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
Our modelling day in Sawston today gave the Ruston LBT its first outing on Fen End Pit. I was really pleased with how it looked and performed. We had an excellent day meeting up with old friends and making new ones, everything this hobby should be about!
Now I still to remember who does a decent 16mm scale driver to put in it.
and finally one of the dragline.
David
Yes, I did get my spelling right and mean braking not breaking.
The Binnie Engineering Hudson Tipper wagon is a staple of 16mm narrow gauge model railways. Understandably Fen End Pit has quite a few and one of them was converted many years ago to have brake standard to give a little variation. I'd often thought about converting a couple more to give one braked wagon per train of skips but never got around to it.
I decided that this might be a good challenge for my new 3D printer so
The Ruston LBT moved into the paint shop this weekend. Unlike all of the Simplex locomotives on 'Fen End Pit' I thought this one should be a non-manufacturers standard colour. A bit of contrast seemed like a nice idea and looking through my photographs of LBTs I could find them in standard Ruston green, blue, orange and yellow. You pays your money and takes your choice. Roy Link had commented what a nice colour yellow was to weather so I decided on a standard 'plant' yellow as the basis colour.
I thought folks might like to see my 3D printed model of a GER yard crane based on drawings in the GERS journal a few years back. The crane was built by the Chatteris Engineer Co and there were examples in several GER goods sheds and in the goods yards of some of the Stour vally line stations including Clare.
I modeled the parts up in CAD a few months back but knew that it would need something better than my original 3D printer to be able to actually make it. The resulting parts, particularl
I've joined an organisation in Cambridge called 'Makespace' who are setting up a public access 'hackspace' in Cambridge. These organisation seem to be springing up in quite a few large cities (see http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/United_Kingdom ) and are intended for people who want to build things to share the cost of owning and running tools. So for the price of a gym membership (and anyone who tells me that would do me more good is probably on the wrong forum) I can have access to tools which I w
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.
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
First up, here is a picture of what I've done with the top of the water tank. in the absence of pictures or drawings I'm hoping I've got something which is plausible. I stuck some plastruct angle inside the tank and then tried to model some tie-bars to hold it all together. The water is clear acrylic with the bottom painted black.
Next is a little experiment on one of those things which is just so much easier to make when you have something that cuts accurately! I drew up this wagon tur
I realized that I needed to get some better photographs of the engine of the Ruston LAT that I'm trying to build and, as the one which was at the Threlkeld quarry museum had moved, I decided a trip to the North Ings Farm Museum http://www.northingsfarmmuseum.co.uk/museum/ was required. My family refer to this particular organization, very unfairly, as 'The chicken sh*t farm' because the line was originally installed to move 'waste product' from poultry sheds. Don't be put off by the sound of it,
I managed to find 4 bearing in Brian's 'box of useful bits' which allowed me to make some progress on the paxolin 'chassis'. In order to be able to remove the wheels I have found some bearings which fit into some U channel. The Polish motor has a 1mm shaft which I sleeved with a 1.5mm brass tube.
The little runner wagon has wheels shorted out on one side so while I've fitted pick-ups on both sides with pickups I may well just try and short out the wheels on the opposite side on the main
I started work on my Christmas present on Friday. A Dave Bradwell J39 chassis. The instructions are detailed and seem to need reading from beginning to end completely at every stage but as usual the etching is superb and so far seems well thought out.
David
I finally got around to doing a bit of modelling, inspired by a thoroughly enjoyable day on Saturday exhibiting at the 16mm show in Peterborough.
I've been working on drawing up the water tower from Thaxted based on the drawing available from the GERS. Having had lots of goes with the little goods hut I had worked out most of the gotchas with the cutter and so the parts which were cut were pretty much right first time. OK, I'll admit I drew the windows frames too far apart by .5mm so I neede
This Christmas sees the completion of the new railway room, the lighting and electrics were finished and flooring laid just before Christmas Eve. This meant that on returning from work on Thursday I was able to assemble Fen End Pit along one wall. Those who follow my blog will know that there is a grand scheme to model part of the Stour valley in P4 as a big 'roundy-roundy' that goes around the room. However common sense dictates that rather than launch immediately into that project I should get
A bit of standard gauge for a change. I took delivery of a couple of the new Bachmann grain wagons which have been on order with Hattons for what seems like years. I've got a P4 wheel set in it now and replaced the coupling with Alex Jacksons. I can (just) remember seeing these being loaded at Sandy on the occasions when I used to cycle over there to watch some proper main-line trains in the later '70s. By then they were in a 'rust based livery' but I think they had been going that way for some
Much burning of fingers later and the repeater head is mounted on a pole. The photographs showed ladders up the front, presumably for cleaning the glass, and the rear, for access to the bulb. The signal will be operated by a servo so the operating wire terminates in a little sprung plunger which is a bit of 3/4 inch long tube beneath the base.
