Leaderboard

Stimulated by seeing the layout by Robin Whittle and the Glevum group at Scalefour North, I came home and dusted off the papers, maps, plans and photos built up over 30 years for the time when '75A' would come to life... that time, I have decided, has come! I was impressed by Chris' (??) baseboards. He took the time and trouble to describe to me the construction of the baseboards which he produced. He uses 6mm beech ply in two laminated layers to construct the edges of the board, the inner layer being recessed to take a single 6mm sheet for the trackbed. The resulting box is strengthened by intermediate members but no diagonals. Up to now I have used a geodesic plan based on 9mm plywood, but I have decided to give Chris' method a go for 75A. OK, so what's the plot? Well, Templot, actually. There's no way I could achieve the required diagram without it. Yes, it's a devil of a learning curve and I still only know about 1% of it, but for anything approaching realism, I can't imagine a simpler and more reliable way of planning such a complex track layout. I still think that Martin Wynne studied at Hogwarts! Unfortunately, copyright laws prevent me from showing the Ordnance Survey map (which I bought!!) at 1:2500 which shows the 1956 track plan in enough detail for effective use. I used it in Templot as a background image and am midway through version 3.0. Why version 3? Because I'm still learning! Templot is very flexible and you can go back and revise, correct and amend and that's what I've done. The templates are still far from perfect but they will be refined over time. I have attached the current track plan from Templot to show the extent of the layout. The baseboards (as currently envisaged) are shown in red outline. I say "currently envisaged" as these are very irregular shaped boards and joining them together is an important consideration for e.g. exhibitions. The location of track, point motors etc will have a dependency that results in the final shape. Not being a carpenter my results won't be nearly as neat as Chris'. As with Barrow Road, I hope to have the first two boards in place very soon and these (the East sidings) can provide some running without the other boards being finished. I have plenty of photos of 75A as it was. The problem is that I only have one of my own (I don't own the copyright for the others) and it isn't very good, having been taken in the snows of January 1963. However, to conclude this introductory, I attach photos of the first board top cut out from 6mm Far Eastern ply this weekend. The templates were only stuck on temporarily to determine the shape of the board and will be soaked off shortly. Using the templates to map out the shape of the board is better, I find, that relying on the background shapes that you can add to Templot. (btw I don't have any commercial connection to 85A!) Wiring? Not on 75A. It is being built not only as my own layout but also to demonstrate Acc+Ess Protocab in action. Visitors will be able to control locos from their own handsets at exhibitions so we hopefully won't be short of 'demonstrators'! Referring to my photo and the plot, the viewing position will be from the curved edge on the south west side of the plan. This is actually a very high roadway (Howard Place) from where the photo was taken looking down on the site. Brighton station was constructed on a shelf cut into the chalk hill and there is a sheer cliff face between the road and the railway. in 4mm this is around 350mm at its highest point so dictates the layout datum height for reasonable viewing. On the other hand, I might omit the cliff altogether! Viewing from the other (i.e. north east) side is less attractive as I plan to build the main line at some time in the future. You can see from the plan that the whole site as modelled is not that huge, and two fiddle yards (one disappearing under a bridge to the left of the layout and the other disappearing under the station canopy ) the overall length is around 30 feet and 6 feet at maximum width. Hopefully this will be an Exhibition Manager's delight to fill that awkward corner! When will it be finished, ready for display? There are very few buildings, except for the engine shed itself and the iconic water tower and three softening tanks that seem to appear in every photo ever taken of 75A! With no wiring and thus no need to insulate any of the points and crossings, a lot of time will be saved compared to my experiences with dc and DCC. There is a considerable quantity of track and some fiendish pointwork (scissors, 3 ways and several irregular slips). I'm planning to be ready to lay the underlay at around the time we have the induction charging mats ready for Acc+Ess Protocab, so that these will be incorporated in the layout, preferably within the underlay itself. I'll keep the forum updated on progress and welcome any comments, criticisms and suggestions!

