Well time drags in my modelling efforts at the moment and yet another month goes by, with things going on around me it is hard to concentrate on modelling, however I thought I would settle down to a little on this rainy Sunday afternoon and set myself the task of re-wheeling my GraFar Class 60 loco so that I have one 2mmFS loco to test out my soldered point-work.
This has proved to be a little frustrating once I had got the body off and split the chassis as you can see from the picture above
So back from a bit of an epic journey north to the 2mm Expo hosted by the Keighley Club (thanks for that) , via a rather long winded journey starting at 6:38am not helped by having been out for one too many sherberts the night before and not getting to bed till 3am. But the journey went well with a range of transports to an from the venue. Have to say the Keighley Club space is great, lots of it! and looks out over the KWVR
I now see didn't take as many pictures as I thought I had and
.. a month goes by and nothing been achieved! well work and life has been busy so not had much time for modelling.. although have been to a couple of shows Railex being the best. I got to see Missy's little Nn3 Shunter and chatted to her near the end of the show, came away with some ideas and then the 2011 Challenge pops up! hmmmm even more distraction(s)
I am also going on a mad dash to the 2mm Expo oop north on Saturday with 8 hours on the train and around 4 hours at the show, but looking
To keep the momentum going as things at work are rather irksome and sucking up way to much time from modelling I recieved my 1911 map of Leyburn. It shows the station plan almost fully but misses a bit off the eastern approach which is a bit annoying.. but it does show some interesting features that I wasn't aware of before, one being the long headshunts at both ends of the station. I think a trip to the records office at Northallerton is needed or a day out at NRM but it is a start and I can ge
Ok so slow news day and as I am away from my workbench and not able to build stuff, knew I should have brought soldering stuff with me I have started reading my books and am starting to get into the research of my future 'big' layout. That being Leyburn Station on the NER Wensleydale Branch. Having picked up one CD in a collection of 3 of images of the branch line, some if not most are images in books I already have but the bonus of these pics are that they are high-ish resolution TIFF files an
With York show over for another year for me time to reflect on what I saw and learned probably more importantly. The show in my mind was a very good one and had some really nice layouts I would have like to be there longer but started the day a bit late so have to be content with 4 hours of viewing and shopping although the last 10mins of the show at Squires stand was a bit tense. I think my favourite layout was the Greek one as its buildings and structures had to be seen, it was like being ther
Ok so I couldn't resist having a go at the plan and having in the archive a suggestion from someone elsewhere I thought about the space issues and liked the idea of having a roundy roundy as trains could rumble through as shunting is carried out in the yard and then wagons could be added or taken away from the passing trains.. the more I think about this the more I like it as the space take would be around the same but be able to be made to fit in with the room rather than having to get the 'tra
Ok so after some Templotting at the weekend I tested out the size of the plan and am quite suprised how bit it is and thats without the 3way so I am going to have to go some giggling to get this into a more managable size as there needs to be space for the fiddleyards/cassettes! but I think it is a workable plan and like the flowing curves allowed by hand built track. And finally a side on view of a Tank loco and 2 (ahem) Southern coaches!
So today's effort was put into constructing point 4. I spent a little over one hour 40 minutes building and now as I know what I need and the order in which it goes I am speeding up a bit but still taking time to get things wrong I feel a lot more comfortable building things up now.
After a trip to BnQ today with a friend who has a car I got an off cut of thick MDF which I thought would make an excellent surface for point building but didnt reckon on the pritt stick gluing the template so t
So after some manic days at work feeling to tired to do anything I finally got to play a bit with Templot and have firstly done the non 3 way version but feel this is not as elegant as the 3 way one that I roughly tried out, so some more playing with is needed to make this fit the area unless I go for the 3way challenge. It all needs tidying up and the timbers shoving etc, but the starting point has been made. Comments on any possible improvements greatfully accepted.
I have which will be a
One of my many! backofanenvelope plans surfaced the other day whilst going through a old hard drive and thought that this would do for my first venture into 2FS layout building. It will be a test bed for many things and is going to be around four foot long-ish. Based on a NER fictional location named after a place I lived in many years ago it will have a simple track plan apart from a 3 way point at the eastern end of the yard. I am going to have a go at Temploting this later tonight if I get th
Well with another iteration comes more progress and I have now a reasonable looking point that has most of the right things in the right places, hopefully.. I have the stock rails and the straight closure rails on and one of the filed down point blades. I am going to see if I can make a better jig than version one which is a bit ramshackle and rough although it seems to have done the job properly. After some advice I tried to create the L shape profile on the rail to give a bit more stability at
Ok so I carried on working on point 2 this morning and got as far as putting one of the switch rails in when I became unhappy at not only the quality of the work but also the fact that I had failed to file the switch blades, Doh! So after pacing up and down a bit and having a cuppa tea to calm the nerves I decided to embark on Point 3. What has become apparent is that I need a number of things to assist the smooth running of this point building operation. Firstly I need a proper FLAT surface to
Ok so decided not to allow current events to stop me I set about building point 2. Decided to tidy up a bit and found a bit of hardboard to protect the desk and also to be able to see bit n bobs more easily.
