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St Ruth

A blog by D869 in RMweb Blogs

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About this blog

The layout of the Midland Area Group of the 2mm Scale Association

Entries in this blog

Your Starter for Ten

Our next planned outing should be TINGS near Leamington Spa in early September although the show web site is curiously shy about our presence and that of another 2FS layout of this parish which I'm told will be in attendance.   There are still a few more buildings needed and some of these may appear before September but I think it's time to make a start on another aspect (get it?) of the infrastructure - the signals.   St Ruth needs a lot of signals so there is zero chance that they will be
D869

D869

17

York 2018

So the much advertised snow didn't materialise (or rather it materialised mostly as rain) and we made it back in pretty good time from York. Maybe the promise of snow put off the usual Easter bank holiday trippers because the roads were fairly clear... of traffic if not water.   The show was an enjoyable one with us parked next to the 2mm roadshow and also the Jerry and Kim roadshow. We had a selection of guest operators on each day so thanks to all of them.   We were next to Mike and Judith
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D869

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Wycrail 2015

We took St Ruth for a day out at Wycrail yesterday - actually a day and a night because we set up on the Friday evening, having previously discovered that trying to do a one day show in one day is a fairly stressful experience.   All in all a very enjoyable show although I'm puzzled why it's not a 2 day affair - it certainly justifies it on the basis of size and quality. We had Missy Julia with a demo table next to us so it was great to have a catch up. Several other folks popped in to say hel
D869

D869

6

Working Timetables

A day off from the class 22 (and work too)…   Ever since I first decided on my chosen region and period I have been on the lookout for decent information about how the real thing was actually operated at that time. Unfortunately documents like working timetables for this period have never surfaced during my visits to places that sell these things and even now that we have the Internet they don't seem to appear very often.   With the creation of St Ruth (which is in my region and set in a v
D869

D869

6

Wolvey Summer Fair 2016

A few pictures from today's afternoon outing for St Ruth. A different sort of experience from a model railway show but we still found some worthwhile purchasing opportunities.   A very enjoyable day and an appreciative audience. Thanks to Pauline for her sterling efforts organising the other stands and for the hot dogs at lunch time.        
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D869

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Wigan 2018

Closing out our 2018 outings was a trip to Wigan this weekend. Friday evening saw us finding a local hostelry where we were amongst a rather partisan bunch watching Wigan play Castleford in the Rugby League semi final. Wigan won so everyone in the pub was happy although when we got back to the hotel we found that the non model railway occupants seemed to be predominantly from Castleford and rather less happy. The meal on Saturday was entertaining. We were sat on a table with the folks from the B
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D869

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Warley 2014

Back home now after our outing to our local mega-show. After a few comments from other people beforehand I was a bit wary of exhibiting at Warley but really enjoyed it. For sure, the NEC is a huge venue and this brings with it extra aggravation particularly during setup and packing up and for sure it was stacked out with people on Saturday but there is stacks of space behind the layouts and the food is good, even if the queue was a bit long. It was also great to spend some time again with the ot
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D869

13

Trees for St Ruth (Part 2) - First part in personal blog

The basic trunk, branches and "twigs" were built up from multicore wire as described in my previous blog entry (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1009/entry-12142-going-round-the-twist-for-st-ruth-trees-pt-1/).   Once I had finalised the shape that I wanted, I attached the base of the trunk into a piece of 5mm diameter brass tube so that the tree could eventually be planted on St Ruth. The base of the trunk was thickened up a bit with some P38 car filler (having first planted th
Ian Smith

Ian Smith

7

Trainwest 2016

Some photos from St Ruth's outing this weekend to deliver one of two helpings of Cornish 2FS goodness to the people of Wiltshire. A really good show with a fine selection of quality layouts. We had a great time being back to back with John Greenwood's beautiful Wadebridge. A certain amount of chinwagging may have taken place.   St Ruth behaved itself pretty well with only occasional minor annoyances.   A recent low-tech addition has helped to improve the running in the station area - a jump
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Tolworth 2019

Some photos from Tolworth. A good show, well attended and with plenty of quality layouts.     This IoW layout, or rather three linked layouts was just across the road from us. Always a nice subject and nicely done.   Harlyn Pier was our next door neighbour. A lovely layout with a T9 - one of my favourite locos. It moved off before I got a pic but the pannier was nice too.  
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D869

2

The Trains of St Ruth

St Ruth is a layout that is designed to be operated and (we hope) entertaining, so deciding what trains to run and how to run them is an important part of the whole package.   We needed a way to operate the layout for its first outing at the Oxford Expo, so a sequence was drawn up shortly before the show (very shortly actually).   As the layout is 'inspired by' Penzance, we have used Penzance as the inspiration for our operating sequence. St Ruth is, of course, not the same as Penzance for
D869

D869

2

The Sea Wall

The sea wall is one of the most prominent scenic features on the layout. It's also pretty long - covering almost all of the 12 foot frontage of the layout. A few weeks prior to the Expo last July it was just a blank piece of plywood and our thoughts turned to make it into something more wall-like.   Exactly how to model the sea wall was something that caused us some head-scratching. We already have some retaining walls done with embossed plasticard and the big retaining wall behind the station
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10

