Henley-on-Thames - GWR in the 1930's

[County of Yorkshire]

Hi Neal, 

 

I love the 70 footers! Sorry for missing this, but how did you paint them? Was it an airbrush or rattle can? 
 

Cheers, 

 

CoY

[Neal Ball]

3 hours ago, County of Yorkshire said:

Hi Neal, 

 

I love the 70 footers! Sorry for missing this, but how did you paint them? Was it an airbrush or rattle can? 
 

Cheers, 

 

CoY

 

They have both been sprayed with my Iwata airbrush.

[Andy Keane]

34 minutes ago, Neal Ball said:

Iwata airbrush

And very nicely too, at that!

[County of Yorkshire]

50 minutes ago, Neal Ball said:

 

They have both been sprayed with my Iwata airbrush.

That’s helpful to know, thanks. Is it Railmatch or Phoenix Precision colours you’ve used there? 
 

My airbrush has been sat in its box since I bought it in the Modelzone closing down sale a decade ago! I’ve not mustered the courage to give it a go yet… 

[Neal Ball]

19 minutes ago, Andy Keane said:

And very nicely too, at that!

Thanks Andy

 

1 minute ago, County of Yorkshire said:

That’s helpful to know, thanks. Is it Railmatch or Phoenix Precision colours you’ve used there? 
 

My airbrush has been sat in its box since I bought it in the Modelzone closing down sale a decade ago! I’ve not mustered the courage to give it a go yet… 

The railway colours are Railmatch acrylic. The non railway colours are Vallejo acrylic.

[Neal Ball]

Replacement Manor - its a long story and taken months to resolve - but finally, I have a working Anthony Manor on the railway, seen here with the 70ft carriages.

 

 

[Andy Keane]

Nice lamps! is there a crew as well?

[Neal Ball]

3 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

Nice lamps! is there a crew as well?

 

Yes! They were still in a box on the bench, together with the coal. Plus once I am happy that the loco will run for more than 2 sessions, I will change the speaker for something beefier!

 

(Crew, like the lamps are Modelu - normal ones, not those pre-printed ones)

[NickL2008]

Hi Neal, just read your thread, you have a nice layout, mine is based on Henley also, albeit around 50 years later

 

NL

Edited March 27 by NickL2008

[Neal Ball]

6 minutes ago, NickL2008 said:

Hi Neal, just read your thread, you have a nice layout, mine is based on Henley also, albeit around 50 years later

 

NL

Thanks Nick. That roof shot of the canopy at Henley is interesting… it could do with a clean!

 

Thanks again.

[Neal Ball]

Today has seen another day of running the Manor 4-6-0. I had filmed a couple of sequences, but wasn't happy with how they came out. Sometimes my DSLR doesn't focus very well in video mode - it was ok on the back screen, but not when I brought hot up to the Mac to make into a video.

 

More running-in ensued!

 

I also started to glaze the C23 clerestory - to be continued.

 

Over the last week or so, I have re-written my loco blog and moved it into the same section as my carriages. This area is now called "Kit-built stock for Henley-on-Thames" replacing my "bodgers guide to Comet carriages" 

 

My next blog page will probably be for the Worsley works 3rd C22 46ft Clerestory carriage (details here: https://gwrcoaches.org.uk/Clerestories.shtml) as I have just received the required Dart castings parts to complete the carriage: (8ft 6 Dean bogies; Dean vacuum cylinder; Dean buffers and for the first time, door hinges).

 

Then it will be onto the H26 70ft Restaurant carriage and who knows which carriage, or maybe loco next!

 

 

[Neal Ball]

Apologies, its been a while 😎 things have become a bit busy of late.

 

How about a Manor to keep you going?

 

[Neal Ball]

Apparently, I missed National Banana day this week! 

 

For my own celebration of all things Banana, how about a GWR / AEC railcar - built in 1936 by Gloucester RCW.

 

 

Or how about a GWR 4-6-0 Castle class loco. This is no 5076 Dryslwyn Castle seen outside the signal box at Henley-on-Thames. 

