Beer and Buckjumpers

Frustration...

2012-01-21T18:10:00.000Z

When you've had a very good day at a CHEAG workshop day, making excellent progress on wiring up your demo board, don't...

...get to five minutes from the end and form a hunch that you've wired up all of the point motors back-to-front. Or you will go home and check them straightaway, and find that you have...

Argh!

Flymo

Some progress...

2012-01-17T22:33:00.000Z

A little at least... It's been a busy Christmas and with lots of other things going on I've had precious little time for modelling. That which I have squeezed in has been with the careful use of a paintbrush.

Here are a few snaps. Please excuse the yellowish tone, as that is due to the artificial light - a permanent problem at this time of year, when all daylight hours are spent at work.

Hopefully more progress soon...

Flymo

TOU 4 of 4

2011-12-03T10:55:00.000Z

Next is the fitting. I would assume that any sensible modeller will have fitted the functional tie-bars, to hold the point blades at the correct distance apart, before gluing the turnout to the baseboard, and ballasting it. I cannot lay claim to being so sensible, so I’ll gloss over the selection and fitting of your personal choice of tie-bars.

The first step in installing the TOU is to solder the dropper wires to the point blades extending down through the baseboard. I file a small v-shaped notch in the foot of the rail in the appropriate place for the wire to sit into, to make it as unobtrusive as possible. A lot can be achieved in disguising the wires by carefully filing back the solder afterwards.

I use dropper wires that initially are much too long. This is to make it easy to handle them. Any extra length is cut off afterwards and either re-used for other dropper wires or put in the “spare wire” box for future use. It’s the sort of thing that is never wasted.

You then slide the dropper wires into the dropper tubes of the TOU. A tip when doing this is to have the dropper wires of unequal lengths. That means that you fit one at a time, rather than having to try and guide two bits of very thin wire into very small holes simultaneously – a task that requires at least four hands, or an awful lot of patience.

After sliding the TOU down the wires to the baseboard, it is necessary to fix it in place. As mentioned earlier, you could use any method to do this, although I preferred to screw it down. In locating the TOU, I wanted to make sure that the functional tie-bar was correctly set ar one end of its travel. To do this, I used a small bulldog clip to hold the pointblade closed on one side, and then had the functional tie-bar set to one end of the travel.

The TOU was then screwed in place. Once this was done, I snipped off the ends of the dropper wires so that they only just protrude from the bottom of the dropper tubes. This will reduce the chances of them being accidentally snagged and causing or being caused damage.

It would be possible to bend over the ends of the dropper wires in the bearing tubes to provide vertical restraint on the movement of the pointblades, to prevent them rising up. I haven’t done this, as the type of cosmetic tie-bar that I’m using will prevent the blades lifting in this plane.

After this, the motor to drive it was installed. Again, how this is done is down to personal taste. As the Conrad point motor that I am currently using does not have user-definable limit travel, I have decided to use a relatively long drive rod with a sizeable omega loop in it to take up the slack and hold the point blades firmly over.

To give you an idea of the scale, the omega loop is approximately 1.5cm across the diameter. It was formed by hand using a few tweaks of snipe-nosed pliers in the length of wire. This is in itself a length of the 0.8mm straight brass wire referred to earlier. I’m sure that other methods of driving the TOU would be equally, or more efficient.

The black wire that you will notice behind the operating wire is simply the earth return wire from the point motor. I have arrange the wiring of this particular board so that the live wiring feed goes up one side of the board, through the switches and associated components – point motors and electro-magnetic uncouplers – and then returns down the other side of the board.

The wiring is kept neatly in place with a few spots of glue from an ordinary DIY hot glue gun. This is showing one of the uncoupling magnets, not the TOU!

As always, I’m not afraid to say when things have gone wrong. In this case, you may notice that there is an extension piece on the end of the functional tie-bar. This was simply because I only noticed after I’d installed the TOU that I had fitted it the wrong way around. I had left sufficient material to drill a hole to attach the operating wire at the end of the tie-bar, but this was now at the opposite end.

Rather than take off the entire TOU and re-mount it having turned it through 180 degrees, I simply decided to use a spare bit of the 60 thou plasticard glued inside the end of the square tube.

The operating wire was passed through a small drilled hole, and the end bent over to hold it in place. At the other, point motor, end, the wire is passed through the operating arm of the motor, with it manually set over at the limit of its travel.

And that’s it. They have now been tested and work successfully. The longevity of them naturally remain to be tested – ask me in five years or so if I’ve had any problems. In the meantime, if I’ve missed anything out, or I’ve been unclear, please do drop me a mail to ask.

Flymo

TOU 3 of 4

2011-12-03T10:50:00.000Z

Next I moved on to the construction of the tie-bar mounts. These are simply two cubes of the larger size plastic tube mounted on top of each other. Two things to consider:

- if you are cutting the tube, as I did, with a piercing saw do clean off the edges of the tube earlier to remove any plastic swarf still attached that may interfere with the smooth sliding of the tie-bar.

- the height of the mount should be dictated by the height at with the point motor provides drive. In the case of the Conrad motors that I am using, this is quite high and I wanted to make the connection at the same height.

These really are just one piece glued on top of the other.

After this, it was time to try the functional tie-bar out for size, to ensure that it slid freely. I actually found that the fit was a little looser than I had expected from two adjacent sizes of tube. However the amount of slack was not so great as to cause problems, and it gave me a bit of wiggle room for fitting them in place.

The pictures do show a slightly different order of fitting the mounts as some pictures were taken during the build of the initial TOU, and some during the batch-build of the balance of them. The differences aren’t critical though, and just show that there are many ways to go modelling in P4.

This is the completed unit, with the functional tie-bar fitted in place.

Two points to remember, thankfully neither of which I fell foul of, but I’m sure that I came close:

- The copper-clad strip should face the outside of the unit, so that the dropper tubes extend out over the edge. This is probably the only critical bit of the entire process, as there needs to be clearance for the dropper wires to come down from the point-blades past the edge of the TOU, and then go through the dropper tubes.

- If you fit both the mounts to the base first, without including the functional tie-bar, you won’t be able to slide it in to the mounts afterwards. There simply isn’t the free room to do this. So it does all need to come together in one go.

So that completes the building of the TOU.

(to be continued...)

TOU - 2 of 4

2011-12-03T10:45:00.000Z

The first thing that I did was to make the functional tie-bars. These will sit below the baseboard and have the task of holding the dropper wires that come down from the pointblades.

Much is made of the torsional stresses that are put in dropper wires when they are soldered in place on turnouts. I’m not sure how much I buy into this idea, unless the section under load is particularly short. However I saw advantages in keeping the TOU and the pointblades physically separate:

To do this, I used some small bore brass tubing. This needs to be just a little larger in bore than the wire that you choose to use for dropper wires. In this size, brass tube is more easily cut by rolling it back and forth under a sharp scalpel blade to create a score mark than by trying to saw it. Using cutters will, of course, simply close up the ends of the tube, which is no good at all.

The length of the dropper tube isn’t actually critical. I used the length shown in this picture to make both tubes for this tie-bar.

The dropper wires are very flexible, and I didn’t need to rely on the accuracy of the functional tie-bar to keep the pointblades the correct distance apart. Nevertheless, to ease the stresses and strains of holding the pointblades in place, I made the two dropper tubes 16.5mm apart. This was measured on the copper-clad strip, and as you can see two saw cuts made for the tube to sit in before it is soldered. This just helped keep it located correctly and at right-angles.

As you can see in the next picture, I later cut a further gap in the copper clad to insulate the dropper tubes from each other.

In this picture you can see that all of the tie-bars have been made. I have four turnouts on the board that I am building, so four was the number that I made.

You can also see that the first functional tie-bar has been glued to a section of plasticard square tube. This is the smaller section – in my case ¼” in size. This was done simply with some two-part epoxy. Again, the alignment isn’t critical, but it should be roughly central, and roughly square, to the plastic strip.

The next, rather dark, picture shows the production of the mounting plates. These are approximately 70mm by 30mm. You could make them larger if you wished, but I wanted to be able to fit them reasonably easily underneath the baseboard.

The small squares of plasticard that are being fitted are an extra that may not be necessary for other modellers. The smallest woodscrews that I have available to fix the completed units to the baseboard are still too long to go through the TOU, and then into the baseboard that is made out of 6mm ply without the ends of the screw bursting through the top surface. Therefore by putting spacing plates, the screw goes fully in but the tip will not come out of the other side. If you used thicker baseboard, or glued the TOU down rather than screwing it, these would not be necessary.

I made provision for three mounting points for the screws. In practice only two, at either end, have proved to be necessary. After the spacing plates were glued in place and dry, they were drilled with 2mm holes to take the screws. Given that plasticard is fairly soft, this was just done with a drill in a pin-chuck. There was no need for any machine tools or suchlike.

(to be continued...)

Turnout Operating Units - 1 of 4

2011-12-03T10:40:00.000Z

I’ve been asked to do a write-up of the Turnout Operating Units that I am using on my P4 demo board. I wasn’t going to do this until they had been installed and satisfactorily operating, although I had done a “finger-driven” test of how effectively they work.

These are certainly not an original idea. I believe that the original Protofour TOU was produced on a similar concept, using sliding plastic curtain rail to provide the base. The main criteria that I wanted to meet were:

Mounted below the baseboard
Cheap and easy to produce
Robust but not necessary to be “engineered”
Did not need to be relied on for gauging the switch rails

Turning to the last point, my philosophy was that these TOUs would drive the switch rails with an approximation of the correct gap between them. However for the precise gauging I am using a “semi-cosmetic” tie-bar. I use the term semi-cosmetic, as primarily the role is to look authentic, but it will also provide the exactness of the distance between the rails that cannot be produced from a flexible drive mechanism three or four centimetres below the railhead.

The materials used are all very commonplace. You may have them already. If not, all of them are readily available from Derek Russan at Eileen’s Emporium, and no doubt other suppliers. I just know that Derek definitely does have everything available as that’s where I got most of my components from! Usual disclaimer, no connection, etc. The list is:

Copper-clad sleeper strip. I had offcuts from track-building to use.
Fine bore brass tube. By fine, I mean something that will take a 0.45mm brass wire down the inside and be a sliding fit. My tube came from some left-over from a High Level Models kit.
Straight 0.45mm brass or nickel silver wire. The sort that comes in 12” lengths from various sources.
Thick plasticard. I used some 60 thou that I had in the drawer, but the thickness is not critical as it is used to provide a robust mounting base.
Two sizes of square Plastruct tube. One that is a loose sliding fit inside the other. The dimensions, again, are not critical, and I believe that I used 5/16” and ¼” for my TOU.

This is the tube that I used. As they always say, other makes and flavours are available. The TOU’s themselves are roughly seven centimetres in width, so you can make a number of the units from the two strips in each packet.

(to be continued...)

Tie-bars fitted

2011-12-02T23:16:00.000Z

And in a burst of competent soldering, all of the remaining tie-bars went easily into place :-)

That's one of them. Tomorrow I hope to fit the dropper wires to the point blades and connect it all up...

Flymo

Lesson for today...

2011-11-27T23:12:00.000Z

Retro-fitting tie-bars (or stretcher bars to give them the proper name) is *never* easy when you've already laid the track, and ballasted up to a height that interferes with fitting them under the rail.

Oh, and as you tidy up the soldering on the first one, the joint breaks.

Argh! Enough is enough, for tonight...

Wiring

2011-10-07T12:03:00.000+01:00

A short preamble - I really don't like doing wiring. It scares me. Which is daft, as I've a Physics A-level, and I've re-wired an entire house before, so I should be comfortable about where the pluses and the minuses have to go. But for some reason whenever it comes to wiring for models I have a mental block...

You may recall that it was quite a while ago that I finished track-laying on my "demo board" - this will be both a test track for my own use, and also a way of showing those interested in P4 modelling the different types of track that are available. A while ago I fitted the power feeds to the tracks, and was able to get something running. The next step is to fit the point motors and the uncoupling magnets.

First of all, an overview of the track-plan, drawn out in permanent marker on the top surface of the board. Push-button switches have been fitted through drilled holes to provide the ability to just press switches along a route. I thought that this would be easier, particularly for others that may have a play with it, than a more prototypical lever frame. The rotary switch in the top corner is for selecting the power supply for each of the three roads.

And this is what it looks like underneath. There are two separate power inputs - I wanted to keep the ones for the "trains" and the "track" separate. At the moment the intention is to run this as DC, but I suppose that there is no reason why it wouldn't work equally well for DCC train control in future, if I decide to change.

At the bottom, the rotary switch feeds the three lines of track. And at the top, the new wiring that I am now putting in. The bus-bar has the feeds to the positive side of all of the switches soldered to it already. The red wires are to the point motor switches; the pink ones to the uncoupling magnets. It's probably an unnecessary distinction, but I can do it, so I did...

