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Ramblings from the Man Cave

A blog by richbrummitt

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entries
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About this blog

Previously documenting the recreation of a small sliver of Oxfordshire in miniature finescale with regular deviations into the rolling stock being built as a distraction this blog has been renamed to reflect the decision not to finish Littlemore in the near - mid future.

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Frankenpannier IV

Following on from the previous installment a kind friend provided the image I was looking for of the target engine in early 1920s condition. There are several Swindon features to incorporate, particularly on the chassis, including reinstatement of the front guard irons. More of that in a future installment. With the cab and bunker erected I moved my attention onto the boiler. Appropriately sized tube was cut to length and a balancing pipe for the tanks bent and attached before being

October 24

0

Possibilites

Possibilites

The boards for a layout mentioned in my previous entry 'Name Change and Moving On' are predicated on fitting Burbage Wharf on 3 boards 650mm long and 450mm wide with a fiddle yard behind and end boards with full transition curves down to a minimum radius of around 2'6" to allow good running of a mixture of trains at appropriate speeds. This is obviously a longer term project but it could be built a board or two at a time and have operational potential. Despite being a single siding on a double

October 9

8

Frankenpannier III

Frankenpannier III

With the bunker in place it was on to the cab next. First of all though some business below the footplate: steps. I wanted all the steps to be uniform section. Rather than try to bend neat channel up from flat sheet I reasoned to have a go at filing the required section from a piece of brass bar given how small they are. The whole bar was clamped in the vice for ease of holding whilst first the channel was formed. A serious of slits made to create individual step 'finge

October 7

5

Name Change and Future Plans

Those that have followed this content over the last decade will be aware of a layout called Littlemore. It was seen operational with hardly any scenery at the 2mmSA 50th anniversary event and following that as a static demo at Peterborough in 2011. I worked on it some more since then, but not in the last 6 years. It's been sat in my new workshop for the last 4-5 years and been erected once. The latter event revealed that a number of Cobalt motors have failed (about half). Despite making the work

October 4

7

Frankenpannier II

Frankenpannier II

Following discussions on the previous entry I reasoned to construct a cab before making a decision about the tanks being close enough to the right size or completely unusable. I also went looking for a suitable engine in RCTS i.e. one that would have the potential to be on the lines of the ex. B&HER, on which more another time. The 645 and 655 class were originally Wolverhampton engines and most of them stayed 'North'. From locomotive allocations I've got 769 and 1804 at Bristol, which is a

September 28

Finished Goods

Some of the wagons started several years ago as chassis for an article have finally been finished. The Minks are done. The Opens are waiting for inspiration on a good way to make the sheet supporter parts, having made a few false starts already. With them is my 'cliché' from two entries back (started around 5 years ago). It has been painted a long time and is now lettered. These are all done with Fox transfers which, aside from the time consumed assembling the numbers from individual digits, I h

September 17

2

Frankenpannier

Way back when Chris Higgs offered me a test build of the conversion chassis for the Farish pannier tank I always knew that it should have a new footplate. Alas I've had an almost complete chassis under an entirely unmodified body for around a decade. Moreover for my intended time period I also knew the body would require some changes beyond detailing to represent one of the predecessors of the 57xx class. The photograph below shows how far I got in two days. Day one was spent machin

September 11

You've Been Tangoed - GWR Modelling Cliché No. 1 - Part 1

After an offer to Rabs of a file to try on his (then new) printer rather a lot of time passed and after an almost near miss with the postal service a little package arrived through the door recently with a bright orange one of these in it. The detail is comparable to some of the finest stereolithography that I have witnessed from professional bureaus. I know Rabs has spent quite a lot of time tweaking and practicing, refining the machine and the process and it has been worthwhile. The n

March 25, 2014

Seven Up

I felt I had free reign when I set up my workbench again to get out and start or re-start whatever I liked. The bench is temporary for the moment, because I want to rearrange the furniture to move my groaning bookcase next to a supported wall. I have been good though: most of the items on it were part finished when I packed them. The only 'new' items out are some 4 wheeled coaches and I'm convinced that it is much better to build these alongside some other short coaches that I started a long tim

February 24, 2014

Nothing to See Here

Previously there was a 'workshop'... and then there was none... Don't worry: most of it ended up here just before Christmas. What didn't is in the garage. Once it's unpacked and sorted out I'll be back to it. I'm keen to do so but other areas of the house have taken priority. Fortunately there are no big jobs to undertake so it should be soon. The first decision will be which project to take out of the box first. There is a clue to a future short, (I hope),

January 16, 2014

8

Time Travelling Equine Transport - Back Dating and Detailing The N Gauge Lima Horsebox - Part 4.

What might have been the last vaguely sunny evening of the year was used for getting the undercoat sprayed out in God's own paint booth. I am still working on a representation of the lake livery, which I personally think should be darker than most renditions I have seen. A mixture of a dark brown and deep red from the citadel range was used in this case. I thought I had all the details added and then, upon opening the white(ish) colour for the roofs, I realised there were no rain strips on t

October 16, 2013

Time Travelling Equine Transport - Back Dating and Detailing The N Gauge Lima Horsebox - Part 3.

