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Good afternoon, Despite a recent flurry of activity on PWIAB, work has been progressing on trying to finish this project. I suddenly realised that I was going about it all the wrong way I had been trying to complete the station building before tackling all the other bits and pieces and detailing but whilst not wanting to rush the second attempt at the building, it meant there was no progress on everything else... So, I decided to reverse that, concentrate all my efforts on all the outstanding elements and leave the station building to last...after all, it is the most important structure on the layout. So...this is what I have been up to... Fascia: The exterior of the layout has now been painted in my preferred grey colour. I always used to use black on past layouts but of recent, I find this to look very smart. I have also re applied the text to the front and added the 2mmFS logo...this turned out to be a good strategic move as the layout now starts to feel more finished. The card has been painted a couple of coats - would have preferred something a bit more matt, but its difficult to find a lot of materials here... Backscene: Previously, I had painted the backscene a sky blue as a base and was in two minds how to treat it. Gary (of Glenuig fame) kindly offered to take some photos last year whilst in Kyle and I mentioned the backscene. Not only did Gary kindly take the photos, he also offered to stitch them together as a panorama and send me a file. The backscene is more moody and representative of the context I feel and certainly is a big improvement on the one I hashed together for the BHMRC 2010 show...Many thanks again Gary. I have attached it with masking tape whilst I try and work out the best method of fixing it to avoid bubbles...all suggestions most welcome! New backscene without 90 degree corners Thanks also to Tony Simms to suggest that... Platforms: The platform and road surfaces have been redone with some wet n dry paper. Wall and bridge: The stone wall has had some dry brushing and further work will be undertaken on this with some weathering powders. The road bridge has also been reinstated together with the handrail. Sidings: I wanted to represent the fence that was installed adjacent to the line and for this I have used Bernard TPM's excellent fence product. A very nice kit of etches and cast components and whilst it is the temporary fencing often used around construction sites, I think it works in this situation. I put a small kink in it as I have never visited a building site to date and found one erected in a perfect straight line! Quayside: The wall has been repainted (again) and the water has been repainted (again) which I have decided to paint layers of gloss varnish on rather than the PVA method which I didn't really get on with. The wall will continue to have applications of dry brushing to add further colours etc. I have also redone the metal ladders which this time are extended to form the grab rails to climb on and off and also some small tyres have been added, strung on cotton thread. Again, some further weathering powders will be added to these items. Also added...but not stuck is a small boat I found in my pot of bits from years old. Not sure whether it works or not so the jury is still out on that. A couple of photos of the above... Station building awaiting completion...the TPM fencing...built and arranged slightly imperfectly... The wall still needs further work including reinstating the blue Kyle signage... I am hoping to get back to the station soon and I have just received from Ian (Scanman) some of his self adhesive tiles (seen on the excellent Tavistock Blog) to complete the roofing. In between restarting the station I will be continuing to add colour/weathering powders. Looking back...just needs some rolling stock now... I did say I would finish it and not get too distracted by the other project(s)...

The ongoing addition of a running line continues. Here you can see the new bridge with a bubble car where the new platform will be on the viewing side. A shot without the bubble car and the addition of a background blocker. No photoshop here! The bridge was made from cut and shut sections of the existing retaining wall, so the colours match the original bridge exactly. I didn't fancy trying to replicate the stonework from fresh. The change in levels from the original to new bridge is unfortunate, but I didn't want to destroy the original. I'm debating what to put in the foreground between the two. One of Kernow's Type 4 stone LSWR signal boxes would fit but would be a bit over the top and would have no realistic reason to be there. At the other end of the layout, I'm planning to relocate the original clay slurry loading point and add a couple of tanks as scenic blockers. Both lines behind will extend onto the fiddle yard meaning we can load a rake of tanks, rather than a couple in the original location which will be used as a coal siding/loading bank and occasional stabling point for the works shunter. One of the bubble car just to prove it's green!

