Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

New arrival at Edwardian Towers today, and it only took nine years from its announcement!  At least it means the financial pain has long since faded from memory.

 

 

Ran very sweetly straight out of the box.

 

 

Edwardian innovation, the Class O steam railmotor of 1906, it makes a useful addition to the 'modern traction' department:

 

 

Though, at 70' it's very much the big brother.

 

 

There are some minor inaccuracies, but I think this is probably likely to be the most accurate of the pre-Grouping liveried versions offered by Kernow. The strange GWR monogram - the 'prize monogram' - was the winning entry to a design competion. It was applied new to the first Class Os in 1906, but did not last long and was soon replaced with the Garter on carriage stock, as seen on the carriages below. 

 

 

The very much overscale lamps are a bit of a pain, but here accuracy was sacrificed for gimmickry; they work. 

 

The lamps are fixed at both ends and show white for the leading end and red for the trailing end, which means the colour of the lamps changes with the direction the model is running.

 

As you all know, electricity is like unto magic for me, so this just puts me in mind of the themos flask; it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, but how does it know?!? 

 

 

 

Edited February 1 by Edwardian
Further thoughts

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

..... .it puts me in mind of the themos flask; it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, but how does it know?!? 

It doesn't need to know. Heat it is not readily transferred through a vacuum, therefore a hot liquid inside does not lose heat to the outside and a cold liquid inside does not gain heat from the outside.

 

Seemples Igor! 😁 

 

Jim 

[Deeps]

6 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

It doesn't need to know. Heat it is not readily transferred through a vacuum, therefore a hot liquid inside does not lose heat to the outside and a cold liquid inside does not gain heat from the outside.

Yes, but how does the vacuum know?

[monkeysarefun]

4 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

That must make me the dishonourable member from Sydney...

 

Only if you go the Sea Eagles.

 

 Or  Broncos. 

 

 Or probably Melbourne  Storm. 

[Nearholmer]

In Edwardian times, it would have been possible to control your train lights using devices that incorporated both confusing phenomena, a vacuum, and electricity.

 

This decidedly H G Wells little chap is one of the first thermionic diodes (or diadems, as autocorrect keeps trying to say), made in 1889.

 

 

 

Edited February 1 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

45 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

It doesn't need to know. Heat it is not readily transferred through a vacuum, therefore a hot liquid inside does not lose heat to the outside and a cold liquid inside does not gain heat from the outside.

 

Seemples Igor! 😁 

 

Jim 

 

Oh, you've spoilt it for me now!

[Caley Jim]

13 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Oh, you've spoilt it for me now!

There doesn't seem to be a 'sorry about that' button. 'friendly/supportive' seemed to be the best alternative! 

 

Jim 

[Edwardian]

Now for something completely different...

 

From time to time I yearn for something simple and old school. Today I came across Briargate

 

It's a 3mm layout set firmly in Bilteezi Land, which alone is enough to commend it to me. Of course, the Bilteezi sheets are available in 4mm, so Briargate, given a board  not much longer than the traditional 6' x 4' it could easily be reralised in OO gauge. 

 

[Nearholmer]

If you do get tempted into retro-modeling in 00, for goodness sake include a circuit, because as I discovered when I dabbled in building a 1963 BLT, something has happened to the running quality of those old trains. Or, more likely, something has happened to expectations in the intervening sixty years. Whichever it is, they certainly aren’t as good at very slow running and shunting as they seemed back in the day. Bilteezi artwork stands up to the test of time though, very definitely.

[St Enodoc]

9 hours ago, Edwardian said:

The very much overscale lamps are a bit of a pain, but here accuracy was sacrificed for gimmickry; they work. 

As I've said elsewhere, I find the gimmickry of the overscale and misshapen lamps very disappointing when the rest of the model is so fine,

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

You are doing nothing here to help James overcome his fear of electrickery!

 

Myself, I think I'll have nightmares. It's not so much the three legs and two arms as what looks like a pair of pliers that it's carrying in its forward protrusion...

[Edwardian]

53 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

You are doing nothing here to help James overcome his fear of electrickery!

 

Myself, I think I'll have nightmares. It's not so much the three legs and two arms as what looks like a pair of pliers that it's carrying in its forward protrusion...

 

Yes, that is an Engine of Doom by anyone's standards.

 

Meanwhile... 

 

Status update. The last few months have been taken up with clearing out my parents' house. They are beyond independent living, you see.

