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Persephone

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Everything posted by Persephone

  1. Well as of today the layout is no more. Newcastle was to be it's last show, but the cancellation rained on our last weekend away with it which was a shame but hey ho. Whilst the layout had fared well, it's owner and operators less so and the process of van hire in particular was wearing, and soon after Ally Pally this year, I decided we'd do Newcastle and cancel the rest. A severe health issue just after Easter cemented that decision. Most has gone to good use, the boards and legs will form part of another club members layout, the stock and buildings will be put up for sale (watch out for the classifieds ) some of the fiddleyard timber has already been chopped into kindling for our log burner and the rest has gone to the dump! To quote the Grateful Dead, "What a long strange trip it's been" but it's been a blast.
  2. A real shame that it was caped at the last minute - I'd just got North Ballachulish prepped for what was to be its last ever show before retiring the layout. The crew were set for one last blast and a few beers on the Toon. I hope the club are not out of pocket as a result, and next years goes ahead as planned.
  3. A show of contrasts for us - after disastrous start after the layout sustained some damage on the journey down, which was put right before the show opened on Saturday morning, it then performed very well through the show . As for the show itself - maybe I'm becoming a bit jaded with the exhibition circuit after all these years but we all remarked how familiar faces we usually see at shows were missing here, so our usual social "banter" (usually a loose form of schoolboy humour/ insults) with those people was lacking, but made up for by some interesting conversations with viewers of the layout. Like it or lump it the scene has changed forever with a lot of specialist traders in particular deciding attending a show is just not worth the hassle, they have survived COVID trading online, why attend when you will be lucky to break even at best? As a measure of this my sole spending was the princely sum of £1.09 on some piano wire to replace the operating arm on a damaged tortoise point motor. Layouts? some you like, some you don't, like Jol Wilkinson I'm a believer in less is more so those were the ones that held my attention in what little time I had to browse round. What made it for us though was the hall staff - car parking, security et al, really obliging, supremely helpful and polite, and the MRC team manning the brew point, life savers the lot of them.
  4. Getting ready for the off on Friday with a bit of wheel cleaning. Looking forward to bringing North Ballachulish to the show, and to our beery excursions in the evening on the Piccadilly Line.
  5. Many thanks for your comments. The backscene was painted for me by Mike Raithby, after an attempt to get a printed photo backscene with 4 photo images from a visit up there stitched together had to be aborted due to distortion which would occur on the 16 foot backscene - or so the printer told me. I like the painted backscene better though, it has real atmosphere. Thanks to the organisers for their hospitality over the weekend, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and it was a really good show. It also was very different from when I was last in the hall 6 months earlier setting up the cask cooling system for the Wigan Beer Festival!
  6. " 'Ere that never ran over that bridge" Myself in tweed jacket old pedant mode on my own model of New Hey, running it as a demo layout at Expo EM North, September 2007, still then in balmy Slaithwaite. They were actually doing some filming for Last of the Summer Wine on the street opposite during the show, which seemed appropriate. Captured if memory serves me correct by one Martin Wales.
  7. It makes sense for Mike to do the same, just as RT did with the Austerity That made the ( erhmm, cough) DJM Austerity do-able in EM/P4 as the DJM all axle driven mechs turned out to be a bag of spanners. As I already have a Judith Edge flatpack 16" plus wheels motor and gearbox, it wont be a buy for me, but if I hadn't the kit I'd be getting a Rapido model and badgering Mike for a chassis.
  8. We hire our club room on a weekly by the hour basis, if we don't use it we don't pay. We do not pay any subs and usually raise the club room rent from the show profits. Therefore at the moment we aren't losing or gaining, although in truth we have had bequest of model railway kit which has appeared recently on flea bay, which if we have to cancel next years show as well as this years will see us well through another year when we are eventually allowed to meet. I should add we have no club owned layouts, but virtually every member has their own exhibition layout, so there are no "extra" costs either. It works for us and not having any club layouts in name mean we can rent hourly. Works very well for us, just a shame we haven't met since March.
  9. Geoff Thats probably the MIOG show which you are referring to, it was held in a school in Rawtenstall, a few miles down the Valley from Bacup and an altogether more civilised place. Bacup is a town where men are men and sheep are worried, and everyone is related to each other in some way. An odd place. To my knowledge there's never been a show in Bacup.
  10. An announcement will be made on September 8th end of. If that doesn't meet your personal criteria, then sorry, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. For their own reasons, the MMRS organising team and committee has chosen to do it this way. In the meantime all of this pontificating is not helping anyone at all.
  11. Its something we are considering with the Rochdale Club layouts. Glaisden for example hasn't been out for a couple of years now (we were due at Warley with it this year) but it takes a good few hours to assemble and stock up, as well as being a head scratching puzzle sometimes when assembling it. Assuming Southampton goes ahead next January it will be a year since I put up North Ballachulish. Consideration is being made of taking a short term let out on some suitable industrial premises certainly to put Glaisden up, and the possibility of having an controlled "open/running day" will seriously be considered.
