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It has been some while - June in fact - since I posted anything about the roundhouse. Since then I have had a closer look at the structure of the roof and realised that I had seriously under estimated the number of roof trusses required for the roof. Looking at an aerial photograph of the shed roof I plotted the 13 trusses and realised their positioning made no sense. This made me have another look at my collection of photographs and I have now calculated that the majority of the trusses are at 7ft 6in centres. This gave me a grand total of 22 trusses for each of the three roof pitches or 66 in total. My first thought was unprintable! Being a glutton for punishment I have plodded on making roof trusses - in between making up an S&D Sentinel kit - and recently achieved the grand total of 22 - time to assemble one of the roof pitches. First stop was to make a suitable assembly jig on a piece of white melamine board and then solder the longditudinal purlins to each truss. Here are some photos of progress:- A batch of 11 trusses Assembling the jig Soldering the purlins Purlins added

Well we have had a good few days whilst a problem is being sorted out at the house. But I expect I will soon be back there everyday. My blog is a bit like the old preverbial bus nothing for ages then two at once. I have completed the back head, which was more work than usual because everything was white metal, it has all been drill out and copper wire added. It looks the part and I am pleased with the result. Not perfect but a good enough representation. The loco Body has had its last few bits and bobs soldered on, and has all been cleaned. It has been given its coat if primer. Will check to see if it needs more prep work tomorrow. I have modified the pony. It is now fixed in two places so does not swing, lots of side play on the wheels and a spring to hold it down and let it rock. It all seems to work and pushes through a peco point. Better forwards than in reverse. So I am looking into that. as we do not want any derailments now do we... The chassis has been striped down and cleaned. All seemed good nothing seemed to fall off whilst cleaning so that is always a bonus. We are now all go for colour now, the tender has been waiting for a while now. I am unsure of the way to go now, what do I mask and what do I do first. I normally do the colour then do the black, but I am tempted to do the black first as there seems to be more of it. If I have not decided when the primer has gone off I supose it is down to where the masking tape lands. Well here is the sum of the parts for the loco. I was actually surprised how many bits it breaks down into.

I’ve been working on the alternative side of the goods depot recently. The sides and roof are now more or less done and I'm preparing to lay the ground and track in front of it. The roof has caused much muttering and swearing. Some time ago I dropped the whole thing on the floor, and had to rebuild much of it. Because of the accident, the roof is now slightly out of true in some places. That's not really visible, but it meant I had to give up on flush-glazing it. Certainly a compromise, but I was getting close to abandoning the whole thing, so decided that I had better just accept it and move on. I like looking down through the glazing to the scene below. Not really what the layout was designed for, but a nice extra bonus. The roof structure gives a nice play of light and shadow inside the depot, which varies greatly with the lighting and time of day. I prefer it when the shadows appear naturally... ...but they can of course be further enhanced by "staged" articifical lighting as above. My struggles with the roof have been a mental barrier, so it's nice to be past that point. I can now get down to things I enjoy more, such as weathering these walls further, and getting the details in place.

I've mentioned in previous posts in my blog, that although I was happy with the basic construction of the station building body shell, I wasn't sure how to best tackle the awning brackets or valance. William Clarke's station buildings have a distinctive valance style, which I wanted to capture in my model. The canopy brackets are also quite ornate, some of his designs had a monogram of the railway incorporated in them. The first thing I needed was a decent photo of the bracket style, ideally a good close up. Thanks to this forum, Tim V sent me a link to photos that he'd taken of Brislington station. One of these is a great close up of one of the brackets Brislington station awning bracket As you can see its quite a complex shape and I still couldn't decide on a good way of making one in 7mm scale, let alone the six that I needed for my station building! Once again the forum came to my rescue! I was contacted by one of our members, crankpin who said he was willing to draw up the bracket in a CAD package and then use a laser cutter to fabricate the brackets from layers of card. I provided him with drawings and dimensions and this is what he came up with! Card components laser cut to make bracket. These 5 layers are then laminated together using PVA glue to form each bracket. Once dry the bracket is trimmed to give the finished bracket shape. Once sprayed with primer its easier to see the fine detail and accuracy that crankpin has acheived. To say I'm pleased with the result would be a huge understatment! There's no way I could have made brackets using traditional methods to any where near this level of accuracy and consistency. That crankpin is a very clever chap! In addition to him making the components for the six brackets, he also drew up and cut from ABS sheet the required valance. Once again i would have found it impossible to capture the planking width and the square shaped holes as accurately as the laser cut has managed. With the Valance and Bracket construction problems resolved, I felt inspired to make a start on the Awning. On the prototype building, the awning was supported by six steel beams that ran right through the building and terminated on the rear wall. As the awning is nearly as big as the building that is attached, I decided to use a similar method to support my model version. Holes were cut in the front of the building and rectangular section brass tube was used to represent the beams. These were glued in position using epoxy resin. The awning was constructed using plastic card and the valance attached using Butanone, which appears to bond the ABS to the plastic card well. Well that's progress so far, I've still got to represent the ribing on the awning roof and make the gutters and downpipes. Once thats done I can start painting and adding all the little details, that will hopefully bring the building to life. Thanks once again To Crankpin for all his skill and work on my project and to Tim V for his drawings and photographs of William Clarke buildings. Until the next thrilling instalment! Best wishes Dave

