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Hello again. My modelling mojo has returned once again. I think its down to a combination of things, shows, steam railways, and quiet weekends have all helped. Using this new apparent enthusiasm I have once again turned my attention to the never ending point rodding for the layout. Its been something that has slowed progress on the layout to an almost standstill. Below is the next installment in the long running saga of Highcleres point rodding, some of you might have already seen some of these elsewhere on RMWeb... I took another approach this time. A section of rodding roughly 2ft in length is 4 rods wide and I didnt really fancy the idea of individually soldering 5 rodding stools every scale 6ft or so. This meant a rethink to try and speed things up a little so above was the beginnings of a different approach, a 0.3mm thick length of Brass which has 0.5mm wide x 0.7mm deep slots with a 0.7mm pitch milled into it. This Brass 'comb' was them cut up into sections which could hold 4 rods, which in turn was soldered to a short length of 2mmSA PCB sleepering. For cosmetic purposes (is anyone really going to ever see them for real?) I then soldered 2 etched stools to each end. The point rodding (0.4mm square stuff from MSE) was then easily slotted into place and the whole thing was held together with a little solder. Care was taken not to hold the soldering iron in place for too long so to unsolder everything (it happened a couple of times which was a pain). Ok, so not the best quality photos (taken with my phone) but this is the impression the point rodding gives. This particular section still needs to be painted then stuck into place properly (its resting on top in the piccies). To me, this is a mini milestone as producing rodding using this method has made it so much easier, so much so that the rest of it doesnt look anywhere near as daunting to me. Sadly though I didnt produce enough of the bits so it will be back to the beginning soon to produce some more. I hope it looks alright and is worth all the effort? Missy

A brief update, which I will add to in the week when I get chance, Victoria Bridge is coming on in leaps and bounds ready for the Cradley Heath show on the 19th October.. a quick peek through the dark door of my shed reveals a little slice of summer, neatly picture framed! Next week, some technical trouble shooting and track cleaning, removing scenic bits from where they hadnt ought to be!

Hello Its been a while, I think its time for an update... 1. Single line token apparatus. Its been on my mind for a while now that I would like to see some form of single line apparatus on Highclere and thanks to Andy plus a visit to Didcot I managed to get enough info to make some. Armed with this I made a start at the recent Oxford show and finished them off today, ready for planting on the layout at sometime. Ok, so close up they look a little tatty but when you will see them on the layout they will look alright. Oh, and if anyone is interested on how I made the mesh, see below... 2. John Grey Trestrol. This didnt go exactly to plan. I fancied doing a wagon kit and this one seemed like a good idea at the time. The problem is that the kit isnt exactly the best available and after an attempt to make it look slightly better I ended up with a wagon that was pretty much 19mm wide. Because of this, the kit has now gone into 'deep storage' and its been put down to experience. 3. 2mmSA Lowmac. Following onto the Trestrol, plus the fact I had to find something to do at the recent Swindon show my attention turned to the 2mm Scale Association NE Lowmac wagon. The intention for this will ultimately be a wagon to display some of my narrow gauge stock so it will end up with a short piece of NG track. Its not the easiest kit to build, the main problem with it is the etched overlays for the sides do not have enough clearance added to clear the cross braces which makes soldering them in place a bit of a pain. This wagon has now been shot blasted and is awaiting painting. 4. Foden Lorry. The first of my 'virtual' modelling goes to my Foden lorry. As some of you might be aware I have had problems getting this printed via Shapeways and now is with Rabs of this forum who is going to have a go at printing it for me. I am looking forward to seeing the results of this. 5. Type L Container. This has come about from a discussion with some 2mm guys at the recent N gauge show where I found out the containers for N Brass' conflat wagon dont exist. Armed with this and a kit for myself I thought it would make sense to model the container for printing. This will be going for a test print with Shapeways soon and fingers crossed I can get something printed! 6. Morris Type J Van. After being persuaded by a certain 2mm member at a car show earlier this year (where there was one) to try and make a 2mm version of this van. To start with I thought 'this should be relatively easy' but its proven to be anything but. The whole van is full of compound curves which has made modelling it a bit tricky. Currently the model has stalled until I figure out how to finish off a couple of bits on the body. 7. Allchin Traction Engine. Finally this is a somewhat ambition project for myself, especially trying to work out how to do the fiddly bits on top keeping the detail yet making it 3D printing friendly. The bulk of the superstructure is done though... It originally started off as a means to produce some traction engine wheels but it has gone slightly beyond that now. I do have a few other projects on the go and Im sure to post about them in the future... Missy

The replacement etches arrived from Mr. Chivers very promptly and a couple of days later I set about a new chassis for the second Hunslet. I will point out for any new readers that the need for a replacement chassis is entirely down to me and my rather over ambitious attempt to compensate the first one. I have not given up completely on this but is going to be put aside in the interests of meeting my now less than a year deadline. I think the recent experience has helped and did various things like putting in longer crank pins on the front axle and making sure these were countersunk first straight away. Result is a really, really quiet and smooth chassis first time with no opening out of the coupling rods or any other such tricks. Here it is in my slightly makeshift but very effective gig. And in quite a brave move sprayed even before testing with the wheels but with some bits where future soldering is required masked off; So here we have a super running chassis on the rolling road. I sat there just watching it completely mesmerised for ages! Next jobs are fitting pickups and then valve gear - not sure which I am least looking forward to! Once these two quite unpleasant tasks have been completed I anticipate pretty speedy progress towards completing half of my planed steam roster, then it's sorting out a couple of Baldwins.

