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Netherwood Sidings


GWC1
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Just got back from Telford and unloaded the layout. Another excellent show. This was the first time I had been there as an exhibitor and when exhibiting, you don't get as much time to look round as you do as a visitor. You do, however, get in before the main rush and can snap up some of the bargains! My rake of HEAs will now be 2 wagons longer, once I have painted the 2 new arrivals.

We had our usual crop of problems - you really can't predict them: the worm wheel on the 08 wore out and we had to shunt the yard with a pair of Heljan 20s, the motor in one of them came loose and slid upwards causing the flywheel to jam against the bonnet and seize a bogie. Then to add to the failures-you-wouldn't-expect, the PSU powering one of the LED light units went awry and started flashing the lights on and off at about 4 Hz!

Thanks to all who came up and spoke to us, it was a really friendly show and having the fiddle yard on display meant that visitors could view stock close up and discuss things without having to shout across the scenic boards.

Special thanks to Nick Dunhill for fitting a sound decoder to his superb model of Tommy and allowing us to run it. It worked a freight train for most of Sunday afternoon - what an amzing model!

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An inspirational layout - full of atmosphere and fantastic detail.

 

Watching the Tommies whiz by with the 20s pottering about in the background was great - I shall upload a video later.

 

The catenary was the best I had seen on a layout and together with the bouncing pans, looked completely convincing.

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  • 3 months later...
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Sorry that I haven't updated this lately, I have been a bit busy with organising the forthcoming Nottingham East Midlands show (http://www.nottingham-modelrailway.org.uk). However, I have still done some work on the layout and an article has been written for publication in RM sometime soon. Steve Flint took some photos at Telford to add to the ones I took at Quorn.

 

Layout work has included changing the ground signals in the yard for single disc ones, when I realised that they didn't need to be double. A bit of a waste of effort making them double, really (and they even had 2 servos each to work them!). I have also been building Mk1s for the passenger service and I will post a couple of pics when I have actually taken some.

 

Thanks for the interest, I'll post more soon.

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  • 10 months later...

It has been a long time since I last updated this - sorry!

I have been busy with building some more passenger stock. First to enter service, and longest in building, was  a mk 1 SK from a MMP kit.

post-20179-0-48007700-1447186788_thumb.jpg

The picture shows the coach body propped up on the workbench with the interior lights powered up by shore supply.

Next was a TSO from an Easy-Build kit (haven't taken a picture of that yet though). These kits really are very easy to build. I was so impressed I bought another one, a CK, and that is in service now too.

The current project is to convert two Lima BSKs into a class 124 TSL and a loco hauled BG. I will post some pics of that when it is finished. The 124 trailer will go into the class 123 unit to make a 4-car set of typical formation found in Sheffield in the late 70s/early 80s.

 

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As promised, here are a couple of pics of my latest project, a class 124 trailer to go in the class 123 3-car set. As the 123 is a bit underpowered, this 'trailer' actually has a motor bogie in it. The coach body is made from the seating parts of two Lima BSKs put together.

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There are, of course, two spare brake ends left, and fixing these together gives a 'bonus' BG (OK, not with the correct pattern of doors and windows at the centre, but near enough in a parcels train).

The motor bogie for the 124 TSL coach is a simple home made job with nickel silver sideframes holding the wheel bearings, 3ft wagon wheels and cheap nylon worm gears. The motor is from an Epson printer I had to scrap as its ink paths dried up and it refused to work again. Cosmetic sideframes were made from resin castings of a plasticard pattern.

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The coach was test run on our Nottingham MRS 'Market Witham' layout last night and performed very well, considering the pickups are only on one bogie at the moment.

More pics when it is a bit further advanced.

Edited by GWC1
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  • 3 weeks later...

Look out for the January Railway Modeller, which should be out tomorrow. Netherwood Sidings is Railway of the Month! Steve Flint took some great photos while the layout was Telford last year. (I get my RM on subscription and these days it doesn't arrive until after publication, so I haven't seen it yet!). 

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My subscription edition of the January 2016 edition of the Railway Modeller arrived yesterday. Eight first class pages about Netherwood Sidings finished with the RM's signature photo of a brake van attached to the tail of disappearing train. There is also a good article titled "Webb's Wharf" about the construction of a small 0 gauge shunting layout. All in all a good month for 0 gaugers.

 

Regards,

 

Chris

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Thanks Dava. The photos used in the article were concentrated on one area and I didn't notice that we had also missed all the signals and that most of the loco shots were of the same loco (76 007). I also mentioned the scenic break bridge halfway down the yard but then didn't take any pictures of it! Ah well, you will have to see it for real. Next outing is the DEMU show at Burton on Trent in June.

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  • 5 months later...

Well that's DEMU show done. We had quite a few electrical problems, which is somewhat ironic considering that I have an article in the current MERG Journal talking about the control electronics! I eventually isolated the main panel and we ran on Sunday with just the manual panels and no working signals. I hope nobody was disappointed with the performance of the layout.

