Thought it was time for some first hand research regarding what's so great about the railways of the south west...
We're in coach A
Films are by other peeps...
Wrong sea wall for St Ruth but just to show that other sea walls are available...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc5ox1tZ6sI
Signal checks on the return journey at Goodrington, Newton Abbott and Exeter meant that Britannia was putting in some serious effort by the time we got to Cowley Bridge Junction... and me wit
As you might have seen on one of 2mm threads, the tractor and its test bed put in an appearance at the Tutbury gathering yesterday.
Several folks had a try at tractor driving and several politely declined. Apart from hopefully being entertaining for the budding driver it was interesting for me to see what happens with someone else at the wheel.
Full marks to Laurie Adams for being the only person to attempt and complete the full tractor shunting challenge (swap an i
The Tutbury Supermeet has come and gone. I'd like to thank John Aldrick and his helpers for organising a very enjoyable day.
I spent most of it operating South Yard but had plenty of interest all day and by mid-afternoon I started to lose my voice because I'm not used to nattering quite so much. An unsuspecting Anthony Yeates asked if I'd mind him taking some photos and was promptly saddled with minding the layout for a few minutes while I nipped off to the Association shop and had chance to
I promised myself that I would spend some time turning the various bits I've cut out for the shunting tractor into something more tractor shaped.
In the previous installment I'd cut out the main chassis frames on the milling machine. In fact the chassis has been together for some time but lacking any sort of superstructure.
The body parts are cut from 5 thou K&S brass sheet using good old fashioned scratchbuilding techniques like a coping saw and Swiss files - the only concession to
I've been making bits for the shunting tractor for a while now (the one in the video in the previous post is just for testing). For the most part it will be scratchbuilt and it's a bit of a case of making up the plan as I go along... never having built a model of a wheel loader before.
The cab sides and engine cover sides have been cut out from two bits of 5 thou brass soldered together... actually they are not yet fully cut out. Somehow I hope to assemble these into a three dimensional thin
I tried to convince these folks of the merits of Easitrac or even soldered PCB construction, but they seemed happy with their own way of doing things
http://youtu.be/0jFZReHQTTE
Still, they managed to lay about 12 feet of track in under 5 minutes, so maybe it's not a bad approach.
Their next move was to rip it all up again, which sounds a lot like what some people write about on RMWeb, so I think that there's hope for them yet.
A quick update on the Manor...
The crossheads and conn rods are now fitted... and remarkably the loco still runs well.
This doesn't look like a vast amount of progress, but there was some tricky work involved... especially for someone who has never built a steam loco before.
I found assembling the crossheads pretty tricky, largely because their final 'I' shape means that there is no obvious place to apply the soldering iron to get a good 'flow' when you get to the last stage. I
A little project that I've been working on for the past few weeks...
This is an Ixion manor bought on Ebay and now sporting a partly completed Nigel Ashton milled brass 2FS chassis.
This evening was its first proper test run. South Yard is a bit too short for this sort of activity so after a few initial runs there to make sure the thing could actually move it was up to the loft to try it on the rehomed (and not very scenic) Taw Bridge where there is at least 6 feet or so of clear ru
Those of you on the 2mm_notices mailing list will have seen Edward Sissling's request for micro layouts to appear on the (bigger) Association stand at the Nottingham show next month. I've volunteered South Yard to attend on the Saturday (15th March)... since I pretty much always go to the Nottingham show anyway.
...all of which means that I need to do a bit of housekeeping in order to get it into a fit state to put on show. Here's a photo of it in its usual surroundings.
As you can
Things have been pretty quiet over the winter season modelling-wise. The building work on the house has taken up a lot of my attention, even though it was being done by someone else. We are still progressing with the aftermath (painting, light fittings, yada yada) but I'm finding that I now have a bit more time for the important things in life.
Anyway, with the intention of giving myself some impetus to do dome actual modelling I promised John Aldrick that I would take South Yard to the 2mm
The painfully slow progress of the 45xx build continues. The loco had a test run at AbRail where it showed a tendency to derail. After readjustment of the pony truck springs it had another run at Macclesfield and was much better behaved. Over the past few months I've been gradually making progress with putting the cylinders together and tonight the second one was finally fitted to the loco.
I've got to say that they weren't the easiest of things to put together - annoying issues like th
... but he hasn't done anything at all!
Well looks can be deceiving. Actually quite a lot of work has happened on the 45xx over the past week or so but the overall appearance is not hugely changed. Let me put it another way... here is how it looked a couple of days ago...
When I stopped work on this project I really wasn't happy with the way it was running. The worst issues had been solved but it still had pretty poor slow running and a nasty tendency to stall. All in all not a
More steamy goings on from my workbench. Now that I'm not frantically trying to make South Yard look less unfinished I've got back to some of the other items that have been in progress for a while. The main build effort amongst these is the David Eveleigh chassis for the Dapol 45xx. The various bits of this have been liberated from their paint shop boxes and put together in hopefully something resembling the right order.
