Leaderboard

In the February issue of BRM, I showed a few photos taken last year when I went over to Australia to talk to the British Railway Modellers of Australia convention. After the main event, we enjoyed a couple of days visiting members layouts around Adelaide. One of the highlights was Tony Phillips model of Nottingham Victoria. This lives in a 40ft by 32ft railway room and is simply awe inspiring when you see it. Reader Keith Dyson from Nottingham e-mailed me to ask if I had any more photos. Well, it's taken me a while to find them, but here are more shots of this amazing project. Looking inside the train shed, still unfinished but looking good. The builder usually finds himself in charge of the MPD during operating sessions. Coal traffic is important and on a layout this large, you need a big loco to handle it. Finally, the man who built all this, Tony Phillips. Thanks again to the British Railway Modellers of Australia. If you are planning a trip "down under", get in touch with them as they are a friendly bunch with some great model railways.

Before I could begin painting the signal box a number of detail components needed to be constructed. The gutter down pipes included in the kit were of course designed to fit a ground level type box so were no longer long enough to reach ground level. The pipes were extended by inserting sections of suitable diameter plastic rod between the moulded down pipe fittings included in the kit and then attached to the building using liquid poly. A name plate was made using 2mm Slaters Plastikard lettering glued to a strip of black 20 thou Plasticard sheeting. I replaced the roof finials with some 4mm scale signal finials which I think look a bit more Great Western. I'm still not convinced they are quite the right shape so I may have another go at making something more representative. A number of pictures of prototype signal boxes show a horseshoe fitted above the signal box door and I fancied including one on my model. In order to fabricate a 7mm scale version I wrapped a section of Micro strip around a paint brush handle then flooded it with liquid poly and allowed it to set overnight. once everything was dry the horse shoe was slid off the paint brush handle, the ends trimmed and then glued in position above the door. The model was painted using enamel paints from both Railmatch and Humbrol, before glazing with the clear sheeting included in the kit. At the moment the roof is still removable to allow me to fit any internal detail. I'm surprised that despite the number of windows very little of the inside of the box is easily visible when positioned on the layout. Even so I'll probably at least include a representation of some levers and assorted gubbins just in case! The next few pictures show the building in it's position on the layout. I still need to construct a walkway to cover the area where the point rodding enters the box and finalise the signal wire runs. I'm not sure what I'm going to tackle next, there are a number of projects on the go! The goods shed still needs finishing and painting, as does the station platform face and surface. I've got the components needed to make the signals work and a load off track ballast to apply. I've also got an interesting etched brass piece of stock that I'm itching to build, so there's plenty still to do! Until next time! Dave

Here is the start of something different. Another 2-6-2 tank. I will do bits on the Ivatt but I need the castings from Laurie who seems to of gone AWOL!!!! Well it is a kit marketed by Ace Models. It is a bit of a mongrel, there are some etches done by William and there are some by Mcgowens, and a couple I am not sure about. Checking against a drawing it seems to be about the right size in all directions. Now it would be unlike me to build it straight out of the box. The rear axle is a radial not a pony so I thought lets try and build a radial axle box. Well it should work OK. I just need to spring it so the wheels stay on the rails. Next was sort out the frames these were soldered together to make sure they are the same and to cut out the hoke for the radial axle. The coupling rods are a pain because they are to have a fork joint but provision in the etching for it. so out with the files and make the half etches. One down one to go. The knuckle hole is a little large for my liking but never mind. As a break from the coupling rods I marked out the compensation side beams. The rear will rock across the body held in position by end pivoted side beams rather than horns and guides, and the front two axles will me on side beams. with the motor on the centre axle. Thats where I am at the moment. I am looking forward to seeing how the radial axle works.

