Part of the reason for slow progress on Whitemarsh Yard is that I've been held up by needing to get reliable working couplings and install uncouplers before ballasting can go ahead.
I did some experiments with Brian Kirby's magnetic tension locks and came away quite happy, but when I started thinking about siting magnets I was less happy - even for a small layout like Whitemarsh you need quite a few. Plus because I didn't install them before laying the track, each uncoupler requires cut
Opel Blitz by Will Vale, on Flickr
While I've fallen into the usual post-exhibition-leads-into-Christmas-holidays modelling lull, it's only been a railway modellling lull and I've actually got several non-train projects on the go at the moment. Thankfully I managed to steer my enthusiasm in the direction of railways again by building an Opel Blitz to use on a possible airfield extension to Tanis 1937.
(If you haven't seen Tanis, it's an A3 diorama/mini-layout combining Tamiya 1:48 models
I spent the afternoon fiddling with couplings and have a bit more to report then last time. See here for the basic idea and where it came from. I wanted to try the delayed action couplings at both ends of vehicles, i.e. the normal tension lock setup with a hook at both ends, as opposed to Christopher Payne's version which only mounts the hook at one end. Apart from flexiblity, this would mean locos wouldn't have to mount hooks at all, and could just have a neat wire loop and full buffer beam fit
Nice to see RMWeb up and running in its new home - thanks to Andy and the team
I spent some more time last week working on my crane, there's still a lot to do but progress is being made. I built new hydraulic cylinders for the boom to support the geometry I wanted - the kit cylinders and rams are all plastic, so they aren't too robust, and the LAV-R crane is stowed horizontally on the roof so the geometry is a bit funny. The new ones have styrene tube with paper clip or music wire for the r
As requested, here are some pictures of the dents in my limpet and a spiel on how I did it.
(Please forgive the image quality - I can't find the charger for my SLR battery so these are taken with a Sony digicam. It's a nice camera for a lot of purposes (fast, accurate colour, decent metering) but it seems to have a lot of problems with macro focus and general softness, especially at the telephoto end. Oh well.)
I wanted to try some denting since lots of real MKA/ZKA wagons have dent
As a lead in to building my Schoema, which is still languishing on my bench as a pile of plastic rectangles, I've started to build some rolling stock. I like this as a way to get a feel for the scale, although making locos is probably more fun because they go Anyway, I've built two (and a half) flat wagons as the base for a light HIAB-type work crane. The wagons are based on some tunnel construction stock used at the Neuer Distelrasentunnel in Germany - I found some detail pictures which I've s
This is a week late, but I spent a couple of hours today going through my images from Railex, adding captions, and picking some to show off. We had a good show, packing and setup were both painless, and I opted to put the layout up on plastic crates (weighted with bricks) on top of the supplied table to improve the viewing height. I think this worked quite well, but I need to give a bit more thought to display next time: The pelmet made conversations with punters a bit tricky at times, and witho
I've been distracted recently by the re-release of Space Hulk (a boardgame idolised by many of my generation) hence the lack of updates since I've been painting monsters - and working to finish a contract. It's over a decade since I did any figure painting so I'm a bit rusty, but it's definitely good practice for brushwork and related skills. I just need to figure out how to get some of the crazy paint colours onto a railway-related project - Warlock Purple for graffiti maybe?
I've weat
I spent some time pasting together Google Maps images and watching cab rides to see better how the line behaves between Falkensteig and Hirschsprung. Then I laid out potential track plans in SCARM (which is brilliant) and tried to put the two together. It looks like I'll need to compress reality about 2:1 to fit the stretch I want in the space I can manage. For a "railway in the countryside" layout that doesn't seem too bad to me.
I ended up truncating the fiddle yards to two roads eac
I made a start on the underframe today. The more I look at detail pictures, the more I marvel at Hornby's tooling - there's really nothing missing.
The first step, as seen above, was to paint the entire underframe with Tamiya Nato Black, which is a useful not-quite black and has a very flat finish which should help the powders stick. It also means that because my finish is based on an out of the bottle colour, it's easy to paint out mistakes.
Then I went looking for pictures - I fou
So having solicited some opinions a little while ago (thanks to everyone who responded!) I seem to be about to ignore them... Unfortuntely, while I've been doing a little plastic-kit-making for Tanis (Do335A Pfeil) I'm still drawn to the Höllentalbahn. It seems like something to do that I could get to a good state for Railex at the start of October. I'd only want to model a bit of it as a tail-chaser, and the bit that appeals most is Hirschsprung and associated tunnels.
[image by Joachim
I've been sitting on some limpets for a while (ouch!) and thought I should make a start on dirtying them up:
The real things seem to be utterly filthy - I think other spoil wagons hang out with them since it makes even the muckiest PNA look classy by comparison. After a false start searching for ZKA images and not really finding any, I discovered that Limpets ended up coded MKA, which was a lot more fruitful. I started with this picture of 390327 by Richard Jones as a reference.
I'v
I went and dug a sheet and a bit of 10mm foam card out of the garage last night, so I could mark up and cut out the main bits of the Höllentalbahn board.