I had a vision of a small layout came into my mind at work today and filled full of admiration for the latest iPad works of Art by David Hockney I thought I'd try sketching it using the Adobe Ideas App. I've been messing with Adobe Ideas for a while off and on and I'm starting to get the hang of it. I'm still "drawing" using my finger rather than a stylus which can be a bit annoying when the line doesn't quite go where you want it to. The idea is basically Purfleet Quay in Kings Lynn http://binged.it/yaTLNr So this is a test of the technique to see if it works and to see if you can actually understand what I've drawn.

I had a successful day I wired up and put the pickups onto the chassis. It then spent about two hours or so running in each direction on the rolling road, seems to be sweet as a nut. Will know for sure when the body is reattached. Fingers crossed. It was lucky I had this to do because the balcony was out off bounds today. Above is a picture taken in December showing the loco body in primer. I was very pleased I only had a few imperfections to remove. The rest of my time modelling today was the detail painting on the back head shown above. Above is the footplate almost complete, it was primed and painted in December. The buffers were done one day last week. I am now wondering whether I should blacken the buffer heads or not.

Here are a few photos of my 7mm Buffalo under construction. I think you will see it is a very straight forward build nothing to fancy. I am looking forward to the day it is finished I get board with some builds this was one unfortunatly. Above is the footplate section, this just requires the buffers soldering on and then can be painted. I try to build loco's for ease of painting. This is all black so needs only the buffer beams masking. Above and below show the body before and after detailing. As seen from the top photo the bodyis a seperate unit and in the lower it is screwed to the footplate to allow the fitting of the details willstill split atpainting stage. Below is the backhead which I have added a little extra detail to help make it look betterthan the plain casting and also a shot of one of the injectors that have been modified to allow the units to come apart again. I hope that has brought things upto date, I am in the process of painting so I will post those soon.

Great to have RMweb back after the Christmas downtime - thanks to Andy for seeing it through. I decided that I needed to redo the control for the lower section of Empire Basin to use servos. This is partly because I was unhappy with my attempts at wire-in-tube and the rather lashed up linkages I'd made which didn't work very well and partly because I wanted to have a test bed to demonstrate the use of servos for point control. I needed to make a proper drive mechanism for the point blades which allows for some adjustment in the blades when fitting them to the layout, I also wanted to separate the servo component from the TOU to allow for easier fitting. The use of servos makes for much easier fitting as the adjustment can be made on the servo controller rather than having to fiddle with different lengths of linkages. In the past I've made TOUs out of brass and paxolin but decided to try using plasticard for this project. The Plastruct square tube is pretty robust stuff and when stuck onto layers of 60 thou plasticard make a component which I think will be strong enough for last. I cut two lengths of plastruct tube which telescope together, the larger is 5/16th inch and the smaller 1/4 inch. These were cut 50mm and 55mm long respectively. Starting with the larger tube I drilled two pilot holes 16mm apart (for P4, EM or OO would be closer) and then slowly openned the holes up to 6mm in 1mm stages. The larger tube was then stuck on to a base plate made of two pieces of 60thou plasticard which gives a base almost 3mm thick. This base blade was then drilled through the same 6mm holes. At the same time I drilled some 3mm mounting holes in the base plate (only done on the front one in the picture). The unit connects up to the point blades via lengths of 16th inch tube which have a length of .8mm brass wire fed through them. The wire gets soldered to the point blade and the adjustment in height can be managed by moving the wire up and down in the tube. I drilled the holes in the smaller of the two plastruct tubes 1.5mm and then openned them out to be a force fit for the 16th tube. The brass tube is around 40mm long and is pushed through the smaller section plastruct once it is slid inside the larger tube. For my depth of base board and underlay I ended up with 11mm of tube protruding above the base. It is worth remembering at this stage to put a broach into the end of the brass tube to remove the burr from where it has been cut, this makes pushing the wire through later a lot easier. To make sure the tube doesn't move I mixed up some aruldite and pushed it into the smaller of the two plastruct tubes and around the brass tube. This should secure things but also avoids the risk of sticking the whole thing up solid which I thought might happen if I tried applying superglue from the outside. Finally I stuck and shaped an operating wire connection by laminating three little bits of 60thou together and sticking them into the inside of the sliding section of tube. This is drilled with a .8mm hole which will have the operating wire threaded through it. A little bit of tidying up with some sandpaper and we have a pair of complete TOUs ready for installation. The holder for the servo is even simpler, base plate of two 40mm square pieces of 60thou and then 'walls' of 60thou 12mm high cut to go around the servo. I drilled these walls with a pair of 2mm holes which allow the servo to be securely fastened by simply threading a short length of 2mm rod through the mounting holes on the servo case. The result is a unit which I can screw to the baseboard but from which the servo can be removed without too much problem. These servos are TowerPro SG-50s which cost about 3 pounds each depending on where you buy them. I got mine from 'Giantcod.co.uk'. So with these components ready to mount it is time to fasten them to the base board. David

