I'm building an N version of my old 4mm Paynestown layout, in anticipation of the Sonic Models 56xx tanks. The new layout will
be about half the size of the old and uses Code 40 Finetrax components for the points and plain track.
In the previous exciting installment I showed some laid and partly ballasted track. Well, hold onto your horses, because here's
some more laid and partly ballasted track.
At last I've got the basic essentials done, in that
I'm building an N version of my old 4mm Paynestown layout, in anticipation of the Sonic Models 56xx tanks. The new layout will
be about half the size of the old and uses Code 40 Finetrax components for the points and plain track.
With the fourth point to be constructed, I wanted to add a bit of a curve to help with an overall bend in the platform road, partly to
get away from everything being too linear, and also to make the best use of available layout width. Running track
Since this layout is hoped to work as a branch terminus, some consideration needs to be given to a hands-off coupling system. I used Spratt & Winkles
on the big Paynestown, and while these are available in 2mm, I can't say I remember seeing them in use. More to the point, I find them enough of
a pain to set up in 4mm, so it wasn't a road I necessarily wanted to go down again.
I'd liked the look of DG couplings so while I wasn't sure how I'd get on with them, I thought i
My track building program continues apace, with half of the turnouts now constructed and fitted!
I thought i'd have a go at ballasting the completed section, to see how I got on with a slightly different
technique to what I'd normally use in 4mm. Rather than sprinkle on the ballast dry, then wet it and
add PVA, I used a small brush to puddle areas of PVA between the sleepers (a few at time) and then
sprinkled the ballast onto that. I felt it was more controllable, espe
I had another go at building a point on Monday evening, hoping I'd be able to do one in its entirety from start to finish. I didn't' quite succeed, though, but
only a few bits were left to be done on Tuesday.
With two points in place, it was time to sort out the frog switching:
I ordered some small sliding SPDT switches from ebay. I drilled a small hole in the plastic switch and then glued the SPDT down over the wire running
to the tiebar. With the
Before I press on with the construction of the other points on the Paynestown 2 project, I felt I'd gain a lot of confidence if I could test the first one thoroughly.
To that end, I've begun building a small section of the final layout on foam core, which - if all goes well - can be integrated into the rest of it later on. Provided
it's treated properly, foamcore is exellently stable, as the scenic modules I built for my American layout 10 years ago are still perfectly straight.
It's a start, at least:
The reason I've built this Code 40 point, from the Finetrax kit, is that I'm hatching a plan to redo my old layout Paynestown, except in N rather than 00.
The idea isn't to copy it slavishly but to end up with something with the same basic design of elevated track and valleys architecture. The
track plan of Paynestown was satisfying to operate so I've planning something very similar, the main diffe
It may seem that I've jumped forward a bit here! Fear not, but I didn't want to dwell on my method of attacking the roofs as I don't feel I'm quite there yet in terms of a consistent approach. It's really just a question of trimming down a piece of vac-formed plastic until it fits, and the instructions do give some guidance, but I'd be lying if I said I don't find it a bit of a tricky step. It's all too easy to end up with asymmetric bits or too much taken off one side. All i can advocate is tak
Having tackled the sides, now comes the time to assemble them into a body. First we need a couple of ends. These are an excellent design and very easy to make, being just a single etch which then folds up into a self-locating component for both the chassis and the sides.
Here's one such end (they're handed, so need to be at the right end of the coach!) with two nuts soldered in place as was also done with the bogie mounts. One very nice bit of design is two small
tabs which fold
With the bogies and chassis more or less done, work turns to the body sides. There's nothing particularly tricky here, it's just
all a bit time-consuming and I split the work below across two evenings.
Here are the two etches for the sides, with the lower etch showing the droplight windows soldered into position. I don't have
any magic solutions for this job, which is a bit tedious! The droplights must be positioned looking at the coach from the outside,
or else they
In the last entry I dealt with the assembly of the Roxey Mouldings bogies. Having built and finished the pair, it's time to move onto the underframe. There's no set order here - you could just as easily build the body next - but I always feel I'm getting somewhere when I've got something that can be trundled down the track.
The first job is to separate the main underframe etch from the sheet and remove the droplight window frames which are included as part of the same unit, which wen
As mentioned in the previous entry, I promised to document the building of my next Roxey coach kit in a series of photos, so here goes.
The first thing is to have a look at the contents of the kit, in this case an LSWR corridor third. Most of what's in the box is here, except
for a few castings and bits related to the corridor connectors, which I won't be using.
The etches are excellent and well laid out, with no issues encountered in separating any of t
Over the weekend and Monday evening I pressed on with a bit more work on the Roxey Mouldings coaches I've been making.
As covered earlier, the first of these is a brake third which I mostly finished last year, and the one on the right is a composite which I've made in the last week or so. Weirdly, the composite went together without any head-scratching, whereas I had to resort to a bit of guesswork with the brake. I was puzzled as to why this should be the case do decide
The Fowler tank has been mostly completed, just needing a few details to be added/reinstated and then
further testing before the addition of DCC control.