  12. 1984 would have been at Christmas, this one at the old UMIST building on Sackville St. It was always the last clear weekend before Xmas. Not sure of the exact dates that year
  13. If I recall correctly, at the time the respray business went belly up, and the resultant fallout from it with people out of pocket, there was a thread on RM Web about it.
  14. How do you get to the bottom of a complete work of fiction? In the Walter Mitty world of DJM perhaps but not in the reality of this world.
  15. Good weather has been interfering with chassis building but some progress has been made. First job on was taking the original model to bits in order to plan out how the chassis, gearbox and motor will fit. Now this should be a doddle but it soon became clear that getting the motor out wasn't going to be the easiest of jobs as the motor fits tightly in the saddle tank /boiler and drives direct onto the gearbox in the chassis. It's obvious it was originally fitted to the base of the boiler before the base unit is glued to the tank, /top. As a result its a pain to get out and only by a few contortions and just about managing to disassemble the motor mount whilst it was still in the boiler was I able to get everything out. The whole exercise just highlighted what a piece of the design of the is model is. Poorly thought out, poorly designed and piss poor quality of components, the gear wheel the worm drives is full of slop, poor quality plastic which looks like it will wear out pretty fast. On the other hand the RT chassis so far has gone OK although the instructions and drawings aren't as clear as they could be. For instance the instructions say put the middle frame spacer in after the two end spacers, threading the inside slide bars through it. This is a real fiddle and not easy, if I'd have realised this I would have put it in the same time as the front end spacer, threading the slide bars in on the bench. That aside everything fits well, it was a joy to get square and has come nice detail. Next job is a clean and a trial fit of the gearbox and motor which will be fun given the limited space available.
  16. I've a few etched brass industrial loco projects to do, and its a while since Ive actually built a kit so I thought Id start with the easiest project and work up from there. As it happens, the easiest option is that of turning a pigs ear into a silk purse, or even harder in this case, a DJM Austerity that runs. Lets face it, its all front, a bit like he who should not be named who designed and marketed it. Face value it looks good, pretty much accurate on the body size, injectors look a bit clumsy to me but that can be sorted, it looks fine. The mechanics of this are another story however, it really is the biggest piece of ordure ever made. My good friend Black and Decker Boy of this parish got a couple shortly after they came out for his layout Kirkmellington. I recall sat with him at Ally Pally with the layout a few years back attempting to figure out how to convert them to EM, they were bad enough runners in OO. Form over substance is probably the kindest thing to say. Anyhow, about a year and a half ago Hattons were knocking them out for a price at which had it been today you'd have thought the boxes contained COVID 19. Although at this stage Greenbooth was just an idea, I was going to do something industrial in EM for another club members project, so I bit the bullet and my principles and shelled out just short of 60 beer tokens for one. I daresay I could have pulled the wheels out to EM and tried it, but a test run on the grandkids OO layout upstairs confirmed my worst fears, it ran like the piece of s**t it is. Wheel pulling was not, and in reality never was, an option. Luckily I knew by then that RT Models produce a chassis for it ( B and D boy had already gone down this route). I picked one up from RT last year and like you should do with all pieces of etched brass, put it into the kit drawer to mature. (I've a circa 20 year old Brassmasters Jubillee in there that's still not quite ready lol) So now it time to build and hopefully produce something worthy of the body work. Yesterday I folded up and put the High Level gear box together - that's paired with a Mashima 2012. Hopefully the soldering iron will be out today to commence the frames.
  17. The value of making mock ups of the buildings has been illustrated over the last 48 hours following a discussion on the Rochdale MRG Facebook isolation virtual clubroom after I'd put the pictures and my thoughts to the group. I wasnt happy with the appearance of the Northlight weaving shed behind the station building. I'd scaled it down from photos on Google earth, not actually being in a position to go out and actually measure it as I would normally do, and put in place the bays looked a bit too big. After a discussion on the group, and a member who's a surveyor giving some professional advice on the angles involved, I today cut more foam board based on another set of photos found online. As a result much more happy with the building and how it looks. Just goes to show that even in lock down the club still functions as it should. Social meeja to the rescue!
  18. Nothing like a change of mind to make you "stay alert" (sic) This week has mainly been about slicing foamboard to make full scale mock ups of buildings etc to get an idea how it will look as a complete model before I embark on any major scenic work. I'm very happy with disguising the entry/exit from the fiddleyard with buildings. The engine house and the boiler house alongside at the entry it are based on buildings found in the Graham Edgar books, both struck me as very interesting buildings and not unlike each other in style. There will be a pipe bridge between the two. The terrace row is based on those just down in the village from me, a typical stone built Lancashire row, but with a difference as on the model being on a slope whereas in reality they are flat. The mill is basically a cross between Ilex Hall and New Hall Hey mills in Rawtenstall. There is going to be the inevitable large chimney at the side of the boiler house. Where the L and Y signal box base is on the far end will be the enginemens bothy, engine servicing - coal stage and watertower just outside the shed. I will now move on to a loco or two and let the buildings "settle in" so to speak in order to get obver that first rush and look at the composition with a bit of objective critical anaysis - the low relief Northlight shed behind the station is going to be redone for starters!