The track plan drawn on the underneath of the board helps me identify what is what - a tip picked up from somewhere on RMWeb I think, where it was used for a 2FS layout. It's better if you use Templot to make it look smarter, but I ain't that clever :-(

The next step is to install the point motors themselves. For these, I'll be using functional tie-bars beneath the baseboard, and operating the point blades by means of wire running up through small holes. This is the batch of tie-bars being made out of copperclad strip.

So maybe I'll try fitting one of these tonight...

Flymo

Bl**dy computers...

2011-09-28T07:41:00.000+01:00

Just a quick apology if I've missed anyone's vital news...

I rely on an RSS feed to tell me when a new post has been made on a blog. It seems that at some point in the last couple of months, one of the automatic updates to Blogspot/Windows/Antivirus/whatever turned off all the alerts for me :-(

And I was just thinking that it was because everyone was busy, and quiet...

Flymo

To complete the set...

2011-09-17T11:28:00.000+01:00

This morning I popped a set of pickups on the Y14...

Well, actually I started the process last night by cutting and shaping a length of copperclad sleeper (I knew that the remains of those EM gauge points that I built when I was sixteen would one day come in useful...) so that it fitted between the frames. I'm always doubly cautious and cut an over-generous gap. It doesn't do any harm and means that there should be absolutely no chance of a short.

Here they are laid out in the correct order to be fitted.

Then they were fixed using two-part epoxy, and left to set solidly in position overnight. This is the time that you don't want the modelling pixies to come along and give them a gentle nudge whilst you're sleeping!

Then finally a wipe over with some solder to tin the copper-clad (being very careful to get absolutely no flux on the steel tyres!) and fix the pickups in place.

For this locomotive I'm going to wait until the body is fully painted before wiring up the motor. The reason for that is that I want to be very certain of the path of the wires before I solder them in place. I will have to route them up the sides of the gearbox and along the top of the motor, before turning them back to the contacts.

So that can wait until I can handle the whole thing as a single unit.

Flymo

Getting things moving

2011-09-16T12:20:00.000+01:00

As a change from the painting, yesterday I decided to stop dithering and see if I could get the tram engine actually moving under its own power...

I had already glued in place some gapped copperclad board and given it a coating of solder to ensure that the subsequent work took well to it. This is the preparation underneath the chassis, and also shows the amount of space that I have to work with.

As a reminder, the gearbox is one of the slimline High Level models which is articulated so that it fits underneath the boiler. It is the 1:108 ratio (I think!) to ensure that the tram can creep along at an appropriately slow pace. You can also see the guitar strings in place from the CSB suspension arrangement.

These are the pickups themselves. Made by twisting phosphor bronze wire (in straight packs from Eileen's Emporium, rather than battle with coils of the stuff) around a 2mm wagon axle with a slot cut in the end. Inspiration from Morgan Gilbert in the thread here (look a third of the way down...)

And these are them in place. The gearbox limited the amount of space that I had available for one pair, but there is still enough flexibility for them to cope with the suspension movement. As the tram wears skirts, I didn't have to worry about the ends of the wires being visible next to the tyres.

This is it completed. You can see how low in the chassis the motor and gearbox sit. It's on my short test board. I hooked up a pentroller to it, turned on the juice, and off it went :-)

It can do with a little lubrication, and some gentle running in to aid smoothness and reduce motor noise, but it runs!

In this final shot it can just be seen through the door and window when the body is fitted. This will be covered by the boiler.

Although this works successfully, I'm still not confident or happy with fitting sprung pickups (and this method is the best that I've tried so far) so I'm fairly certain that the next new-build locomotive that I start will be a split-chassis one.

Flymo

More painting...

2011-09-09T08:51:00.000+01:00

Someone prodded me a couple of days ago to ask how the tram engine was going. The answer is progressively through the paintshop...

The boiler is from the tram, and the backhead from the Y14. They will both be getting gauges, brasswork and similar picked out on them next.

The tram itself has had another coat of teak basecolour, but then washed over with a Dulux teak effect topcoat. It's shiny, but doesn't give a convincing effect of woodgrain in 4mm.

I don't want to lose more of the detail by putting another coat of base colour over the top, so will see what can be done with dry brushing and weathering...

Oh, and the tram interior will have to be painted again, as just after I completed that with a "guessed" colour of off-white, I found a reference that the GER painted cab interiors in tan. There are days when I really wish for a GER equivalent of "Great Western Way"!

Through the paintshop

2011-08-29T12:20:00.001+01:00

A couple of pictures of the other locomotives currently going through the paintshop.

First, the Y6 tram engine which this morning got the first coat of teak paint on the woodwork. In my opinion, it's starting to look rather smart.

The teak will get at least another coat of paint before I start thinking about putting the woodgrain on the top of it.

I also need to think about the colour of the interior. I haven't found any reference yet to indicate what the colours may be. I suspect that it would not be teak, as there would be a need for as much light as possible to be reflected into what would be quite a gloomy interior, with all of that boiler taking up space. I suspect that I'll go for some shade of light stone, cream or ivory white, all with suitable weathering.

And this is the Y14, after three light coats of GER royal blue. I feel that it's just about ready to start on the detailed paintwork of the areas of black, and then onto the detailing. I quite like the satin finish, with perhaps a little more shine in the final varnish coat before the weathering goes on.

More to be done this afternoon :-)

Picking things up again...

2011-08-27T09:57:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I've made a post on Beer and Buckjumpers. For that matter, it's been a while since I've had chance to do any proper modelling. In the meantime we've decorated our study, and one of the spare rooms at home, so I can't really say that I've been idle.

However this morning I had some peaceful time, and the opportunity to pick up a smaller paintbrush. I'm pleased to have been able to make some progress towards finishing the Pug. I was very pleased that it ran successfully on the Pampisford test day back in June (full story here: [click link] on the Scalefour Society Forum) although it's appearance in the rather bright basecoat probably scared the horses!

So this morning I donned the white cotton gloves, and picked up (very well shaken) black paint and a size 1 paintbrush, and started. I definitely needed the first strong coffee of the day to steady my hand, but the knack soon returned, and I've made a start at blocking in the colours.

What I'm aiming for is the picture in the background... Much weathering to be added after the initial painting is done! I've cried off the panelling and reverse corners on the cab for the moment, but they will probably be done next, when I have a little better light - although I see that the sun has just come out :-)

I've also noticed that I've forgotten to add a replacement smokebox door handle. The original moulded plastic one was carved off. I'll leave that for the moment, and hopefully remember to put a new turned brass one on when the majority of the painting is completed.

Useful little tools...

2011-05-30T08:01:00.000+01:00

Following up the suggestion of "Liquid Reamer" that was made by Buckjumper to help keep my old and neglected airbrush clean, I wandered along to chat with Derek Russan at Eileen's Emporium whilst I was at Railex this weekend.

Derek does stock Liquid Reamer :-)

But he'd just sold out :-(

It must be the power of suggestion from the web ;-)

However what he did have (and I think have recently come into stock, as I don't recall seeing them before) are a set of tiny brushes, that are perfect for cleaning out paint bowls and nozzles on an airbrush:

At only £3.50 for the set, they seemed like an absolute steal. But that would be a bit rude, so I bought a set instead. If I get some more modelling done on this Bank Holiday, they may well be getting a good usage later this week.

Flymo

Yuck!

2011-05-21T11:30:00.000+01:00

Hmmm... You think that you've got your airbrush clean, and then...

After the last bout of use (see previous post on painting the Pug) I thought that I'd cleaned my airbrush out fairly well. However the action of the trigger was still a little "sticky" so I thought that it merited a little more attention if I was going to get decent results next time that I wanted to use it.

So an old jam jar that is surplus from my wife's stockpile (she funds her sidecar racing by selling homemade jam - just don't ask...) and drop all the bits in it. Fill up with cellulose thinners and give a good shake.

The thinners is now a dirty dark yellow colour, and the parts clearly still aren't entirely clean. I'll give them a good going over with cotton buds in a while.

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But it's surprised me how much paint has built up inside and still hadn't come out through "normal" cleaning. I think that I'll be doing this more frequently in future...

Flymo

Off on the right foot

2011-05-19T23:11:00.000+01:00

It's been awhile since I looked at the Ulpha Light Railway. I tucked it away safely in the back of my garage (at the opposite end to the birdfood, so hopefully our resident woodland creatures don't mistake the scenery for a snack...) and have left it there until I feel that I can get the whole thing out and erect it for a couple of days.

However I have started work on the restoration of the infrastructure. When I first brought it home, and did a test erection in the garage, I had no end of trouble getting it levelled out. After a life of twenty years, even though each trestle leg was fitted with screw-adjustable feet, I found that they were dirty, corroded, jammed, or a combination of the three. Something needed to be done to make them workable again.

My first thought was just to replace them, so I had a quick look on the web. There are a number of suppliers out there, ranging from Screwfix to model railway specialists. But generally the price per leg was £3-4 for each foot, and I needed 16 of them. I didn't really want to pay around fifty quid if I could avoid it.

So on a sunny evening, I sat down and unscrewed them from the bottom of the trestles. That in itself took some time, as the screws had also suffered from time. Having got the feet off, I used spanners and a bit of brute force to separate them into separate components. The locking nuts were discarded, as I'd already got replacement stainless steel ones from Screwfix - strongly recommended for this sort of stuff.

To clean all the dirt and clag off them, I popped all of the feet, and the mounts, in my ultrasonic bath with plain water and gave them a few cycles. Then they went into a cooling oven (after dinner...) to dry them out thoroughly. After that, the restoration could begin.

For working on motorbikes, I have a set of taps and dies:

So I ran the feet through the dies to clean up the threads and get rid of residual gunge and corrosion. Now they are all back together, with new nuts, and a touch of grease on them, and I hope that they'll give many more years of service.

Next, onto the trestles themselves...

It's a bit bright!

2011-04-27T07:16:00.000+01:00

But nothing that a bit of weathering won't tone down.

As this Pug is now transformed for industrial use, then I don't need to slavishly follow a prototype livery. Which is some respects is a shame, as I was quite looking forward to seeing it in L&Y black with red lining. However I do have a second High Level chassis kit in the drawer, and a spare body, so I can always do that in the future...

This is the base coat - a Humbrol medium red - sprayed on over the black original livery. I took it carefully to build up the colour in thin layers without runs or other blemishes.

You see what I mean about bright! The masking will cover off most of the motion and wheels so that I don't have to clean them off to a great extent.

The next tasks will be the footplate/chimney/etc in black, and then on with the black panels around the red, and finally into some very fine orange lines, complete with reversed corners. There's nothing like a challenge!

Ready for the finish

2011-04-23T21:41:00.000+01:00

Well, the weather is perfect for gardening, or DIY, or painting small L&Y locomotives...

So having run the Pug successfully at the North London Group meeting last Monday night, it is a good time to fire up the airbrush and put a livery on it. However, before I do that, I thought that I'd post a couple of pictures of the finished work from the High Level Kits chassis and conversion kit. I really can't recommend this too highly for its level of detail and precision of assembly.

First of all, showing the cab detail. All of this is new in the kit, and replaces the motor in the Dapol original!

And the other side. The lettering has been rubbed down with a glassfibre brush to help avoid it showing through the top-coat when it is put on. More of that when the painting is underway...

The final task before painting will be to mask as much of the wheels as possible, to avoid gumming up the mechanics. Let's hope that I'm successful in it :-)

Flymo

Making a stand

2011-04-17T09:29:00.000+01:00

That's what I'll be doing later today...

First thing this morning I decided to fire up the airbrush and put a coat of self etch primer on the chassis of my Y14. So I set up the spray booth, turntable, mixed the primer, loaded the air-brush...

And promptly fired the chassis to the back of the booth! Ho hum...

A _gentle_ application of primer seems to have done the trick, but I really should knock something properly designed for the task. I'll dig out a couple of offcuts of timber from the garage and see what I can do with some bent coathangers.

For now, I'm off to take the motorbike out for some background photos of research for restoring Ulpha Light.

Flymo

Scalefour North

2011-04-11T07:50:00.000+01:00

What an absolutely superb show! I was so pleased to have made it, after dropping my better half off at Mallory Park for a spot of sidecar racing... Certainly the best selection of layouts that I've seen at Scalefour North. Every one of them interesting, and in a different way.

My personal favourite was Horselunges, because it's exactly the sort of rural shunting puzzle that I'll build myself one day! In close seconds were Lee on Solent and Longcarse West, both of which I can stand and watch for hours.

I hope to see all three of these again in the near future - Gordon Ashton mentioned that Horselunges was invited to appear at the Pendon show soon, and I encourage everyone to go a see it.

The trade support was excellent as well. I don't think that there was a single moment when there wasn't a crowd around the Hogh Level Kits stand, but at least Chris hadn't run out of his new "spacesaver" bearings by the time that I reached him :-)

My only regret was that because my diary was so crowded I didn't get the opportunity to make a weekend of it :-(

Maybe next year...