The newest project is my last planned locomotive for this year, and is a B4 or 'Immingham' class 4-6-0. This will use bodies from a Hornby B12 and Patriot, and a chassis from the Hornby B12. The chassis is actually the easiest part to do; in hindsight I should perhaps have done this model first, rather than leaving it this late- both my Jersey Lily and B5 use the same chassis but with major modification that were great headaches at the time. With the B4 all that is necessary is to cut down the gap between the bogie and the driving wheels a little, and add a set of Bachmann 'O4' motion. This done I moved onto the bodies. Breaking out my Charles Reddy drawing of the Imminghams and matching it up to the loco bodies, and remembering how I did my Jersey Lily, the B12 body was swiftly reduced to the parts I can use. Basically I cut away the frames below the running plate, including the bufferbeam, and then made a vertical in the boiler just behind the second to last boiler band. When I reached the splashers I stopped, put a vertical cut through the running plate just behind the middle splasher, and then made a small diagonal cut to bring the two together. At a later date I need to cut away the lowered front end of the running plate and bring it up level with the splashers. The Patriot body is similarly cut, though in this instance straight through immediately in front of the firebox. The firebox is noticeably too long but luckily there is a boiler band on it at just the right point. So we use this as a guide and cut the front of the firebox away (it is the front end of it that we shall be using). After this operation you should have the cab end of the Patriot with about 4mm of firebox still moulded on to it; cut this away and you end up with the basis of the cab. Next time I'll be carefully sanding and filing these three components to get a nice joint between them all, and taking a chunk out of the boiler barrel so that I can move the smokebox back by 3mm or so...

So I have been busy with decorating but found time to weather this 8F for a client. It is a DJH kit in EM Stanier tenders accumulated grot along the top edge (where the grease etc from the chimney and the coal from being coaled met.. The locomotive running gear (rods etc did pick up some nasty dirt on top of their grease and oil.. I hope this gives a good impression of what it looked like

The great thing and perhaps the worst is the ability to order up your own aerial photographs from in this case Google Earth to look at the location you have chosen and make sure it meets your requirements. Having identified the potential from train Simulator and confirmed with a couple of trips on the train the next thing was the aerial views. I've actually managed to do some screenshots from the google earth site using paint and included them below You can see the main London-Brighton line on the right had side of the picture with London towards the top. Gatwick is the next station northbound and Three Bridges southbound. At this level of zoom you can just see the main sidings and also where the old sidings ran but which are now roads. My original planning was to use the units running along Gatwick road with the larget warehouses as the backscene. Once the sizings and look of the layout started to come together this became impractical and so I have had to bring some of the larger warehouses forward and adjust some of the positions slightly to create the scene. Just south of here is a road bridge and I'm going to use this as the southen exit . There is a bridge futher north but too far away to be effective. The buildings in the North are part of a Bus depot and I'll hide the return curve behind one of the warehouses. Summersvere woods in the south and the Hedge line after the cement works to the north are then set to frame the cement works and Agggregate yard. The other main section is Burdens years which borders summesvere woods to the south. The picture above zooms in on the northern part of the site, The Cement works are in the north and the site of what looks like an old loading platform just below the hedge line. You can see a lot of cars parked in the north, unbelieveably this appears to be overflow parking from Gatwick, Not sure the owners would have know there car was going to be parked between an aggregate yard and cement Facility for a few weeks. In the Middle of the shot you can see the main aggregate building, Light green and this will form the main part of the Layout and will be subject of its own blog post when its made, The Railheads are interesting as the one which goes up the north side of the aggregates building is heavily obscured by aggregates and right at the entrance totally obscured by the vehcle track. At the bottom of the picture you can see the northern end of Burdens Yard. In the view above I've shown the potential line of the backscene with the buildings I'm going to drag forward to make as very low relief for the backscene. I'm still not sure at this point how the main Aggregates building will look or what to do about the backscene to the north of it. Next post the site visit and some photos. Managed to get a few from the train over the period, never great pictures but here's one from the Main line

T:B : T A Leslie Green style tube station built from a Kingsway card kit M1 The underpass which acts as the station entrance M2 A view of the 4 track station area. shortly behind is the EMU sidings for terminating commuter services B Some Metcalfe shops recreating new development after the war

just a quick photo of the B17 thats in build at the moment! its work in progress needs alot of finishing off yet! another quick photo of work in progress although nearly superglued it to myself tonight! must be more carefull trying to do too much to quickly! another quick photo update started hand rails! more to follow later!