Currently still waiting on production and delivery of suitable copperclad to allow track laying to commence.
I went to the Bristol show at the weekend and was able to buy a Dapol Class 22 in BSYP, something I'd missed out on for a long time due to money being tight and then there being none to buy. It got me to thinking about headcodes for the S&P.
I've read up a bit on how such four character train reporting numbers work, and realised that though the basic arrangemen
The third board (the first of the fiddleyard throat boards) now painted. I've included a series of images as the painting progressed for this posting to see the 'effect' in action, so to speak. I won't bother with the later boards as it's just outright repetition really.
First white undercoat, brush painted, underside:
Second white undercoat, brush painted, underside:
Topside, ply delamination repaired and abuttment screw dips filled (with wood fille
The first board, one of the straight 4' x 2' boards for the fiddle yard, has been painted:
Top:
Bottom:
Only nine more to do (it took a week to do this one!)
The idea of the S&PR - The Sayersbridge and Penmouth Railway - is for a series of related model railway boards that will utilize materials I already have but don't fit any particular prototype. As such, the model would represent a heritage line with some commercial freight operation on it. It is set in a fictional landscape and as such can't be directly linked to any existing lines or geography, but it gets pretty much all its ideas from the Hampshire - Dorset - Devon coastal area and as suc
Hi all,
So, after some help here with arranging the throat parts of a fiddleyard, below is a picture (from Anyrail) of the arrangement I'm likely to settle on for the common fiddleyard parts that I hope to use for various 'vignettes' of the S&P's line. It's designed on the principle of 'adaptable modularity', so that different lengths and widths of arrangement, and different track exit positions on the scenic sections, can be made and the fiddleyard parts should always be able to
The build begins. I've cut 'bolster' pieces of 2x1 for screwing the curved sections to, together with cutting a fair few (but not yet enough) stanchion pieces. The first board is now at the end of its initial build stage. There's crossbeams and diagonal strengtheners to go in to stop the board being able to twist (which it is doing ever so slightly), but it's pretty flat considering. There's also a bit of tidy up work on one corner where the outer curve is a couple millimetres too long. Otherwis
Finally, after struggling with living at a friend's in a tiny room and then ending up getting work, only to end up moving to a place on my own again in August 2018, my mind is slowly starting to get something of its previous self back together. I'm not 'all there yet', but I'm a few steps further down the road.
One subject that is getting some 'neural energy' is my fictional railway line idea. I have been thinking about geography, geology, and the like, and have thought that my origi
...or, in layman's terms, bu**er.
I had been planning to try and get tracklaying complete during this week, as it's my annual kind-of week off. However, before beginning, last week I had a chat with model railway friends, and they informed me I was right of something I had been concerned about. I have been using cork to boost the height of the copper clad strip up to the underside of the rails for the board ends, but I felt it was really too soft for the job. My friends agreed. I was
Second board is painted:
Eight more to go. The next six boards are the ones for the fiddleyard throat, so smaller but more complex on the underside. I think only one of those needs remedial attention (for some delamination of the top surface of plywood). I'm going to leave that till last. The remaining two are the curves into the scenic section.
Fitting the dowels to board number 11 for connection to board 5 has worked much better. Firstly, I drilled the recesses to 28mm rather than 26, meaning I had more wriggle room in the alignment on board 11. I used more quick set epoxy this time, so that edges were filled as well as back surface. This seems to have gripped the dowel much better. I used a thin piece of paper (an old Tescos receipt) between the connection to prevent them gluing together while the two boards were clamped together ups
Second, because I'd dropped a board during build which dented a corner and bent one of the join clips.
This time though the damage is a little more terminal to the recently attached barriers:
Occurred during disassembly this morning when I wasn't being quite cautious enough to ensure that the board was properly supported during leg removal. Proves that the acrylic is pretty fragile, and acts as a reminder to me to be careful in all respects when as
A bit of progress to report. I'm currently waiting for a delivery of copperclad strips for board end track attachment and alignment, so in the meantime I've done some test setups of the boards; checked for alignments; put the templates on top; checked some track positioning issues; cut the cork underlay for turnouts and plain track; and started punching holes into the templates to allow marking of the board surfaces where the rails need to go:
An initial set up of the ends and the pr
The strips of plywood have been cut to length for all the outer frame parts of the boards. There's some additional cutting to do for reinforcing the board ends so they can take alignment dowels. The ply is only 6mm thick, so not deep enough to drill for the dowel parts and still have something to put screws into. Also, cross members still need to be added, but I'm waiting till the outer frames are in place before sizing up and cutting those.
I've knocked this up today. Took a while to get that subtle curve in, AnyRail doesn't provide any tools for quickly doing curved shapes so shape control points have to be added and aligned by hand:
Note that, in the fiction, the 'goods yard' is a late addition to allow reworking the demonstration freights away from the main station of Tynworth. In the fiction's original idea there would have been no freight sidings for the railway as the station was for boat trains only,
A little update. I've tweaked the plan for the fiddleyard to get it to work with the 15 feet 4 inches room it could be set up in, such that I can work on 8 foot vignettes. Previously it had been measuring 15 feet 7 inches in length and that of course wasn't going to fit. The tweaks on the throats have brought it to 15 feet 2.5 inches, allowing a little bit of leeway:
I've printed out the throat boards, sellotaped them together and cut them out so I have full size templat
The first board (numbered 5) is now assembled. The cutting of the holes was very 'splintery'. I need to come up with a way to reduce the sheer amount of splinters that come off the cut plywood (both for the holes and the edges). I'm wondering if varnishing now might not be a bad idea to help seal up the edges. Another idea is to put insulation tape on the straight edges. I don't know how I could do the sam with the hole edges though.
The outer frame lengths have now had their grooves cut, completed without so much pain in my hands trying to use a saw, thanks to a routing attachment for my Dremel
They are now easier to bend, but they'll still need some kind of supports inside the boards they attach to to hold the curves in place. So that's my next job, cutting a number of short lengths of 2x1 timber for those supports.
After doing a bit of sketching of possible geography and a rail route through such, I've revised the gradient profile to better reflect what I was intending when I wrote the posting for the run along the line. Attached is version 2 of the profile, now somewhat modified from version 1. I've put in marks on the profile itself for the mileposts, with their heights in brackets. The beauty of the way I've set up the code is that I can add and remove such markings for features just by modifying a vari
Recently I've been thinking through the geography for the line, and I believe I've come up with a slightly tighter version than that in the last posting.
The town of Sayersbridge is on the North East bank of a wide-ish river flood plain, flowing from the North West to the South East. The main Southern Region station in Sayersbridge is situated towards the South East edge of the town, and the main line through it travels East North East to West South West. This means the flood plain e
So the first dowel fitting didn't quite work well enough. I used small blobs of epoxy to try and hold the back sides of the dowel parts to the recess in the plywood end, but its hold on the metal is just to fragile. The parts moved and the end result is a 1mm error. I can use sheets of paper built up in layers to raise track on the 'lower' side for this join, but I need to have a different glue of some kind to hold the dowel parts properly for future joins. I'm now thinking of Original Gorilla G
...the 7mm copperclad for securing of rail at the board ends has arrived! Yay!
Unfortunately the railway room is in a mess, as I had decided to try and sort out what boxes of stuff I have and try and get everything grouped more suitably in my various boxes. So the floor is not exactly clear. Being a hot weekend and all, I think I won't be fixing any track down just yet. Not so yay.
