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Ravenser

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Blog Entries posted by Ravenser

  1. Ravenser
    As I've mentioned before, in my teens a CJ Freezer article turned me into a modern image modeller , and I attempted a layout set in contemporary Lincolnshire: Ghosts opf Flaxboro'
     
    Eventually the project foundered under many problems, but I hung onto the stock and over the years I've slowly been recycling the stuff as reasonable scale models.
     
    In the photo contained therein, you can see an Airfix 31 heading two blue/grey vehicles entirely washed out by the flash awaiting departure for the E Lincs line at "Grimsby Town"  . They are in fact a Hornby Mk2a "BSK" and a Lima Mk1 SK , and a second Hornby Mk2 brake brought up the rear of the stopping train set.
     
    The Lima Mk1 was resurrected and rebuilt here :  Lima SK to TSO . But at the end of the day the contrast between the SE Finecast flushgalze on the TSO and the flushglazing on the Bachmann Mk1 BSK I commissioned from unused stock to run with it was just a bit much. Added to which the set had no first class accommodation.
     
    So I decided to aim for consistancy of modelling standard and return to another long-abandoned project, an attempt to make something of one of the two Hornby Mk2 brakes from Flaxborough.
     
    The state of play 8 years ago is summarised there:
     
    I started trying to flushglaze one, and it became clear the flushglaze wasn't fitting well. I tried filing out the window apertures from behind , it all started to look very messy, slow, and difficult , the coach would need repainting, there were moulded lining ridges... 
     
    So I boxed it up again and forgot about it. The second Hornby Brake was quietly sold on at the club show a few years later, as I certainly wasn't doing this twice. But the one I had started was now unsaleable, so I kept it.
     
    I've been very evasive how I describe these models because what Hornby produced and sold as a Mk2 brake second is in fact a 4 compartment BFK , and not a BSO. Having decided that finishing this project would give me a coach which would sit better against the upgraded Lima TSO , it was always going to be reworked as an actual Mk2 BFK, thus providing the missing first class accommodation in the set.
     
    The starting point is here:
     

     
    The moulded lines seperating blue and grey were peeled off with a chisel blade and rubbed down. I'm not clear if that had already been done when this photo was taken
     
    The shade of grey was visibly wrong when set against the Lima TSO, the Bachmann BSK - or anything else. I haqd some difficultiers finding suitable aerosol paint - it being the pandemic - and I made do with Tamiya TS-81 to respray it
     

     
    Having hacked away at it to remove the lining moulding, I had to repaint the self coloured plastic in rail blue , and I just about got away with the result. The interior was painted and peopled, and as it is a First , I even went as far as to add white patches for antimacassers
     
    Replacement transfers were applied and sealed with satin varnish. I managed to apply white lining neatly, although I did not attempt it on the part of the top edge where the yellow stripe is. Transfers didn't really fit for the stripe , so I resorted to hand painting (I had left the raised strip in place at the top of the grey area)
     
    The bogies wouldn't do - they had visible lumps above the B4 bogie frame which looked quite wrong. And as this is to run with the Lima Mk1 TSO with MJT B4s, they had to go. A pair of replacement bogies using MJT cast sides on MJT rigid 8'6" etched frames were built up . These are fitted with the MJT NEM etch. This provides useful extra weight in a good place, low down - they were suitably painted with blue coil springs and yellow roller bearings. Nothing much could be done about the underframe boxes , although a plasticard step was fitted below the guards doors. Replacement whitemetal buffers were fitted
     
    The whole vehicle was reglazed with SE Finecast vac-formed glazing .I had this in stock - supplies are getting difficult although I believe SE Finecast intend re-running them. This is the biggest and most critical job, as the lack of flushglazing is the killer with these old coach models. I cut off the flange at the back to get the main pane to seat forward and flush, and I used the glazing for the ventilators as backing and filled up with Glue and Glaze, which was also used to disguise the edge around the glazing. 
     
    One end gangway was plated over to recieve the black paper gangway from the companion Mk1 - the other had its gangway door painted the correct lime green. Underframe and roof recieved mild weathering
     
    And a photo revealed that the orange curtains in First were very noticeable. A rummage in the parts boxes found some MJT whitemetal curtains which were chopped up (Mk2 windows are wider) painted a suitably lurid orange , and stuck in place on the compartment side with UHU
     
    Here's the result in its set :

     
    It won't stand close up comparison with a new Bachmann Mk2a, but it's a perfectly serviceable layout coach , sits ok with the Mk1 , and is a vast improvement on the starting point.
     
    Anyone with a China-made Hornby Mk2a , with its much better standard of finish , has a head start
  2. Ravenser

    Mercia Wagon Repair
    I don't think I've ever done a product review on here before, but here goes....
     
    A fortnight ago I went to Railex. Most of my purchase list was 4mm stuff, even though I don't seem to have done any 4mm for about a year because of the N gauge project (which is why my annual review and resolutions post for 2023 hasn't happened). But the previous weekenmd I went to a local show - only my second show this year - and picked up the body of a Kirk Gresley 61' full brake for a quid. Everything below the solebars had gone , but I bought a set of MJT Gresley bogie sideframes I didn't need at Warley, and with a few other bits sourced I reckon I can rebuild it and get a decent vehicle for the kettle-period on Blacklade for under £20.
     
    I digress. While wandering round the show I came upon a trader new to me , WWscenics. I was browsing their stand wuith a vague "this looks useful stuff for the hobby" benevolence, when I noticed some brown cardboard boxes labelled as N Gauge Loco Storage boxes. I've started to build one or two N gauge wagon kits, bought a few more , and the issue of how to store them was starting to raise its head. The storage drawer under the bed which contains the Boxfile and its stock also houses the N gauge stock, all of it in the original boxes. I'd pretty well run out of room in there, and I'd more or less decided that my purchases of N gauge rolling stock had reached a limit.
     
    Here was an N gauge storage box, at the price of one modestly-priced N gauge wagon. I don't have 10 N gauge locos, but 10 locos might perhaps equate to 20 wagons. 
     
    At that point my interest moved rapidly from the vague "He seems to have a range of decent stuff" to the immediate "This could be useful". I asked if they had a made-up example: they did, and it was remarkably compact. I promptly bought a kit at the exhibition special price. (It now retails at £29.99)
     
    And the next afternoon, in an unwonted burst of energy and enthusiasm, I actually got on and built it. 
     
    The product is here: WWScenics N gauge loco box and it took me a couple of hours to build.
     
    Here we have the key things:

     
    The material is laser-cut 3mm MDF , with chocolate burnt edge colouring and a pungent mildly acrid smell. The instructions are plain and well drawn, although to be honest what goes where is mostly obvious. Nevertheless what you think you know may not be quite the way it should go together so the instructions are useful. The fit of the parts was excellent. No fettling was required.
     
    I assembled the unit with aliphatic resin, not so much because this is the ideal glue for the job but because I have twice bought a bottle of the stuff from Rocket under the impression it would be useful . Having found no obvious need for aliphatic resin over a good many years I am now trying to use up the bottles on any job where they  might be vaguely suitable, in order to preserve my stocks of PVA, a much more generally useful glue. Aliphatic resin leaves something of a stain despite intermittent attempts to be careful. But then PVA leaves a mark, too  .
     
    The finished unit is small- about a hand span in length and width. This means it fits nicely into the limited space left in the storage drawer after the Box file, 4mm stock storage files, and controller are packed away in it. The cardboard boxes and plastic jewel boxes in which N gauge RTR is supplied are a lot smaller than the boxes we are used to in 4mm , but they still aren't a particularly effective use of space. This unit improves the packing density of the stock by 2x-3x. What that means in practice is that I now have a home for pretty well all the kits I've bought once I've built them - and the drawer is less crowded than it was. Since in a small flat the limit on your fleet is the point at which you run out of space to store it, this is very helpful.
     

     
    It has multiple internal partitions so it builds up into a pretty sturdy unit . Clearly it wouldn't take being stood on or sat on , but otherwise it's pretty solid and I can't see it coming apart easily. The tabs visible on the top surface are designed to interlock with a second box on top. I may or may not buy a second unit: on the whole I think I prefer to keep locos in their original padded boxes, and without the locos I doubt if I would do more than half fill a second box. So the saving in space probably isn't there.
     
    A bonus is that it will make taking models out to run the layout a lot quicker and easier. It also means less scattered debris in the living room. I have been trying to use the boxes to give an impression/mock-up of the backscene buildings but that's only a short term measure.
     

     
    The holes on the ends of the trays are just about big enough for the end of your little finger and there is a recess on one end which is presumably there to take a label. A loose intermediate divider is provided with a series of slots to allow it to be placed so as to stop the models moving about. It is just about possible to arrange the drawers to take two 4 wheel wagons , if one is shorter than the other: the divider always has to be a little more than half way down
     

     
     
    I find it a useful product at a moderate price
  3. Ravenser

    Mercia Wagon Repair
    Things are looking up a bit for Mercia Wagon Repair, and the business seems to have escaped the liquidator's clutches.....
     
    Two or three weeks ago I was feeling more than a little hopeless about the whole thing here , partly (if truth be known) for one or two reasons external to the layout. Although there were enough problems arising within the project to cause dispondency.
     
    In the end after a certain amount of glum staring at N gauge points, I decided to see if  the second of the list of increasingly drastic options - fit frog wires and lift and replace the damaged points - would be viable.
     
    And it was. I managed to attach a frog feed wire to three of the five undamaged points. Awkward but, as it proved, quite doable. The other two points were hopeless cases, One , up against the backscene, did not permit me to get at the relevant areas with a soldering iron. And the other had gaps at the joints patched with plasticard scraps superglued in place. You do not solder anywhere near cyanoacrylate bonds, because in the presence of serious heat it decomposes to give off ..ahem cyanide gas . (The clue is in the name, cyanoacrylate...). 
     
    These happen to also be the points where the motors are SEEPs without switching. Not that SEEP's point motor switching is anything to celebrate, as we shall see.
     
    I already had Peco switches in stock, so these were stuck to the motors with Gorilla Glue contact adhesive and wired up . Excellent! I also wired up the one switched SEEP. Not so excellent...
     
    The "switch" on a SEEP motor consists of a small spring fitted round the vertical actuator rod. The point motor is built onto a PCB : there is a slot through it  for the actuator rod to move along when the point is thrown. On each side of this slot , there is a broad metal contact track on the PCB . On one side it ends in the pad to which the frog feed wire is soldered. On the other side it comprises two short sections, seperated by a gap. One of these sections ends in the pad to which you solder  the positive feed wire  , the other in the pad to which you solder the negative feed.
     
    The spring round the actuator rod presses against the PCB and shorts across from the track on one side to the track on the other ... When the actuator rod is at one end of its travel that is the bit of track connected to the positive feed. And  when it is at the other end of its travel, it's the bit connected to the negative feed.
     

     
    The words that come to mind for this bit of electrical engineering include "crude", "bodge", "primitive" and "Heath Robinson"
     
    The throw of a 9mm gauge point is of course rather less than that of a 16.5mm point. And the problem that this causes can be summed up in the words of The Grand Old Duke of York: "And when they were only half way up / They were neither up nor down" . Or positive , or negative....
     
    In one position the spring didn't quite reach the track connected to the feed. So the point is dependant on blade contact when set that way. Unfortunately that way is into the wagon works - which will be the route the shunters take most often . This is unfortunate. I tried fiddling about with the thing, but the PCB base is screwed into pads of thin balsa and I can't shift the motor along by about 1mm
     
    It seems that holding the switch across for slightly longer (say 2 sec not 1 sec) may induce sufficent travel to establish contact. What that will do to the blades long-term is an awkward question - remembering that this all started with a switch blade broken at the tiebar. And the point with this SEEP motor is the only point even more deeply buried in the formation, and even more disruptive to operation if it goes, than the point I've had to replace.
     
    But there are certainly a few issues with the shunters finding the blade dead when they shunt the works fan
     
    Speaking of which , the replacement job is done and here is the proof - point on the right .
     
    It works ok. (Peco point motor here so no switching issues. Just a dirty great hole in the board top). 
     
    So the Board are pleased to report that Mercia Wagon Repair is no longer facing liquidation. I just have to finish laying the track.
     

     
    In the meantime several other issues have been resolved. When I was in the nearest model shop buying the replacement point and a few other bits I spotted a recent issue yellow Network Rail 57 for sale second-hand at a reasonable price. A little discussion with the man in the shop ended with me returning and exchanging my Freightliner 57 and £20 for his Network Rail 57.  
     
    I now have 57 312, in a state current from about 2012-2019  (I can't now find the video of her emerging from repaint in order to confirm whether she lost the custard livery in early 2018 or early 2019).  She was hired out to a freight operator (I think DRS - again I can't refind the reference) so it's perfectly reasonable to have her turn up on a train of stock for repair/ recently repaired .  But she shouldn't really be seen with the Dapol 33, which with a little stretching of reality is good to about 2003 but no further. On the other hand the Freightliner 66s are fine as companions.
     
    I am starting to realise that "post-privatisation" has become rather a long period, and I am being more than a little hazy about the exact dates of various "modern" airbraked wagons....
     
    No plates were supplied with the loco although she has carried various names at various times.
     
    Here she is , along with my first two efforts at kit-built wagons in N .
     
    These seem to have taken forever to sort out but they now have couplers and can be used, even if they still need weathering/varnish coat. A degree of approximation applies with both, and I'm not entirely sure the chemical tanker really made it to the late 1990s never mind the present. As I said, "contemporary" suddenly seems to be about a 30 year period. It's startling to realise that the 57 must have originally been built by Brush almost 60 years ago...
     

     
    A further excursion has been provided by the question of backscenes. I was pondering the need for some kind of photographic work - or at least something - at the left side of the layout. Then Peco gave away a fine photo -backscene of a townscape with the January Railway Modeller (it's actually Exeter - the cathedral can be seen near the middle of it)
     
    This seemed ideal , even though I had already repainted the backboards with a clean sky colour. But it's just over 5' long, and the layout is 6' long. By the time I thought to phone Peco about the availability of an extra copy of that issue they'd run out
     
    And by that time I'd bought some Gaugemaster photo-backscene for the ends. But those sheets are rather closer up.
     
    Hmmm
     
    I have at least decided to disguise the non-exit at the left-hand end by a road bridge on a rising gradient , at a slight angle to the board. If I were ever to cut a hole at the end and go to an external cassette fiddle , this might disguise it. And in the meantime, it occurs to me that a mirror buried here might help, scenically
     
     
     
     
  4. Ravenser
    I've made further progress with the bodies, though it hasn't been without problems and blemishes , and I'm afraid the all third is definitely going to be the inferior model of the two. However the brake composite is thus far (fingers crossed) going pretty well
     
    All the sides have been fitted,without any further damage to paintwork. I then moved onto fitting seats, and here I made a blunder from sheer ignorance.I dug out what turned out to be almost all of a packet of Ratio coach seating strip which has been lurking in a scrap box for very many years. This wan't enough to cover all requirements for these coaches and the second set of MR suburbans , so some undignified expedients and a Comet interiors pack had to be resorted to... But I sawed up the Ratio seating strip in the mitre box, painted it a golden brown with hastily mixed acrylics and duly installed the seats in most of the compartments of the all third. I had a problem in one place where solvent leaked onto the glazing and marked the compartment window, taking a little of the paint with it. This was bad enough but it was shortly afterwards that I checked a few photos, and then photos of other coaches and realised that even in third class compartments you shouldn't really be able to see the edge of the seat protruding beyond the window frame. And you could..... With narrow panels between windows on the compartment side , thick plastic compartment dividers and narrow compartments, the Ratio seating strips were too thick. I had made the classic blunder of blithely assuming that Ratio's seats must fit all Ratio's coaches properly.
     
    I managed to extract the worst offenders (those where for one reason or another the seating strip wasn't entirely seated against the compartment divider) and filed these down from the back by rubbing up and down on a big coarse file on the workbench. I did the same with the seating strip for the compartments I hadn't yet fitted out, and for the third class compartments in the brake composite . Thus treated the Ratio strip was just about thin enough to just about sit behind the windows. But there was nothing I could do about those seats I had already installed which were firmly stuck in place. They are still visible behind the edges of the compartment windows . A damage limitation exercise , but not, sadly, a full cure . The brake composite is fine - the all third is compromised on one side. I have a feeling this set is going to spend most of it's life with the corridor side facing the viewer . For the first class compartments I used Comet seating strip , painted blue . I have no idea what colours the LMS - or even the LNW - used : post 1934, the LNER used brown moquette in third , and I had had quite enough of painting the coach in slightly different shades of mid brown, so I'm afraid I opted for an attempt to approximate the pre 1934 fawn moquette in third and blue pattern moquette in first.
     
    It was at this point that it dawned on me that I don't possess a single book on carriage modelling , and have in fact being flying more or less blind, guided solely by some very hazy memories of misbuilt Ratio kits perpetrated in my early teens and a section of a DVD by Tony Wright on detailing and improving RTR - though that involves some heavy duty reworks, it doesn't, obviously, say a work about building kits. I must have at least half a dozen books and DVDs by various people on wagon modelling, a similar number on reworking locos and building loco kits, books on scenery, buildings , painting ... But when it comes to coaches, I suddenly realise that the cupboard is almost entirely bare.
     
    Some Slaters figures were painted with acrylic and the tiny stump of an old paint brush . I took the chance to off load all the figures which are really not suitable for a modern image layout, so passenger traffic from Blacklade in the 1950s appears to consist very largely of nuns and National Servicemen
     
    I've also touched up the paintwork where required: it's adequete rather than a top class finish. It seems necessary to paint the leading edge of the tops of the sides, else slight bits of grey may show when the roof is fitted
     
     

     
    I've also made up the roofs - the two part lamp tops are a bit of a nuisence , and as I managed to damage two , I'd have been introuble if just building the all third. As it was, I had some spares on the other sprue. A point to watch for: although the understide of the roof marks different positions for lamps and torpedo vents for the brake third and brake composite, they've got the kit numbers the wrong way round. I drilled out the first two lamps in the position marked, fortunately checked them against the body before going further, and found they didn't line up with the first class compartments. They had to be hastily filled, and the holes marked for the other kit drilled out instead....
     
    Some thoughts on the kits as a whole, from what I've seen so far. These kits are significantly more sophisticated and elaborate than the very straightforward MR kits . There are the first signs of the unnecessary over elaboration of seperate parts which makes the Ratio Maunsell Van B kit such a laborious chore to build - two part lamp tops, two part floor pan, seperate duckets, corridor handrail and so on. The need to build up the interior and assemble the sides round this makes for more work and parts, but it also results in a strong structure , and makes the kit rather heavier , which is a useful bonus. The fit of parts is good. By modern standards things like metal buffers and metal wheels are desireable features. The kits are still pretty straightforward to build: there is nothing I can see technically difficult for someone familiar with plastic kits , and provided you work with care a neat result ought to follow
     
    I'm intending to build these kits as they come, but in one area I've had to deviate. Somehow I seem to have lost the sprue with the corridor connectors from one of the kits. A hasty rummage in the parts box turned up an MJT LMS gangway ,which I bought for some reason and have no other obvious use for. Since I'm building these coaches as a 2 car set, I'm going to fit the working MJT gangways in the centre of the set, with the fixed plastic mouldings at each end. I've therefore fitted a plate of 20 thou plasticard across the end of one corridor on each coach supported by a cross piece of 40 thou styrene across the inside of the gangway extension. This then will then form the baseplate for the MJT gangway - the other end gets Ratio's plastic moulding with endplate
     
    I've also weighted the coaches to get them over the magic 100g mark (4 axles at 25g/axle) . This is easy enough in the brake composite - two slabs of lead flashing on the floor of the guard's compartment , stuck down with araldite. For the all third it was more difficult , but I glued pieces of lead to the inside of the walls of the toilet compartments , and to the floor next to the toilet compartment , to balance that in the toilets. I intend to build both coaches with battery boxes not gas tanks , and if I need any additional weight there should be room to superglue lead sheet inside the battery box mouldings
  5. Ravenser

    Constructional
    Having rashly flung down the gauntlet and declared I'm thinking of running a third , not terribly authentic, period on Blacklade to give an airing to the bits of steam era /green diesel stock I seem to have acquired, I've actually made a start in the form of a pair of Ratio kits: two of the LNWR kits to be precise. The twist is that these will actually constitute the ER's contribution on the coaching side, until I lay my hand on some Kirk kits.
     