Old furniture and new vices...

2011-04-01T07:56:00.000+01:00

I haven't had much chance to spend time online since enjoying the Modeller's Weekend at Missenden. I didn't actually post from there as it seemed much more important to actually get some modelling done :-)

The last couple of weeks have been very busy with work, and other matters, but I have been doing more modelling in the background. One of the things that I learned at Missenden was that my toolkit was deficient. Those who saw me unpack, and produce all manner of oddments on request throughout the weekend may find that hard to believe but it's true.

One of the things that helps Tim Watson, our group tutor, produce such superb 2mm scale models is that he has a precision to his metal work that borders on that of a watchmaker. A lot of this, such as filing is done using a vice to hold the workpiece. In contrast, I just use the edge of the bench, or hold it in my fingers.

So when he suggested that a proper jewellers' vice would help enormously, then I saw the common sense in it. Tim advised not to waste money on a cheap one from one of the tool suppliers that you get at exhibitions, but to invest in a proper one from a watchmaker's suppliers like Shesto.

On returning from Missenden, I searched for the type that he recommended, and a few other bits and pieces that I needed, and ordered them online from Shesto. Fortunately, as a Scalefour Society member, I get a 10% discount on everything ordered from Shesto, so I've already saved nearly half of my annual Society subscription. Which is nice :-)

When the package arrived, i had a good look at the vice, which is a lovely engineered piece of work, and also demountable via a clamp and lever from its base. I decided to place it on the right hand edge of my bureau cum workbench, where it will be easy to use. Having it able to be removed means that I can take it off and still close the lid to turn the workbench into a normal piece of furniture again.

I marked out the boundary of the base, to be inset into the timber, and attacked it with a couple of chisels...

That is the base of the vice at the top of the picture, being checked for size. I took a bit of care to get the hole nicely trimmed to fit tightly, and ensure that the bottom surface was smooth. I raided my stock of screws in the garage for some cabinet-makers screws that would fit flush - my last ones, so I must remember to get a further stock - and then cleaned everything up and tried it for size:

The result is a total success. Sturdily mounted, and able to be tidied away. I haven't tried it in anger yet, but I'm sure that I will soon...

Modelling heaven...

2011-03-11T20:11:00.000Z

After a few weeks of not doing any modelling at all, and nothing but a bit of shuffling around of bits on my Y14, to get the gearbox run in, I have 48 hours of modelling heaven :-)

It's the Missenden Railway modelling weekend, with assorted luminaries dispensing wisdom, and me, bodging a GER Tram locomotive with the best of them!

More to follow, if I get the time to put my soldering iron down :-)

Tales from a mineral twig...

2011-02-05T23:00:00.000Z

Friday morning saw me rising bright and early, but not to do the usual thing of heading into my office in the City of London. No, I was off to collect a rental van for the day, and pointing it due west I headed off on a road trip along the M4, for yesterday I was White Van Man.

And three hours later, I arrived at my destination where I was greeted by Neil, a fellow Scalefour Society member. He showed me up to his loft, where the reason for my journey was kept. Half an hour of dismantling and heaving later, and the back of the hire van looked like this:

As Rolf Harris would say, "can you guess what it is yet...?"

Well, that dismantled layout in the back of the van was previously set up in Neil's loft, and it looked a lot more picturesque like this:

Detail of the far end, during the course of dismantling (although not in a Beeching style):

If it's starting to look familiar to you, then you may well be right...

I have just become the latest custodian of the Ulpha Light Railway :-)

This was built by the Norwood MRC as an exhibition layout, and originally written up in an article in Rail Model Digest No. 3 which appeared in 1996. A few years later it was acquired by Neil, and he has kept it safe for the last five or six years, in excellent condition but not used a great deal operationally.

Last week, as a stepping stone to moving on to fulfilling his own plans to build his own layout, he listed it on Ebay, where it appeared very, very briefly. For as soon as I saw it (at about 6.10am...) then I thought that it (i) looked excellent and (ii) would be the perfect test track for stockbuilding. So after letting my wife wake up (!) and then asking for her agreement to take over part of her garage with it, at least in the short term - it's my car that's been kicked out onto the drive, not her motorbikes - I agreed to buy it.

There is only one small flaw... I'm a Great Eastern modeller, and this is resolutely set in Cumbria...

However, after getting it all back into working condition and checking it out thoroughly, I have plans to shift the location slightly. Preliminary enquiries have established that there were chalk quarries on the north-western side of Saffron Walden...

For now, it's putting it up in the garage and admiring the excellent craftsmanship. thank you Norwood MRC, and thank you Neil for allowing me the privilege of owning it.

I can see clearly...

2011-01-29T09:56:00.001Z

There - you'll have dire Seventies song lyrics buzzing around in your head for the next week... The reason for it is that I've finished the small project that I've been working on, and that I needed some brass countersunk screws for from Eileen's, which resulted in the spontaneous airbrush purchase at the St Albans exhibition.

As part of the Scalefour Society demonstration stand for exhibitions, we sometimes are asked about the need for suspension on models built to P4 standards. I'm not going to go into the reasons and circumstances why and where it may be necessary here, but there are three main options:

- rigid (i.e. drop-in wheelsets with no further work)

- compensated (the traditional method using a rocking axle)

- sprung (using steel wire to allow the individual axlebox to move up and down)

So I've built three wagon chassis, to illustrate each possibility:

As you'll clearly (sorry!) see, the "body" on which the suspension units are mounted are clear pieces of perspex, cut to the same size as a typical 10-ton wagon. This means that it is easier to see how the units are constructed, and also when used in practice on a demo piece of track.

The one on the left is sprung using Bill Bedford units, the one on the right has a Scalefour Society rocking unit, and the one at the rear is rigid, using Scalefour Society units but folded up to sit on the chassis without movement.

Of course, no matter what suspension method is used, it is critical that the axles are absolutely parallel with each other. That is why it is sitting in a Brassmasters chassis gauge, which sets the final adjustment into alignment at the chosen wheelbase. It's a tool that I certainly would not now be without in building reliably running wagons. It's usable for any 4mm gauge as well - not just P4. The final glueing of the suspension units with a spot of superglue to hold them on place is the reason why it is being used.

So there you have it. Hopefully something that will de-mystify P4 in one more aspect for those that are curious, and also a useful way of checking the reliability of my own track by watching the suspension work as the wagon is pushed along it.

Rail Express - February 2011

2011-01-27T16:07:00.000Z

I'm not in the habit of giving random plugs to magazines just because they have a P4 layout in them, or a model built to 18.83 standards. However I'm going to break that rule in the case of February's edition of Rail Express, which hit the bookstalls last week.

In the Modelling section in the middle of the magazine, you'll find an article by Society members Terry and Simon Bendall. This is the first instalment in a new 24 part series dedicated to showing the building of a small layout in P4. It's based on BR Southern Region, third rail prototypes, but the basic principles are equally applicable to many locations and periods.

The series will take you from the initial concept, through building the track, to the surroundings and the rolling stock that is needed and will get you started. This is categorically a practical layout that could be built at home, and by the "average P4 modeller".

So even if you are not a D&E modeller, you may well find that this is a very interesting project. Indeed, you may feel that at the steady pace of one episode per month, you may want to build your new layout alongside Terry and Simon...

Beware the Russan!

2011-01-24T06:28:00.001Z

If this was a James Bond script, you'd think that there was a missing "i" in there somewhere...

But in actual fact, it is nothing more than a reference to the amiable proprietor of Eileen's Emporium, Derek Russan. Now Eileen's has become the "one-stop" for me for tools, materials and general bits and bobs. However going to see Derek has its dangers...

I was glad that he was at the St Albans show, as I needed the pin-chuck adapter that had been suggested by Terry Bendall for my pillar drill, and a couple of packets of 14BA brass countersunk bolts for a small project that I'll be able to finish now. A few quid's worth, and nothing more.

So how on earth did I wind up walking out with a new airbrush compressor?

Well, it's down to Derek's superb salesmanship, a demonstration of how much quieter his new compressors are than my existing 15 year old "thumper", and a very tempting price :-)

So thank you Derek, it looks like a superb piece of kit, and I'm very much looking forward to trying it in anger.

Flymo

Unexpected arrivals

2011-01-21T21:39:00.000Z

I went to the post office today to collect a parcel that couldn't be delivered earlier in the week. I thought that it might be a CD or two that I'd ordered recently. On opening it, I found:

- five D&S kits for Great Eastern 5 plank opens

- five D&S kits for Great Eastern cattle wagons

Thank you Dan Pinnock! He has a longstanding large order of mine, and every so often I get a mystery package turn up on the doorstep. Nothing is critical in timing, so it makes it even more pleasant when it happens.

What a top bloke :-)

Scalefour Society Workbench - Manchester, March 2011

2011-01-17T08:13:00.000Z

Just a quick plug for an event that the Scalefour Society is organising...

We are pleased to announce a practical workshop, aimed at those who are interested in modelling to finescale 4mm standards, or who are new to P4 modelling and want to find out more first.
This is a repeat of the successful Workbench held in London in 2010.

The Workbench is open to all modellers, and not only members of the Scalefour Society.

The workshop will give an introduction to:

•    Soldering skills and materials

•    Fitting suspension to a model wagon

•    Converting a ready-to-run locomotive using drop-in P4 wheelsets

•    Thoughts on methods of track construction

The workbench will be run by experienced P4 modellers and will give hands-on experience in all of these areas. Attendees will need to bring with them a small selection of tools and details will be provided in advance of the Workbench.

Date:           Saturday 26th March 2011
Venue:        Manchester MRS Clubroom, Dean Hall
        Mersey Road, Manchester
Time:        10.00am to 4.30pm
Cost:        £30 per person, to cover resources used

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the day. Attendees will need to make their own arrangements for lunch.

To get further details or to book a place contact Terry Bendall :
e-mail terrybendall@scalefour.org

or write to     123 Plantation Road
               Leighton Buzzard
                   Bedfordshire   LU73HJ.

End of advertising break!

Trouble comes in threes

2010-12-28T09:52:00.000Z

I couldn't face a return to the computer last night, so it's a post-event write-up... They say that trouble comes in threes, and yesterday proved the truth of that. After the gearbox glitch, and the tender hornguide hiatus, came the soldering iron woes!

I thought that I'd do something very straightforward and knock up some wagon suspension for a little side-project (of which more in a couple of days time). I switched on my Antex TC660 soldering station, the "heating" light flashed once, and that was it :-(

Much switching on and off, dismantling, probing, etc, etc, and it still did exactly the the same. Flashed once for heating, the element got _slightly_ warm, and nothing more. My suspicions are that the temperature sensor in the element has died, so that it gets to the minimum level of heat (75 degrees C) and then switches off. Replacement elements are available, but not readily on a bank holiday evening.

Fortunately, my nearest Maplin is only ten minutes drive away, and after a quick phone call to confirm that they woul be open until 6pm, I whizzed off down there for a replacement soldering station. It's Maplin's own model, 48W, and with a digital temperature display. With a packet of spare bits, it cost me 55 quid as an emergency purchase, versus about £30 for a replacement element for the Antex - not that I could have got one until the New Year anyway.

It does the job, but I have to say that I don't like it as much as the Antex. The iron itself is more bulky, and somehow feels more "clumsy" to use. The bits don't seem as well built, and are not as fine to use and don't seem to hold the solder on the bit cleanly. And the up/down temperature control is not as quick to use as the dial on the Antex.

All this makes it sound as though the Maplin iron is rubbish. It's not. However I've clearly been spoiled by the Antex, and I'll be getting a new element for it as soon as I can. I can then keep the Maplin station as a spare in case the Antex dies again.

So that is my three items of bad luck out of the way! Let's hope that is it for the festive season...

A couple of glitches

2010-12-27T15:33:00.000Z

Just when it was all going so well... Actually, the two glitches that I've hit that will disrupt progress for a little while are not the fault of the Alan Gibson kit. It's solely due to the way that I'm building it using CSB suspension, and the learning points involved in that. Again, no fault of the theory or practice of CSBs, just that they need alternative approaches.

The first glitch arose last night when I started putting together a High Level RoadRunner+ gearbox to use in the Y14. I picked up a couple of these at Scaleforum, knowing that they are lovely quality items. However, when i got it part-built, I tried it between the frames and...

The gearbox is too wide to go between the axleboxes. I've already thinned as much as I dare from the back without losing the High Level beam-fixing tags, but there is still a lot to lose before it will go. So I've put the chassis to one side, and will phone in an order for a couple of SlimLiner+ gearboxes after the New Year.

I may also get chance to pick up one of the High Level mounting point jigs for CSBs at the same time. They were so popular at Scaleforum that Chris had sold out before I could get to his stand.

