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Hatfield : Part the Second


Kallaroonian
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Work inches forward.

 

Including the measures to protect electronics from atmosphere : -)  - am nearish the coast - and the evil long ladder of multiple slips on the North end of the station

 

There's a prize (of kudos) for the person who guesses what the kitchen skewers are for

 

 

 

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  • 4 months later...

Last year the goal was to get a train running on one track in a full "circle" by Christmas

 

Mission failed.

 

Partly due to Real Life but also as a significant result of the upper boards warping. You may recall the lower boards are 50mm or 100mm extruded polystyrene and that's really never going anywhere.

 

The upper level boards that traverse over most of the storage area need to be much thinner and are marine ply reinforced with aluminium channel. The channel is there to provide some rigidity but it was a big mistake to believe that I could glue aluminium channel to wood.

 

The channel - esp Alu - changes shape with heat and the wood changes shape with moisture. I'm in Perth Western Australia and it was 37C today. Much more in the loft space. I have had to spend a long time removing the channel (the only upside is that the Gorilla glue was also quite useless) and re-affixing with screws that should provide clamp but give.

 

Below are various pics showing :

- warped boards

- repaired boards

- new blanking plate file I'm using to cover point wiring (print on printer, cut out marked holes, spray with primer for some rigidity)

- upper level in position and track located - Hatfield station exit to left hand side and notional Welwyn shunt location and 6 track to 2 track narrowing ahead of viaduct to the right hand side

 

Trains now run though the station, its southern approach and the storage yards; also the viaduct albeit not continuously with the rest.  Just the upper loop between the north of the station and the viaduct approach and a train can run the whole way round

 

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  • 10 months later...

Some more progress in the last year... ahem. It's slow, I don't know if this will ever get completed but........

 

.... on the plus side I did finally run a train in a complete loop last July or something. Other than that the following photos tell the story

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Is this starting to look about right?

 

Bearing in mind I'm going for highly reminiscent rather than rivet accurate.  I daresay its not long enough. And the number of vertical panes is too low, 3 instead of 4.  But it's going to fit the bill when it's done. 

 

It's two Knightwing kits bashed together plus scratchbuilt parts, not least the custom roof that will have York Modelmaking slate tiles in the very near future 

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I have only just found this thread but am impressed with the layout to date and interested to see how it develops.  I worked at the north end of the airfield in the early 70's and, more recently, in Hertford.

 

If you are still interested in published material, I can recommend "Great Northern Branches Hatfield to Hertford" by Peter Paye, published by the Lightmoor Press, ISBN 9781 911038 89 4.

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  • RMweb Gold
1 hour ago, Kallaroonian said:

Just in case it helps someone, my secret weapon for getting the ladders, and track in general, straight.

 

Plus also a one metre stainless rule to push up against the sides of the flexi track to take out any kinks.

Can you give details of the toy?

Mind you, what I really want is one that will project a curve at a selected radius.  Pigs, fly, etc.

Paul.

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It seems it didn't include the two photos in the previous post, turning it into gibberish. 

 

So there are actually three secret weapons. The laser, the metre rule and two adjustable parallel track spacers like this :

 

https://www.conrad.com/p/proses-ppt-h0-01-h0-parallels-1233492?WT.srch=1&vat=true&utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=shopping

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

And I finally renovated the hand built curved platforms.

 

I say renovate because the paper top surfaces suffered in the damp or the heat of the loft space. Most of the surfaces have now been replaced with hand-skimmed fine interior filler which looks much better. A technique I seem to recall I used as a teen and which I think will still stand the test of time now.

 

Other than that I am lucky that the Hatfield platforms I have seen in photos looked awful. Rough here, paint dripped there etc etc. Which goes a long way to not having to take quite as much care with the edge lining or finish in general, thankfully. Which is good as one of them is about 6ft long. Any loose brick papers are re-glued and the other lesson learned is to varnish the whole thing before returning in situ

 

You will see the section in front of the yet to be built station building has no top but notwithstanding that the staggered nature of the whole location is evident.

 

So much to do.....

 

The worst current issue is that the plan to avoid track cleaning by coating track with a graphite pencil basically doesn't work. This is a huge issue. I am now experimenting with the always planned never executed cloth covers because my suspicion is the track is protected by the graphite layer but the whole ploy goes South due to airborne dirt accumulating on top of the graphite over time.

 

I hope that is the reason because otherwise the whole thing is a bit stuffed. The other plan is to build a battery powered  cleaning train that hauls wagons with spring loaded graphite pencil cleaning tubes !  I'm hoping it doesn't come to that

 

cheers

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Edited by Kallaroonian
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