Will Vale

Hi Ben, I've added a bit more detail in a follow-on post. The synopsis is it works OK, but some wagons have different NEM pocket heights which makes things a bit less reliable. Probably no worse than standard tension locks - the problems are all on coupling up. I'm still not entirely sure if I'm happy with having the small tension locks on the basis of looks - it'd be nice to get closer coupling. I've been fiddling with bits of wire and such trying to build a better mousetrap, no dice so far. In fact I'm considering Sprat + Winkles, and ended up at your description of same - thanks for posting it! I'd be happier if I could do something with the tension locks though - cheaper and it makes for a more gradual changeover.

I spent the afternoon fiddling with couplings and have a bit more to report then last time. See here for the basic idea and where it came from. I wanted to try the delayed action couplings at both ends of vehicles, i.e. the normal tension lock setup with a hook at both ends, as opposed to Christopher Payne's version which only mounts the hook at one end. Apart from flexiblity, this would mean locos wouldn't have to mount hooks at all, and could just have a neat wire loop and full buffer beam fittings. I made up a new set of hooks with the magnetic tails and delay latches soldered to the outside, since it seemed likely they would interfere if they were on the insides of the hooks. The critical dimension is that the there should be a 3mm gap between the start of the hook and the delay latch. To speed things up, and since I wanted to do some shunting with a two or three rakes of wagons to give the couplings a proper test, I did a few at a time, with a "jig" consisting of two pen lines and some masking tape - classy! Removing the completed assembly needed a bit of care, but separating the couplers and trimming/forming the latches was really easy. The latch needs to slip over the other coupling's loop easily, and the end can be trimmed off almost in line with the slope of the hook, it's only there to give space to withdraw the coupling loop after propelling a wagon into position before the hook drops. So they end up fairly small. I did some hands-on and hands-off testing with an 08 and a mixture of PNAs, Seacows and TEA tanks, to try and cover a range of vehicles with both body and bogie mounts. This is much more of a test than I did last time. Observations: Propelling after uncoupling is pretty robust most of the time, but on curves the latches can sometimes slip off the loops and cause the wagons to recouple. I tweaked them in a little bit which helped. Coupling up is reliable, the latches don't seem to hinder this at all. Having hooks at both ends helps when coupling heights don't match perfectly - one hook will usually engage even if the other doesn't. Some tweaking might be required to balance ease of uncoupling with accidental train breaks. The Seacows seemed to need more tweaking than the PNAs and TEAs - maybe because the mounts are quite low and droopy on mine. Even with my cack-handed soldering they seem robust enough. I did break a couple of latches, but they were easy to fix. If I was exhibiting with these I'd make up half a dozen extra and just clip a new one in if there were problems. Uncoupling requires a bit more care - like Kadees. You have to watch the couplings closely, or listen for the click of the hook lifting. With two hooks you need to be in just the right place. I suspect that with Brian Kirby's larger ceramic magnets this might be easier. The two biggies: If anything goes wrong (involuntary recouple, or a partial couple with one hook latched up and the other down) you can fix it without touching the stock. With a bit of practice I was getting about 80-90% success rate shunting rakes of wagons in and out of sidings using only the direction button (and a bit of momentum) on the Powercab. Very satisfying. Even more than before, I think this is worth pursuing. It would be better with an etched hook, since everything would be happening in the plane of the hook rather than outside it - it seems like it would avoid the recoupling on curves. Plus it'd save my blushes in that I would'nt have to show something I'd touched with an iron to the world at large I might see if I can draw up some artwork since I have a modelling friend here who sells etched brass kits. Either that or I need some flux and a better jig.

