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Railway Modelling Ramblings

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Stour Valley Dream - brakes for P4 coach conversion

Over the last couple of weeks I've been converting some Hornby coaches to P4. I've been using my favourite sprung bogies from Bill Bedford/Eileen. The hardest bit with these though is the brake blocks as I find metal etched brake blocks too likely to short out on the wheel tread when I bend them! (probably my own fault). So I thought I'd have a go at 3d printing an alternative to see how it might work. It wasn't too hard to model up and I printed the result on my Anycubic Photon. I did two

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Stour Valley Dream - Basic painting on Goods shed

While waiting for Eileen's to delivery a replacement soldering so  I could continue on the Dave Bradwell B1 I made some more progress on the goods shed. This morning I cut a load of post labels for slates and then this afternoon I painted the basic brick and slate colours on the building.       I need to wait for this paint to really dry and harden before going to the next stage with Wilco fine filler. I also need to paint the various engineering bricks and s

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Steam in Beds - Fen End Pit on show on Saturday 28th

I'm looking forward to a day out on Saturday with Fen End Pit at Steam in Beds. http://www.bag16mm.org.uk/Steam%20in%20Beds.html A chance to play trains, dig sand and chat to people sounds like an excellent plan.   Progress on the extension continues, the railway room now has plastered walls and a door. I'm even promised lights tomorrow!   Only trouble is that between now and when a carpet fitter comes in two weeks I have to get every wall and ceiling of about half the house painted! I shou

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Starting to plan the replacement to Empire Basin

The little grey cells (and Turbocad) have been working since my last posting. The limitations of the space result in a basic track layout which is quite similar to Empire Basin. Using Templot has resulted in a much smoother flow of track work and it is interesting to see that the single slip ends up about 2 inches longer than my original version.     The biggest change is the design of the baseboards. You'll see I now have 4 conventional baseboards for the scenic area, with all of the diffi

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Started work on the quayside

A day off on Friday allowed time to start track building on the lower quayside area of the layout. This bit of the layout is a bit of an 'Enigma Engineering' inspired shunting puzzle, I might even resort to waybills so I can shunt different bits of the pickup goods down to the lower yard. I know one end of the section is going to be a coal yard, but I'm not sure about the other end yet, possibly a scrap yard? The intention is for this track to be inlaid, so copper-clad sleepers and lots of check

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Started work on J39 chassis

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

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Sprung bogie fitted to D16/3

Another Friday night and I finally got the right wheels fitted into my bogie and then the bogie fitted to the loco. The key thing here was that I wanted to bogie to give some guidance to the loco and not just 'go along for the ride'. I was concerned that with my tight curves on the P4 roundy-roundy I would see an unreasonable amount of overhang unless the bogie helped 'pull the front of the loco round'.   First up is a picture of the underside of the footplate, you can see the rubbing plate fo

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Signaling questions? He hasn't even finished the baseboards yet!

Progress on the baseboards continues at a pace with the ply framing now constructed for two boards and mostly complete for the third. So far I'm rather pleased with how it looks.     from the railway room door things begin to take shape. The templot plan is laid down and the two large mill buildings fit nicely.     Underneath the layout the ply frame is nice and stiff and fitted with lots of useful holes to feed wires through.     Looking across the workbench and you see the area

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Shunting Signals

It is amazing what you can get done over a weekend when you don't have RMweb to distract you. Seriously though I work in IT systems management and can sympathize with Andy. These kinds of upgrades are a complete pain for all concerned and we should be grateful to Andy and the Mods for all the work they put in.     So, the weekend was taken with fitting a pair on Conrad point motors to some ground disks. The disk was an etch of unknown original I obtained back in the days of the old Cambridge

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Shiney Shiney etchy things

Over the last month PPD have been kept busy with a couple of projects. I've been helping my friends at Brassmasters with a potential EasiChas project.   As I mentioned a couple of months back the cab windows provided for the J17 in the PDK kit I'm building didn't seem to match the GERS drawing very well. I received the replacement etches from PPD and will see how they go together over the next week or so.     The second project has been considerably more complex.

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit in Ivatt 2MT

Shark Attack!

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

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Scalefour trackwork - where's the catch?