At long last, the conclusion of the 'I'll get it printed soon..' saga, well, the parcel from Shapeways arrived. The original laser cut MDF bridge will survive as a 'core' but now, 'Victoria' is rendered in much finer resolution as a 3D print, rivets and all! It was printed in 'Frosted Detail' rather than 'Frosted Ultra Detail' to save on cost, it has plenty of detail still legible, with all of the wording showing through rather well in relief. I had to make the side in three segments due to the maximum dimensions of 'FD' and 'FUD' prints, this means a bit of fine tuning can be carried out to line up the freshly printed sides with the existing wooden uprights behind. Some close ups of the central bit: Pardon the dodgy flash photography, which makes the colours go a bit bizarre! In the same order, I tried a Frosted Detail SVR Wheel Chair Carriage, which will be finished off with the roof and ends of a Farish BG conversion that went wrong.. All of the prints you see here are fresh from the box, and still need the fluffy wax print deposits cleaning off.. give me a day or two and you'll see them looking much tidier in primer. The carriage will benefit from some gentle sanding to the sides, which as well as improving and sealing the rough surface, will help to get the 'tumblehome' shape of the sides matching unmodified Farish carriages it will run alongside. At least I have the roof sitting at the right level.

I'm not sure what happened here, these pictures appear ok in the preview, I hope that this upload works ok.

With a little less time pressure, I thought I'd take the time to write a catch-up installment of the account of Grenville's build. We left things with the windscreen frames and most of the front end ironwork fitted but with a remaining question mark over the access panels on the cab sides. To finish off the ends, the lower lamp brackets were sliced off and used as a guide to drill 0.5mm holes. Into these holes were pushed some brackets cut from 5 thou N/S strip… these are probably a lot easier to make than they sound. Then a couple of squares of plastikard were added to represent the parts of the brackets that are flat against the nose. And so to the access panels… after some indecision I decided to bite the bullet and try to improve these. I wasn't too keen on trying Milliput here so instead I filled the Farish grooves with some 10 thou round styrene rod after first scoring the inside of the grooves to expose the plastic. After leaving these for 24 hours to set I scraped and sanded them smooth. New panels were added using 5 thou plastikard sheet using the outline of the original panels as a guide. The result is far less obtrusive than Farish's interpretation but I will probably use 10 thou next time and thin it once dry because there is some bubbling on some of the 5 thou panels. The cab side window frames fitted quickly with very minor fettling of the plastic. Normally I find cutting the glazing (from 10 thou clear sheet) rather a time consuming job but with the frames separated from the body it's pretty straightforward, although the windscreens still took some time and care due to their almost complete lack of straight lines. I test fitted all of the glazing by using an amazing (and environmentally friendly) temporary glue that I discovered. It's called spit and it does an excellent job of holding things in place for long enough to check the fit. Looking at the Farish skirts, I'd say that one side is better than the other. The asymmetric side looks pretty reasonable but things are a bit more suspect on the other side. On this side I drilled and filed away the opening containing the fillers because these are very two dimensional. I also used the styrene rod trick to fill in the panel grooves on either end of the central skirt but left the battery box covers alone. I also fitted the front ends of the skirts that come in the box with the loco. The cab interiors needed some attention. Farish seem to have got the general shape right but they have made the top edge of the control console about 1mm too low so it is not very visible through the windows in the way that is so characteristic of the real thing. I solved this by adding 40 thou plastikard to the top of the Farish moulding and filing to shape. I also added some plastikard to make the face of the secondman's console vertical (which it certainly is in the photos of Greyhound kindly provided by Brian Hanson). The seats are too high and too far forward so I chopped them off and just added a representation of the top of the seat back which is more or less in line with the back edge of the side windows. Finally the drivers console is a bit undersized but rather than scrap the whole thing I extended the rear edge a little towards the crew using some microstrip. The console and rear bulkhead were painted light grey with black for the false floor. Some of the 'controls' were then picked out using a fine tipped black marker. I thought I'd taken some photos of these before I glued them back in