Leaderboard

Have been busy with the grass machine, didn't take long actually but has made a huge difference and is making this end of the world seem pretty much finished. There is still a fair amount detailing to do but have made a start with weeds and you can just see the flags waiting to be used by the control point - need to find a suitable figure for here. Did get a bit carried away and made a shell hole which I now need to fill with rubbish. Altogether pretty pleased with the progress and will soon be able to start work on the next board along.

It was only when I looked at the photograph of "City of Truro", which I took yesterday, that I noticed that the nameplate was missing! About half of my track is in tunnel, so there was an evens chance that it had dropped off in the tunnel. Fortunately, I have a 'search and rescue' procedure. Some time ago, I became interested in the idea of shooting video from the footplates of my model locomotive. I found that there was a miniature video camera, popular with aircraft RC enthusisats, which was both very small and gave good quality results, recording HD video onto a micro-SD card.. The camera I bought is known as an '808 #11' and it is packaged within a car key-fob, as a rather dodgy-looking spy-cam. There is now a slightly larger, but conventionally packaged version, called the 'Mobius Actioncam'. You can read loads of information about all these cameras at: http://www.chucklohr.com/808/index.shtml In addition to having fun running the camera around my layout, I also mounted it on a wagon, together with a small LED torch, so that I could view inside the tunnels on my railway. I was surprised to see several bit of debris, fallen off passing trains, and was able to recover these through the various hand-holes that I provided in the baseboard. The small torch lights the track ahead and reveals any debris, as shown below: While on the subject of video, and since there are very few moving trains on these pages, here is a tiny movie that I call, with great originality, "Arrival of a Train". It shows my Stella-class 2-4-0, rebuilt from a Mainline Dean Goods, arriving at my station with a local train of four-wheelers. An original Mainline Dean Goods is waiting in the passing loop. (sorry it's so small - I was keeping within the 1MB limit) Mike

I can't believe it's so long since my last update, an unfortunate reflection of how busy I've been of late. My missus has been labouring under the misapprehension that DIY and household chores somehow have priority over serious model railway business. She was helping me clean out the loft the other day. All dusty and covered in cobwebs, but she's good to the kids. Actually, she's not been very well lately, she's even had to give up her coal round... The new Deltic videos, filmed at a friend's 7mm garden railway seem to have gone down well, clocking up nearly 1500 hits in a month. Thanks very much Dave for the help. We had so much fun on the day that I forgot to record the various departure sequences and only two of the four were captured. The Heljan model is on the back-burner for a while now but I will get around to putting another big speaker in the free space inside the body. The loco was supposed to have made a public appearance at Newark until a certain Yorkshireman managed to corrupt all the CV's and disable the sound before the show even opened! It seemed to go down well at Peterborough though. I always know from the smiles when I've got it right. Out in the field, just two recording sessions to speak of. The first was undertaken in the 'Garden of England' at the excellent Spa valley Railway (Tunbridge Wells, Kent; sadly on the other side of the M25 hell-hole from me). The session was supposed to have included the Thumper but its turbo expired the week before so in the end it was just 31206. The Thumper is likely to be in the spring now. It was a real pleasure to spend the day on the 31. As a youth living on the Birmingham-Norwich route, 31's featured heavily in my haulage book (just had a quick count-up, over 60 different locos, happy days). This one sounded excellent and pretty much everything was in full working order including both sets of horns. The crew were great and gave me everything I needed. I had plenty of time to set up and tied a boom-mounted mic about a metre from the exhaust (see the photo), which yielded some very clean engine sounds. I also managed to capture various sounds that I missed in my first 31 session when I was just starting out (exhausters, brake applications, BIS etc). The sound project has had an intermediate upgrade (various new auxiliary sounds and enhancements but still with the original engine sounds). The new engine sounds will be incorporated asap so I suppose I'd better start looking for a Hornby loco to ready for a video. Public thanks go to the loco owner, the crew and the railway. As well as the Thumper and 31 the Spa Valley have also got a couple of 33's and the 37 which I recorded in 2011 (37153, now looking superb in Inter-City livery). Well worth a visit if you're down that way. Oh, and they have some of those old-fashioned trains too :-) On the way down to Kent I dropped in to see Richard Armstrong of 'The Armstrong Powerhouse' and have a play on his Rail Simulator set-up (big screen, simulated loco control panel that sits on your lap, sub-woofer, the full monty). Great fun and very interesting to compare and contrast his railway sound editing environment and business with mine. The final amusing anecdote in Kent came after the recording session when we were all starving hungry and ready to eat. I went back to my hotel room (right next door to the railway) to drop my gear off. Walking back down the corridor I was horrified to find a long trail of dirty black footprints leading all the way to my room. Oops! Cue big tip and apology to the cleaner next morning. The most recent recording session was with a Plasser 08-16 tamper which came about as an indirect result of Jonathan Buckie's superb kit. My helper on the day was exemplary, a real authority on the subject and I suspect this won't be the last time we work together. Recording and editing this has been really enjoyable as it's so different to everything that's gone before. They are incredible pieces of kit and very interesting technically. I doubt whether I could have made the project work so well with a v3.5 chip but the v4 is so flexible it has been quite straightforward to make the necessary adaptations from normal loco operation. The project is almost finished, just final testing really now. Jonathan is trying to get a model ready with fitted sound for Warley. I suspect he may shift many more kits than he anticipated, and good luck to him. My 03, 33 & 60 are now in the very capable hands of Lord & Butler for weathering. When I get them back I'll try and get a video done of the 60, and the 33 to demonstrate the all-new engine sounds (recorded from 33109 at the ELR). The 03 will be a while longer as the project is in need of major work to bring it up to current standards. The (very) slow boat from China has finally docked with Charlie's 144's on board. Part of last month was spent recording new beepers, brake applications and a handful of other sounds to enhance things. I also managed to capture a generic Northern Rail on-board announcement which has been included. Now I have had a production model to play with the project has been tweaked to suit the mechanism and the finishing touches have been applied. Many locos and units have distinctive sound features that immediately identify them and you just have to get right. For the 14X units it's the ear-splitting flange squeal that results from the long wheelbase, two-axle design. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. As with the original version, you can squeal, creak and groan to a standstill and the sound will pick up again (slowly at first) when you set off. Finally, the next recording session is shaping up nicely so perhaps more on that next time...

