Over the past month I decided to try and resurrect an ancient locomotive from my collection. It's not that we've discovered a source of high pressure Geo-thermal steam in Clare, it is just that I fancied trying to get the old Impetus Andrew Barclay fireless to work again. I first built this loco about 20 years ago and I can remember my son, who was about 5 at the time, drawing steam locomotives with their cylinders at the wrong end for months afterwards! The loco was built with a split axle design but still suffered from intermittent pickup. I had a little room left in the locomotive so I wondered about fitting a modern DCC decoder and stay-alive capacitor which might be better able to deal with this. I asked for some recommendations on the MERG forum and then opted to order a Zimo MX617f and KungFu stay-alive 27x9x6. I order these from Digitrains online at 13:30 on a Friday, Order acknowledgment was immediate, an email telling me that the goods had been dispatched arrived at 14:30 and the chips arrived in the post at 10:30 the following morning - Kudos to Digitrains and the Royal Mail.

Soldering the stay-alive to the  chip was nerve-racking but achievable (I believe that Digitrains will do it for you if asked) and the decoder inserted into the top of the reservoir (note: not boiler) . The chips were installed within 24 hours of being ordered! The stay-alive is sitting in the cab but is pretty well hidden. The result is incredible. Before the loco would stutter along and needed to be traveling at an over-scale speed in order not to stall. At this speed the motor was rev'ing very fast and generated an unpleasant whiny sound. After fitting the stay-alive I can now make the locomotive crawl along with its wheels going around at 1 r.p.m.

It really does make for a most unusual model (and as such is bound to be released R-T-R before too long!)

My second little project has been to work on some tests for a potential little side project. I rather fancy building a small single board 'cameo layout' for the fireless to run on. Many years ago I started a layout based on Mistley in Essex. The layout even got as far as a Scaleforum at City university (I said it was a long time ago) but was eventually abandoned because the maltings buildings were just so damn big and would have taken decades to make in plasticard. But now I have access to a laser cutter!

One section of the building looks like this, the actual building being about 8 storeys tall and ten or so bays wide...

My first attempt was to cut a test section using 3mm MDF for the base and 1mm MDF for the buttresses and detail. Each of these sections is 50mm wide x 70mm tall.

While the buttresses were fine the detail on the brickwork was way too course.

For my second attempt I purchased a sheet of oiled manilla card from Tindall's in Ely. (I corrected the closures around the windows etc. on this too)

This gave a better look but the tiny pieces of card were extremely fragile to fit. The multiple layers needed were also very time consuming to add.

For a last attempt I tried 3D printing just the decorative brick work. The part between the buttresses was printed as one piece and the part which wraps around the buttress was a separate piece. I also modeled the decorative diagonal brick course which had previously been cut in 1mm MDF and fitted into a slot in the 3mm MDF base. As I was in 3D printing mode I added some windows and grills to the print job.

This was so much easier to assemble and could be made even easier if I cut some alignment holes in the base with the laser and added some location pins on the back of the 3D printed parts. I had a go at painting the test piece with two different colours of brick and then adding a mortar coat with some fine surface filler. Finally a wash with Vallejo grey wash.

I think a building nearly 50cm x 25 cm could look rather impressive, particularly with a fireless and a couple of grain wagons shunting in front of it.

I remember an enjoyable operating session on Enigma Engineering (what they make is a mystery) a few years back, this might be a case for Mistrey Quay (who knows what ships from there?)

What do you reckon?

David