Chaldron wagon couplings usually consisted of a forked ended bar fitted with a pin and a chain. The chain was often permamently attached to one end of a wagon only to keep all of the wagons the same way round, so the brakes were always on the same side. There were, of course, exceptions, some were fitted with a crude hook. This of course makes life difficult if you use 3 links and still want an authentic looking useable coupling. The kit comes with cast scale size bars, which gave me an idea... My solution is to make my own bars from .040" x .010" brass strip, folded back on itself and with a pin made from .45mm wire. The pin is left overlength and bent slightly back; This one is the prototype and still needs cleaning up. I need to get some round link chain, I intend using 2 round links finished with a normal oval link. On the wagon; (One link in place to show how it will be fitted.) I now need to make some more to properly test the idea. Comments welcome!

Hello. Hopefully I haven't bitten off more than I can chew, and I'm not entirely sure that a blog is the best place to share this information, but I'm going to give it a go. I've been reading old issues of Rail Enthusiast magazine and was jotting down information which I thought was of interest to me and so I considered sharing it. This I will attempt to do in six tables, one for each topic that was of interest to me. These are: 1. Firsts and Lasts, i.e. the first or last time that something happened. Examples include the introduction or withdrawal of stock, and the opening and closing of stations, depots or routes. 2. Prototypes. The original intention was to focus on the prototype diesel and electric locomotives that existed prior to the Modernisation Plan but it has been extended to include prototypes on an ongoing basis as well as some of the less successful Modernisation Plan classes. I've also included some instances where individual class members were modified, e.g. 37292 and 47901. 3. Liveries. The modifications to the corporate BR blue (or green) plus the one-off liveries that in some cases only lasted until the next Works visit. 4. Formations. The intention was to record examples of prototypically short or 'unusual' formations that would be useful to modellers, although this has extended to some longer formations, particularly for HSTs. 5. Images. A graphical miscellaneous bucket. Pictures that I thought others might be interested in. 6. Miscellanea. The snippets of information, some of which may be useful, some of which may bring a wry smile to those that know or knew better. As far as I know, I am not trampling on any toes by doing this, but if I am duplicating work that others have done, then please say, so that I might go do something else instead. My sources of information are the old Rail Enthusiast and RAIL magazines from the 1980s and 1990s. As far as I know, I am OK with respect to copyright as I am not duplicating vast tracts of information. Please note that this is NOT intended to be a comprehensive index of British Railways activity or a comprehensive index of Rail Enthusiast magazine. It is what interested me and what I thought might interest others. To date I have reached the end of 1982, so the first 18 months or so of the magazines. The intention is that I will post updates when I reach the end of each year, but I don't know when that will be. It'll happen when it happens. If anyone finds this useful, then it will have served its purpose.

