Jump to content
 

St Ruth

A blog by D869 in RMweb Blogs

  • entries
    59
  • comments
    352
  • views
    85,344

About this blog

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

Entries in this blog

Merry Christmas

D823 has just backed the stock for an evening stopping service into the arrivals platform and is quietly warming the coaches against the chill of the night. The other platform has been pressed into service to provide a bit more space out of the elements to handle the additional pre-christmas parcels traffic. A motley assortment of vans await loading but the staff seem to have disappeared. Maybe they are trying to find out who has stolen the barrows.     Merry Christmas and a happy 2015 to a
D869

D869

6

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
D869

D869

13

Getting Ready for Warley

Some of you may have seen the two new signals over on the 2mm Workbench thread. Last night they were planted on the platform. Unfortunately I failed to photograph the little signal covering trailing moves over the carriage siding points before the station board was boxed up ready for Friday.   Anyway, here are a couple of pics of the bracket signal covering the same points. The shunt arm covers the move into the sidings, the 4' arm into the platform and the call-on for use if there are already
D869

D869

8

Kidderminster and Afterwards

I think that a good time was had by all at the 2mm do at Kidderminster on Saturday. I certainly enjoyed myself and St Ruth performed with its revised control panel... when we weren't just nattering that is. I'm not sure how many times we got through the schedule, but I think it's far to say that the pace was more leisurely than normal. Another welcome innovation was the snazzy barstool provided by Pauline in the 'front of house' department. I also got to have a look in the new demo signal box th
D869

D869

9

Everything under Control?

It's quite some time since I posted the draft of the new signalling diagram on here. Since then we have been constantly debating over the right time to actually put the thing on the panel. It's always been easier to say 'right after the next show' but we've finally got fed up with all of the annotations, crossings out and other amendments on the panel so have got around to doing it.   Here's the middle part of the panel showing the state it had got into after four years of 'clarifications' and
D869

D869

4

Epsom and Ewell 2014

We got back fairly late yesterday evening from Epsom so I didn’t get chance to post any photos last night.   We had a good time at the show. There were some excellent layouts on display along with a good selection of traders. The digs and food were good and we also managed to venture into the mean streets of Epsom and track down some pints of St Austell ‘Tribute’ on Saturday evening. I’m sure that our operating on Sunday was much better for it.   Unfortunately the journey down on Friday was
D869

D869

10

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
D869

D869

10

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of our readers in RMWeb-land. We hope to see some of you at St Albans in January.     A word or two about the photo… I must thank Peter W Gray for the idea and the composition. The photo is inspired by his photo (published in the Jan 2005 'Steam Days') of 5015 Kingswear Castle waiting at signals to depart from Newton Abbot in January 1962. Peter's photo is lit by the lights of the platform where he was standing. The equivalent platform at St Ruth stops rather short of
D869

D869

8

Burton 2013

First of all an apology - no pictures this time!   Yesterday we took St Ruth to the Burton show held in the brewery museum. I spent most of the day on the fiddle yard where it is at least possible to make eye contact with the audience so was able to talk to a few people. We had some favourable comments from the audience although behind the scenes things were not entirely going according to plan.   Burton is a one day show so it was an early start, setup, do the show and pack up all in the sa
D869

D869

4

Aldershot 2013

Just back from an enjoyable weekend with St Ruth at the Aldershot show organised by the Farnham and District MRC.   Getting the new sea siding crossover finished in time for the show was a bit of a struggle. We could certainly have used some more time to deal with the stickiness that always seems to happen as soon as new track is painted... and then again when it is ballasted. It managed to (mostly) make it through the weekend though.   The other new items were a new goods yard shunting sche
D869

D869

11

More Trees for St. Ruth (Part 3)

Having completed the Oak (which took more hours than I care to think about), my son suggested that he probably could get a couple of off-cuts of cable from work (he works for an electro-mechanical company). What he provided was about 13" of some pretty hefty stuff : Each cable within the main cable consisted of 7 twists of 72 individual (0.38mm diameter) strands which were a little thicker than the wire I'd used for the Oak.   I decided that by folding a single length double that it
Ian Smith

Ian Smith

6

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

Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Sea Siding

I was going to find some modern marketing speak for 'digging up the track' but the language used by the real railway is now so far detached from reality that I decided against it.   As most readers will know, St Ruth is 'based on' Penzance but exactly how far that goes is rather flexible. Starting from the pre-1938 track plan, the very first departure from reality that we made was to add a headshunt to the goods yard and then continue this along the sea wall as a goods loop. This has been very
D869

D869

9

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
D869

D869

8

Licence to Model

Things are pretty hectic right now getting stuff that we have planned finished in time for Railex but here's a little photo taken at a recent meeting.     Those longer in the tooth may remember this loco on our old group layout 'Helsby Tumill and Haddon'. It was built from a Foxhunter kit by the late Phil Kerr, a member of the Midland Area Group, talented modeller and a very helpful chap too. I think that Phil also did the masters for the kit (he definitely did the masters for the A1 kit).
D869

D869

10

Off my Workbench

Some folks may have seen several episodes describing this under construction on the workbench thread in the 2mm forums. Last night it was planted on the layout and given a quick test.   All seems to be working OK.     Which frees up my signal building board for the next one... plenty more to do!   We also have some new buildings... must try to get my camera and the buildings to be in the same place at the same time.
D869

D869

7

Merry Christmas

Seasons Greetings from all at the Midland Area Group of the 2mm Scale Association.   Hope to see some of you at our next outing - Railex in May, if not sooner.
D869

D869

4

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

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

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

Nottingham Photos on the 2mm Topic

A quick note for those who don't tune in to the 2mm topic on RMWeb to say that Nigel and Jerry have posted some nice photos from the show including St Ruth and Fencehouses. Links below...   http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/53154-photo-call-2mm-layouts-out-and-about-at-exhibitions/#entry649757 http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/53154-photo-call-2mm-layouts-out-and-about-at-exhibitions/#entry670006
D869

D869

0

A Grand Two Days Out

Just back from St Ruth's first 'real' outing at the Nottingham show. I really enjoyed myself and I think the rest of the team did too.   It was really nice to be in a 2mm finescale 'ghetto' surrounded on three sides by Fencehouses, Brafferton and Annedale Town. At times the number of 2mm Association faces in attendance made me wonder if we weren't at a 2mm Expo. The quality of the whole show was well up to its usual standard - this is a show that I attend as a 'punter' pretty much every year b
D869

D869

9

Hotel Royale - Ready for Installation

Work continues to get the layout ready for the Nottingham show. For my own part I've finally completed work on the Hotel Royale and its neighbouring houses.     As those who know the real thing may notice, I have omitted the glazed 'sun deck' over the entrance that existed in the 1960s and 70s and backdated the building to its original form. Due to lack of photos, I have had to speculate a little on how the entrance might have looked before this was added. In particular I have assumed that
D869

D869

4

Building Buildings

There is a bit of a theme to our lives at the moment... getting the buildings built.   We have accepted an invite to the Nottingham show in March next year so it's now all hands to the pumps to get a reasonable set of buildings into place on the layout. Most of us have little or no prior experience of doing this, but I think that everyone has produced good results.   The photos below were taken at our most recent meeting where we had most of the current crop of buildings in place on the layo
D869

D869

8

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
×
×
  • Create New...