The transfers have now all been added and weathering improved/added to. There were a couple of minor setbacks: the matt varnish on the roof dried a lot glossier than the satin varnish on the sides, and one of the numbers dissolved in the satin varnish (I was probably too rough with the brush!). I have reapplied the missing number and added blue star coupling codes on the ends. I revarnished the roof area using a Testors lacquer, which tends to dissolve any paint layers beneath it if one dwells on the spot too long, leaving one or two spots that need re-weathering. For the first photo my phone camera somehow decided to turn the flash on (I always leave it turned off) so, while it is not a good photo as such, it does cruelly highlight any errors or omissions in my modelling. In this case it has picked out the bright yellow plastic interior of the body, so it looks like I'm going to have to source some cab interiors and paint the insides of the body too. These next shots show it in a better light (no pun intended but it works!!) and I think it has come up looking OK. Looking at the front end, I need to do a little weathering around the doors and seams, flooding a little black wash into them to eliminate the slightly plasticky look.

I am currently gapping the copper clad sleepers so that the two rails are isolated from each other. This leaves a small groove on the upper surface of each sleeper which is non-protoypical. Or is it? I remembered seeing termite proof steel sleepers on the Cape Gauge Chemin de Fer Congo Ocean in the mountains between Brazzaville and Pointe Noire. I was doing some geological fieldwork at the time (in 2013) and we had heard of a rock formation that had to be blasted through when the railway was built in the 1920s. Today this particular section has been bypassed but the locals told us that one train a week still passed along the old line. I took a few photos and while focusing on the steel sleepers I noticed each one had a groove! The rock formation is in the distance on this photo: No doubt a passing train had a piece of substantial metal hanging loose and this must have caused the damage. I plan to fill in the grooves on my track, but it is nice to know that I don't actually have to - the precedent has been established in far away Africa.

The idea was that the little outing in Jan to Mickelover was going to sort out all the problems with the layout so it would just be a case of packing it all up, throwing it in the car and then off to the Nottingham show for the weekend. As you can guess the snag list got longer and I got diverted by things that weren't on the list and life just got in the way a bit. Appologise also for lack of posts as have been problems with internet since my 'seamless' change to a new supplier (is a £125 Sainsbury bribe voucher really worth it?), and having to fight for space in the office as my wife has been working from home a lot. Got a few moments now as everything is all set up and ready as it is ever going to be and waiting for a nice man from British Railway Modeling to come and do some video of the layout for an article. Note above 'all set up' - this is the first time it has all been put together in it's new 21 foot guise and it is going to be a rare event I can tell you. Who would have thought that the extra couple of feet would case so much trouble. As you might be able to tell from the rather rushed pictures it now completely fill the studio and has to poke out of the door to fill half of the conservatory -limbo dancing required to get in! Also on display is my Mk2 back scene (all 24 feet of it!), which now extends the full length of the fiddle yards and around the ends. I do need to add a little more support though. One thing that this does highlight though is how bare the fiddle yard boards are so some scenic treatment will probably be in order but not before the weekend! In the next shot you will see another long overdue addition - a name - courtesy of letters cut out with the Cameo cutter and glued to the pelmet - why didn't I do it sooner? Also in this shot you can see my test rake of three wagons that all couple to each other and stay that way. I have been laboriously adding loco's and other wagons to this benchmark rake to try and get the couplings actually do what their name suggests. Very time consuming, very boring and so far not completely successful! My mystery project is pretty much finished now but to do it justice will require a couple of posts of it's own but if you come to Nottingham you can have a sneak preview!

After placing the dock temporarily in position, I thought I'd take a photo - as much for my benefit as anything else - of progress to date. Plenty of basics to put in, let alone anything else, but the 'bones' of the goods yard side at least are now nearing completion. I hope this gives a general 'map' of the layout which will help anyone interested to get their bearings when I start to add further structures and scenery.

