Apologies - this seems very disjointed as it was written across a house move and as a result my plans had to adjust as the space the layout will go in is different, again. In the process I had to pack the layout to move it, and I decided to renew the boards as the old ones, with 40 year old chip board had distorted with time so that none of the joints were flat .... so this is a June 2022 edit / correction of what I wrote nearly a year ago before the move, forced by the rmweb catastrophe that w
My last entry on this topic was in 2017!!! Just around my last house move had caused a huge hiatus in modelling well blow me down, I've moved again, the layout is all packed up still and I'm thinking, while waiting for my new railway room to emerge, what do I do?
Answer: post an update on this very long running project (It's not the longest by any means) to try and complete *something*
So here are some shots of that BCK's interior completed, and reassembled. In addition,
Having a couple of years with bits and pieces from my previous house assembled as a 'testing plank' pretending to be a layout I have decided at long last to attempt to bridge the gap from one side of my converted garage to the other to make something approaching a real layout - one where you go from one bit to another (!) in this case from the station on one side to the storage sidings on the other. Having bought a quantity of 12mm ply as tops for some new baseboards, and 18x44mm timber for the
The last entry on this project to make a frankencoach from a Hachette coach chassis and roof combined with heavily modded sides and interior from an old Triang-Hornby Mk 1 CK was in October. Every so often I would pick up on this project and do a little more .... then a few weeks back I got the bit between the teeth and attempt the finish stretch. This covered: painting the sides (maroon), roof (grey). Painting the glazing bars a proper shade of maroon (Precision), lining with HMRS Presfix trans
Since my last entry on this topic soooo long ago I've now managed to add couplings and the hand rails. Still missing are the vac pipes, the vacuum pipe up the chimney side of the van, (I'll have to hack that one, its missing from my kit), the central lamp irons on the body ends and some writing on the sides (number, tare weight ....). Sadly after the event I found an article in the Scalefour news of a hero's previous efforts at building one of these kits and like me, he had an early production
Having got a decent enough test track to run things I've been adding to my freight stock. I need a couple of brake vans and in an exhibition a little while back (when we had them things) I bought a partly built Cambrian models SR brake van kit from a 'member sales' stand. The chassis had been assembled (as rigid) and the duckets had been glued to the mixed plank sides (great as that is the variety I'm modelling). Putting this together has been bit of a pain as the body interior is actually l
47465 is my Bath GP shaded Jinty which was a Bachmann Jinty P4 conversion (that was the basis for the EMGS conversion data sheet). Since that sheet was created a long long time ago, poor 47465 had an unfortunate accident, being sent flying from the layout to the floor (!). The result was that the front LHS wheel acquired a loose tyre (the only damage!!). It took a while for me to get around to fixing the tyre (super glue) and it then ran fine. However, in the process of investigating the damage
Having done my first RTR wagon conversion I was overtaken by the urge to assemble what ever rolling stock I could that needed minimal work to run. The attraction was that I could assemble realistic train formations long enough to test any future track work. In the limited testing I had already done I realised that constructing track and not immediately testing it was a really bad idea. Right now I'm working with a layout that has taken 30 years plus of very slow construction and almost zero t
These photos are of my first RTR wagon conversion, a Bachmann LNER box van in BR livery. Re wheeled to P4 and Dingham couplings added. Running in original bearings so doesn't roll that well, but a very happy result for just a couple of hours work. Rather too clean but I like it. (I had scratch built some GWR wagons many years ago but as my layout was very cramped with no room for a goods yard I had ignored wagons until recently when a house move has given me a large railway room and now space to
The story continues ... you may have noticed from the pictures that 'new' straight board that I built to replace the dodgy curve is aligned at an angle to the wall sticking into the railway room. This is a result of the 'old' station boards being designed to fit in the living room of my previous house. The main station boards were fitted in between two chimney breasts and the exit line had to be angled to avoid one of these chimney breasts. Now in the 'new' railway room has no chimney breast a
Having got to the happy situation that I could actually run stock without something falling off the rails all the time, I can turn my attention to building or rebuilding items of stock to run, knowing if they stay on the rails with the current set up, they should (!) run nicely on any successor set of baseboards (!!)
So I turned my attention to my trusty (very) old Triang-Hornby Hymek, subject of a much earlier blog entry. The prototype I remember with much affection having travelled
Following on my last entry, replacing dodgy curved like a Thrupenny under gauge and too tight radius track, the new straight track board makes progress. Two photos, one in each direction show what it looks like now and my Pannier (Bachmann conversion) has successfully ventured on to it ...
