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Railway Modelling without Modelling


Ravenser

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I've been pretty busy on the hobby front in the last few weeks. The trouble is that it hasn't involved making any models....

 

A few weeks back I was helping with the DOGA stand at a show in the Midlands, which meant a couple of days away. Very nice and hopefully productive, some nice layouts , and I was a good boy on the spending front.

 

Then the following day someone from one of the magazines came over to photograph the layout for an article, which will (I hope) appear in the next few months. This meant that the week before my show trip was spent frantically tidying up the flat cleaning the layout and the stock, and sorting out one or two minor issues - a dummy point motor reseated so that it doesn't foul the underframe boxes on the coaches (which it was doing in one direction) , and one of the accessory decoders remounted - I'd initially fitted it with double-sided tape, which NCE and Tortoise assure us is adequate for mounting purposes, but it must have shaken loose on the way back from the show. It's now held on with two screws as well.

 

I've written the article, and gone through it three or four times to ensure it reads as easily as possible, unnecessary words are taken out and as much as possible covered within the word limit (I could have probably filled another 500 words, to be honest). Copies of the photos came by post - I've done the captions and the whole lot has gone off to the magazine

 

After that came the club show and two days of stewarding and help breaking down.

 

I'm afraid the cheque book suffered this time - when working with the etches for the 128 I was reminded yet again that a bending tool for etches would be very useful. So I treated myself to the smallest size of Hold And Fold - I'm not intending to build any 7mm etched brass Pacifics, so that should be adequate for my needs

 

And given the shakiness of Hornby I decided I would definitely buy a J50, as there's a risk this might be the only chance I ever get. It's not a loco I definitely "need" but I've occasionally toyed with the idea of a cheap Lima body detailed on some chassis, so - I grabbed an early crest J50/4 off a boxshifter at a good price. A bit of renumbering will be required but 68982 seems to have been allocated to Colwick, Immingham and Frodingham at various times. That will do - I just hope Modelmaster numbers are the same size as Hornby's tampo printing, otherwise I'll have to replace the whole number

 

Then there's my embarrassing little purchase. Someone had a couple of second hand coach kits for LMS Portholes - punched aluminium bodyshell affairs that I thought were BSL, and a fiver for a Brake Third seemed a great bargain

 

Unfortunately it's actually MTK . Next time, read the label

 

Blacklade runs very smoothly with DMUs. We're more or less there with the 31s and loco-hauled trains, though the Airfix 31 is a little sticky - no doubt attributable to its mechanism (I am starting to wonder if a drop of oil may be needed again), and I have had very occasional thoughts that a 25 might be an idea

 

But the steam stock still has some bugs to be shaken out of it. The L1's pony truck is a particular offender, though it seems this is a well-known issue with various fixes being tried.

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/51794-Hornby-l1-front-bogie-derailing/

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/87326-Hornby-l1/

 

(This is by way of a note to myself, so I can find the threads again) .

 

I was somewhat less than chuffed to discover that Hornby's Fowler 2-6-4T has the same arrangement: that's supposed to be near the front of the queue for a decoder in order to improve the motive power situation

 

And I'm even more convinced that the MERG accessory decoder must come out - rebooting the layout after a short is getting very tedious

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