Lower Thames Yard

[Tallpaul69]

Our exile in the conservatory continues......

A small parcel arrived this morning to brighten things up- a set of Hornby R514 Island platform Canopies. 

These will be used as an interim canopy on the up/bay platform of Bradenham and will help with the design of the eventual canopies which will call upon High Wycombe and Princes Risborough down platform canopies for GW & GC influence on their design.

 

A difficulty with these canopies at Bradenham is that the end section of this platform curves to the right. The pragmatic (and construction wise easiest) option will be to end the canopies at the end of the straight section of the platform. This will also make operation of trains in the bay a little easier as their outer end/coupling up points, will be more visible.

 

I have also been doodling arrangements for the breaks at the end of the scenic section of the model.

The down break is probably going to be yet another road bridge! The question is how far along the curve away from the down platform should it be. My original thought was to make it like the Oxford side of Thame, quite close to the over track part of the footbridge, but now it may move further round the curve so that up trains are operationally a little easier to sight.

The up scenic break may be a footbridge rather than a road bridge as since I "dropped" the loco shed between the up line and the inwards goods shed, there is not enough room to fit in an overbridge approach road! Sharp turns in footpaths are much more prototypical.

 

The plasterer seems to be on schedule, so hopefully tomorrow will be the last day in the conservatory for now, although next week the new ceiling is going to be decorated. Happy Days.......

 

Meanwhile I hope everyone's projects are making progress, and eyes down for Bachmann's Autumn predictions tomorrow?

Best regards

Paul 

[Nick Gough]

Hope it's not too hot in that conservatory Paul?

[Tallpaul69]

19 hours ago, Nick Gough said:

Hope it's not too hot in that conservatory Paul?

Thanks Nick,

Its not too bad, its currently 32.4 C, and it will stay around that until c6pm as the sun starts to go off of the conservatory soon.

So its day three of our conservatory exile. Light is definitely at the end of the tunnel! The plasterer is starting to pack up although I suspect it will be tomorrow before we can start to return order to our dinning and sitting rooms. Even then it will only be partial as for next Wednesday, we need to do it all again for the decorator arriving.

When I have finished on RM Web, I will take a peek at what Bachmann are offering us.

 

Best regards

Paul 

[Tallpaul69]

And so to Thursday......

Well, here we are over half way through post plastering day 1, and we are pleased with the job Jeff did for us!

It is nice to be out of the conservatory, and we have done minimal return to normal re furniture etc., awaiting Matt who is doing the decorating, visiting at the weekend to finalise the job.

 

Meanwhile I see Hattons have Dapol Manors, but only basic versions, DCC and DCC Sound are to follow........(When- a long while if Dapol are doing these themeselves!!).

Will these arrive before Accurascale, who will probably have all three versions from day 1?

Moan over, as I am glad I won't have to pay for my Dapol DCC Sound Manor just yet.

 

Meanwhile, I am thinking about whether to continue with one of my Rule 1 decisions:-

Over the years I had acquired several of each livery of the Lima , then Hornby Mk3 sleeper to run the Penzance sleeper in each of my modern eras. This was fine for the slow lines of the GWR main line but not for the GW&GC! Selling them would give me a fair chunk towards the DCC Sound set up for my two Class 800 5 car sets, which of course now are themselves a Rule 1 decision on the GW & GC!

Decisions, Decisions........-more on this later!

 

Cheers for now,

Paul

[Nick Gough]

You could always claim that the GWML is closed overnight for major engineering works/incident east of Reading.

 

Consequently the Night Riviera has been diverted via Greenford, High Wycombe, Bicester new chord and junction, Oxford Parkway and Didcot West junction.

 

That would allow for the newest sleeper versions (and a longer sleep for the passengers customers!)

[Tallpaul69]

Good Thinking Nick!

I had been going to send the Night Riviera via Thame, but that would involve a reversal at Oxford.

I am still going to need to dispose of a couple of sleeper sets - I think it it might have to be the Merlins, as the Fag Packet liveries ones can be justified for c2007, and Dynamic Lines Blues that go, as by 2019 they were Green. 

Back in the 60s I am on firmer ground with my pair of Mk1 sleepers, as there was a Marylebone to Scotland (Perth?) sleeper that did sometimes go via the GW & GC!

 

I was cheered to receive the Bachmann Times in the post this morning. I was already alert to the DRS Mk2F DBSO to go with my DRS Mk2F coaches. What is a DBSO doing on the GW&GC I hear you ask? Simples - Testing or an excursion in 2019! 