 

The new backscenes seem to have been appreciated, and one old gent thought he recognised the industrial backscene as Sheffield. This was nice, but I don't know if he was right; that section of the backscene is a Gaugemaster print and I don't know where they took the picture.

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On Sunday Legomanbiffo lent us a Deltic with his sound decoder in. That was pretty amazing and we ran that on a Transpennine set standing in for the 123/124 unit which first slipped a gear then had a short circuit. The 76s worked well though and we had very few OLE problems, just a few pans getting caught (not much different to the present day ECML really!).

 

Thanks for coming and saying hello, those who did, and special thanks to my fellow operators, one of whom is Great Central of this parish.

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  • 4 months later...
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Well that's DEMU show done. We had quite a few electrical problems, which is somewhat ironic considering that I have an article in the current MERG Journal talking about the control electronics! I eventually isolated the main panel and we ran on Sunday with just the manual panels and no working signals. I hope nobody was disappointed with the performance of the layout.

 

The new backscenes seem to have been appreciated, and one old gent thought he recognised the industrial backscene as Sheffield. This was nice, but I don't know if he was right; that section of the backscene is a Gaugemaster print and I don't know where they took the picture.

attachicon.gifP6040142a.jpg

On Sunday Legomanbiffo lent us a Deltic with his sound decoder in. That was pretty amazing and we ran that on a Transpennine set standing in for the 123/124 unit which first slipped a gear then had a short circuit. The 76s worked well though and we had very few OLE problems, just a few pans getting caught (not much different to the present day ECML really!).

 

Thanks for coming and saying hello, those who did, and special thanks to my fellow operators, one of whom is Great Central of this parish.

 

 

Hi,

Im hoping your still on rmWeb - Netherfield Sidings is wonderful - could you provide some more details on the OLE, as I'm about to attempt something similar and getting stuck with what to use for the contact wire!  Id love to know how you did your gantries.

 

Rich

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Hi,

Im hoping your still on rmWeb - Netherfield Sidings is wonderful - could you provide some more details on the OLE, as I'm about to attempt something similar and getting stuck with what to use for the contact wire!  Id love to know how you did your gantries.

 

Rich

Thanks for the kind comments, Rich. I am still active here, but don't tend to check it all that often!

The layout was Layout of the Month in January 2016 Railway Modeller and I gave a short description of the OLE there, but basically it was made from 33SWG nickel silver wire strung from gantries soldered up from brass sections. I made a drawing of each type of gantry and stuck double sided tape on it to hold the brass while I soldered it. The brackets which hold the wires were etched using spare space on the class 76 fret I had made.

Since the last show I have modified some of the overhead to replace the contact wire with EZ Line. This is threaded through loops bent in the tops of the droppers. The advantage is that the elastic line is always straight and, in the case of removable sections at baseboard joints, springs back pulling the contact wire clear of the baseboard joint. I will see how it performs at the next show, which is Stevenage in Mid January next year.

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Thanks for the kind comments, Rich. I am still active here, but don't tend to check it all that often!

The layout was Layout of the Month in January 2016 Railway Modeller and I gave a short description of the OLE there, but basically it was made from 33SWG nickel silver wire strung from gantries soldered up from brass sections. I made a drawing of each type of gantry and stuck double sided tape on it to hold the brass while I soldered it. The brackets which hold the wires were etched using spare space on the class 76 fret I had made.

Since the last show I have modified some of the overhead to replace the contact wire with EZ Line. This is threaded through loops bent in the tops of the droppers. The advantage is that the elastic line is always straight and, in the case of removable sections at baseboard joints, springs back pulling the contact wire clear of the baseboard joint. I will see how it performs at the next show, which is Stevenage in Mid January next year.

Many thanks for the response. What may I ask is EZ Line? I'm assuming it's some sort of fishing line? Do you have any other exhibition bookings for next year? I'd like to see the layout in the flesh and examine the OHL further! But can't make Stevenage.

 

Rich

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Many thanks for the response. What may I ask is EZ Line? I'm assuming it's some sort of fishing line? Do you have any other exhibition bookings for next year? I'd like to see the layout in the flesh and examine the OHL further! But can't make Stevenage.

 

Rich

EZ line is a latex rubber thread that comes in three colours, rust, green or neutral and at least 2 thicknesses. It's from the USA and I used it for telephone wires on my Long Preston layout. Graham has used it as part of his overhead. It glues very easily with Superglue.

 

Jamie

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Netherwood Sidings doesn't get very many exhibition invitations and I am afraid that, at the moment, Stevenage is the only one next year. 

 

It certainly should get plenty of invitations although of course many venues not suitable to accommodate larger O gauge layouts.

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Since the last show I have modified some of the overhead to replace the contact wire with EZ Line. This is threaded through loops bent in the tops of the droppers.

 

I think you meant to say that you have replaced the catenary wire, not the contact wire. That is how I planned to use it on the 'Carstairs' OLE when I bought the reel I suspect you are now using for Netherwood Sidings.

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