Part of the reason for slow progress on Whitemarsh Yard is that I've been held up by needing to get reliable working couplings and install uncouplers before ballasting can go ahead. I did some experiments with Brian Kirby's magnetic tension locks and came away quite happy, but when I started thinking about siting magnets I was less happy - even for a small layout like Whitemarsh you need quite a few. Plus because I didn't install them before laying the track, each uncoupler requires cutting out two sleepers, fitting two magnets, and making good afterwards. Not heaps of work, but not trivial either. I wondered about some kind of delayed action and remembered that Christopher Payne mentioned using "delayed action tension locks" for his minimum gauge layouts. He describes the system here (apparently he was in turn inspired by an article in the March 1969 Railway Modeller) and it's very elegant, much like the magnetic system in that respect. So... could these two neat ideas work together? On the face of it it looked reasonable, so I modified some coupling hooks and tried them out. Essentially this meant fitting a brass wire delay latch to the coupling hook to sit outboard of the bar, plus notching the underside of the bars in the middle. How it works (assuming a loco coupled to a wagon for the sake of avoiding "wagon A", "wagon B" etc.) When the coupling is over the magnet and tension is released, the hook lifts until the latch catches under the bar of the other coupling. Backing the loco off, the bar slides over the latch and hook lifts fully. Bringing the loco back, and propelling the wagon away from the magnet, the hook drops partially and the latch sits on top of the loco's bar. You can then propel the wagon to where you want to drop it off. Backing the loco off again, the latch slides over the bar and the hook returns to normal. This all worked fairly well, so naturally I looked for ways to spoil it The big difference between the magnetic tension locks and the ramp-operated kind is that the hooks lift much further with the magnets - with the neodymium magnets I'm using, the hooks lift easily to the limit of their travel, and I recall this was also the case with the recommend cupboard door catch magnets as well. This makes it both possible to use a simpler latch, and not necessary to notch the loops. I think when using ramps the hooks don't lift as far, so the geometry of the latch, hook and loop is a lot tighter hence the more complex shape. I also didn't bother to crank the hooks to the centre line on the second try. This resulted in a Mark 2 simplified version: It's not a huge difference, but forming the hook is easier, it's marginally less obtrusive, and not having to notch the loops makes installation less fiddly. (Ignore the different staple arrangement here - that was another experiment). Footnotes: I soldered the magnetic tail and delay latch, not something I'm very good at but so far they haven't fallen off. I didn't have any problems with soldering one desoldering the other. I'm currently using the delayed action couplings single-ended (so the hooks are only at one end). This makes installing magnets easier, since you only need one, but it does mean things have to be fitted more accurately (mainly in regard to mounting height) since you can't rely on the "other" hook to provide tension if one doesn't quite catch the loop properly. I don't think this is peculiar to the modified couplings though. I can't see why the delayed action wouldn't work with hooks at both ends, but it would be likely better done as a one piece etched arm since I perhaps the delay latches (which effectively make the arms thicker) interfering with each other. I might try and fit the latches on the reverse and see if that works - if it does, then using the couplings double-ended is attractive since it will allow stock to run on any layout, and locos to wear thin wire loops rather than tension locks at both ends. The delayed action and non-delayed action magnetic couplers inter-operate quite well, rather like the way the magnetic and "vanilla" tension locks do, so no rush to convert everything. Disclaimer: Unlike Christopher and Brian, I haven't tested this modification extensively under proper layout conditions (although I intend to) so take this as an interesting suggestion rather than a recommendation If it turns out that it all goes really well though, does anyone fancy making an etch with the latches built in?

So back at the tail end of last year I built this A3 layout in three weeks. I was quite pleased with it, and thought I could take it to the 2010 Convention in NZ and enter it in the A3 competition at Easter. I had a long list of things to finish/fix/improve and plenty of time to get them done in the interim. Fast forward a few months and we're flying down to Christchurch for the convention next Thursday, and Tanis hasn't had any of the attention I wanted to give it until last Friday night. Oh well. I have at least cleaned the track and run some trains a train the train. I've also started working on a better Acacia tree to replace my previous effort, which was a suitable piece of the Woodland Scenics pre-flocked sea foam stuck in the ground and given some extra thorny foliage with spraymount and static grass. I've never made a tree before, so this is all a bit of an adventure. Since I didn't really know what Acacia trees look like, I found a picture on Flickr: http://www.flickr.co...r_a/3967834130/ and this is what it's going to be replacing. I'd forgotten how much I liked this picture (because you can't see the cut-off top of the sea foam here) so I hope it manages to live up to it. Sadly the original tree is u/s following a botched removal, no going back now. I started by dismantling about 8" each of twin-core stranded mains cable, and solid core Cat-5 Ethernet cable, plus dug up a few inches of heavy gauge copper wire for the core and to make a peg for planting. I had a go at forming the tree from just the stranded cable, but it was too fine to work with easily so the armature is mostly from the Cat 5. I did weave a couple of inches of the stranded stuff in at the ends of branches to get some finer twigs. You can see in the picture that I decided to add some more of the solid core partway though - I wouldn't recommend this since you pretty much have to loop it around the existing trunk and branches and it won't be as neat and tidy as the stuff which was twisted in the initial bunch. Still, learning experience... I then messily soldered various junctions so that I would feel I was creating a well-engineered tree (a proper job, if you like) and wrapped the thicker branches in tape: I should have taken more care in making sure the tape laid flat everywhere - there are a few flaps of tape visible which I'm going to have to trim back after the next stage dries. Speaking of which, the next stage involved brushing a mix of gesso, raw umber, and burnt siena acrylics onto the branches. This is more for texture than anything else, and I'm probably going to spray it black afterwards since the acrylics are unlikely to bond that well to the bare wire areas. But they do help me get a feel for the bark colour and ensure that any chips won't be stark white. A tip from this job was that brushing from the roots to the twigs is probably good - I found it was easy to leave blobs of gesso around the tree, and at least if they're on the twigs it's easy to spot and remove them. Next job is to see what it looks like when dry, and clean it up and fix the various problems you can see in the photos, most of which are because it's a bit of a rush job. I'm not sure what to use for foliage yet - possibly teased out Woodland Scenics poly fibre with more static grass needles for leaves? Real Acacias have a fairly regular leaf structure but there's not much hope of replicating that since they're quite small leaves.

