Leaderboard

Beattie Well Tank No. 30587 trundles through the open crossing at Polbrook with a freight from Wenfordbridge to Wadebridge on a sultry summer day in 1957. 111204_polbrock_IMG_2088_WEB, a photo by nevardmedia on Flickr. "She smells a bit but has a heart of gold", as coined by John Cleese when introducing his slightly less than fresh wife at a drinks party on a well known Monty Python sketch. Here though I'm writing about Kernow Model Rail Centre's recently released Beattie Well Tank. The model supplied is quite delightful in pristine shiny black, any weathering being left to the modeller. Locos in service were generally a little grubby and had an acrid smell of hot oil, steam and soot - this aroma being perfume to steam fanciers My method is to brush on a sludge of water based black acrylic and weathering powders, then wipe most of it of. These locos were generally quite well kept, so to reflect much use of an oily rag to give a nice sheen, Humbrol Metalcote was drybrushed on here and there to give a metallic oily look. To complete the effect, three link couplings have also been added, though I have still to remove the socket under the buffer beam used for the supplied tension lock couplings. I have also added one of the supplied distinctive Southern Railway route disks that sits just in front of the chimney. Bigger version of the above photo HERE!

I've finally gotten around to doing a bit more on the goods shed for Callow Lane. To recap, this is based on the Townstreet plastercast kit, which I have always liked, although it is not based on Midland Railway practice in the area I am modelling. It was one of their very first kit, and as such the castings would appear to be slightly less refined than their later productions, certainly the kit that I picked up has a number of minor casting defects, which I am disguising or otherwise trying to make good. I am replacing some of the cast components with other materials, where I think these will improve the appearance of the finished model. These include the main roof (which will be from 1mm thin ply, overlaid with thinner card, with Scalescenes paper slate strips), the awning, where I have removed the plaster cast valences and replaced them with Slaters plasticard ones, and the doors, which will be scratchbuilt from plasticard as well. Thanks to those who responded on the Prototype Questions forum, with information on internal goods shed cranes. I have put a basic crane together using sections of Evergreen plastic strip and one or two parts from the Wills yard crane kit. Closer view of the replacement plastic valance: Internal view showing crane. More detail will be added such as loads on the platform etc. in due course.

One or two folk have asked for a layout diagram of Callow Lane, so here is one, together with a supposed location map:

Here are a few more general views of the layout taken today, after a brief operating session when a friend came round:

Not quite a "heist" movie, but my family did wonder what I was up to in the basement this weekend...

I thought folks might be interested in a couple of photographs of the new MERG CBUS based DCC system. This uses a CANBUS (originally developed for the automotive industry) to transmit the signals from the handset to the command station which then generates the completely standard DCC signals on the track. The advantage is that this is the same wiring bus as I using for controlling the rest of the layout using other MERG CBUS boards. Ultimately I should be able to run the whole layout with 6 to 8 wires between the boards. Two for the DCC signal. Two for the CBUS. Two for a 12v DC pair to power the modules. I'll probably end up with another pair for a 16AC as this can then be used if I need power anywhere else. There are three components to the DCC system, A command station which is a simple PCB costing around £25 to build, a number of handsets which are available as a kit for £38 and a soon to be released booster which will be another ~£25. Without the booster you are limited to pulling about 1.5amps in total but that is proving adequate to run a couple of trains around Empire Basin with no problems. The command station is pretty straight-forward to build being just a single board and convention 'through hole' mounting of components. As usually you need to take some care with your soldering and reading the instructions but it isn't beyond the skills of a beginner. The handset on the other hand is a good deal more complex requiring the use of surface mount components. These look a bit scary to start off with and I watched several video clips on Youtube demonstrating how to solder a chip with 20 pins down one side an inch long onto a board with trepidation before having a go. In the end I found it wasn't as bad as I feared, a combination of a circuit board covered with a solder resistant surface (except that is where you need to solder!) and the smallest soldering iron bit Maplins had did the trick. I also bought some de-soldering wick which came in handy on the occasion when I did manage to bridge a connection. In the end the little handset really does feel like a quality part and is a credit to those involved with the design. The knob is positioned nicely for the thumb and you can easily drive the loco with one hand. The push buttons are very easy to work and the typical operations of selecting a loco or turning a function on and off are all quite logically and take very little getting used to. There are a couple of limitations with the current version of the firmware around taking control of a loco already assigned to another handset but these are all developments due in forthcoming releases. A combination of the MERG command station, the CAN-USB interface which allows a PC to talk to the CBUS and the Java Model Railway Interface (JMRI) also allows the use of an Android phone or (if you want to sell your soul to Apple) a Iphone as a throttle. I'm tempted, but not tempted enough to want to part with the cost of a loco kit just to try it! David

One thing I do after every show is create a log of the problems/issues that come up during the show. I now have a record going back to 1997. It's interesting looking back at the problems I used to have. As the problems get sorted out, I tick them off, making sure I've dealt with all of them before the next show. I also have a "countdown calendar", this is based on the number of Sundays before the next show, about 15 left before Clutton's next outing.

More progress on the buses. I finished off the Southdown Tiger Cub and London 5Q5 for the annual modelling competition of the Model Bus Association of Australia, held today. The Southdown bus took first place in the 4mm kit built section, in spite of a few faults. The first photo shows both of the buses near completion. The 5Q5 has just had its windscreens glued in so the glue is still white but dries clear. The Little Bus Company kit comes with pre-printed windscreens but i put them somewhere safe, which means I still haven't found them and had to make up my own! The Southdown Tiger Cub has its fleetnames in place but I ran out of medium sized Mackenzie scipt fleetnames so had to use some oversized versions. Also, I discovered a paint run on the nearside of the roof, too late to do anything about fixing it. The windscreens are now clear on the 5Q5 and I have (rather crudely) painted the red bars across them. The 5Q5 now has its fleetnames, registration numbers and badge in place. I printed suitable destinations for both plus the Southdown registration numbers up and glued them in place. Unfortunately, the photos I took of the Tiger Cub are too blurred but the 5Q5 has come out OK. I'll post a final shot of the Tiger Cub later. You can see the slight roughness in the finish of the white areas.