    I've rather fancied the Ratio LNWR coaches since they first came out . They were new products, they looked really rather stylish with those big windows, and I suppose they were a bit cool. As I went modern image in my early mid teens, there was never any scrap of justification for buying one - until I got involved with a small informal group locally. Amongst other things we were talking about building a small branch terminus, and because of others' interests it was bound to be steam.
     
    The LNWR seems to have embraced the concept of corridor coaches and gangwayed connections very quickly and with some enthusiasm. By 1893 they had commissioned a full train set for the 2pm Euston - Glasgow express - thereafter, for a generation "the 'Corridor'"(until the LMS formally named it "The Mid Day Scot") - and by the late 1890s they were building corridor coaches in volume for their own main line services, not just the WCJS. Ratio's range of 4 kits represent these , built from 1898-1903, and not extinct until after World War 2. I've always been surprised these kits never took off - there was a time when their MR coach kits seemed virtually ubiquitous and if you wanted a pre-grouping coach it was a Ratio MR kit or a Triang clerestory, but somehow I've hardly ever seen the LNWR kits crop up in layout articles. The prototypes feature in Historic Carriage Drawings Vol 2 - LMS , edited by David Jenkinson, as do the MR suburbans and the MR non-gangwayed express clerestories : and no doubt that's how Ratio came to choose all three types.
     
    The twist in the story comes in 1936 , when the LMS offloaded some of them on the M&GNJR, apparently along with some ex MR gangwayed clerestories which I think are available as kits from 51L Models/Wizard , and which are far too grand, sophisticated and expensive for me to consider... A few months later (October 1936), the LMS offloaded its interest in the M&GN on the LNER. Given that the LNER promptly scrapped most of the M&GN loco fleet -, and the LNER wasn't rich enough to indulge in extravagences like "scrap and build" - I think we can take it that the M&GN was in dire need of re-equipment by that point and the LMS wasn't prepared to stump up hard cash. It's pretty clear why the choice fell on these coaches for transfer. The M&GN was a lengthy cross country main line and its big passenger traffic was holiday expresses from the Midlands. A lot of those passengers were families making 3-4 hour journeys, and by the mid 1930s subjecting them to non-gangwayed stock without access to toilets was unacceptable. The LMS duly off-loaded some of the oldest corridor stock it had in order to "modernise" the M&GN, and since the MR came to corridor coaches much later and more tentatively than the LNWR , inevitably old LNWR stock was going to feature in the transfer.
     
    So some elderly ex LNWR and MR coaches ended up as LNER stock in E Anglia . Beyond this point we find ourselves peering into the mists of history - which are pretty thick and misty hereabouts. As a modern image modeller of Eastern leanings , my references for this are pretty scanty : 3 volumes of Historic Carriage Drawings, Harris' LNER coaches and the notes to the Ratio kits , prepared by a Mr P Millard. According to the latter "several" vehicles were transferred to the M&GN , but he doesn't say what. I have been shown a photo of an M&GN train from the mid/late 1930s with one of these coaches clearly visible , still in LMS livery . It wasn't a brake, and holiday expresses aren't obviously in need of lots of all firsts, so I think we can assume some all thirds were transferred. Whether any brake coaches were is anybody's guess: Historic Carriage Drawings does not even mention the transfer, and nor does LNER Coaches
     
    The Ratio instructions claim extinction dates of 1950 for the brake composites, and 1952 for the brake thirds, but 1947 for the all thirds, even though more of them were built than everything else put together. Historic Carriage Drawings gives an extinction date of 1953 for the all thirds, and says extinction dates for the other types cannot be established but all types reached BR and probably became extinct 1953-5. It's evident from one or two other entries that events in apple green territory are beyond the ken of LMS coach scholars, so these will be for the vehicles which passed from the LMS to the LMR
     
    It is quite possible the vehicles which passed to the LNER lasted a little longer. By M&GN standards, in 1936 these were relatively modern coaches. In late 1934, the LNER had set out to eliminate 4 and 6 wheel coaches - of which it still had several thousand - "except for third-rate branch lines, miners' and workmen's trains". What this meant in practice in E Anglia can be established by looking at some branch line monographs. Witham/Bishop Stortford trains were still 6 wheelers until 1940 , when they were replaced by ex GE 50' corridor coaches. The Thaxted branch retained 6 wheelers until 1946-7, when GE 50' corridor coaches were provided - working in 2 car sets. The Mid Suffolk became the last place in Britain served by non -bogie coaches (until the DoT inflicted Pacers on us) - here the 6 wheelers survived until a few months before closure in 1952, again replaced by ex GE corridor coaches working in 2car sets.
     
    Given this , it seems unlikely the LNER would have scrapped these ex LMS vehicles before the war. In fact it seems quite plausible that after 1940, when holiday trains would have been few and far between, and the M&GN section probably had surplus coaching stock, they might have been pressed into service to replace 6 wheelers on some very minor branch. Photos show elderly pre Grouping coaches as branch sets on many ex GE and ex GN branches in the early 50s - what probably swept them away was a combination of the first round of ER closures in 1951-2 plus cascading following the arrival of the first Mk1s in 1951-2
     
    So - a pair of ex LNWR coaches from the Ratio kits make a plausible E Anglian branch set on a very minor branch in the early 1950s. By that time they would have been in brown - on the GE, pregrouping stock was not given BR crimson, but was repainted in brown with BR lettering , and examples survived beyond 1955. When my local model shop closed down about 4 years ago I bought a brake composite and an all third , for use on the little group branch terminus project. All the other authentic options would have been difficult to source and much more difficult to build. I think they had been in the shop some time - one kit was the earlier version with plastic wheels - and they were discounted. I gave the sides an undercoat and , since it wasn't an urgent job, they sat in the cupboard , waiting for the branch terminus to happen first......
     
    As these two kits include the only kit for a brake vehicle I have , it seemed the obvious place to start. I have very little coachbuilding experience - a couple of Ratio kits in my early teens - and Ratio kits seemed an easy place to start. (That theory took a serious knock with the very over-complicated Southern Van B kit, which took me 2 years to finish)
     
    First stages are shown here. The exact shade of LNER brown seems to be open to question and photographic research. I bought a tin of Precision Pullman umber and another of LNER dull teak. The original idea was to mix up a suitable brown , but then I reflected that Precision paints don't cover half as well as Railmatch or Humbrol and I'd never match the colour for the second coat - or the second vehicle. So I gave the sides an undercoat in umber, in order to darken the teak top coat - and stopped there.
     
     

     
    On restarting last week it became clear that the undercoat on the brake composite was badly affected by nibs and whiskers . I don't have an airbrush , and neither colour is available as an aerosol can. The all third was ok, if not 100% perfect . So I gave the latter a coat of teak - and the brake composite sides got a coat of Modelstrip. The teak coat wasn't 100% perfect either: Precision paint seems to love to form tiny bubbles as you brush . I did the best I could. The brake was given a fresh undercoat of umber, and then teak over. Despite my careful cleaning/degreasing of the sides and cleaning of the brush on a bit of soap to rid it of any nibs, the finish still wasn't perfect - and all sides visibly needed a further coat. There is no way you can apply three brush coats of paint and get a flawless result. I have learnt my lesson and sourced a spray can of Railmatch crimson for all the other coaches, but with the LNW set , damage limitation is all that's possible
     
     

     
    These kits are slightly peculiar - at least to me - in that they are built round the interiors. In this they differ from the other Ratio coach kits I built long ago from the other 3 ranges. They also show early signs of the overcomplication which makes the Ratio Maunsell Van B such a laborious pig to do. I can't see that moulding the floor pan as two halves which join together with a kind of mortice joint is any improvement on the single piece floor pans found in the MR kits - unless there was an overriding technical reason in the design of the moulds, and since they produced a lot of earlier kits with single piece floores , I can't see it. Similarly, the all third corridor sides are two pieces with a tenon joint - though in the brakes these have to be two seperate mouldings , as the guard's van is in the centre not the end. However the fit of the parts so far has been excellent - the floor pan needs only routine cleaning of the edges and no packing or filing down has been required. In one or two places a few strokes of the file were necessary along the compartment partitions to get the side even. There are little locating pegs on the floor to locate the interiors (except for the toilets) - the all third has these pegs on the compartment side too, but the brake doesn't
     
     

     
    In the process of fitting the first side, stage by stage along the side, and holding it tight to the compartment partitions till the solvent set , I managed to get solvent onto the side with some damage to the paintwork . As "cracklature" was definitely not wanted, I have rubbed down the affected panels and they will need touching in - the damage can be seen on the photo . The compartment interiors have been painted with Tamiya Flat Earth acrylic, to avoid anything embarassing being seen through the windows. I am starting to feel that if I have to apply any more coats of brown paint to this kit I'll scream
     
    On the corridor side there are recesses for the glazing strip - why the glazing on the corridor side of the all third has to be 4 seperate recessed sections , when the brake manages with just two sections, beats me. The corridor handrail is a piece of styrene micro rod (more brown paint) applied between slots . On the all third, I made the mistake of using solvents at the retaining slots, As a result , I have marks on two windows just above the rail, where it wasn't 100% straight and capilarity drew the solvent where it wasn't wanted. Damn. On the brake third , I learned my lesson , and used the Revell Contacta bottle . In fact I've taken the heretical approach of using Contacta cement very sparingly applied as the first tack bond for the major pieces, with solvent applied to finish the join
  6. Ravenser

    Layout schemes
    This is by way of a speculative post.....I've remarked before that it's been a very long time since I started a new project. Over a decade in fact. Between 2000 and 2007 I launched into 4 different layout projects, all 4mm/OO - Tramlink, a club layout project, the Boxfile, and Blacklade - but since then, nothing.
     
    I've recently resurrected the Boxfile - see postings here - and though I'm still hunting gremlins in the stockbox it's working a whole lot better than ever before. Proper systematic debugging will hopefully get it running with a high degree of reliability - in the meantime it's already possible to have a play at shunting as originally intended, quickly and with reasonable reliability (except for the couplings).
     
    Blacklade has been out a few times to shows and it works reliably as a home layout. The club project is long buried. So...
     
    A long time ago, at the end of the last century, I joined the 3mm Society. I acquired a little secondhand TT3 - a Brush 2 and a diesel shunter, along with some wagons and coaches. Matters got as far as an ambitious order for about 15 wagon kits from the 3mm Society, and the acquisition of a 3SMR J11 kit and an etched brass diesel shunter kit. A design for a compact urban goods depot was sketched, I built a couple of wagons which didn't seem to roll freely , and I bought about half a dozen of the then new Peco 12mm gauge points. At this point I got shanghaied into the club layout project, I became involved with a society, and what with Tramlink, work, commuting, etc. anything in 3mm was squeezed out.
     
    I'm still a member of the 3mm Society. It's a nice size. The padded envelope of wagon kits is still in the cupboard . The replacement armature for the Brush 2 is still in its packet somewhere.
     
    In the years since the idea of doing something with those Peco points has crossed my mind occasionally. A 3mm layout is one possibility , but what about OOn3 ?
     
    That means staying in my familiar 4mm scale - for which I have masses of stuff in the cupboard and elsewhere.
     
    Now narrow gauge and me are not a natural match. Because narrow gauge normally means OO9, and OO9 has traditionally meant rabbit-warren layouts dripping cute and twee - the Hobbiton and Munchkin-land Junction Railway, with a spur to Ivor the Engine's branch operated by an Eggerbahn railcar on a 9" radius curve using a Gaugemaster shuttle unit, the whole thing being built on a 4' x 2' board in four tiers of granite hillside, modestly populated by colonies of small pet Welsh dragons who eat buns from the tourists.
     
    I'm afraid I tend to penny-plain realism in muted shades of grey, and minimum gauge railways have never really gripped me. I like proper trains on proper railways doing a proper job - it's probably no coincidence that the narrow gauge locos that instantly appealed were the WHR's Garretts. I come from Lincolnshire, and Eastern England is a plain spare landscape with a notable lack of thatched cottages with holly-hocks round the door set amid rolling hills, nor does the Celtic twilight rise at dusk like a mist.
     
    My idea of a toy railway is Canary Wharf DLR. (I'm sure they must have used lithographed tinplate somewhere in the structure. Hipster-designer lithographed tinplate, of course.)
     
    But 3' gauge railways are another matter. The CDJR , L&LSR, and the Manx railways were serious and substantial operations. So were a number of Midlands ironstone systems. OOn3 means something a bit different (definitely a plus for me) and in prototype terms implies a proper railway which feels much more like a minor standard-gauge rural railway, doing a proper job. (There's also the faint possibility of what MORILL years ago called 3n3 - that is 3' gauge in 3mm scale, using OO9 track and N gauge mechanisms)
     
    This thinking has, over the years, led to the acquisition of a Southwold Railway van kit in resin, and a couple of ex MTK Isle of Man coach kits. Oh, and there's those Peco 12mm gauge points. But what might be modelled has been rather hazy.
     
    Only once in my life have I been to Ireland, and then only to Dublin, with a day trip by rail to Galway. (For much of my lifetime Ireland has been the island of bombs and balaclavas - I've never been to Northern Ireland and still feel no urge to go). Consequently I don't really feel any personal connection with Irish railways - certainly not enough to commit to the solid slog involved in building a OOn3 model of one.
     
    I don't really want to build an accurate model of a specific Manx prototype, and there isn't really space on the island to accommodate a fictitious one.
     
    There was no 3' narrow gauge in Wales, and almost no narrow gauge at all in Scotland. In any case granite mountains are not me.
     
    That leaves English 3' gauge lines, of which there are usually said to be two - the Southwold (closed 1929) and the Rye & Camber, a rather small operation abandoned in 1945 after the Admiralty had finished with it. In fact there is also the original Ravenglass & Eskdale (1875-1915) and a number of fairly significant ironstone systems in the Midlands.
     
    I have occasionally toyed with the idea that the promoters of the Mid Suffolk Light might have made it a 3' narrow gauge line, using Leek and Manifold style transporter wagons, in which case they might have focused on the proposed line from Needham Market via Debenham and with the reduced construction costs of narrow gauge have made it into Halesworth to link with the Southwold - the whole 3' gauge empire being inherited by a rather reluctant LNER (and no doubt worked very hard in support of the USAAF during World War 2)
     
    But the most tempting scenario involves "conjuring spirits from the vasty deep" in the general vicinity of the Dogger Bank.
     
    Long ago as a child I read that until the 12th or 13th century the coast of Lincolnshire was sheltered by low sandy islands on what is now the Dogger Bank - their loss began a cycle of occasional devastating storm surges across the North Sea, starting with the loss of much of Mablethorpe in 1283 and continuing down to 1953.
     
    Whether this is true I do not know. In recent years prehistoric archaeologists have conjured up a very much larger ghost, in the form of "Doggerland" - a vast region of low hills and plains spreading across what is now the North Sea until rising sea levels drowned it in stages in the later Mesolithic and early Neolithic:
     
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
    https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/doggerland-rises.htm
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27224243
     
    What we know as the Dogger Bank represents the central uplands of "Doggerland"
     
    It's fair to say that modern archaeologists believe this whole area was under the North Sea thousands of years before the 13th century - but for the sake of a layout, we can envisage that two or three largish sandy islands continue to exist on the Dogger Bank down to our own day - thus permitting not merely Early English narrow gauge, but emphatically 20th century narrow gauge too.
     
    Whilst medieval Great and Little Dogger would have been inhabited only by a few wretched fisher-folk, from the 17th century onwards they would inevitably have been of great strategic importance to the Royal Navy and from the reign of William III through to the late 1950s there would have been a strong naval presence there. As well as being dotted with 18th century batteries and Napoleonic Martello towers there is also the famous Great Dogger Mole, an 18th century naval equivalent of the Cob at Portmadoc, which links the two islands and creates a sheltered anchorage for small naval vessels in the inlet which separates them - as legend tells us , this was built out of ballast stones brought from England in the holds of ships which came to Dogger to load barrels of the celebrated Dogger herring. Horatio Nelson's famous letter, written as a young lieutenant in 1776, in which he complains of being cooped up on "two miserable sandy islands containing a handful of mean houses and meaner inhabitants" has been rather generously rewarded by the signboard of a large pub overlooking Dogger Haven, the Lord Nelson....
     
    Railways came to the Dogger Islands as a result of hasty repairs to the Great Mole , and the construction of two new batteries, at the start of the Crimean War. A narrow gauge horse-worked line was established from Doggerport, up to - and across - the Great Mole, (and thus past Dogger Haven) and up to a suitable point on Little Dogger for the off-loading of stone for the new fort . This stone obviously had to be imported, since the islands have no stone ( and not many trees ), and afterwards the tramway was found very convenient by various parties, civilian and military, for moving stores, coal , herring barrels and the like around the island. It was upgraded to a steam-worked line in the early 1870s with a passenger service serving the islands' three main settlements and the naval installations - a small number of Beyer Peacock 2-4-0Ts and some 0-6-0Ts reminiscent of the R&ER being supplied.
     
    The naval arms race before WW1 saw it modernised and developed, and this accelerated during WW1 when the Dogger Islands were a key base for minesweepers and torpedo boats in the N Sea : indeed in 1917 the Dogger Light Railway acquired Britain's only narrow-gauge rail gun. Petrol locomotives appeared during WW1 and the railway's rolling stock was augmented by standard WD narrow gauge equipment, running on 3' gauge bogies.
     
    After a quiet period between the wars, the Dogger Light Railway was again at full stretch during WW2, but thereafter things began to run down and when the RAF Coastal Command base ran down in the late 1950s , that was the end.......
     
    Buildings - brick boxes. I have a number of Lincolnshire buildings in Skaledale form which could find a home on such a layout.
     
    I've also acquired several Dundas WD wagon kits. If I could get someone to produce a fold-up etch H-frame wagon bogie, to which you could stick the moulded bogie sides , they could convert to OOn3...
     
    But I have to admit that the new Bachmann OO9 stuff looks rather tasty. I don't quite see that you could regauge the Baldwin 4-6-0T. And nobody could accuse the Western Front in 1917-8 of being cute or twee.....
     
    Hmm.
     
    I have Stewart Squires' "Lincolnshire Potato Railways" - I knew his son at school. There is however a large gap between the handful of systems in the Tetney/Grainthorpe area and those in the fens or Nocton Estates.
     
    Suppose there had been some potato railways in the Marshes between Mablethorpe and Skegness. Chapel St Leonards has caravan parks - but it never had any railway near it.
     
    Suppose someone in the early-mid 1920s proposed a 2' gauge narrow gauge line from Mumby Road on the Mablethorpe loop to Chapel St Leonards, linking several private farm lines with the LNER , and offering a primitive service to holiday makers going to Chapel St Leonards - using surplus WD equipment (shades of the Ashover Light Railway)
     
    Hmm
     
    The only space that might be available for this would be if I finally decommissioned the old computer and removed the computer desk . That might give an L- shape about 4'3" x 2'4", with the short leg being a narrow ledge under the window sill.
     