 

I might also stretch the funds to a pair of either grey or weathered red IPA car carriers to work with the two pairs I bought when they first came out in red. They will be for my 2019 Cowley to the Ports carrying Mini production.  

 

Hopefully this weekend I will get some time in the Railway Room, although tomorrow morning will be taken by a trip to Homebase and Buzzard Blinds as we need to sort new sitting room curtains and a blind for the utility, the lack of the latter, being something I have moaned about for ages, so I can't begrudge the time.

 

Hope everyone's modelling is progressing well, especially Nick with your station buildings?

Cheers for now,

Paul

[Nick Gough]

1 hour ago, Tallpaul69 said:

 Hope everyone's modelling is progressing well, especially Nick with your station buildings?

 

Slow but steady Paul!

[Tallpaul69]

Good afternoon All,

Here we are again.... in the Conservatory!

This week, its the painter, painting the ceiling the plasterer fixed last week.

He is also repainting the walls as there is slight marking at one side from the water leak that resulted in the hole in the ceiling.

It all reminds me, as those of you of a certain age will recall, of the Flanders and Swan song that started:- It was on the Monday morning that the gasman came to call etc.etc.

While waiting for the ceiling to dry  this afternoon, he is also doing a number of small jobs around the house that he has the skills to do with a better result and in half the time that I would achieve- especially in this once again rising set of temperatures!

 

Modelling is currently limited to some sorting out of items to dispose of and reorganising the storage of items bought over this year so far, and mostly just shoved "somewhere" in the garage store.

I have however decided that the Merlin liveried sleepers will be going along with my remaining Merlin HSTs. I am still debating on the Dynamic Blues sleepers as I have yet to finalise whether my most up to date era is going to remain as 2019, or whether in the next year or so it might slip to 2022/3. If the latter, then the Dynamic Blues will definitely go, but if I stay with 2019 or shift a year or two earlier then the Blues could usefully alternate with the greens.

The snag with 2022/3 is that my green HST coaches are all slam door type, whereas for 2022/3 I need sliding door types. It depends on what it is going to cost to change over the coaches. However, 2023 or even 2024, might be a better justification for my two type 8000 sets appearing on the GW & GC, as there is less need for the bimodals on the lines to the west as electrification spreads! 

 

I could also for 2024 onwards justify some trains from the rebuilt East and West line from Milton Keynes or Bedford. This would be nice as they would give Bradenham a local to me content, but of course, at this stage , I have no idea what those trains will be, or their livery. Also it is probably a slim chance that anyone will produce models of them anytime soon!

Still, I can always hope.

Cheers for now,

Paul

[Tallpaul69]

Yippee!!

Our confinement to the Conservatory is over!

Matt finished the painting at lunch time, the paint is dry, and we have returned to use of the sitting room, albeit in a basic form.

Earlier today we also saw a guy called Neville from the local curtain and blind shop re a new set of curtains and also, for the utility room, a blind. So we will have 4-5 weeks of normality until he arrives to fit same.

Tomorrow we will aim to return most of the still removed items to the sitting room and with their removal, restore some sanity to the dining room.

Next week, I hope to have for you some pics on the modelling front.

Cheers for now,

Paul 

[Tallpaul69]

Good Afternoon one and all,

I suppose I mustn't grumble- but now it is raining!

At least it is a steady drizzle which will do the gardens good, unlike the thunder storms they have been threatening us with.

 

We have taken it steady with getting straight from the decorating, but we are reasonably in order now, so I hope in the next day or two to catch up with the various photos I have been promising you, and then by next week to get some work done on the layout.

 

Currently deciding which to attempt first out of signal installation, rail painting or ballasting. There is also the slight matter of the engine shed yard, which might be better installed before any of the above jobs are started!

 

Off course, there is always the cop out in indecision of going for a running session, as there are some items that have not yet been tested, other than on the test track.

 

Hope your modelling is going well,

Cheers for now,

Paul

[Davidl66]

With regards to "Currently deciding which to attempt first out of signal installation, rail painting or ballasting. ".

 

My layout is at the "track laid and electrics installed" stage, whilst I am doing lots of running to iron out any track or electrical problems I have been painting the rails. I figured if I had to lift anything to fix a problem then it wouldn't be a job wasted.  I don't have any signals planned at the moment, but if I did then I would install those before ballasting.

[Nick Gough]

1 hour ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Good Afternoon one and all,

I suppose I mustn't grumble- but now it is raining!

At least it is a steady drizzle which will do the gardens good, unlike the thunder storms they have been threatening us with.

 

Send it a bit further north Paul - we're still waiting for it!

 

It must have rained for all of 15 minutes last night.