With progress on the loco stalled, I thought that I would have a crack at the tender. This should be pretty straightforward, and again would have CSB springing all round. I have more High Level 2mm axleboxes and hornblocks in stock, so the first thing that I did was get them out for mounting in the (inner) tender chassis frames.

The Alan Gibson frames come pre-milled with cutouts for the standard AG hornblocks for springing. Unfortunately, these holes are actually larger than the entire High Level hornblock, including the mounting plate.

So I'll have to make up some frame sides of my own, and go from there. Not enormously difficult, but a little tedious with a piercing saw. So that's for another day. In the meantime, I'm going to knock up something quick and easy...

Flymo

Detailing the chassis

2010-12-25T17:58:00.000Z

A few pieces of brass strip, and couple of bits of bent wire, and a rather impressionistic detailing of the chassis has come together.

Now to find the instructions for my High Level gearbox kit and get some movement into it...

I think that's it...

2010-12-22T08:12:00.000Z

After watching Jezzer, James and Stuart on the seasonal Top Gear, I returned to the workbench last night to do some more on the Y14. I must have got in the metaphorical steam of things, as it was 23.58 when I soldered the last lamp iron into place, and dunked the body into the ultrasonic bath.

And I think that this is it. I believe that I've got in place every detail from locomotive no. 643 that I could identify on the photographs in place. I used a picture of 642 for the port-side, and even between apparently sister engines in the class, I noticed one difference, in the number of handrail knobs on the side of the smokebox. There is a lot of GER standardisation, but very little consistency!

So here are some pictures of it. The blotchy colours of the metalwork are due to the use of Acidip then neutralising Rinse to clean off the flux and oxides. It isn't actually that bad in real life...

Comments and criticisms are all very welcome. I know that the whistle is absent from the side of the safety valve, as that is polished brass and won't be fitted until after painting. Also, I know of two very small errors in the style of the components fitted, when compared to the prototype photos. However I'll keep those to myself unless someone spots them - they really are very, very minor.

Flymo

Santa Claus arrives early...

2010-12-21T22:37:00.000Z

Or at least the postman does. Bringing with him the etches for my Great Eastern Little Sharpie 2-4-0 kit. This is from PeterK, part of the Kemilway portfolio: http://www.kemilway.com/peter-k.html

Having virtually forgotten about it, being some fourteen months since I placed the order and the cheque was cashed, I gave a random phone call to Kemilway, when I remembered last week. Part of the overall delay was due to me having moved house in August, and the first delivery sometime after that wasn't swept up in our postal re-direct.

But now I have it! The next step is to review what suitable castings are available from Alan Gibson to complete it, and put it into the Works queue.

One picture from the Kemilway website of what the finished model should look like.

Despite the delay, I'm really looking forward to building it...

An evening's work...

2010-12-18T09:52:00.000Z

Making progress is great when you put your mind to it. For once, I had an evening with very little in commitments to do anything. We were staying in to wait for a friend who is coming up from Bristol for the weekend, so I retired to my modelling desk to get started on what was initially quite a daunting set of details that I'd identified.

The kit instructions are generally quite vague at this point, and there is only a single exploded diagram of the locomotive that shows *everything* that is in the kit, regardless of period or option. Points that I came across on the way, and that I include for the education/amusement/despair of you, gentle reader, include:

- The Westinghouse pump mounting bracket does not have an identifiable location to fit to the kit. It isn't visible on the instructions, nor any of my photos. Logically really, as it's hidden behind the pump itself. So I concluded that it can only go behind the lower part of the pump, as to be behind the upper would interfere with the reversing rod.

- Getting the lower ends of the pipes from the clack valves and the Westinghouse pump fixed firmly to the footplate promised to be problematic, as I didn't want to leave a visible gap at the end of them. I solved this by flooding a blob of low melt solder onto the footplate, then fixing the pipe into this. I could then use the tip of a scalpel and some needlefiles to pare back the excess solder until only a pipe-width remained.

- Most of us have an excess of different solders in our tool kit - USE THEM! Last night I used four different types. These are all from Carrs/C&L (no connection, just good quality stuff) and were 188 solder paint, 179, 145 and 70 degree. Use each in its proper place and the job is so much easier.

- Details of what I believe are the sandbox operating linkages are not included in the kit. I made these up from a couple of spare AG short handrail knobs and some 0.45mm straight wire. They curve under the boiler, where it appears that the operating linkages to the cab run on the prototype. I think that they are an extra detail that is rather quite convincing.

- Bending the front curve of a handrail is an absolute sod! I've always struggled to get this even on any loco that I've built (not that there have ever been more than three of them before this), and of the correct radius. This one isn't perfect, but it's not too bad, and I seem to have got the "elbows" to bring the length of wire back down the boiler side in roughly the right places. I did it with a series of very small wreaks in AG straight wire using snipe nosed pliers. If anyone has any other tips or methods that they can share, I'd very much appreciate it.

So what is the result of all this labour? Here are a couple of (slightly blurry, as they were shot using the grey natural light this morning) pictures of it:

There are still a few more external details, such as pipe runs and hinges, to be fitted, but it's starting to look much less clean-lined than before, but is a workmanlike, good way. Maybe some more to be done this evening, but in the meantime it's Christmas shopping!

Starting the detailing

2010-12-16T23:06:00.000Z

So, to make a start on the fine detail of the locomotive. The picture below shows my initial stage:

Thanks to Adrian Marks of the GERS, I have photos of the left and right sides of sequential locomotives from my intended production (1899) batch of the Y14. They are also in roughly the correct period. You'll see that I've printed them off at A4 size. I've then ringed each detail that I can see on the locomotive and that isn't already on the model.

Some of these fittings already come with the Alan Gibson kit. Some I will have to make from scratch. And so to the soldering iron...

2010-12-16T19:00:00.000Z

Well, I've just booked myself on the Missenden Modellers Weekend. That's 11-13 March 2011, in deepest Buckinghamshire.

Now I really *must* get on and finish the Y14, as I started it at last year's course, and it's going to be so embarassing if I'm *still* working on it :-(

To the workbench (after dinner and a glass of red wine, that is)!

Getting things moving

2010-12-05T07:50:00.000Z

After another couple of weeks of no real progress on the demo board, yesterday I had chance to start work on it again.

I'd already obtained from Maplin some terminal posts and a rotary selector switch as components, so I was ready to go with drill and soldering iron. The interesting thing about the Maplin rotary switch, if anyone is contemplating using one is that although they are sold as (in this case) a three-way by four contact switch, this appears to be defined by the position of a tab-washer inside the switch. This can be moved to give a different number of clicks. This presumably gives a different number of discrete selections. I didn't test this with a multimeter, but is worth exploring if you think that you have the wrong component for the job in hand. Oh, and I found this little gem out when the switch fell apart after I'd taken the locking ring off to install it. So be careful!

Anyway, this is how it looks from above the baseboard:

The nearest posts, by the switch are the ones that take the power feeds. I will produce some proper wires for a controller with banana plugs, rather than the temporary flying leads that I use for testing locomotives at the workbench. The far posts are for the power feed to go in for the point motors.

And this is it underneath:

I'm using a piece of copperclad sleeper strip as a wiring bus, so that I don't have to try and fit all of the return feeds into a single point or onto a single component.

And so if I get chance today, it's on to finishing off my first Turnout Operation Unit, and seeing if it can be installed.

Tracklaying (nearly) finished...

2010-11-15T21:28:00.000Z

A friend gently chided me this weekend about the absence of blog updates. He has a point - when I'm modelling, I tend not to think of the computer, and when I'm sorting out things on the computer, I don't get any modelling done! The excuses are not relevant though - I should just get on and do both!

There has been progress in the last couple of weeks though. The Scalefour Society stand was attending the East Ham Finescale Show, thanks to time dedicated to by Terry Bendall, Mike Ainsworth and Bob Bourne. However I helped out on Sunday, and I was determined to take the demo board along. There were three reasons for building this set of track.

Firstly was to proved that after a few years away from active modelling, that I could still build track that worked! Well, subject to wiring it all up, I think that I succeeded in this, and I certainly learned a few lessons of what NOT to do. More on these in a separate post...

Secondly was to give myself a small test-track that was more than a rolling road and 12" of straight track.

And thirdly, and the reason for the diversity of track types on it was to show to people new to P4 modelling that there were now a whole range of track solutions available, ranging from the "shake the box" kit that is almost like RTR (but not quite!) to the more traditional ways that are still valid.

So I set myself the goal of finishing the tracklaying in time for EHFS. I managed that during the week beforehand, and was able to take the completed board along with me. This is the track fully laid:

The diagram beside it is the key to the actual types of construction. This will be smartened up when I have learned enough Templot to re-draw the board using that software. The next shot is down the length of the board, showing what are hopefully some flowing curves.

And finally, just to show the reason for taking the time and modelling effort of modelling to P4, an A5 turnout alongside a similar dimensioned OO Peco turnout.

The next steps are the wiring and point motors...

Rail preparation

2010-10-23T22:04:00.000+01:00

Here's a thought - prior to building ply and rivet track, do you actually clean the foot of the rail?

The reason for asking is that I've just done that, and wondered why I'd never done it before. I'm making up some lengths of 36" curved track for my demo board. I plucked a length of nickel silver rail from the tube where it's kept, and did as I always do - burnish both sides of the rail with a glass fibre brush to get rid of the crud so that it is clean for soldering.

And then I looked at the foot of the rail... The flat surface, that I'm actually hoping the solder paint will bond to, was just as tarnished as the sides. So I whizzed the brush along that as well, and now all is bright and shiny.

Hopefully it improved the strength of the track rather than just having to rely on solder joints to the web of the rail. I thought that I'd mention it, as I can't recall anyone mentioning it specifically before. Of course, you'll now better and point me to a dozen references :-)

Satisfyingly quick

2010-10-18T23:00:00.000+01:00

Sometimes you just need to pick up a soldering iron...

Part of the demo board that I'm building has copperclad track in it, just to show how you don't need to go for the full P4TrackCo stuff (excellent as it is) when you're "behind the scenes". So five minutes with a strip of copperclad, a length of nickel silver rail, and voila!

Sorted!

Forming some thoughts...

2010-10-10T22:41:00.000+01:00

Having decided that I'm doing a quick small layout, inspired by Horsley Bank at Scaleforum, I am putting some ideas together. Following the "Beer & Buckjumpers" theme, then it will be of part of a maltings/brewery complex. I've yet to draw up the full trackplan on Templot, but a list of desirable features to include (in no particular order) is:

- wagon turntable into a building, a la Snape Maltings

- GER branch line on embankment in background as part of backdrop

- wharf, with interlaced track for loading

- engine shed triangle, as at Bass Brewery, Burton

- possible Spitalfields style coaling stage

- coal unloading area for brewery

- bay window over a loading bay (I have a particular picture in mind)

- models of my former neighbour's house which was a maltster's house, and my old house (part of a maltings) if there is space.

And I need to fit all of that in 4' by 2'...

Oh, [expletive deleted] Templot!

2010-10-06T22:10:00.000+01:00

Top tip...

When you have tried *several* times to insert a bitmap (.bmp) image into a Templot background, and you still get a blank square labelled "* Empty Picture", when you reload the file, don't despair...

It's because although Templot allows you to navigate to where the .bmp source file is, it doesn't remember that location or actually import the image. It just (AIUI) imports the name of the file.

You need to copy the .bmp file into the Templot\shape-files folder for it to find it again.

This little undocumented (AFAIK) "feature" has cost me an hour in wasted time this evening. It was only thanks to the good advice of Morgan Gilbert at Scaleforum that I remembered where I might be going wrong. I've searched, and I can't find anything on the Templot site that explains this...

Anyway, the end result is this:

Onwards and upwards!

Read the instructions...

2010-10-04T23:39:00.000+01:00

Or, in this case, read Norman Solomon's series of track-building articles in Model Railway Journal. That would have been very helpful with my recent track-laying experience.

Before going away racing at the weekend, I decided to lay some of the track that I've been building for my demo board. Having seen Norman's demonstration at the Missenden modelling weekend earlier this year, I thought that I would try his technique of fixing the track using PVA and ballasting it at the same time. This would be laid on a bed of Carrs foam, which is just the right thickness and firmness to give a resilient but yielding foundation.

I also used the technique of laying granite ballast immediately on top of the wet glue, in the areas where I wanted to show finished track. So I did this, after spreading the glue reasonably well, up to and over the edges of the masking tape that I'd use to define the formation, and placing the track carefully on the wet PVA. Then I applied a few weights just to hold the track in position and left it for the weekend. When I came back to it, this is what it looked like:

Good points:

- the track had stuck well, and hadn't tried to lift or twist

- the glue was flexible, and the foam trackbed still worked as a firm foundation

- the ballast had generally taken well, sticking to the glue without going rock solid. It had also stayed reasonable clear of the sleepers, so I don't have a huge amount of clearing up to do.