    But 4'3" x 18" max doesn't really seem too promising for depicting low coastal sandhills or flat Marshland potato fields - both of which require a sense of flatness and openness
     
    Hmmm
     
    Somehow nothing has quite gelled on this one....
  7. Ravenser

    Tramlink
    A very long time ago, I went to one of the CMRA Workshop events. The bookseller was selling a copy of "Tramlink - Official Handbook" published by Capital Transport. (It was Geoff Gamble - I told you it was a long time ago)
     
    Anyway I bought the thing, discovered that Alphagraphix were doing card kits of light rail units, and I got fired up with the idea of building one , and making a working model. This obviously would need somewhere to run, so the idea of building a small layout based on Tramlink was rapidly born. The overhead was fairly simple posts, concrete sleeper track could be used... Ravenser Mk1 was visibly a problem - try again with some proper boards
     
    This whole thing occupied much of my modelling in the early part of the millenium, along with the club project and the Boxfile. The baseboards were constructed in a one bedroom flat using a junior hacksaw and a plastic benchhook - the main plywood plates being cut to size by the timber yard. (Never again... I bought a Black & Decker Workbox not long after. And the timber yard has now closed and been flattened for redevelopment as housing. No-one within 15 miles can cut time to size as far as I know)
     
    The basic design can be seen from the photos:
     
    Each board is 3' x 11" - they box up as an opposed pair, and the idea was that they would just about be carriable on public transport as a boxed unit. At that time I didn't have a car, as I was commuting daily by train .
     
    Here is Elmers' End. Two Wills kits are still in stock for the platform canopy. The photocopy mock-up of the Goods Office is still in place, pending the rework and building of the full kit...
     
     
     

     
    And here is the second board, labelled as Beckenham. I know you can't actually run from Elmer's End to Beckenham on Tramlink, but this was not conceived as  finescale layout. In fact Beckenham was originally conceived as the fiddle yard, until I thought that a terminus in a station forecourt could be suggested, and therefore I could have a fully scenic layout:
     
     

     
    The "unique selling point" was that it was to be an all-card layout
     
    I built the first LRV . It was successful - sort of . It has a Tenshodo at one end , it runs - but it's very light weight and propelling trailer first into (or was it out of?) the cripple siding at Elmer's End it came off every time. 
     

    The system of articulation  was shall we say basic, and would never feature in MRJ. I think the idea was to have one trailing bogie live vto one side, and the other to the other rail. These were A1 etched H frames for wagon bogies, and I cadged some bogie castings off Mark Hughes, who makes a respectable whitemetal kit
     
     

    But it did get written up in the DOGA Journal (also a long time ago)
     
    Then I attempted proper Croydon cars from an Alphagrapix kit. These are skirted vehicles, and the skirts fouled the H frames and it wouldn't take a curve at all.... Since the body is a sealed unit there is no way in bar tearing it apart....
     
    (That photocopy mockup really needs replacing. The back of an advertising hoarding was to go in the gap)
     
     


    Oh and one end sat too high....
     
    About the last thing to be done was a push to build super-detail semis from Bilteezi sheets, which stalled:
     
     

    There was even briefly a thought of expanding it with a representation of the depot inserted in the middle
     
     

    Tramlink (Kent) has been stored, boxed up, in the study with an ever growing pile of Railway Modellers on top for more years than I like to admit to. For some years it was occasionally hauled out for use as a DC test track, The wiring was always very, very, basic with hand thrown points and something has come adrift and the Beckenham board is dead.
     
    After I built the external CDU for the Boxfile external CDU and connections I had good intentions of sorting out poor old Tramlink with a rewire. Suitable DIN sockets were sourced from Maplins (remember them?) to take the connectors from the Boxfile. I even sourced a new small radius point , to replace the troublesome Settrack  point at Elmers End, with a view to lifting and relaying and realigning the lead into the cripple siding . Not to mention two solenoid point motors - might as well fit a point-motor while I'm doing it , and then we could see if a point motor could be retrofitted at Beckenham.
     
    I have all the bits - nothing has been done, as I have a long list of jobs with more urgency and more obvious reward.  When I still haven't fixed the W Yorks 155 , Tramlink is unlikely to get priority.
     
    Once or twice the idea has crossed my mind of scrapping it and reusing the boards for a shunting layout to give the stock off the Boxfile more room to breath (and maybe some of the kettles a chance to use it, too) . But to be honest I don't really want to destroy all the buildings which took a lot of work and scrubbed up well, and I can't see how any kind of meaningful shunting plan could be arranged without doing that. Come to that I don't actually have a meaningful 6' x 11" shunting design
     
    So poor old Tramlink stays in its box buried under the magazines....
     
     
     

     

  8. Ravenser

    Electrical
    One of my outstanding projects is to do something about electrical connections and points on the boxfile
     
    This arose from some comments from a fellow DOGA member a couple of years ago. DOGA had their stand at Watford show that year, I was helping on the Saturday, and I took along the boxfile as a display item , and also something to provide intermittent movement (We had a Hornby Sentinel on it for a while and it looked the part - I really must built my Judith Edge Vanguard Steelman..)
     
    However this also displayed the boxfile's glaring practical weaknesses
     
    When I built it , some years ago, my knowledge and experience on the electrical side was very limited, and the boxfile represented a major step forward - for the first time I was fitting live frog points and point motors to drive them. This led to some mistakes.
     
    Even longer ago I bought several clearance packs of electrical "goodies" from a company called Greenweld. They were job lots of connectors , cables and such like which in a fit of enthusiasm I thought might be useful. Few have been. A rummage in this stash produced an audio cable with a 5 pin DIN plug on each end, and another with a 7 pin DIN at one end and fine wires hanging out of the other end. These, I thought, would make pukka connectors for the boxfile. DIN sockets were duly sourced and we were in business.
     
    Here they are:
     

     
    The first problem is that those very fine wires are the devil to secure in the screw connections at the back of the Gaugemaster. I tried making them solid with a bit of solder - that just made the job desperately fiddly instead of completely impossible
     
    The second problem is that the points don't throw particularly well. The siding into the wagon hoist is completely reliable, the nearby headshunt can overheat after extended use and the point into the coal siding is a real problem. It worked until I stuck the weighbridge building on top of the motor. Then it would only throw in one direction....
     
    Of course I didn't think to build in a CDU. And since the wiring is hidden inside sealed buildings I'd have to destroy parts of the layout to retro fit one.
     
    My friend recommended an external CDU , which would then allow thicker wires to connect to the Gaugemaster , and make setting up dead easy.
     
    So far so good - and an All Components CDU was duly sourced and has been sitting in the study ever since waiting for me to acquire a round tuit, or more accurately a suitable enclosure.
     
    It was only when I read the instructions that the real problem leapt out and hit me. They recommend using 6A wire, or as a minimum 3A to carry the current to the motor. I don't know what the current rating of the wire in those audio connections is, but it looks well under 1A "layout wire" (7/0.3 wire I believe). Any internal wiring within the file was carried out in blithe ignorance and 1A layout wire.
     
    A little measuring suggests there's 2.4m of extremely thin wire between the 16V AC outputs and the point motor into the coal siding. Plus a couple of foot of 1A wire and various connections. No wonder that point struggles to throw.
     
    A crude hasty test on the remains of a 10m hank of 24/0.3mm wire (say 5-6m) and the 1.2m interboard connector using the multimeter suggested resistance through the audio cable is about 30-40% higher than through a run of 5A wire at least 4 times as long. I'm aware that resistance becomes more serious the more current you push through. Oh heck.....
     
    By this time I'd also come up with the scheme of resurrecting Tramlink by fitting DIN sockets and audio connector as interboard connections to replace the extremely crude arrangement currently in use , whose wiring has come loose on one side, leaving one board dead. Tramlink serves as my DC test track when I dig it out from under the magazines, so something needs to be done. I probably need to replace and relay one point , and the idea of retrofitting point motors to the two points was and is rather appealing. So I could face the same issues there.
     
    Anyway I pressed on, hoping the thing would deliver some improvement. The external connector (the one with a DIN plug at one end) was shortened to about 18". This should remove about 20-25% of the distance from the power source to the furthest point motor (and half the run of wiring to the two points on the first file). Logically therefore , it reduces the total resistance by 20-25% to the worst affected point.
     
    Now if half the power leaving the power supply is lost due to resistance in the wiring, (and the very poor throw of that motor suggests the loss is substantial) a 20-25% cut in resistance should equate to a 20-25% boost to available power at the solenoid. If the loss due to resistance is less than half, the gain in power is less. But if the loss due to resistance is more than 50%, then a 25% cut in resistance would translate into a boost to available power of more than 25% - perhaps significantly more
     
    This is before you add the benefit of upping the current and voltage by using a CDU. If the path from the power supply to the motor is too long in too thin wire, the cumulative resistance can strangle the output from a CDU and you may see very limited benefit
     
    Here are some of the basic components before starting - the Maplins PSU enclosure , the audio cables, and some Maplin grommits (Wallace is not in the shot)
     

     
    A piece of 5mm balsa wood was glued to the base of the plastic box using aradite, with a strip of doublesided sticky tape under a recessed area and some UHU along the top of the sides. I don't want this base breaking loose if the box gets knocked about . The CDU unit is screwed down to this - the balsa allows for seating of the underside where there are projections caused by soldering components to the circuit board . I took this approach with the MERG decoder I built for Blacklade and it seems to work fine, though there the mounting screws do pass through the balsa onto the ply board top.
     
    A second strip of balsa was wedged/araldited across one end to take a small connector from one of the Greenweld bags. It had tags with loops on one side and a larger tag , presumably for some kind of spade connector , on the other side. These fouled the CDU board , so after 24/0.7 wire ("5A") had been soldered in place the prongs were bent over . These form the connection between the two wires in the audio cable which connect to the track and heavy duty black and red wires which run to the controller .The fine wires from the audio cable were soldered to the tags on the opposite side. I was a little nervous about whether the joints might be dry, as the metal is not terribly good for soldering to - a hasty test with the multimeter gave readings of 0.07- 0.05 on the lowest resistance scale through the entire set up fron DIN plug to the end of the 5A wire - a little under half the value originally measured through a 1.2m audio cable. So the joints are presumably good
     
    The two wires in the audio cable carrying the current to the point motors were then extended with short lengths of "1A" 7/0.7 wire , the joints protected with heatshrink, and the extended ends connected to the output terminals of the CDU
     
    A general view (heavily zoomed and not in perfect focus) of the contraption is shown below
     
     
     
    I then set it up, managed to get the wires connected to the correct terminals on the CDU output and we were in business.

     
    Despite my fears , the improvement is dramatic. Instead of throwing with a loud buzzing , the points flick over instantly with a click. Even the point on the second boxfile works perfectly
     
    And connection to the screw terminals of the Gaugemaster is now simple reliable and a matter of a couple of seconds , instead of the previous fiddle trying to get tiny wires caught by the screws
     
    There's a further, unexpected benefit. When I tested the traction current with my lumbering black 05 , running was much surer, smoother and more reliable. Since I'd done nothing dramatic to the traction circuit and I was testing on the second file , with a further audio connector in the path to the motor, this was a real surprise
     
    I can only conclude that the connections at the terminals of the Gaugemaster may have been a significant part of the problem. It looks as if the fine wires were not only fiddly to trap in the connectors, they were making a poor connection even when trapped.
     
    In short , a big improvement all round, and I think I will probably chance my arm and rewire Tramlink using the same set up
     

     
     
  9. Ravenser

    Mercia Wagon Repair
    Things have not been going particularly well for Mercia Wagon Repair recently. As a result I've become rather disheartened and I've been wondering whether I should in fact pull the plug on the project.
     
    Issue number one can be seen here:

     
    A key point, buried fairly deep in the track plan has broken up at the tie bar.
     
    This is the second point to break up at the tie bar out of 7 points I've bought so far (The first large radius point disintegrated at the tie bar before I even laid it.). That is within 9 months of starting work on this project. This particular one failed a few weeks ago during use. It uses a Peco motor fitted to the designed-in attachment holes: in other words I'm using a proprietary product exactly as it is designed to be used.  I've never had such failures in forty years in 4mm.
     
    At this stage there seem to be two possible approaches:
     
    - Extract the plastic tiebar, somehow, and try to wiggle a replacement PCB tiebar  under the rails and also over the actuating pin of the point motor. Not a nice or easy job  
    - Buy a replacement point. Cut out and extract the old point, wire and lay the new one. Reconnect wires ...
     
    Then there is the matter of frog switching
     
    The Peco leaflet with the Code 55 N gauge points makes no mention at all about connecting the frog to a switch to supply it with power. I've read the thing 4 or 5 times carefully through, and  such a reference to frog switching simply isn't there (though from memory such instructions do appear with 16.5mm electrofrog points). All that the leaflet says is "Turnouts are ready for immediate use - seperate levers are not necessary ."
     
    On 4mm electrofrog points there is a wire run to the side , for the purpose of feeding the frog off a switch. There is a linkage wire under Code 55 N gauge points , connecting the swtich rails and the frog - but there is no "loose" wire to link to a  polarity switch     
     
    There is every sign that Peco expect purchasers simply to lay their Code 55 N gauge points as they come, and rely on contact of the switchblades with the stockrail. That is an unreliable contact, and risks leaving the entire switchblade /frog assembly dead - about 3" of track.
     
    (Not a theoretical comment . I've seen this on the wagon works fan , and it is a serious issue for a layout designed around shunting wagons with an 0-6-0 diesel shunter. You should get away with it when running a bogie diesel with all wheel pickup, especially a long one like a Class 66, but wagons are supposed to be shunted around the Works by 0-6-0s)
     
    I tried to tweak the tips of the switchblades on the offending point to ensure contact. I think it may have been the point I had to tweak for switchblade contact - which may have ultimately led to the failure. You can understand why I'm less than impressed with this product...
     
    Having recounted this in a thread elsewhere , someone (with whom I've previously crossed swords several times) appears to state that you can in fact lift the linkage wire "frog jumper" underneath Peco Code 55 points and attach a wire to this "jumper" in order to connect the frog to a polarity switch on the point motor , thus providing a switched power feed to the frog and switch blades. (Which is the best way to wire a live frog) . But -
     
    I've already laid the points. To get at that wire connection and solder on a feed wire to a polarity switch I'd have to lift the points. 
     
    The track is laid and wired and running. Lifting it all and replacing the cork  would amount to "scrap and start again"
     
    It might - to a 4mm mind - seem possible just to accept the issue and carry on. But over the past few months I've picked up disturbing vibes that shunting and shunting/operational layouts are "not what N gauge is about" :
     
     
    It may be unfair to seize on a single comment, but it crystallizes a vibe I feel in the air.
     
    Shunting in N using the "standard" Arnold coupling seems to be regarded as pretty iffy. I have gone for the replacement Dapol Easi-Shunt knuckle couplers - effectively NEM Kadees in N. But they are costing me over £5 a vehicle. They frequently require packing of the NEM pocket to limit or remove drooping , which results in the tail fouling pointwork . And my impression after 3-4 operating sessions is that they are rather less certain and reliable in coupling  than the Kadees I use in 4mm on Blacklade. They uncouple over the fixed Dapol uncouplers, not always conveniently. As usual, successful delayed action is rather elusive.
     
    Put another way - can you remember seeing many "shunting planks" in N? (Either at shows or in the magazines.) Many branch line termini?  An N gauge Minories?  Micros or Boxfiles using N? N gauge inglenooks and other shunting puzzles?
     
    On reflection, the typical N gauge layout seems to be a longish continous run. Commonly on a 2'6" deep solid board , with 12" return curves at each end, and the fiddle yard hidden behind a backscene set 2/3rds of the way back. Operation consists of firing a train out of the fiddle yard, sending it round the the circuit and back into a road in the fiddle yard.
     
    "Cavalcade" layouts do not interest me. I don't want to build one, I don't have the space for one. That is not what Mercia Wagon Repair is about.
     
    Am I trying to do something in N that everyone knows cannot and should not be done in N? A project that cannot and should not be?
     
    When I've raised the issue of shunting in N - apart from the implications of trolling and being offensive - I've been assured that the NGS Hunslet is the very bee's-knees in N gauge running. There can be no question of things being possible in 4mm that are not possible in N.
     
    So I bought one, and here it is:
     

     
    It is indeed a very small locomotive. It cost me £82 which in this day and age is a remarkably keen price (I stuck a wagon kit for a TTA in with the order to bulk it up). The finish and printing is admirable. It does indeed run very slowly, being heavily geared down. But it does not run as sweetly or quite as reliably as my Farish 04.
     
    What it reminds me of is many a kitbuilt small locomotive on 4mm finescale layouts. It waddles a little. It runs slow, and it keeps going , but it waddles. Not quite a even movement. It's a decent locomotive and it will do a job of work on the layout. I'm not the "toys out of pram" type who returns things in a huff because they do not meet his exacting standards 100%... But it's not as sweet and smooth running as the 04.
     
    And it will  be obvious from the photo just how short the wheel base is and just how long the switchblades and frog are on the adjacent point. Any hesitation in contact - they're dead. And the Hunslet will stop. 
     
    Dare I blaze ahead with this project with electrically compromised "live frogs"?? Do I dare spend £145 on a Farish Class 14 in British Oak orange as an additional shunter??? Nobody has mentioned that one as an outstanding shunter. In 4mm I'd have not a shadow of a doubt that a modern RTR 0-6-0T would run shunt very happily over live frog points, smoothly, slowly, reliably all day. But in N??
     
    Disposable income is a little tight at the moment. My savings may be ample - but I'm not necessarily prepared to dip into them to buy a loco that turns out not to be capable of the job required
     
    I started the Chivers N gauge SSA kit. The Peco chassis used is wrong - leaf spring suspension not pedestal. In 4mm  that would be a show-stopper. But in N - nothing can be done.
     
    Then I read this in the current NGS Journal:
     
    That's me told then - the Chivers SSA kit and the NGS chemical TTA kit I'm currently working on can never be good enough to sit alongside a Dapol or RevolutioN wagon with any credibility......  not unless my name's Tim Watson
     
    I painted the main sprues in the TTA kit white - the suggestion in the instructions that they could be left as self-coloured plastic took me aback. Then the bag with the rest of the kit disappeared . Could I find it? I could not.
     

     
    The cars are some cheap plastic ones I managed to find in a model shop's box, which I'm trying to paint up and make passable. Modern cars are quite difficult to find in N . I've got boxes of the things in 4mm/HO needing a good home...
     
    How many more points will fail at the tie bar, and how soon???
     
    At this stage there seem a number of options:
     
    - Press on and hope. Try to fix the tie bar and leave other pointwork as is.
    - Replace the bust point . Maybe try to fit frog feed wires to one or two others.
    - Rip up most of the points and trackwork , and replace them, fitting point feedwires to the replacements. This would mean major reconstruction and rewiring
    - Pull the plug. Decide this project can't be made to work satisfactorily and get out of N. Dispose of the N gauge stock and bits for whatever I can recover before I sink more money time and effort into a quicksand  (I spent over £150 at Warley on a new loco, wagons and bits for this project)
     
    Since two of the locos were given to me and have personal connections, I couldn't dispose of the lot. 
     
    If I scrapped it , what would I do? 
     
    - I think the plan could be done in TT120. There would be some loss of train length, but with mostly 4 wheel wagons it could be manageable. Width might be a more serious issue in a larger scale. 66s and an 08 are promised in TT:120, and in some respects the project might be better done in BR days , with a 37 and 47 as the main line power. But the 66 is 10-12 months away in TT, and I'd have to buy every single item from scratch. This was a project to use a core of existing stock....
     
    - If we're talking about stuff I already have, that points towards either 3mm, (where I have a bag of wagon kits, some second hand Triang and half a dozen Peco points in stock), or OO9. But I have no serviceable 3mm loco, and no design. I have two OO9 Baldwins and some stock, but the design I came up with is 18" wide , not 11" , although I have more length than I drew out. 
     
