Saturday saw the first point get some 'workings' on the switchblades. The Turnout Operating Unit (TOU) was one of the perspex ones I'd made for the previous layout and the only modification needed was to shorted the length of the brass tubes that go up to just below rail level because the baseboard is now 6mm ply rather than 12mm MDF. The tie-bars are scrap brass etch with the two halves separated by a sliver of paxolin. This cruel enlargement makes it look much worse than it is!
The co
A good few months back I was working on a Rumney models chassis and tried to fit a Parkside Shocvan onto it before realizing that it was planked and it should have been plywood to match the chassis type.
http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/186/entry-15555-a-little-bit-of-suffolk-or-learning-to-love-templot/
it was helpfully pointed out that Red Panda actually did a kit of the plywood version and so I purchased one of these from a trader at the Ely show. An offer over the weeken
Progress on the rebuild has been slow over the last week with not too much time for modelling. However I have still managed to put some string grass over the new sections of the layout. I've still got a lot to do to blend things together but it is coming together.
I decided to follow the suggestions and try to make a farm track as discussed in a previous post. I'm happy with the shape of the land form now and got a layer of sand on it. I've started to add the grass which will cover much
Back in the day new railways were always started with great ceremony. Contemporary reports always describe how the town band would play 'suitable tunes' (what would be considered an 'unsuitable tune' in 1850-60 I wonder?) and the shareholders would be treated to a meal befitting the occasion.
So yesterday was spent in Makespace cutting 6mm ply with a lasercutter and this afternoon spent assembling the resulting kit of parts. As is usually there were a few places where 40 watts didn't quite g
Having finished soldering bits on to the loco body it was out with the glue to fasten on the boiler fittings, Westinghouse pump and lubricator.
The Westinghouse pump casting broke in half as I was trying to clean it up so the middle section was replaced with lengths of brass wire. The hole in the footplate for the pipework from the pump didn't match with the drawing or photographs so it got filled and re-drilled.
I had a slight 'Oh $h1t' moment when I looked at the plans and saw two snif
I applied Deluxe Materials Scenic Rust to the skip, this pack contains a bottle of very fine 'Rust powder' and a binder which feels like a very dilute PVA. These are mixed together and applied to the model. Once dried a 'Rust developer' is applied which makes the layer of material actually produce real rust.
After about 8 hours the rust is fully developed and you end up with a very rusty skip.
It works rather well on corrugated cardboard to make rusty corrugated iron.
David
Yesterday I popped into Makespace and cut some test sleepers. I wanted to make sure I'd got the right allowance for the laser width in my drawing. I also cut a test part in the .8mm sheet of ply I'd bought from City Cycles in Ely on Saturday (we are very lucky to have a shop that sells model and craft items in Ely!, too much of this country is a model shop desert). The laser cutter is worked by controlling the speed and power of the laser to get the right level of cut so you can see from this te
I've made a start on the point rodding for Clare. Before anyone asks this is NOT functional! It has been great fun trying to work out the rodding runs from photographs as they changed over time at the Cavendish end when the coal siding was realigned. The prototype was built using round rod rather than the more modern square section - typically I had bought a load of .5mm square brass wire from Eileen!
I've used cranks from Brassmasters and rodding stools from DCC concepts. These rodd
I got back to building more pointwork today, the first for some time. One job I always feel a bit wary about is getting the joggle in the stock rail where the end of the switchblade fits. One of the recommended ways to do this is to bend the rail twice with a pair of pliers. I've always found this a bit hard, because you need to get the two bends accurate or else you end up with the rail bent in the vertical plane and then nothing will ever run over the point correct ever.
What we are after
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
Over the festive period I got most of the track for the quayside built and wired. Point control is all manual via wire-in-tube and/or cranks. I've fitted check rails to most of the line and think I'm probably going to try some Noch cobbles for the road service.
The J65 shunts a couple of vans in the loop. This loop is just long enough to take three short wheelbase vans without fouling the three-way point which gives access to the pair of sidings.
This is an overall view of the
Progress on the Slaters Simplex took a step back , a combination of 'Chemo lethargy' and 'cock up'. I was dismantling the loco prior to getting it ready to prime the body work and decided to try and test run the chassis having slightly increased the back-to-back to make it run through my points correctly. Unfortunately disaster struck and the DCC sound chip let the magic smoke out. A repair/replacement is on its way I hope thanks to Digitrains.
I also decided to revisit my decision to abando
Note, that is plant (singular) rather than plants (plural), this isn't about sticking on more stringy grass even though there has been a bit of that too.