Less good points:

- the steel rail has rusted! Having been very careful to keep it unblemished prior to laying it, there are now patches of fresh rust all over the sides and head of both plain track and pointwork. This is going to have to be cleaned off. I suspect that it is something nasty given off as the PVA dried, and as it is much more pronounced on the sections where the weights were placed, I believe that it was trapped from evaporating away.

- there is glue and ballast that has crept behind a couple of the switch blades. This is going to need some careful digging out and cleaning.

- the PVA stuck the masking tape too well to the edge of the track to separate easily. I'm having to carefully cut it off the underlay. In future, I think that I need to lift the masking tape when the PVA is still wet, and chance the glue and ballast creeping further.

So all in all, a mixed result. I'm confident that it doesn't need scrapping and rebuilding, but it does need a bit of TLC to get it back to a usable state. Live and learn!

Today's Top Tip

2010-10-01T06:26:00.000+01:00

...if you have spray painted a length of flexible track off the baseboard, don't try and subsequently adjust the curve of it.

For although it is relatively easy to break the bond on a single painted chair, or even Pandrol clip in this case, a track panel worth's of them isn't going to move easily :-(

Oh well, it's nice to be doing some modelling again. I am just wondering how long it will take the PVA that I laid last night to dry. It seems to have hardly dried at all by this morning. It's also very successfully turned the sides and head of the steel rail rusty. That was unforeseen. I think that my track laying technique is going to need some refinement in the future...

Scaleforum inspiration

2010-09-27T08:08:00.000+01:00

All has been quiet from me recently, as a house move at the end of August meant that modelling equipment had to be boxed up, and time found for more important things (like rebuilding drains, and fixing lights). There was also the run-up to Scaleforum, which meant Society matters took my attention as well.

However, with a very successful weekend at Leatherhead behind us (I'm sure that there are many that will tell the story better than I can) I have both more time and much inspiration as well. Inspired by Horsley Bank, I feel a minimum space "box" layout coming on :-)

Finally, it was great to spend time talking to folk over the weekend that I only normally "know" over the web. Too many to name individually, thank you all for taking the time to say hello, and I'm sorry that I may have been interrupted to answer questions about catering and suchlike. If you have a namebadge on, at times you're a target ;-)

See you all next time!

J15 build - Mystery Parts

2010-08-15T13:06:00.000+01:00

In the background, behind my exploits with the High Level Pug, I've been building an Alan Gibson kit of a J15, or more accurately a Great Eastern Y14, as it will be in condition suitable for circa 1908.

I'm now at the detailing stage of the body, and I've found on the fret these mystery parts - four times part #42 :

They look like washout covers for the boiler. However there is no mention of a part #42 anywhere in the instructions, nor do they show on the exploded diagram, which is intended to cover the parts not mentioned in the text.

Fortunately, it seems like they were a not an original GER feature, so I can safely ignore them. I can't see them evident on any of the period photos that I have from the GERS Journal. But does anyone know if my assumptions are correct?

Flymo

Weighty matters

2010-08-11T06:46:00.000+01:00

It's been a few weeks since I last made a post. I'm afraid that's because I've been busy with other things - both Scalefour Society matters, advertising the Scaleforum exhibition in September, and more importantly preparing for our house move that will take place in two weeks time. That means that I get a dedicated study cum railway room :-)

The Pug has made some progress since I replaced the axle after the unfortunate Loctite Incident. It has been put on a rolling road, and shows a slight limp that I need to eliminate. To help the running and road-holding, I also needed to add some additional weight to the kit chassis. The normal model has a large cast weight in the tank, and this is replaced in the High Level model with the motor and gears, to give the benefit of clearing the cab and allowing full backhead detail to be seen.

I used lead sheet to pack up the free corners, cut to size with a scalpel and snips, and held in place with either superglue or epoxy resin. This photo shows how it was done.

The locations are:

1 - under the cab, next to the reversing rod

2 - under the cab, behind the rear valance

3 - in the front chassis "box" between the cylinders. This has a section cut out to allow a screwdriver to the chassis mounting screw

4 - inside the coal bunkers on either side of the cab. There was a need to be careful here not to intrude into the area of the floor fixings

5 - two curved strips placed under the roof, and glued out of sight.

Together, they've brought the weight up to 76 grams. Probably not as heavy as the original model was, but a definite improvement. Let's see how it runs when it's back together.

Frustration!

2010-07-11T20:33:00.001+01:00

I was hoping to get a good few hours of modelling in today...

Anne is away racing sidecars in South Wales, and apart from a couple of hours over lunch to visit some bee-keeping friends, I was expecting a day of peace and quiet to finally knock a couple of things off. However I didn't anticipate the modelling bug striking my ten year old stepson so hard today. A friend of ours gave him an old Tamiya kit for a Ducati 916 (the same bike that I have).

So I've spent most of the morning and afternoon holding parts, cutting out components, and generally being a gopher! Pretty much all of it he can do himself, but he does like the company :-)

Anyway, I'm not really complaining. He's shown a skill and patience level far beyond what I was expecting. This is the result so far:

It's about five inches long, and has exactly the same components as the real thing, so he's had me going "that's a crankcase breather, that's a steering damper" and so on...

For me, I was frustrated because:

(1) I forgot that I'd switched my mini-drill into reverse to do some burnishing, so the small drills I was using to make holes for handrail knobs on my J15 were going nowhere, and particularly after I snapped the drills...

(2) Whilst spraying track for my demo board, the paint well fell off the side of my airbrush, so that was a clearing up job...

(3) I took the Pug back out of its box where I put it for the loctite on the gearwheel to set, and found that I hadn't re-done as much to it as I thought.

Oh well, in reality, it's been a lovely day! Hope that yours was as well...

East Suffolk Light

2010-07-05T06:25:00.000+01:00

Over the weekend we visited Snape Maltings, in search of antiques shops. Whilst driving around the area, and seeing the maltings itself, it reminded me so much of Iain Rice's East Suffolk Light Railway.

Many people talk about the influence of Pendon or Heckmondwike on their modelling, but for me the key influence was the ESLR. That combination of artistic observation, eclectic rolling stock, and a history that bound it all together was superb in setting a time and a place. It wasn't just a model railway, but a model *of* a railway, even if that was an entire fiction :-)

It would be great to know "where is it now?" and whether it was ever going to appear on the exhibition circuit again, but it simply seems to have sunk without trace. Ah well, I think that I'll be digging out my old magazines for a dose of nostalgia tonight...

Inspiration

2010-06-21T21:57:00.000+01:00

I had last week as holiday from work, and other than getting a lot more modelling done, we had the opportunity to just chill out and do things. On Friday Anne and I went into London to spend the day going around galleries.

To Tate Britain first, and then on to the National Gallery. I was, as usual, completely entranced with the Turners, and not just because "Rain, Steam and Speed" includes a Green With Rivets train.

It's because Turner is such an inspiration on how an impression of substance, colour and movement can be created with just a few strokes of a brush. When it comes to scenic works on a model railway, I definitely want to try and be inspired to create the depth and emotion in the scenery that he does on canvas. Hmmm.... I wonder if I should try art classes before painting my backscene.

Flymo

Scrap

2010-06-18T08:04:00.000+01:00

Well, I couldn't get enough heat from a soldering iron into the gear wheel from my soldering iron. It's only a 50W iron, and even cranked up to full, the heatsink of the brass gear was too great to stop it getting any hotter than uncomfortably warm.

So it was out with the Dremel, and the careful use of the slitting disc... I had to make a series of cuts to first of all get the gearbox out, then to extract the gear wheel itself. There wasn't enough room to cut it immediately in the middle and slide the axles out.

This picture shows the four parts that the axle wound up in!

From here, it was easy to use a gear puller to get the gear off the axle. It was then cleaned up, and re-mounted on an axle stolen from my other Pug kit. I must get some spares from Alan Gibson when I next see him at a show...

Flymo

Stuck

2010-06-14T16:59:00.000+01:00

Or, to put it another way, does anyone know and effective method of removing Loctite 601?

In a burst of enthusiasm (okay, free time) on Friday and today, I finished off the Pug mechanically. This has not been without its trials and tribulations... In particular, it's only after assembling the whole thing that I found that there wasn't enough running clearance for the connecting rods to oscillate as needed between the original slidebars. Cue careful use of a dremel.

But the problem that I now have is this. Having followed the instructions to the letter, I tested everything out, and fixed the final drive gear on the driven axle with a tiny smear of superglue. This done, and suitably cured, I set it running on my rolling road.

After five minutes, the gentle whirr of the motor continues, but the rotation of the wheels stops. The gear wheel has slipped on the axle. It could actually be moved easily from side to side within the gear box.

So this time I reached for the Loctite 601, and intended to leave it to set firmly overnight. However, to avoid getting 601 where it wasn't needed, and knowing that it sets slowly, I applied some to the gear wheel with it in the middle of the gearbox and well away from anything else. I then intended to slide the gear wheel sideways until it meshed with the drive gear. You can tell what happened next...

Instant bonding. How come 601 never works this way with wheels? Whether it was because the axle was warm, I don't know, but what should have been fifteen minutes of adjustment room was changed into instantly setting solid with the gearwheel in the wrong place.

I've tried a little physical persuasion and it hasn't budged. The alternative to loosening the glue is to dismantle most of the chassis - not something I'm pleased with contemplating.

Can anyone suggest a non-destructive way of freeing off Loctite 601?

Flymo

Organisation

2010-06-08T06:41:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I was able to find the time for some modelling, but I have been getting things ready for a final assembly session on the Pug. To say that I'm slightly nervous about the clearances of the coupling rods behind the crossheads is rather an understatement...

I've found that during building this kit, being organised has always been essential. Witness the case of the missing brake hanger as an example.

So when it came down to taking the Pug apart for painting I didn't want to mess up all of the neatly and precisely matched components that I had prepared earlier. During previous stages each bearing, axle and what had been washed with a code of coloured dots to indicate their position in the chassis. Also critical was getting the correct thickness of washers behind each wheel, as there is not a huge amount of space to fit the clearances to the connecting rods in, and free play must be kept to an absolute minimum.

I then used the back of an old business card to mark out the respective positions of all of the components. The picture below illustrates:

Of course, the knack now is to not knock them on the floor!

Files

2010-05-04T23:43:00.002+01:00

I was chatting with Steve Duckworth a couple of weeks ago at Scalefour North. We were comparing various tools and techniques, and the ways that we can model better. I commented on a little change that I have made, and Steve suggested that it was worth sharing.

How many times have you picked up the wrong file? You know the situation - you're doing some heavy-duty removal of whitemetal from a wagon underframe, you reach into the box or rack and pick up your very best fine-cut needle file, usually only reserved for stroking the olive-skinned thighs of Sicilian virgins, and High Level Kits' hornblocks...

Usually you only notice about five milliseconds after you've used it... There is a cry of "oh dear" and an attempt using file-combs/heat/scalpel tips to remove the shiny stuff that you've just clagged the teeth up with. A waste of modelling time, and never fully successful. I did this several times until I hit on a simple approach that won't prevent it, but will make it much less likely.

This is the box that my needle files live in...

And this is how I tell them apart...

I picked up a bottle of Tippex correction fluid, and now the white-handled files are the ones for WHITEmetal (and solder, lead and other clagging materials)

A Black permanent market pen indicate the file is for Brass, as well as nickel silver, steel and so on.

And the yellow handled one? Not for gold, but my scriber. Because it *looks* like a needle file, I kept picking it up by mistake to file things, and used rats-tail files inadvertently as scribers...

As Aleksandr would say, "Simples!".

Patchy

2010-04-28T06:44:00.000+01:00

Over on the Scalefour Society Forum, I have asked about the use of metal black as a preparation for painting, and these are my experiences...

Well, firstly, I started off by giving all of the parts that were going to be treated a good going over with Carr's Acidip to chemically clean the surfaces thoroughly, and to get rid of any traces of flux, dirt and so on. After this, it was into some plain water in my wife's jewellery cleaning ultrasonic tank...

This always does a superb job at making any remaining grime and noxious substances literally fall off the model. You can even see the slightly cloudy water streaming away from the model when you switch the machine on. And she is happy as well if you offer to clean her rings at the same time - although preferably without the application of Acidip!

After this, the parts were popped on some kitchen paper in a box to keep the dust off them and left to dry thoroughly in the sun. Such are the joys of modelling in the summer.

After this, I reached for the Casey's Gunblue, and applied it with the end of a cotton bud. Unfortunately this was the result - distinctly patchy.

I'm not quite sure why. The model wasn't handled at all after cleaning, and was perfectly dry. I can only hypothesize that it was variations in the grades of nickel silver that made the difference.

Either way, I followed it up with a thin coating of etch primer, sprayed on, to ensure that the paint would adhere properly. I'd washed the remains of the gunblue off with plain water so the surface for the primer was clean again.

