Today was one of those days when I painted two wagons and got the colour of both wrong the first time!
This shark started off bauxite but then I realized it should have been black for my chosen period.
Got a few assorted fish to go in front of it to work on now.
David
The last few days work means that the goods warehouse to the rear of the layout is pretty much finished with the exception of some weathering, downpipes, ground cover etc. etc.
From viaduct level you get a good view of the entrance which has some detail inside with loading platform, some internal walls and various notice boards cut from the Scalescenes goods shed kit. I'm wondering about the area around the signal box. I'd originally thought about adding a water tower into the scene but
The last few days have been spent putting a hipped roof on top of my Scalescenes constructed goods warehouse. As I've built the various units I've been developing the method and thought people might be interested in the order of construction which worked best for me.
First up is a general picture of the building I've been putting the roof on. This is a railway owned goods warehouse positioned next the a viaduct on my North-East London 'Empire Basin' layout in P4.
The shape of t
Christmas seems to be a traditional time for me to do some Scalescene's buildings and this year seems no exception. The large goods warehouse is at viaduct level with a street level entrance below track level. I spent a few hours cutting card to make up the road level and I am quite pleased with the view you get from under the bridge of the main line. I think the retaining walls looks like a suitable location for some bill boards.
I also decided to put some hipped roofs on the building.
Thursday night saw the bodies of the wagons fitted and Friday evening was spent fitting weight and Alex Jackson couplings. Still need to fit the dropper wires for the coupling.
I realized that having removed the toy hinges for the side doors I needed to replace them with something more to scale. A few pieces of plasticard from the scrap box were enough to fabricate something suitable. Painting was by brush with Humbrol acrylics.
Transfers from the Modelmaster range were applied
Reading Geoff Kent's 'The 4mm Wagon - part 1' gives the answer to the question on the Airfix brakes.
The kit provides two mouldings, only one of which is required, and two identical brake handles, the one on the same side as the brakes should be fitted with a Morton clutch.
So, I've removed the brakes from one side and cut the brake handles off the V hanger on the other. pushing it slightly upwards and used a piece of rod to represent the end brake rod and the Morton clutch. At the same
I was luck enough to have the opportunity to get hold of a pile of original Airfix 16 ton mineral wagons. Nice little kits which are worth a bit of work to bring up to modern standards. The price seems quite reasonable too!
I wanted to use Bill Bedford sprung W-irons so first thing was to remove the plastic W-irons to just leave the spring and axle boxes. i was actually surprised that this wasn't more difficult than it proved to be. I started off with a razor saw and then finished off w
More fun with MERG electricery. I purchased a PICKIT2 which allows you to change the software running on the PICs used by the MERG Servo4 controllers to a version called Sema4 which has the option of setting 'On' and 'Off' positions, the 'On Speed' and 'Off Speed' and then up to 3 'bounces' in each direction. The result is shown in the attached YouTube clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un5LMUBFDM8
For the technically minded I've also now upgraded the software on the MERG CBUS modules
So we were up before dawn and trundling down the M11 expecting the usual hour to get over the Dartford crossing and what happens? No queues! Through the toll at 08:00 on the dot. Arrived and Swanley with plenty of time to put the layout up in a reasonably relaxed manner. The fact I knew where we were going helped to, my son is now used to Dad's special U-Turns on the way to find exhibition halls. I even got to take a few photographs before the public arrived.
The show was great fun and
As next Saturday Fen End Pit is off to Expo Narrow Gauge at Swanley this afternoon was spend checking and preparing the stock. Several couplings needed adjustment, lots of wheel cleaning but nothing serious in need of repair. I had realized I was one driver down so have also been trying to convert 'Larry the Lister driver' into 'Sidney the Simplex driver'
I took the opportunity to take a few photographs and a short clip of the Simplex 40S with the sound chip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
Over the last couple of weeks I've rewheeled a Bachmann LMS 50 Brake and a BR GUV, two more additions to my parcels train. Actually it is probably going to end up as an 'Up Parcels' and 'Down Parcels' as the fiddleyard won't be long enough to hold all the stock! I did a bit of a foolish thing with the GUV, I brought one in Rail Express Parcel livery as the Maroon wasn't available and then tried to strip it and repaint it. By the time I got around to trying to line it and number it I found I cou
Hmmm, over a month since the last blog entry. Well it is the holiday season.
Progress on the P4 layout continues. To be honest I'd hit a bit of a wall in that I didn't want to get things much further along scenically because I was terrified I would have to take everything apart if I needed to fix anything below the baseboard. I needed to take some time to sort out how to make the gubbins more accessible before I ran too far ahead.
