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RLS may soon gain some room in which to take form.  13' x 9', or thereabouts.  Now I think that what I want should fit in that space and, if it doesn't, well I'll just have to make some decisions about which bits of the grand plan I'm happy to dispose of, won't I? 

 

More of this anon over the next few months I'm sure.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Things are moving forward with the house but I'm anticipating it will be a few months at least before I move in, if all goes well.  Then there's the small matter of wanting to take it back internally to something approaching original appearance, which no doubt will be a long term project.  RLS will probably become the long term project that gets looked at between bouts of work on the other long term project... to be expected when you buy an Edwardian house really, it goes with the territory.

 

Meanwhile though I've started serious design work and bought a paper download kit for a stable block to pair up with the goods yard offices I built a year or so back.  The plan for that, much like the station buildings for Cremorne & Pittance, is to use it as a template for practically a scratchbuild in plastic. 

 

Serious design work I hear you cry- when I have a track plan already?  Well, you see, the station plan I have is pretty much just Phase One.  Also, I'm not particularly happy with the goods yard arrangement and- a lot of planning thus far has been of the 'if I had some space' sort.  Now that (fingers crossed) I have the space, and I know how much of it I have (13' by 9', or thereabouts), I can start seeing what will fit.  I'm reading a lot of Iain Rice books at the moment, specifically how to avoid a rectangular room leading to a rectangular layout.  Initial thoughts are to create almost a triangle with a curved 'bottom'.  One straight (actually a long gentle curve) will conclude with Red Lion Square station.  That will lead into approximately a 4'-radius curve across the 9' wall on the inside of which will be built a small running shed. The main lines at this point might actually be hidden behind a backscene, so splitting the layout into a couple of vignettes.  Once past that and on the other 13' wall the main lines would be back in the open and run through open country side and C&P station before entering a fiddle yard of some description, but not before passing an interchange siding with a narrow gauge network serving a waterworks.  You might see here that I've basically taken bits from several Iain Rice plans I like the look of and am trying to hammer them into one design.  We'll see how that turns out. Four walls, four vignettes then- a busy town terminus, a small mpd, a bit of a run through open countryside and a neat relatively bucolic bit of industry.     

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  • 3 weeks later...

More bits and pieces arrive. 

 

A goods yard office came with the January Railway Modeller (Why oh why do kit manufacturers refuse to get the brick bond right?  It's almost as inexcusable as slapping some green paint on a parallel boilered 4-4-2 and calling it Flying Scotsman), and I wonder what I might do with it, short of chucking the walls in the bin and starting over with some brick sheet.  

 

Then a Wills signal box kit happened.  This will be for the continued development of Cremorne & Pittance once it has been melded into the general Rufford scheme.  I have, somewhere, a recent article in which this kit is converted into a Great Central box.  I know it was in Railway Modeller and I'm sure it was sometime in the last year to eighteen months.  In fact, the signal box and the little yard office might make a nice pairing, if I take the view that although C&P has no goods yard it has a transfer siding for the waterworks narrow gauge system. 

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On 24/12/2018 at 14:28, James Harrison said:

So; what do I see in the coming year for RLS?

 

An immediate objective is full-scale planning for Red Lion Square station. Having left it alone for several months, I'm still sweet on my Douglas-inspired sketch from the Summer:

 

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/840/42338053015_dfacca4a00_b.jpg

 

Which actually I think as well has a bit of a hint of Leicester Central about it which I find quite pleasing.

 

Then there's the Square itself, in addition to the first building I drew up I've bought a few kits; the low-relief terrace from Petite Properties and one of the old Victorian semi-detached kits from Hornby, which will provide a decent start to the street running down the back of the layout. Much of the Square 'proper' will be scratchbuilt and I'm slowly gathering photographs of buildings and street layouts that I think will fit; one that I would like to use as inspiration is the Gilstrap Centre in Newark. One of the major elements of the Square is the tramway and I'm quite pleased with how that has developed this year, the traction poles being the one element that was holding planning up and of course I have those now... expect in 2019 to see some serious town planning going on.

 

As it usually is, materials, inspiration and research is turning up faster than it can be applied...

 

Oh, and for making a start on RLS proper? That still waits on finding a home for it, which in turn waits on something else- and that something else, well, time will tell shortly.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

So that was the plan for 2019 and- it didn't quite all work out. 