So quite a disappointing result. I still see the merits of using blackening on the edges of models to ensure that any paint chips won't be so obvious. That makes a lot of sense, and I'll be doing it in limited circumstances. I also suspect that the gunblue will "take" better on brass than on nickel silver, so I haven't given up all hope of this method.

I thought that I'd post the results so that you can all see what the outcome was, and perhaps add your own thoughts or experiences.

Don't try this at home...

2010-04-21T06:36:00.000+01:00

...or anywhere else for that matter.

As part of my P4 demonstration track, I've planned to show various different types of trackwork construction. A rough plan of it shows what I mean:

Part of it is to link a P4Track Company B8 kit into the three-way point made from ply & rivet. I'd made the B8 a couple of weeks ago without problem. Last night I finished riveting the ply sleepers, a tedious task at the best of times, and started laying them out on the template:

Unfortunately, when I looked at it the difference in height between the plastic sleepers and ply sleepers was more significant than I expected:

I'll just have to work with that, laying the ply onto a thick card trackbase. Once bitten, twice shy, and I'll not attempt to mix the two types like this in future. I recommend that you do the same!

Also, the act of laying down the sleepers showed that I'd missed out punching and fitting one rivet. It's right in the middle of the point, at the end of the wing rail. I thought momentarily about making another sleeper, but then realised that I could just use one of my spare P4Track Co. plastic chairs to fix the end in place.

So that's a solution that saves the situation and will produce a good cosmetic effect. Next stage is to start making the crossing vees.

In the raw

2010-04-15T22:00:00.000+01:00

I thought that I would make a final post of the chassis construction for the Pug. The reason for doing so is that this is the last time that it will be seen in this state of raw metal.

The next instructions ar "break the chassis down into its sub-assemblies [done, as you can see] and paint it". So I lose all of that lovely shiny nickel silver, and start to gain something that looks like a proper locomotive :-)

In case you were wondering about the slightly mangled looking brake gear, it isn't broken or mis-assembled. Chris at High Level has used a very ingenious design to make the entire brake gear removable from the completed chassis.

There are "carrying tubes" that run through the chassis frames, and through each of these passes a loose wire. From this the soldered up brake rigging hangs. The fact that it is soldered means that it all stays in alignment with the wheels as a single unit. The seemingly misaligned wire at the far left is actually just one of the loose mounting wires that I hadn't tucked properly back in place. You are even told to put a slight curve in the length of the mounting wires to ensure that friction holds them in place.

I've yet to see the instructions for final mounting of the brake gear, but I may well put a small blob of black paint on the ends of them to fix them securely, yet in a manner that can be easily detached, for extra security.

In the meantime, it will be off with the wheels, a final clean in the ultrasonic bath, and into the paintshop...

And then there were two

2010-04-11T10:43:00.000+01:00

Brakehangers that is.

This was the brakehanger that remained, and I wished to copy. The scrap nickel silver is a OO spacer from the kit, so the correct thickness and also surplus to requirements.

I used my Resistance Soldering Unit to attach the hanger to the scrap. Using a RSU was ideal for this, as I could "spot weld" the parts together and no risk the completed brakehanger de-laminating or otherwise losing parts.

I then took a piercing saw and fretted around the outline of the master and whilst they were still soldered together used the holes for the brake rodding to drill through into the new part to get them properly aligned. When this was done, I carefully slid a scalpel blade between the old and new components and gently heating them with a conventional iron split them apart.

All that I had to do after that was to drill a small hole in the centre for the piece of wire to represent the brakeshoe retaining pin, and solder in a small piece of wire. Unfortunately at this point a no.78 drill was lost in action, but we all get casualties from time to time.

A spot of cleaning up with a file and these are the finished articles. The re-manufactured one is at the front. Not quite as neat as the original etching, but the day has been saved :-)

Bother!

2010-03-28T23:40:00.000+01:00

I've not done very much on the Pug recently. However I picked it up again earlier this evening to get started on the brake gear. This is very cleverly designed as a one piece unit that can be removeable.

To start it, I made up the brakeshoes and put them ready to be fitted to the crossbars. Here's a picture of all four of them prepared. The next step would be to mount the wheels to set the shoes to the correct position.

Unfortunately, after I'd mounted the wheels on the axles in the chassis, I went to pick up the brakeshoes (centre of picture) and found only three of them :-(((

I suspect that whilst fitting the wheels, I caught one of them with a sleeve and flicked it into the far corner of the room! I've spent twenty minutes on my knees on the floor grubbing around and not found it.

So out with the nickel silver scrap and the piercing saw when I next start on this again. Sigh...

Chassis progress

2010-03-06T18:56:00.000Z

Well, although I haven't posted anything for a couple of weeks, I've been busy with the Pug and a few other things - of which more anon - so I'm not going to go through a blow by blow build of the chassis. Rather, this will be a picture essay, with a few comments where appropriate.

Where I left it previously, I'd finished the cab fittings and was ready to move on to the frames. As previously, before doing any construction I gave the etchings as a good going over with the fibreglass burnishing brush to remove any surface oxidation. That gives the best possible start for soldering to be done.

So to start, this is the basic chassis with the frames and the P4 spacers erected. I had one minor mishap where I filed off a locating tag by mistake. There *is* a warning in the instructions, but it comes after you've removed the part from the fret and (if you're of a fastidious mind) already cleaned the etching up :-/

Never mind, there are plenty of other location references, and the kit naturally goes together absolutely square.

One of the next tasks was to laminate the coupling rods. This was done using solder paint, and a cocktail stick rammed through the holes in each end to keep them together and aligned.

This is the finished item. The slight banana shape of the rods isn't actually there. It's a function of the camera lens in taking pictures of some very small objects at very close range.

The next picture shows the sliding bearings and the matching hornblocks being held in place by a coil spring so that they stay in place whilst being aligned using the London Road Models tapered axles. These allow the centres of the coupling rods to match the bearings exactly. One axle is fixed in my model, so it only needs one set of moving bearings, and not the two pairs if I was going for a fully sprung model. A conservative choice on my part, given this is the first loco kit I've built in around 15 years.

This shows where I went away from the instructions slightly. The suggestion is that to provide a mounting point for the front chassis bolt, it is possible to tap into the body moulding. I found that there wasn't enough meat in the material for this. As an alternative, I carved a larger section away, and filled it with a couple of layers of thick plasticard laminated together with PlasticWeld. I then left it 24 hours to dry thoroughly and harden before drilling through and using the mounting bolt to cut its own thread.

So after readying the body and test fitting it, the original cylinders and slide bars are re-used and mated with the frames. This was done using a 14BA bolt. Not too fiddly in isolation, but unfortunately when it needs to be weedled into a gap between two spacers with tweezers it became a job that needed much patience and a few rude words when it came to getting the nut on the end of the bolt.

The next (slightly blurred) picture also shows the compensation pivot point. It's a chunky piece of steel rod, so there's no danger of it wearing down. Fixed in place with a little reaming of the mounting holes, and the use of Carrs Brown Label flux, it was very easy to solder securely.

It does seem as though the spacer and slidebar hangers could be more closely aligned. I may have made a mistake here, but tightening the mounting nut up tightly does induce a distinct bend in the crosspiece that is the slidebar hangers. Perhaps a spacing washer should be used to keep things parallel.

This shows a more complete state, with the connecting rods soldered in place. It remains to be seen how much clearance I have when I come to install the wheels behind them, but there is still meat left in the backs of the bushes that can be filed down. Also visible is the dummy inside motion, which makes the chassis look nicely prototypically cluttered.

The ashpan is fitted next. I pressed out the half-etched rivets by hand, using a sharp scriber and even hand pressure. This was done on a slightly soft cutting mat, to give a yielding surface to form them against.

And finally, some neat little webs not only represent the strengthening ribs on the prototype but also neatly locate the rear guard irons. Another piece of really clever design that is a hallmark of the High Level Kits.

After all of this, the chassis had a good rinse with Neutralising Rinse (Carrs again) and a dunk in my wife's ultrasonic cleaning bath. That really made all the accumulated crud and chemicals drop off it, and it was followed by an overnight dry on the top of a radiator.

Brake gear building next time...

Now where was I?

2010-02-19T21:02:00.000Z

After a rather busy couple of weeks with things both work, and non-work, I've a moment to catch up with progress. At the start of February, I'd got to the stage where the cab interior was nearly completed and I simply had a few details to attach to the firebox back.

As with all of the kit that I've completed so far, the parts are beautifully prepared, and assembly is a joy. This picture shows the etched regulator handle shaped and soldered to a length of straight brass wire. This was prior to cleaning up, so fitted it looks a little neater. But for comparison of the size, the object in the background is a fibreglass burnishing pencil...

A tip for anyone contemplating doing something similar. Not only did I solder the join through the pivot over-length and then trim it back, but I left the whole of the length of the wire in place as a handle. I drilled through the entire firebox back and soldered it in place from the rear.

I then snipped it flush and filed down the rear to remove the solder blob. I then repeated it for the two pieces of wire that form the firebox door handles. And this is the completed item.

A masterpiece in kit design and manufacture... So that's it for the cab interior at the moment. More on other areas later. For now, I've got an Alan Gibson E4 kit to drool over.

Too busy!

2010-02-17T07:01:00.000Z

To write things up, that is! There has been much modelling going at home, but not much spare time to write this blog up :-(

On the Pug, the cab is finished, and one day so will be my notes, and there has also been baseboard shaped activity as well, taking advantage of a quiet weekend. More on that soon, but for the meantime here's a taster showing how I solved the "three hands" dilemma to solder the regulator through the firebox backhead...

And yes, those are a pair of Pug sideframes in the background. More soon!

That was tough!

2010-02-01T23:15:00.000Z

A couple of hours more this evening working on the Pug. All spent on the firebox build, and if I'm to do it properly, an intensive and painstaking job.

It started off by the curving and building of the firebox itself. The tab and bend method works very well, helped by the half-etched lines that help form an even curve. I started by tack-soldering the ends in place, and then filling the rest of the join around the entire edge with a fillet of solder.

After this can fixing the lost-wax brass castings of the steam turret and the safety valves. The ends of the steam turret are drilled out slightly and some 0.5mm wire soldered in to represent the pipes. They aren't quite even, but I had a heavy handed fitter in the shed at the time of the last bout of maintenance ;-)

The handwheels are so delicate that I really didn't want to flood them with solder, and I am already using two different grades to stop previous work falling apart - 188 degree and 147 degree on this.

I then had to switch to the 70 degree solder to start on the firebox back. The gauge glasses are now in place and the holes drilled for the wire on which the firehole door handles and the regulator will be mounted. The casting is only propped in place at the moment, and the gap around the edge won't be there when it is soldered in place.

And that's it for the moment. I'm out of the country for work tomorrow, so it'll be the end of the week before I can pick up a soldering iron again. And yes, soldering these sort of details is tough on the eyes and the fingers!

A start

2010-02-01T08:04:00.000Z

Well, in Sunday I had some free time to make a start on the High Level Kits chassis kit for the Dapol Pug.

After five minutes the Dapol body was reduced to its constituent parts:

There is one typo in the instructions that confused me at the outset - it refers to unclipping the cab at the sides and FRONT of the cab, where a quick look at the model showed that the clip was at the REAR. Simple to spot, so not exactly a deal-breaker. The metal weight is the source of ballast for the original model, and the space where it sits will be occupied by a motor in future. I'm going to have to be slightly cleverer to get more weight into my model.

One of the next steps is to remove the hideous cab shutter that formerly disguised the motor that intruded into the cab. This was done by using a miniature drill with a burr in it to carve away the mass of the shutter, then finished off with a scalpel. I managed to do it without breaking any parts of the cab, nor carving off the beading around the opening, but I made one slip when trimming the very last bit off. I hadn't realised that I was so close to the back of the cab window and scratched it with the tip of the scalpel. So that's a bit of disguising that needs doing in the weathering stage. Ho hum...

It's a fantastic improvement to get rid of the shutter and to be able to look straight through the cab.

After that, things went well, with the replacement cab floor fitted, some dummy front frames, and then onto the two coal bunkers that are in either side of the cab. These are exquisite pieces of design, all folding up from a single piece of nickel silver. They are finished off with some 0.4mm brass rod and etched handles for the injectors. This shows just how small and delicate they are.

The piece of wire sticking out the front of the bunker is as yet unidentified. It may be a handle for the coal-door, but it isn't clear yet. Therefore I've left it overlength until its use is clear. I don't want my fireman catching his shins on it.

And after three very satisfying hours, that is it :-) More tonight if I get chance...

Anticipation...

2010-01-29T23:09:00.000Z

After another bout of five or six wagons having new couplings fitted, and generally renovated, I fancy something different.

So before diving straight into a full etched kit, I thought that I should warm my skills back up on an easier RTR conversion. Rather than a simple conversion using drop-in wheelsets, I have two of High Level Kits' replacement chassis for the venerable Dapol Pug.