http://www.cybermodeler.com/hobby/kits/tam/kit_tam_89782.shtml Thanks for the tip! It looks like Tamiya have re-boxed it for the Japanese market, although I'm not sure it'll be easy to get now since it was a limited edition. I'll see if I can track one down, although it's a bit naughty since I'm supposed to be finishing off a Krupp Protze for the same layout and I doubt I can fit both I agree about the scope for crossover. I'm also really impressed at how much extra stuff you usually get in kits from some manufacturers - figures, stowage, tools, etc. etc. Great for layout details, and the figures are often a lot better (in terms of poses and proportions) than the railway ones, particularly in larger scales.

Lovely job on the lorry, and nice to see someone else has been lured in to 1:35 by the military stuff - I've just started dabbling in the same scale. I keep hoping Tamiya will produce the Blitz in 1:48 since I'd like one for my 09 layout, but no joy so far.

That's lovely! Who would have thought that Peco point motors plus grey primer could look so convincing? This might be the impetus I need to start on all the pre-ballasting trackside stuff for Whitemarsh. Looking forward to the next update

Love the sketches James! Does this mean you're going ahead with this project? I've just read the article in the January RM about the Istil rolling mill - another inspirational waterside industrial.

Nice to see RMWeb up and running in its new home - thanks to Andy and the team I spent some more time last week working on my crane, there's still a lot to do but progress is being made. I built new hydraulic cylinders for the boom to support the geometry I wanted - the kit cylinders and rams are all plastic, so they aren't too robust, and the LAV-R crane is stowed horizontally on the roof so the geometry is a bit funny. The new ones have styrene tube with paper clip or music wire for the ram, pivoted on more paper clip pieces spanning the boom sides. They're functional enough, although repeated play suggests they need a little something to hold a pose more firmly - perhaps a blob of glue on the end of the ram would do it. You can see I've also started on the slewing mechanism (rack and pinion) and pedestal. I found a picture of this type of crane arm on quite a tall tubular pedestal mounted on what looks like a ship deck, so I'm not worried that the tube looks thin - it's fairly legit according to the image. More fun was working on the hydraulic power unit, which is kit bashed/scratch built from a surplus TOW launcher sprue from the Tamiya M151A kit. I don't know much about engines or hydraulics, so this is to give an impression rather than to place rivets accurately, but there's a small engine, shaft-driven hydraulic pump, fuel tank, radiator, fan and coolant lines in there. I want to put a bit more panelling on it, for strength and realism, but not so much that you can't see the details. I've been bitten by this before, after building a fiddly engine for my Senussi loco and then ensuring that it was more-or-less invisible in the finished article! Once bitten, twice shy. Hopefully...

Cheers Pugsley! A friend said that this tunneling stuff was a bit of a rabbit hole (pun intended) and I'm starting to see his point - you find one picture or bit of information about the thing you're looking for, and then spend another hour finding out about some weird machine in the background of the picture.

Agreed, more great stuff. I have a loco project in mind with a very exposed cab, so I can see I'm going to have to buck my ideas up considerably from the "chair plus man" position I started off with

I finally found a copy of the December Model Rail in the colonies - stupidly I'd missed it in the first (airmail) shipment. Great article, although I agree that the web pictures look better - the contrast and saturation seemed higher in the magazine making the colours oddly vibrant. I'll definitely refer back to this when I start doing my yard pilot.

