Midland Railway in EM gauge

[Mrkirtley800]

Do you mean w/v or v/v Simon

Derek

[Mrkirtley800]

Good luck with the visit to the quack

Would that be a "7% solution", Jock?

Just realised, Simon, your location is Oakham. My son lives in South Luffenham, and the last time Olga and I stayed with him, we spent an enjoyable morning in Oakham.

We love Rutland, it is such a pleasant county.

Derek

Edited November 17, 2015 by Mrkirtley800

[Barry O]

Derek 

 

just you be careful in Rutland - my sister lives there in Cottesmore - now full of Army people instead of the RAF but a nice village and a super county.

 

Baz

[Mrkirtley800]

Still work in progress on the locomotive cassettes. The construction of the cassettes has been a slow job, but is now more or less finished. The cassettes themselves are made out of scrap lying around and there is plenty of it. I keep getting requests like "for goodness sake, can't you throw some of that away?"

Well, I didn't and it has come in useful.

The bases are of hardboard or 3mm ply, and the sides are any old bits of strip wood. The tracks are odd lengths of SMP etc with two copper clad sleepers at each end.

One of the piccies shows them, with the glue - PVA in this case - still wet.

Each cassette is to 'plug' in to any of the fiddle yard lines. The FY lines have short pieces of 1.5mm inside diameter tubing soldered each side of each line, the cassettes have lengths of 1.5 dia brass wire soldered each side. I hope the pics will explain better than my words.

I have painted the FY baseboard with white emulsion. The corner where it fits, although not dark, could do with a bit of extra illumination, so hopefully, the white paint may help.

The last shot is of the cassettes in place. Because the fiddle yard tracks are closely spaced, I can't have cassettes fitted to adjacent lines. In practise, this shouldn't matter too much.

DonW suggested some time ago that a line linking the two lines to Grassington and Skipton, which are next to each other in the FY, would allow exchange of, full and empty, stone wagons. Try as I might, a link will not fit. So, I will make another and longer cassette to perhaps accommodate five mineral wagons to allow interchange.

All that needs doing now is the tidying up of the two fiddle yard boards, and when these are back in place as a permanent installation, I will bring the passenger trains out of hibernation,

I should have pointed out that I have fitted plastikard stops at each end of the cassettes to prevent any wagons running off.

Derek

Edited November 19, 2015 by Mrkirtley800

[coachmann]

Sound idea. I expect some locos with tender pickups would be on the cassette without having to connect them to the sidings electrically. Re the human bone joints, I still take cod liver oil & Malt that many of us were fed each morning before school in 'owden days. It must lubricate the joints.

[Mrkirtley800]

Yes Larry, that cod liver oil and malt phew!! When sweets were rationed I used to refer to it as toffee. Tried some similar stuff a few years ago and I started getting hot flushes, so I stopped.

A lady of 89 down our road has taken cod liver oil for years and now she can out - walk me. She strides up and down our road which is on a steep hill, and walks everywhere. No problem at all, makes yer fink.

Derek

[Buhar]

Watch the excess of vitamin A in fish liver oil (especially if your partial to liver and onions).  It might be better to go with a general fish oil. 

[Mrkirtley800]

Yes, you are right there Buhar. Vitamin A can be overdosed, not like vitamin C which if in excess, passes out in urine.

I have a friend who is a keen fisherman, who goes of sea fishing in his boat many days in the summer and autumn. He loves his fish and eats it most days. Even when we all go out to the local restaurant for a meal, he will choose fish. He is very fit, with a low heart beat and at 74 plays a good game of badminton and tennis regularly

Derek

Edited November 21, 2015 by Mrkirtley800

[ben pez]

Ive only just come across this thread,wow!

Its looks superb,some fantastic modelling

 

Cheers

 

Ben

[Worsdell forever]

Yes, you are right there Buhar. Vitamin A can be overdosed, not like vitamin C which if in excess, passes out in urine.

I have a friend who is a keen fisherman, who goes of sea fishing in his boat many days in the summer and autumn. He loves his fish and eats it most days. Even when we all go out to the local restaurant for a meal, he will choose fish. He is very fit, with a low heart beat and at 74 plays a good game of badminton and tennis regularly

Derek

So you're taking up sea fishing now? The layout will never get finished!

[NHY 581]

Wonderful thread Derek.

 

Pre grouping at its very best.

 

Does anything epitomise Victorian engineering better than a Johnson 4.4.0...?

 

Elegance personified and modelled to perfection.

 

Bravo.

 

Rob.

Edited November 21, 2015 by nhy581

[Mrkirtley800]

So you're taking up sea fishing now? The layout will never get finished!

 

Not on your life, Paul. Once taken sea fishing by my uncle in Eastbourne. It was choppy, I got the lines in a tangle and felt very queasy looking down into the boat trying to untangle them. Finally got bitten by a dog fish caught by my uncle. The thing had razor sharp teeth and it hurt. Never again thank you.