Today I did a job that I should of done in the UK a year or more ago. My rolling road bearings were set to far apart. They worked fine except if the loco had brake gear or sanding pipes, then everything snarled up because the wheels sat to low. After taking one apart I found that if I redrilled the new holes at 10mm centres, this gave me 1mm between the rollers. So having drilled the new holes and reassembled the unit. I jury rigged a loco so the I could test before doing other. Bingo it worked brake rigging and all. Now all are done, I can get the 1076 running on it as a final check. It always gives me a feeling of great satisfaction when I do a job that I have been putting off and dreading for ages. Smiles all round, a good day.

Not much of an update, but I've had a go at modifying the original smokebox door by using pastic strip for the straps. It doesn't look too bad but the numberplate (modelmasters) is probably going to go - the brass colour looks odd. I may try and paint it over in white, perhaps, but it'll have to wait for another evening. The smokebox door dart is a new addition - a 4mm brass one from the Markits range. Literally just removed the moulded one and fitted the new one. Gunmetal silver used on the straps and door dart as the locomotive in question had these polished, not painted, in the period I'm portraying. I'm intending to portray it as it was in late 1949, namely as British Railways 62768, with full LNWR style mixed traffic lining out but with the early lettered branding as opposed the cycling lion on the tender. Next jobs to do are rivets, steps, buffers, front coupling, painting, lining out, weathering and sealing...! So it's coming along, slowly but surely. Until next time!

Hello Ever since I posted in a past blog entry about a possible new gearbox I have been working on I have had quite a few people asking me about it as they are very interested which gave me the incentive to get it done. The idea I had was to get one together and take it to the St Albans show (which I really enjoyed btw) so people could see it finished. Unfortunately things didnt work out how I would have liked so I didnt get round to finishing it...UNTIL TODAY! OK, for those of you who dont know this is my first attempt at making a 'universal' gearbox that I could use on different engines, it came about as I was drawing up an engine for chassis for etching and I thought to myself "I could make this removeable and use it on other engines". It comprises of an etched frame, the new motor from the 2mmSA shop (3-257), and gears from my favorite gear supplier Mikroantriebe (https://www.shop.kkpmo.com/). Amazingly I have managed to get an impressive 128:1 ratio which would suit a shunting engine a treat! The drawing below shows the dimensions of the gearbox... It uses all plastic gears so it is a bit on the quiet side, and if put together well it runs very smoothly (and slowly!). The motor is double ended so there is also the possibility of fitting a flywheel if I wanted to(and if there is room!). Here are a couple of photos of my first attempt at building one... Of course there is a down side, because of the gears I used to get the ratio it unfortunately means the wheel axle can only be upto 1.5mm in diameter which therefore means I will have to use a solid wheel axle and insulate the wheels with a plastic bush but I feel thats a small price to pay for something like this. Its my first attempt so I would love to hear any thoughts or comments on this... Missy

By way of a follow-on from http://www.rmweb.co....great-northern/, here's the finished article, ready for delivery next week. Very little to say about this one really, so I'll let the pair of images below do the talking. EDIT: so that's how the "Blog it" button deals with things..... Experiment kinda worked.... Cheers, Source: Tim's weathering workbench (mostly steam)

I received a parcel last week from a very kind member of the China Clay Branchlines Yahoo Group that contained a number of P4 track items. One package in the parcel contained slide chairs which are something I've been lacking. This spurred me on to try and complete the track to a point where I can start installing the wiring. Bringing the layout down into the living room over the weekend enabled me to work on a couple of bits that were a little difficult to get to where I normally have the layout erected. And here it is ........