but I was wrong. And so to the paint shop… Some will have read most of this sorry tale elsewhere already. After unsuccessfully trying meths and T-Cut to shift the painted on nameplates I eventually resorted to 1200 grit wet or dry on one side. I left the other side alone after figuring out that the etched plates would cover it anyway. The whole body was then given a scrub (using gloves) with dilute Flash and an old toothbrush, followed by a further scrub under the hot tap. The body was then mounted using Blu-Tack on a suitably shaped block of wood for painting. I have rather an aversion to yellow paint due to its poor coverage so I decided to take a short cut with the warning panels. I just masked off the shape using Tamiya tape after checking which shape was correct for Grenville (it had a fairly rounded top with higher corners rather than the variant that rises to a more obvious 'point' under the central headboard bracket). In spite of not actually needing to, I removed the headcode inserts before painting. This was probably a mistake because it damaged the fine beading around the opening on one end and needed some touching up of the yellow. Some yellow painting was of course needed around the new lamp brackets. I was also very keen to avoid filling the fine roof detail with paint so I also masked off the roof panel… I probably won't do this again. The whole lot was then sprayed with Precision BR green (no messing with the colour this time) and I was very pleased with the finish achieved when the tape came off. After 48 hours drying I masked around the roof panels and sprayed Humbrol 27. The first two bits of masking tape came away just fine but then disaster struck. On peeling back the tape from the first body side a whole lot of the green paint came away with it. Because the green had a masked edge it also pulled away some of the edge of the grey paint on the roof panels. You can read all about this over on the painting forum. I decided to try to fix it by some careful sanding to feather the edges of the remaining green paint (which didn't really want to be feathered), brushing in the small damaged areas of grey and then (after drying) masking the roof and ends and respraying the damaged area from directly above. The result was better than I had hoped. You can still see some of the damage if you look hard for it under strong lighting but you would not notice it unless you knew where to look. I think it was a better bet than a full strip down and respray. There was also some matting of the sides from overspray but (after more drying) a rub with a cotton bud improved matters. The photo below shows the side that was repaired. Most of the upper part of the side at this end was showing rail blue before the repair. I really must brush the dust off things before getting the camera out though. The lining was done with a Haff ruling pen. Dealing with the line ends was a bit of a puzzle. On the class 22 and 41 I just drew the line a bit over length and then chopped off the ends by painting over it in green but I was less keen on that approach with more prominent waist level lining. Instead I tried putting a 2mm vertical strip of masking tape lined up on the handrail recess to define the ends. This worked reasonably well but did disturb the pen a little at the ends of the line so I think I might look for another approach in future. The numbers were done with CCT transfers (as used on D604). I must admit that I'm not too happy with these. They seem a bit 'fuzzy' compared to other transfers but they are still the least bad green diesel numbers that I have now that the Woodhead ones have pretty much run out (in comparison, some of the numbers on the Fox sheet are barely legible). I might order some Modelmaster ones now that I've joined the N Gauge Society and see if they are better. The BR crests are from a Woodhead sheet and the OHLE flashes are from Fox. After problems with fogging the varnish on previous builds I avoided using Micro Set on the transfers and stuck to plain water… which left the transfer carrier edges looking very obvious, especially on the numbers which also showed some silvering. Once the transfers were dry the whole thing was sprayed with Tamiya varnish. Given the dodgy appearance of the transfers and the previous problems with paint fragility I opened up on it rather more than usual so the loco is now pretty shiny and will need some careful toning down when it comes to weathering. As expected, avoiding the Micro Set meant that I had no issues with fogging of the varnish. The windscreen frames were cleaned with a fibreglass brush and then sprayed with Halfords primer followed by Precision BR Green. Once dry the paint was carefully scraped away from the window frames, including the inside edges. The side window frames were left completely unpainted. Assembly Most of the reassembly process was (in the immortal words of the Haynes manual) 'the reverse of removal'. The tricky bit was fitting those windscreens. I was in two minds about how