Having completed the first two baseboard structures, it is time for a change. All of the kit and materials for making hand built soldered copperclad sleeper track is now assembled, so a good excuse to get started on the switches (I think switch is the correct term as the point is just one part of a switch; however. . . .) On a point of semantics, I should also add that when I last made my own track, the sleepers were made of PCB, short for printed circuit board. That acronym is apparently now used to describe a chemical. So now sleepers are "copper clad". Back in the early 1970s you could by copper clad sleepers already cut to length for standard track. My source (C & L Finescale) sells long strips that have to be cut up. This makes sense for the switches but is rather tedious for regular track. So, having printed off my Templot plan (at 100% scale - most important!) I began to glue the sleepers down with UHU glue stick. This washes off easily when the track is cleaned prior to painting. Then I started to add the bullhead rail. I am building the release crossover at the town end of the platform so it makes sense to build them together. This is particularly important as the prototype was oddly shaped to accommodate the end loading platform: http://warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrss535a.htm The photo exaggerates the shape but I wanted to include this in the model. The outer rails were added first, then I fabricated the v-shaped frog, using the track gauges to make sure I had the right spacing. Next, the point rails were added after filing down the moveable blades. I used my Dremel to do the filing, with a small drum sander attachment. At all times I used the Templot "go by" and then the track gauges to ensure the rails were in the right place prior to soldering. A couple of solder tacks, then check again before finishing off. Finally, the check rails were added, using the check gauges and a 1mm shim of brass sheet to set the correct gap: At this stage the completed parts of the switch can be tested using, in my case, the front bogie of my Finecast King, currently being renovated. With one of the switches nearly finished, I sat back and admired my work: A few comments: I probably use too much solder. But I would rather use more than less, as long as the solder doesn't interfere with the running. It is true that the solder hardly represents proper chairs, but most OO gauge track chairs are out of scale anyway. Besides, once painted the solder will blend into the background. The switch blades will be connected to a stretcher bar (from C & L Finescale) and this will be actuated by a Tortoise switch motor. At the present time there is no insulation between rails and the frog is not isolated electrically. The copper cladding will have to be carefully removed down the center of each sleeper. Again, I seem to remember that regular PCB sleepers were already gapped by the vendor back when I was young. So, one switch down, one half started and three more and a double slip to go. Edited because I forgot one photo.

As you'll see in other entries on my blog, I build models of BR ex GER stock, and as the E4 and J17 are now virtually finished, I've started on a new build, a J19 (I've just edited this entry, I originally called the loco a J17. It's not!) 0-6-0 tender loco. As you can see from the photos below, I have used a High Level gear box (Road Runner +) at 60:1 ratio. The motor is currently a Mashima 1620 although I may change it for a 1624 or 1630 I have available. One of the things I dislike is seeing motors or gearboxes intruding in to cab, under boilers etc. With the modern range of gearboxes, I believe (although I would be happy to be proved wrong!) that you should be able to hide the motor and gearbox away, and this is why I have mounted the transmission the way I have. The one difficulty with this is that I have had to make a bracket to hold the gearbox in position when the body is mounted on the chassis, and it's fiddly to fix in place now, I dread to think what it will be like when I've got brake gear, pick ups etc in as well. However, that's my problem and as it's me who's created it, I'll live with it! Oh, and if you want to know whose wheels they are, all I will say is that the proprietor of Precision Paints and I are members of the same club. Phil

The class 450 conversion from a Bachmann Silverlink class 350/1 is now all but complete. There are a few very minor tweaks and finishing touches to do but the unit is now running as a complete four-car set in one livery. It's not perfect. I have a few small air bubbles, a couple of small lumps in the paint underneath, and I cut and partly hand-painted the front end stripes to correct the Electra printing. It still saved an awful lot of work in adding the various livery elements and looks absolutely great at normal viewing distances. I am going to suggest a few minor changes to the vinyls to Adam Warr of Electra but, even if he doesn't consider the alterations, I would still whole-heartedly recommend the product. I have taken a couple of videos of the unit too and will edit them into one vid and post that in the next few days.In the meantime, here is the unit, 450 107, looking complete and actually in service. Edit: video added.