[Tallpaul69]

Hi Nick,

Sorry you are still dry!

This afternoon lasted 60-90 mins just light stuff. We then had another c30mins around tea time.

Forecast says showers all night from c23.00, then off and on all day tomorrow.

 

So I think I will be bringing some model jobs into the house for tomorrow.

Cheers

Paul

[St Enodoc]

13 hours ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Currently deciding which to attempt first out of signal installation, rail painting or ballasting.

Paint the rails before ballasting otherwise you'll get rail paint on the ballast.

 

Ballast before installing signals otherwise you'll knock them over.

[5BarVT]

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Ballast before installing signals otherwise you'll knock them over.

Possibly drill holes for signals first and have an oversized dummy base to keep the ballast away?

Never having got that far with a layout I don’t know whether I’m talking sense or tosh.

Paul.

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Possibly drill holes for signals first and have an oversized dummy base to keep the ballast away?

Never having got that far with a layout I don’t know whether I’m talking sense or tosh.

Paul.

That should work too.

[Tallpaul69]

Good evening All,

Unfortunately, progress is painfully slow at present. I hoped getting a series of household jobs out of the way would give me the momentum to get stuck into all the outstanding jobs on Bradenham.

This has not worked out. l have allowed myself to be too easily diverted my this and that. There have been a couple of serious problems such as the unexpected news that one of my wife's close college friends being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer(and she has never smoked!); but my get up and go hasn't!!

 

Still, with a new month I am going to set some relatively easy targets and try to get a bit done.

I did get to AGR this week to pick up a couple of locos from sound chipping and take four more in to be done.

 

I hope you are all getting on successfully with your modelling?

Cheers for now

Paul

 

[Tallpaul69]

Hi All,

Apologies for almost 3 weeks posting silence, but events just seem to keep conspiring against me making progress on modelling, so there has been little to report.

The last 10 sad days have not helped as we have been busy off and on supporting family and our community.

Our grandchildrens' questions about events in the Queens reign gave us food for thought such as what we were doing at for instance the Silver Jubilee. 

Being the family "railway expert", gave me chance when questioned on a TV comment about the use of road between London and Windsor yesterday, to recount the story of the swap of identities amongst "Castle" locos so that King George V1's Funeral train could appear to be hauled by "Windsor Castle" when in fact that loco was in bits under overhaul in Swindon Works!

 

On a more up to date theme, I do hope the Royal Train, is kept going, especially as it now seems unlikely that there will be a new Royal Yacht.

 

Best regards to you all,

Paul 

[Tallpaul69]

Hi Everyone,

So, it's just a week until the Great Electric show at Stadium MK.

Hopefully the moves by the gremlins (Unions) on the 12inch to the foot railway will not cause problems for too many visitors?

I will be going on Saturday as my transport will be by bus, and the Sunday bus service is only every 2 hours!

Mustn't forget to print off my ticket.

Meanwhile, I am trialling different configurations for Bradenham Engine Shed. I had hoped to avoid buying any track items but the points I have to hand don't quite work, so I will have to dig out my Peco Templates and see what works best.

 

I also need to run a track cleaning session. I nipped into the railway room yesterday to quickly measure up some details of the station area, and so ran a couple of trains round while i did this, but the two locos seemed to falter a bit. I hoped to investigate further today, but we were out this morning and this afternoon it threw it down with rain. Still, tomorrow is another day!

 

Cheers for now,

Paul

 

 

[Tallpaul69]

Afternoon All,

Last Saturday's visit to GETS in the Marshall Arena in Stadium MK, made a nice change of scene. As usual at such events there were large "scrums" around some of the sales stalls but as I was not in the market for "bargains" I was able to bypass them!

There were some good layouts, and below I show my shot of one of the best IMHO of the ex-Great Western scenes on show.

 

This portrayal of Sydney Gardens in Bath showed really good attention to detail and bought back memories of times spent there 20 years or so ago when our eldest son was based in Bath on work experience for his Architecture degree.

 

 

While considerably shorter than the real thing, there was so much to look at you didn't notice the shortening or the curves at the ends!

 

Unfortunately, the operation of a number of layouts showed how the layoffs from exhibitions over the last couple of years had affected both layouts and operators. I expect things were much better on Sunday, but that wasn't a viable option for me, dependent on buses to get there, the Sunday service being only a 2 hourly one.

 

I did buy some scenic items and accessories from a stall which was new to me called Shedring Hobbies. Their products are 3D Printed and look pretty good to me. When I have unpacked them, I will put up some shots here for comment. Through the plastic packaging and on the samples on the stall I couldn't see any of the often-quoted 3D printed blemishes.  