best to do this. In the end I tried both ways. Both are pretty darned difficult. The first way is to glue the glazing to the frame before it goes onto the loco. I did this by fitting the glazing 'dry' and then adding spots of canopy glue to fix it in place. Getting the glazing to stay in place was very fiddly this way and I didn't get it positioned quite accurately enough. The result was that the whole assembly was a slightly less than perfect fit onto the hole on the loco body. For the other end I tried the other option - fitting the frames to the body first and then fitting the glazing from behind. This was also very tricky and I needed to trim the glazing a bit further to make it fit so clearly either my test fitting before painting was wrong or else there was enough paint and glue to mess up the fit after assembly. For both ends the frames were fixed in place by running some super glue along the join on the corner pillars. I am intending to tidy this up with green paint but I haven't got round to doing that yet. I also added some spots of Canopy glue from inside the cab to give some support in the middle of the frames. Adding some plastikard cubes to support the centre pillar before painting might have been a better bet but I forgot to do it (this would probably rule out the 'frames first' assembly option too). For the side windows I tried a third way - putting tiny spots of Canopy Glue onto the corners of the frames (off the loco) and then carefully dropping the glazing into position. I think this was a better option and the side windows went in very easily indeed. Handrails were done using Albion Alloys 0.2mm N/S rod as recommended to me in the discussion on part 1 of the build. This looks a lot better than 10 thou N/S wire… although it is surprisingly stiff and a bit tricky to form into a curve. The cab handrails are factory fitted wire jobs so these were carefully scraped clear of paint. Couplings were rather a pain. The quick and easy answer (as I've done on my other Warships) is to leave the front skirts off and glue some DGs to the top of the Farish coupling mount. As I've fitted the front skirts to Grenville I decided to do it properly. Unless I've misunderstood something I can't see a way to have the front skirts on without attacking the bogie mouldings with a knife, so that's what I did. The DGs are soldered to some 15 thou brass strip which is bent to pass below the skirts and super glued to the bottom of the bogie keeper (after scoring both surfaces). The hard part is making this strip so that the coupling sits in the right place in all three planes. I was a bit worried about the strength of the glued joint but after trying unsuccessfully to shift one that I wasn't completely happy with I decided that they were probably strong enough. The final job on the night before RailEx was to fit the nameplates… and I managed to mess one of them up when trying to clean up the etch tabs so Grenville appeared at the show with just one nameplate on the public side. I think I was treating them like nickel silver… which they are not. They are stainless steel and a lot harder. I picked up another set of plates at RailEx where Brian Hanson recommended sharp scissors as the best way to separate the nameplates from the etch. Still to do There are a few jobs left. I still have the red route availability dots to add. The main job is weathering. I intend to keep this fairly light - some crud on the skirts and sooty deposits on the upper surfaces. I found a photo of Grenville in November 65 which shows the paintwork in pretty good nick but with a fair bit of road spray on the lower parts of the bodywork. It's always summer on my railways, so I will skip the road spray. I'm pondering the ride height. It does look a bit tall so I don't think that a little bit of lowering would go amiss. I haven't looked to see how feasible it is yet though. Apart from that the only other things missing are some fillers to go in that hole in the skirt - another job that didn't quite get done before Railex. So What? This has been a very experimental build and one which I fully intend to do again because there is plenty of scope for more D800s in my fleet. I am very pleased with the appearance of the new window frames but the fit of the windscreen frames has room for improvement - partly this needs some small adjustments to the curve of the bottom of the etch and partly I think it's a matter of being a bit more bold in filing back the front edges of the corner pillars to allow the frames to fit a little further back into the recess. I'm also intending to try out a 'minimalist' upgrade on Hermes to see what can be achieved in a shorter space of time and without resorting to major paintwork (or put it another way… I don't have any way to replace those ship's crests on the cab sides). As evidence of my lack of forward thinking, the next 'full' upgrade is planned to be on another maroon 'Druid' (picked up brand new for a very reasonable price) which I intend to respray into… blue.

