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D869's own Projects

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The Flat Earth Theory

As we all know, the Earth is anything but flat but a flat earth is quite a common sight on our models. Now it's pretty obvious that Hayle North Quay has some high ground at the back and a quay edge at the front, but is that the whole story? Well, no...   A couple of examples from my visit in 2010 (the place has been completely rebuilt since then to provide flood defences).   I'm not sure what this building used to be, possibly stables for the Steam Packet hotel or possibly so

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D869

Tutbury Tractoring

As you might have seen on one of 2mm threads, the tractor and its test bed put in an appearance at the Tutbury gathering yesterday.   Several folks had a try at tractor driving and several politely declined. Apart from hopefully being entertaining for the budding driver it was interesting for me to see what happens with someone else at the wheel.   Full marks to Laurie Adams for being the only person to attempt and complete the full tractor shunting challenge (swap an i

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D869

More Tractoring

I've volunteered to take the tractor test bed to the Tutbury gathering next month so I've been doing some more work on it ahead of that. All of the work so far is 'below stairs' so visitors may not see much visible difference from it's state last year at Chelford but in fact quite a lot has changed.   The first big change is that the curtain track has now been relaid to run dead straight instead of following the line of the Esso siding. This makes manual steering more predictable - pre

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D869

Tractor Progress

I promised myself that I would spend some time turning the various bits I've cut out for the shunting tractor into something more tractor shaped.   In the previous installment I'd cut out the main chassis frames on the milling machine. In fact the chassis has been together for some time but lacking any sort of superstructure.   The body parts are cut from 5 thou K&S brass sheet using good old fashioned scratchbuilding techniques like a coping saw and Swiss files - the only concession to

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D869

Gresley BG

A former member of the Midland area group recently donated his box of unfinished projects and other bits and bobs so that the group members could make use of them. I picked out a part built Gresley BG which looked like a nice model which was crying out for someone to finish it. I have a bit of a soft spot for parcels stock.   Some photos and words about progress to date...   The coach as retrieved - basically two sides, two ends and a floor   I don't know much about its origin - this is

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D869

Chelford 2018

Yesterday I took all of my various Hayle related bits and pieces to the Supermeet/Skills day at Chelford. It was a great day but it's fair to say that I was ready for some sleep by the time I got home again.     I got a bunch of my research photos printed by one of the online companies. I hadn't actually realised just how many I'd managed to hoover up while researching Hayle. The ones that fitted into the display hangers were probably less than half of the ones printed... and there were sti

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D869

Tractor Frames

I've been making bits for the shunting tractor for a while now (the one in the video in the previous post is just for testing). For the most part it will be scratchbuilt and it's a bit of a case of making up the plan as I go along... never having built a model of a wheel loader before.   The cab sides and engine cover sides have been cut out from two bits of 5 thou brass soldered together... actually they are not yet fully cut out. Somehow I hope to assemble these into a three dimensional thin

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D869

The Contraption

Thought it might be time to say a few word on here about the thing that's been taking up most of my modelling time since last June.   The Esso depot at Hayle North Quay was laid with a kicked back siding. As the quay had no run-round, it could only be worked using a shunting tractor... so my layout needs one of those.   It might have been nice to just get on with building the layout and worry about this later but that's really not going to work - the tractor is too small to have an on-board

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D869

Spot the Difference?

A little puzzle for you...   On the left is a new tank which has just escaped from the paint shop. ICI supplied chlorine to Hayle in the early years before Ethyl/Octel had their own chlorine works at Ellesmere Port and there was a period during which both Octel and ICI tanks were seen together.   The tanks were made by different companies for different customers but both to the same RCH design, so they look similar but there are plenty of detail variations. No credit will be given for saying

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D869

Spring has Sprung

A little break from the 2mm stuff indoors... The weather has been pretty decent this weekend so a certain amount of effort in the garden was felt to be in order. Naturally apart from pulling out the many weeds, I took the opportunity to make sure that the railway was clear of obstructions.   This afternoon the odd train or two had to be run just to make sure things were working properly. Today's main performer was my little IP Engineering 'Jane' - a meths fired pot boiler - similar in principl

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D869

Making a Mockery

Planning for Hayle North Quay has progressed a bit. I have now sorted out a 2d plan by combining a transparent bitmap export of the plan from Templot with some colouring in done using Inkscape. The overall depth of the layout will be 22 inches at the ends and 24 inches in the middle.   The Octel office block and the whole of the Esso depot have been subjected to quite a lot of fore and aft compression but hopefully I've still managed to keep the character of the place.     I've also also

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D869

Back to the Drawing Board

Regular readers may have observed a certain 'theme' to some of my wagon building over the past few years and perhaps even wondered about the reason behind my seemingly incessant fixation with tank wagons.   It's not a huge secret that I've been intending to do something based on what most people in our community will know as 'Hayle Wharf', so here, finally is the start of it.   There are actually several wharves at Hayle, so I've decided to use the more specific name 'Hayle North Quay' as th

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D869

1907 Hurst Nelson 10T Tank

Hmm.. July 2015... apparently that's when I started on this particular project   http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/100931-riveted-oil-tanks-in-2mm-scale   I've not said anything more about it on here since then... mainly because until a few days back I had no idea whether or not it was going to succeed or fail.   Rather than theorising further about whether this would or would not work as a 3d print I decided to take a punt and had it printed when Shapeways had a free posta