I've got to admit I'm quite pleased with the result and it will be nice to have a feature 'on scene' to demonstrate the aspect of the 'off scene'
Well a couple of days off and a weekend's worth of construction and the frame of the vertical fiddleyard is now mounted on the wall. First up went the rack-mount server runners and then I hit the first problem, trying to fasten things accurately to masonary is a complete pain! Despite measuring accurately it is just impossible to actually drill a hole and get a rawl plug into exactly the right place particularly when you are trying to fix something to the resulting holes and have no margin for e
Today, being a bit milder, I was able to take a bit more time in the garage with an aerosol before having to get back in the house to warm up. The result was that I could get a much better coat of primer on the building and apply it in several thin coats and let it harden off before going any further.
The resulting luminous building showed the joints weren't going to be too bad. I made a bit of a mess when gluing it together last night, I tried to stick the inner walls to the outer walls bef
The re-construction of the fiddleyard started in earnest with a couple of days off. The original Mk-1 version was based on a lump of MDF as a back with some shelves of 6mm MDF fastened on the front. The unit had been built up one at shelf at a time at it had proved difficult to make each shelf align properly with the exit roads, basically as layers were added the previously alignment would get pushed out with the extra weight. I also had the problem that in retrospect I had mounted the rack-moun
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I built a Wills N7 kit. The chassis was built using the etches for the kit, now sold by South East Finecast. The original chassis had the 'posh' hornblocks from Gibson (I think) which were the lost wax casting with a tiny springs pushing down on the bearing with a bolt through the top of the hornblock to locate the spring and set the ride height.
All of this worked fine until you took into account the sheer weight of the white metal body. The body c
A couple more pictures.
Firstly this is the switch end of the three-way. The check rails were basically just soldered on to the copper clad using the a set a Scalefour Society jigs to locate them. I was given some old Studiolith rail which is actually a little thinned than the current bullhead available from C&L et al. In reality the guard would probably just have been a piece of angle iron rather than rail, but it was rail I had to hand.
To give you some idea of how the lower l
As requested by Phil, a few notes on how I make tie-bars. I'll try and cover the current TOUs later, my previous version made from plastruct was described here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/186/entry-8263-making-tous-turnout-operating-units/
The visible tie-bars are made from a couple of pieces of scrap etc roughly .75mm tall and a tiny piece of thin paxolin. Mine originally came from Eileen and judging by the price label which says 70p I suspect it is quite old! I have
I'd been looking for a suitable industrial building to form a back-drop to my rebuilt scalefour empire and also provide a source of rail traffic. Those with very long memories may remember my attempt to model Mistley maltings (or at least part of it) more years ago than I care to think. I didn't want anything quite that big this time so spent a good few hours on Google searching for 'East Anglia Mill' and similar terms. I end up finding Ebridge Mill near North Walsham. There is an excellent web
We had a busy week on Fen End Pit, the Easter break meant additional assistance was available from my Son so we managed to complete the cutting and fixing of backscenes and the revisions to the layout legs to better support the boards.
Friday evening meant another night out and a chance to work on the Slater's Simplex. It is convenient to have a project which can be 'carried out' away from the workbench. The buffer plates, couplings got stuck on to the ends.
Also the axleboxes and t
I decided to treat myself to a little project, working on the grounds that you can never have too many Simplexes!
I particularly appreciated Slater's choice of packaging, though I suspect some other members of the family might have enjoyed the original contents more.
Inside, surrounded by copious quantities of bubble wrap was a fine looking box.
Inspection of the parts make this look like an interesting project. The 16 page instruction book looks very well produced and the
