2mmMark

A mate of mine used to do Prince Philip's hair. One time driving in to Windsor Castle, the guard asked him if he has a permit. My mate replied "no, he just wants a trim off sides and back."

You can ignore that paragraph if you use a 12vdc plug-in power supply of something like 500ma. This will be written on the power supply. Here's a very simple schematic for you. http://davidksmith.com/modeling/projects/throttle.htm The LED Dimmer can be replace by this or something very similar https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275254025141 I'm well out of touch with what's available on the market. Gaugemaster are OK but their feedback handheld (HH) is still based on a very crude circuit. All Components offer one but I know nothing about it except that it costs £60. A good ready-made unit would be the Stapleton 852B. I have a couple bought secondhand from ebay, already set up for N scale. Don't let the 1.5amp output worry you, it's up to 1.5amp. Use a lower amperage power supply and it'll give a suitably reduced output. http://www3.sympatico.ca/kstapleton3/851.HTM As for basic electronics, I highly recommend the first 8 chapters of this as an excellent primer on the subject. https://www.merg.org.uk/content/ebook Mark

I'm quite keen on the inexpensive PWM speed controllers available from ebay & other sources. They work well with a variety of motors. I'm using one on British Oak and it copes very well with my locos which have motors ranging from the traditional open frame Tenshodo to Tramfabriek coreless. Here's how I built a controller: It's important to find one with a 0 to 100% duty cycle. Some are not zero which in simple terms means that the power is not off completely so a loco with a very efficient motor can creep slightly with the control at its lowest point. I have tried a Morley Vesta controller but I found it didn't give the very fine slow and steady running I was after. Mark

It's a bit of a cheeky cross-posting from a Facebook group on industrial locomotives. The image was taken in Huddersfield in 1959, the assumption being it's on delivery from the builder. https://www.facebook.com/groups/163976490369879 Mark

Don't need a layout, just a low-loader! Mark

Some tricky times ahead then. We'll need some coal to keep the strategic steam reserve working. Won' t get far burning Harbottle's underpants and signs for Cheltenham.

All I have to say is... Mick treated us to a few images during the recent ZAG meeting.

Not even from a copywriter? 😉 As the saying goes, two writes do make a wrong.

Thanks, some interesting views there that I'd not seen before.

Progress on British Oak has been static, on maybe static is progress? The layout is now decidedly more furry after a few sessions via applications of static grass. Setting up for the first application involved two seperate metal sieves, with insulated handles - very important! - connected in turn up to the flockbox, using it as a static charger generator. Two sieves enable different shades of fibres to be spread which helps to get a variation of colour. The electric puffer was also put to good use. WWScenics Basing Glue was applied and some various sizes of ground foam mixed into the glue. This gives an uneven clumpy surface to the glue, which feeds through into a clumpy uneven grass effect. Bottom left is the crocodile clip connection to the layout. I found it didn't need to be right in the glue as the static does spread across the surface. The photo below shows the aftermath of the grass application but before hoovering up the excess. A useful technique which I picked up from Giles Flavell's youtube channel (look for "grass clumps" from GilesEngineer) was to scatter some fine earth over the static grass. In my case, I used some grey dust recovered from the mess left behind after lifting a foam-backed fitted carpet. I suppose there has to be some benefit from these awful things! As I hoped, the foliage mats levelled off with first static grass layer. Extra grass tufts were also put in place, some are home-made, some came from Games Workshop. Detritus from the older wood staithe was added, using sawn-up lolly sticks stained with Indian Ink along with corrugated iron sheets made from aluminium foil. The lolly sticks are a nice close grained wood that stains nicely. Here's a overall view of this stage of the layout. The next step was to layer some longer dried grass on top, using the WWScenics Layering Glue. This is designed to be sprayed but given the small area involved, it was applied by brush instead. I did try using a paper mask with holes torn in it but the water-based glue dissolved the paper. These two before & after photos show the effect of layering. The track of the disused line also had grass applied. The trial backscene is part of an 1903 oil on canvas painting by George H. West, currently in the care of Calderdale Council, found in a useful collection of images here https://myrastrick.com/tag-cut A few more photos taken earlier today. I think that leaves British Oak in an acceptable state for the forthcoming 2mm Expo. Now is the time to concentrate on getting the locos & stock completed. The workbench needs a good clean up and hoovering before any painting starts. Static grass fibres get everywhere. The layout is also gently shedding fibres like a faithful dog sheds fur (we have two of those!) Mark

A few photos from the Centenary Of Speed Day at Brooklands yesterday. The famous Napier-Railton John Cobb special Sir Malcolm Campbell's 1920 Sunbeam 350hp Land Speed Record car 1905 Fiat Isotta-Fraschini recreation - never actually built at the time but recreated using factory blueprints on a Fiat chassis 1905 200hp Darracq V-8 1924 Delage DH V-12 Sadly missing was The Beast of Turin, which ran a big-end the evening before. All these ran very impressively, given the limited space of the Finishing Straight. Mark

Same for me. I always liked the quirky and wide-ranging nature of the subjects in the magazine. SMT April 1991 is on my search list, Paul, you can guess why... ;-) Used to bump into Chris quite often at local exhibitions in Surrey & SW London. I recall him as still using a 35mm film camera when most of us were toting digital. I wonder what SMT would look like nowadays with the benefit of improved production techniques, easier photography and affordable colour printing. Mark

A few photos of the home-made foliage mats in situ. Still looking a bit raw but they'll bed in when surrounded by grass.