As a lead in to building my Schoema, which is still languishing on my bench as a pile of plastic rectangles, I've started to build some rolling stock. I like this as a way to get a feel for the scale, although making locos is probably more fun because they go Anyway, I've built two (and a half) flat wagons as the base for a light HIAB-type work crane. The wagons are based on some tunnel construction stock used at the Neuer Distelrasentunnel in Germany - I found some detail pictures which I've since lost, so I can't post those, but you can see the general sort of thing in this image from Wikipedia: Image from de.wikipedia by Reinhard Dietrich. Public Domain. Edit: found the detail picture I was after here: http://fotoportal.fo...2&s=akt14&b=107. Still not sure if my representation of the brake line attachments is anything like the real one but it looks OK on the model. The chassis are from Hornby Railroad mineral wagons with some bits trimmed off, and everything else is styrene with a pinch of brass wire. Given the chassis choice, mine are much shorter than the real thing and have fixed knuckle couplers (Kadee no. 148) rather than the pivoted ones on the real thing. The HO knuckles are under scale here, but better than nothing. I kept the recessed mounting because it looks cool, and built a representation of all the end fittings since there isn't really any other detail on the wagons! Here are the two together with the start of the crane. The parts are from a 1:35 scale Trumpeter kit of the LAV-R APC, which I got for a bargain price - I was originally considering taking something from a die-cast toy, but didn't find what I wanted. I'm almost sorry not to make the kit up properly since it's really nice, but it's also full of lovely bits (and etched mesh, and other details) which are going to help me detail the crane's hydraulic power unit. I'm not sure if the second wagon should be a match truck pure-and-simple, or possibly carry some kind of unitised freight with the crane boom supported above it? I'm leaning towards the latter although I don't want to give away what the cargo might be for fear of incurring mockery...

OK, here you go - not the best, but hopefully it makes the text clearer: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/blog/315/entry-2767-noisy-gronk-pictures/

Some pictures of the speaker install I talked about here. Sorry for the nasty digicam quality, it was too much work to go and find the tripod and the SLR. While I had the body off I took the opportunity to make a styrene bottom plate for the sound box to replace the blob of Blu-Tak which was filling that role in the Mk.1 version. It's still not a classy install, but it works and apart from cutting the hole is still reversible for when I find a better way. Here are the main components. I've already removed the grille cover with the tip of a no. 11 blade here. If I was doing it again I'd be very careful to only exert pressure near the corners, since it's possible to create hairline cracks if you do it in the middle, and it might also give more chance of getting all the pips out rather than snapping them - I had two break. Not a big deal though. Here's the grille drilled out, prior to cleaning up with a file. Take care and go slowly - lots of detail to spoil, as you can see from my errant knife blade leaving a mark towards the top of the bonnet. I spliced the decoder and pickup wires together with soldered joints and tape. The motor terminals were easy to get to so I soldered directly to those. The rest of the decoder wires are bundled up in case I want to run lights later. The speaker is mounted to the interior of the body using a shell with a thin skool sossage (chiz chiz chiz) of Blu-Tak. This needs to make a seal all the way around. And finally here's the sound box with ugly Blu-Tak fillet to hopefully seal the enclosure. The back and bottom are made from 1mm styrene, with a groove in the back to clear the motor shaft. I cut the plates roughly to shape and then worked on them with sandpaper and files to get something close to the body shell's shape - the last 0.5mm gap is taken up with the Blu-Tak. Don't forget to plug the exhaust (I assume) outlet! I haven't sealed around the bottom plate yet in this picture. I hope this is useful to anyone thinking about doing one of these. It wasn't that hard, it probably took a couple of hours, and I've only installed a couple of hard-wired motor-only decoders before. Admittedly one of those was in a Bachmann On30 Porter, which is not particularly easy. All that said, look to the more experienced folk (e.g. the DCC fitting guides in the forums) for how to do a proper job rather than my less professional version The end result is fun, it's not super loud and there's some hiss from both the ESU mixer (I think) and some of the sound samples, but it compares well to some factory-fitted models I've tried. Howes should be congratulated on the driving qualities - the rev up, run, coast and stop all feel excellent. Now I want to do my EWS one

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I took a couple of pictures and then forgot to take more. I'll see if I can get some with the body off and post the lot.