I bought these two bodies over a decade ago, and made a start at scratchbuilding a chassis for one of them using hand-fretted frames. Since then the HLK chassis kits have arrived, and I've parked my effort to one side.

So this is what I have: one stout white box, and one body with original chassis and motor.

The body will be backdated and repainted in L&Y colours, but that is for the future to worry about. In the meantime, what's in the box???

A comprehensive range of plastic bags, full of all sorts of bits. Several sheets of very comprehensive instructions, including a cross-reference to an article in Model Railway Journal. I've added some Alan Gibson wheels, and with the kit I bought a suitable motor and gears.

So apart from some etched L&Y number plates, the kit is complete.

Let's hope that I get some free time tomorrow to get started!

In the cradle

2010-01-24T14:14:00.000Z

Two things came together this morning: Allan Goodwillie's post on the use of ad-hoc jigs to make modelling easier (here: http://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=666&start=25#p3809) and me chasing another upside-down wagon around my workbench. Grrrr!!!!

Whilst fitting and tweaking S&W couplings, my activity seems to require one hand for a soldering iron to melt the parts in, and one hand to hold whatever I'm fixing, and then one hand to stop the wagon sliding around the workbench. Now I'm not anatomically gifted, so this has become very much of a sweary language moment, particularly when I drop the part that I'm trying to fit.

So out with the camping mat and the steel rule and the craft knife. A few swipes, a waft of the hot-glue gun and I now have this:

The central fence means that I can use it for either low sided stock on the left side, or taller wagons and vans on the right hand side. A bit like these:

Held securely in the cradle, they are like this, with the innards exposed for easy work:

When I next go out to the garage, I'll look for a piece of board that I can glue it to. Whilst it works as it is, a little more weight underneath will make it less likely to slide around.

A note on construction - if you're using a camping mat, unroll it and let it rest for 24 hours, to get the curl out of it. Otherwise you'll find that your base and fences aren't straight and may even try and pull against the glue into curves.

Causes of poor running #137

2010-01-23T16:21:00.002Z

Or idiot's mistake #6.. Look at it how you will :-)

As part of renovating my fleet of tired P4 wagons, a Coopercraft GWR open wagon with sheet rail came to hand. I've had a preliminary look at it, taken off the old S&W couplings that were not as well-fitted as the ones that I build now, and given the wheelsets a spin to see if there was any wobble.

There wasn't, but one wheel was catching very badly on the brakeshoe. Looking at the one on the other side, it was running well clear of the brakeshoe. Odd to find. So I popped the wheelset out, and looked at it carefully, and this is what I found.

Notice the difference? When I had checked, and presumably adjusted, the back-to-back setting on this wheelset I had made a simple mistake. I'd pushed the wheels along the axle until one was far back from the coning, and one was actually sitting over it. So although the wheelset was to the correct measured back-to-back, it didn't sit squarely in the chassis.

A lack of care on my part, and something to make sure that I don't do again in the future, but if you get poor running from a particular piece of rolling stock, it's something else that merits checking.

A4 finished

2009-12-02T22:31:00.005Z

No, not one of Gresley's finest, but the A4 turnout I was building.

I finished it off in a couple of hours at the weekend. This is the end product.

The sleepering through the turnout is Scalefour Society ply & rivet build. The dark brown sleepers at the ends are ones cut individually from C&L trackbases.

The whole thing is stuck down firmly on my test-track/reviewing board. This serves the purpose of allowing me to look at a vehicle to see if it is "right", to test the fitting of the Sprat & Winkle couplings, and to see how it runs through pointwork. Not as good as a full shunting plank or test track, but a sight easier to have on a workbench.

There is a tie-bar fitted that I _think_ that I got from the Scalefour Society.

Although you can see it is soldered in place, I have yet to work out a latching mechanism. I may drop into Maplin tomorrow to see if I can find some form of surface-mounted switch that does the trick, possibly in conjunction with an Omega loop as well to take up the extra movement.

What to do next? Hmmm... Let's wait and see.

Do you tin?

2009-11-23T23:16:00.004Z

I've just spend a pleasant five minutes tinning the tops of all my rivets in my turnout sleepers

It may have been completely unnecessary (or it may not...) but it seemed that it helps speed the formation of the solder joint.

I've never done it before but it was rather therapeutic - just a pinhead of 188 solder cream and a wipe of the iron. Alas, two days away on business in Amsterdam mean that it will be the end of the week before I get a chance to do any more. Still, I have the 1:4 vee filed up and fitted now. One more decent session, as opposed to snatching a quick ten minutes at the end of the evening, and this thing will be built!

Riveting stuff

2009-11-23T21:02:00.005Z

I had some time free on Sunday afternoon, so I thought that I would gather the tools together to turn my miscellaneous crossing timbers into something that I could construct a turnout from. First, gather the tools...

I used to have a lovely solid aluminium sawing block - the type that you clamp to the edge of a workbench - that was great for peening rivets over on. Sadly, that has disappeared in the mists of time, so i had to look for an alternative. That's the very solid block of steel making up that set square, so that will do nicely. It's propped up on the end of my soldering sponge just so that it is level.

For actually turning over the tubular rivets, of which a few can be seen in the foreground, by using the centre punch on the left. I use it unconventionally, by turning it upside down and tapping (okay, belting it quite hard..) on the pointy end with the small hammer on the right. It usually needs three or four taps to get the back of the rivet level with the sleeper, and then it's closed for good.

The most problematic bit that I found was getting the rivets into the holes in the sleepers. I had problems lining them up in the first few sleepers, and then I snapped one by mis-aligning the rivet with the hole and pressing too hard. So after that, I just reamed slightly out the holes so that they slipped in more easily. But it just shows that even on the simplest tasks it's possible to make mistakes.

I had a second template stuck down with double-sided tape, with more tape on the front to hold just the ends of the sleeper. After each sleeper was riveted, I transferred it to the appropriate position on the second template.

And after they were all in place, I dug in the spares box for some rail parts that I could recycle to save making them again. I found a pair of point blades, and a pair of wing rails.

Some work with a fibreglass brush and they'll be ready to use again. But first I need to make the 1:4 angle vee, as that is the part from which I remember that the pointwork is built from. I really should dig out the Scalefour Society Digest sheet on building turnouts, rather than trying to do it all from memory ;-)

Fish 'n' strips

2009-11-19T22:47:00.006Z

Fishplates and crossing-timber strips to be precise...

In a quick ten minutes before a trip out of the country earlier this week, I fired up the soldering iron to add a couple of fishplates to the length of test track that I made. There's only one (fake) rail joint, but I want things to look good.

I'm using Colin Waite etched brass fishplates, and whilst the basic etching is good, the fitting method is a right PITA! The problem, in my hands, is that the two plates for the two sides of the rail are linked by a brass strip to make a H-shape. This means that they don't get lost so easily, and in theory it is possible to attach them by clamping them in place with no solder or glue involve.

The theory is fine, but I found that in practice the springiness in this joining strip actually kept them away from the rail. It also made it difficult to align them properly. I wanted them to stay in place, so soldered them in place, with the iron turned up high and a quick in-and-out so that I didn't melt the plastic chairs. Looking at the photo below, I wasn't that successful with the soldering :-(

The solder paste that I had didn't help. It's Carrs 188 stuff, which is normally excellent. However I hadn't used this stuff for (literally) several years, and it was starting to get very thick, and gave rise to some very blobby application, which shows in the messiness of the end result.

Thankfully, Brian Lewis of C&L (vendors of the Carrs range) runs the Finescale list, and very shortly after posting a question about what could be done to revive the solder paste, he replied with the information that I could use Green Label flux to let it down a bit. And now it's back to as good as new :-)

The strips bit relates to the fact that next to the plain track, I'm building an A4 turnout for testing purposes. From my last stretch of P4 track-building I still had a bag of cut and punched sleepers from various turnouts. Not referenced, of course, that would be too easy.

So in the manner of a jigsaw puzzle, I spread them on the bench next to the template and matched the individual lengths and holes to the relevant places on the plan. Now I've never tried to build an A4 turnout before in my life, so I know that these are all stolen from B6, or B8, or double slips, or whatever. But they fit, and now I have the full set of timbers to start work with.

I know that I've got some blades and vees from other projects that I have in a bag somewhere, so I'll rummage through those as well, although I'm certain that I'll have to make the A4 vee from scratch.

Now out with the double sided sticky-tape!

Stealing Children's Toys...

2009-11-16T21:47:00.004Z

No, not a raid on the Thomas the Tank Engine trainset for some rolling stock, but an inspired source of one of those things that you can't easily find elsewhere...

As part of setting up my short test track, I want to be able to check the operation of the Sprat & Winkle autocouplers. For a piece of board, I can't and don't want to set up an electromagnet beneath the board - too large and too easily knocked, and needing to be wired in to a power supply every time something is tested. However to get hold of a small button magnet to put under the level of the sleepers was also problematic.

Maplin sells them, for use with reed switches, but at over a quid a shot, a few for testing purposes would be pricy. I didn't have anything like spare kitchen cabinet catches to dismember, so I was feeling a little stuck. And then inspiration struck...

My nine year old stepson has a number of plastic "bones" with magnets in the ends so that they can be stuck together to make sculptures or designs. He won't miss one, will he? A quick snip with the modelling pliers and I've liberated two button magnets that are about 5mm across and 3mm deep.

Then I got my Dremel out, and drilled a shallow hole between the sleepers in the board. A couple of taps with a hammer on the end of a drift, and the magnet is tightly in place. I've popped a drop of superglue in for security, and that should be that.

The photos show the board, and then the close-up of the magnet and the "bone" that I got it from. The intact one I will be slipping back into his room later tonight - I don't need *that* many for a test track.

The magnet fixed in place:

Sleeper spacings

2009-11-14T14:48:00.006Z

Two separate days on business in Amsterdam this week, and an evening seminar in between means that there has been precious little time available for any modelling. However I managed to find a quick ten minutes last night to knock up a quick jig that will help with future jobs.

The period that I'm going to be modelling is Great Eastern Railway, circa 1909/10. The exact date hasn't yet been fixed, but it will be around then. Thanks to Adrian Marks on the Templot forum, I have plenty of information on the different types of track formation that would have been used.

At this date, the quieter branchlines of the GER would still have been laid with rail in lengths of 30 feet, if not even the earlier 24' length. A standard was established in 1883 (rather than 18.83!) set that there would be eleven sleepers per thirty foot section.

I am knocking up a quick piece of board in order to sit rolling stock on to check buffer height, coupling alignment, etc, etc. This is just on a small offcut of wood pinched from the back of the garage. It's conveniently long enough to fit two 30' legths of plain track on it, and next to it I can put an A4 turnout that will be a test to see how stock runs over pointwork and crossings, and will be a good proxy for some of the more severe curves that will be found within the to-be-built brewery.

Adrian provided a set of measurements for the sleeper spacing of this rail length, so I printed off his diagram, and then transcribed the markings at 4mm to the foot on the side of a piece of stout card.

This was then placed next to the length of track that had already been prepared with
separated C&L sleepers taken from the individual P4 trackbase panels. These work very well on their own, but they don't simulate the variable spacing around rail joints and the large gaps between sleepers that I wanted to capture.

The spacing marks on the card could then be easily aligned with the centre of the chair on the outside of the rail for each sleeper.

A bit of shuffling around, and we have one prototypically spaced length of GER track. The railhead is notched with a piercing saw to simulate the gap between the railends, and I'll add an etched brass fishplate to the join afterwards.

I'll now attempt not to nudge the sleepers out of position (being separated from each other means that they do move more easily out of alignment) and when all is square I'll glue it down to my bit of nicely varnished board.

Hoorah for Alan Gibson!

2009-11-05T23:06:00.002Z

I had a call on Saturday from Colin at Alan Gibson saying that he had an order for me ready for shipping. On Tuesday I had a card through the door saying that the Royal Mail had a package for me to sign for, And finally today, I was able to go down to the post office and collect a stout brown box with my name on...

And inside were :-)

I haven't opened the boxes yet, but they should both have a full complement of P4 wheels included, and be ready for full springing on all axles. Excitement!

Slipping away

2009-11-01T20:17:00.002Z

Recent discussion on the Scalefour Society's web forum gave a cautionary word to someone that was planning their first P4 layout and had included in the trackplan a three-way point. Advice was along the lines of sucking between the teeth and saying that it might be a bit tricky - but it was generally positive. The episode coincided with me finally deciding to get rid of the second ever piece of pointwork that I ever built in P4. Mind you, looking at the picture below, of how I found it in a box of other railway bits, you'll see why:

It was a double slip - a B8 I think - and despite not having survived countless house moves, it shows what can be done with a bit of determination. The first ever point that I built in P4 was a B6 turnout on copperclad. Like this, it was just to prove that I could do it. I think that looking at the centre section of the slip shows that I could.

So the message to those contemplating P4 track for the first time is to have no fears. Indeed, with the P4Track Co turnout kits, life should be a lot easier...