I added 5cm in each direction to the width and height of the plan in the previous entry - I may regret this, but it seemed like it wouldn't make that much difference to getting it though doorways, and it relaxes some tight areas on the plan. That gives a board size of 1900x500mm, or 6'2" by a bit over 19".
Cutting the thick board
I finally got hold of a Bachmann SSA locally, which I've wanted for ages in order to try Nigel Burkin's underframe conversion from the Modern Wagons book.
I followed the book's recipe fairly closely, although I cleaned up the original SSA buffer mouldings (which had a fair bit of flash) and used brake details recovered from the PNA's underframe. Not strictly correct, and I suspect there should be more stuff under there but I can't figure it out from the pictures in the book. To fit the
Step 1 by Will Vale, on Flickr
I thought I'd try and put a step-by-step up for this, because when I went back to the earlier entry on this tunnel portal to try and duplicate the painting onto the second wall, I found I hadn't listed the paint colours. So this is partly for my benefit. But maybe it'll be useful. It's always tricky to remember to put the brushes down and take pictures between steps. Usual disclaimer - I don't think this is an exemplary result - it looks good from six inches aw
Ballast by Will Vale, on Flickr
This always feels like a make-or-break point for layout building. You've got to do it, but once you have going back is impossible, or at least wildly unpleasant. I have ballasted Z track before, as seen here on Igelfeld, but the ballast I used was pretty coarse. I was happy with it at the time, but given that the new layout has closer-to-scale rail profile, I felt it needed closer-to-scale ballast as well.
Before getting into that, I laid the track wi
I did some more work on the limpet I started the other day. I applied the modern warning flashes (very nice Fox transfers) and blacked out the DC prefix on the data panel which I forgot to do last time. The body has had a little bit more work with washes and powders to try and tone down the contrast a bit, otherwise it's much as before. The white filler on the inside is to cover a soldering iron mark from the denting process, it'll get sanded down and painted over tonight hopefully.
The o
Unteren Hirschsprung Tunnel (West) by Will Vale, on Flickr
I dunno, you wait ages for a blog entry, then two come along at once! With two months to go until the exhibition, my progress really needs to make the leap from "glacial" to "avalanche".
My current focus is the track bed (see previous entry) and civil engineering - once those jobs are out of the way I can finish the basic landforms and get the profile boards on. The main things required are four tunnel portals, some retaining wal
Unteren Hirschsprung Tunnel by Will Vale, on Flickr
Well, it's showtime tomorrow! I've been finishing things off as best as possible this week - as ever there's an awful lot which could be done that hasn't been done, but I think the overall result has the right kind of consistency. The deciduous forest also failed to materialise - I made and planted a lot of trees, but they weren't really good enough to they ended up getting yanked out agian. The bog brush firs are a cliche but they're one I
The first set of springs I made was a bit too heavy, so I picked up some finer strip. Using 0.75x0.25mm allows the correct four leaves, and looks reasonably close to scale:
They are less wonky than they look in the picture, honest - I think it's because the picture is much too wide-angle!
These are really easy to make - if you cut one length of Evergreen strip (as above) into four, you can stack the pieces and build four complete springs flat on the workbench. The end brackets are
Just finished installing a Howes LokSound micro in my Christmas present - a Cotswold Rail 08 intended for duty as the Whitemarsh Yard pilot. It wasn't particularly fiddly, only a couple of hours' work really, although I underestimated the care required to cut out the body shell behind the front grille. I started off drilling the four corners and thought I could then cut through the edges with multiple passes of a knife - bad idea A slight slip left a mark on the warning stripes, but it isn't to
Some pictures of the speaker install I talked about here. Sorry for the nasty digicam quality, it was too much work to go and find the tripod and the SLR. While I had the body off I took the opportunity to make a styrene bottom plate for the sound box to replace the blob of Blu-Tak which was filling that role in the Mk.1 version. It's still not a classy install, but it works and apart from cutting the hole is still reversible for when I find a better way.
Here are the main components. I've a
I've had a go at the interiors, inspired by this picture...
http://ukrailrolling.../p57256754.html
...and it came out OK I think. It's quite hard to capture the almost salmon shade (rust plus dust/dried mud?) of the prototype picture but provided it looks believable I'm not too worried if it doesn't look identical
I've started another two and taken some pictures to accompany the process.
Step 1) I stippled on artist's acrylic (the stuff in tubes - the one I use is called P
...works out as 110mm life size. It's the difference in height between code 40 and code 60 rail.
I blame thank James for starting me down this particular dark path. The further of the two parallel tracks in the picture is standard Märklin track using code 60 rail. The nearer is code 40 rail threaded into Märklin sleeper bases, with the tops of the chairs/spikes/clips dressed with a sanding stick afterwards. And it works! The rails are held in gauge, and the trains run along it without
Rock painting experiment by Will Vale, on Flickr
The plain brown undercoat has finally reached the right side of the layout, so I've been putting some (maybe) final paint on the rocks on the left. It's not too bad, it looks a bit frosty and overdone under my worklight, but nice in daylight and it seems to photograph OK. The green bits are just stood there to get a feel for the colour balance - it's going to be very green which I think will reduce the contrast in the rocks and make them appea