Although baseboard construction for Nowhere has been progressing rapidly, I've managed some progress on the embankment, bridge and station yard modules for Loose Ends. The basic form of the bridge module is now complete with the bridge itself, the river banks and the stone piers in place. Though I've yet to consider the river water or the backscene, and a central pier is yet to be built, possibly with Brunellian cylindrical supports. I'm still experimenting with different ways of painting the stonework to try to represent something like Bath or Cotswold stone. I'm not there yet, but its much closer than my first attempts. Meanwhile, the track components have arrived and I've started laying track on the embankment and bridge. At this point, I have to reveal a hitherto closely guarded secret about Loose Ends. It is to have GWR mixed gauge track so that I can run both narrow and broad gauge stock. At the moment, the latter is limited to a single, almost complete, tilt wagon shown in the photos, but I have several BGS kits sitting at the end of the bench awaiting my attention. In line with my intention to use Loose Ends as a way of experimenting with different modelling techniques, I am trying two different methods of track construction. The rail is BGS bridge rail and is being laid on timber baulks on the embankment and copper clad on the bridge and into the station yard. On the timber baulks, the rail is soldered to brass pins which pass through the baulks. So far, this method seems a bit more fiddly, though this is probably made worse by the need to level the baulk surface by sanding and with packing pieces because the surface of the underlying cork is aomewhat undulating Bearing in mind that Loose Ends is intended to sit on a shelf near eye level and that one of its purposes is to give me somewhere to photograph stock, I'm hoping that the nature of the track will only be apparent when viewed from above. It should be quite possible to photograph my Edwardian and later stock from a lower angle without it being apparent that they are sitting on track that should have been lifted at least 10-12 years earlier. If not, then we'll just have to invent a fiction that the broad gauge survived a little longer in this alternative universe There will be very little pointwork and all of it will be on modules that could be removed from the layout, leaving a simple traverser at each end. Standard gauge EM stock should therefore run happily on the P4 gauge rails as they will not have any flangeway gaps to deal with. By the way, I'm surprised that no one has yet managed to identify the prototype for the bridge cattle creep on the embankment section. My wife (who knows her architecture) recognised it straight away!

Now that I've taken the plunge and decided to unveil what I optimistically (perhaps laughingly) call my layouts, it's time to begin a description of progress on the collection of boxfiles that will be Loose Ends. Experience of RMweb suggests that whenever anyone starts a layout thread or blog without a track plan, someone will request one, so here it is: Whilst it's a bit rough, it is the only plan I have No Templot for this one as it is just a straight section of two track main line. It was sketched on a scrap of paper in a hospital waiting room and, hopefully, will give some idea of what I intend to build. Starting from the left, the boxfile modules are a cutting (perhaps with tunnel entrance), an embankment, a girder bridge over a river, a station yard and a station. The yard and station will probably expand to include one or two more modules depending on how adventurous the track plan becomes. Not shown on the sketch are possible fiddle yards or traversers at each end (the Loose Ends of the name, I suppose, whereas the Station, I think, will be called Loose End). Work on the embankment, bridge and first part of the yard has progressed slowly over the last couple of months, mostly as something to do while paint was drying or waiting for components for one of my workbench projects. I'll describe the embankment module below, but first it's probably worth showing how I am using the boxfiles. This will probably get me thrown out of the boxfile fraternity before I've even joined. Not only is the Loose Ends trackbed on, rather than in, the boxfiles, but I am also opening out the front part and folding the lid underneath to give a slightly larger footprint. So, to module 2, the Embankment. This is loosely based on a specific prototype location and includes a small underbridge built for farm access in a style that matches other bridges and tunnel entrances on this part of the line. I wonder if anyone recognises it? The basic form of the embankment was constructed from 5mm foam board. A 3mm cork track base was added on the top, cut from scraps left over from Camerton. Eventually, I hope, the gaps will disappear beneath the ballast. I had to do it this way as all the local DIY outlets seem to have given up on the cork tiles I used before. Since then, though, I've found that C&L supply rolls of 3mm sheet and now have a supply ready for further modules. The sides of the embankment have been covered in hanging basket liner, and the base of a farm track under the line and between two fields has been built up using foam board and air-drying clay. I've started trimming the 'grass' and tweezing out all the bits of plastic material and string ready for my first serious attempt at vegetation. I have supplies of various materials, crumbly green foam, static grass, tufts etc. Now all I need to do is to go back and re-read all those accounts of how to do it, both here and on the old RMweb, then to summon up the courage to make a start...