I'd been looking for a suitable industrial building to form a back-drop to my rebuilt scalefour empire and also provide a source of rail traffic. Those with very long memories may remember my attempt to model Mistley maltings (or at least part of it) more years ago than I care to think. I didn't want anything quite that big this time so spent a good few hours on Google searching for 'East Anglia Mill' and similar terms. I end up finding Ebridge Mill near North Walsham. There is an excellent web site at http://www.norfolkmills.co.uk/Watermills/ebridge.html which has some good pictures from the '30s and '40s. The mill buildings had also been visited by several groups of 'Urban Explorers' over the years who had taken many pictures of the mill and some of the derelict details http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/industrial-sites/79782-ebridge-mill-north-walsham-norfolk-feb-2012-a.html. Finally the mill is still standing and had been past by the Google Earth Snoop-mobile. (Search Google maps for 'Ebridge North Walsham'). The mill consists of 3 major buildings, a low section of original watermill built in Flemish bond brick with pantiles, a later built taller mill building in English bond and slates and finally a 1950's extension of silos clad asbestos. In the early 50's the tile roof on the earliest section was replaced with more corrugated asbestos. I've decided to model the building in this condition as I thought for my period (1950-60's) the only way the building might still have been rail served was if it was used as a transhipment point for grain from road to rail. I am imagining that local farms would deliver their grain in small lorries and then some of this grain would be loaded into rail wagons for shipment. Constructions follows the same processes as my previous water tank only this time the 1.5mm MDF I used to engrave the brick on is strengthened by using 3mm MDF to make the structure of the building. I was slightly caught out by just how much engraving there was on the building as I set the laser cutter going during one of my lunchtime visits to Makespace http://makespace.org Unfortunately I then had to mail work to explain I was going to be back 'a few minutes late' as the cutting of the sides took almost exactly an hour! The roof and end are clad in Wills corrugated iron which was a much better approximation to the size of the corrugations on the prototype than their corrugated asbestos. Taking the time to file the bottom edge of the sheet is worth while if tedious. This still needs to be painted on these photographs and I'm trying to work out the best method. It seems to me that the valleys need to be quite a bit darker than the ridges and also full of moss on at least one side! Windows were cut in 1.5mm MDF but I have been able to thin this down to almost 3/4mm by gently rubbing on some fine sandpaper. At the moment the windows look rather 'white' and need toning down about. Bricks have again been painted using Halford's Red Oxide car primer, followed by ModelMates brick joint filler and finally various washes of water colour paint. By the time period I'm modelling the original lucam had been cut back and trying to get the various angles correct when cutting the Wills sheet caused several hours of amusement. I've took the opportunity of a couple of hours in Cambridge yesterday to cut the carcass for the second mill building. Put together the two begin to make quite an impressive, but thankfully not over-powering sight. The window reveals in the carcass are obviously way over-sized as they are designed to fit a rectangular piece of clear sheet. One thing that is becoming really clear to me is that it is so much easier to make a realistic model if you actually start with a prototype rather than 'making something up'. The road side view compares quite well with Google Earth. So, next up I've got to work out how to fit the corrugated clear plastic 'sky-lights', paint the roof and then fit and make all the rain water goods. David

Good evening, Not had a chance to do any modelling since the exhibition of 11 May 2013 so I guess the next best thing is to think, read and draw about it... You may recall that this layout is on the list to be scrapped when we move back to the UK in a couple of months, all being well. Whilst I have had fun making it...and then remaking it, I have to be ruthless in some of my decision making to set the example in our apartment as we have a lot of pruning to be done...plus we have far too many train projects going on so it would be unreasonable for me to bring them all back. Cut to this weekend back in BCN and I just thought I would have one last look at the layout (its on a shelf high up on the wall so needs me to stand on a table to look at it) and whilst pondering whether I should try and keep the station building (as it took so bloomin' long to build) a slightly mischievous thought entered my head What if I just stripped it back to the scenic bit, losing the fiddleyard and rear space behind the backscene which make up the 1100 x 260mm IKEA shelf? Granted, it wouldn't be operational...but it would pack much smaller and it could also serve to be a photo plank for my 2mmFS (purely Scottish ) stuff...which may well expand one day. So, on the morning plane back today, out with the sketchbook to try and see what it would entail...dot dash lines represent the cuts... And then finding an old photo of the layout I guess it would mean just keeping this much... Which I thought with a much smaller footprint, could be bubble wrapped and form part of the stuff to keep and could maybe make it along to a 2mmFS event one day as a diorama should it be of interest. So, with this in mind, I might get the saw out next weekend and see what emerges...