 

This has been both time consuming and draining in every possible way. Finally, with everything packed, the pantechicon booked, and exchange and completion just days away, a pipe burst, the house flooded and the ceilings fell in. This was not ideal.

 

In the meantime, the shed intended for Castle Aching - the roof of which now leaks in several places - is crammed both with my kit and the contents of my parents' house, with the overspill filling our reception rooms. 

 

So, bear with.

 

Anyway, once the tide of life's flotsum and jettsom has receded from my living quarters, I think I might be able to shoe horn the test track into the little room off the sitting room. This could then be be finished, fulfilling its purpose of scenic test track and photo plank in both OO and OO9. We'll see. 

 

As electrickery is the stuff of nightmares, I might at that point have to submit the track plan and request a wiring diagram!

 

 

Edited February 1 by Edwardian
spelling

[Nearholmer]

Clockwork anyone?

 

On the parental downsizing, you have my empathy. One of my bros and I spent a lot of time, on and off, last year, 

helping/supporting/guiding/facilitating our mother from her house to a “supported independent living” flat at the seaside near my bro, because she’d come to the decision that the house and garden were getting too much for her, which was also clear to the rest of us. Physical hard work, and emotional hard work too, because the house had been in the family since the 1930s, so was stacked to the rafters with memories (as well as my late father’s books and papers!).

[uax6]

Funny you mention leaking roofs, I spent yesterday patching a leaking roof on my garage, pending a full replacement in warmer (drier?) weather later in the year. I discovered that roofing felt can be staple-gunned into position on to OSB (which is the under roof of my garage). I'm interested to see how long it will last like that though!

 

I do suggest getting up there and getting the roof repaired as soon as possible, as the under roof will rot quite quickly.

 

Andy G

[John B]

15 hours ago, uax6 said:

Funny you mention leaking roofs, I spent yesterday patching a leaking roof on my garage, pending a full replacement in warmer (drier?) weather later in the year. I discovered that roofing felt can be staple-gunned into position on to OSB (which is the under roof of my garage). I'm interested to see how long it will last like that though!

 

I do suggest getting up there and getting the roof repaired as soon as possible, as the under roof will rot quite quickly.

 

Andy G

 

From experience, I can affirm that whilst roofing felt can be stapled (or nailed) to OSB, water will find it's way in fairly rapidly....

Since a "proper roofer" redid my sheds with heat-sealed asphalted felt, even the windiest and wettest westerlies have been repelled.

[phil_sutters]

My son and I reroofed our summer house roof, a couple of summers ago. Having previously done it just with roofing nails, the large headed stubby type, and a thin strip of black mastic gunge, which failed dramatically in high coastal winds. We recovered it with roofing felt, staple-gunned at the top of each strip and under the eaves at the bottom of the lowest run. Then we applied a good four inches wide strip of black mastic about an inch in from the bottom of the next strip, allowing an overlap of about five of six inches. This has held well throughout the subsequent winter weather.

[Nearholmer]

When the ‘felt’ on our shed roof was beginning  to “go”, I went straight over the top of it with Onduline sheeting, which is a rigid bitumen sheet that looks like corrugated iron. So far (c5 years), so good, with it not showing the slightest sign of deterioration, and I have high hopes that it will last longer than ‘felt’, which began to noticeably deteriorate after c10 years. I found it easier to install than felt too, less faffing about.

[Northroader]

James and Kevin, speaking as an old git who had to downsize last year, and was far too infirm to do any of it himself, I’m sure your filial efforts were very much appreciated by the parties involved. 

Edited February 2 by Northroader

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

James and Kevin, speaking as an old git who had to downsize last year, and was far too infirm to do any of it himself, I’m sure your filial efforts were very much appreciated by the parties involved. 

 

Sadly, I don't think the Aged Ps even remember the house they left 18 months ago, such is dementia. I now dread that fate.  

[GMKAT7]

Good evening Edwardian,

 

I do feel for you in those circumstances.

 

Before my Dad passed away 11 years ago he had spent 2 years or so bed-bound and had daily visits from carers, which he paid for.

My mum was already showing signs of dementia, which accelerated after Dad passed away.

 

It was only the daily visits from my brother who cooked both of them hot meals, did the gardening, etc that kept them both going.

Once my Dad had gone my brother moved into the family home to be Mum's full time carer.

Sadly she died a year and a week after my Dad.

 

Since my aunt (Mum's sister) also suffered from Alzheimer's I am not looking forward to picking up the same family trait.

