At its last outing at the Farnham Club's exhibition in Aldershot, Freshwater sarted to show its age. Two minor problems developed.
The point in the fiddle yard had a blade come detached from the moving tie-bar
The central uncoupling magnets started sticking in either the 'up' or 'down' positions.
Fortunately, neither of these problems were too detrimental to the operation of the layout, and were probably not noticed by the viewing public. However, they needed
The petrol station is now firmly planted on the layout, and the final scenic work complete. This entailed more herring gulls, a couple of foxes and a few colonies of rabbits.
The Rev.W Audrey (from ModelU) is pondering over his Bradshaws Guide and deciding if his scooter would get him to Newport in time to see the train just departed from Freshwater arrive there.
This fox (also from ModelU) is not looking for fish.
Rabbits are more to
Finally, I have got round to creating the last building required for my Freshwater layout. There were two reasons for the procrastination afforded to this project. Firstly, the building is right at the front of the layout, and would get in the way, or be damaged, when working on other parts of the layout. The second reason was the severe shortage of images or information about the petrol station as it was in the 1940's or 1950's.
Having completed the rest of the layout scenics, excus
No major projects to report on for this entry, but lots of little jobs here and there that are moving the layout forward slowly towards completion (if that is ever possible).
First off, lots of telegraph poles and power poles. Seven telegraph poles where only two pairs are identical. Based on Ratio items, chopped about to provide the correct number of arms and 'pots', plus some 0.2mm diameter wire for two 'stays' where the wire course changes direction to cross the tracks.It took a l
Having used my imagination to create a non-descript building supplies/scrap dealership at the far end of the goods yard that I have not found photographs of, I decided the business needed a better means of transporting its wares than the old bicycle. I purchased an Autocraft white metal casting for a 1930's Reliant three wheeled van. This is a nice casting, but there are a couple of omissions. First, there is no interior detail, or floor. Second, are the wheels. Representing spokes in this scale
Two sets of 30 year old ex-LBSCR 4 car 4 wheeled carriages arrived on the Isle of Wight in 1924. They were followed later by some slightly newer Billington carriages, some of which still run on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. The Stroudley sets saw less than 10 years service on the island, so are not really suitable for the period of my layout. But a set of etched brass bodies are available from Etched Pixels, so how could I resist.
Being only body kits, I needed some chassis that w
Built by the North London Railway in 1864 as a four compartment, all-first class, 4 wheeled carriage, this vehicle was purchased second hand, over 30 years later by the Isle of Wight Railway (IWR), along with six other carriages. It was numbered 46. It retained the varnished teak livery, but bore the garter motif of the IWR, with its number in the centre. One of the first class compartments was down-graded to second class. When the Southern Railway took over in 1923, these 60 year old carriages
No, I am not scrapping the layout yet. A few weeks ago, a club junior member said he fancied having a model bonfire on his OO layout. I thought I could have a go at that, using an Arduino Nano and a couple of LEDs and resistors. I even found a ready made Arduino sketch on the Internet that randomly varied the brightness of three LEDs independently (two red and one yellow) at random, short intervals. I had it all complete and working ready to hand over at the next meeting.
Having made
One job that I had been putting off for too long was fitting dummy point rodding. It needed to be done before I could get on with adding details to the front half of the layout, as it would be too difficult to access where it had to go without causing damage. With an invite to the Ally Palley exhibition, I really wanted to get it done in time for that. I just managed to complete it before receiving confirmation that the event was cancelled. C'est la vie. Anyway, it now gives me time to add furth
With the CMRA Stevenage exhibition coming up this weekend, I have been busy adding some detail bits to the rear half of the layout, while it is still accessible, before starting on the foreground stuff. I hope visitors to the exhibition manage to spot them.
The figures are mostly ModelU, except where noted.
The newsagent now has a browsing customer, matching the photo of the real thing that I have.
The old git on the bench is a 3D scan of me.
Just shown Freshwater at OXRAIL 2019 in Abingdon. I finally got around to adding some more details to the layout a few weeks before the show, mostly adding further vegetation along the river Yar, and the brook that runs behind the platform.
I had some extra operators, so I managed to just sit and watch shunting operations, for a change.
And an additional detail added was a pair of benches, a ModelU scan of yours truely, an
Another long pause in activity following my participation in the Channel 5 'Great Model Railway Challenge'. Having completed our heat, and then being in the final, we were asked to build another layout for the Radio Times. Then, Peco invited us to have our Santa layout on their stand at Warley, which was followed by a visit to Bognor Regis. Finally, I could get back to worrying about Freshwater, with two shows in February, Stafford and Tonbridge.