The Red Lion and Neighbours

As previously advertised, some pictures of the row of houses that John has recently finished behind the station. Now we just need to persuade John to write some words about them.     And the real thing...  
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D869

7

The Green Green Grass of… St Ruth

Progress on St Ruth continues at its usual (ahem) pace. One of the more recent items has been the scenic treatment of the ‘grassy knoll’ (hmm… haven’t I heard that term before?).   The first thing I tried out was surgical lint grass in the Barry Norman approved manner – in this case lint from Superdrug, dyed olive green and then stuck furry side down to the brown-painted landscape. Once the glue is dry, the lint backing is peeled away, hopefully leaving something resembling grass.
D869

D869

10

Syston 2018

Our first show of 2018 has come and gone. Not too far from base - organised by the Syston club but actually in Sileby, not far from Rothley.   The organisers were very welcoming and we were awarded two prizes for best layout including a trophy and some bottles of wine. We will now need to organise a function to provide an opportunity to consume said wine.   We also had a play with one of those rail mounted cameras but we will need to wait for the owner to let us have the results.   Some ph
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D869

4

Swindon 2016

The dust has now settled after our trip to Swindon. An excellent show in the presence of some of the great products of Swindon Works. It was great that our roving reporter, Chris (MinerChris) was able to join us from Utah . I hasten to add that Swindon was not the only reason for his trip. This morning we made the rather less fun journey to Heathrow so that he could catch his plane back 'over there'   There was some disturbance from the other side of the planked wall caused by a rather rowdy
D869

D869

3

Staying Grounded

The more recent meetings of the Midland Area Group have consisted of fettling points and generally resolving faults that emerged from the running weekend at the Nottingham show.   One of the major alterations consists of altering the traversing fiddleyard so that more than one track is live with DC at a time (John can describe, along with the rest of the electronics.) Eventually with enough operators present, four loco movements should be possible at the same time. This is more impressive when
MinerChris

MinerChris

12

St Ruth Voyager

I finally got round to putting some finescale wheels on the Yorkshire Voyager (Dapol) that's been languishing in its box for a few years now and took it along to this week's group meeting to try out.   Actually, it isn't 100% what it seems - only two cars have finescale wheels right now because I didn't get the trailer wheels turned down. Instead I fitted 2mm Association disc wagon wheels. These have 1mm axles compared to the 1.2mm Dapol ones. Because it's an experiment, they also still have t
D869

D869

7

St Ruth at TINGS

I was contemplating some rather lame puns for the title of this posting but I thought I would spare you all. We're just back from two days at the N Gauge Show which takes place in a barn on the Fosse Way near Leamington Spa - just down the road for us... which turned out to be just as well.   I'm glad to say that St Ruth performed well during both days with just a few minor issues appearing during opening hours. The same cannot be said for the setup day on Friday...   We had given ourselves
D869

D869

6

St Ruth at RailEx

Just back from RailEx with St Ruth all packed away safely. It was a very enjoyable show and an excellent mix of layouts to look at.   St Ruth behaved itself and performed well, including the new operators (Ian and Stephen). All four signals kept working for both days which is good news given our lack of mileage with them (and particularly the servo drives). The route indicator decided not to play on Saturday but was persuaded back into action today and was fine after that. I think that the new
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8

St Albans 2014

Well, 2014 seems to have arrived and after the usual last minute flurry of activity to get things finished, so did this weekend's St Albans show.   It was great to see some of our existing friends and to make some new ones. I think that all of the team had a good time although you might have got a different answer if you had asked those of us on our backs mending the point motor at the goods yard throat during the Saturday morning session.   The Sea Siding crossover also decided to develop a
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10

Southampton 2019

A nice weekend down south for the gang at the Southampton show and a good chance to catch up with Jerry and Paula. A good show all around and nice accommodation too. We were also happy to be awarded the Founders Cup for the best layout by the organisers. No major issues with the layout but no show would be complete without a few niggles to put on the fault list and give us something to do when we get back to base. The black surroundings of the drama studio worked pretty well with our night scene
D869

D869

2

Royale Hotel

A quick pic of (early!) work in progress on the next building that I owe to St Ruth, along with a rough mock-up.     The plan is to try to follow the 'Pendon cottage' style of construction (well, sort of) - the key point being to cut the external walls from a single piece of card (0.7mm in this case) to avoid any joins. External corners will be formed (I hope) by creating a 'V' cut behind the corner and removing most of the thickness of the card... well, it worked for a PW hut but this is a
D869

D869

5

Railwells 2017

Just finished our run back up the Fosse Way from Wells where an enjoyable weekend was had in spite of an annoying points failure that affected our ability to get stuff in and out of the goods yard for most of the weekend. We had the station board off after the show closed on Saturday evening (to many amusing comments of 'it's a two day show you know') and changed the point motor but after a few tests this morning the motor of the new one was found to be red hot and promptly disconnected.   The
D869

D869

6

Progress - January 2011

Some of the other group members now have access to post to the blog but it was decided by popular demand that I should post a progress update. We decided to dedicate our most recent meeting for a photo shoot. Surprisingly I was the only one who showed up with a camera... even though I don't rate my abilities at phtographing 2mm scale models very highly. Anyway, here are the results.   The station area with my favourite Warship waiting to depart. John Russell has been doing a lot of w
D869

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