Just starting to re-work some of my weathered stock as well as finally photographing some weathered stock First up a Millhome B5 built by late father this will be reworked this week. Next a Hornby Stanier 2-6-4T - about to be re-wheeled with Alan Gibson wheels and finally a Chivers LNER Pigeon brake - somewhere I have a D&S one of these which needs weathering...

Spent a great day out yesterday at the Chester MRC's event in Blennerville, County Kerry. The group have generously donated their model of the Tralee and Dingle Light Railway to the centre. This will hopefully provide a great boost to the fledgling Irish Railway Society that have recently started up. Some pictures of what is an already well known and highly crafted layout. John Campbell and Neil Ramsay were also in attendance with their fabulous collections of 16mm live steam and rail car locomotives. All hand built to extremely high standards, the locos on show were a real treat to look at. A video of John running one of his superb engines. John is from Cradley Heath and we spent a lot of time talking about Birmingham and the Black Country (I hail from Perry Barr, Birmingham originally). Julie, my wife, was quite captivated by live steam and I was nearly on the point of convincing her what a good investment a garden railway would be. That was until John mentioned costs and her jaw dropped to the floor! Looks like I'll just have to stick with 4mm for a while yet. I think you'll all agree that John's work speaks for itself - they are finely crafted locos of high quality and it was a real privilege to see one of them running. The next few pics are of Neil Ramsay's brilliantly hand crafted 16mm narrow and broad gauge models. Neil must be the only man in the world who runs them on a accurately scaled version of Irish Broad Gauge track in his garden. The railcars have been built from 3mm ply - unbelievable how he has managed to get ply to look like metal! Really skillful workmanship. The Class C Metrovick has directional lights, real smoke exhaust and a working extraction fan - it is battery operated and is correctly gauged to 79mm (5ft 3inch). This last shot is of the Blennerville windmill just outside Tralee. It is a working mill and actually does grind corn for some local bakeries. All in all it was a great day out as I don't get to meet many fellow railway modelers here in Ireland. I'm still working on Julie about the many advantages of live steam - wish me luck!

The usual Sunday morning trip round one of the local Car Boot Sales revealed some interesting bits. Firstly – an old Hornby Sheep Wagon. I believe this is nothing like the prototype, but at a solitary pound, with no broken bits (I have a spare wheelset!) , it will do as a placeholder and something in the right livery to shunt around whilst I am building kits. The books both caught my eye on the same stall (£2 the pair). The H.P White ‘Regional History of the Railways’ book has already thrown up some interesting snippets on a very quick first glance through earlier, and this edition was published in 1964. As well as plenty of text, there are a few interesting pictures, and a lovely pullout Map (in perfect condition, despite the somewhat tatty dust jacket) of the area. Finally, and with a nod to the always thought-provoking Neil Rushby, I picked up ‘Sussex’ by John Burke (1974). This is immaculate, and will hopefully prove enlightening reading whether or not it throws up anything which can be incorporated into the layout. Neil mentioned on his Rushby’s Railways blog a few weeks ago that modellers sometimes struggle to get what is outside the railway boundary as correct as they do inside, and suggested the Country Life volumes from the 50?s as a useful resource. A quick squint on Amazon shows up some interesting potential books for a matter of pence (one on Alfriston and one on Alfriston and the Cuckmere Valley), which may well follow these two onto the shelves. Moving to the layout, it has been a quiet weekend with the wonderful weather allowing plenty of time to get the garden looking good – although I have waved the jigsaw at some plywood. The first of the boards is now cut into three sections, awaiting the cutting of side panels – then we’ll see if the jigsaw idea works… Admin note; I am now also blogging externally at http://cuckmerevalleyrailway.wordpress.com/ . Posts are likely to continue to be identical on here and Wordpress for some time, but as things progress I am likely to add additional images (and possibly off-topic thoughts) to the external blog. Anyone interested is more than welcome to follow, comment or ask questions on either.

