I thought I would introduce South Yard by concentrating on what it is for so here is a picture of South Yard set up in the holiday cottage that we rented last week for our half-term holiday on the North York Moors.
I don't claim any originality in any of South Yard's ideas (or the title of this posting) - the main inspiration came from David Mallott's 'Chapel Wharf', particularly his idea of having a layout that could easily be taken on holiday to provide entertainment in case of inclem
The body gains its buffer beams, valences and roof panels.
... and I promise to write about something else one day
Buffer Beams
As far as I can tell the method of assembly intended by the Worsley Works kit involves two false cab floors to be soldered to the main body and a separate chassis built around a floor unit with two cutouts, presumably for motor bogies. The floor unit and the cab floors have etched holes, so I guess that the idea is that they should be bolted together. The si
Spent a pleasant day today at the DEMU Showcase in Burton helping out on Jim Allwood's Welton Down along with fellow Midland Group member John Russell and lapsed member Richard Lake. Thanks to Jim for inviting us and the show organisers for putting on a good do.
I thought I'd take a few trains to play with but having precisely zero appropriate items to fit in with the 1990s Network South East theme, I just had to take along some inappropriate ones.
First up, I thought I'd hijack Jim's co
Oh dear!
It looks like my Hymek won't be appearing at Warley.
The Hymek developed an issue a few months back with one of its wormwheels skipping on the worm. I think it had been happening for a while before I figured the problem out. The upshot is that the wormwheel teeth have been rounded off making the problem worse. I'd temporarily solved it prior to Kidderminster by swapping the bogies end to end, the intention being to keep it going while I got hold of a spare gear. Unfortunately no
I noticed during the first of our St Ruth test days before Nottingham that we were having to do rather a lot more loco swapping and sharing between trains than I was comfortable with. This prompted me into a re-evaluation of my gloat box to see if I could scrape together some more motive power... pronto. The first thing to make it out was a Farish warship - Hermes. This was a really minimalist conversion - wheels turned down by the Association's wheel turning service (the warship has a smaller g
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
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
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
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
Regular readers may have observed a certain 'theme' to some of my wagon building over the past few years and perhaps even wondered about the reason behind my seemingly incessant fixation with tank wagons.
It's not a huge secret that I've been intending to do something based on what most people in our community will know as 'Hayle Wharf', so here, finally is the start of it.
There are actually several wharves at Hayle, so I've decided to use the more specific name 'Hayle North Quay' as th
A light dusting of snow has fallen on the Plymouth area this morning. The coal men have turned up for work but retreated into the office to keep warm and get a brew going while they wait for the trip freight. Meanwhile D6309 has turned up with a couple of 16 tonners which it is positioning for unloading so they'll need to be venturing out again but it looks like they may be in for more snow before they are done.
Merry Christmas everyone.
... or maybe plaice!
It's been bugging me for a while that South Yard has a rather dull backscene. It's also a bit low now that the new lighting rig is in position so I've been thinking about doing something about it.
Now South Yard is a real place in Plymouth (or rather Devonport, Stoke Damerel or 'Dock' depending on how old fashioned you want to be). The name refers to the southern half of the Royal Naval dockyard and my layout is set just outside the dockyard wall. Having done a spot
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
There hasn’t been a huge amount recently that has really justified a blog posting on its own but there has been plenty going on so here is a potted summary of recent developments and the covoluted paths by which they progressed through the works.
Another Stephen Harris tank is now ready for the paint shop. This one is a class ‘A’ tank. I went for one of the early ones with the shoe suspension and without bottom discharge because that’s what the transfer sheet covers. On the whole though I’m
There hasn't been a great deal to report here recently. It's not that I haven't been doing anything, just that a good deal of it has been kit assembly or repeat builds.
There is one job that I did started shortly after the 2mm Expo that I thought would benefit from a few words here. We were a bit more relaxed at the Expo with mixing and matching locos to different trains. At one point this ad libbing caused us to come unstuck. My Hymek was moved from its usual local passenger turn and put on
The latest of the coaches that made it to Railex but weren't quite finished is now done… barring the usual few bits waiting for some crud coloured paint.
To recap for those just joining the story, this is a Fleetline kit bought in the 1980s which has languished in my gloat box ever since. The kit has been assembled mostly 'as intended' except for discarding every whitemetal part (including the coach ends) and replacing with Plastikard.
I suspect that some readers may have been expecting me
D604 is now ready for traffic. I'd like to say 'finished' but I suspect that some further attention to the chassis paintwork may still be needed.
There was one body detail issue that needed to be sorted - I was not too happy with the empty rectangular vent openings in the roof. After trying to find prototype photos to figure out how to make them more realistic I noticed that they were only visible as openings in early photos of D600 and D601. Later roof photos of these and roof photos of D60
One of my jobs for St Ruth is the preparation of the operating sequence so that we don't get stuck in a rut of just running the same trains up and down. I've done this by referring to the WR working timetables for Cornwall for the late 1960s and the excellent carriage working information available on the BRCS Yahoo group. This material has provided plenty of ideas for introducing variety into our train services without the need to depart from reality. One of these ideas was the working of a slee
Just back from my summer hols during which we spent a couple of weeks in Italy.
As relaxation was definitely on the agenda I thought it reasonable to take along a few modelling bits just in case the opportunity presented itself. Most days were spent playing with the traffic on the Italian autostradas to tick off the usual Tuscan destinations but I managed to grab a couple of spells on our quieter days while the other members of the family were keeping out of the heat and struggling to find s
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
A few photos from South Yard's day out at Nottingham. A good day out was had by all and it was nice to catch up with some 2mm friends for the day.
The layout worked well all day and I got lots of nice comments.
The new backscene being cut out from its surrounding card. In the end I went back to watercolour because I'm too new to Acrylic and things just weren't going in the right direction.
All packed up and ready to go. Very neat (not!).
The layout on show complete with pai
There has been quite a lot of activity chez mois in preparation for St Ruth's forthcoming appearance at Nottingham, mainly on the buildings front as those watching the St Ruth blog will have seen. This has meant something of a hiatus in areas like locos and rolling stock because once I get started on these the buildings won't get a look in.
Those who saw St Ruth at the Oxford Expo in 2010 may have noticed a lack of many things including (but not limited to) coaches. This show came at an awkw
The full brake is ready for the paint shop, all bar a few bits of fettling.
I don't intend to write a blow by blow account here - after all the kit comes with instructions, so I'll stick to the main places where I have gone 'off piste'.
Unlike David 71's build, I opted for using solder for all of the brass to brass joints. I stuck to cored electrical solder plus Carrs Green Label flux because I find this stronger and less messy than using lower melting point solder pastes.
Footboards
It Lives!
This is a quick update with some good news about my class 22 - this afternoon postman brought me an Atlas MP15DC that will provide the chassis for the class 22.
It had taken about 5 weeks to arrive from New Jersey. I was rather beginning to think that it was never going to arrive and wishing that I'd just found a nice Farish class 20 like everybody else does.
Naturally, being a patient sort of chap, after a fairly cursory test to make sure that it wasn't dead, the body was
Look at a few photos of trains in Devon and Cornwall in the 1960s and the chances are that you will see class 22s cropping up quite often. Although they were regarded as probably the least successful of the WR diesel hydraulics, they were a key part of the scene in the South West and I needed at least one of them if my stock was going to be representative of my chosen location and period.
That’s easy to say but the problem was how to create a model of a class 22 – the number of louvres o