Under the hood is a Nigel Lawton motor coupled to the worm via a U
As we all know, the Earth is anything but flat but a flat earth is quite a common sight on our models. Now it's pretty obvious that Hayle North Quay has some high ground at the back and a quay edge at the front, but is that the whole story? Well, no...
A couple of examples from my visit in 2010 (the place has been completely rebuilt since then to provide flood defences).
I'm not sure what this building used to be, possibly stables for the Steam Packet hotel or possibly so
Thought it might be time to say a few word on here about the thing that's been taking up most of my modelling time since last June.
The Esso depot at Hayle North Quay was laid with a kicked back siding. As the quay had no run-round, it could only be worked using a shunting tractor... so my layout needs one of those.
It might have been nice to just get on with building the layout and worry about this later but that's really not going to work - the tractor is too small to have an on-board
In a scandalous misuse of the limited time remaining before Railex, Jackie and I took the Cheltenham Flyer from Tyseley to Paddington and Back with 'Castle' class 'Earl of Mount Edgcumbe'.
The run was superb - a storming ascent of Sapperton and some fast running in both directions on the main line. 40 minutes early into Paddington and then an hour early back to Gloucester. A shame that NR couldn't find us an earlier path back to Brum so we all had to sit in Gloucester for an extra hour forlo
A little break from the 2mm stuff indoors... The weather has been pretty decent this weekend so a certain amount of effort in the garden was felt to be in order. Naturally apart from pulling out the many weeds, I took the opportunity to make sure that the railway was clear of obstructions.
This afternoon the odd train or two had to be run just to make sure things were working properly. Today's main performer was my little IP Engineering 'Jane' - a meths fired pot boiler - similar in principl
A little puzzle for you...
On the left is a new tank which has just escaped from the paint shop. ICI supplied chlorine to Hayle in the early years before Ethyl/Octel had their own chlorine works at Ellesmere Port and there was a period during which both Octel and ICI tanks were seen together.
The tanks were made by different companies for different customers but both to the same RCH design, so they look similar but there are plenty of detail variations. No credit will be given for saying
A little 'photo op' that I'd been planning since I found out that St Ruth and St Blazey would both be appearing at last weekend's Swindon show.
The inspiration was a John Chalcraft photo that I bought when I was building D6309. It shows the real D6309 at St Blazey in 1969 in front of what appears to be a duff Duff. The same photo is also the inspiration for the weathering job on my model.
http://railphotoprints.uk/p737470212/h3AAF2938#h3aaf2938
My attempt at something similar. Gettin
Owners of Farish class 47s circa 2008-2010 will probably have read lots of words on RMWeb about the shortcomings of some batches of this loco. I am the proud (ahem) owner of one of those models - D1764 in two tone green with full yellow ends. This loco has been on the St Ruth roster since the 2010 Expo in Oxford and has, shall we say, never been a favourite with the operators, it being fiendishly difficult to get all 6 axles reliably on the track and seemingly having a remarkable ability to skip
My workbench sits in a bay window that gets the full sun in the afternoon. I had a bit of modelling time on Friday but it was just too hot to be spending time sat at the workbench. Sometimes I set up in the back garden with something fairly self contained like assembling some bogie kits, but I already have several bogies assembled and waiting for coaches to make use of them.
I've been buying and building a lot of coaches recently to run on St Ruth. I've enjoyed doing this but it's always a b
I haven't had much to say on here for a few weeks, not because I haven't been modelling but rather because it has been one of those periods where I'm doing stuff that is not particularly new, so there isn't a huge amount to say. In particular, I've been trying to trim my gloat box a little in anticipation of some re-stocking when some new kits arrive from Mr Higgs. The results are now ready for the paint shop when the outside temperature warms up enough for it to reopen.
The first one is an
We set St Ruth up yesterday to test some recent work and get some photos that we've promised to exhibition managers using the layout's own lighting.
I also took the opportunity to get a move on and finish painting a couple of vehicles that I've been working on.
I mentioned the Thompson BG here a little while ago. This has now been painted in unlined Precision maroon. I didn't make any attempt to lighten the colour on this occasion because colour photos of maroon parcels vans in service o
I thought it was time for a few words and pictures to update folks about the latest happenings chez moi. Things have settled down to a more err... leisurely... pace since Nottingham and I've been trying to get some of those half finished projects completed and reduce the level of overcrowding in the gloat box (this never works, I know).
One item that didn't quite make Nottingham was one of two Association CCT kits. I've now finished painting it. Fetching it out for a photo reminds me that I
Some prototypes are just too much for we mere mortals to resist, even if we can’t completely justify them…
This is a Stephen Harris 35T GLW class ‘B’ tank that I’ve been working on (very slowly) over the summer. My original plan was to build three class ‘A’s and one class ‘B’. I thought I’d do the class ‘B’ first as a one-off.
While there is plenty of evidence of 35T class ‘A’ Esso tanks in Cornwall, I have not seen any photos of class ‘B’ tanks so had no good reason to splash out o