The whole of the 'works' end of Fen End Pit has been rebuilt so this means I need to reinstall all the working sand processing plant, the tipping area, conveyor and revolving screen all needed reworking. The redesign makes the baseboard slightly wider so I decided to turn the revolving screen around by 90 degrees. Previously both the screen
Thanks to the crew working overtime, and lots of helpful stewards from the Ely club, Fen End Pit got set up in the gym ready for tomorrow.
Hope to see plenty of rmwebber's there, please come and say 'hi'
David
On Saturday 21st Hastings Diesels tours arranged a tour from Hastings, via London and Cambridge to Ely and King's Lynn. Billed as 'The West Norfolk Wanderer' it was intended that folk would travel to Ely and King's Lynn for a fine day out and included a quick run out and back on the Middleton Towers freight line. My enterprising brother (he has his uses and a blog http://www.northernvicar.co.uk/) spotted this via the Cambridge university railway club's news and contacted the organizers regarding
A little bit of cleaning up last night and I assembled the extended skip chassis. I need to add a tiny bit of filler at the joint between the original Binnie chassis and the extra parts but hardly any. I put a coat of Humbrol matt 113 on with a brush and this had the effect of really showing up the detail and just how good the printed parts had come out.
I hardly did any work on top surface of the extension and I'm really chuffed with the smoothness which the printer achieved.
On the original Fen End Pit the rotating screen was placed against the backscene by the fiddleyard. The motor was hidden in the fiddleyard and drove the screen via a couple of intermediate gears. In the revised layout this arrangement wasn't going to be possible and I'd puzzled over how to make the drive work. 16mm scale is big and it dawned on me that an industrial electric motor would actually be larger than the motor which I used to drive the screen so what I needed to do was build the functi
A lot of brain work and a few hours in TurboCad resulted in a design for a baseboard frame cut from 6mm ply on the laser cutter. I've had to make the longest lengths by jointing two bits together but with a suitable joint and a glued plate I don't see it is going to move. Lots of clever joints should make it nice and strong and lots of holes in the cross braces should mean I can feed wires around.
I have some hardware, alignment dowels and bits coming from Station Road baseboards.
Plan i
One of the things about keeping a blog is that it makes you photograph your models and one of the things about photographing your models is that every time you do you just can't avoid seeing the faults in the results - things that somehow the eye only picks up when blown up on the screen when you look at the photograph.
So, here is the current state of the E4. I had to go back once and clean off around the dome which I didn't really pick up until I took some pictures last night. Tonight I ca
Last Christmas I was given an RT Models sentinel kit and I have to say it was thoroughly enjoyable to put together. Also, given that the kit comes complete with a gearbox and motor, I thought it represented excellent value for money. Readers of this blog will know that there aren't many kits that I build which don't involve remaking at least some parts, either having to get bits etched where the original design is wrong or 3D printing components where features haven't been supplied. With this li
Over the last couple of weeks I've managed to get the final scenic baseboard constructed. This board will house the completely fictitious sidings to a mill. I've already got most of the mill buildings which are based on Ebridge mill in Norfolk. The board is a slightly odd shape to incorporate a removable section which will lead the track round to the fiddle-yard. This is made removable so that the bed which sits in the railway room can still be used when needed as a bed!
At the other e
Back from an unnaturally dry week in North Wales and I was able to start laying some track. I had salvaged as much as I could from the previous layout (with the price of components following the practices of all the prototype railway company and retrieving components from closed lines makes good financial sense!). This did mean that I already had assembled switch blades and rail with chairs fitted that I could reuse. I printed the Templot template for the B6 point which is in the yard and stuck
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
Yesterday was that great annual treat of a trip to Scaleforum, the journey to Aylesbury almost made me miss the delights of queuing around the M25! The list of bits was rapidly procured (with the exception of those from High Level kits where the focus was on talking to customers rather than rapidly serving (this is not intended as a complaint, that is a large part of the point of Scaleforum) - note to self: next time buy online!)
I purchased a 12x24 motor to replace the 14x24 which I had pu
The corner of the room has two baseboards, one which will feature a scenic area with the mill and the other, much narrower board, for the fiddle-yard. These two boards don't have the space for the curve which leads into the fiddle-yard because this needs to be removable so that the 'crew lounge' can be used as a bed when we have guests.
The resulting extra board is a bit of an odd shape caused by a desire for the rails to cross at right-angles to the the baseboard edge and for the perma