This time I started with a number 6 as I thought this is what I will be using So first I soldered up the frog after filing down the rails, I really need to get a better file for this and with York coming up another item to add to my shopping list. Then I set out the sleepers that I hav
Things haven't gone quite according to plan as I have to move out of current digs and find something else so I'm in the process of having to box everything up and get ready to move.. I am keeping modelling stuff to last as I don't have loads but working is also proving problematic at the mo too so finding it hard to do anything except eat sleep and workso a little of the 2FS sparkle has disappeared.. But I do hope to start Point2 at weekend, so this time hopefully I will get it right.I also need
Ok so I got the frog done before I set off to work this morning and I am counting the hours till hometime now so I can do more trackwork.. really getting into it.. I thought the forg was going to be one of the hards parts but turned out to be really easy. getting it onto the track in the right place without too much solder was hard.
The eagle eyed amongst you will notice my first cock up which is the frog is 2 sleepers to far back from where it should be on the template, but man who nev
Ok to prove to myself that I am not just hot air I started to build my first 2mmFS point today. I deliberately have not followed all the things I have seen on the t'internet as I didn't want to to be too precious and just get on an do it, learning from my mistakes and then moving on to better modelling. This is a picture of my temporary and some what mobile work bench with the first rail down. Unfortunately I have to go out now so maybe more will happen later although some liquid refreshment may
After spending time looking for a suitable project to get me started on 2mmFS loco building I was recommended this lovely little loco LNER E1(J72) which although is in the right region is not native to the area I want to model, so modelling licence comes into play I think but it wouldn't look out of place in the location I have set and would be a worth shedded loco at the Leyburn Shed. It looks a beautiful kit and came in wonderful packaging with real brown paper something I thought that
Well he knocked once really this morning, but he had 2 packages for me from the kindly elves at shop1@2mmfs association. One with the rail, jigs and PCB's and the other with a huge box of Easitrac plastic sleepers. The excitement was too much to contain and with childish zimto opened this all up at the breakfast table. I must say that everything was really well packaged and was very quick in arriving too, only sent the order off last week on Thursday,
So then I set about printing out my te
Ok so nearly 18 months have gone by since my last post and you may be say what now or you may not be! So what is new in Backofanenvelopeland for a start off I have made a new years resolution to actually achieve something this year or throw it all in and start basket weaving or something. In reviewing my responsibility landscape I have come the the conclusion that I need to have a number of interests to keep me going and so when the muse wains I can flick to something else. So those areas are l
Came across this site on my travels, and has some very interesting info on scratch building chassis's for 3mm and some nice looking stock. Have downloaded the 3mm society app form and am going to stick in the post on Monday postal strike allowing..
Well I thought I would put some thoughts down, as I am still thinking about the possibilities of 3mm. I have always wanted to do some L(NE)R based in the Pennines, having seen in RM David Jenkinson's Marthwaite and being bitten by it as I was close-ish to where I grew up. Also having access to Wensleydale Branch made me want to model that too and in the early days I made a very 'loose' interpretation of it in my bedroom on an 8x4 L shaped chipboard layout. Having moved on some what I now think t
Well after typing in a lengthy post it all went wrong, so I am going to give the abreviated version.
Went to Festival of Railway Modelling, although there were a number of quality layouts there I came away feeling that it was a bit of a let down, I know times are hard at the moment, but I guess I was expecting a bit more. One the plus side I saw West Harptree, which has got the juices flowing, but adds another scale to the yo-yo! anyway more thoughts on that to follow.
Went to NVR as hav
Well this is my first post on here an a bit of a test really. I was going to bring some stuff over from the old forum, but decided against it due to complete lack of activity. I am hope that this spurs me on to 'get things done' But being a serial scale hopper I am trying to tie myself down to 1 or maybe 2 at most so I can have some output.
Whilst digging around files sections I came across this plan which I drew some time ago. I still rather like it and think it would make a nice 2mmFS layo