This loco was built in 1938 and later named Gladiator in 1941, it was the second loco to be called Dryslwyn - the first one was built in 1936 and was 5051 - but was the renamed just over a year later to Earl Bathurst. The latter loco is now preserved at the GWS Didcot.

 

 

I have recently been reading the "Castle class 4-6-0 locos 1923-1959" book by David Maidment & Bob Meanley, Im almost finished and have thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Neal Ball]

Then to finish off the Manor set of photos, it is seen here on the turntable at Henley-on-Thames.

 

 

This one seems to be running ok - it defiantly is a different loco to the original one. I am hoping to get a complete day in the railway room tomorrow and should have the loco running round all day.

 

Assuming everything is ok, I will add the crew and coal. Then change the speaker for a better one. Hopefully that will make it louder.

[Neal Ball]

More Manor work this afternoon 😎 

In which I take a drill; scalpel blade; cutting disk and soldering iron to my Manor class 4-6-0 loco no 7801 Anthony Manor.

 

Anyone who is squeamish, or from the Accurascale development team, should probably look away 🤣

 

I started off with the loco on the bench and it was programmed as 7801 through Decoder Pro:

 

 

Next up was major surgery on the tender:

 

 

Space was cut into the tender base in order that the new speaker could sit above the DCC decoder. I have also drilled some holes into the false coal load - plus I have drilled out the base of the water filler cap.

 

The new speaker will be a Youchoos 2watt 4ohm double ice cube speaker. But in order to fit it, I needed to remove the smokebox speaker - it was a simple case of snipping the cables.

 

Then I had to take out the small speaker under the mainboard. By comparison the old speaker was tiny - no wonder you couldn't hear the sound.

 

With the speaker removed, it was a simple case of soldering the speaker connections onto the strips under the PCB:

 

 

This is how it looks under the coal load:

 

 

The crew have been added (These are Modelu ones) and as I left the railway room, real coal had been added and glued to the tender coal load.

 

 

The video below shows one scene before the changes and then several after. This loco is now as loud as my Castle class locos:

 

 

Apologies for the shaky iPhone images! 

 

The difference doesn't quite come across, but its huge - it was definitely worth doing.

 

It was ridiculous that the sound project was so low. Overall, it has been a very productive afternoon.

[mallaig1983]

Lovely video Neal. Nice to have some camera panning of the layout which looks fantastic. There is a noticeable difference in the volume and it sounds great. I do absolutely love a Manor 😀

[Neal Ball]

2 hours ago, mallaig1983 said:

Lovely video Neal. Nice to have some camera panning of the layout which looks fantastic. There is a noticeable difference in the volume and it sounds great. I do absolutely love a Manor 😀

It’s been a long time to get to this stage - I can’t believe the original sound is so low - far lower than the videos show. But now it’s a decent sound to rival my Youchoos fitted sound Castle class locos.

 

I don’t mind low sound, as long as I can turn it up, but the original Manor project is at max….. so it’s obviously a speaker issue.

 

Accurascale should have spec a bigger / beefier speaker. Leaving that aside, it’s a lovely loco and runs very well.

 

Im looking forward to their 57xx.

[Harlequin]

Hi Neal,

I know I'm going to sound like a stuck record but you could get the sound even better if the speaker wasn't covered by the solid plastic coal load.

 

[Neal Ball]

6 hours ago, Harlequin said:

Hi Neal,

I know I'm going to sound like a stuck record but you could get the sound even better if the speaker wasn't covered by the solid plastic coal load.

 

The video doesn’t really do the sound justice. From sounding like a whisper (so much so, that the radio often drowns it out!), it’s now very loud.

 

Someone commented on Facebook that I should have used a thin speaker from Road and Rails, but I think the depth of the enclosure is also making a difference.

 

As you know, I always work on the basis of squeezing the biggest possible speaker into the space.

 

I was very surprised at how small the Accurascale speaker was.

 

Next week, I will look to see if we can buy metal glaze here and give it a go.

Edited April 21 by Neal Ball

[Andy Keane]

2 hours ago, Neal Ball said:

Next week, I will look to see if we can buy metal glaze here and give it a go.

If you get stuck I will cut a bit of mine off my stock and stick it in an envelope!

