Things appear to be quiet on a number of fronts, and with little reported output of wagonry from a certain East London establishment, leads me to believe that perhaps the order books are looking slightly bleak for the time of year. No doubt small batch work of various sub assemblies are keeping the workforce occupied with fettling and preparation of components ready for fitting to items of rolling stock (should they appear), and a glimmering hope of an upturn in work to avoid the need for serious reorganisation (or dare I say it redundancies?).
There will be no excuse for water ingress from the roof during quiet times, as I'm sure the metalsmiths, carpenters and painters are more than capable of adapting themselves to the tasks in hand, although ladderwork and high wire activities should almost certainly be carried out by those of junior years in any organisation.
You will have to excuse any presumptions as a result of this contribution, but communication has never been easy in these far reached parts of the borderlands. Similar problems have been encountered in the locale with regard to automation, and the Shaglings may hold the key to performing separation & agglutination within preferred timeframes, much of which could be more widespread if it wasn't for copyright and patents pending. There's nothing worse than constant shuffling, resulting in frustration and a desire to return to the drawing board!
Give me a 3-link any day.
Hello Kier, and thank you for your concern.
Indeed, recent happenings in The Works have had little - or any, if the truth be told - impact on the external environment. This is not to say that the work has dried up; we still have a number of wagons on the Order Books, and rumours of a coat of paint for the Works 48DS (rendering her to something other than Bold As Brass) are currently providing much froth around the Tea Trolley.
But the current activities have been centred around the ongoing acclimatisation with all things Alex Jackson. For a variety of reasons, mostly related to the fundamental foundations of fixing these folded finger-piercers (after so many battles, some amongst us call them The Devil's Handiwork) we are all a bit weary of the shaping shenanigans, and are casting about with an open mind for alternative associative arrangements - especially those that look comely, and are self-determinant and unrequiring of prestidigitation). In truth, I would long to utilise 3-links, but the oscillatory nature of the shunters hand has been found to lack the fine control necessary in this area, and has wreaked havoc upon many a supposed immovable wagon in its time.
Herewith below, you find the current status of our travail.
A finer obsequiance to the Deities of Bodgery and Hamfistedness shall not be found, I wager. The slots in the baseplate are useful here, as the 'approved radius' for these couplings is far beyond what we have here, and thus the distance between the tail of the coupling and the coupling needs to be greater than the 0.25" in the specifications.
The next attempt will be to try the more 'classic' fixation, and be mounted directly to the chassis, and will thus need to take into account
a priori the need of more distance between coupling tail and bufferhead to enable traversing of the tight curves of The Wharf.
The additional metalwork sits on the host vehicle - a 7 plank mineral that might well have been to Mainline standards once, but has now been allocated as testbed for all manner of Works experimentations. I fear her chassis will not recover from this one as - having got her to a point where she was able to host both couplings and soft iron droppers, and having seen her couplings nod in the presence of a magnetic field - she was cunningly assailed by Gravity, and lost another buffer head as she interacted detrimentally with The Works laminate floor.
You may see from the above photo that we have decided not to use steel nails for droppers (they pass muster for counterweights, though), but have come up with this kneeling L-shaped bend of soft iron. We prefer this method - it is a length folded several times, becoming two L's, joined at the top; this design (more a happy accident, but we'll happily make out we're Engineers of the first order to anyone who doesn't know any better..) having the useful advantage of clamping the 11 thou wire between its 'knees' and sparing the need for more jigs and dexterity to hold it in place for soldering.
So, there we have it. Something or Nothing. Probably the latter, but the time spent in education and enlightenment - although gazed upon ruefully in hindsight - will not be entirely wasted.
We remain, resolute and intrigued.
From All of Us Here.