Sandycock junction ( my previous layout and the layout that formed the basis of many of the photos used in other blog entries ) has been sold off . This is Midd Everford. A combination of the concepts of Evercreech junction and Midford and Midsomer Norton, which form the inspiration for the layout. Before getting into the reasoning behind each of the decisions here are the technical specs for the planned layout in terms of radii: Main line radius scenic 4Ft Minimum Minimum radius scenic 2Ft Minimum non scenic radius 2FT The main concept behind the design is that I wanted a turn table as per Evercreech junction and theoretically the requirement to bank loco's ( thus a minor storage facility attached to the turn table) also as a nod to Evercreech there are two passing loops that can act in theory also as an up and down line marshalling yard. Theoretically in my head, this place was built midway along a non existent spur of the S&D. larger passenger trains would turn and head the other direction here, whilst smaller goods and local passenger would continue on. I like the small goods yard an architecture of Midsomer Norton and the goods shed I hope will be a nod to that. I also like the hilly nature of Midford viaduct and have a soft spot for water, so a tunnel at one end and some terrain elevation and a river are a nod to that area. Overall the layout had to be something with enough shunting interest to keep me entertained when I wanted to play with a waybill style system, however had to have a continuous run as well for those other times that I or other just want to run trains. For those reasons the two run around loops with 3 industries seemed like a good combination. the advantage is that the up and down main can each be run by one person and they can either run a train around or shunt without fowling the other line. The main concept is to build the layout just under eye height. Beneath it I have convinced the minister of war finance and pies that there will be room for her sewing desk and my hobby desk. Onto the bottom of the baseboards 12v LED lighting will be placed to light up both of our work areas. In making efficient use of room in the house the peace is kept as the trains will not encroach into other rooms of the house ( beyond modelling or playing around on the kitchen table, which happens a fair bit) I would like to give a Nod to Iain Rices' book " Railway Modelling - The Realistic Way" which has provided me with much food for throught in the layout planing process. I would also like to give a nod to right track 15 which has taught me much about operations as well as helping me work out what I want. (Standard caveat, I have nothing to do with eather of these companies/people , just a happy buyer) Its been ages since I have blogged thanks to two house moves and a change in career direction, however with Christmas approaching I finally have time to catch up on blogging again. Some interesting projects have been in the works including some weathering, a test track build using a book shelf and 2 DJH white metal kits. Ill put further posts up in time, however here is a taster of the DJH standard 4mt tank. If anyone has any thoughts or comments please place them at the base of the blog. I am interested in any problems that anyone can for-see. Also I would love some suggestions as to where signals should go. The plan is to have fully functional ground and semaphore signals so they will need to be planned before the build starts.

Wanted something to use out doors to take pictures on in proper light so I came up with this. This experiment cost next to nothing. A small piece of 9mm ply found in the garage, some spare Hornby set track, some Pva, ash from BBQ. Spread glue on ply and place in BBQ . Spread ash from BBQ liberally over glue. Remove and leave to dry. the glue has dried and the surplus ash has been knocked off and a wagon run over to check nothing fowls. i dont think it looks too bad for an experiment for next to no cost. with a bit of scatter added and some longer grass and weeds it will be just like the real thing. now we have added some green scatter it looks a whole lot more unloved. just some longer grass and weeds to add to finish I have added some Woodland Scenics ballast in places to see how it looks and to replace patches of ash that did not stick too well. With long grass added now must get the backscene sorted.