As reported earlier, I use small 'rar
Not much progress recently - I was diverted by a different project which was no 2mmFS.
Anyway, with a couple of exhibitions coming up in October (Fareham and Abingdon/Didcot) I have set up the layout ready for some more work to be carried out, and took the opportunity to take a few, up to date photos:
'Freshwater' will be on show again next Saturday, 14th April 2018. It will be the first 2mmFS layout to be invited to the East Surrey N Gauge Show at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, Linkfield Lane, Redhill, Surrey, RH1 1EA. As usual, I wanted to get a bit more completed after its last exhibition, and next on the list was the Newsagents stand and the signal box. The main part of these buildings were 3D printed by Shapeways, as were most of the other structures on the layout. However, for the
Well, I am really proud of my first attempt at producing artwork for etching. This arrived today from PPD, Special Delivery:
It all looks crisp and clear, and, more importantly, the correct size. Here are the window frames for Freshwater signal box (top) and the magazine stand (centre and bottom):
And the solebar overlays for the LBSCR 4 wheel carriages:
And finally, some fold-up buffer beams and the guard's lower steps:
I have actually 3D printed some buffer
No, grab handles. Four little four-wheeler carriages seem to require a lot of grab handles. It took most of an evening just bending and cutting these. I have drilled the coach sides for the lower end to fit into, but the top end will be above the window line, and the door surround is too narrow to drill. Fitting them will be interesting.
I have also, with advice from D869 (Andy) and Merg member Simon, completed some artwork for creating an etch. This includes window frames for the signa
OK, I know they did not survive into the 1950's but a 4 car set was used on the Freshwater line, so that is good enough for me. The brass etch for the bodies is available from Etched Pixels. They suggest putting them on chopped up peco wagon chassis, but I thought they would look nicer on etched chassis. The GWR 4 wheeler chassis from David Eveleigh is almost perfect for length. I could not figure out how to fit the footsteps provided, and the Stroudley set only had a single footstep, except bel
At the Euskirchen exhibition, I asked Peter to use his camera to try to replicate some of the source photos I have of the real Freshwater. After some manipulation, here are the results:
It shows some irregularities, and focal length differences, but the main one is the position of the buffer stop in the horse box photo. It is positioned correctly according to the OS map, but does not match the photographic evidence.
With another deadline about to whoosh past (exhibiting at Andover this weekend) it is about time I added a bit more scenery to the layout. I picked up a couple of boxes of Noch laser etched bullrushes to add to the plumber's hemp rushes I had already planted along the river Yar and the brook that runs along the rear of the station. I found some more on eBay, and in the end, I have almost 150 bullrushes to plant. They do not go far, as you need to group them to look effective, and even then, they
I have now added rail wiper pickups, fabricated from 0.2mm phosphor-bronze sheet, as fitted to number 8 'Freshwater'. This has improved pickup no end. I still need to permanently fix the con-rods, add 'stay-alive' capacitors and couplings, as per 'Freshwater' before I can give it a proper test on the layout.
https://youtu.be/4ckGObsXMFc
Here is a view of the wipers that I added to number 8 'Freshwater':
Edited to add photo of wipers.
Having had a successful weekend running 'Freshwater' on 'Freshwater' at Abingdon, I have now turned my attentions to a second Dapol A1X Terrier locomotive, carefully copying the process that worked with number 8 'Freshwater'.
The chassis is etched nickel-silver, available from the 2mm Scale Association along with suitable wheels and gears and 'muffs'. A Nigel Lawton motor provides the power, and a CT electronics DCC decoder fits in the cab. Some extra lead weighting has been added inside the
Obvious quote from "Oh, Mr Porter" describes this morning's activity. Using some plastic card and some printouts from Scalescenes, I started on the interior of the Station Master's house:
And what can you see once it is in place?
With only two weeks until the Newbury exhibition, taking a chisel to the layout might seem a bit foolhardy. However, I had a few jobs I wanted to complete before showing the layout again, so I have booked a few days holiday to get them done.
The first job is to extend the station concourse. Having acquired more photos and information, it was apparent that I had underestimated its size, as the W.H.Smiths bookshop and newsagents was sited between the station building and the signal box. I have
Not much has been happening on Freshwater for a few months as all my modelling time seems to have been spent making up Merg electronic modules for other peoples' layouts. But this is about to change as I have an invite to the exhibition in Newbury on February 11th. I had set myself a deadline to get the station building and surrounding area sorted, and some more trees planted before this. So, over the Christmas period, I spent some time on the laptop fiddling with Blender to get the signal box a
