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  • SouthernRegionSteam

    Coastguard Creek - 15 months of planning!

    By SouthernRegionSteam

    Hold on to your socks - this is going to be a lengthy one! (In fact it's so long, I've now split it into 2 separate posts - the next will be up soon...)   I think it's fair to say that you are all long overdue an update on Coastguard Creek. Due to other commitments, no real progress has been made since the last post way back in March 2021; almost 15 months ago! If anything, things went backwards for quite a while, as I kept finding more and more inspiring locations that I really wanted
    • 8 comments
    • 2,793 views
MikeOxon's Broad Gauge Blog

A Galaxy of Stars

In my previous post, I wrote that I needed to make a model of one of the longer-boilered ‘Stars’, to see if it made a better comparison with the photograph taken at Cheltenham shed around 1850.   According to the RCTS booklet Part Two, two ‘Stars’ were built with boilers that were 2 feet longer than the others – these were ‘Rising Star’ and ‘Bright Star’. We are very fortunate that E.T. Lane not only made several sketches of ‘Rising Star’, including end-elevations, but also produced a
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

3
Jim Champ's "Introduction to Great Western Locomotive Development"

Cambrian Small Side Tank (2-4-0T) Class

Three small side tank locomotives from Sharp Stewart, delivered in 1866. They received a significant reworking in Cambrian days which altered their appearance considerably. All survived to the GWR, who proposed to scrap two of them immediately, but they were reprieved and numbered 1192, 1196 and 1197. They soon received the full GWR treatment above the footplate. The boilers were thoroughly overhauled with top feed added and they were given new GWR smokeboxes, tanks, cab and bunkers. Thus utterl
Atherington Victoria & East Yard.

56. "Through to the Continent by British Rail."

Taking a week off work recently, I started 'the factory' as what I thought would be a quick, simple, discrete project.  This monolith hides the passenger station viaduct on the left of the layout, behind the minerals yard and arrival/departure sidings, currently substituted by cardboard boxes to give an idea of the 'massing'.   I can not say the modelling has been enjoyable, but have been able at last to stage a cameo dreamed of when first mooting the layout's track plan.  A VIX is shu
C126

C126 in B.R. blue goods yard.

10
Kelvinbank, a Caledonian Railway project.

A Stevens & Sons lever frame, part 2

Some progress.   The nine levers have been cut from 2mm brass. The other parts are fabricated from tube and section. I used a pair of buffer springs to assist gravity on the stop block to give a positive feel to the action.       The frame made up from silhouette cut styrene, 3 ply. It will become stiffer as more is added but tests show that it is heading in the right direction. I chose a spacing of 15 mm for the levers. That gives about 28 mm as a gap for movi
Dave John

Dave John in General

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MikeOxon's Broad Gauge Blog

A Tangled Web

I’ve referred before to the problems that arise from using published drawings as the basis for creating 3D models of early locomotives. The usual dictum of “find a photograph of your selected prototype” simply doesn’t apply to the years before photography became established.   That leads to the next problem – so much of the information we read about early locomotives comes from books that were written decades after the time to which they refer. Even Gooch’s own ‘diary’ is considered su
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

3
Barry Ten's Blog

Paynestown - no sleep til Barry Island

Paynestown's public outing is coming up fast, and inevitably there's a rush to get a lot of jobs done, compounded by the fact that I'm travelling on the two days prior to the exhibition! I think it's nearly there, though, provided I get a good weekend of tasks done.   Other than adding additional wagons to the stock box, by way of converting their couplings, the other main job has been further tidying up of the fascia, ready for its final coat of paint. I've opted for a satin warm grey
Barry Ten

Barry Ten in GWR

1
Goverseth Sidings (Dubbers)

Tedious Little Tasks!

Just a brief little update on the layout, not to much to report on this week.    The tedious task of wiring has been started, the droppers have been placed into the block and loops connecting them together have been installed. Luckily wiring on a smaller layout isn’t as bad!   A small but important job of adding a strengthening piece has also been undertaken. With the boards originally being four modular baseboards I was worried about the rigidity of the boards that are permanen
Fxtgood

Fxtgood in Goverseth Sidings

0
Upgrading Draxbridge

The trackwork (2)

04/08/23   The layout is now fully wired up however this point next to the TMD is a bit troublesome.     The loco I was using, 73212, would go on it and as soon as the they got on it, it would stall. It worked fine when it was set straight but it wouldn't when it was set in the other direction.   However, upon closer inspection, I found out that the point blade wasn't touching the side of the rail properly so I carefully bent the end of it a bit to see if
Atherington Victoria & East Yard.

55. A Ghost-inspector calls.

Just wished to add my paean to Revolution Trains' S.R. General Manager's Saloon, 'Caroline'.  Arrived on Monday, and on initial inspection it looks excellent to me.  Taking the precaution of un-packing it on a white napkin, only the coupling hook fell off, which I am too ham-fisted to re-attach.   Here it is, arriving at Atherington Victoria upon news of an out-break of Victorians populating the platform.  (Please forgive my flippancy, but I have nothing better in which to pose it.)
C126

C126 in B.R. blue goods yard.