 

Cremorne for Pittance was completed and that suggests I should be able to build to the level of detail and standards I have in my head.  I learnt a lot from building it- not least of which, plan plan plan and think about the stages ahead!  A lot of what I struggled with could have been avoided entirely with a bit of forethought.

 

Red Lion Square station went through a few iterations and then took an unexpected turn with the purchase of a Walthers kit.  Which is currently sitting in its box waiting for me to get around to deciding how much of it I want to change and what I want it to ultimately look like, which in turn is waiting on actually having somewhere to build Rufford and knowing what sort of space I have to play with. 

 

On which score, I've found (and am buying) a house, which will give me the space I want but will also eat my time.  Time has also been at a premium this year as a new job means a longer commute and longer hours.  What I'm gaining in one respect I'm losing in others, as the house itself is also going to be a project.  To be realistic; I'll have the space for RLS but I doubt this coming year will see much progress as both time and money will be lacking. 

 

Small bitesize chunks are probably the way forward, and this year I've managed to get five goods locos to an acceptable standard.  This still leaves.... many, many engines to address.  Coaching stock has progressed well and freight has come on in leaps and bounds but there's always, always more that can be done and more to do. 

 

Some buildings have been bought, however the plan has always been for less of a shop-bought built environment and more of a bespoke appearance.  The payoff is that scratchbuilt structures take so much longer!

 

So a bit of a curate's egg prognosis; good in parts.

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Santa brought a few remarkably relevant presents last night; so relevant you might almost think I'd bought them myself.  A copy of Robert Western's "The Mansfield Railway" published by The OakWood Press and an Isinglass kit for a GCR covered carriage truck.  

 

I wonder what the next year will bring and what next Christmas will be like.   

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  • 2 weeks later...

I had a horrible nightmare that Hornby took it upon themselves to throw lumps of scrap iron at some of their more life-expired moulds and market the ensuing mess as a sap to a subculture I've been a proud member of for the last fifteen years.  Then I pinched myself and realised this is no nightmare, they really have gone and bl**dy done it.  Perhaps they missed the memo that if you draw a Venn diagram of "people who like steampunk" and "people who like model railways", the vast majority likely fall into the pre-grouping category....

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It is pure craziness.  I used to be a Victorian Sci-Fi and Steampunk wargamer  and what Hornby is offering is daft tawdry rubbish if you just look at it from a pure steampunk viewpoint.  But by associating the mess with Bassett Lowke they have really taken it too far.  Whoever dreamed that up needs to be tied down and and have all those stupid brass watch gears superglued over every inch of their body to teach them to never do it again.

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2 hours ago, James Harrison said:

Perhaps they missed the memo that if you draw a Venn diagram of "people who like steampunk" and "people who like model railways", the vast majority likely fall into the pre-grouping category....

Or that the intersection is made up of people with tasteful discernment who won’t be fobbed off with cheap and nasty toys.

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Yet further proof that the world would be a better place if the members of RMWeb's pre-Grouping cadre were consulted more often!

 

I have never done anything in the steampunk line, but I've always admired it and think it's stylish and fun, so I agree with everything said above. 

 

Happy New Year and good luck with the house, James

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I've picked up the 2-4-2 tank again and started lining out. I then found that the original brass chassis is a bit skewiff, so I dug out a Smokey Joe chassis with a view to simply swapping the wheels over... nope! A few hours and a lot of hacking later, the chassis fits but the wheels are putting up a fight. So I did something I try to avoid- checkbook modelling. Ebay, and two Bachmann Lanky tanks later (I have both the current project and a Cotswold or Sutherland F2 kit to look at)... so now at least I will have a chassis that isn't an example of Frankensteinism. If the chassis can't be made to easily fit, I'll convert the Lanky tank to its GC counterpart. 

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23 hours ago, James Harrison said:

I've picked up the 2-4-2 tank again and started lining out. I then found that the original brass chassis is a bit skewiff, so I dug out a Smokey Joe chassis with a view to simply swapping the wheels over... nope! A few hours and a lot of hacking later, the chassis fits but the wheels are putting up a fight. So I did something I try to avoid- checkbook modelling. Ebay, and two Bachmann Lanky tanks later (I have both the current project and a Cotswold or Sutherland F2 kit to look at)... so now at least I will have a chassis that isn't an example of Frankensteinism. If the chassis can't be made to easily fit, I'll convert the Lanky tank to its GC counterpart. 