 

This week is a bit of a "Health Kick" with annual health checks on Thursday and Flu jabs on Saturday, but if the warm weather continues next week will hopefully see some action in the Railway Room.

 

Best regards

Paul

 

 

 

[Nick Gough]

Although I couldn't go to GETS this time I saw the Sydney Gardens layout at the last Warley show in 2019. I was also very impressed with it and spent quite some time watching the action.

[Tallpaul69]

Good afternoon all,

I managed to get an update from Rails at GETS on the A5 Tank: -

 

They are in production at present and Rails are confident that they will be with them very early in the New Year if not before Christmas.

Rails are also making progress with the sound chips for them. The sound files are made, whether they are able to offer a sound version at the same time, or just a few weeks after the DC version depends on them getting hold of the chips. This is a great advance on the "we are working on it" response to my email enquiry a month or so ago!

 

So hopefully I will have one strutting its stuff on Bradenham by Easter.  It is a Rule 1 item with regard to my 1962 timeframe for the layout, but the samples I saw at GETS lived up to my expectations. I think the story is going to be that one of the last ones on the GW&GC was stationed at Bradenham as a backup to those new-fangled DMUs!

In this regard, I am thinking of getting out a non-powered Lima 117 set for it to tow that I have left over from what would have provided a six-car unit in the stock for the Maidenhead based Lower Thames Yard.

 

Cheers for now,

Paul

 

[Tallpaul69]

'Evening All,

I haven't made much visible progress in the last couple of weeks, but a lot of planning and research has gone on!

 

Having reviewed all the things that need doing on Bradenham/Wycombe End, I have concluded that a priority should be linking the two layouts into one. This sounds like it ought to be a relatively easy job, after all the gap is only a foot! However, there are two problems to be overcome: -

Firstly, there is a slight level difference between the two, although they were both built as a baseboard surface a nominal 48 inches off the floor.   

Secondly, the layouts were each built as self-contained units and although they both use NCE controllers, Wycombe end has points and signals controlled from the hand controller, while Bradenham has its points controlled by pushbuttons, although the built, but not yet installed signals will also be controlled by the hand controller.

The first question on the electronics is how the track connection from one layout to the other will work. Simplistically, it seems to me that I could use one controller e.g., Bradenham, to control all locos on both layouts and use Wycombe End's controller to control Wycombe End's points and signals.

More research needed, and questions to the experts in the DCC areas of RMWeb!  

 

Meanwhile, I intend to commence preparations for levelling the two layouts, but this necessitates removing two years of accumulations of this and that under the layouts. All this has to go somewhere, and so the first stage is to sort out my storage area in the garage to allow space for the above accumulations from under the layouts. Once access is clear, each of the 12 legs on the two layouts are adjustable, so hopefully armed with my trusty metre long spirit level, getting everything level should be relatively easy!

 

I intend to use regular updates to this thread each weekend to act as a progress record on this job, which I expect to take several weeks. To facilitate the work, I have agreed with SWMBO half days which are on the calendar when this job will progress.  

 

So watch this space!

Cheers for now,

Paul

[Tallpaul69]

Hello Everyone,

Progress on Layout integration to date: -

 

I have posted a question on the DCC Help threads re how I connect the two layouts together. There have been several responses, some more useful than others! 

 

I have been measuring the size of the gap between the two layouts. The new board needs to be 90cms deep by 20 or 21cms wide, depending on whether i remove the end board (width 10mm), from Wycombe End, or not.

There are pros and cons to its removal. A pro is that it will allow the Wycombe End tracks to align with those on Bradenham more easily, but a con is that it might reduce the strength of that end of Wycombe End.  I need to move some stuff to allow me to look at the underside of that end of Wycombe End to see how it is constructed.

As it stands, the end board has a reduced height at one point to allow two tracks from Wycombe End to pass through. Unfortunately, this gap is not in alignment with the tracks it needs to meet in Bradenham, which are going to be difficult to realign because of the bus under them. So, if I don't remove the end board to allow two tracks that ae on the right alignment to pass across to Bradenham, I will need the 20mm board to accommodate a kink to allow the tracks on Wycombe End and Bradenham to meet.

 

So, onward and upward!

Take care All,

Cheers

Paul

[5BarVT]

30 minutes ago, Tallpaul69 said:

There have been several responses, some more useful than others! 

And some actually relevant even though you didn’t realise.

Please try to be a bit more careful about how you interact with those who are trying to help avoid blowing up expensive bits of kit.  They might just sit back and and watch for the blue smoke next time.

Paul.