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It turns out that the cheap Chinese motors I bought on eBay are just that: cheap. Despite much fiddling with the motor position I couldn't get the original motor to turn the wheels while on the track. The chassis rolled freely with all of the gears and rods attached, but the motor would only turn the wheels if I held the chassis in mid-air, and then only if I held the motor in exactly the right place. On the track, it just wouldn't budge. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the motor just didn't have enough torque, and bought one of the Tramfabriek 0716 motors which are (newly) available from the 2mm Scale Association shop. The difference was magical! Here you see the new motor test fitted. The worm is now brass, because I couldn't get the old plastic one off the motor shaft. The eagle-eyed will spot that I replaced the worm bearing bracket with a heftier version, filed up from a block of solid brass rather than a bit of thin brass angle. This was part of my messing around with the eBay motor - I thought it was too loose and that might be preventing the worm from meshing correctly. Again, it has a phosphor bronze frame bush soldered in to take the little length of stub axle, which is a press fit into the worm. The worm sits on a 1mm shaft adaptor like before (I think it came from Nigel Lawton). This motor has a double-ended shaft, as you can see. Unfortunately I can't take advantage of this and fit a flywheel as there isn't room. Here is the motor after cutting off the unused shaft. This was done with a slitting disc in the minidrill. I had to cut it off quite close to the end of the motor because there is very little clearance lengthwise in the bunker. Even so, I had to file a bit off the motor support collar to get the body on. I found it useful to attach the wires to the motor with Kapton tape. At long last, the chassis has made its first successful test run - here's a video. For this I temporarily soldered the motor wires to the side frames, and balanced some lumps of lead on top to give it some hope of current collection. It's a bit more hesitant in the backward direction, but I will worry about this once I've dismantled the chassis for painting and put it back together again!

I have not posted a blog for a while. But I am still modelling. I have finished my cottage. This cottage is called Rose Cottage and it belongs to Miss Harriet Parker, a free-lance journalist and writer. For the magazine of the Middleshire Historical Society Miss Parker wants to describe the cottages of Littleworth. She thought it would be a nice idea to start with the cottage she lives in. Sitting behind her Underwood Noiseless 77 typewriter she starts typing: “I know the cottage is built in around 1900. But there is not much information about the cottage in his papers. The only thing is a letter about adding a shed to the cottage in 1935. This letter was from Frederick Peterson & Son, Builders & Contractors. Mrs. Peterson tells me that Mr. Frederick was a fully accurate man. He archived everything very carefully. Now she stands up and goes to another room. After a while she comes back with an archive map. I can read that it is a map for Littleworth. Mrs. Peterson tell me that the firm had only done a few building projects in Littleworth. One of them was de building of some cottages on Green Lane. As a speculative builders Mr. Frederick Peterson hoped he could sell them to people who could afford buying a cottage. The three cottages there where of a basic design from E. Flint and Son, architects. In the map was page from a notebook on which stood that the cottages could be finished by a personal choice of brick and tiles. Mrs. Peterson gets another paper out of the archive map. This is a drawing of the floorplan of the cottages. I am incredibly pleased to see them and recognize my own cottage in it. Unfortunately, there is no further drawing information. No. 1 Green Lane was sold to Mr Christopher A. Roope, Wine & Spirit Merchant. They have their premises on Dock Road in Northall. We have no information when the cottage is sold to your farther. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Job

Some initial pictures of my latest scheme. Like most of us modelling fanatics I haven't been idle during the lockdown period! These are strange times indeed and I have no doubt that many of us have worried about income and job security so, with the exception of purchasing a second hand Hornby Q1, I have managed to construct the layout with materials and track I had to hand. Folgate Street is a fictitious slice of third rail London and is an old scheme that has been revamped for the purpose. The original station throat was constructed about 11 years ago and was made at the start of my railway modelling journey. I was still fumbling about at this earlier stage hence the use of Code 100 and Insulfrog points. It was a copy of a throat drawn up by the famous Cyril Freezer. The original layout was actually once used as the basis of my 1984 model (see previous posts) and was gathering dust in a forgotten corner of my loft so I thought I'd put it to good use. The fabulous Hornby Q1. This was picked up cheaply from Hattons. It had a missing sand box and steps which have been knocked up from bits out of the spares box. Despite a thorough wheel clean it runs intermittently and I wonder if has anything to do with the DCC decoder that it is fitted with? I don't need it as I'm analogue and I know they'll run on DC current. If I remove the decoder will I need a blanking plate? - any help would be greatly appreciated as it's a smashing model and it deserves to run properly. The roof is another of my soldered wire schemes - to add a bit of interest I've used a downloadable texture from CG Textures for the roof lights. Note the cardboard strips at the side of the track. These have been made form thin card to replicate the wooden boards used at Southern stations to contain the third rail - they help to hide the absence of insulators and also disguised the oversized profile of Code 100 track. A Hornby 2 HAL emerges from the right hand scenic break. The Lyceum Theatre is a freelance structure made from Scalescenes Textures whilst the buildings on the overbridge are downloaded photographs from CG Textures. These have been layered to give a little relief. The superb Heljan Class 33. The station tower is another freelance structure loosely based on the Towers found at Cannon Street Station. Again, I've used Scalescenes sheets to construct it. The station roof is loosely based on the Suburban station one at the side of Kings Cross Station. Two tracks on a slight incline were added to the front of the original layout to add a bit of operational interest. The signal box gantry, based on the one found at Holborne Viaduct Station over the Widened Lines incline, has been made from Plastruct girders and bits from various Dapol kits. All the signals work apart from the one on the signal box - I think super glue seeped into the fine electrical wires and have caused a short circuit! The 5.5 foot layout is an end to end scheme with a main 5ft long fiddle yard to the right hand side. The half station side is fed from a three foot long 'black box' section during normal operation. I utilised a mirror at this end to lengthen the look of the station for the above photographs. More pics to follow.

