Mark Forrest

A weekend of studying weather forecasts suggested our best bet for good cycling weather today was to head towards the top lefthand corner of Wales, so that's what we did, and we weren't disappointed. We started out in Betws y Coed for a road ride on the gravel bikes. A big loop up to Conwy and back. As the elevation graph shows, it was a ride of two halves with all the elevation in the first 20 miles, followed by a lower level spin alongside Afon Conwy on the way back. If the weather had been clearer I'm sure the views would have been stunning - we intend to revisit on a less cloudy day. Of interest on the way back was the memorial to the Dolgarrog dam disaster - scary to think of that volume of water and huge boulders thundering down the side of that steep valley almost 100 years ago. Definitely a ride to repeat on a sunny day. 44 miles and 3500' of climbing.

Possibly, however, cutting ply or MDF would require going outside in the cold and wet to cut the parts (no sun terrace here, unfortunately) and cutting the openings for doors and windows is much more time consuming. I did think about simply cladding the foam board structure that I already had, but wasn't sure about how it would react to having multiple layers of brick embossed plastic glued to it. Having seen the work that @2ManySpams is doing on his 7mm buildings, I thought I'd try following his method for this - so I can blame him if it all goes horribly wrong.

A bit more progress with the building. I've decided that, because of the size of the building I'm going to make three separate sections then join them together when cladding it with embossed plastic. The loading platform and canopy will be separate subassemblies that will be added later too. I've added a lot of internal bracing to (hopefully) prevent warping - all very necessary but, quite boring too. To break up the boredom, I've started to build another wagon.

As a rule, yes, but both types were (at times) used for other loads. For example, cable drums in a Pipe: https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/brpipe/h125f319e Or rod coil in a Tube: https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/brtube/h3fb8fc9b

I have (for a number of years) used a Gaugemaster WM1-E power supply which has a claimed output of 18v 1100mA with a Multimaus and had no issues with overheating decoders (or any other issues).

The continued wet weather has been getting me down a bit, even road rides (we did a 100km Audax from Leicester a few weeks ago) have resulted in a soaking. Last Monday we drove to Hadfield with intentions to ride the Trans Pennine Trail, but stopped after 3.5 miles because of a problem with the brakes on my bike that I wasn't able to fix. Yesterday however things were looking a bit brighter. A cold start, but dry and sunny in the Peak District for a 28 miles MTB ride; a figure of eight loop starting with the climb up onto Baslow Edge. Conditions were quite muddy/sloppy in places (particularly as we dropped down towards Bakewell) but on the whole it was great to get out for a ride with no rain.

Yes, I really must get around to giving that bargain lorry a bit of a repaint!

Remember this building I started as part of the layout extension? I've finally got around to making a proper version of it to replace the foam board mock up. At just over 600mm long, it's easily the largest structure I've ever modelled; should be interesting!

Excellent news about the change of date, looking forward to being able to attend the SRC show and Scaleforum this year.

Here's a link: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/9cqb4wNYb1J4YGED/

I had a call this week to update my card number and confirm address (for a P4 wheeled and sound fitted 25324) and was advised despatch was expected within the next "few weeks".

My earliest memory of going somewhere specifically to watch/spot trains was a trip to Wolverhampton station on a Saturday with my Dad and brother. I still have the Locoshed book bought at the time which was the Winter 83/84 edition so I'd have been about 8 years old. If I remember rightly we were there to see the pair of class 25s take forward a train to (I assume) Aberystwyth. Possibly the same year, we had a day out at Crewe during the school summer holidays and remember being amazed at how busy it was with loco changes and movement on/off the depot. We saw D200 which think had only recently returned to traffic in green livery at the time.

Listed in the current Alan Gibson catalogue:

Thanks Mike. I'd missed the bags of bits which had got mixed up with a load of other wagon related detritus on my workbench. Wider calipers now fitted (and and coupling mounts chopped off).

As DPD have misplaced a parcel of bike components I was planning to fit today, I found myself with some unscheduled free time and made a last minute decision to go to Doncaster exhibition this morning. I picked up a couple of new wagons for the layout. Firstly a Revolution TUA tank. A set of P4 wheels popped straight in with no other modification required and (despite feeling quite light) the wagon runs very nicely. Less simple to convert was the Rapido OAA. I have a part finished Hornby OAA in one in my projects box, but thought this would make and interesting comparison. While the underframe detail is impressive, conversion to P4 is not straightforward as the brakes foul the wheels. In addition the axles used are longer than normal, resulting in a sloppy fit when replacement wheels are fitted. At first I considered swapping the P4 wheels onto the Rapido axles, but these are 1.5mm diameter so that wasn't really an option. I ended up drilling out the axle boxes to fit brass bearings and after some trial and error got things running nicely. Now I need to refit the brakes I had to chop off - might persevere with the Hornby one after all.

A variation on your Freightliner flats would be the Fletliner brick train, as seen here: edit to add, sorry just re-read your post and see you are looking at Lancaster area, I think the Fletliner only went as far as Trafford Park

I have happy memories of operating Moretonhampstead and Leighford back when my Dad was a member of WMRC. As a youngster, the club's exhibition over the May bank holiday weekend was one of the highlights of my year! I'm glad to hear that the club remains active. Are there any current club layout projects a perspective member could get involved in or any plans to run an exhibition?

Sounds like the unclipped gear tower issue that was mentioned a few pages back - an easy fix

Please don't take my comments as a criticism, more of an observation. I'm grateful for the thought given to making the loco so easy to convert and for the availability of P4 wheelsets. Just to clarify, I had no issues with derailments at the supplied 17.5mm back to back measurement, the only issue was that the loco would slow down slightly when passing through turnouts at slow speeds. I believe this was caused be the backs of the wheels dragging on the check rails. Adjusting the wheels to a back to back measurement that is within the recommended range (17.68 to 17.75) improved running. Checking and adjusting back to backs is a routine part of any P4 (or EM) conversion so it's no big deal.

56070 regauged to P4 and put to work on Fryers Lane. Initially I found the wheels a little tight to gauge (17.5mm back to back) but these were easily eased out to something closer to 17.7mm and it runs very nicely. I found the standard DCC settings excellent giving an enjoyable and intuitive driving experience.

Wheel swap done, very simple and quick. Time for a bit of a test run. Initially I found the loco a little hesitant through my (admittedly less that perfect) point work. A quick check of back to backs found them to be 17.5mm; easing these out to 17.7mm helped - I suspect the backs of the wheels were dragging slightly on the check rails. I found the DCC settings gave an enjoyable and intuitive driving experience, making it easy to stop the loco in the correct place when shunting. Hopefully more time for a more thorough play over the next few days.

Wheels - and very nice they are too. Hopefully I'll get some time later to fit them.

Unfortunately I chose based on era; you'll have to wait until the next one!

I've already had to stop him eating the package from Modelu containing the crew for the 56!

I think you're expecting too much of Spams' loco recognition skills. It's another example of the "flat front, two windows" class.