Just finished installing a Howes LokSound micro in my Christmas present - a Cotswold Rail 08 intended for duty as the Whitemarsh Yard pilot. It wasn't particularly fiddly, only a couple of hours' work really, although I underestimated the care required to cut out the body shell behind the front grille. I started off drilling the four corners and thought I could then cut through the edges with multiple passes of a knife - bad idea A slight slip left a mark on the warning stripes, but it isn't too bad and will probably disappear after weathering. Edit: See here for pictures to go with this text. What I ended up doing, and what I should have done all along, was drill 1mm holes all around the hole, join up a couple on each edge with the knife (carefully) and then use a fine razor saw (Tamiya handheld one) to finish the job. Much easier that way, especially since the moulded interior grill provides a good guide for positioning the drill bit. This was my first sound install, and it went quite well apart from breaking one of the speaker connections and having to re-solder it. I cut a blanking plate from 1mm plasticard profiled to the interior of the body - this fits behind the speaker, and the decoder goes on top of the motor block where the 8 pin socket was. I wired the motor terminals directly but spliced the pickup wires to avoid having to dismantle the mechanism. Pleasingly, the cab is still pristine and there was plenty of space to tuck the unused function wires away without having to trim them off. Best experience - after sealing around the speaker and sound chamber with Blu-tak, and screwing the body back on after an initial test it was suddenly much louder and clearer since the sound chamber was properly sealed. I know this is what's supposed to happen, but it's an eye-opener (ear opener?) when it does. I'm now wondering if I could make a hole in the corner of the back plate and run a thin styrene tube back along the inside of the body as a bass pipe? It'd only get to go as far as the gearbox top, but it's still a 40-50mm run, and well away from the front of the speaker. Hmm... Off for some shunting now, plus with its electrics done I can think about weathering that pretty paint job.

Thanks eastwest, I'll stick to my umlaut substitute for now!

I'm afraid things have been a bit stagnant on Whitemarsh, although I did build an unusual micro layout for exhibition at the end of last year so I haven't been completely idle. The problem which is stalling progress on the UK stuff is that I need to decide on a coupling system, or more crucially an uncoupling system, before I ballast the track. I think what I want is the Kirby coupling, but I have track laid on cork already and don't want to dig it out. I'm thinking about getting some Neodymium magnets to fit between the sleepers - I have a styrofoam board so putting them under the trackbed isn't an option. Once that's done, hopefully work can continue. I must admit I'm also musing about ordering a teddy bear from Hattons, since a preserved example was the first pilot at Whitemoor during the earlier stages of the reconstruction. I received its replacement (a Cotswold 08) for Christmas, but I like the idea of having the green diesel to upset people with when it's parked next to a class 66: "Silly fool, you've gone and mixed your eras!"

I've been thinking about making something in 1:35 for a while, since like Tanis's 1:48 this allows a wide range of good quality cheap figures, vehicles etc. from the military modelling community. A representation of 60cm gauge using OO/HO track and mechanisms isn't that far out of scale so it's relatively practical from the railway side too. So I went looking for modern narrow gauge industrial stock to build and found Schoema, a German manufacturer. I knew about their Feldbahn locos, but didn't realise they now mainly concentrate on locos for mining and tunnelling projects. (Incidentally does anyone know a way to post o-umlaut on here? ALT-0246 and ö both didn't work...) Their stock has a fantastic functional aesthetic which is also quite friendly to modelling - no tricky curved bits to worry about! After a lot of searching I found this one, which is pretty small but has all the right features: Image from de.wikipedia by Reinhard Dietrich. Public domain. I've made a drawing (from perspective photos, so it's likely not that accurate) and that scales out nicely to match the Bachmann On30 trolley wheelbase at 1:35. This means I get to make a relatively accurate model as opposed to a might-have-been. The gauge will be a bit narrow, but they produce them down to 750mm gauge (and the gearboxes are narrower than that, so they could probably make a 600mm version if they really had to ) So far, all I've done is cut out a few frame parts from 2mm styrene, and have yet to pluck up courage to do all the shaping. Once I have something more than a small collection of rectangles I'll try and post some pictures.

I sympathise about the code 75 - I ordered mine from Hattons as well. I was tempted to get an entire box in order to have a local monopoly The shop in Johnsonville is a bit better, and mail order from Hobby City is good as well, but they seem to be winding down their railway business a little. Pity, they used to carry a really good range four or five years back.