Do you think that's wise Captain Mainwaring? 1 - It's a bank holiday weekend 2 - I'm booked up for a vintage motorcycle run in Dorset on my 1938 Royal Enfield. Bound to be damp! Mark

Time to crack on with scenery and end any prevarication. The best approach seems to be to work upwards from the ground level in layers. With this in mind, the area around the staithe has been treated with some gravel/earth mix and spilt coal, to replicate what I'm seeing in photos of the prototype. As the staithe was rebuilt, it looks like there's an area of ground that was cleared and stayed rather bare for a while with just a scattering of weeds. A mixture of ash and a fine brown sand was made up to match photos, sprinkled onto a layer of wet PVA glue, then sealed by dropping on a very much watered down PVA mix with some isopropyl alchohol added as a wetting agent, rather like track ballasting. When dry, this holds down the texture very strongly. The same was done with spilt coal. There's a bit more to do around the base of the staithe as it looks like it collected into piles when dropped into the barges. I'll make these from the black anti-static foam mentioned previously. This should be a neater way of making things untidy, if that makes sense. The spilt coal might need a coat of matt varnish as it's quite sparkly in places. It's genuine crushed coal from Attwood Aggregates. This comparison with the earlier staithe shows the change that has taken place and it's also a useful reference for the adding the long grass and vegetation. Next step was to make some ground cover to go in before the static grassing of the layout. Again, I believe this helps bed everything in and more closely represents nature with grass growing up about other vegetation. I did get some ready-made scenic mats but they're a bit coarse. Fine for larger scales but not really suitable for 2mm. This meant starting from scratch. As a basis, my favourite material is 3M Synthetic Steel Wool - ironically 000 grade. This is just about perfect, a nice drab colour, a fine texture which can be teased out and amply strong. What I do is pull a pad of the material apart, ending up with two thin layers. Then PVA glue is applied to the side which has been pulled apart as it's randomly rough. The best way to apply the PVA is with the fingertip, trying to coat individual strands of the mesh. It's then dipped glue side down into the scenic dressing mix, which is various types of ground-up foam with some very fine sawdust added to give the effect of dead leaves. The two "scatter coats" are from Jack Kine Scenics, so I've had these for a while now - possibly nearly 30 years and the lighter green are Carrs Tree Leaves from the same era. The photo sequence shows the process. Varying the glue coverage varies the amount of scatter and if there's a bit too much, it's easily brushed off to thin it out a bit. A lot of people use hairspray but I prefer the more robust bond of PVA. It's a little bit more time consuming to apply but it helps with the longevity of the finished scene. Mark

Your chief tester's eyesight is probably at the optimum for 2mm modelling. You should subcontract more jobs to her. Wiring concepts can be made simple by taping a red pen and a black pen together and drawing out the track plan. When the red crosses the black, that's where you need to isolate and put in some kind of switch. It will also indicate how dead-end sidings can be made self-isolating when the turnout is set against them. The MERG e-book is highly recommended https://www.merg.org.uk/content/ebook

The Flockbox is designed to produce static grass tufts like this, a job it does well. I'm hoping that the electrified puffer bottle will make it easier to produce a patchy effect on bigger areas of grass. My trials so far show that layering gives a better effect than trying to cover everything in one go. Incidentally, the Flockbox is written up in MRJ 262. Mark

Something I've been experimenting with is a more precise way of applying static grass. Now that everything is electrified, the simple Noch puffer bottles are being somewhat overlooked. What if there was a way of combining the precise nature of the puffer bottle with an extra static charge? I have one of the now discontinued Warpainter Flockboxes which has a couple of flying leads aimed at using a metal sieve for grassing bigger areas. I believe similar boxes are available from other sources. https://www.warpainter.net/flockbox-11-p.asp Fitting a loop of wire inside the plastic nozzle of the Noch puffer on which to attach one of the flying leads showed the idea had legs but it needed a bit more area to fully charge the fibres. The bottle has a 20mm diameter nozzle so I acquired some suitably sized tube, brass mesh and a bit of copper wire to make an all metal nozzle. The following sequence of photos shows the general idea. The copper wire came from a spare bit of mains twin & earth cable. It helps reinforce the joint and provides a convenient connection point. A little bit of heat shrink tube helps protect the bare wire. So far it works rather well for covering small areas and should come into its own for putting weeds up against structures and in trackwork. A slight drawback is that the exterior of the bottle takes on a slight static charge. A non-conductive tube slipped over the metal nozzle might help prevent this. The mesh size (about 1.5mm) I've used copes OK with fibres up to 6mm, probably about as big as you'd want to go for 2mm work. A tip I'd pass on is to wear some latex gloves when doing static grass to prevent getting the occasional jolt from the applicator.