This is where the hindsight comes in and possibly a good
Over the weekend I constructed a simple locking bar mechanism which is operated by a servo which locks and unlocks the levers. The operation can be view in this Youtube clip. I think the basic mechanism could be expanded to cover a larger frame without too much difficulty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8KJZ4BlT_s
David
I realized that the spring on the lever was effectively duplicating the one in the micro-switch so in the best traditions of trying to keep things simple I tried to build a version which doesn't bother using it. The revised lever arrangement is a bit simpler but it takes a little bit of adjustment to:-
get the springing in the lever right,
the micro-switch to change correctly as the catch handle is pulled and also
the screw which fastens the attachment to the lever not to foul the mic
I've managed to have a go at fastening an extra micro-switch to be activated by the catch handle on a Shropshire and Herefordshire Area Group (spelled out in full to avoid being replaced by #####, the so-called scunthorpe problem) lever frame.
In order to make it so I could still take the levers apart I built it as follows:-
20mm of rectangle brass tube (K&S)
saw slot in the narrow side of the tube, this allows it to feed over the tag on the lever which holds the bottom of the sprin
Over the last week I've been experimenting with my MERG CBUS components and JMRI with a view to producing a way to make a mechanical signal box frame which is interlocked and interfaced with a PC. The requirements I've set for myself are as follows:-
I want a mechanical lever frame, with proper chunky levers to pull. I've already build one from the Scalefour stores produced by the Shropshire & Herefordshire Area Group (######).
I want the frame to prevent me from setting conflicting
Having joined the MERG at Biggleswade I went down to their meeting at Keen House a couple of weekends ago. Very pleasant day out, welcoming bunch of people and an interesting talk on computer control. I purchased a number of kits including the servo controllers and some of the CBUS modules designed for accessory control. Several hours with a soldering iron later and we have the CBUS playground featuring a number of modules designed to test and develop some ideas on how it might work on a layout.
An order to Modelmaster produced suitable transfers for the 16t minerals I've built up over the last few months. The plaintive requests on their website asking for people not to bother ringing them to chase order were unnecessary as delivery was 4 days!
The ease of not having to put every b£$"d% number on individually is certainly a major advantage if you are like me and don't really mind if the number isn't exactly correct. I had no problems getting them to float to the position I needed an
I've started work on another vehicle for the parcels train, a MK1 GUV. So far the B4 bogies have been replaced by Mk1 type. These are Bill Bedford etchings with the sides off Bachmann Mk1 bogies (suitable thinned down). The Bachmann bogies came from Kernow Models last week and at £3.50 for a pair are actually cheaper than some less detailed white metal castings.
The original 'Rail Express Systems' livery came off easily with model strip and will be replaced with plain BR maroon (and lots of
It has been a frustrating few weeks on the scalefour roundy-roundy. A major part of the design is the track running from the high-level viaduct down to the quayside. This was all laid, and generally locomotives could go up and down it, however getting a train to go either up or down was causing problems.
As there is a reversal on the way down you have to deal with the locomotive being at the 'up hill' end for half of the journey. This leads to two problems, firstly when you shunt the wagons
A Bank holiday seemed like a good time to do a bit of building work and finish off the roof of the big warehouse behind the viaduct. The Brassmasters etchings made the northlight units quite rigid though cutting them all to a different length to match the profile of the backscene was a bit of a faff. I had decided that one end of the building would house the lift shaft so this got a block house on top to house the lift mechanism.
From track level the building now looks quite impressive.
Added some Alex Jackson coupling this afternoon and painted the various buffer fittings. Finally a gentle blast of Railmatch frame dirt from below, and a weathered black from above.
David
I've spent the evening fitting the various pipes to the buffer beam on the Class 15. Quite fiddly, but worthwhile. Having thinned down the sandboxes they are on too. I've opted for a freight headcode and think adding the disks to the nose really brings the loco to life.
Now I must get around to ordering a chip, but every time I think about it during the day somebody asks me to do something at work!
I think I'm going to trim back the coupling holder to fit an Alex Jackson hook in. It
As I had to take the chassis apart to solder the brake hangers on (they were too close to the wheels for comfort) I opted to paint the chassis while everything was accessible. The frames were brush painted with some enamel primer and the a coat of Humbrol matt black, which amazingly dried matt. I then picked out the valve gear with some Humbrol gun metal to give a slightly shiny look of steel. A quick blast of acrylic railmatch 'frame dirt' has toned it down a bit.
Another task completed wa
I found getting the body off a bit nerve racking. The instructions with the loco are rather non-specific to say the least. Trying to work out how much force to exert while terrified you are going to break something isn't really my idea of fun. Still, needed to be done as i want to get a decoder in.
The actually rewheeling is quite straightforward. The bottom keeper plate on the chassis pops off with a small screwdriver under each catch on one side. There is an arrow on the inside of the mold