The bodywork needed some attention. I reworked the entire rear bunker/cab-cutout to get a better/neater
finish than had been on the original model. This entailed respraying and relining the bunker, and since I
was about it, i also attended to some areas of bad or missing lining on the tank sides. I'd used HMRS pressfi
I'm surprised to see how long it's been since I've posted a blog update - doesn't time fly? Thinking back, a lot of the modelling I've done
in the last few months either hasn't been very exciting (wiring, ballasting, tidying up fascias, that kind of thing) or hasn't been relevant
to the blog (Mustangs, radio control etc). Not that that's stopped me before!
As an attempt at something vaguely relevant, I thought I'd post a few shots of the current project, which is the provis
Another brief offering of blue diesel action, since the first seemed to go down well.
Heljan Hymek D7036 on the parcels service, which has gained a bit of weathering since the last set of shots. Blue sits well on Hymeks, doesn't it, especially with the white window surrounds. What fine looking diesels these were.
Meanwhile the 08 potters about in the yard with a pair of conflats. I've no idea if these containers persisted into the blue diesel era, never
When the pre-production models of the Bachmann Blue Pullman appeared, I thought that the Tri-ang model held up pretty well in terms of the basic body shape and detailing. One area where the Bachmann model particularly impressed me, though, was the detailing around the power bogies, with the brake pull rods very finely modelled.
My model uses Chris Leigh castings for the bogie frames, which are fine in themselves but omit any representation of the brake gear:
Although the layout's supposedly set in GWR days, I'm not only content to run it in BR steam days, but also to push the clock forward to the blue diesel era - within a very loose timeframe that allows for hydraulics, pullmans, TOPS-coded diesels and Railfreight-era wagons to sit comfortably (or not) together. Even the odd sectorisation or green diesel may squeak in.
Here a few snaps from tonight's running session, hopefully providing a change from the usual staples of Castles and Kin
Some LEDS were ordered over Christmas and once they arrived I set about adding front and rear lights to the power cars.
Here's a grisly shot of the internal wiring - can you tell it's still at the prototyping stage? I'll tidy it up once I'm satisfied that the
wiring is complete.
It's not as complicated as it looks! Somewhere in that tangle is an 8 pin DCC socket so any decoder (or blanking plug) can be swapped in and out in seconds. I made all the lighti
Over the last few years I've dipped in and out of a very long-term project to create an 8-car Western Pullman set. As the model is now close to completion, and there is interest in the 6-car WR sets due to Bachmann's new version of their original Midland Pullman, I thought it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of a recap of the story so far.
Back in 2007 there wasn't any hint of an RTR Blue Pullman on the horizon from any of the manufacturers, with most commentators of the view that it would
A minor update on my E1 class - see earlier entries this summer - with the main body colour on:
Initially I sprayed the model with black, then brush painted the olive green. I've had good results with that approach in the past, finding that a good sprayed base coat can provide a basis for a very nice brush-finished top coat, but in this case it was apparent that the quality of the finish wasn't heading in the direction I wanted. Unfortunately the black had gone on with a
At Railwells a year or two ago, I picked up two Roxey Mouldings kits for LSWR 56 foot corridor coaches. I've just acquired a beautiful Blacksmith kit for an S&DJR coach so I thought, rather than dive in with that, I would crack on with the LSWR coaches as a warm-up exercise. This has turned out to be a good idea as although they come from different manufacturers, the coaches look to be of very similar design.
I've started with the brake coach of the LSWR set, and this was the pro
About ten years ago I came back from Warley with three Ratio Midland clerestory coach kits. My vague intention at the time was to paint and line them in full S&DJR blue livery, possibly with some minor modifcations to the bodies and roofs, just to have a semi-acceptable period-looking train to run behind my one or two S&D blue locomotives. However, time went on and I never got around to it. Eventually I decided that, if I were to go to the trouble of painting and lining a set of coaches,
This Dapol pug was one of the first models I bought after returning to the hobby in the mid 1990s. Living in the Netherlands at the time, my purchases were confined to occasional visits to the UK or those few Dutch retailers who sometimes had British stock for sale. This model, if I'm remembering rightly, was bought at one of the big Eurospoor model shows in Utrecht, for the princely sum of 115 Guilders, from the stand of "De Spoorzoeker". This friendly Dutchman (Harry, if I'm also remembering r
A couple of snaps of my just completed 9449. The camera has cruelly picked up a couple of fingerprints in the weathering which I certainly didn't notice on the model, but will be attended to!
Note also the absence of rivets on the cab step on the lower photo, which was fabricated in plastic since the tatty model I bought second hand didn't have one. I think I'll add some rivets ... so, er, not really finished, strictly, but then they never are.
Cheers!