The management of British Oak have been concerned about fossil fuels for some time and have been seeking a replacement. They have also been faced by the illogicality of moving wagons to and from the unloading point which either remain empty or full. Explaining this wasteful process to shareholders at the AGM would be challenging. Fortunately, a replacement has been found. It's an artifical material often used in computer packaging. The combustible properties are not yet known but will be marketed under the slogan "Let's Keep The Foam Fires Burning!" It's also a much cleaner material, far less prone to the annoying dust that coal produces. OK, that's enough of this rubbish. When I built British Oak, I neglected to make it work properly for unloading coal. In order to make up for this heinous oversight, a method of representing laden & empty hoppers is needed. The answer came from a block of quite dense packing foam which protected some hard disks I'd ordered. Shapes were carved to fit the barge and the hopper wagons. Those for the barge are a tight push fit but the ones for the wagons needed to slip in and out easily. This video demonstrates the general idea. The photos below are pretty self-explanatory. The magnetic wand is left over from a sliding uncoupler experiment. A steel dressmakers pin is pushed into the underneath of the foam, the foam compressed slightly, the pin is cut short flush with the compressed foam, the foam released and hey presto, the pin vanishes. The key thing is to make sure the foam is easily removed from the wagon, otherwise the whole wagon gets lifted up. To acheive this the foam was lightly sanded, the dense nature of the foam making this possible. On its own. the foam looks reasonably like coal but the next step is to try a coating of crushed coal to see how that works.

The email address I have for Allen is allendoherty@worsleyworks.co.uk but if the domain is parked, that might not work either Postal address is 19 Douglas Road, Worsley, Greater Manchester M28 2SR

Just a shot of showing where scenic progress is currently. Quite a lot to do but thankfully it's a small area. I'm doing quite a bit of reading up on static grass techniques.

I'll have a look in the box of bits David Balchin passed on to me when I went to Berts to look over the remains of the Rydes Vale after it had been brought down from the loft. The tale of running trains in the VC10 cockpit was told to me personally by Bert when I visited him. He showed me his folding oval test track. The flight deck of the VC10 is like a ballroom compared to modern day aircraft. There's space for 5 people in comfort - two pilots, flight engineer + panel, navigator + table and a spare seat. Mark

To paraphrase Captain Mainwaring, well done I wondered who'd be the first to say something like this. I'm aware that the boat isn't right, having posted some photos of the actual location right at the start of this thread but unfortunately, a boat of that size wouldn't fit the canal space on the layout and at this stage it's impossible to alter the landscape. When it comes to what'll be shown at the 2mm Expo, it's either this boat or an empty space. The boat scales at about 70 foot long and 8½ foot wide. In any case, rule 1 applies.

I think there's a variety of domes been used on Jinties over the years. 47445 definitely has a bell-type Midland dome. The one I used was thr L&Y 2-4-2 dome sold by N-Brass. The Tri-ang moulding also has the same dome. A classic case of needing to model a specific loco from a photograph. I wonder if they ever got switched in the works?

Thanks Simon, on the original casting they are 16mm from face to face, on my loco, they're 12.5mm face to face. Possibly still a bit wide, definitely bigger than true scale but much less prominent than before. The extra width was never necessary in the first place, even for N gauge wheels. As the basis for a 2mm finescale loco, the current production Jinty is a much better proposition. The body is better and the chassis is an easy conversion using the Association parts. Even so the chimney & dome don't seem quite right. If you can find one, the Gem whitemetal kit was about the best 2mm scale version. I remember seeing one (possibly built by Phil Kerr) with a scratchbuilt chassis running beautifully on the newly built Luton Hoo section of Chiltern Green at the MRC's Easter show in Central Hall in 1982. It was that what persuaded me to join the Assocation at the show. A mere 40 years later, I'm close to having my own Jinty finished. Actually, tell a lie, I did have a couple of Lone Star pushalong versions as a kid. I'm not an LMS modeller but to me, and I suspect many others, it's the archetypal 0-6-0 tank engine, perfectly proportioned in every respect. It's very tempting to make another in a more normal livery to replicate the one I saw on Luton Hoo. I have a Gem kit stashed away. Better not get distracted, I have some scenery to get done! Mark