A package containing two mermaids was waiting for me when I got back from work last Thursday. In case you're wondering how the postman got two mythological creatures through the letterbox, I should point out that these were 2mm finescale kits for the GWR/BR 'mermaid' ballast hopper wagon. The photo below shows what you get for your money - a cast resin body, a nickel silver etch for the chassis (and body details) and a comprehensive set of instructions.
As you would expect from a kit p
Eeek! Nearly 3 months have passed since the last blog update, and I don't have a lot of modelling to show for all that time! A few projects have been rumbling along slowly - a Chivers tube wagon has made it through the paint shop and transfers have been added (I'm hoping I can sort out that rather obvious carrier film on the transfers). Some fairly savage weathering and some couplings are all that is required now.
The layout has also chuntered along - the dodgy crossing has been replac
I've not updated the blog for a while, mainly because there hasn't been much progress to report (the weather has been too nice for modelling!)
The bits for the 02 arrived from the 2mm shop last week. Unfortunately swapping the spur gear hasn't improved the running much, and following a comment on an earlier blog entry, I checked the stub axles to make sure they were running true. There was a slight wobble on one axle, so to be on the safe side, I removed all of them and threaded some plain a
Well, the last couple of weeks have thrown up a few problems.
The 02 is currently on the 'naughty step' pending the arrival of some replacement bits from the 2mm loco shop. Having checked the mesh of the gears earlier and not found any problems, I was fairly confident that adding the wheels would be fairly straightforward - how wrong can you be!?
When I tried to fit the axle gear (having checked that all the other gears ran freely), the whole drivetrain was very reluctant to move at al
I've made a bit of progress on the '02', although it doesn't look vastly different from the last set of photos I took!
The bonnet and cab roof have been soldered in place (which has the advantage of making the body much stronger) and a start made on adding all the little details.
Buffers (from Nick Tilston at 'N Brass Loco') have been soldered into place, and the engine cover door handles have been added from bits of bent 0.3mm wire. The handrails on the front footsteps have been ad
(or the sweet smell of success singed fingernails!)
Pete asked last time about progress on the body of the shunter. At that time I had only cut a few parts from the etch and formed things like the cab steps and the funny little boxes in front of the cab. I wasn't sure how much I could assemble without needing to check the fit of the motor and gearbox, so it didn't seem sensible to progress too far too fast.
After a fairly stressful week at work, I decided to celebrate on Friday by e
or "yet another part-complete loco!"
At the excellent 2mm Golden Jubilee Expo in Oxford last July, I bought one of the Worsley Works etches for an 02 shunter. Of course, I then put the packet in the cupboard and forgot about it while I got on with some other modelling. The real things look like this:
Anyway, after a few months, the kit came to the top of the pile again and I decided to make a start on it. The etch comes complete with a simple etched chassis which i decided to discar
Over the Christmas hols I have had an opportunity to 'play' with a resistance soldering unit. Up until now all my 2mm scale etched kits have been assembled using my trusty 25w Antex iron and Carr's solder paste, and while it give good results, I do seem to spend a lot of time scraping solder off places where it shouldn't be, despite the solder paste being very easy to apply in small amounts just where you want it.
Whilst the RSU (purchased by my dad from the Swanage Model Company stand at G
Evening all!
It seems like a very long time ago that I posted details of a little 2FS layout, designed as a shunting plank, but also intended to give me experience of using the newly introduced Easitrac components. After my last post featuring the layout here in early August, I wired-up some of the track, and the part-complete layout appeared on the 2mm Roadshow stand at the N Gauge Show at Leamington Spa in September, with a Farish class 24 loco converted to 2FS running up and down on the
The weekend began at an ungodly hour on Saturday morning - I was helping on the 2mm Scale Association stand at the International N Gauge Show, and it meant getting up early in time to set up the stand before the show opened. This is the first time I've been to this exhibition, and it was well worth the 2.5 hour journey from York. I took the shunting plank layout (which had been wired up the night before!) and had a class 24 running up and down 6 inches of track (I had to chose between the wirin
For a little while I've wanted to build a 'simple' 2mm loco project - I have a couple of kits and etches for various 2mm locos, but I've never plucked-up the courage to finish any of them (apart from a chassis for a J72 loco that I built quite a few years ago now). Having almost got to the point of being able to run a train on my shunting plank layout, I decided to tackle one of the stored projects.
A year or so ago I started a project to build a Jinty loco, and bought a Graham Farish 'Jint
Tracklaying is progressing very slowly at the moment (too many distractions on my part rather than any fault of the Easitrac system), so rather than boring everyone with even more photos of half-finished turnouts, I thought I'd find something else to blog.
Having a tidy-up of my folders and files on the computer at the weekend, I came across a photo of a North Eastern Railway brake van that I took a few years ago. The van is one of the very few wagons I can claim to have finished, and I was
Another week, another panic as I realise how little progress I've made in the last week!
In the last few days I've managed to do a bit more work on the turnouts. These, as with the plain track, use Easitrac components. I'd previously stuck the turnout timbering down, so first job was to cut some rail (nickel silver code 40 bullhead) and start threading chairs.
(Photo courtesy Mick Simpson)
The chairs are tiny, but can be threaded onto the rail fairly easily if the rail end is sli
Hello,
Well, my aim of posting one blog entry a week seems to have fallen by the wayside. I'll try and stick to this in the future - if only because it encourages me to do some modelling!
Today I spent the day at the Thirsk show helping operate this marvellous layout.
Yes, it is 2mm finescale! This is Mayfield Street, built by David Long. Today was it's debut on the exhibition circuit, and it performed really well. Thank you David for letting me loose on it!
It has inspired
Hello,
Things are moving! Admittedly I still have to push them with my finger (does this make it digital control ?!), but there is now track on the layout, and, with the aid of a 9V battery, trains have been run .
As I mentioned in my first posting on this blog, I used Templot to generate a track plan. This was printed, cut out and stuck down onto the trackbed, then given a couple of coats of shellac to try and stop it crinkling-up.
First up for tracklaying was the headshunt f
No! Not that sort! - this sort of S&M;
I made reference in my first blog posting to my 2mm Golden Jubilee Layout Challenge entry which never made it as far as the Expo at Oxford. I’ve been asked if I would post a bit more information on it, so here goes….
The original idea came from Roger Carpenter’s book on the Criggion Branch of the S&M (published by Wild Swan) – idly re-reading this one Sunday afternoon just after the GJLC had been announced rekindled my enthusia
Hello,
It's been a bit of an odd weekend - it was so hot yesterday that I hardly made any progress on the layout and I was struggling to get any enthusiasm for modelling . This morning I popped up to the Hartlepool exhibition and got a top-up of modelling enthusiasm (and some electrical bits and pieces for the layout), so this evening I cut and glued the thin timber trackbed down onto the ply baseboard surface.
It didn't go exactly to plan (I spotted a problem with the alignment of
Since my last posting I've actually started construction rather than just doodling, so I thought it was worth producing a quick update. This is the current view of the baseboard (apologies for the distracting background! )
The board is pretty conventional - a PSE softwood frame with a birch ply fiddle yard surface. The next job is to work out levels and cut and fit the risers that will support the trackbed. I've also started making the cassettes from aluminium angle (I remembered to buy
Hello,
Apart from spending a few days helping on the 2mm Scale Association stand at exhibitions, I've not done any serious modelling for over six months, and not had any enthusiasm for doing any either. My abortive 2mm Golden Jubilee Layout Challenge entry has been sitting unloved and gathering dust in the spare room, and I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to get things moving again, but a day at the recent DEMU Showcase seems to have done the trick, and in a slightly unexpected w