Hello again, After a bit of work I have finished the building work on the J68, so it'll be a bit brief, but I would like a bit of help from the vast group of experienced modelers out there... Anyway, the kit has reached a stage where the fittings have been going on. So since the last update, I've fitted all the cab and boiler fittings, for this I have used Araldite to hold these parts together, apart from the lifting lugs which I have been white metal soldered in place which has meant that the Air Vents on the tanks are now soldered in place too!! Further work has moved to the fitting of the injectors and relevant pipe work. Plus the fitting of the brake blocks and brake rigging. This is where the problems are, since fitting the blocks and rigging I have found that the locomotive is Arc-ing when the power is running, now this has not happened before since I fitted the blocks & rigging. Further work has been carried out on the Vacuum, air pipes, Steam Heat Pipe work. The reason for painting this is prepared before being glued in, this is also because of the numbers on the buffer beam, my plan is once the decals are in along with the varnish I will glue the pipework using Araldite, but not too much as they need to look smart. Further work has included the Destination boards, interestingly the kit comes with two boards (Right) which I intend to put into the back of the cab on the brackets. Because I didn't see that these brackets, and disks I bought some more from Ragstone Models. The spare set which I now have can be used on the loco when running. Please note the really smart looking backhead and finished oil can. What I'd like to know is it the Rigging as it's so close to the track? The photo below is an old(ish) one, but I thought it might help. I have moved the brake blocks back away from the tyre, they are roughly 1.5 - 2mm away. So if you have any idea's to help me that would be appreciated. All in all the model is ready for painting, just a bit more cleaning to do before I put this into Primer, but it won't be too long before further work is carried out!! Thanks Tom

Retirement beckons and, like many, I had set my heart on building the layout of my (youthful) dreams. Having decided that N gauge was right for me, I set about picking up rolling stock, track, etc. at auctions (not Ebay). I 'scored' some major successes with only a single failure and I now have much of the bits and pieces that I require. However, one of the 'Lots' that I won at an auction included a box of Marklin controllers, switches and track but, sadly, no rolling stock. I thought that it would be a neat idea to create a very small Z gauge layout (the Marklin track being Z gauge). When I spotted a batch of Z gauge locos being auctioned I jumped in (feet first) and bagged several items. However, I identified that I would need some points and started asking around. I got into a conversation with a guy who was selling off his collection of Z gauge track, etc. and he still had a few items left. In passing, he mentioned that he also had an ex-exhibition layout that he had started dismantling. For whatever reason he hadn't got any further than removing some of the electrics and he was going to throw it into a skip if no one was interested. Rather tongue in cheek, I made him an offer and was surprised (and delighted) when he accepted. I am now the proud but daunted owner of an end to end Z gauge layout that measures 4 m x 0.28 m. It has been in storage for a number of years and spiders have taken up residence - it will need a thorough clean before I do anything with it. It appears to have two names, one of which is "Hauteville". One of the tasks that I have set myself is to produce a track plan (using SCARM) and then add a wiring loom which might help me to work out what bits are missing and whether or not the whole thing could do with re-wiring. Sadly (for me) the previous owner was pretty experienced in building layouts and didn't feel the need to label any of the wiring - troubleshooting was either a real challenge or he got everything right first time! I have erected the layout in my dining room (not currently in use) but have had to place it diagonally, from corner to corner, because it won't fit in anywhere else.