Managed some more to my little Well tank. I am pleased with the way it is going. To me it is taking on the character of Beattie's little engine, hopefully you all will agree.. The chassis is almost finished, I just need to add some detail to the marine type big ends and nut detail to the crosshead. I have already added the sand pipes and brake gear. I also had a slight accident with the rear buffer beam. I need to reattatch it, the epoxy glue failed. I made the crankpin nuts from a 12BA nuts rethreaded to 10BA to which a small washer and a piece 2.5mm tube were added, as the slaters top hat bushes where not quite long enough as the coupling rods are outboard of the connecting rods. The nuts I think need to be reduced in height. I also added the front cylinder covers. Which I feel has added to the feel of the loco. I have started to finish off the body now. I was not happy with the smoke box door, so I repositioned that before making the hinge and putting a new dart on as I was unhappy with the original. I also added the handrail which was a bit of fun to do. Got there in the end with it though. The cab steps needed to be removed and made slightly shorter, as they too far forward. I also had to move them more towards the outside of the footplate. As you can see it is a little tight with the rear crankpin. I have made but not fitted yet what I think is the blower valve linkage, on the right hand side just above the handrail. Also have drilled the holes in the cab front plate, for the whistle and injector controls. I am pleased with the progress with the little tank, I had it on the bench before I came to Brazil. But that time I did not really make any progress with it. Whether it was a lack of skill, or a lack of enthusiasm I am not sure. I am hoping once completed it may well give me the inpetus to make a small layout come test track.

It is over 12 months since my last posting on this blog. A quick recap of the project so far is in order. Way back in July 2010, the 2mm Scale Association celebrated its Golden Jubilee with a special Expo in Oxford. Prior to this, a layout building challenge was issued for layouts up to 9.42 square feet to be exhibited at the Expo. I built Freshwater for this challenge. As a change from my normal use of relays to operate points, I decided to try servos for the new layout. I joined Merg to get access to their Servo4 kits. After some teething problems, I managed to get the layout working just in time for the Expo with a temporary control panel with a switch for each point. Although the layout operated nicely all weekend, there had been no time to create any scenery. It was just track on white painted baseboards. I did want to have route selection and a proper control panel, but there was a problem with the servos that I wanted to fix first. On powering up the layout, one or more servos would decide to move rapidly to one extreme or the other, despite being restricted in their movement by the point mechanisms. Sometimes they would draw so much current, the power supply voltage to the PIC controllers would not rise high enough for the PICs to start operating and get the servos under control. I had to resort to switching the power off and on a few times until things sorted themselves out. My last posting on this blog describes the introduction of the Merg CBus layout control bus, the introduction of DCC, and a lot of work on power supplies in an effort to resolve the servo startup problems. The problems persisted and I was beginning to lose interest in the layout. The introduction of a new Merg kit for a servo mounting started me thinking again. I had done everything I could with the electronics - maybe the problem was with how I had mounted the servos. I had them directly driving the point mechanisms which meant they were only using a small segment of their available movement. The new servo mounts are arranged so that the servo can sweep through its entire range while the rod connecting to the point mechanism only moves a few millimeters. It would no longer matter if the servo wanted to move to an extremity on powering up. It could do so quite freely. So, a start was made removing the existing servos and their mounting blocks and fitting the new mounting kits (with 5mm shaved off their overall height to fit within the hinged cover panels). At the same time, I decided to replace the under-board point tiebars I had originally fitted. Although they had worked OK, they did not have any way to adjust the distance between the point blades. The old ones also had a microswitch to change the frog polarity, whereas the new mounting also has microswitches nicely mounted on them. My new under-board tiebars, therefore, did not require microswitches. All this work has now been completed with a couple of weeks to spare before this year's 2mm Scale Association Expo in Wallingford. Unfortunately, the viewing side of the baseboard is pretty much the same as it was in 2010 - ballasted trackwork sitting on plain white baseboards. But, like the duck, calm and serene on the surface but peddling like mad underneath.

Here I have completed the 25t Mod0.3 gear, in brass, next step to make the split axle muffs to carry them, and the wheelsets