Over the past few weeks it's been hard to motivate myself to do anything, aside from drawing stuff on the computer, which is always satisfying.
So this weekend I decided to just do something, anything just to get myself going. So I built a workbench for model making so that I don't monopolise the dining table any more.
The work surface is 18mm ply with a frame of 50*50 PSE bracing for strength and to straighten out the ply, which was a bit warped.
Sides and shelf are 12mm birch ply.
I dismantled the baseboards from the middle of the living room and erected them in a more out-of-the-way corner. This is still not an ideal location because other furniture has been displaced and I have nowhere to bring in my huge specimen Strelitzia plant for the winter - but we'll deal with that when the time comes.
In the meantime, having the layout more permanently set up has meant I've been able to push on with laying cork trackbed and actually laying some track!
This was the trac
I realised I needed to make a roundy-round test track so before I get into making the complex baseboards for Hampton Malstead I have decided to make some simpler baseboards for the test track using the same basic techniques.
Here's the plan for one of three identical boards which I will arrange in a U shape with a thin bridging piece across the top of the U to allow a continuous circuit of track to run around.
Open baseboard.pdf
I brought a sheet of 9mm ply up to the workshop during
I glued a ply top to the central baseboard frame at the weekend. That was rather stressful because it was very hot and I had to get glue onto the top edges of the frame and all the ribs and spines as quickly as possible before dropping the big 1440*720 piece of ply precisely on top. In fact I ended up just gluing strategic points and the surface board did not end up as accurately aligned as I would have liked. Hopefully good enough, though...
I have also cut and fixed quarter-circle pieces
I drew up a quick set of plans for the bridging section to get it straight in my mind: I made the side panels and the track bed all the same width, 140mm. That made cutting a bit quicker and simpler.
Some ribs with holes drilled through them for wiring in the same style as the main boards were glued under the track bed: I added PSE timber pieces to reinforce the ends, provide a good solid support and some extra thickness for whatever locating and fixing parts I decide to use.
To help l
I did a better job of fixing the pattern maker's dowels with the next baseboard connection. Practice makes perfect. This time, I drilled a small pilot hole through both baseboard frames while they were clamped together. (There was only just room to get my small Makita drill in to do this - something to maybe plan better in future!) Thus, when the frames were unclamped the pilot holes were exactly aligned where the faces meet. Then, using these pilot holes, I was careful to hold the drill perpend
I bought some pattern makers dowels at the Exeter MRS Exhibition:
I also bought some cheap plastic saw-horses from B&Q: A little bit of modification allows the baseboard frames to locate securely on them.
Things went awry when I tried to fit the pattern makers dowels: I used a 25mm forstner bit to make very neat pockets to house the dowels but because I was using a hand-held drill it wasn't exactly perpendicular to the surface and so the pockets did not have consistent depths. The
I made some more progress on my open frame baseboards today.
I glued and screwed the side pieces to the ends to create a flimsy frame.
I drilled out some holes in the rib and spine pieces. The exact position of these holes isn't really important but for neatness I clamped the ribs together and drilled through all 5 at once.
Then I glued the ribs and spines into their grid pattern. Some of the fits were a bit loose so I had to weigh everything down while the glue dried.
When th
This afternoon I worked on using the parts to put together one baseboard.
Cut the parts to exact length in the mitre saw. This ensures that the parts are exactly square and gets rid of any rough corners.
Cut the PSE that strengthens the ends of the frame. It's not the best quality and although it was reasonably straight and not twisted it was badly bowed so I ran the pieces through the planer just to square things up a bit without changing the dimensions too much.
Glued the PSE to
I had an idea to knock up some pointwork. Left work early to go to the local model shop and bought some code 75 points, track and joiners.
After battling out of town through the rush hour traffic jams I realised I hadn't thought to buy any insulating joiners!
D'Oh!
Project on hold for a few more days now, sadly.
I found this sage-like quote from C J Freezer recently:
I do not subscribe to the theory that it is somehow better for a modelmaker to rely solely on his own resources, making every item in his own workshop [snip]. In pure model engineering, where construction is the object of the exercise and the pleasure lies in the work involved, the idea makes sense, but where, as in a model railway, the question of operation arises, then short cuts via the cheque book or credit card have very consider
I am trying to make one working loco and tender from a pair of secondhand Hornby purchases, Tintagel Castle and Beverston Castle.