    - I suppose I could try to come up with an LCC tram scheme in 4mm
     
    - Even Son of Boxfile in OO ????
     
    Or I could box the whole lot up, and put away all N gauge modelling until at least September . When I would re-assess what is to be done about this , in a more cheerful frame of mind.  All my modelling time has been going into N recently - I haven't done any 4mm for about 9 month's let alone had Blacklade up. I know 4mm works, and even more importantly I know I can make it work , within reason. Time to do what will work, instead of plunging deeper into the swamps of N?
     
     
  10. Ravenser

    Constructional
    After a good deal of last minute panic I now have a working Baby Deltic, and here is a picture of it on the rolling road to prove it:
     

     
    The Mk2 stiffened chassis also developed bend, and I stiffened it with two short lengths of brass bar araldited in place. It is now rigid and more or less straight
     
    Fortunately for me the Hornby Ringfield motor bogie I had in stock is the final Chinese-made 5 pole unit with 8 wheel pickup. Not only does this pick up better and run better, it is also not live to the motor casing, meaning that it is within my capabilities to install a decoder. It has accordingly received a TCS MC2 - the last of the 5-pack I bought
     
    The superglued traction tyre has given no trouble and shows every sign of being secure. However there is a noticeable wobble on one wheel of the motor bogie
     
    A certain amount of tweaking of the decoder settings was needed to raise start volts for a reliable start, and hold down mid and top volts. Acceleration and deceleration are perhaps a little too slow for a short terminus to fiddle yard layout
     
    I'm not convinced the body sits absolutely square on the chassis, but that may well represent the inside of the resin bodyshell not being totally square. Given my fear of resin dust nothing will be done about this until next spring.
     
    Running has been a touch erratic. It's perfectly fine on the rolling road, but has an odd habit of sticking on the layout. As this was happening in specific places I set about chasing raised bits of ballast with a screwdriver - the problem is almost certainly deep flanges catching on any slight obstruction . Running this wheel profile on code 70 bullhead is arguably sticking my neck out, and I may need to look at how the flanges could be reduced
     
    Otherwise it seems to run smoothly and reliably enough. Some extra weight has been added in the form of the off-cut from the 155 ballast weight to hold down the unpowered bogie. Waste not, want not (and I am almost out of sheet lead)
     
    I have also weathered the underframe suitably with multiple washes of Humbrol Dark Brown wash, AK Interactive Light Dust deposit, mixes of both, and a final wash of AK shaft and bearing grease in selected areas, and I'm reasonably satisfied with the results
     

     
    As can be seen, the wretched Tourist Brake Third is also effectively finished. As a result I'm starting to get very ambitious about new projects again - though really I ought to finish off a few more things that have already been started.
  11. Ravenser

    Reflections
    A very long time ago, I read an article by Cyril Freezer in the Railway Modeller. It was called "Modern Image is Easy" and if you judge by the impact on my modelling it must have been the most important magazine article I've ever read. At least it's the only article that has ever resulted in me scrapping my layout, selling up my stock, and completely changing direction in my modelling.
     
    Mind you I was a highly impressionable young teenager at the time.
     
    I was then attempting to build what can be classed as a trainset, which was supposed to be a GWR/LMS joint operation, and a branchline. It was GWR/LMS because those were the cool companies in those days , unlike dowdy difficult and neglected things like the LNER or SR, where you needed to be a scratchbuilder of the calibre of Frank Dyer , Barrie Walls, Iain Futers or Nigel Macmillan to be able to make a go of a serious model. At that age I couldn't build a wagon kit tidily. It was a branch line - because that's what you did, as evidenced in the Railway Modeller. And it was steam because it hadn't occurred to me that you could model anything else. In those days even modelling BR steam was a case of "why would you want to model a depressing period of decay like that?"
     
    It was a startling revelation to find the editor of the Railway Modeller arguing in detail in a 3 page article that it was not merely possible but straightforward and attractive to model contemporary BR . The attraction of modelling a railway I'd actually seen, rather than one that had effectively vanished about the time I was born and I would never experience, was immediate. The East Lincolnshire line had closed in 1970 so I hadn't seen a lot of the contemporary railway, but I'd seen something . The thing was out there, and getting to Grimsby or New Holland or Market Rasen or even Kings Cross was a great deal more practical than acquiring a TARDIS and visiting the 1930s.
     
    And CJF had explained in detail how it could be done. There were even layout plans, taken from his 60 Plans for Small Railways - one of these (that marked 3) purported to fit a continuous run in 6' x 4', and I came to the conclusion that a version could be done in 10' x 8' in the loft. I didn't much like the through terminus Cyril Freezer had drawn so I thought a few loop lines tricked up like a station would act as a sort of fiddle space.
     
    So I got parental permission and funding for some lengths of half inch chipboard about 18" wide to be supported off the roof trusses on metal shelf brackets There was no baseboard frame - these were effectively crude shelves. My existing rolling stock - three engines, some coaches and wagons - was sold. (There seemed no point trying to sell the few kits I'd attempted to build. Three wagons were much later rebuilt and recycled for the boxfile, one Ratio coach eventually went in the bin, another has just been completely rebuilt for Blacklade, and that just leaves a badly built GW 4 wheeler which I 'm considering rebuilding as engineer's stock.)
     
    With the modest proceeds I had a model railway spending spree. My birthday produced a blue Wrenn class 20, and the rest of the funds went on a blue Airfix 31 - the latest thing in RTR diesels then - three or four coaches and three "BR vans": my first venture into the world of the discount mail order box shifter, bought from a prominent advertiser of the time, Eastbourne Model Centre. I soon discovered that the "BR vans" were not like the ones that took malt from ABM Louth - they were pre-nationalisation types, and further investigation suggested there weren't any of those left. But I was stuck with them , even if they weren't authentic.
     
    Cyril Freezer had claimed that an authentic modern BR train could be made up with a van , two brake seconds, an FO, and a catering vehicle; and that a mix of Mk 1 and Mk2 stock was authentic. I duly bought a pair of Hornby Mk2 "BSK"s and an Airfix Mk2D FO . An old Triang Hornby Mk1 RMB was found on a junk shop, and repainted rather roughly into blue-grey with Humbrol enamel (I remember freezer tape was used as masking, the catering red stripe was actually a narrow strip of the original maroon self-coloured plastic, the corners of the grey weren't rounded and there was no lining. Or numbers and branding). I also acquired two Lima BGs, and a pair of their CCTs - I thought I could add a parcels train to the mix. The idea was that with a BG and RMB I had an InterCity rake, with these cut out and a 31 on the front I had a semi fast/local train. My express loco was to be a second hand Triang Hornby 37 , bought for a tenner from the junk shop. It barely ran. I eventually took it to a model shop I'd discovered near Grimsby station to be sorted out. They did their best , but it was still pretty rubbish . I bought a new Lima 08.
     
     
    It was a badly flawed project. Nobody in the family had ever had a model railway, I didn't know any other modellers, there were no local clubs, no local model shops and in those days of course no internet. I was totally on my own bar a few copies of a monthly magazine, and I had no real idea what I was doing. I was under the impression that Brasso would be an effective track cleaner. After all it is sold for polishing metal and rails are metal... The whole thing ran like a dog with frequent derailments. I'd reused every Hornby point I'd ever bought - it's only now, many years later , that I wonder if there might have been some back to back issues in there somewhere , and whether some of the points may have been a bit coarse for some of the wheels. I remember I ultimately rewheeled the Hornby coaches with wheels sold by a model shop in Grimsby - Romfords no doubt. Were those really going to run happily through 1970s Hornby trainset points?

     
     
    About 18 months into the project my father was seconded out to the Australian branch of his company, and progress stopped.
     
    We spent most of the next few years in Sydney, where I found a 1500V dc suburban railway with a 15 minute frequency service on my doorstep , and in due course acquired a NSW Student Railpass for use on the same. A chance find of a months old copy of the Model Railway Constructor on the bookstall on Wynyard station ramp led to modelling restarting in the form of a small tram layout , which went through 2 versions , the second of which boasted two BEC kits and worked quite well though it ate card buildings and came back asking for more, and I never did get more than a few centre masts without wires up..

     
    An attempt was made to resurrect Flaxborough when we returned home about 9 months before university, and during holidays , but it didn't work well, progress was limited - and when I moved south to start work the project was quietly abandoned . Modelling restarted about 2 years later with Ravenser Mk1
     
    However this was not quite the end of the matter, because I was a good little boy, kept my stock boxes and packed everything carefully away in cardboard boxes in the parental loft (beneath the derelict remains of the layout). Those boxes eventually ended up in my own flat - and as I don't like wasting stuff , the stock is very slowly resurfacing.
     
    The Wrenn 20 and Lima 09 were reused on Ravenser - where their mechanical limitations became abundantly obvious. The Airfix 31 which was probably the best of the locos is now being detailed up for Blacklade. One of the two CCTs has already been comprehensively upgraded, and another awaits its turn. An Airfix LMS van which suffered my first attempt at weathering was reworked for the boxfile, and a Mainline Mink is now earmarked for reworking as a tail load parcels van for the steam period on Blacklade.
     
    Other stuff will surface in due course. The two Lima BGs are earmarked as donor vehicles to take a couple of pairs of Comet sides when I pluck up the courage to face attempting blue/grey with spray cans . I don't suppose there'll be a lot left of them when I've finished but at 64' there's not much else to be done . There's a Lima Mk1 SK tucked away somewhere - which raises the question of whether the secondhand Kitmaster SK kit someone gave me should be built as a TSO instead. Most of the TTAs I got for 50p each second hand have now been reworked , and at some point I may get round to reusing the body of the 37 with an Athearn PA1 chassis and some Dave Alexander bogie frames ( both already stockpiled) under it .Whether the Mk2s are really worth the huge effort of upgrading is moot. I started , got seriously discouraged - I'm not sure I'll finish
     
    There's one other ghost, a slightly more subtle one. The tram layout, allegedly 4' gauge, was set in a Midlands county town, which was supposed to have a GC and MR presence (E Midlands county towns generally did) . I had a copy of the East Midlands volume of Great British Tram Networks, and Leicester, Nottingham and Derby were very much in my mind. There was supposed to be a city centre tram terminus and a depot outside the lesser , MR, station, serving a secondary group of tram routes , and this was allegedly what was being modelled. The town was called Blacklade, and the square outside the MR station in which the trams terminated was named after my initial misreading of the name of one of the stations on the North Shore line. The real station is Artarmon, but I quite liked my version.... When I needed a backstory and scenario for a small rundown terminus in an East Midlands county town , it was easy to blow the dust off the fiction.
     
    I seem to have mislaid the layout photo I was going to scan... (Which is why this post has been an awful long time in draft)
  12. Ravenser
    This is the story of a cheap and nasty kit for a cheap and nasty coach. Actually that's a little unfair - to the prototype
     
    In recent years Coopercraft , like the Cheshire Cat in Alice , has been slowly fading away. Two or three years ago, before matters reached the final stage of a Smile Without a Cat, I purchased a couple of kits from their stand at Ally Pally.
     
    One, the Kirk non-gangwayed LNER 51' full brake was a decent kit, and was built some time ago.
     
    The other was the Mailcoach kit for the Tourist Brake third . For some reason , these slightly unusual Gresley vehicles have always caught my interest - they were not teak, they were built for a rather different purpose, and they stood apart from the general run of LNER coaches in most respects. However they do seem to have been used in general service post war - and here was a plastic kit . Moreover I reckoned I could build a plastic kit..... Added to which, here was a mainline corridor brake with an unusually high seating capacity which might well appear on marginal duties like short portions .
     
    I'd heard one or two grumbles about the kit from the likes of micklner and Tony Wright - but I assumed that as their level of refinement as far above mine (and above what is being attempted with a theoretically quick 'n cheap fleet of coaches for RTR kettles) this just meant it wasn't really up to the standards of a Comet kit. Little did I know.......
     
    Firstly some comments about the prototype, since there appears to be little on the internet - the following rests on Harris' LNER Coaches.
     
    Once the Depression began to ease, LNER management decided it was time to eliminate the remaining 4 and 6 wheel coaches from revenue service. One pocket of this would found in excursion traffic where 36 sets of ex GN suburban 4 wheelers displaced by the Quad-Artics had been retained [The idea of KX to Skeggy in those makes Liverpool St-Cromer in a Cravens unit seem positively civilised....]. The LNER commercial management wished to compete with coach operators, and Gresley came up with the idea of some special modern excursion stock as a part-replacement. Five 12-car sets were ordered in 1933, each comprising two Brake 3rd Opens , four articulated all 3rd twins and two buffet cars. Four more sets were ordered in 1934-6 and one in 1939
     
    These coaches were all opens with low backed bucket seats, plywood paneling, and finished in a surprising green and cream . Interiors were cheap Art Deco, and by the mid 1950s a BR report was speaking of the buffet cars - by then in general service - as "truly very bad indeed". High backed seating seems to have been fitted post- war. The plywood panelling was liable to deteriorate badly and many of the coaches ended up replated with steel panelling. They finally disappeared in 1963-4, though a couple of buffets lasted on the LMR (who must have been desperate) until 1967.
     
    These coaches seem just right for a place like Blacklade
     
    I wanted to check the actual colour of Railmatch maroon jars against the Hachette Mk1 since patch painting was required. So - I did the obvious thing and hauled the Tourist Brake kit out of the cupboard. The sides are moulded in clear plastic with raised window frames and whatever opacity they acquire is given by the paint...
     
    The maroon was dark. I tried lightening it by applying a coat of Railfreight Faded Red (=pink) on the inside. And after a couple of coats of paint I found I was committed, and the Porthole Brake 3rd was laid aside unstarted.
     
    Matters have now reached this stage:

     
     
    I think this has now taken 4 coats of brush-painted maroon, and a certain amount of patching along the way. Tony Wright , who evidently has a higher-opacity red, only required three. In the circumstances it's a reasonable finish, but nowhere near sprayed standard. It's also had about three interior coats. The opacity still isn't all it should be around the window frames - painting these without getting paint on the glazing is very difficult, especially around the ventilators
     
    And I was several coats in and part-built before I realised there were long sunken marks at the bottom of the sides in several places (Perhaps the mould pressure wasn't quite high enough?) . I rubbed back and patched the worst of these with filler, then touched back in. Obviously I should have spotted these, and filled them systematically, at the start : I suspect they weren't terribly obvious on translucent sides - and of course I got stuck straight in to painting as a colour test patch.
     
    There is a pinhole in one of the door droplight windows. I've tried patching it today with some Microsol product - only to find the whole bottle has congealed over years in storage. That's been thrown out
     
    The seating provided seems to derive from longer (compartment?) mouldings , roughly sawn in half , apparently with a Junior hacksaw. Not having spare 2+2 seating available (the remains of some sawn up Mk4 interiors are not suitable here...) I cleaned it up as best I could , painted it and installed it, on the basis that you can hardly see the interiors of coaches anyway - so any unevenness won't be visible
     
    The battery boxes were mere facades. As a bodge, I've thickened them up with a piece of 40 thou styrene glued behind. I didn't feel up to the delay, and the cost of sending away for proper Comet ones, when the overall quality of the kit is so mediocre. "Lipstick on a pig" is the phrase that comes to mind. I has whitemetal Gresley buffers on hand so I substituted them. The Gresley bogies seem to have built up ok - I just need to get my head around fitting Kadees
     
    As I had bought a packet of 10 LMS/LNER coach duckets to replace one missing from the MTK Porthole kit , I used one here. It seemed a better proposition than the one in the kit
     
    Then there's the roof. After a bit of playing around and thinning the ends with a Stanley knife blade, I reluctantly concluded that the profile of the roof moulding supplied , and that of the ends and partitions simply could not be reconciled . I therefore bought an aluminium roof from Wizard Models . This will need to be cut to length, and then a suitable - and matching - rake back filed on every corner. So far I haven't plucked up the courage to attempt it.
     
    That is the current state of play. (And I've just realised I'm out of torpedo vents). The thing has been sat in a box for at least 3 months.
     
    This is not a particularly good kit. It's certainly the worst coach kit I've encountered - but as my experience has been confined to Ratio, Parkside, Dapol and Kirk, I've led a sheltered existence.
     
    I'm sure that the MTK Porthole must be better than this - though I may live to regret those words
  13. Ravenser

    Layout schemes
    I have a new job, and (for the moment) most of the time I will be working from home. When I'm in the office I find myself within walking distance of the mortal remains of the Ipswich dock lines, several of whose locos feature on the Boxfile. The shops are open again. The sun shines and we see blue sky. I've had my first dose of a vaccine. 
     
    In the meantime, over the last year of lockdown, there has been time for reflection and clarification. The awkward fact is that I've made much less of an inroad into the backlog of projects than I hoped. Nothing has been done about OO9 modelling  and the putatative OO9 layout here for at least 9 months.  The study has not been cleared; the possibility of moving from a 2 bedroom flat to a 2 bedroom house is back on the table. Nothing has been done about long-dormant Tramlink either. My energies have been focussed on coaches for Blacklade and wagons for the Boxfile. The list of questionable wagons on the Boxfile is now getting quite short, and one good push should finish off the remaining projects already started; I've hit some problems with the coaches, or more specifically a lack of suitable spray cans of paint. Everything seems to have coasted gently to a halt now I'm earning a living again. I still have plenty of projects to go at in the cupboard; there are no exhibitions, so there should be few temptations to buy more .
     
    Into this situation drops an Industrial Railways supplement to the May Railway Modeller. Having looked through this, one layout scheme caught my eye: for a "Basic Exchange Siding" , occupying 9' x 1' as drawn. That could fit along one wall of a small bedroom /study in a 2 bedroom flat or house. The logical thing to do with that kind of space would be to have Blacklade set up permanently, rather than have the hassle of setting up/breaking down every time. But possibly Blacklade could be supported at a reasonable height on brackets - say at 4' (6" higher than on its legs) - as the upper level of a 2 deck arrangement . It's narrow enough - 12" outer ends, 5" in the middle - not to obstruct access to a lower level too severely. 
     
    The Railway Modeller plan depicts a set of sidings with a running line treated as a former double-track route singled . It's basically open country with almost the only structures a road bridge at each end , and a retaining wall and bank at the back. The scenic section is 6' long, and features a run-round loop on one side , with a  pair of exchange sidings on the other: from this a connection to an industrial site runs offstage . There is a long fiddle yard of 2' at onme end, and a short fiddle yard of 1' at the other end. If this were sat on top of shelves and cupboards 30" high, this would allow 3" high boards and 12" separation from the bottom of Blacklade. That ought to be workable
     
    The photographic quality is truly dire but this picture, taken at Louth in (I think) 1978,  looking north from Keddington Crossing, shows very roughly what such a setting might look like . (The station and goods shed was behind me on the other side of the crossing). I certainly have no intention of modelling snow, but this kind of thing is very open and has little height to it . Access for operating would be easy enough, especially if the lower deck were moved say 3" forward of the upper deck. There would be almost no obstruction of the critical centre section of the layout by the upper level; and equally there would be nothing much to lean on and damage when operating Blacklade at the higher level.  Construction should be straightforward and fairly quick. I would presumably use the new Peco Bullhead, though the threeway might have to be from Marcway
     
    Why am I even toying with this?  Well, I have a moderate amount of modern image freight stock which has no use,  left over from Ravenser Mk1. I also have a potentially growing number of Type 2s (not to mention a couple of Type 1s) and a supply of shunters which might be excessive. A simple modest sized layout that gives them something to do on freight operations, a feature missing from Blacklade, would get these models into regular use . The Railway Modeller plan provides all this, in a modest space with limited demands in terms of layout building . 4 points, one slip , a three-way, no buildings, one hut. And it looks like it might be possible to fit both this and Blacklade in the same space for permanent availablity, without causing any serious problems. Anything less minimalist would start to create problems with buildings obstructing access, or becoming vulnerable to damage
     
    In terms of setting , I would be looking for a rather tatty residual railway operation in an industrial area in the Seventies or Eighties. This would probably need to be in an industrial area, not Lincolnshire (although the sugar beet factory at Bardney comes to mind) . South Yorkshire or West Yorkshire would be the obvious choices : a low retaining wall at the back made of soot-blackened massive rough cut stones would suit nicely.  At those dates, the most numerous industrial locations would have been coal mines and coking works, courtesy of the NCB. Those, however, tended to be big complexes and something more minimalist is perhaps called for.  A quarry would push us into the Peak District or Yorkshire - but I don't have any aggregates wagons. Scrap traffic looks a better option: I have a number of air-braked scrap wagons and kits , intended for the club project, which have never seen use. Mineral wagons were also used on scrap traffic , and I have a few of those kicking about. A small industrial shunter would be reasonable: trhe scrapyard north of Bradford had a Sentinel. I have two Judith Edge kits unbuilt in the cupboard. 
     