Here with the track temporarily lightly pinned down, a third track for the empty carriage road will be added once the section on the main station throat board is slewed to be parallel with the othe
So my last entry found me trying to debug the point work in the station throat and the curved approach track. I had replaced the first 10cm of the approach curve as most stock fell off without fail at the point marked with an arrow:
sadly, all that happened is that the stock ran on the replaced track and then fell off at the next original section -dash it. Here the obvious occurred to me. Even though I thought I had laid this curve very carefully, I had not taken suf
Since the last report I've wired up all six new Dingham electromagnets, and tested them with a couple of Dingham equipped coaches, and even got loco - coach uncoupling working! So some photos of the top view of the 'control panels' distributed along the baseboard sides. The push buttons are for the uncouplers, the switches variously are linked to signals, points (the switches linking the electrical sections controlled by said signals / points), or are isolating switches e.g. at the loco run-rou
So my lockdown experience: staying at home mostly for self protection has not resulted in a huge acceleration in layout development as a few 'little' main house projects have taken precedence. But in my time off from that I've switched from rolling stock projects to trying to advance the state of those old baseboards that came from my previous house (all of three years ago) to have a more realistic environment for that rolling stock when it does really roll so I can, wonder of wonders, do some r
A bit chicken and egg, to test a layout track work is properly built you need stock and to test that stock is properly built you need some track with pointwork (!). In a bid to reduce the frustration of having built stock and finding it falls off the rails, won't go around bends, strikes platform edges I decided to resurrect the layout boards I had moved house with to have something to run the stock in progress on ('never end a sentence using a preposition with'). In the process I found out jus
having been absorbed in house and garage renovations plus a lot of travelling there's not been much modelling going on, but the odd thing is happening and things at Weston super Mare (S&D terminus) have been crawling forward. In parallel with trying to resurrect the layout boards that I moved house with (a blog entry in the imminent future will explain) I have been trying to finish off some stock to run on said resurrected boards to test it. So the trusty early Airfix - (now Dapol) non cor
Couple more photos - work on the railway room infrastructure (insulation of the garage in which it lives) has made progress on this project very very slow. So months later, I have at long last given a grey 'undercoat' to the sides partly to see what is not up to scratch (cracks, wrinkles etc!) and a base for the maroon livery that the coach will eventually wear. I've also started painting the old Triang-Hornby interior moulding. As well as painting I'm narrowing the corridor partition windows
Progress at last (for me): I have stuck on the top of each of the Hornby sides a strip of 40 thou (1mm) black plasticard to imitate the slotted strip that is on the top of the Hachette SK sides into which the roof clips. And indeed it does and the coach holds itself together, like the original -amazing! Needs a little bit of trimming to make sure everything lines up and sits tight. Now I need to cut holes in the Hornby interior to give clearance to the bogie pivots and the close coupler cams
By way of completion of an old blog entry: Before my house move I started constructing an interior from scratch for a Bachmann maroon BSK that I'd bought at Expo EM as a 'spare' without an interior (well, not quite true, it had a TSO interior!!). I described how I'd built the interior but I didn't post photos of the completed job. so here are some external views of the almost complete coach, re-wheeled in existing bogies to P4 (to see how that runs).
The complete coach from the cor
Some photos of the sides being worked on, showing the micro stripped and filled windows. The filler I'm using doesn't like sticking though ...
plus the re-drilled roof
then needs rubbing down and the door hinges reconstructed before painting
Well I ran out of cash for all those juicy Bachmann Mk.1s I need for my 1961 period express / through services, and so turned to that cheaper knock-off the Hachette Mk1 SK which has some resemblance to the Bachmann Mk1 .... to see if with a little work (which cost me nothing but time which being retired I should have lots of. but somehow don't really) I could make something approaching the quality of a Bachmann Mk.1
BTW - why use the Hachette rather than Hornby? because I want the cl
Just came across an old photo (well from 2016) of a posed shot on my yet to be dismantled (before house move) partly complete weston super mare S&D of a very GWR scene with my rather lovely Bachmann City 'City of Bath' renamed and numbered as 3440 City of Truro just before I disposed of it as being surplus to my requirements on Ebay (sob sob) ... well it will get resurrected as a monstrous hybrid of Airfix kit with a Bachmann mogul Swindon No.4 boiler on to make amends for the rather undersi
The last in this glut of blog entries for my historic projects, but one i hope to continue working on soon!
This has been a long running 'improvement' saga. Take one pair of Airfix B-Set coaches. Attempt to turn into a representation of the real thing. The body is correctly dimensioned but so many details are wrong. So far I've:
- blocked off the incorrect extra guard's window on the left hand side
- carved off the end detail and replaced the emergency brake gear on the
Reality Warning - this locational is fictional and so is almost every thing that follows, but it interests me!
I've mentioned early on in the blog the chosen 'real' location for my layout, that is an imagined Somerset & Dorset Railway terminus at Weston Super Mare (henceforth abbreviated as WSM). To me it has several attractions, as firstly, historically it was something that really did almost happen, and secondly a very attractive variety of services both local and long distanc