A previous owner of Tintagel has removed all the pickup wipers from the tender. (If it was you please say Hi because I'd love to know why). It runs haltingly over track where a little Barclay 0-4-0 has no problem.
Beverston was sold as a non-runner but its tender has a full complement of pickup wipers. Thus, the Beverston tender matched with Tintagel loco shou
Electrical connections have been made to all the fixed sections of track in basically a tree topology through chocolate blocks, B&Q red&black speaker cable, 5-pin DIN plugs between boards to a chocolate block distribution point under the main board and from there a pair of wires come out to the controller. (For readers considering DCC: there are still lots of wires under the tracks but they don't come back to the control panel, like many of them would in DC, they just keep on joining to
I noticed that the new bullhead rail large radius points are still being described as 60in (1524mm) radius when we all know that's rubbish. They simply can't be if they are to give a 12 degree turnout angle and a 2in (50.8mm) separation between parallel tracks.
I emailed Peco and they said the 60in radius is a "nominal" figure because the points include "combination curve"s. This is also rubbish because either "nominal" means the overall effective radius of the points, which you can measure
I have now made board skeleton #3. I'm getting quicker!
I'm getting used to the process, improving my working methods (e.g. using a longer fence on the table saw to get long straight parallel cuts in the boards) and simplifiying the construction by relying more on glue and leaving out some fixings.
This is how the three boards will be arranged with a bridging section where the 6ft level is to form the roundy-round circuit.
I completed the frame of baseboard #2 using the parts I cut at the same time as those for baseboard #1.
There are detail differences but it's basically the same pattern. No corner braces on the top face because I don't think they add anything and no holes in the ribs because, ahem, I forgot. But since the frame is open the holes are probably redundant anyway and they don't affect the weight much - I can lift the unit with one finger.
I need to make one more similar board and a simple br
I fixed the corner braces to to the top corners, hoping that they might make the unit less prone to twisting but they don't make much difference. So I might omit them from future versions.
To give an idea of the amount of twist in the unit: If I lift one corner off the ground then I get about 2cm deflection before any of the other corners also start to lift. The worry with that is that it might be enough to crack scenery or cause fittings to become detached.
I suspect that cross bracing
I fitted the stiffeners today which make the side pieces into L beams for longitudinal strength and provide some racking resistance to hold the entire unit square.
One of the ends had the PSE fixed wrongly inside the plywood. The stiffener stood proud so I had to chisel out a little rebate:
The frame was remarkably square (1609mm across one diagonal, 1610 across the other) so I just glued, screwed and pinned the stiffeners into place without making any other adjustments:
The stiffe
I've just been checking through the family history that my Grandma very carefully pieced together to find out exactly how I'm related to "Old Pib", Albert Pibworth, one of the drivers of Flying Scotsman on the first non-stop run from London to Edinburgh.
I know lots of people claim this sort of connection but I'm pretty sure my connection is genuine.
Albert's father was James Pibworth one of whose siblings was Thomas Pibworth. Thomas => Hannah Purton => Rosa Ann Hall => Edith An
The entry for Llanglydwen station on disused-stations.org.uk was recently updated with three high-res vintage photos. Here
(You have to click the "here" links to see the larger versions.)
The new photos are wonderfully evocative and look like photos of a model. The station, a small hamlet, a road, a river, a bridge and a level crossing are all compressed into a small area with verdant countryside all around.
It's almost too good to be true!
While searching for info about signalling diagrams I came across this interesting site that shows Network Rail's live info, as used by signalling staff and train operators: http://www.opentraintimes.com/maps
E.g. Paddington: http://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/d3_1
To take good photos of model railways it's really important to control the depth of field or focal depth of the image. This is best demonstrated by @KNP's wonderful photographs of his masterpiece, Little Muddle.
This blog entry describes my first experiments in improving depth of field in my photos.
Why Depth of Field matters
Definition: The Depth of field is the distance between the nearest and furthest objects that are acceptably in focus.
I'm not a photograph