After being on the back burner for a while to make way for the completion of D604 and work on the next signal for St Ruth, I finally got round to doing some more on the Ultima Hawksworth BCK that I started in October. The coach is now ready for the paint shop (I just corrected a typo there - 'pain shop' - quite appropriate really). Although the coach is ready, I don't think it will be going near any paint for a little while - it's too flippin' cold and dark out there. For the most part, the coach went together in much the same way as the BG did last year. The main differences arise from the fact that this coach is passenger carrying, which means bigger windows to expose the presence or absence of an interior, seats and loos. As with the BG, I've made the roof removeable and added some nickel silver strips as strengtheners towards the top of the sides. Predictably, this complicates the interior a little but I did at least think ahead and located the centre strip in the area of the division between first and third class. The interiors are built up on a false floor of 30 thou black plastikard. I used the printed partitions from the kit pretty much as intended (barring some alterations to fit around the strengtheners), stuck together with canopy glue. I added some seats by stealing DavidK71's idea of using coloured paper. Naturally, I had to agonise over the colour for a long time before actually starting though. As far as I can tell the Hawksworth seats had a woven pattern - fawn on a red background for non smoking and on a dark blue background for smoking. The pattern for first class was much larger than the third class one. Having said that, other photos show Hawksworth coaches with a completely different material so it seems that there were at least two types, possibly related to the use of either wood or formica for the internal panelling. The third class seats are a dark brown card (from a cheese biscuits box). These are coloured by lightly going over them with felt tips. The pattern is too small to be visible, so I didn't bother. The first class seats use a lighter coloured paper from a buff envelope. These are coloured with felt tips with some attempt to suggest a visible pattern. I think the blue works OK but the red is a bit too light and bright for my liking. The good thing about having a removeable roof is that I can change things if I don't like how they look once the windows and curtains are fitted. The loo tanks have been discussed on DavidK71's thread. Checking photos supports the view that the fillers are very much off centre with respect to the tanks. Actually the fillers seem to be on the roof centre line (presumably because that's the highest point otherwise the water would fall out) so perhaps it's more accurate to say that the tanks are very much off centre. The etches in the kit don't have the filler sufficiently off centre, so I made the tanks from 10 thou plastikard… stuck them on… realised the next day that they were on the wrong side… sliced them off, sanded everything down and did it right the second time. The filler is 1.5mm round section fitted into a hole drilled through the tank and roof. My original plan was to do the loo filler pipes using wire which would be held in holes drilled into the plastic rod used for the filler. I made a start like this but found it was very tricky to get the pipe runs to stay parallel and generally not look messy. I was contemplating how to secure them to the roof ends (as per the prototype) - ideally I wanted to fix them using a sort of mini handrail knob in a drilled hole but I realised that it was going to be tricky to fit these given that there was no room to do any gluing on the underside of the roof because the coach ends were in the way. In the end I went for DavidK71's dodge and used 10 thou styrene rod. This gave a much neater result and I was so impressed that I extended the same approach onto the coach ends. The result looks a little more two dimensional than wire would but it's a darned sight easier to do a neat job and it also means that the two filler pipes can indeed be separate instead of being one continuous semicircle. I dropped the idea of sprung gangways but after agonising again over the Ultima castings I decided to stick with making my own from black plastikard. Once again these fit into holes cut in the end. Since the BCK can run on its own, at the end of or in the middle of a rake, I wanted to have some options regarding gangway position so at the back of the gangway is a brass wire retaining pin that locates into one of two holes drilled in the floor to allow the gangways to be sloped in the clipped back position or held vertical if being coupled in a rake. At the moment my plan is to put together another Ultima Hawksworth so that the two can be painted at the same time. As a first step, the Siphon G has now given up its (incorrect) long spring bogies and has been fitted with a pair of the NPCS variety built from my etches. Here's a photo of it next to the Siphon that I built many years ago with scratchbuilt sideframe overlays onto a 2mm Association bogie frame. Finally a view of my entire Hawksworth fleet... excepting the stuff in the gloat box of course. EDIT: A photo of a Collett roof at Buckfastleigh related to my answer to DavidK71's comment

Andy, hi - work is going well thanks...superbusy so modelling has taken a back seat for now...this fulltime work lark takes some getting used to again after 5 years!

For it's small size Denmark has historically had quite a nice variety of goods rolling stock, I think. But until maybe 10-15 years ago most railway modellers were just running whatever was available from the German RTR market. That's changing now, and we

Thanks Mikkel. I think my picking lame cases came from when I was in my 30s bringing up the kids with no money. It was a case do one like the hall, or not have a loco. It always feels like a luxury when I get to do an unstarted kit. toboldlygo, I think that is the conclusion I have sort of come to. Bit it is always nice to get comfirmation, you are thinking right.

Thanks Pete. Hope the new job is going well for you and that you're enjoying the... err... seasonal... weather. Regards, Andy

The scanning and printing operative was away on a business trip. He's back soon, so perhaps there will be some overlays made by reducing photos of the real thing.

Looking superb Dave! Next time you want to know what brackets are made from, just hang upside down under the canopy and I'll get my camera It does indeed demonstrate what a brilliant resource rmweb is now, if only it could reduce the time I spend building a layout.....

Not a single piece of evergreen strip in sight! Proper engineering all round. I like that we small gauge modellers get our materials in fractions of an inch from Eileen's Emporium, and you get yours by the foot or kilo from B&Q and the engineering shop!

Flush glazed or not, I think the roof looks great! I'm sure the full size building would have sagged here and there, so it's probably perfectly prototypical. I love the way the shadows are created by the beams on the walls, very atmospheric Dave