    There are chronological issues. The line should also have a  basic passenger service. The left hand fiddle yard is only 12" as drawn . The only DMUs that short are 153s (not introduced until 1990) or Classes 121 or 122, which were strictly WR specialities. Unfitted mineral wagons (MCO / MDO) disappeared in  1983, and vacuum-braked minerals in 1988: you can't credibly run them with a 153. A Class 105 or Class 108 will require at least 20" length to accomodate it.  Pacers will come out at about 15" or 16": but Class 142 did not enter traffic until 1985. Class 141 was in service in West Yorkshire from 1983: but they were narrower than the later Pacers, and not available RTR. (Class 140, a one-off prototype, would be a complete scratchbuild).  An extension of the left fiddle yard to 16" seems essential . 
     
    A Class 31 is almost 10" long, a Class 37 slightly over 10". TTAs and equivalent scrap wagons are 5" long. That doesn't give you much of a train in a 24" fiddle yard. Extension to 30" seems essential. Yes  a Rat or a Class 20 is shorter and gives you another couple of inches to play with, and 17'6" underframe wagons are a whisker over 3" long. Brush 2 + 4x SSA/POA , or 20 + 4x MCV/MDO + brake are your limits. Neither really allows much scope for the rest of the train (what rest??) to carry on down the line with some other traffic in vans or some other kind of wagon. And at best the other fiddle yard will take loco + brake van or one wagon
     
    The layout could readily be backdated into the 1960s , at which point a railbus or a single car Derby Lightweight solves the passenger problem . But the other train-length issues remain (In practice I think I would want to try to run both 1970s/80s Blue Period , and mid 60s , as I have green diesels available. Freight stock for the earlier period would be the only issue). This plan may well have been intended for steam operation: a medium-sized 0-6-0 (say J15, J11, J25, 3F, 4F) or a moderate sized tank engine (think Jinty, N5 , J50, Pannier, LNWR 0-6-2T) would allow 1-2 extra wagons. An 0-4-4T plus one pregrouping brake would make a passenger train
     
    A minimum length of 9'9" seems inescapable
     
    While these issues are pondered, along with the possible availablity of a site I don't actually possess, here is a gratuitous picture of a CGO grain hopper at Louth (not at all usual for ABM malt traffic). I have somebody's etched kit unbuilt in the cupboard.
     
     

     
  14. Ravenser

    Layout schemes
    This is another of those speculative posts about possible layouts, so here goes....
     
    Not so long ago someone posted a video to Clive Mortimore's layout thread that got a few people going - including me.
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/87205-sheffield-exchange-what-a-to-do/page-66
     
    In short it was a rather eye-opening documentary film about operations at Darling Harbour Goods in Sydney in its dying days during the late 1970s. Backed up with another film mostly shot 7-8 years earlier showing the last stand of steam shunting in the Darling Harbour yards using Victorian 0-6-0s : these locos were over 90 years old when finally withdrawn in 1970-1. A total of 35 minutes of fascinating and very high quality rail video.
     
    Now, the family went out to Sydney in 1979, and came back at the end of 1983 - Darling Harbour Goods shut the following year. Although the general lack of rail enthusiast material in Australia meant I was only very faintly aware of the existence of the place, never mind what was down there, and so never attempted to go and have a look myself, still - this is very firmly in "my period". And 35 minutes of video is a lot of reference material - about as much as my treasured copy of Sydney's Forgotten Goods Railways which I was lucky to get my hands on.
     
    So I went poking around on a few Aussie manufacturers/retailers sites to see what is actually available for the period. There's no 19-class , 73-class shunters have been done and sold out, its all pricy , but still... Somewhere tucked away I have a Hornby-Lima 422-class and two NSWGR coaches. Arguably I need to acquire a few more bits of stock while I can - say a brake coach, some wagons , a brake van...
     
    What would I run them on? Well, a half-formed idea about a NSWGR industrial shunting micro set on Sydney's North Shore has been kicking around my head ever since I reach a brief comment in Sydney's Forgotten Goods Railways about an obscure operation in the North Sydney area served from Darling Harbour Goods:
     
    For those unfamiliar with the geography - ie 99% of the forum - this is almost under the shadow of Sydney Harbour Bridge, on the north side of the harbour, directly opposite the Opera House. Admiralty House is the official residence of the Australian Prime Minister in Sydney - in other words Kirribilli is today a very posh harbourside suburb with historic properties and the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron
     
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Sydney_Harbour_Bridge_from_the_air.JPG
    In this photo Kirribilli is in the lower centre, and Lavender Bay is upper right, above the Bridge
     
    And in the heading photograph, Lavender Bay is to the left of the Bridge, and Kirribilli out of shot to the right (I think this photo may have been taken from the Opera House. Ahem, Fort Macquarie tram depot, as was...)
     
    Half-remembering the details I went searching on Google. As I searched on the wrong point, I didn't find much , but what I did find was this:
     
    https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lzw1AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA9-PA14&lpg=RA9-PA14&dq=lavender+bay+goods&source=bl&ots=s8FGT8HpJF&sig=SvkuezDcD6ccu9cUHa_aOxsXdMs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwig3abN64rbAhUrAsAKHYjKDocQ6AEIQzAF#v=onepage&q=lavender%20bay%20goods&f=false
     
    which is a transcript of hearings by the Public Works Committee of the NSW Legislative Council into the proposed extension of the North Shore Line from St Leonards to Milson's Point in 1890 (a gentleman will be passing among you handing out matchsticks for your eyes very shortly, though I assure you it's really quite fascinating if you know the patch, and the history of what was actually built and when...)
     
    Here is chapter and verse explaining the background to that car-float operation , complete with all the politics and arguments in Dolby Surround-Sound and glorious Technicolor
     
    What seems to be a talk on Darling Harbour Goods given to the NSW branch of the Australian Railway Historical Society (whose bookshop in a terraced house near Central I remember from my teens) gives a few further details of the operation:
    http://www.arhsnsw.com.au/lunchclubnotes/1309dharbour.pdf
     
    There is even - this being the age of the internet - video of the fire on Facebook
    https://www.facebook.com/nfsaa/videos/1457559367588249/
     
    This seems to have been Sydney's - and Australia's - only car-float operation: something quite common in New York and some other big American cities, but - as far as I'm aware - extremely rare in the British Empire.
     
    Now car-float operations have been seen by US HO modellers as an ideal subject for an urban shunting micro. Here is a self-contained freight facility to shunt, with a built in "fiddle yard" in the form of the car-float . This can be made removable so that you can actually dispatch and receive wagons in a prototypical manner , giving the layout operational credibility. I think Chris Leigh floated the concept a few times in Model Trains International
     
    Very promising indeed. And here's one right on my patch,just down the hill from where I went to school for a couple of years, which was supposed to be served by what was my local line. .Mmmmmm.
     
    Some historical background is useful to make sense of the sources. After a long - and in places, wild - boom, Australia entered a severe depression in 1891, culminating in the collapse of most of Australia's banks in the first half of 1893 . My fifth-form History of Australia notes three pillars of the boom - the "land boom" , speculative property development ; the wool industry; and public infrastructure, above all railways: "the colonial governments had carried their railway building to excess, just as private investors had done with urban building and pastoralism....lines were pushed out into thinly settled districts where there was likely to be little settlement for years to come...freight rates were kept artificially low to stimulate traffic so that although in the long run most lines were of value in encouraging economic development, in the short run few of them could pay their way."
     
    All of this is vividly on display in the testimony to the Public Works Committee in 1890.
     
    We learn that the NSWGR were offering wool shippers free cartage from Darling Harbour Goods to any wool store in the city centre - not, say the Railway Dept witnesses, out of the goodness of their hearts, but because Darling Harbour was so congested that they needed to get the stuff out the door straight away or they would be overwhelmed. Not being in the city centre, the Pastoral Finance Association’s warehouse didn't benefit - so they wanted their own direct rail link with wagons delivered to their door.
     
    It becomes painfully obvious why "acquiring the necessary property proved too difficult". After 1891 Australia was in much the same state as Ireland after 2008 - the cash just didn't exist for this kind of "top of the boom" project. Extension beyond Milson's Point was quietly forgotten about and once the worst of the crisis eased, the Pastoral Finance Association was offered direct delivery by car-float as a compensation. A lot of time before the committee was spent arguing about the idea of running trains onto train-ferries at Milson's Point and floating them across the harbour to meet a new railway (which didn't exist either) round the city centre to the main railway station, as an "alternative Main Northern", based on US models. This was nonsense, if not nonsense on stilts, but you can see where the idea of a car-float came from.....
     
    It is also clear that a number of witnesses were adherents of the "if you build it, they will come" theory. Unfortunately in the end you will build it, and there will be no-one left to come, and the sky will fall in on you..... The first whispers of the gathering storm can be heard in the admission by a number of witnesses before the Committee that in the last year or so trade has been a little quieter.
     
    It is fascinating to see the idea of a harbour bridge being considered so early - that was still four decades away. And some prize should be awarded to the proponent of the alternative route, who was also proposing a cross-harbour railway by laying two tubes on the bottom of the harbour , to be reached down a bored helix at Milsons Point on a 1 in 70 grade , the whole thing to be worked by steam...."1073 Q: Can you refer me to an example of such a railway? A: I do not know. Q: Then we should have to make an experiment?" Ouch!
     
    What was actually built shortly after was the railway to Milson's Point, as proposed by the Railways Dept; and it was a purely suburban line - and in due course a very busy one. The ferry connection to the city was operated by the existing ferry company. Building the Sydney Harbour Bridge was the centrepiece of the 1915 Bradfield Report, the blueprint for Sydney's 20th century public transport - construction began in 1924. As the North Pylon of the Bridge essentially obliterated the old Milson's Point terminus the line was cut back to a new terminus part way up Lavender Bay - after the new line opened, the platforms were removed and it became carriage sidings. They can be seen here- despite all the grand talk about "1560 feet of harbour frontage " nobody has ever built commercial wharves in Lavender Bay. It remains a quiet anchorage for small boats.

     
     
    The North Shore line was electrified at 1500V DC in 1932 in connection with the opening of the new line through North Sydney, across the Harbour Bridge and in tunnel under the city centre to Central. There was talk between the wars of a Northern Beaches line turning east towards Manly - it was in the Bradfield Report, the Depression killed the idea and I suspect that it will never happen.

    In the late 1970s there was a pickup goods along the North Shore line - I never saw it , but I saw occasional traces of its presence in the appearance or disappearance of a refridgerated box car outside what appeared to be a coldstore dock at St Leonards. I think it disappeared sometime in the 80s
     
    So - any model would be a compact urban shunting layout, with a small two wagon or four wagon car-lift as fiddle yard. Almost a cassette fiddle yard. It would feature a big Victorian Italianate warehouse as its backdrop. On one side there would be a blocked tunnel mouth for the access route that never happened . It might be set into a ledge carved out of the sandstone hillside.
     
    Traffic would be wool and meat for the cold-store. Possibly some general goods across a wharf, maybe a little timber.
     
    We need a trackplan. Now the only space which might be available is the 4'3 x 18" where the desktop computer currently sits - and which has an alternative claim from a possible OO9 layout: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/343/entry-20376-shifting-sands/
     
    That's too short for the obvious candidate, John Allen's Tymesaver . Cut it how you like, 51" is not enough length unless you lose chunks of the layout to a sectorplate. And how you would arrange the carfloat connection on such cut down versions I can't see:
    http://www.carendt.com/micro-layout-design-gallery/micro-tymesaver-designs/
    http://www.carendt.com/micro-layout-design-gallery/dense-track-designs/
     
    A hunt around Carendt.com turns up one possible design - Triple I Industrial Park:
    http://www.carendt.com/micro-layout-design-gallery/dense-track-designs-2/
     
    Something can certainly be done with this. The great Victorian warehouse towers at the back in half-relief - I can certainly spare an extra 4" depth to take it, and it provides a perfect backscene. "Industry A" then becomes the wool reception road, and "Industry B" the cold-store road. The extra 3" in length would be added on the left side: "Industry C" becomes a track on the wharf, and "Industry D" gets a Y point and becomes the car-float connection. What is marked as "office" is the plant where the wool is "dumped" (compressed into bales). Wool wagons are shunted across from A into here, after which they are empty and due to go back to Sydney on the barge
     
    Yes, using C as the headshunt off the car-float is awkward, but this would be the least used siding of the four. With the extra length you would have about 20" clear of the point after allowing for buffers
     
    Stock? Well NSWGR refridgerated vans are available RTR from specialist Australian sources. As is the 4 wheeled S-wagon , prominent in the Darling Harbour videos , and evidently still in regular use as late as 1977. Other opens and vans can be sourced.
     
    But some of these vehicles are big - NSWGR and VR bogie vans can run out at 56' or longer. That starts to be problematic for micro plans based around US 40' cars. There's no justification for goods brakes
     
    Traction is a little complicated. For the 1970s you'd need a 73-class. But if you go back before 1970 things are more difficult. The NSWGR wasn't really into tank engines - and definitely not small ones. Their idea of a dock shunter was - as we've seen - a long-boiler 0-6-0 goods. They never owned British-style 0-6-0 diesel shunters. C30-class 4-6-4Ts seem to have been pressed into service for trip goods /shunting : these were what worked Sydney's suburban lines before electrification (limited to 6 bogies on the N Shore line out of Milson's Point). A Baltic tank is nobody's idea of a small shunter....
     
    And currently 73-class are out of production, while nobody seems to have produced the C30s RTR , never mid a RTR 19-class.
     
    There's also a serious issue with period. As already noted "my period" would be the 1970s and early 1980s. But we are talking about an operation that in real life ended in December 1921 - a huge time- gap. In the USA car-float operations were vanishing fast after about 1960s and seem to have barely made it into the 1970s. If I were to push things back a decade or two for credibility - say to just before the end of the N.Sydney tram system in 1958 - a suitable loco is quite a problem
     
    And this highlights a real problem. The Aussie stock I actually have comprises a 442-class - that is, a 1970s mainline diesel - and two coaches. I could not run any of it on such a layout, and in any case it would all be out of period. If there was access from the right, as envisaged by the designer, I might have a pickup goods, perhaps worked by a 48-class diesel - something that is small, available, and which I understand worked the N Shore goods. But on the right there is actually the external wall of the flat. And a 48-class would not have come across on a car-float
     
    Oh, and any rail access would have been from the left, not the right, in reality.The thing starts to bristle with problems and won't quite gel.
     
    I might well attempt a version of this project at some time, but as far as the space in the study currently occupied by the desktop is concerned, the 009 scheme fits more neatly, works a little better scenically , and uses things I already have in stock. And the extra stock to be bought can be obtained from a nearby model shop or from traders at shows . There are no currency issues to face.
     
    Hmmmmm
  15. Ravenser

    Mercia Wagon Repair
    A fair amount of progress has been made with Mercia Wagon Repair over the last 6-8 weeks. However this has involved a number of revisions and minor tweaks.
     
    The layout - or at least the "main line"  side of it , which was all that had been laid - had been test run  a few times. This amounted to running in a train behind a type 5, the loco running round and picking up a train of wagons waiting in the departure siding , then returning whence it came. The shunter would then shunt the incoming wagons into the departure siding. I have bought one of the NGS Hunslet shunters in Railtec blue and white livery to supplement my Farish 04. It's a very small loco, and modestly priced at £81, and it certainly runs very slowly, which is a plus for a shunter. But despite all the plaudits it doesn't run as smoothly as the 04. I'm reminded of a lot of small 4mm kitbuilt locos - it seems to have a certain faster/slower waddle though (like them) it doesn't stall. I don't regret my purchase, but it isn't my best loco and I'm not sure I'd buy two
     

     
    Along the way I had set about converting the couplers from Arnold Rapido to Dapol Micro-couplers . This is an expensive exercise : even buying packs of 10 couplers it works out at just over 5 pounds per vehicle. I bought a pack each of medium and long , and then found that the long version is something of an embarrassment. On almost anything it looks a bit like the couplers on 1930s Hornby tinplate, projecting far beyond the vehicle. The shorts are too short for most stock, but I did  just about manage to find homes for the contents of the pack. The medium is the bread-and-butter coupling, and I'm now on my third pack of mediums.
     
    To the point. I went to start work laying the wagon works itself , and discovered that I seemed to have bought the wrong handed points...
     
    Acxtually I hadn't. I'd merely not bothered to check the plan and had happily proceeded on normal railway principles. The plan is to be found here   and you will notice that the bottom road of the actual works comes off the upper road of the loop, via a reverse curve and there's a somewhat odd arrangement whereby the topmost road comes off a wrong-handed point and goes round the back of the works on an awkward reverse curve. I'd assumed that everything came off in the normal way through a nice conventional fan of points.

     
     
    I contemplated ripping up the recently laid top road to follow the plan as drawn for about half a second, and decided I didn't much like the idea of shunting wagons through all those reverse curves and access through the loop being required every time you wanted to shunt in or out of one road of the workshop. Nor, I think, would the real railway. Presumably the plan was drawn that way to save on length and get everything on a 6' long (ahem 180cm) board in HO
     
    I am not short of length when it comes to the wagon works. The space constraints are the length of the loop, and the length of the entry/fiddle siding to the left , plus the length of  headshunt required to take an FEA twin-set plus a shunter. Those constraints limit me to a 66 + 3 bogie wagons and a 4 wheel wagon in my 6' in N . But the wagon works sidings are pretty long, so I don't need to compress the fan of points into them.
     
    Then it became apparent that a short and a medium point weren't going to fit in before the board joint . The second point just overlapped the joint - largely thanks to the fact that you can't join Peco code55 N points one after another like you can in OO . They foul each other at the divergance, so a small length of plain track needs to be spliced in.
     
    So I bit the bullet - the second point was displaced onto the left hand board , clear of the board framing, and I decided to go for a large radius point at the divergance of the first workshop road
     
    All this shoved the start of the hard standing in front of the workshop about 6" to the left of the board joint. That was the end of my plan to use the change from ballast to hard standing to disguise the board joint. An access path across the tracks will have to do the job instead.
     
    Here we have progress , with only one siding to go in. That siding is now going to incorporate a Peco inspection pit inside the shed, though not for the full length of it. Since this requires me to cut a slot in the board laying this has been deferred .... 
     