Very dull and wet today so a perfect day for building duckboards - but how. Firstly, what out of? Plastic micro strip would be great but could turn out pretty expensive as each board needs 30cm of material. Brass no go for same reason. Card cheap but too bendy so it had to be wood really. Guess it is the obvious choice for something made of wood. Now, how? I first thought about making up a jig but the chances of getting bits glued in would be very high and if had to wait for glue to dry each time before removing from jig it would take forever. Then I hit on a cunning plan. I drew up a template in PhotoShop, duplicated it a few times and printed a load out on a sheet of A4. A bit of double sided tape was then stuck over and the cross pieces laid on then the length ways bits glued on. Now, here is a little known fact about British duckboards - they come in two sizes, one with the length ways pieces widely spaced and then the other with the long bits placed to fit inside the first one to interlock - clever eh? Having worked out how to do it I found some sheet that I had hanging around which I though was balsa but turned out to be basswood. After several failed attempts to cut a long strip 1.7mm wide with a balsa stripper I had another brainwave. I cut a strip off the end 10.5mm wide and was then able to cut the little strips (all the same length), by pushing the piece into the stripper - far easier and remarkably I still have all my fingers. After peeling a few off and staining them and my fingers separately yet another idea struck me and I stained the remaining ones while conveniently on the sheet. This had the added advantage of loosening the sticky tape so they came off far more easily. here they are ready to go Here they are in the trench. Not the corrugated iron placed to disguise the baseboard joint. And one outside the new dug out. When I come to make more for the wagon loads I will get some proper balsa as will be easier to cut or even ready cut strips.

Hi, Progress has been a bit slow over the past month or so as Heworth made an appearance at our clubs open weekend (26/27 October). This was only the second time the layout had been run with the basic scenics added and for some of our club members it was the first time they had seen anything but track on bare boards. There were several positive comments about how we had captured the 'winter' look!!!! On the Saturday it was just a free for all, but on the Sunday we each took turns running either the Up or Down fiddle yard lines as we would at a show. This was done to make sure everybody was comfortable and up to speed with how the layout operated. On the whole everybody managed very well, but we need to do something to help the operators receive trains back into their side of the fiddle yard, as they are generally sat at the exit of the Fiddle Yard some 20' away. It may work better to sit the operators at the entrance to their side of the fiddle yard, but this is something we can work on. Here is a brief video from the weekend - Since the open weekend, one of our members has really started getting to grips with the bridge which is the transition between the on / off scene sidings and the dis-mantled bridge over the main running lines, the majority of which is being scratch built from plasticard. I must confess that on the last two occasions I have failed to get any pictures of the work so far, but it is looking very good. Some work has been done on the Fiddle Yard 'kick-back' sidings, which having been laid over a year or so ago, had yet to be wired up and have point motors fitted. There's also been some work done researching the typical height and spacing for the catenary masts which we have decided in our case would be around 36mm (18 scale feet) above the rail head. The masts themselves are not going to be hard mounted to the boards and will be attached magnetically, which will give us the flexibility to run the layout as either an electrified or non-electrified line. Here are a couple of pics of a mast against a Dapol 86. Cheers, Mark.