Derek

[Mrkirtley800]

Managed to create another boo-boo.  When I re-installed the fiddle yard, I realised I had omitted to allow for the curve in the back scene.  I kept that back scene in place since it gives a neater finish to the appearance, but it did prevent the loco cassettes fitting in place.

So, Saturday afternoon was spent lopping off about 20 cm of the three Grassington fiddle sidings, and giving it another coat of white emulsion.

To allow the cassettes to fit, the end of one of the sidings had to be curved.

A few piccies of the scene from Canal Road in it's hey-day, and the alterations I had to do.  Finally the board in place with the curve of the back scene showing how much fiddle yard board was cut off.

Derek

[Barry O]

Lovely locos and stock Derek

Just been asked to dcc chip a Midland inside framed Johnson 2-4-0 - they are such a beautiful loco to look at and it almost has me wanting to reconvert some of my stock to Midland colours....

 

Baz

[Mrkirtley800]

Thanks Barry.  Interesting about putting a chip in a Midland 2-4-0.  I had doubts that these little locos would be too small for chips, especially if you wanted sound.  Of course, the even smaller 2-2-2s and the little tank locos.  I just wonder.

Derek

[Donw]

If you use efficient motors and gears the low current demands means you can get away with the smaller decoders. There are a number of 2mm locos fitted with decoders. Adding sound might complicate it a little.

Shame about having to cut the fy sidings but the curved backscene does look better.

 

Don

[Barry O]

Thanks Barry.  Interesting about putting a chip in a Midland 2-4-0.  I had doubts that these little locos would be too small for chips, especially if you wanted sound.  Of course, the even smaller 2-2-2s and the little tank locos.  I just wonder.

Derek

Derek

 

sugar cube speakers can be fitted between the frames and a Zimo or Loksound decoder can be very small.  Unlike others I will fit chips to kit built and scratch built locos.

 

Baz

[queensquare]

As Barry said you can fit chips in pretty much anything. This recently completed 2mm Scale MR 1F has a CT chip up between the frames. Quite what she is doing running in at Wadebridge in the far south west may take a bit more explaining!!

 

 

Jerry

[Jock67B]

Wow, queen square, that could be a 7mm model with detail like that!!

Derek, sorry you've had a drama with the fiddle yard but you appear to have found a solution to the problems. The country scenes are sublime!

Kind regards,

Jock.

[Mrkirtley800]

That is a rather nice loco there Queensquare, and 2mm wow!!

Thanks for your helpful comments fellas, very interesting.

Derek

[queensquare]

That is a rather nice loco there Queensquare, and 2mm wow!!

Thanks for your helpful comments fellas, very interesting.

Derek

Thanks Derek. As I've said before this is one of favourite threads on RMWeb, proper modelling and lots of lovely red engines. The little 1F above will, however, be black as my modelling period is the early 1920s although as the SDJR kept its separate identity until 1930 I do tend to use a bit of licence and stretch things a bit!

 

Jerry

[Mrkirtley800]

I don't think there s anything wrong in stretching history or geography for our own ends, Queensquare.  If any inhabitants of Kirkby Malham read my thread they will be horrified at my desecration of their beautiful village. putting a dirty smelly railway there.

Here are a few rather poor pics of where I am now. 

The fiddle yard is now in place and hopefully it will be permanent, and I won't have to take it down again.

The other shows the early morning goods from Skipton behind the old reliable Kirtley goods.  This loco, a K's kit, was bought as a birthday present by Olga in 1965.  It has had a change of motor and driving wheels in that time, although the K's mark 2 motor that came with the kit was quite a good one.  When the K's motors were good they were pretty good, when you got a bad one ---- oh dear!!  best binned.

The pic was taken from the bridge at the end of the scenic section and also shows my ragged baseboard.

I had meant to lay a line where the signal box is standing  (the box being re-located to the other side of the main line) coming off the Grassington spur, and ending up a two or three sidings and a trans-shipment shed for the limestone quarry, similar to the arrangement that used to be at Grassington.

However, there isn't a lot of space to do that, so the "jury's out" on that idea. If I did put a line in there it would give me chance to use my 0-4-0 saddle tank.

Derek

 

[Mrkirtley800]

Thanks Simon, you would be surprised at how much of this layout was planned during the small hours. I went through a period when I would wake up in the middle of the night, could not get back off, so planned the layout. The wiring problems with the double junction were solved in this way.

Derek

[Jock67B]

Derek,

In my opinion, if the board surface was 'tarted up' a bit, I think the yard could be a scenic section in its own right - reminiscent of an interesting marshalling yard! The brick built 'hut' looks similar to the size I need for a bothy at Hurlford - is there anywhere in your archives with info on its build perchance?

Kind regards,

Jock.

[Mrkirtley800]

Hello Jock, if you mean the buildings in the distance in the middle picture, they are scratch built by one of our club members for the club's Aidensfield Junction layout, which has now been scrapped. The builder is now in a care home, so I bought one or two of his buildings for Kirkby Malham to save me a bit of time.

Derek