     
    Having got  something like a layout laid, of course it had to be test run, to check nothing fell off (and also to see how it would actually feel if operated as envisaged)
     
    The front siding is the departure road, where wagons that have been through the works are held pending a mainline loco  taking them back onto the network. A train of wagons for repair is standing in the "fiddle" road, representing the connection to the national network. (The limitations on train length are obvious.) As this is in front , it will have to be scenic - I have added a spare bit of flexible track in front as the stub end of an abandoned siding , where an abandoned wagon can be held. This should really be slightly further forward : the intention is to imply that a former double track approach line has been singled. I intend to add a "holding track " at the front , between the two groups of switches . This will be firmly off stage and this front area painted stage black.
     
    What you see is nearly all my serviceable N gauge stock... It became painfully obvious that to run the layout when complete everything I have , including unbuilt kits, would need to be pressed into  service. I am therefore compelled to buy more rolling stock.
     
    I have also been checking dimensions and trying to mock up backscene buildings , based on possible downloads and the Pikestuff material I have. (N gauge stock boxes found a use here)
     
    This is a closeup of the  actual wagonworks area. My various pencil marks as exact arrangements were amended can be seen

     
    The IPA twin and the Network Rail open mark the location of the actual works shed, more or less. This has now shrunk to 12" long from 15" , and it should have a lean-to store/office along the front. It will be a Pikestuff 2  road shed , extended  and with the roof omitted except for a short strip front and back. The rear track is behind the shed : the missing road with the inspection pit  will fit in the gap. Dapol uncoupler magnets have been laid across the door positions: all this area will be inlaid into concrete flooring so they will be hidden . The Cargowaggon is in an area behind the shed which will be used for holding wagons that have arrived and are awaiting their turn in the shed. Behind it is the NGS Hunslet - there is an isolating section here, to hold a "back shunter"
     
    The VTG hood marks the location of the paintshop. This will be the Pikestuff Atkinson Engine Facility, which has a front leanto office . That office, it is now apparent , will block road 2 of the shed, which will have to stop short
     
    And here we see how Mercia Wagon Repair uses my hifi speakers as trestles. There are plates of single ply faced in baize for them to rest on, to protect the speakers - the controller and external CDU box sit on top of the hifi cabinet.
     
    This is a lot less disruptive of normal use of the room than Blacklade , which has to be erected diagonally across the room
     

  16. Ravenser
    As I noted here the two quickest wins amongst the possible coach projects were commissioning the Bachmann Mk1 BSK and upgrading the old Lima Mk1 SK - since those two projects didn't require me to do a complete paint job. 
     
    So upgrading the Lima Mk1 it was. And after getting a fair way with painting the SK  interior (along with all the other interiors) the penny dropped that I had two Replica TSO interiors in the coach box, and conversion to a TSO should therefore simply be a matter of swapping interior mouldings and painting . So I did just that - the Replica interior fits witout any noticeable difficulty, although the table tops possibly sit a shade high.  (Or the Lima windows are a fraction too deep). I found some suitable figures to represent passengers in another box and painted them up with acrylics: some are resin castings from Peter Goss bought at Southwold one year when World's End was there, while others are Slaters and Prieser figures which had already been part painted by me.
     
    The Bachmann Mk1 BSK also needed some weork to commission it: the seats were painted a light grey, but no passengers were added . There are only 4 compartments, and by this period compartments were less popular with the travelling public. They might well still be empty on a train which will not be departing for some minutes. A Kadee #5 was jammed in the hacked NEM pocket at the brake end with superglue. Somewhere in my boxes I have a Keen Systems replacement close-coupler cam, left over from my upgrade of the Hachette Mk1 SK , which ought to be a drop in replacement to bring the NEM pocket to the right height. However I couldn't find it despite searching - so for the moment the coupling internal within the set is a Hornby/Roco close coupler, which will tolerate a slight varisation in height
     

     
    However the TSO interior is much more open so passengers are necessary. The white-topped tables catch the eye, even with the coach roof on and glazing in place. I didn't want the job of neatly repainting the interior of the bodyshell in white in order to represent the last phase of Mk1 construction with white melamine interiors and strip lights. So the target for the model became Lot 30525, Wolverton 1959-60: plenty of vehicles  from this Lot were still listed in traffic as late as 1992 (the earliest coach listing I have): they were fitted with B4 bogies not Commonwealth or BR1, and had broader aisles with the later seating style , but they retained darkish timber interiors.
     
    (The photo above shows the TSO with a new interior, and bogies and underframe items replaced , but glazing and roof still to be sorted out)
     
    The major faults of the Lima model have now to be addressed.
     
    - Lima's bogies, trussing and underframe detail are unsatisfactory, malnourished, missing or wrong. I removed the Lima bogies, chopped away everything below the solebars and made good the holes with plasticard plates and milliput.
    - The glazing is totally unsatisfactory, with deep slab sides. Fixing this is make or break for any upgrade of this model to modern standards
    - The ends are a complete mess : footsteps that were removed in the early 1960s, moulded handrails that should extend onto the roof but don't, self-coloured black plastic (the ends were blue with markings), gangways with random holes in them, mickey mouse buffers... 
    - The roof vent arrangement is quite wrong for a TSO. (I'm not sure what, if anything, it's right for. These were generic roof mouldings for the whole Lima Mk1 range)
     
    So -
     
    I soldered up MJT rigid 8'6" etched bogies. This was the first time I'd attempted these, and although they proved quite a bit of work (not helped by several errors on my part that had to be reversed) I'm pleased with the results. I used the press-stud system and find the ability to remove the bogies at will quite convenient. It also means that such bogies can be added to a body that is sealed up without needing to break into it, and there is no risk of a bolt or nut coming loose inside which you are then unable to get at and repair.
     
    I added cosmetic whitemetal B4 bogie sideframes from stock (They are actually MJT B5s, but you have to be pretty knowledgeable to spot that something is not quite correct). I also used the etched tongue that folds up into an NEM socket, which MJT supply separately. These need to be cut down a little to avoid fouling the rocking bogie pivot. (I used a piercing saw). They project rather further out than Bachmann /Keen Systems CCM cams, so you need a supply of short NEM Kadees
     
    A replacement underframe truss was stuck in place - I used the plastic Mk1 trusses available from Phoenix Precision in the ex NNK range. These were obviously intended to sit behind a solebar, so the plastic base needs to be cut away. A little bodging with scraps of microstrip under any short legs was needed. Comet underframe castings were used . Unfortunately these are designed to fit behind solebars on an etched fold-up floor plan, not to sit on a plastic floor at the level of the bottom of the solebar. So the battery boxes and other castings had to be cut down to suit. These and the bogie sideframes add a lot of weight to the finished coach, which helps road-holding. Since I can only run 2 car sets there is no question of this making traios too heavy for the locomotives.
     
     For future projects I will use the Replica underframe equipment mouldings, as these can be stuck to the base of a coach without needing to be cut down.
     

     
    The ends need extensive reworking. The footsteps on the ends of Mk1 coaches were removed after 1960 because climbing up to the roof became an intolerable risk once there was 25kV overhead on the network. Normally the bottom step was left in place. The footplank above the gangways was also removed, leaving only the brackets. However every manufacturer of Mk1s throughout history has produced them  with end steps even though the real things carried them for less than a quarter of their service lives. Apparently everyone models the 1950s - nobody models the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties or Nineties.
     
    Taking them off the Lima Mk1 with a sharp craft knife is fairly simple, since the whole end needs repainting in blue. Removing them from the Bachmann  BSK is rather more difficult as you need to make a neat job without requiring a repaint of the ends - I'm afraid there are still slight witness marks, (although a plate was often left at the base on the real thing). As the photos reveal  I didn't dare attempt removal of the upper footplank on the BSK. On the TSO I did remove them, leaving vestigal plastic bumps , which are very representational attempts at the support brackets for the missing footplank, left in place by BR. I also removed Lima's moulded representation of the end handrails and filler pipes, and replaced them with brass handrail wire - in the case of the filler pipes, these extend onto the roof. Only one end of a TSO has these filler pipes.
     
    Lima's representational buffers were quietly cut off and replaced with MJT castings. The ends were painted blue , though there was a slight mismatch between my Railmatch BR blue and Bachmann's rendering when touching up the the BSK ends. Transfers were then added - Bachmann omit electrification warning flashes so these were added to both vehicles. A corporate image Mk1 has a noticeably bare end compared with a 1950s Mk1 festooned with steps.
     
    The roof is held on by clips that fit into holes in the end within the gangway. I painted the outer gangways grey, but the holes looked horrible, so a piece of paper cut to match the gangway door was painted rail grey and stuck in place to hide them once the roof was back on. At the other end the plastic gangway was cut down to half thickness and a working gangway made up from black card stuck to a plasticard plate using an old MJT etch as a template: a thin plate of plasticard was glued across the passenger end gangway of the BSK as a bearer plate to let it slide without catching
     

     
    As already mentioned, the glazing is the most critical part of the whole project. Shawplan's Lazerglaze will not help you here - it's back to an earlier generation of upgrade parts. I used SE Finecast vacuum-formed glazing. The edges of all window apertures were carefully painted in thinned anthracite black to disguise them. In order to get a genuinely flush-glazed effect I had to trim the flushglaze for the main windows neatly around the base and push them well forward.
     
    This won't work with the ventilators, and vents with the glazing recessed by about 1.5mm - which is what you get if you simply fit the flushgalze from behind as it comes - would look pretty unrealistic and spoil the project. Initially I tried glazing the vents with Rocket Glue and Glaze. This worked, sort of: it sagged under its weight, and even a second application left the glazing dished. It was also a very slow process . Eventually I fitted the flushglaze anyway, and poured Glue and Glaze on top of it to fill up the recess. The Glue and Glaze  is now supported by the flushglaze underneath so it stays flat, and a lot less is needed so it dries quicker. The vac-formed pieces for the main window had a noticeable gloove around the edges - I tried carefully filling this with a filet of Glue and Glaze using the microtip. At least it should ensure the windows don't get pushed inside if I pick the coach up carelessly.
     
    Which just leaves the roof, which Lima moulded in clear plastic and which incorporated the glazing. The moulding was scored underneath the gutter line and the side glazing snapped away. All existing ventilators were carved and filed away. Since the moulding is actually clear plastic a full repaint is therefore needed. Parkin's book includes sketch drawings of the roofs and ventilators for most types, and the roof was drilled for new whitemetal MJT dome  vents in appropriate locations , as shown in the relevant drawing. The whole lot had then to be repainted - with several coats required to cover the clear moulding properly. The top coat was Railmatch roof dirt mixed with a dash of frame dirt.
     
    The resulting 2 car set can be seen in the photos. The Bachmann BSK is a touch track-sensitive and can derail if run the other way round , but the new TSO, with all that weight from whitemetal castings, is rock-solid reliable. That said, it's not quite to the standard of the Bachmann coach. At normal viewing distance , the glazing is okay, but at 12"-18" the glazing though flush is undeniably a bit rough and untidy , and noticeably so when compared with the crisp neat glazing  of the BSK. And I have a suspicion there is a slight difference in the actual windows between Bachmann and Lima. Also I forgot to add a strip of microstrip along the roof edge to represent the gutter, so the roor profile is subtly different between the two layout coaches.
     
    The TSO is numbered using some Modelmaster transfers, which include at least one E-prefix number from the correct Lot
     
    So  the TSO is definitely a "layout coach". The medium term plan is therefore to finish an upgrade of my vintage Hornby Mk2a BFK and run it with this TSO. Both vehicles will then be glazed in the same manner, and since the windows on their prototypes are different anyway awkward comparisons are avoided. This will also mean that the finished set gains some first class accomodation.
     
    (This of course leaves the BSK without a partner, and the longer term plan is to floow on by building a second, rather better, Mk1 TSO to run with it using the Kitmaster plastic kit I have . Kitmaster's flushglazing should sit much more comfortably with a Bachmann Mk1)
     
    In the meantime I have a decent second loco-hauled substitute set for the layout. All items used were already in stock , where most of them had sat for a good few years, so the project cost me nowt at the point of construction. As an aside the original Lima box survives with a price tag of £3.50 on the end


  17. Ravenser

    Mercia Wagon Repair
    The N gauge project is firmly analogue DC. This is because the core of the stock has been sitting in a drawer for nearly 15 years and none of the four locos concerned are "plug and play" DCC ready . Indeed the Farish 04 isn't DCC Ready at all and would be a real pig to convert. (I understand current production of the model will take a decoder)
     
    Electrical wiring was long one of my blind spots. The wiring of Tramlink (Kent) consisted of a few bits of bell-wire and an on/off switch. Points were dead-frog. The Boxfile marked a huge step forward: live-frog points with - gasp - point motors . But it was and is extremely small. The club project launched me into a supporting -player involvement in DCC which bore fruit in Blacklade, which has a fairly sophisticated DCC and lighting installation for what is a small terminus to fiddle yard layout.
     
    So Mercia Wagon Repair is the first time I've attempted conventional analogue DC wiring on any real scale. There will be six live-frog points - the Boxfile has just three. There will be six electrical sections and two isolating sections - the Boxfile is in practice one section. There probably won't be any signals - the real thing wouldn't have any - but there might be a little lighting.
     
    Tramlink (Kent)'s boards were built of 2" x 1" timber and 4mm ply. This precludes the use of stall-motor point motors like Cobalts and Tortoises. There simply isn't the frame depth to accomodate them. So point motors are by necessity solenoids - Peco and SEEP types.
     
    There will be no control panel as such , just local switches along the front edge of the two boards . I have learned my lesson about operating positions: if the layout is operated from the front, the switches had better be at the front, conveniently to hand. There is no reason at all to operate from the back with the backscene in the way. This is essentially a shunting layout intended for interesting operation at home. It is portable enough - the whole thing will box up as a unit 3' x 11" x 12"  - so theoretically it could be exhibited . But the last two and a half years have altered the dynamics of the hobby considerably. The exhibition circuit is currently a shadow of what it was three years ago, the next 18 months may be somewhat restrictive, and it is getting difficult to see things going back more or less to where we were in February 2020 in the foreseeable future. In this climate , building a new layout principally for exhibition starts to feel like an act of denial. Put another way - this year I reckon there will be just 3 events within 30 miles of me involving layouts from outside the organising club.
     
    Mercia Wagon Repair is therefore going to be an extremely conventional analogue DC layout. Control gear is borrowed from the Boxfile : a Gaugemaster 100M controller and this:   Hanging By a Thread  .  The inter-board connector with its DIN plugs is also borrowed from the Boxfile.  DIN sockets had already been bought for the intended re-wiring of Tramlink (Kent) and can therefore finally be used. (Tramlink was run from a little Gaugemaster Combi , which also has a 16V AC output, so in theory the four input wires from the Black Box could be connected to that. I haven't seen any need to do so yet as the Gaugemaster 100M is a reliable unit, but it might be worth experimenting with its use on the Boxfile since the Combi takes up less space and might not need the use of an extension block to reach the wall socket)
     
    Only one problem there - taking the high current power to the point motors from an external CDU means a comparatively long length of wire to reach the point motors. This is especially the case with the satellite board, where the current would have to traverse a long DIN connector lead as well. As I had bought a new CDU without really thinking why I needed it, I decided to use it after all on the second, satellite board (the left-hand board) and avoid the issue. 
     
    This means that I need three circuits : 12V DC track power from the controller, 16V AC high current pulse from the external CDU to the point motors on the right-hand board, and 16V AC low current continuous to power the CDU on the left-hand board and, potentially, any other accessories requiring a 16V AC supply. That could include a regulated power supply delivering 12V DC to lighting LEDs
     
    The DIN plug from the output side of the Black Box is 6 pin, and the inter-board  DIN connector cable is 5 pin, So far, so good: the necessary number of connections are available. However you will have noticed that the external CDU was wired up with only 2 circuits (12V DC + 16V AC to/from the CDU). The first step was therefore to open up the Black Box, and add two by-pass wires from the input connector blocks of the CDU (ie the 16V AC continuous input) which were soldered to the two spare wires in the output DIN cable. While I was about it, I found out what went to each connection on the matching 6 pin DIN socket I was about to install on the layout. The equivalent socket on the Boxfile is sealed inside a building, so I had no idea what came out of each pin.
     
    Dropper wires are 7/0.2 wire in red and brown - the electrical trader at Ally Pally didn't have any off-cut packs in black. Every piece of rail has a feed , and longer lengths of rail have two. I find soldering droppers below the rail much more difficult in N than in 4mm, and the sleepers are much more vulnerable to melting. Longer runs are in 16/0.2 or even 24/0.2 wire left over from Blacklade in order to minimise voltage drop
     
    Here we are at an early stage of proceedings. Some bits of the wiring and connectors from Tramlink are still in place: the tag strips from the old wiring were re-used.

     
    A hole at the back to take the DIN socket for the interboard connector is visible on the right hand board.
     
    There are to be 3 electrical sections on each board . No section can bridge the board joint because there aren't enough connections on the connecting cable (Also DIN sockets are relatively tough and 28-way D sockets aren't and are rated for a surprisingly limited number of connections. Anyway, I had the DIN sockets and cables already.)
     
    The usual rule "black to the back" applies to the 12V DC traction supply, though brown is the new black. All the section switching is on the brown side, so red is common throughout. Switches for the sections and point motors are mounted at the front of the boards , a small group of switches on each board. The brown patch on the right hand board reflects the fact that I left the low platform of Tramlink in place, and two layers of 4mm ply is too thick to get the switches through. So I had to chop it out with a chisel and a 16mm wood drill from below
     
    This will show the issue. The front siding - mainline departure siding - is laid along the inner edge of the old platform . At the time this was taken the cork to ramp it to this level was still to go in. The gradient is about 1 in 75 and does not seem to cause any issues. The dots are breakthroughs from the wood drill and mark the location of the switches. The rest of the old platform surface will be covered by ballast and sceney in duie course. The complications of re-using existing boards....

     
    And here we have two shots of the undersides of the boards , largely wired. So far I've laid the "mainline" side of the layout (loop and front siding) amounting to 4 points, 3 electrical sections and the basic electrical architecture. That amounts to about 2/3rds of the wiring.
     
    This is the right hand board, as it currently is. One point still to go in, and also the dropper wires for the works siding fan (the 3rd section on this board). The plethora of dropper wires does eat up tag strip connections. Blue and yellow are high current 16V AC for the point motors - the heavy 24/0.2 wire used for the long runs of the AC common is obvious. The back of the layout is at the bottom. (The 16V AC low current circuit is grey/purple)
     
    Point motors are a mix of SEEP and Peco. I already had two SEEP motors but thought I would need motors with switching for the frogs. In fact Peco code 55 short radius points have no frog switching and rely on the blades. But the medium and large radius Code 55 points are unifrog, and need a switch in live frog mode.... I bought 5 Peco point motors (nearly all "new second-hand") and five switches, but only 3 Peco motors and one switch will be used, because I don't like chopping big holes in my baseboard.
     

     
    And here we have the left-hand board,  in the heat of battle.
     

     
    The second point motor - a SEEP - is still to go in. The small hole it requires is visible below the packet of solder, and the ruddy great crater left by installing a Peco motor is visible to the right. The heavier 16/0.2 wire used to reach the satellite tag strips will be obvious . Using heavier wire here should minimise voltage drop : there is another 18" of interboard connector and internal wiring on the other board so this is actually quite a long run. The CDU is bottom centre and the AC common is just starting to be wired. There is an isolating section  to hold a loco at the far end of each board.
     
    As I said - a lot of wiring for a little layout
  18. Ravenser

    Mercia Wagon Repair
    So - the wagon works layout project described here is now on. And very much as forshadowed in the subsequent comment.
     
    Several things have pushed me into actually doing something. The first and most powerful is a problem that has developed with my right eye. Gloomy reflection suggested that if anything was to be done with the N gauge bits it had better be done quickly, whilst I was capable of it. 
     
