 Thanks. Most of the airfield is private property. For this trip, the museum chairman took a friend and myself around.

Thank you!

When I got my M201, it had the Hotchkiss sealed distributor. When the ignition lead insulation broke down, I replaced it with a standard distributor, fitted with electronic ignition. The coil was mounted on the block. Later replacement coils have been 24v versions from a Land Rover. I've seen a number of M201s that have had the distributor replaced with the wartime type and various different coil styles, I presume depending on what people could find and whether the M201 was converted back to 12 or 6v.

@@century_bombers are you on the UK Hotchkiss Facebook page? Thanks for the reply. Just currently going through mine and was planning to go duel purpose to RAF markings.

@@chrisbeard5884 No, not in that group. I'm on G503 and the Universal Jeep Supplies FB pages. I used motorway grade magnetic plastic to make my RAF markings. 2mtr x 600mm roll of white off Ebay for £16. I gave it a light wet sand to key the surface, then painted with enamels. Check out my website for more info about my two Jeeps and Dodge. There's a link in the video description.

I presume you saw the link to the flight video in the description?

@@century_bombers I didn’t . Thanks for telling me. I will go back and view it. Beautiful craft. Great job.👍🏻🇺🇸

I was told recently that they don't have access to the airfield any more and the taxiway between the museum and airfield is no longer suitable for moving the heavy aircraft like the Victor and Nimrod.

@@century_bombers yep they will say that. Nothing wrong with the airfield or taxiways.

There is a light aircraft that can be heard passing overhead, just after the spitfire takes off, but the rest of the flight is prop noise.

It's an impressive model and flew well, but I'm ICE all the way. Electric is just soulless to me. I've had a few small electric models, but love the sound and smell and engineering of petrol and glow engines. However, due to the shape of the Spitfire nose, I can see why Ali wanted to go electric on this one. However, it can't beat the sound of his F7 Tigercat, powered by two Moki 150cc radials!

I only saw it make three flights that day and then it was taken away by the customer, so not really sure what its performance was. Endurance was only about 7 minutes from memory, with something like a 250 AH speed controller.

Back in the 1990s, I wrote to several veterans about B-17 "Hang The Expense" and also met several guys at the Thorpe Abbotts reunions. The stories they told would have made hollywood films look tame! Amazing guys.

@@century_bombers Mr Murphy was shot down in Aw-R-Go. 8 POW 2 KIA.

@@century_bombersWhich one? Valesh got through about eight of them from what I’ve read. 😉

@@Iceni_Paul Frank flew 14 B-17s, but only two carried the name Hang The Expense - #035 & #560

@@century_bombers we must be getting conflicting info, according to Harry Crosby’s accounts in ‘Wing and a prayer’ he’d got up to Hang the Expense 7. Looking in the back of the Century Bombers book, I could only see Hang The Expense 1 and 3 listed. Confusing isn’t it?

The 100th didn't have the largest loss rate in the 8th Air Force ( I think that was the 91st BG ), but the 100th did have several single missions, with particularly heavy loss rates.

@@century_bombers I didn't realise that I know the 8th airforce bomber group had terrible heavy losses across all of there groups especially before long range fighter escorts thank you 🤝🙏

Thanks. The failsafe is designed to crash the model as soon as possible after signal loss, to prevent a fly-away, where the aircraft could cause greater damage to a 3rd party. In the UK, any model over 5Kg needed a failsafe.

It was hard to remember the boundary of each display, just from the photographs I took.

@@century_bombers that's understandable

Thanks. This railway went to the customer around Spring 2016 and I haven't built any more railway models since. I'd like to do a small US layout for myself, but currently have too many other jobs with both my military vehicle fleet to look after and house and garden projects.

Thank you.

I've got mylar plastic draught proofing strips over the front and rear opening joints on the inside. The roof runs on L section channels, so the L section acts as a gutter, preventing rain from entering at the sides.

The P-47 has alway been a favourite of mine. Before this P-47N, I had a P-47D to the same scale. Both were scratch built and both flew very well.

Thanks