[Gopher]

17 hours ago, Neal Ball said:

More Manor work this afternoon 😎 

In which I take a drill; scalpel blade; cutting disk and soldering iron to my Manor class 4-6-0 loco no 7801 Anthony Manor.

 

Anyone who is squeamish, or from the Accurascale development team, should probably look away 🤣

 

I started off with the loco on the bench and it was programmed as 7801 through Decoder Pro:

 

 

Next up was major surgery on the tender:

 

 

Space was cut into the tender base in order that the new speaker could sit above the DCC decoder. I have also drilled some holes into the false coal load - plus I have drilled out the base of the water filler cap.

 

The new speaker will be a Youchoos 2watt 4ohm double ice cube speaker. But in order to fit it, I needed to remove the smokebox speaker - it was a simple case of snipping the cables.

 

Then I had to take out the small speaker under the mainboard. By comparison the old speaker was tiny - no wonder you couldn't hear the sound.

 

With the speaker removed, it was a simple case of soldering the speaker connections onto the strips under the PCB:

 

 

This is how it looks under the coal load:

 

 

The crew have been added (These are Modelu ones) and as I left the railway room, real coal had been added and glued to the tender coal load.

 

 

The video below shows one scene before the changes and then several after. This loco is now as loud as my Castle class locos:

 

 

Apologies for the shaky iPhone images! 

 

The difference doesn't quite come across, but its huge - it was definitely worth doing.

 

It was ridiculous that the sound project was so low. Overall, it has been a very productive afternoon.

Thanks for posting this Neal.  I think there is a huge improvement in sound volume and quality.  I think I'll have to do the same.  I did replace the tender speaker with a larger flat speaker (so no surgery required, apart from removing the factory fitted speaker).  The sound was only marginally improved IMHO.  Can I ask did you remove the loco body to disconnect the smokebox speaker ?

 

It is a lovely loco  but definitely let down by the low volume on the sound project (for those of us who are fans of DCC  sound).  I wonder if Accurascale will re-engineer this to fit a bigger speaker in the tender in future releases ?  I guess not if the sound fitted versions are selling well despite the volume issue  

 

Thanks

 

Clive

Edited Sunday at 10:05 by Gopher
correction of grammar

[Harlequin]

5 hours ago, Gopher said:

Thanks for posting this Neal.  I think there is a huge improvement in sound volume and quality.  I think I'll have to do the same.  I did replace the tender speaker with a larger flat speaker (so no surgery required, apart from removing the factory fitted speaker).  The sound was only marginally improved IMHO.  Can I ask did you remove the loco body to disconnect the smokebox speaker ?

 

It is a lovely loco  but definitely let down by the low volume on the sound project (for those of us who are fans of DCC  sound).  I wonder if Accurascale will re-engineer this to fit a bigger speaker in the tender in future releases ?  I guess not if the sound fitted versions are selling well despite the volume issue  

 

Thanks

 

Clive

Accurascale are very aware of the sound volume/quality issue from the feedback they got when the Manor was first released so we can hope that they will make changes.

 

(I think the people who are happy with the factory sound have probably never hear a good steam sound project before...)

 

I did a similar upgrade but I removed the circuit board entirely so I have more room for a speaker. It's documented somewhere on here. Found it:

 

Edited Sunday at 15:10 by Harlequin

[MAP66]

Nice work Neal, I will soon be tackling something not too dissimilar when I attempt to install a sound decoder, speaker and stay alive into the tender of a Bachmann Fowler 7F. Having never tackled anything like this before it was timely to see your efforts have paid off and it was good to hear the sound on the video.

[Andy Keane]

21 hours ago, Neal Ball said:

Youchoos 2watt 4ohm

Neal

have you wired this in series or parallel with the smokebox speaker? I am wondering about the total impedance the sound chip is driving.

Andy

[Gopher]

1 hour ago, Andy Keane said:

Neal

have you wired this in series or parallel with the smokebox speaker? I am wondering about the total impedance the sound chip is driving.

Andy

Andy - I think Neal dis-connected the smokebox speaker, so only using the Youchoos 4ohm

 

Clive