    (I am glad to report that I saw the eye specialists yesterday, and they stated firmly that it is not macular degeneration, but something completely different , which is eminently treatable with an 85% success rate - and also that my left eye is entirely fine. To quote Mark Twain  reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated, and I should have a long term future in constructional model-making. I am feeling a great deal more cheerful.)
     
    Secondly, the "corporate developments at work" duly resulted in redundancy as I privately feared. However I have found a new job and start there on Tuesday, so I've actually only been off work for 5 weeks or so.  This gap created a little time to do things, though rather less  than I had been expecting. The labour market, at least in freight, is quite strong - indeed at one point, for the first time in my life, I actually found myself with two job offers.
     
    Over and above all that, I haven't started a new layout project in over 15 years (January 2007 with Blacklade). The previous 28 years saw 8 layout projects  (Flaxborough, versions 1 and 2 of Blacklade Corporation Tramways, Ravenser, Tramlink (Kent), the club project, the Boxfile, and Blacklade, if you ask). So I've been getting a little stale and restive and it shows, in the various speculative layout postings in this blog. .
     
    Of all these schemes, the wagon works in N is the only one that is "oven ready" in the sense that I have a  core of rolling stock available and a place to put the layout. The OO9 scheme comes close, but the space isn't quite there. The possible house move is definitely on hold until I have my feet securely under the table in the new job and the eye is sorted out, but it remains very much in the frame thereafter. At which point the OO9 layout should become a genuine starter. In the meantime the OO9 bits can be test-run on the N gauge layout, rather than the N gauge bits test-run on the OO9 layout....
     
    And the last few months have prompted some very sobering reflections about just how many projects and things that "might come in very handy at some point" -  points that have failed actually to arise in the last 20-30 years - I have stuffed into various cupboards and drawers. Not to mention how slowly I am building things. As Dr Johnson remarked "the prospect of imminent hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully". Lockdown only grazed the surface of this mass, and the last 12 months have managed to produce two coaches and a 1/72 scale aircraft.  I am not quite in the mood to start disposing of stuff, but the clamp on buying any new projects is firm. Purchase for immediate constructional need only.
     
    I was a good boy at Ally Pally , except for bits for the N gauge project.
     
    If I am being more ruthless with my prospective commitments, then a half-built diorama layout started in 1999 and untouched since 2007, that needs significant work to restore to operation, and a lot of work on stock and scenics to finish - but has limited operating potential and some reliability issues - is a good place to start.
     
    So poor old Tramlink (Kent) is no more.
     

     
    The buildings have been carefully salvaged and boxed up in one of the many cardboard boxes lying around since lockdown ("Waste not, want not..."). Most of the scenery was mounted on foamcore packing and came off fairly easily. The track and ballast has been removed by pouring on hot water and scraping with a kitchen fish slice, ready for reuse of the boards.
     
    Track will be Peco code 55 live frog, which was bought at Ally Pally. Although this will be an essentially RTR layout, I see no reason to compromise and use less than the best available commercial products . These will be live frog and control will be DC analogue. I am not up for the hassle and expense of trying to fit decoders into N gauge stock, and I'm not sure the job can be done with the one shunter I own, an 04.  In practice, the layout will need a shunter and a mainline loco, perhaps with a backup for each. There is no obvious benefit from DCC in such a scenario (unlike Blacklade with its multiple units and intensive operation). Point motors will be solenoid, because the framing of the Tramlink boards is quite shallow and Cobolts won't fit. This is entirely acceptable with commercial track, and Peco motors have given reliable service on the Boxfile . The Gaugemaster 100A and external CDU box used for the Boxfile can be redeployed for this layout too, along with the interboard connector - DIN sockets had been sourced when this was simply going to be a rewire of Tramlink
     
    A roll of 1/32 cork sheet was also bought at Ally Pally , and I've sourced some Pikestuff N gauge buildings. However they are quite small, and I'll need more material to construct a rather larger shed.
     
    The layout also has a provisional name: Mercia Wagon Repair - Guthlac Road Site. This is suitably generic - Mercia was a large kingdom, so the layout could in principle be anywhere from Grimsby to Gloucester, or from Cambridge to Chester, inclusive. We are in a largish Midlands town, housebacks will be seen along the backscene, and that's all that needs to be said. The business is generic and not tied to any particular railway company, so the stock tells no real tales.
     
    Site clearance has now reached this stage:

     
    If you are wondering why the old platform hasn't been removed, well it's very firmly stuck down 4mm ply. My intention is to lay the front siding (departure/finished wagons) on top of it, which means the siding will sit about 3-4mm higher than the other tracks. This introduces a little bit of accidental relief onto the site : it amounts to a 2' difference in levels full-size. Sanded cork underlay will provide an approach ramp at 1 in 75 to 1 in 100, which I don't expect to be an issue when shunting a single wagon. 
     
    One issue still not quite settled is the couplings to be used. I'm dimly aware that the "standard" N gauge Rapido coupling doesn't have a great reputation as a coupling for shunting. Everything I own has NEM pockets bar a Farish VBA and VGA , and those look fairly easy to convert. So Dapol's replacement knuckle couplers , or even Kadees, look like a practical option
     
    I am also likely to join the N Gauge Society. Their Hunslet loco would be ideal as a shunter for this layout, and a few of their wagon kits would be suitable and interesting
     
     
  19. Ravenser

    Reflections
    I am very late with my annual review this year, even though a stub has been in draft for several months . But rather more has been done than might appear.
     
    The 1:72 Fairey Battle took up much of my modelling activity in the last months of 2021. A full write up is here , and it has now recieved final painting (which needs writing up..). It is already a bookshelf ornament on its stand, and I still intend to build a simple runway diorama as a test piece, on which it could be posed.
     
    Inevitably this activity led to a rush of blood to the head, and I purchased more Airfix kits - a Cromwell tank (1:76) to "bulk out" the purchase of display stands, and a Gloster Gladiator, with one eye on the proposed OO9 layout. Further research has revealed that RAF colour schemes and markings changed sharply with the Munich crisis in the summer of 1938, and the familiar serial letters and camoflage schemes of World War 2 were not used by the RAF prior to that date. Consequently I could either build the Airfix Hurricane Mk1 I have in a very early non-camoflage scheme, valid only for a few months in spring-summer 1938, or I finish it in camoflage with early squadron letters which is valid from summer 1938 to September 1939. Either way replacement after-market decals will be required. The Gladiator (introduced February 1937) is a noticably smaller aircraft than the Hurricane and smaller is definitely better for a OO9 diorama layout. The suspended aircraft is intended to be demountable anyway, so the models could be changed over - which would allow the layout to be dated at any time from early 1937 to the outbreak of war.
     
    Once I started building the Battle I had grand thoughts of following it up quickly with another kit from the gift set, this time a twin-engined one with greater presence on the top of the bookshelf. The Handley-Page Hampden was earmarked for this, and upgrading parts are available to do a better job than straight out of the box. Fortunately I didn't rush out and buy anything as the Battle has taken rather longer than I expected, and this bright idea has receded into the middle distance - however it is still the likely follow-on on the aircraft kit front.
     
    The Cromwell tank was bought with an eye to providing a load for one of the DOGA etched Warflat kits I bought . It would be somewhat out of period for anything I actually run, but it is the last British tank that would fit on a Warflat inside British loading gauge. However in the process of checking Paul Bartlett's website I realised that some Warflats were used to carry coach and DMU bogies in departmental service - and that is something I could credibly run on Blacklade.
     

     
    The Cromwell tank was built before I returned to work, the Warflats are still therefore on - but they are on hold at present as my N gauge project is absorbing all my modelling time. I have at least managed to write up some of that one.... Mercia Wagon Repair
     
    One thing that was finished was my upgrade of an old Hornby Mk2 "BSK" into a decent Mk2a BFK . This now makes up into a reasonably well matched 2-car set along with my ex Lima Mk 1 TSO. The pair were taken along to the DOGA AGT for the modelling competition, and I need to get them into regular service. (Blacklade, I'm afraid, hasn't been up much in the last few months). Again, a write up is outstanding.
     
    I got nearly all the way with a conversion of an old Triang Hornby Mk1 BSK  to an NNK courier van. This needs finishing, assembling and weathering but the BFK took precedence when it came to getting something ready for the AGT and I've done nothing in 4mm since - not helped by a bout of the Dreaded Lurghi some weeks ago (I now seem to be back more or less to normal). Again it needs a post to write it up when it's done.
     

     
    And I really must finish off the 128 Parcels unit this year - if only because it is what will pull the NNK and the NRX conversions . One minor job that was done early in the year was fixing the too-short Kadee on the NRX so it now runs without derailing on curves
     
    I made a start painting the sides for a second Mk1 TSO, this time based on an unbuilt Kitmaster SK /TSO kit, which will have a second Replica interior and MJT bogies. I hope this will come out rather crisper and to a higher standard than the upgraded Lima Mk1, and make a better partner for the Bachmann Mk1 BSK
     
    Beyond that, the Airfix kit of the Trevithick loco is still stalled here: Airfix Trevithick kit
     
    It would be good to get my old detailed Hornby 29 rewired, upgraded and running on DCC

     
    But I doubt if I will get much further than that in 4mm this year - if even that far , considering we are already in the second week of August. The Pacer will doubtless have to wait for yet another year
     
    There is rather more going on in N. Obviously I have started building a layout, and despite my  attempt at a strict "no new purchases unless to finish a job" policy I've been able to indulge myself in a little retail therapy. Four or five new wagons have joined the fleet, although I've been trying to look for bargains that fit the theme instead of sheer indiscriminate buying. This has included one "weathered" TTA that had obviously been hanging around because everyone was put off by the "plaster it with brown from an airbrush" factory "weathering". My efforts to tone this down and rework it spilled over into trying to take some of the plastic sheen off several other wagons , and I'm now the owner of  a  mildly weathered Dapol VTG hood  wagon which I'm reasonably pleased with.
     
    I have also joined the NGS, basically so I could buy their new Hunslet shunter. This has now arrived , along with an NGS TTA chemical tanker kit I couldn't resist adding to the order. Watch this space...
     
     
  20. Ravenser

    Layout schemes
    I started a new job after Easter, and the big lockdown modelling push basically ran into the sands in May and June. But the sale of my late mother's house has now been completed;, and a long-overdue attempt to reduce the chaos of the study has taken place. Out went a large broken computer desk and the very old desktop it housed , and in came a small computer trolley; the office chair moved from the sitting room to the study, the study chair went in the bedroom, and a broken chair from the bedroom went to the tip. 
     
    As a follow up, three new shelves went up on the wall that had just been cleared, giving me an extra 12' run of shelving. To be honest, it would probably take almost the same again finally to clear all the build-up of books and magazines in the flat, but the study is now a lot better than it was, so is the rest of the flat, and a great many things are now readily to hand that weren't.
     
    The new shelves are set at a level to clear the proposed OO9 layout I have been evolving here - Dogger Light Railway   However.... an 18" boxed diorama will severely compromise the new minimalist laptop workstation and drive it well back into the (narrow) room. The curve at one end looks really rather tight with a Lynton & Barnstaple coach.  All in all - possible, but cramped and awkward. 
     
    I've decided that no final decisions will be taken until at least next Spring. I have a lot of other things to sort out before taking on the big commitment of a new layout project. The possibility of moving from a flat to a house using the legacy also needs to be considered , but I am taking no decisions on that front either until next summer, pending some corporate developments at work. 
     
    And in the course of finding homes for piles of stuff, a copy of Loco-Revue dated Septembre 2017 turned up. I read it carefully - there were several articles on a compact modern(ish) wagon-works layout in HO. Total footprint 180 cm x 45cm (interesting to see the French still think in imperial underneath - that's in practice 6' x 18") 
     


     
    The prototypes shown in France can be as simple as a 3 road steel shed , with an additional siding on either side, plus a connection to the SNCF system.
     
    Such prototypes do and have existed in Britain. The wagon works opposite the island platform at Peterborough station comes immediately to mind. Ipswich wagon works closed in the early 80s, but there are other facilities around Britain - probably rather larger , although I haven't seen photos of them. In short , unlike the entirely fictional "Any TOC TMD " layouts we saw around shows before the pandemic,  there is an actual credible basis for transplanting this kind of facility to  a British setting. Such a wagon works  also offers a plausible scenario for shunting large modern wagons singly, in a modest space, without the need to accomodate lengthy block trains. This is very promising.
     
    I have some bits of modern N in store, which spiralled out of being given a presentation Dapol 66/5. Halve the dimensions in the article and you are at 3' x 9". If the wall above the workstation and below the shelves is problematic, what about about the wall on the right hand side? There's now 3' clear on that side before you reach the pile of boxed stuff with forlorn forgotten Tramlink boxed on top of it.
     
     

     
     
    It's at this point that the difficulties start surfacing. For starters, British N is 59% of HO. That immediately takes you up to 3'6". x 10.5"   A class 66 in N is 15cm long. A Dapol Cargowaggon bogie van is only fractionally shorter. Just those two  together therefore come to 30cm , which is longer than the fiddle siding as drawn. And either is about as long as the headshunt at the other end, if not fractionally longer. But you would also have to fit a shunter into the headshunt, otherwise you can't operate at all. A Farish 04 is 6.5cm long....
     
    And since the N gauge locos I  have are 2 x Freightliner 66s, a Freightliner 57, and an 04,  and the rolling stock includes an IWA , a VGA and a curtain sider   any N gauge layout needs to accomodate these vehicles. If it doesn't use  the stock I already have there's not a lot of point doing it.
     
    You suddenly realise that short diesel locos like Rats and 20s disappeared a long time ago.
     
    My calculations suggested I'd need at least 3'7" , which is starting to intrude significantly along that wall. That would allow a fiddle yard 33.5cm long , which would just take a 57 + 2 wagons, or at a pinch a 33 + 3 wagons (A Class 33, the shortest mainline diesel loco still in traffic in the 21st century,  is 10.5cm long). Peco short radius points in N are 123mm long. In contrast the layout in Loco Revue manages 3 wagon trains with an assortment of shunters used in the works
     
    Hmmm. Not quite so simple. And none of this would accomodate my FEA twin-set. It's a bit awkward if your wagon works handles exclusively Freightliner locos, but no container flats ever appear.
     
    Any layout  would use Peco code 55 track. There's no reason to use anything coarser, and pointwork on a shunting layout ought to be live frog. (N gauge actually equates to 4' 4.5" gauge - closer to scale than OO, but still not quite there . However nobody ever seems to notice this.) It would be DC, because none of the locos I have are plug-and-play for DCC, and I don't fancy the hassle and extra expense of trying to fit decoders. I have a perfectly serviceable Gaugemaster 100M and a Combi in the cupboard to run this - solenoid motors could be used.
     
    There are certainly issues. But there are also genuine possibilities, and such a project would use stock I already have which doesn't currently have an obvious use
     
  21. Ravenser
    In which the Author maketh a prosperous Journey towards Penydarren in South Wales - where he suffers a sudden Misfortune which leaves him stranded upon a remote Shore...
     
    It has been some time since my initial post on this model  Part 1  when all seemed so promising.   Now, like a message sent in a bottle by a castaway washed up years later on a distant beach I suppose I should write up further developments with what is currently a stalled model.
     
    After much internal debate I finally decided not to attempt a wooden cladding to the boiler, as painting and assembling the cladding round the boiler and the valve gear and gubbins round the cladding just all seemed too much.
     
    Slowly but steadily good progress was made. Yes - I managed to stick the cross-saddled holding the axles in the wrong place and had to remove them and reposition. The carcase of the model was spray-painted matt off-black (Games Workshop Chaos Black from a big aerosol can) as were quite a few of the valve gear and drive components. I was careful to assemble everything so that it would move where it was supposed to move , although the meshing of the gears isn't quite perfect - as can be seen here - and it isn't really free turning in one direction
     
     
     

     
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
    The crosshead moves reasonably freely , even after painting - as a railway modeller I set about making sure everything slid as freely as I could , and gear teeth were checked over to ease any meshing difficulties. The wheels were on, the motion more or less erected....things turned, fine in one direction, not quite so fine in the other, and I was still harbouring hopes of ultimate motorisation ,once I had finally got my head around what Airfix envisaged happening underneath the plastic stand. A motor was supposed to be fitted there, along with a battery - and presumably a switch as well - and I think this was supposed to drive something and thereby turn one of the wheels , so that the motion moved . Effectively the locomotive would work backwards - the wheels driving the motion.
     
    The display base itself was built up, though I'm not quite sure if the stand mounts would hold the loco perfectly level , or so that the wheel would be in contact with whatever's turning underneath. (There's a slot in the base , where this would have protruded, and come in contact with the rim of one of the wheels.)
     
    But still - so far , so good, or reasonably so , and all the problems looked as if they might ultimately be resolvable with a little thought, care and ingenuity.
     
    Then I added the big flywheel and - disaster!
     
    I tried turning the drive train. It was very stiff. I pushed a little harder - and the great flywheel sheered off.....
     
    Somehow the shaft at the back had become  stuck to the bearing when I added the flywheel (presumably solvent got where it should not have been) - and the simply twisted off and sheered at the bearing as I pressed. The damaged area is visible on the bearing bracket at the rear of the boiler.
     
    I tried to drill out the shaft end to take a short piece of brass handrail wire to pin the flywheel back on - but couldn't drill centrally
     
    The only thing I can now see to do is to melt  a short length of 0.45" brass wire into the end of the shaft from above (i.e. the side) , and drill a hole to take it into the centre of the flywheel. A (very small) drop of superglue would then be used so that the wire would "pin" the flywheel to the shaft.
     
    I suppose I could just glue the flywheel in place and abandon all hope of a working model. But having taken quite a lot of trouble to build the kit with moving parts that actually move I'm very reluctant to do this.
     
    Woe is me! The poor mechanical trilobite has been consigned to the shoe box for some months while I get on with other projects that I haven't broken (yet)
     
     


  22. Ravenser

    Constructional
    I was trying to be systematic and focussed, and work on things in good order, but while I was hunting through boxes looking for bits for the 128 the packet of handrail knobs turned up in my DMU projects box...
     
    As noted in my "programme" posting here, my attempt to press on with the long-stalled ex LNER Toad B (an elderly Parkside kit) stalled when I couldn't find the handrail knobs. Suddenly the brake van was back on the agenda. And as I worked steadily through the things I could see a way to do on the 128, the tasks started to seem more and more demanding, like riding into an ever-stiffening headwind. 
     
    In short there came a point when almost all the obvious things had been done on the 128, and almost all the bits in the bag had been sorted out and applied, and my resolve  fell to critical levels , so that it seemed easiest to pause (the polite term for halt) and to tackle the brake van which ought to be an easier, quicker win
     
    So - the awkward long handrails went in , in an afternoon. I chickened out of attempting an accurate single piece H-shaped handrail - presumably soldered - and the long horizontal handrails are separate from the vertical rails by the door. Feeling emboldened , I was contemplating adding the handrails on the end , when I spotted a problem. When I started the kit, in the reign of George VI [not quite], I got one of the sides upside down . And by the time I added the duckets, somewhat later, there was nothing  much I could do about it. So one ducket is almost 1mm higher than the other. This is not a problem as you don't see both sides of the van, and the discrepancy is slight. But the moment you add end handrails - which must align with the horizontal rails on the side, and with each other- the discrepancy would become horribly obvious.
     
    So I've left them off. Otherwise matters have proceeded as envisaged by Messrs Parkside, the painting has been done, weathering has been carried out, a final varnish coat applied to finish, and the current state of play may be seen here:
     
     

     
    The steam era engineer's train now has a suitable second brake van - the full formation is visible in the short
     
    It was while I was hunting high and low for some lamps for the Toad B (they eventually turned up in a little plastic box hiding in plain site on my workbench) that I found, in tobacco tins buried in an old plywood scrapbox, the mortal remains of two Airfix wagon kits from my childhood. The BR Brake Van is the easier proposition . I painted the parts quite nicely before assembly - I forget what glue I used, but as it was attempting a paint-to-paint bond the whole thing rapidly reduced itself to a kit of parts again, and was shovelled away in the scrapbox.
     