I really love photographing my layouts and my ultimate aim is to make the locos and settings as realistic as its possible in 00 Gauge. Getting as much as possible in focus has always been a bug bear of mine. The relationship between F-Stop, shutter speed and ISO is complex to understand and I should imagine professional photographers spend a long time to master it. I haven't quite managed this and have always found that the higher the F-Stop then the yellower the image simply because the more depth of field (or more in focus you want) then the smaller the aperture. In addition, my camera will only stop up to F8. A medium aperture but one that still restricts the amount of light you need. This always spoils the photo and no matter how long you keep open the shutter you can never get rid of the yellowing effect. Camera's therefore love loads of light where this is concerned so I decided to cobble together my own powerful lighting rig. It had to be on the cheap because professional lighting rigs are an astronomical cost. The above shot under the rig. F8 at ISO 400. The camera sets the shutter speed itself and I set a two second timer delay to defeat any camera shake. The 'Heath Robinson' style lighting rig. I found an old overhead projector at my local tip and took it apart. I put the fan and bulb assembly into a wooden box, created a reflective direction device out of hangers and mounting card and put the whole thing on top of a stand that I bought secondhand from a builder for a fiver. It was really cheap to construct and it works quite well. Mind you, despite the fan it gets very hot so I don't leave it on too long in case the whole thing falls apart! The rig is about as good as it gets in creating artificial sunlight. It's either that or lug the layout down from the loft and wait for the sun to come out and you could wait a long time over here for that! Now to get rid of those pesky shadows on the backdrop! This is my take on a smashing prototype picture in Hornby's latest mag regarding coloured light signalling on the Southern. The picture was of a Class 33 double heading with a BR Standard 5MT out of Waterloo in 1966. A summer afternoon at Folgate Street. Note how the light rig casts realistic shadows under the signal box gantry. Light and shade. Notice how the focus drops away and yet this is the best my Fuji Bridge can do. It's a lot better than my other smaller 'snap' Panasonic Lumix which has a much narrower field of focus. The only other route is photo stacking, but this seems like a magic trick far beyond my capabilities. I guess I'll always be an analogue fuddy duddy!

It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly 5 years since I last wrote a blog on this forum and actually, most of the work I’m about to describe was completed about 9 months ago. I recently decided that in order to make my wagon fleet more representative of the Big 4, I needed some LMS vans. The Association shop sells 3 plastic body kits that are suitable for my era - a twin pack from the N Scale Society and a single 2mm scale version. I was concerned that the N Scale versions would look too large in comparison with my other pure 2mm scale wagons but comparison with drawings suggested that the length and height were acceptable; the problem was with the width which was about 1.5mm too wide. I therefore decided to see if I could remove sections from each end to reduce the width to match that of the 2mm scale van. The N Scale pack has sides and ends to make up into two quite different diagrams, one with horizontal planked sides and corrugated ends that I chose to model as a fitted version of D1897 (10’ wheelbase) and the other with vertical planking and ends that featured cross bracing between two end stanchions that I modelled as an unfitted version of D1664 (9’ wheelbase). D1897 Looking at the ends of this kit, it seemed that there were two places where I might be able to reduce the width. Firstly, the flat space between the side of the central ventilator and the start of the corrugations seemed too wide and secondly, there looked to be more plain plastic on the edges than seemed to be the case in photographs. This latter problem was easily solved by trimming a bit off each edge with a sharp scalpel. The problem either side of the ventilator would mean cutting the ends into three pieces which I did by scoring heavily almost all the way through from the back with a P cutter and then finishing off the cut with a scalpel. I then cut and filed the pieces so that the corrugations came much closer to the ventilator, trying to get a nice smooth fit between them. The ends were reassembled using a thick piece of spare plasticard behind them to strengthen the joins. Carefully scraping and filing along each corrugation helped to remove any traces of a ridge where the joins had been. A comparison between the original (left) and altered ends (right) can be seen below. To quote Eric Morecombe (and show my age a bit) “You can’t see the join” (well, hardly). The picture below shows the assembled wagon but with the area below the solebar still needing to be painted black and with one more buffer needing to be bought from the 2mm shops, followed by some darkening of the roof and overall weathering. D1664 The end of this style of van looked like being harder to deal with as I did not want to spoil the nicely riveted detail of the cross bracing nor lose the riveted detail on the corner plates. The only solution I could come up with was to replace the three plank sections either side with new ones with the planks scored slightly narrower. Again, I divided the ends into three pieces, cutting just outside the edge of the vertical stanchions. In order to retain the corner plates, I glued the edge pieces to the van sides and only after the glue had set really hard, cut the ends back leaving only the bit of plank that was visible behind each corner plate. I scribed two new pieces with three 1mm vertical planks and glued these either side of the original N scale centre piece. After fixing the ends to the sides, extra pieces of plasticard were scribed and fitted to fill in the gaps in the buffer beams. Below is a view from above to compare the width of the one of the finished vans with an un-altered N Gauge Society van kit. Finishing Off To create some variety in both chassis style and colour, I chose to model the vans as follows :- D1897 - this is modelled as a fitted van with clasp brakes as appears in the photo of number 506818 on page 45 of the 2010 reprint of Essery’s LMS Wagons Vol 1. D1664 - I decided that this wagon would be unfitted but painted in bauxite livery with 5” lettering. I numbered it 264131 as per the picture of a van in BR livery on page 39 of Essery’s book. Although the photograph shows the ends of this van having slightly different strapping, I hoped these were later additions and also that the van was from one of the unfitted batches as I could not see the brake details from the photograph. Also, there was no evidence that the van would have received the bauxite livery, but I doubt if anyone can prove it one way or the other. The vans are shown below posed in front of Tavistock’s trainshed, still needing painting of the roofs, weathering and buffers. The left-hand van is from the 2mm Scale Association kit, modelled in LMS grey as an unfitted D1808, number 131391.