However, they all lived to their mid-80s, so I think I've got 20 years or so left in me 😀

 

Cheers, Nigel.

[uax6]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

When the ‘felt’ on our shed roof was beginning  to “go”, I went straight over the top of it with Onduline sheeting, which is a rigid bitumen sheet that looks like corrugated iron. So far (c5 years), so good, with it not showing the slightest sign of deterioration, and I have high hopes that it will last longer than ‘felt’, which began to noticeably deteriorate after c10 years. I found it easier to install than felt too, less faffing about.

 

I'm also slowly moving over to 'coroline' (Onduline is the same but different!), again put over the top of existing good felt, works really well. The key with coroline/onduline is to have it supported by something underneath over its whole length, or it goes saggy very quickly...

 

My repair to the garage roof is a quick and dirty fix which keeps things a bit more watertight for a couple of months until I can strip the whole lot and replace with new. The garage has been a bit of a pest, timber with lots of rot, but now its sat on concrete blocks to keep it out of the ground and a lot of new timber and nice SWMBO tinted cement board weather boarding. A bit like Triggers broom!

 

Andy G

[Edwardian]

Sorry to bang on, but this whole tiny building scam annoys me. I've just been reminded of how much these wretched things usually cost and it just makes me cross!

 

The reason I was attracted by the Bachmann model was not just the design, but the fact that the design implied that this was a larger structure than the minimalist designs offered by Hornby and Wills.

 

As a model of a larger prototype, I naturally expected a larger model , and one that could sit, front of baseboard, on the non-conformist outskirts of Castle Aching.

 

 

I should have known that I should stick to scratch-building as instead I ended with a uselessly tiny ill-proportioned tin elephant that now needs to be set carefully at a distance. Sizewise it's actually something like 2.6mm to a foot compared with the structure on which it is evidently based, though detail on the model is more like the claimed 4mm, making it a misshapen Frankenkirche that will need to be set carefully in a 3mm scale zone if I am to get away with it. 

 

 

So, it will be recalled that I only succombed to Bachmann's tabernacle because it was on sale at £9 something.  Even so, I was disappointed because it proved to be comically under-scale and therefore unfit for purpose at any price. The price I paid just meant I'd wasted less money that I might have. Today I received news of a discount now offered by a retailer, but look at the full list price for this thing!  If i'd paid anything close to that, I'd  be suing Bachmann by now!

 

 

 

Edited February 3 by Edwardian
F-ing keyboard

[monkeysarefun]

Since I've taken to 3D printing of buildings I'm constantly surprised at the size of the finished models. Unlike card or styrene modelling where you get to have an idea of how big it will be from the  moment you draw up the sides on a bit of card, using CAD I have no idea until I have drawn it all up and  produced the print file and then find it is too big to fit on the printer in one piece. 

 

Keeping with the church theme, this one just down the road from me is a small building.

 

 

But even  in HO scale it is 6 inches long. If I hadn't measured the original with a tape I'd have assumed I had made a mistake, but no, it IS that big.

 

 

 

Conversely, I have found the opposite with cars. Lacking Australian outline cars in HO scale I've taken to designing them in Blender and  3D printing them, and there the opposite occurs - the resulting models  seem much smaller than expected and I have to recheck the scaling. Perhaps that is due to many HO  layouts here using OO scale cars or even Matchbox due to a general  lack of HO cars and I'm used to the larger sizes. 

 

Once I put them against a building though, they all match ok though in my mind taken individually  these are  undersized  cars in front of an oversized building!

 

 

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

This would not be an RM thread without posts about leaking shed roofs. What is it with all this felt and bitumen and thatch etc?   Is there an advantage in using all this stuff  in the 21st  century instead of say metal?

 

Here you would be hard-pressed to  find a shed that doesn't have a  zincalume or colourbond roof.

 

Colorbond is multicoated zincalume, which is a zinc/aluminium alloy. This is coated in a corrosion resistant layer, then an adhesive primer, then an oven baked finish in a range of colours. This is toppped with a UV and heat-resistant reflective coating made of ceramic and titanium dioxide particles, then a clear acrylic glaze.

 

The panels are good for a minimum  70 years, and if the correct cyclone rated fastenings are used it can withstand winds of 275km/hr. (though it will probably  end up 5 houses away - but still in one piece).

 

I've never heard anyone complain about a leak in their shed roof here, unless a tree falls on it.

 

Edited February 3 by monkeysarefun

[St Enodoc]

2 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

an oven baked finish in a range of colours

...but usually Rivergum or Monument.