1
Fen End Pit's Blog

Progress on a possible J17 kit - part 3 - the tender

During the week I assemble the chassis for the J17 tender which went together well apart from me drawing the holes for the brake hangers in the wrong place. Artwork correction took marginally longer than drilling 6 holes in the right places. I've stuck two pieces of copper-clad sleeper strip down the inside of the chassis and soldered the pickup wire onto these. While I have metal brake blocks and hangers on the etch I thought it would be interested to try 3D printing them and see how they worke
Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit in J17 Build

0
Notes from the loft

My name is Bond ,Ballast Bond

All the Youtube videos I have seen on ballasting casually gloss over how to deal with points and specifically that hardest of all points,  the double slip.  My hypothesis is that it isn't the ballasting itself that is an issue, rather it is the pre-wetting of the ballast as that seems to disturb the ballast and that's the very thing we need to avoid around points.   To set the scene -  my peco 75 track is laid on DCC Concepts foam bed, not cork, and I have spent thousands converting th
deepfat

deepfat in ballast

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pheaton's Blog

Keeping 26043 alive.....No1 end....."Its Ground Hog Day"

With the major welding complete to No2 end....its time to tackle what we always knew was there...no 1 end...     Dave the welder makes his first cuts into No1 end (he was reminded to put his goggles on after this photo was taken!) We see the rather optimistic hatched area we drew last week of metal we expected to cut.... the side panel itself doesn't look too bad at first glance....but...inspections at the base of the window show significant corrosion....    
pheaton

pheaton in Preservation

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pheaton's Blog

Keeping 26043 alive.....No2 end.....snagging

A bit of a while since my last blog, but no let up in the effort on 26043, work obviously fades over the summer months, its peak season for the diesel department so a number of us crew locomotives but we also have summer holidays and kids to look after...     The last sheets of steel being welded in, during late march at No2 end     No2 end welding is now complete all that remains is to fit a new skirt, the skirt is a very complex fabrication and is curved
pheaton

pheaton in Preservation

1
5&9Models' Blog

A London & Birmingham Novelty

I’ve long been entertained and intrigued by depictions of early railways of the 1830s and ‘40s. The period was marked by significant political and social change, the technology of the new iron roads symbolised these changes more than anything and the railway companies knew it. From the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway onwards, artists such as Isaac Shaw, John Cooke Bourne, Thomas Talbot Bury and many others recorded what they saw, creating images that sought to commemorate and i
The Farthing layouts

Copenhagen to Penzance by rail

Back in June I had some work to do in London. I live in Copenhagen, so a devious plan was hatched to extend the work trip with some time off for railways and family. I even managed to do a bit of research for the Farthing layouts.       I went by rail to London. It was 16 hours on 5 trains, but I enjoyed the views and got most of a day’s work done on the laptop.       Early departure from Copenhagen Central at 5.44. No rush to the airport hours befo
Mikkel

Mikkel in Misc.

59
MikeOxon's Broad Gauge Blog

Photographic Evidence

Having wandered into South Devon territory with my atmospheric caper, I started to look at some of the steam engines used on that line. I realised that, although I have modelled several early passenger engines, including the Firefly class, I have not tackled any of the early goods engines.   The Leo class 2-4-0 were built as goods engines, starting in 1841. It was soon realised, however, that they had insufficient adhesion weight, so all the engines were converted to carry saddle tanks
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

2
The Strawberry Line

Cheddar P4 - August 2023 Update

This month, I have been mostly gardening. In a scale style obviously. And that's about it really. Road surfaces are the usual Attwood Aggregates dust, greenery is static grass undercoat and postiche top coat, horsehair hedges and an assortment of sprinkles and flocks. It's funny how I'm down at the dregs of various containers as I hit the last board. Another obligatory strawberry patch has appeared inside the railway fence (which is still to do). Still lots to do but I alread
ullypug

ullypug in P4

1
The Farthing layouts

Midland Railway D299 Open

As Stephen has highlighted, the Midland Railway D299 Opens were built in such large numbers that they appeared in almost any pre-grouping goods yard at some point.       So I dug out my Slater's kit for this diagram.       The kit had some rather bare looking insides.       I therefore scribed on some planking detail.       For the rest of the build I followed Stephen's info, including removal
Mikkel

Mikkel in Wagons

7
Oxendale

Installing the Signal.

A while ago, I brought a fully wired up Dapol LMS semaphore home signal from Cropper's Models in Bridlington. It was originally intended for use on a new OO gauge micro layout I was working on. Unfortunately, that never happened and the signal remained in store for a while.    That was until Oxendale was built. I was sorting out some boxes and I came across it again. I thought "that would go well on the layout" and then it hit me: Rather than keep it in store, I'll use it on the layout
Chesworth - Horsham MRC's 00 Finescale project

We have five Long Wednesdays left .............

The club chairman spoke to our team this week. There are going to be 22 layouts at the joint show with Dorking club on 30 Sept/1 October. We did say that we could make that 21 but were firmly told "no way". So over the next two months we will concentrate on making our efforts as interesting as possible as completion to exhibition standards is totally not feasible. If it ever was.   One of the issues we have had since the beginning is that Horsham club do not have a dedicated club room.
whart57

whart57 in Monthly Reports

0
Kelvinbank, a Caledonian Railway project.

A Stevens & Sons lever frame , part 1

I have never been entirely happy with the control of points and signals on Kelvinbank. Three way switches allow a signal to be set to on, off or auto. Switches set the points, in auto mode they also control the signals via short timers. It is vaguely interlocked, but not perfectly. All workable but somehow not in keeping with the period feel of things.   So. Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire section of the CR during the Edwardian era. Built in the 1890s. Boxes would have a Stevens & S
Dave John

Dave John in General

11
46444's Blog

Two out of three ain't bad. And the one about the soup can!

In the 1980's as an impressionable teenager Ratio produced a number of special pre-printed kits based on their venerable GWR 12T box van.    As far as I an aware the three kits available came in Badger Beer, Huntsman Ales/Elderidge Pope and BOCM liveries *.    When they were available in the 1980's I never built them. I remember they were advertised in black and white images in the Railway Modeller from Ratio when they were based in Sturminster Newton.    However a
46444

46444 in 46444 Blog

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