Leaderboard

I've been toying with the idea of DCC on Sherton Abbas for a while now, adding sound to my locos is something that really appealed. The final push came when a friend offered to sell his Prodigy Advance controller to me for a very reasonable price! I had a very enlightening chat with the people at Southwestdigital during the Bristol O gauge show back in January and left their stand armed with a sound decoder, a sugar cube speaker and the rather handy adage " Red and black to the track, orange and grey the other way!" My 517 was the first 7mm loco that I built, so thought it only fair that it should be the first to be equipped with sound:-) The decoder fitted nicely in one of the side tanks and I mounted the speaker in the firebox between the frames. Once the controller was connected to the track testing could begin! Much to my surprise there wasn't a bang or small cloud of smoke and the loco moved in the correct direction :-) Pressing the F1 key for the first time and hearing the loco chuff up and down the track was very satisfying, even Mrs Wenlock was quite impressed:-) I still need to delve into the treacherous waters of CV adjustment, at the moment I've got too many chuffs per wheel revolution:-) Here's a quick video clip of my 517 in action. Best wishes Dave

It's less than two weeks to go before the Missenden Abbey Spring Railway Modellers weekend. This year, in a break from tradition I am booked on the painting and lining course with Ian Rathbone. My chance to learn to finish my models from probably the best around. Although rather daunting I am looking forward to hopefully gaining some new skills. To this end I thought I should try to finish a few items to the state that I can try to paint them at Missenden, time allowing. My Black Hawthorn was already finished, or so I thought until I decided to clean it up ready for primer. It was then I notice I had failed to add the two T handle from the valves on the dome. So I drilled through the cab front and added these out of some bits of 0.45 brass wire. Next on my list was the Neilson, that I knew needed some more work to complete the cab detail, break gear and under frame. So I spent the last evening or so working on the cab detailing, I decided the under frame could wait, it was the body the I was more interested in painting. I believe that I now have the Neilson complete above the footplate. It needs the brake gear to the rear to be added, the clack valves below the footplate and some taps on the cylinder fronts. Next on my list of items to add those finishing touches to are my NuCast steam rail motor and the Duke. The steam rail motor needs some steps made up to replace the broken, and frankly not very convincing white metal ones. The real thing had complex folding steps on the passenger doorways to allow passengers on and off at locations without platforms. The white metal versions in the kit, which have since broken, where very simple and not a good representation of the original. There were also steps on the buffer beams to allow the crew to change the lamps etc. The kit makes no provision for these, but I am hoping I can adapt some etches intended for guards vans to represent these. The roof needs fair bit of cleaning up, but this could be done later, since the main body could be painted without the roof. The Duke needs a top feed, clack boxes, smokebox dart, lamp irons, cab interior fittings, whistles and handrails. The later being a bit of a pain since there are no handrail knobs positions marked on the kit. I also need to replace the middle step tread on the rear tender steps, sadly I was attaching it with the RSU and sneezed, the result was that the delicate half etched tread pretty much vaporised. Something I will have to learn to avoid in the future. Hopefully I will have time to get all these things sorted before Missenden. Then I need to think about priming all or some of them so that I can apply top coat at Missenden. Perhaps I should have started my preparations somewhat earlier!