It's been a while due to reducing this sprawl to something that was presentable. There was a concession to keep one desk for now (by the window) and so I have this week finally manage to squeeze a few useful hours furthering the odd project not currently mothballed. The horse boxes had a number of parts made or cut from the frets with the potential for loss when packed and I wanted to get them fitted. I had originally planned to finish these for next weekend and am now on a promise

October 4, 2013

6

Packing Up and Moving On

Despite the lack of posts I have got some work done. Much of it has been drawing bricks and stones but I still haven't got anything finished enough to print out and put together as a final version. Various draft station building have been trialled however. I have also made a pair of signal posts that await fittings and assembled some MSE arms to go on them. An order to Minx microdrives has provided the hardware to make them move when finished, along with bounce, and the interlocking for the leve

July 25, 2013

9

Time Ticks By

After more procrastination than really should have been necessary a somewhat productive afternoon finally occurred with the final pieces of the switch operating mechanism fabricated and fitted allowing the lever frame to operate the switches for the first time. I reused the telescoping square section motion limiters linked to the new TOUs and had the operating rods from the motors move these. The linkage between the motion limiters and the TOU is soldered directly to the TOU wire but some ad

June 21, 2013

0

Joined Up Thinking

A lack of posts over the last few weeks has been down to a lack of progress worth sharing. I've spent quite some time trying to get a system of operating the TOUs going over and over the options, trying and failing and re-thinking. Initially I used wires linked directly from the switches to the TOUs and when these were removed in favour of the lever frame I intended to use some kind of mechanical system and installed a crank arrangement to lead out from the frame. Servo arms were

May 18, 2013

5

Bricking It

Aside from running out of ideas and being in desperate need of linking a lever frame with my TOUs so that I commence scenic work I have been slowly putting brick after brick individually in various walls. I have a plan to produce my own brick paper 'kits' for the three station buildings (station building, signal box and weighbridge hut/goods office) on the computer using photographs of actual bricks arranged to proper bricklaying practices in as much as I understand them before printing them

April 24, 2013

9

Some Tricky Soldering

The TOUs are finally finished. A little jig was made up to quickly and easily bend consistently sized dropper wires in left and right hand forms. These are long enough to fully engage the brass tubes fixed to the moving sleeper (no longer visible) but not so long that they have any chance of causing a short by touching the brass housing of the TOU. They are then fitted and carefully soldered to the underside of the switch rails. Once painted, ballasted etc. they it should be near enoug

April 4, 2013

6

Making an Exit

After the emotional strain of the switch surgery I needed a break and considered what else needed doing soon. I wanted to plan out the right hand end of the board and make sure there was space for the planned signals to fit around the major engineering structure that is Sandford Rd overbridge. I measured up and comparing to photographs in my reference books marked and cut out a portal from mount board. This was duplicated by using this as a template. In my memory the road wasn't particularly

March 21, 2013

Switch Surgery (Not for the Faint of Heart)

No update last week because after I had fitted the first of my revised TOU mechanisms and feeling good about it I moved on to the others only to discover that the rebates in the other board were not as deep by 0.8mm! Oh-oh! I had to make the rebate deeper somehow and really didn't want to be rebuilding the switches. Inspiration came to me quickly and I was able to achieve the unthinkable in a reasonably short space of time. I used a 3mm graver for the one nearest the board edge wh

March 13, 2013

9

No Further Objections

Thank you again to everyone who voiced an opinion last week. It is now too late to change my mind because the levers have subsequently been installed at the up/Thame/left-hand end of the layout and I'm not planning on taking them back out, ever. The front profile of the board has also been finalised to be a gentle slope downwards from the road overbridge to below rail level at this end. The ground is not below the rails at Littlemore but I think this makes most sense for incorporating t

February 28, 2013

Does It Offend You, Yeah?

A picture heavy blog post to ask a fairly simple question. If it is possible to have a poll on a blog post I can't work out how but it would be useful in this instance. I had previously consigned myself to the replacement of the unsatisfactory toggle switches, which had only been bought because they were available in 3PDT and 4PDT flavours, with banks of linked slide switches. With the TOUs coming out as well I figured I would change these too. Having played with the S4 Society lever fr

February 20, 2013

Fifty Shades of Colourful Language

So here it is. TOU Mk2 and yet another moving sleeper with a difference. The shaping has made a lot of use of the milling machine. In fact the only part that I used a saw for was cutting the milled channels to length. First I milled some channels to receive the sleeper tie bars in whatever this material is? These are sized to fit into square section brass and were cut into 20mm lengths. The thickness is 2.5mm leaving a 0.5mm for the tubes that are soldered to the sleeper and a shim

February 13, 2013

8

Eleven Months and Counting

I don't agree with the idea that Deadlines = Motivation but a deadline does require a certain work-rate and focus for it to be met. For the next eleven months I need to maintain focus combined with a reasonable work rate to complete the work required to transform the bare wood and pink hills into something resembling a small part of Oxfordshire all those years ago. I feeling quite motivated at the moment however. Below the baseboard I have the TOUs issue to resolve once and for all along wit

February 9, 2013

6

Close Coupling in an Instant

I'd done quite a bit of thinking and head scratching how to make an instanter link for some time. The shape is not easy to make around a former. Indeed my first few attempts failed to make it off the formers. The process still makes some duds during the cutting and final shaping stage but on the whole I am managing to make some slightly better than triangular links most of the time. This evening whilst clearing the workbench of assembled DC underframe etches and drilling headstocks to fit co

January 31, 2013

The Realisation I'm an Idiot

A New Year means that exhibition season is under way. It used to start earlier back in the North but there isn't a lot locally until January and then it's St Albans, Southampton and then it is busy through until March until it's over for another year. Returning from St Albans the realisation hit me of what I had done to myself. Then I get an email from an exhibition manager to confirm details for next year that very much confirmed it. I am an idiot. I unwittingly talked myself into this over a y

January 24, 2013

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