    Unfortunately I really don't have any use for more brake vans. If I did, then I could sort out the poor battered WD road van; and if I needed a BR brake van I have one nicely finished as an air-piped CAR from Ravenser Mk1 which would only need the couplings changed.
     
    Also in the tins were the bits of an even earlier attempt at an Airfix cattle wagon kit. These are not in such a good state as the brake van kit. But when I dug them all out I found that almost all of it is there. I'm missing one end (I've a nasty feeling I threw it away a few years ago as obviously useless) and the doors. Also one buffer beam. And the stations above the sides have taken some damage. But nearly all the necessary bits are there,
     
    I have absolutely no need of a cattle wagon either. But - I was looking through the Cheona book covering brake vans (so as to check painting details for the Toad B) and that volume also covers cattle wagons. At the end is a photo of two BR cattle wagons converted to tunnel inspection vehicles taken at Rotherham in 1989. The roofs have been removed and the vehicles cut down to about 18" above the top of the sides, and a substantial timber platform built on top, carried on heavy longeditudinal timber beams.
     
    That is firmly within my period. And a tunnel inspection vehicle could run perfectly credibly in the 1980s engineering train
     
    The two wagons in the Cheona book are BR built Southern wagons to dias 1/35? and 1/35?  , not the GW-derived BR standard cattle wagon dia 1/353 done by Airfix- which is demonstrably a final version of the GW MEX. I have only managed to find internet pictures for one cattle wagon to tunnel inspection vehicle conversion to show you what I mean - this is a little different as it is based on a dia 1/353 wagon, but the vehicle has not been cut down and the platform is quite thin  DB893928. The photo was taken at Belper in 1980 and the vehicle belonged to the District Civil Engineer at Nottingham, so it's not that far from Blacklade. By 1982 this vehicle had been acquired for preservation and was at Quainton Road
     
    The damage to upper stantions would make this particular conversion difficult from the parts I have. But a similar vehicle cut down by an extra 2 planks and given the much more substantial platform seen on the two vehicles photographed at Rotherham should be doable and ought to be plausible. A hybrid - possibly, but definitely a possible BR conversion . And I rather suspect it will be quite hard to prove it definitively never happened...
     
     
     
     
  23. Ravenser

    Constructional
    I have to confess that I've slipped off the straight and narrow (no, I'm not modelling the Nullarbor Plain as 3'6" gauge...) 
     
    The plan was that I was going to systematically work through the litter of stalled unfinished projects on the bookcase, to clear the decks , clear my head , and achieve a maximum of result for a minimum of effort . No new projects!
     
    However I've come off the wagon, fairly spectacularly..
     
    There were two catalysts. Firstly, there was the ex LNER Toad B which I reported stalled here  as I couldn't find the packet of handrail knobs. As you may have guessed, the packet of handrail knobs duly turned up, so work resumed . Secondly, I dug out the Boxfile to have a running session. And I dug out the second stockbox - and into use went an LMS fish van that fell off at every turn. Closer investigation reminded me that I have two ex LMS fish vans, after I bought a built kit off a second-hand stall under the misapprehension it was a plain ordinary ventilated van. One is - just about - okay: the other isn't . This was the one that isn't....
     

     
    A couple of years ago I had a big push to sort out the problems of reliability on the Boxfile. This brought on the realisation that all was not well with the wagon fleet, and a determined effort to sort it out: Troublesome Trucks  . Unfortunately, like a lot of my determined efforts, this one petered out about 4/5ths of the way through, leaving a substantial improvement in the situation and a pile of unresolved loose ends. Or at least, 6-7  wagons that definitely derail. Worryingly, at least 3 of them are RTR chassis , which really ought to be square.
     
    So another push seemed needed - especially as 3 of them are vans, and I am under quota for vans anyway, whilst being over quota for opens and minerals.
     
    You will now realise that my latest efforts have improved the availability of serviceable opens and minerals...
     
    The ex Hornby Dublo steel High (OHV) had been a nagging failure for a while, and it sat carded in the storage file. Checking the thing revealed that the Parkside chassis was tight and not quite square. Never going to stay on like that.  I've melted in one bearing to create a little slop - an ugly bodge, but it won't be good enough for the file. (I've been here before with a Parkside BR van that ended up redesignated to Blacklade).
     
    In a box in the modelling cupboard amongst other unbuilt kits lurked an old Parkside kit for said wagon. This was the version without the "dimples" in the side for securing. I'd prefer the more characteristic dimpled version, so I was thinking about building this for a friend's EM shunting layout and buying the more recent retooled Parkside kit... Nothing got done .....
     
    Coronavirus simplifies matters - I'm not sure he still has the said EM layout. Besides, there will be no shows until at least next year. The club's 4mm steam project is therefore stalled. And the employment situation prohibits unnecessary spending. 
     
    So I decided simply to build the thing as a straight replacement, and dug out the kit. While I was about it, I also dug out of a box from the depths a Hornby refridgerator van. This was always vaguely planned as a conversion for the boxfile. I'm convinced it is ex NER from the body style, but I have no firm details. Buying an entire volume of the new Tatlow 4-5 parter on LNER wagons for reference for one wagon, when I also have the old one-volume version was never justifiable. (Pt 1 GN/GC/GE was an indulgence. Pts 4a and 4b a necessity)
     
    So - from a livery diagram in the preface to Tatlow Vol 1  I think this Hornby model may be based on NER dia F3, 17' over headstocks / 10' wheelbase, wooden underframe, presumably clasp-braked. No kit exists for a 10'wb /17' long wooden fitted underframe. (Of course not) The Hornby body seems to be 67mm long - 1mm short (unless I am measuring over angle irons and it's 2mm short.) . I intend to live with this slight discrepancy. A scratchbuilt underframe will be needed - I have plenty of etched W irons in stock. Since the axles are displaced well to the ends, I intend to "adjust" by reducing the wheelbase to 9'9" to compensate and maintain proportions - it's only a matter of where I set the W-irons on what I believe to be a clasp-braked vehicle. 
     
    A packet of ex MR buffers from ABS had been bought years ago as the nearest available match for NER buffers. These will be set on spare Cambrian buffer beams surplus from a mineral wagon kit - which neatly provides the round base. After more hunting through boxes, I found the Mainly Trains etch of wagon strapping where it should have been - so I have crown plates and other garnishings for the solebars
     
    The wagon has been stripped of old paint and a coat of primer and a first coat of white applied
     
    And the remaining MR buffers  have a use too....
     

     
    Many years ago, in my early teens, I bought a Slaters rectangular tank wagon kit and built it. (Not particularly well, obviously.) It ended up painted in a fetching cream lined grey along the edges (not especially accurately) and the battered thing has been lurking in the depths of a box for several decades as not bad enough to chuck.
     
    So I dug that out as well, and stripped off the paint at the same time. 
     
    One solebar broke loose under gentle pressure - the other didn't, but that was enough to rebuild it square. The buffer beams were removed , cleaned up and replacement whitemetal MR buffers fitted, as 3 of the originals had broken away. The whole thing was reassembled, a missing brakelever replaced with something of an old sprue , and another one patched up. A missing V hanger was reinstated (another bit from the boxes of accumulated spare bits from kits  ). As much lead sheet as I could was jammed in underneath - I reckon it's at least 40g which I hope it just enough, though ideally I aim for 50g . Cross-shafts were installed from plastic rod, brass bearings and a pair of split-spoke wheels  fitted from another box and we have this:
     

     
    Transfers are bits and scraps from various sources including the sheet numbers on Modelmaster transfer packs. I'm not sure a wagon with only two brake blocks should carry a fast traffic star but some things that shouldn't really did, and tank wagons could be rather archaic in the 1950s. The fetching weathered effect is where one transfer started to break up under the weathering wash... A little further weathering of the chassis , then a coat of matt varnish, is still required.
     
    Prototype reference is here RMWeb thread and here: Paul Bartlett - Croda Rotherham, 1984   I will repeat my astonishment that such archaic vehicles survived so late, when I was discovering blue 31s on Transpennine South loco-hauleds and approximately the date of Blacklade's "blue period".  Just to ram it home - this wagon kit was originally built 6 or 7 years before the prototypes were photographed at Rotherham. Nobody mentioned I was getting a contemporary wagon kit....
     
    The OHV is a reasonably straightforward kit build, complicated only by my possession of a copy of Geoff Kent's "4mm Wagon". This means that I've done most of his upgrades - whitemetal buffers, profiled brake levers, better whitemetal brake cylinder - and whitemetal clasp brake shoes, though that was much more about trying to build in as much weight as I could. I also made the effort to suggest the drop doors from the inside as the interior is very visible, and the Cheona LNER Wagon book includes shots of the interior of a wagon preserved at  Quorn on the GCR. The door area is cross-scribed with a scrawker to represent the chequerplate, and fine microstrip added on both edges then sanded down
     
     

     
    And painting has reached the point where we now have:
     
    The number is reasonably accurate for the contractor-built fitted wagons with smooth sides and steel doors. Again the underframe needs more weathering washes and the whole thing a coat of matt varnish
     
    I still have to reletter the original OHV that started all this off, and which seems to behave itself on Blacklade, and to sort out the couplings  all round. And the LNER brake van has been given a trial trip out in traffic - though it too needs an underframe wash and some matt varnish to seal the transfers
     
     

  24. Ravenser
    We left the NBL 21 as a nearly finished bodyshell, here . The sticking point was the need to produce flush glazing for those large curved cab windows by hand.
     
    Finishing the loco was my first big lockdown project and turned into a bit of a fight.
     
    It wasn't really the glazing - like quite a few frightening jobs that didn't prove as bad as I feared. I had used the Shawplan window etches as a template for the shape, traced onto an old business card. (Before I glued the etches onto the model, obviously).  I did this 3 times, to give me spares in case one window went wrong. These templates were cut out and fixed to clear plasticard, then I cut round . (I'm trying to remember whether they were held to the glazing with Pritt-stick or judiciously placed sticky tape. I think I may have done both). They were then filed until they went into the aperture and fixed in place with Rocket Glue and Glaze, which took care of any slight gaps between glazing and frame . Yes, ideally the fit would be good , but it looks perfectly ok at any normal viewing distance and in photos. The front quarterlight was also filed to fit - the rest of the glazing is SE Finecast
     
    Next for the chassis. I had sourced a Class 29 chassis frame and two Class 29 trailing bogies from Peter's Spares. I bought a Hornby Class 25 in blue as mint second-hand at Warley last year for about £50, and I robbed the 5 pole motor bogie out of that. (Before you suspect me of terminal cruelty to Rats, I then bought a Bachmann 25 with damaged handrails at Peterborough for £75, and the medium term intention is to combine the Hornby body with the Bachmann body to produce a super-douper blue Rat at a modest price. Ah, the days when we had shows, and could pile up more and more future projects that we never got round to doing...)
     
    Hornby Ringfield motor bogies were standard items across the range, so it snapped into one of the Class 29 bogie frames. The other bogie was rewheeled with Hornby disc coach wheels. This means a finer wheel profile with shallower flanges that don't catch and lift on stray bits of ballast on my SMP code 70 bullhead track, and has proved effective in preventing stalling on my Baby Deltic. Since there are traction tyres on the motor bogie the resulting chassis picks up on 6 wheels plus 2 crossed fingers. A spare Hornby weight - surplus from the Pacer I started long ago - was slotted into place. Those, too, were standard items at Margate.
     
    I fitted Kadees - long underset , from memory - to the bogies. The Hornby coupling is cut away, a plate of 40 thou plasticard glued underneath to bridge the gap, and then the draft box glued on top of this with solvent, microstrip packing round the sides if possible, and with a Kadee nylon screw  inserted from below for added retention. I think I may have added a spot of UHU on the top to stop it working loose.
     
    While I was about it, I did the same to my old Hornby 29 which was detailed up years ago it a desperate attempt to find a main line diesel that would run reliably on Ravenser Mk1. This loco needs converting to DCC and my first attempt about 18 months ago  failed ignominously, trashing a decoder. A complete rewire is needed: when it was first detailed I fitted Ultrascale wheels and all-wheel pickup, and something is evidently not right somewhere. This loco needs a damaged radiator grill replacing and I will probably have a go at reworking the cab front windows as well. The substantial difference in appearance this makes will be obvious from the photo below, and I have a second Shawplan etch in stock. While D6119 has a 3 pole motor and will never run quite as smoothly, this would at least get it into some kind of use. The "rationale" would be that the loco was appropriated by RTC for test train use after withdrawal in 1971, replacing the Baby Deltic.... 
     
    A TCS T1 decoder from stock was fitted , programmed much in line with the Baby Deltic and test running began.
     
    There were problems. (Entirely prototypically, I might add..)  It kept stalling. A prod was required to get it moving. I added more weight , because the thing seemed to be slipping. I played about with settings, but still it kept sticking in places. Sometimes it would run fine . Then it would start to stall and spin.
     
    After several days of frustration, tweaks and weight adjustments, the penny suddenly dropped. The wheels on the motor bogie had been eased out to 14.5mm back to back. This adjustment meant that sometimes the final drive gears to one axle would slip out of mesh. Hence the slipping and stalling. Nudge the loco and they meshed again. 
     
     The back to back was closed up fractionally (it's now about 14.2-14.3mm)  and all was well. Previous CV values were reverted to in the matter of start and mid volts. And now it runs as well as can possibly be expected from a 5 pole ringfield with traction tyres on one side. There are pickups to those wheels, but I doubt if electrical pickup is more than erratic. So we have 6 wheel + 2 pick up, rather than proper 8 wheel collection
     
     

     
    The underframe was then weathered, with washes of Railmatch Frame Dirt and Brake Dust, and some AK Light Dust Deposit on the centre tanks. And I wasn't happy. The problem can be seen by comparing the top and bottom photos - the bogies were just too bright orange. A further wash of AK Shaft and Bearing Grease over the lot knocked it back to something acceptable , though I left the sandboxes  as colour  photos show these as something of a tonal highlight. The second photo shows D6103 after the extra weathering wash.
     
     

     
    The loco is seen  departing Blacklade with the steam-age engineer's train, my recently completed Toad B leading, and the engineers'  ex GW 4 wheeler (Ratio) just behind . Set 4  (Hachette Mk1 + Hornby Gresley BCK) lurks in the background . I need to weather that BCK at some point. D6103 is evidently working test trains so the engineers at Derby (or should that be Toton?) can work out what the heck is wrong with these things.
     
    This one fought me all the way, but I now have another small short Type 2 that is pretty well bang in period for the Kettle Period. This final write-up has been part finished and outstanding for an indecently long time (D6103 has been in traffic since August) , but we are done. Sorting out the 29  is still outstanding......
  25. Ravenser
    I know I promised a report on the final stages of the reworked NBL Type 2 , but a start has been made on the long- stalled Class 128 parcels unit , and it's getting a little frustrating...
     
    This posting has been sitting in draft for four years with the optimistic stub "Progress on the 128 has been slow, but like BR we're getting there" Very slow indeed... . However on closer inspection I find I am in no sense entering into the home straight with this one
     
    The project ground to a halt when I found that part of the bogie support at one end of the Replica chassis had sheered, and could not be stuck back together. This left one end of the chassis sitting lop-sided. I eventually found out that Replica could supply a replacement, I took it to Peterborough show the following year and they fitted the part .. and other things were higher priority and got in the way.
     
    Having finally got round to the 128  as a result of lockdown I started by trying to fix the mistakes that had begun to nag at me while the bodyshell sat gathering dust on the bookshelf. The lights didn't look right. I removed the whitemetal castings and found they'd been glued the wrong side round. They now look a good deal better, though not perfect. At the left hand end the cab handrail should be inboard of the door. With some trepidation I clipped out my first attempt at a handrail here and put in a new one in the correct place.
     
    There is a problem with door furniture. Two styles were fitted, one to the WR vehicles (of which my model will be one, as inherited by the LMR and modified without gangways) and one to the vehicles originally built for the LMR
     
    A good shot of the WR vehicles is here - M55993 - ex WR and an official photo of one of the LMR units adorns the relevant Railcar.co.uk page Railcar.co.uk - Class 128 page
     
    M55993 is going to be my "target unit" for this model:- the door furniture is visible if you blow up the photo - and I have absolutely no idea how to do the two small handrails either side of the handle , bearing in mind there would be 6 per side and they need to be exactly the same and in exactly the same places . The DC Kits instructions seem to indicate that there are two etched door handles to be applied , one on each door, and no handrails. That is definitely wrong for all units..
     
    After several attempts I eventually got suitable door handles for the three parcels in place, using bits off an NNK/Phoenix etch for Bulleid coaches. As a fudge I've done a rendering of the LMR style handrail , using an etched grab rail from the fret. It is at least regular and neat and more or less the right side, though I had to clip out the first attempts and reposition when I found a good photo.
     
    I also added the vertical handrails beside the windows on the cab front.
     
    This brings me neatly to my big grumble and issue. What I bought from DC Kits was a package deal of 128 body and Replica chassis. The kit instructions are a little sparse and broad-brush. There were a couple of etches of detailing parts. Since what I'm trying to do deviates significantly from the original kit with floorpan and underframe the instructions are not always relevant anyway. There are some sketches but they are not always relevant either. And I'm finding that in a number of areas the parts needed are not included and there are parts included that may not be relevant.
     
    To be more specific - there are no bogie parts included . Since the Replica chassis requires bogie sideframes, I'm on my own. I've managed to find an unbuilt Kitmaster Mk1 coach kit in the cupboard with plastic sideframes that can be adapted to give a decent representation (I would use MJT bogies if actually building the coach , so the mouldings are spare)
     
    There were two fold up etched strips for the underframe equipment, but these were designed for the DC Kits floorpan moulding and the folds weren't in the right place to suit the Replica chassis. And after looking at it for several months I was certain that a fold up etched box with no detail on the face simply wouldn't convince . There are two plastic mouldings representing battery boxes in the bag of bits , so I've hacked away the etched box on each side and made good before fixing the plastic mouldings in place with superglue. But they are hollow, so I'll need to make a back from plasticard… The instructions refer to castings for engines, and two types of airtanks . No such castings are in the box. What lumps I have on the underframe look uncomfortably sparse (and thin) - certainly compared with photos. Golding's book of DMU drawings only shows one side of a 128 , so I'm left to guess if the other is the same , mirrored , or significantly different. The sketch in the kit instructions , and the two identical etched strips imply the two sides are the same but I'm not sure I trust that.
     
    Plastic buffer beams are provided as are etched brass detailing overlays. As I can't see anything on the etched brass overlays that isn't on the mouldings , I've just used the plastic moulded buffer beams. Plastic buffers are supplied but they are round , and by the 1980s M55993 had oval buffers . I found some MJT 1'8" Oleo buffers in the bits box and have substituted those. I butchered the etched brass coupling hooks to get them in, and left off the etched shackles as they would foul the Kadees (There's no diagram to show what the components on the etch actually are)
     
    And I'd already replaced the roof vents with MJT cast torpedo vents
     
    In short this is looking less and less like a 128 kit, and more and more like a scratch-aid for a 128 requiring the builder to conjour up much of the build from his own resources
     
    Progress to date is shown here. I can get a long way towards finishing this, but there are some parts of the underframe equipment where I am afraid I may find myself stumped.

     
     
    And I'm starting to wonder if I was a mug trying to build my own and I should just have paid £50 for a Heljan model out of the Bargains page of a boxshifter… Because I cannot finish this to the accuracy of the Heljan model.
     
     
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