Being a private siding the line to the mill needs protecting by a catch point. At least this didn't need another 'V' making! However as you can see from the picture getting the sleepers of the crossing space so as not to foul the line for the loop exit was a pain and more glue was smeared around on the underlay than should have been. The intention is to have a gate across the siding just beyond the catch point.     This leaves me with one last turnout to build and then lots of plain track -

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Sawston modelling day - Saturday 30th May

Please forgive the shameless plug and cross-posting from Middlepeak's blog.   Our regular group of 'Friday Nighters' here in darkest Cambridgeshire are putting together one of their 'mini-exhibitions', this time to give some financial support to the activities of St Mary's Church in Sawston. This will be a very informal affair - just a collection of layouts and modelling displays from our group across a range of scales from 2mmFS to Gauge 3! Among the exhibits will be -   Alex Duckworth, a f

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Ruston Research, trip to the North Ings Farm Museum

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,

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Ruston LBT enters revenue earning service!

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

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Ruston LAT/LBT shiney pretty things!

I received my etchings back from PPD yesterday. Apart from an error with the J17 coupling rods which were on the same etch the Ruston bits look super. The intention is that these bits provide the strength I need for the axle boxes and motor mount together with lots of nice bits to detail the laser cut plastic body, This is the first time I've used PPD and actually produced etching for myself rather than just doing art work from others and I'm very pleased with the results.     The idea is t

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Ruston LAT/LBT progress with etched bits

On Friday night I started to look at the Ruston bits. The bits for the horn-guides were pretty good.     The bearing is held in a carrier which then springs in the elongated hole in the carrier. These were made up and then epoxied onto the chassis and the wheels test fitted.     We now have a chassis that rolls.     A close-up of the horn block shows the bearing end in the guide, this will get covered with a bit of plastic in the end but I wanted to make sure that the springing wa

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Ruston LAT/LBT - now made progress on the LAT

Over the last couple of weeks I got to pretty much finish off the LBT, the most noticeable change being to clean off the etched builders plates. I then went on to make some changes to the drawings based on what I'd learnt putting it together and then laser cut the body work for the LAT. There are a few subtle changes to the frames (the LBT has a hole near the front which the LAT doesn't have) and the bonnet (which has a different shaped grill for the radiator and the sandbox fillers). The LAT ha

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Ruston LAT/LBT - it's not green!

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.

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Ruston LAT/LBT - coming together

I've made a lot of progress with the Ruston over the weekend. I decided to build the locomotive using 'split axles' for the pick-ups.I decide to try something new here and use the delrin gear as the space to keep the two parts of the axle aligned. The gears are about 8mm wide so each end of the axle is pushed into the gear by about 4mm. A little circle punched from a piece of thin paper is enough to keep the ends electrically separate and the whole lot is flooded with loctite so hopefully it won

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Rolling Chassis!

After a heavy week the J39 now has a rolling chassis.   Jigging up the horn guides was 'fun' because the design of hornblock means that there is nothing to prevent it from going outwards until you fit the wheels. As most jigs use a spring to keep anything in place while you solder this doesn't work. In the end I had to use the holes in the ends of the brass horn guide to hold a temporary wire through the little tab soldered on the hornblock for springing.   Wheels were fitted thanks to the l

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

rewheeling Heljan Class 15

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

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Return of the J15

Last Friday I had a particularly productive evening rewheeling my old Alan Gibson J15. The kit was built about 25 years ago (gulp) but had languished on the works sidings for a couple of years following the wheel quartering slipping and the wheels being so old that they were loose on the axles and no amount of locktite would hold them in place.   So, finally I bit the bullet and ordered some new wheels from new Mr Gibson. The biggest problem with some of the wheels available from Colin at the

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

Return of an old friend and some experimentation with walls

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 desi

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit in Quay side

Researching buildings - Check out local planning applications

So I'm finally making a start on the buildings adjacent to the goods yard at Clare. We have a large maltings, still existing as an antiques centre, and a pair of buildings, one with a hipped roof and the other with a pitched roof. One of these is marked on one site plan as 'telephone exchange'.   The maltings has been heavily altered but the current 'Greek portico' is just an embellishment of the original loading area where lorries would reverse in to tip grain.    

Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit in Stour Valley

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