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D869

Some Photographic Mucking About

A little 'photo op' that I'd been planning since I found out that St Ruth and St Blazey would both be appearing at last weekend's Swindon show.   The inspiration was a John Chalcraft photo that I bought when I was building D6309. It shows the real D6309 at St Blazey in 1969 in front of what appears to be a duff Duff. The same photo is also the inspiration for the weathering job on my model.   http://railphotoprints.uk/p737470212/h3AAF2938#h3aaf2938   My attempt at something similar. Gettin

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D869

Tutbury Supermeet

The Tutbury Supermeet has come and gone. I'd like to thank John Aldrick and his helpers for organising a very enjoyable day.   I spent most of it operating South Yard but had plenty of interest all day and by mid-afternoon I started to lose my voice because I'm not used to nattering quite so much. An unsuspecting Anthony Yeates asked if I'd mind him taking some photos and was promptly saddled with minding the layout for a few minutes while I nipped off to the Association shop and had chance to

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D869

A 'P' Set for South Yard

Some considerable time ago I invested in a couple of Chris Higgs' Maunsell coach kits. It was a bit of an impulse buy - I've always fancied having a north Cornwall 'P' set even though it doesn't fit with my usual core themes. Having languished in the gloat box ever since, I decided that South Yard's appearance at the upcoming (err... tomorrow) Supermeet at Tutbury was a good prompt to actually get them built.   As with all things, time ran short so they are not exactly 'finished'. They still l

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D869

The Regreening of South Yard

Things have been pretty quiet over the winter season modelling-wise. The building work on the house has taken up a lot of my attention, even though it was being done by someone else. We are still progressing with the aftermath (painting, light fittings, yada yada) but I'm finding that I now have a bit more time for the important things in life.   Anyway, with the intention of giving myself some impetus to do dome actual modelling I promised John Aldrick that I would take South Yard to the 2mm

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D869

Merry Christmas

As a late December evening draws in, 4574 and her crew prepare to set off for home with just a brake van in tow after having delivered a few wagons to South Yard. The cameraman manages to capture the scene with the train almost silhouetted by the solitary lamp that passes for illumination on the platform these days.     Normally I'd post a seasonal message on the St Ruth blog but what with one thing and another I didn't get chance to do the usual pre-Christmas photo session, so you'll have

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Demountable Things

A couple of items that have been stuck in the paint shop for a while.   First up is a BD container. This is from a Parkwood kit that was sat in the gloat box for ages. It's sat in a steel bodied high - also from a Parkwood kit. The chassis is a 2mm Association etch.   I've hankered after a container in the later BR 'door to door' livery for a long time and have now finally got round to doing one. It may be possible to get commercial container transfers but I was doing some custom decals for

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D869

Farewell Special... and Opening Day

First of all, apologies to anyone expecting 2FS content. Let's just call this a summer special.   Today was a sad and a happy occasion. The builders arrive tomorrow to start work on our house extension. This means that the patio section of my garden line will have to close. Today was the final day, so I had to run a special.   On a happier note, I've been beavering away (re) laying the track on the North side of the garden where the track gets the most sun and consequently would never stay t

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D869

Guest Op at DEMU

Spent a pleasant day today at the DEMU Showcase in Burton helping out on Jim Allwood's Welton Down along with fellow Midland Group member John Russell and lapsed member Richard Lake. Thanks to Jim for inviting us and the show organisers for putting on a good do.   I thought I'd take a few trains to play with but having precisely zero appropriate items to fit in with the 1990s Network South East theme, I just had to take along some inappropriate ones.   First up, I thought I'd hijack Jim's co

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The Little House on The... (Part 3)

The painfully slow progress of the 45xx build continues. The loco had a test run at AbRail where it showed a tendency to derail. After readjustment of the pony truck springs it had another run at Macclesfield and was much better behaved. Over the past few months I've been gradually making progress with putting the cylinders together and tonight the second one was finally fitted to the loco.     I've got to say that they weren't the easiest of things to put together - annoying issues like th

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D869

Finescaling a Hall - Part 3

Having been temporarily chucked back together for AbRail, the Hall is just back from an extended spell in the paint shop having its paint job generally finished off and some weathering applied... just in time for St Ruth to go to Macclesfield this weekend.     My plan for the 'paint job' was to wash over the Dapol GWR green (or it it US Army WW2 geep green?) with thinned Precision BR Green, doing my best to avoid the lining. It's kind of worked, but it took a few more coats than I had hoped

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D869

Hymek First Aid

I'm hopeful that the Hymek (which you may recall had failed prior to Warley) is now on the mend.   In our previous installment, I'd got hold of some spare worm wheels from BR Lines and installed them in the loco but this had not cured the uneven running which I still thought was caused by the wormwheel skipping on the worm (hence the trashed original wormwheel)   We have AbRail coming up on Saturday, so I finally got back around to looking at the problem... with visions of needing to make ne

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D869

Finescaling a Hall - Part 2

A quick update on this project.   The chassis is now pretty much done barring a few odds and ends like couplings and attention is now turning to the superstructure.   Again there is not much to say about the chassis build - it went together as per Nigel's comprehensive instructions... although I do prefer to get things running and tested at the earliest possible stage whereas the instructions save the installation of the worm until quite late in the day.   One part that did prove niggly th

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