  19. > As an exhibitor I'd not really be happy about finding out about a cancelled show off T'internet before the exhibition manager had a chance to speak or mail me personally. As an exhibition manager I'd be very severely peed off if it appeared in public before I'd chance to contact all exhibitors and traders personally. It's called common courtesy.
  20. I'm more than well aware of that and know very well that traders very closely monitor their aftersales which they use partly to decide whether or not attendance at a particular show is actually worth it. The point is sooner or later there is a tipping point when a loss leader becomes a loser, and with an economic situation where little disposable income is around, the likelihood of that happening is greater. It may not affect the big boys like Warley, Donny et al where to be seen is to be seen, or the small local show with little completion but for the middle division shows who have rows of competing box shifters then it's an issue they may have to face.
  21. Whilst naturally and quite rightly so the debate here has been about the health implications regards exhibitions, there is another factor looming large on the horizon looking at the pronouncement from the governor of the Bank of England today, that of substantial downturn in the economy and a very deep recession. Reading through it one of the recurring themes in it was that of consumer confidence, or more correctly the lack thereof. Whilst these days only being involved in running a couple of small shows with a substantially reduced risk, whilst keeping a weather eye on the economy, it would not be a major concern, after all we have been through this before. However add that lack of consumer confidence to a probable reluctance of a section of the target audience to visit shows on health grounds then the head bobs up quickly and takes note. Even if they come, will they spend? Traders rely on that to turn a profit over stand rent and I know it can be a tipping point for some, especially if they are paying a high stand rent which in turn for the show organiser, generally offsets hall rent.. There are now many examples of traders giving up doing shows - Wizard is a good example - because its just not worth the hassle for a poor return, and given a good internet presence then its not really a problem. Over the last 7 -8 weeks I've needed materials for the layout build which ordinarily I would have bought at shows, I'd a massive shopping list for ally pally. But Ive coped very well, and been able to source stuff from the likes of Eileens Emporium very quickly - and judging by the gap in order numbers between two orders about 4 days apart, so are a lot of other people. I miss being able to browse but its not a game changer, I suspect a lot of traders will be looking long and hard at shows if the downturn is as bad as the BoE says.
  22. Having spent a few days fettling trackwork, Ive spent some time running locos to spot any further bits which need attention before moving onto the next stage. Theres a couple of tight spots I'd not noticed to sort out but other than that its onwards and upwards. I was going to start building signals but I feel a change to doing some of the industrial stock might be a better idea. But is it the Judith Edge Hunslet 16 inch, or making a silk purse out of a pigs ear that is the mechanical and chassis side of the abortion that is the DJM Austerity. (RT Chassis, Mashima 2012 motor, High Level box and Gibson wheels)
  23. So just on three weeks of starting on the panel and the wiring, all the final bench testing was completed last night, with just a few jobs to do today reversing polarity on a few motors so that when the "levers" are in the normal position, the road set reflects that on the box diagram. That job done, both boards were put back on the subframe and joined and everything including the NCE kit was plugged in. Granted a class 40 may not be the best loco to test track on a shunting plank but at least it found the bits of track needing attention! Apart from a few dry joints on the track droppers which were quickly sorted it all works. Next is to fettle all the track , and put a chip in one of the locos which will actually be running on the layout!
  24. The last week has seen board 2 upended and the wiring started. It seems off starting with board two but as this is next to the fiddle board, and where the controls are, this is where the power originates from, and all the hardware under the board is located. First to go in was the bus wires. These are broken in each segment and soldered to a copperclad strip, from which all the feed wires jump off from, both to the track and to the polarity switches on the point motors. It looks a bit chaotic at the moment but I know where everything is, and once all the loom is in place it will be all tied up and made neat and tidy. Next to go in on this board are the point operating wires, via the 37 way from the panel. Ive cheated a bit on the business end of this by buying a ready made up terminating block and connector rather than soldering up my own using tag strip, its going to save some space in an already crowded environment. This gets installed next and the point motor operating wires connected. The signal wiring will go in later as I want the Megapoints servo control unit on the bench to set all the signals up as I make them, but thats an easy win as the leads are ready made and will just cable tie to the loom Greenbooth was supposed to be a slow burn project whilst North Ballachulish was on the road but all this Isolation has seen progress made well in advance of what I thought, I'm spending 2 or 3 hours a day on it, having a break every hour or so to do something else and keep fresh. If things were normal I'd be on the ELR working or actually at this moment in time out visiting licensed premises to judge the Greater Manchester pub of the Year, such is life. At least its something to look forward to when his madness comes to an end.
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