When broader isn't always better...

2009-10-30T20:57:00.003Z

Over the last couple of days I've been finishing off my first restoration wagon by fiting Sprat & Winkle couplings to it. Yes, I know that it's taken a long time to get this far, but I've been thinking - a lot...

As a P4 modeller, normally I would have a preference for broadness - 18.83 looks better than 18.2 or 16.5 for example ;-)

However my plan to use a wider loop for the coupling isn't very satisfactory. Having decided that I'd like a width of 12mm to ensure that there would be plenty of swing from side to side on the sorts of curves that I'm anticipating on industrial sidings in a brewery, it simply doesn't look very good...

On the left, the new width. On the right, an older wagon with a much narrower loop. Despite being made out of much thicker wire, I think that it's much less obtrusive. Time for a change of plan (and the gauges that I have set up for making these consistently).

Scaleforum - the hangover

2009-10-10T22:13:00.003+01:00

Well, not in a bad way. I have finally managed to get some time earlier today to get started with some of the modelling kit that I bought at Scaleforum.

I've used the Brassmasters wagon wheelbase jig to straighten out the w-irons on my LNWR ballast restoration job. It now sits squarely in the runnig gear, only to reveal that the body is not the straightest thing that I've ever built :-(

Never mind, perhaps it suffered a rough shunt in a previous life. At least with sprung buffers it will not be adversely affected by the misalignment when it's running.

The next challenge that I'm facing is that of getting the Sprat & Winkle couplings set up properly. If I'm every going to get consistent running, then I ned to find a way of easily making these consistently. I'm working on some ideas, but it's more frustrating than I could possibly imagine! I seem to need about four sets of (asbestos) fingers to hold everything together in the right place whilst glueing/soldering the parts together...

Oh well, not much chance to do anything in the next few days, as I'm off for a week on a Dutch language course. I'll have very little free time, so perhaps a little browsing of the new-look RMWeb will be all that I can manage.

Scaleforum - OMSL #3

2009-09-25T19:39:00.004+01:00

Well, it's the night before Scaleforum and I'm adding the last things to my shopping list...

Alan Gibson waisted pinpoints - if I'm getting the wheelsets, then I need the bearings. The ones with the metal cutaway so that they are like a little Mayan pyramid (but obviously without the human sacrifices) in shape, and which mean that there is much less metal or plastic that needs to be removed when modifying axleboxes to fit over them. It may mean throwing away, or at least popping in the spares box, perfectly good parallel shaped bearings, but the improvement in ease of fitting makes it so much more worthwhile.

Piece of aluminium for RSU - I have one of the superb London Road Models resistance soldering units. I've never been very happy about earthing the workpiece through a piece of scabby brass sheet that was sitting around. I think that I need to look at Eileen's Emporium (now under new ownership!) for a piece of proper aluminium sheet that I can use for a more professional set-up.

And that's it. That's my shopping list. Of course, there's still plenty of room for the impulse purchases ;-)

Scaleforum - OMSL #2

2009-09-11T19:30:00.001+01:00

Further thoughts on what I need on my shopping list...

- an airbrush moisture trap. I've never had one, and thankfully never had bad results from spraying, but from reading so many articles saying that they help get a good finish, I think that it's about time.

- weathering colours. More precisely, the list of paints recommended by Martyn Welch in his invaluable book, "The Art of Weathering". He produces all of his effects from the artful use of a very limited range of colours, all from the Humbrol range. To save ploughing through the whole text in search of them, they are:

- 33 Black
- 62 Leather
- 82 Orange
- 53 Gunmetal
- 64 Grey
- 112 Tarmac
- 133 Bauxite
- 9 Gloss Tan
- 110 Natural Wood
- Metalcote Gunmetal
- Metalcote Polished Steel

I intend to keep these separate in a box so that can force myself to ONLY use these in a weathering palette, and then I shoudl get consistency in the shades and effects across all of the models that I paint.

Oh, and I did a quick check to start working out how many wheelsets I would need from Alan Gibson. I have 38 (thirty eight!) unmade D&S wagon kits alone... Whoops!

Scaleforum - OMSL

2009-08-24T17:04:00.004+01:00

In a blatant steal of a title from RMWeb, with Scaleforum 2009 only about a month away, I've started thinking about what I need (or simply would like!) to stock up on. The list so far (and this post will be edited as I go along) is:

- miniature snipe nosed pliers. When I started dismantling the wheelsets and w-irons on the LNWR open that I'm repairing, I wanted to twist back the lugs on the rocking w-iron, and found that I didn't have a precise way of doing it. In the end I used a pair of flat-ended pliers, but I need a proper tool to enable me to work with more precision.

- a w-iron spacing jig. One of these, in fact - http://www.brassmasters.co.uk/axle_gauges.htm as I found that the Bill Bedford gauge that I have works perfectly for setting up parallel axles, but doesn't work at all when checking already-fitted pinpoint axles.

- wagon wheels. I've just realised how many unmade wagon kits I have, and how many sets of wheels they will need. Alan Gibson will do remarkably good business off me...

- waisted pin-points. If I need the wheels, I need the bearings as well, and these type might mean that you have to junk the ones that arrive with some wheels or in kits, but they are sooooo much easier to use than filing or drilling big chunks out of the back of an axlebox.

More on this post in future as I think of other things to add :-)

The Restoration Chronicles - Squaring up

2009-08-17T22:10:00.009+01:00

Time to illustrate the progress so far. The picture below shows the transverse spacer .bar that I've put in to hold apart the two sides, and one of the slivers of plastic strip that I've inserted between the lead flashing and the wagon side. There is one on the nearer side as well - it is obvious that the Daywat used for sticking the chairs to this lead also dragged in the body planks as well.

.

In the background is an axle spacing jig from Bill Bedford. An excellent piece of kit, but not suitable for helping solve for problem that I found underneath this wagon. More later on that, and adjustments to both my thinking on this wagon, and rocking W-irons in general in my next post.

Paranoid? Moi?

2009-08-08T23:05:00.003+01:00

We've all heard occasional stories of tyres becoming detached from wheel rims in use. Less frequently discussed, but probably more prevalent is the chance of a wheelset moving around on an axle during use. Well, I've decided that I'll try and eliminate that risk.

So after double checking each wheelset with a Scalefour Society gauge, I'm applying a tiny smear of superglue to the join between the back of the spokes and the axle. Hopefully that means that they will stay set in place, and one more variable that can cause problems with consistent running is removed.

The Restoration Chronicles - Brute force and ignorance

2009-08-08T22:11:00.004+01:00

Well, it's been a while... The combination of stupidly long hours at work and a couple of scheduled holidays mean that it's been far too long since I did any modelling. After a couple of days riding motorbikes around Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire, I now ache too much to do anything more than a bit of gentle modelling.

The brute force is the way that I finally decided to restore the wagon sides to near-straightness. I have decided that if I try and use heat or more solvents, then I just risk making things worse. So I have slid a knife blade down to separate the sides from the lead flashing that is inside the wagin and provides some weight. After this, I've gently eased the sides out with my fingers, and it seems to have worked. What I will do is put a couple of slivers of plastic card down into the newly created gaps to pack them out, and add a plastic cross-brace across the middle as well. Hopefully this will be sufficient to maintain things in a linear fashion.

And the ignorance? Well, I'm still ignorant about exactly what diagram of LNWR wagon this represents. More fundamentally, when on earth was a Permanent Way Department wagon doing on a Great Eastern branchline in the Herts/Essex borders?

So with that as a thought, and in order to avoid the side-warping effects of Daywat Poly on normal plastic mouldings, I've decided that I'm not going to try and replace the C&L chairs that were previously the load. There are a couple still firmly glued to the floor, but the rest have been levered off the lead flashing and thrown away.

There will be a couple of LNWR wagon sheets used to cover the weights, and the reason why it is traversing Essex? Well, it had a hot box and had to be diverted to the nearest repair shop, which happened to be on the GER. Simple!

The Restoration Chronicles - A pause for thought

2009-06-23T22:55:00.000+01:00

Hmmm... Life is never easy, is it?

In my last post, I was thinking that the greatest hurdle to overcome in restoring the LNWR two plank wagon would be to restore the warped dropsides to some form of straightness. Wrong! I've actually made pretty good progress on that particular task, and they only need a final bit of tweaking (I can't decide whether by the use of solvent, or a carefully waved soldering iron) to get there.

The biggest problem has been to find out what the wagon actually is...

I know that it comes from the Ratio set of four permanent way wagons - I even have an unmade set of the same at home, sitting here next to me. The problem comes that the kit instructions are brief to the extent of not even including any prototype details. They give an LMS painting scheme from 1923 to 1947, and that's it!

I emailed Peco today, as they now seem to be the manufacturers of the Ratio range, and had the helpful response: "Thank you for your Email. Unfortunately we do not have any extra information other than the details supplied with these kits."

So a blank there. I have a copy of the excellent "LNWR Wagons Volume 1" but this only covers the main commercial types of wagon. I assume that the departmental and more esoteric stock was intended to be left for Volume 2. Nevertheless, Appendix 2 of Volume 1 gives me some clues.

There is a ballast wagon listed with a 16ft body (which the kit scales out at) under Diagram 62. However even the very useful LNWR website doesn't list this diagram.

So does anyone else know what the correct prototype for the Ratio kit actually is???

The Restoration Chronicles - LNWR 2-plank wagon

2009-06-16T22:52:00.000+01:00

First on the workbench, and number 1 in my fleet of somewhat eclectically recorded list of vehicles is an LNWR two-plank permanent way wagon.

This was built from the Ratio four-pack of wagons which I believe is still available.

To fit in with the permanent way purpose of the wagon, it is part-loaded with some C&L chairs, doing the job of covering up the lead sheet with which it is weighted.

So, what needs restoring? Initially, the diagnosis is quite promising:

- all of the buffers have survived, and are still freely sprung. No work needed there.

- The single sided brake gear is intact. Looking at it end-on, the lever guard is angled in slightly at the bottom, and could do with correction. I suspect that is a construction error that I made when I originally built this. Something to correct though, if possible.

- The wagon is fitted with compensated w-irons – de rigueur at the time that it was built. However the rocking one could do with a little bit of tightening up to stop it being quite so floppy. I think that I can get away with better trackbuilding, and less suspension movement in future. I suspect that my earlier attempts were overly influenced by the words of Iain Rice and his preference for light railway quality permanent way.

- even the bump stops that exist to protect the brake gear from the weight of the wagon side as it swings down are intact. On both sides. Which raises an interesting question.

Even if the long-lost kit instructions explained it, would bump stops (and the corresponding bash-plates be found on the wagon side that doesn’t have brake gear that needs protecting? My guess would be that yes, it does, as the stops would also stop damage to the axleboxes by the side swinging into them.

I’ll have to look for a prototype photograph to make sure…

Things that definitely do need work include replacing a number of the chairs where they have fallen off over the years.

Also, and this is the biggest problem of all, an aerial view shows that where I have piled the chairs against the side of the wagon, and glued them in place, the solvent has made the wagon side bow in. This really does need straightening out to be convincing.

The issue of coupling standards also needs to be addressed. More on the coupling dilemma at a future date, but even though the Sprat & Winkles on this have survived, I need to consider if they are of the right dimension for the future.

Enough typing for now. Time to pick up a knife and start work…

The first post is the hardest...

2009-06-10T21:00:00.000+01:00

Welcome!

Welcome to my trials and tribulations, musings and mutterings, successes and failures, as I try to remember how to model in P4 after a gap of more than ten years of idle armchair occupation.

Why Beer and Buckjumpers?

The Buckjumpers bit sort of suggested itself. Wherever I’ve lived, the local railway history has always attracted me – from the bucolic GWR branchlines of Worcestershire to the gritty LNWR environs of West Yorkshire I’ve been interested in the industrial archaeology of my surroundings. Now that I’m living on the Herts/Essex/Cambs borders, the byways and eccentricities of the Great Eastern Railway have caught my eye.

And the Beer? Well, mine’s a pint thank you. I wasn’t aware of brewery railways until recently, but since then I’ve found it a fascinating topic to research. You will read more about the background to my small bit of hypothetical history in future, but for now it gives me the opportunity for some industrial light railway quirkiness, a genuine purpose to a timetable and wagon movements, and some incredibly photogenic buildings.

This blog will take some random turns as it progresses. To start with, there is no layout – only some ideas and images floating around in my head. There’s also a backlog of past misdemeanours to correct, so watch out for what (with very due cause) I’m entitling “The Restoration Chronicles”.

I'm also keeping a thread on the Scalefour Society forum. It's at http://www.scalefour.org/forum/index.php and you'll find it in the "layouts" area. You don't have to be a Society member to read the Forum, and as a non-member you would be very welcome to post to the Guest Book. You never know, you may even fancy joining yourself...

So for now, I’m off to start some modelling.
Flymo