It will certainly get a good runner. Could the original chassis be taken back to components and then re soldered in a jig and the bearings reamed out to the necessary amount? At this point it is a free try, and might give you the ability to pass on one of the lanky tanks. I too have looked at using one as a basis of an F2 

richard

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20 minutes ago, richard i said:

It will certainly get a good runner. Could the original chassis be taken back to components and then re soldered in a jig and the bearings reamed out to the necessary amount? At this point it is a free try, and might give you the ability to pass on one of the lanky tanks. I too have looked at using one as a basis of an F2 

richard

 

When it comes to chassis I'm afraid I'm confident enough to swap wheels over, but going any further is currently... beyond my ken.  Not to say I'll never get there, but not at the moment. 

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A little bit of investigation on the Lanky tanks.  The good news is, I *think* the chassis can be squeezed under the scratchbuilt body.  The bad news is, more would have to come off the bottom of the body work, right out to the edges- particularly in the bunker.  I have my doubts the body could survive that sort of surgery... but we'll see.  Now for the other example, I was planning to put it under a Cotswold whitemetal kit, but again 'I have my doubts' that the chassis will actually fit.  So what I'm considering instead is converting the Lanky tank into its GCR cousin, specifically GCR class 3 (LNER F1) #589.  Which kept a round topped boiler until 1929 (saves me a job!).   

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Fingers crossed, in two to three weeks the house purchase will have been finalised and then I can look at more important things, by which of course I mean a cutting the first sod ceremony for RLS. 

 

Meanwhile- the saga of the 2-4-2s continues.  As suspected, the scratchbuilt body is proving increasingly frail.  Meanwhile the whitemetal kit looks like surgery to fit it to a Bachmann chassis is less involved than initially thought, so I'll be looking at that further this weekend. 

 

I'm also drawing up a list of locos that require further attention, much of my stud being in various states of repair.  Some of them are mechanically fine but need a repaint, some of them are fine appearance wise but require mechanical attention, and some of them fall down on both points. 

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I got a bit of my enthusiasm back today and had a look at the Sutherland Models whitemetal kit for a GCR class 3 (LNER F1). 

 

49440096582_b803e03722_c.jpg

 

With a bit of careful measuring and cutting the running plate marries up to the Bachmann Lanky tank chassis.  I think you can even get one of the body-fixing screws on the LYR tank matching up with the kit. 

 

49440096667_08265c356b_c.jpg

 

A few fixing lugs on the tank sides had to be cut away, and the rear spectacle plate cut down, and the bunker profile/ bottom can't be fitted, but little by little it builds up neatly. 

 

49439870236_f1ab7328b1_c.jpg

 

The boiler top fitted well, the boiler bottom had to have most of it's length (the length hidden in the tank, that is) cut away to clear the motor. 

 

49439397488_1d949f1b3e_c.jpg

 

After a few hours' worth of patient work, I'd got the basics of the loco erected. 

 

49440096547_231ff14111_c.jpg

Edited by James Harrison
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Today's work:  the smokebox wouldn't mate properly to the boiler barrel, I guess the flange on the boiler was too thick.  Off came the boiler, out came the files, smoothed the edge down and now it fits just nicely.  Then out with the Dremel and a 1mm drill bit, drilling holes for the handrail knobs.  I'm using split pins for these- there are two of them on each side of the boiler and a fifth top centre on the smokebox.  This of course means that the handrail itself is in one piece and curves in the middle.  I've always struggled with forming these!  So I'm going to try something different.  I'm going to get some thread, coat it in PVA and leave it to dry.  I'm hoping this firm it up enough to take a straight line whilst leaving it supple enough to take a curve.  Then when it is in situ I'l coat it with PVA again to lock it in place. 

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For those type of handrails draw the shape you want at the front end on paper. Bend rail around tubes to get the right shape and then fold back the parts that run down the sides of the loco. Make sure the smoke box handrail knob is threaded before you do the back bend. 

 

Richard 

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That's pretty much the method I usually employ; but it usually takes about 4 attempts, wastes a good deal of wire and ends with tried patience, a poor temper and goodly use of Anglo Saxon.  I'm trying stiffened cotton as an experiment; fantastic if it works, if it doesn't I've lost about 10" of Mother's cotton thread.

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