A short clip of a china clay train arriving at the dries, with the added interest of DCC off-board sound. Still a few tweaks to make. Let me know what you think.
Graham
Despite a new job, new house and a move to the opposite corner of England, progress has continued slowly but surely over the last year. Spurred on by a recent 2mm North East Area Group meeting, here are some recent photos showing scenic progress on Board 1:
The layout is operational, in that I have a total of 2 wagons with DG couplings at each end which can be run-round in the loop and shunted by the 37 (still waiting to get my hands on one of the new class 37 releases from Farish w
Quick shot of progress so far with work well underway on embankment and a mock-up of the dries and slurry loading point in cardboard/paper. All now running moothly over the concrete and both sets of pointwork; the pointwork is operated by wire-in-tube with no difficulties just yet! The siding in the foreground will be ballasted before weathering with a covering of clay muck. Next for attention: board 2, with the disused linhay.
Lesson one: if you use steel instead of nickel silver rail, don't worry, you'll always be able to tell where the tracks are underneath wet concrete:
Lesson two: If you don't smooth the top off whilst still wet, sand off the filler very, very carefully when in proximity of point blades... Or they go ping... On the last trial, I'd encountered shrinkage which necessitated a re-plaster so this time I didn't smooth the top off when wet. Nothing 10 minutes with some grade 120 paper didn't f
Here goes nothing - it is a test layout, after all! Before and after shots of the P-Way following a visit from the concrete pouring gang:
Before...
After...
Once dry, the filler will be sanded until the rails are slightly proud of the surrounding concrete (I sanded the tops of the rails level beforehand) and then the flange recess on the inside of the rails gently scraped clear. Clearly, I've left the pointwork for the next batch of concrete after I've see how the rest of the job has tur
After much moving house, a little wagon building, some minor procrastinating and a great deal of trackplan re-working, Trevanion Dries has re-surfaced, at last in a more permanent guise. The new siding arrangement, although not maximising the amount of 'visible' trackwork, does increase the operational possibilities by some margin over the last plan. The two boards measure 100 x 30cm each and the trackwork is raised 5.5cm above the floor to allow for an embankment. In a flat without a proper spa
Whilst I'm working on my wagon fleet, I had the wheels on my 2 DMUs sent away for turning and gauging to 2FS standards. Now they're back, here's a visual comparison of the Dapol 153 and the Farish 150, both in Regional Railways livery. They both look great and run superbly (although the Dapol model does have far better slow speed control than the Farish), both before and after conversion to DCC. The blues used for the main body side colour and the lighter blue stripe are slightly different, not
Naturally, after coming up with a great little layout plan, construction has been terminated as the landlady called to give us notice that she's selling up. As the new place will be only a temporary fix for a few months and space will be at a premium, I've decided to concentrate on building stock and flushing out the gloat box of kits and detailing items - whilst also kicking myself that I'd not followed Pete M's example a long time ago and built myself a 2FS micro layout!
I'm still taking
After a prolonged absence forced by work and the French , modest progress on the Trevanion Dries project has been achieved. Depending, of course, on how you define 'progress'... Further research has revealed the original plan just isn't prototypical, but fortunately, as I'd not yet built it in 2mm, there was nothing to rip up... . So I set to work again with paper and pencil and a few plans later, with help from google satellite view, I'd re-created Goonbarrow Jn and exchange sidings! Of course
Pathetic progress this week as work is getting in the way but a tame start has been made on the first two PCB turnouts, with sleepers in place in preparation for the first rails to be laid. As only the rails will be visible alongside the dries I've only laid every third sleeper to speed the process. This may yet prove to be a bad idea if the rails are not sufficiently supported, in which case I'll sneak in another one in each gap.
When I got to this point and tried to straighten the coile
There's been plenty of debate on RMWeb over the best way to achieve the look of track inset into concrete at industrial facilities, so I thought I'd add my method used on the Trevanion Dries test-track. I've gone for the simplest solution possible and used a general household shrink and crack-resistant filler that was lying around after the last room redecoration. A few quick photos by way of description (trackwork at this stage is still N gauge):
When applying the mix, the
Here's a couple of shots of work in progress on the first CDA conversion. The donor body for this wagon was a Minitrix HAA. After making an approach to Peco, they kindly allowed me to purchase a small quantity of unpainted hopper roofs and end discharge covers, which is allowing me to convert a small fleet of HAAs I've built up over time. The roofs require some careful filing to fit snugly inside the hopper body but once that's done I think they look the part. The second photo shows the prominen
As mentioned in the opening blog post, Trevanion Dries is a small facility with the run-around severely limiting train length. Before I plunge headlong into handbuilding any more 2mm pointwork however I want to make sure I've got a workable track plan which bears as much resemblance as possible to dries in the area bearing in mind the huge compromise I'm making with space. The current plan is below:
From top to bottom:
Line 1 - enclosed within the dries facility for loading of any wagon
One of the reasons I switched to 2FS was the ugliness of the rapido coupling. I'm still not sure there's a perfect solution for its replacement but what I have done, however, is got hold of some 3-link chain from Mathieson Models (usual disclaimer) which is designed to replace the coupler on their wagons. These can be used on many recent Farish wagons with only a modest amount of 'persuading' - simply unclip the coupler pockets, widen slightly if needed, and press the Mathieson coupler lugs int
Trevanion Dries is the name of a long-term project in 2mm finescale. It's an attempt to re-create the atmosphere of the railways in the clay country of South Devon and Cornwall primarily from my memories of growing up in the area in the mid-1990s. The period will cover the CDA hopper operation and Speedlink wagonload services of the late 80s and early 90s stretching through to the introduction of the first EWS-liveried Class 37s... roughly 1988-1997.
Trevanion Dries will be a small model of