In the archives of the Northall Gazette I found a nice description of the cottage and the warehouse behind it. And some pictures of this part of the layout. View from the dockside. Birdseye view Farnshawe Ltd. This picture is made before I did some more work on the roads. I also decided to create a ‘NO ENTRY’ sign for the alley. The background is also still the try-out. I had to find out first some more information about how to place this traffic sign. With the help from Jules ( see his Mayshill layout) and the internet I found the information I needed. When the road along the dock is finished I also will adjust the alley and the dock road. Hope this gives you an idea about the eastern part of Northall Dock. Regards, Job

Some 40 odd years ago, when I was lad, I used to enjoy playing with my model railway on the lounge carpet floor. This pleased my father, but annoyed my mum who got fed up doing a hop, skip and jump over the track and rolling stock just so she could sit down on the settee. Sadly at that time, being that tender age I didn't appreciate my dad's efforts in buying and producing a running model railway, albeit I could only have it out on my school holidays. But looking back I should have paid more attention to what dad had achieved on my behalf. Unfortunately once entering my teens the model railway plummeted to the bottom of my spare time activities list.......the model railway lay dormant for a good many years. But more recently things dramatically changed on my job front, the new mundane job left me plenty of time to channel my thoughts elsewhere in just trying to keep my mind active and relieve the boredom! It was a wet and windy May afternoon last year, when my partner and I decided to pay a visit to the Hornby visitor centre at Margate. After much reminiscing that day, this was quickly followed up with trips on the Mid Hants Railway "Watercress Line" , Kent & East Sussex Railway and a visit to the National Railway Museum in York and you've guessed it..............I've caught the railway bug! Possibly it's an age thing or just big boys' toys, but like many things in life you don't know what you've missed until it's gone..... thankfully enthusiasts have kept the steam dream alive and running, so it's time to catch up on what I missed the first time round. Now for the loft to sort out the Hornby Dublo 3 rail!

Well, I've managed a few hours here and there in my evenings this week and this is how the Ratio suburban carriage is shaping up.... The eagle eyed will see that I've replaced the Ratio bogies with Gresleys. Let me explain.... Basically, I found a really nice clear image in George Dow's Great Central Album of a rake of GC suburban stock which shows the bogies very well. They are (were) quite hefty, slab sided things. The Midland ones supplied in the Ratio kit, in contrast, are light and spidery. The closest things I have to the GC design are a pair of Coopercraft/ Mailcoach Gresley bogies (about the only good part of the 'Coronation' beavertail observation car I attempted a few years ago). They roll exceptionally well, better even than some of my RTR stock. So last night I switched them over. I kept the Ratio bolsters and couplings, and used wood screws to fix the bogies to the chassis, by means of a 2mm hole through the bolster and a 1.2mm hole through the floor of the carriage (hidden, of course, under my new interior). Result? A very well-riding suburban carriage. Next steps? Adding plastic sheet and strip to the Gresley bogies to make them closer to the GC examples. I've also gone and ordered 4 more pairs of same from the Coopercraft website, a steal at £3/pair, to fit to my other Ratio stock as I re-work it. ~~~ Also, the 1880s express moves forwards a little as the Hornby 4-wheelers arrive.... I found out my old Ratio GWR 4-wheelers too... two of them are in quite good serviceable condition, so they'll be part of the express. The third is broken quite badly so i reckon I'll keep it in hand as a grounded coach when I finally get around to building a layout. My plans for these five Hornby carriages are shaping up as follows: two will be converted to full brakes whilst the other three will be merged into two longer six-wheeled vehicles. This will give me a rake of 6 carriages... Ah yes, the loco. My first attempt at a conversion/ hackbash a few years ago. It's spent quite some time on my bookshelf, hidden behind (variously) a Bradshaw's, some Discworld and a couple of Anthony Trollope novels. It looks a little worse for wear, and I'm compiling a list of things to alter on it. I'm thinking of adding new brass splasher detail, spectacle ports, an entire new tender front, new paint job, new lining and decals, separate wire handrails.... it won't be a slavish perfect model of a Stirling Single but it will certainly evoke the 'feel' of one.

A friend of mine recently asked if I could do a group shot of all of my projects together. This is what I came up with. From front to back and left to right we have -LNER class D10 'Director' "Sir Clement Royds"- a resin kit. -LNER class D11 'Improved Director' "Jutland"- a whitemetal kit. -LNER class L1- a resin kit. -LNER class N5- a very heavily hackbased Hornby J83. Though all that can be seen of the J83 is the smokebox! -LNER class J11 'Pom Pom'- a whitemetal kit. -LNER class J11 'Pom Pom'- a hackbashed Airfix 4F. -LNER class C5 'Jersey Lily' "King Edward VII"- a very heavily hackbashed Hornby B12. Some small alterations planned. -LNER Class D6- a hackbashed Ratio Midland Johnson kit. Complete rebuild/ renewal planned for next year. -GCR brake third- a hackbashed Mainline LMS carriage. -GCR all first- a hackbashed Mainline LMS carriage. It's really the sort of thing that would look so much nicer as a shed scene or something- but sadly I've neither the time to build one at the moment, nor the space to keep it...