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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/09/11 in all areas

  1. Mixing and pasting track ballast currently looms large and I am attaching details of the procedure that works for me. I prefer the small poppy seeds to gritty mineral sands. I use wallpaper paste as the adhesive. It should offer less resistance than PVA should there be a change of plan or track repairs needed. I use simple tools, a small plastic bowl (ex Christma Pudding basin), stainless steel spatula and a small screw driver: I use a heavy duty wallpaper paste which has been chopped finer using the Kenwood liquidiser in the kitchen. Hopefully the finer powder mixes more quickly and easily. To make sure that the mix can be used well before it starts setting I only make a small batch at a time. I use around 8ml of water (1/2 a tablespoon): I add sufficient dry paste powder to make a stiff mix (around half a teaspoon full): I then stir in sufficient dry seeds to make a stiff porridge. In this example, just over 1/4 ounce or just under 10 gm: The porridge is then spread between or along the tracks using the spatula: For smaller places I use the screw driver: For the sides of the track I make a wedge or fillet which extends about 1cm from the edge of the rail: This is then flattend between the sleepers and smoothed into place: Then depending on my patience I can use the small screw driver to clean out between individual sleepers: Spare or left over material can then be placed between the rails using the small screw driver: Experience suggests that it can be three or four days before the mix completely dries. Prior to running trains the track is brushed gently with an old tooth brush and the surplus seed carefully removed with a vacuum cleaner. The tops of the rails are then cleaned with a damp cloth. Too little paste or applying the porridge too long after mixing may result in a very fragile ballast which can disappear up the vacuum cleaner!
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  2. Right then, after a couple of weeks away off modelling and and with missus gone back for a while ive embarked on something new. My deltic is slowly progressing through the paint shop, so at a bit of a loose and and filled with ideas from a EE drawing of a 'super deltic' i had a look around to see what i could do. Reading the notes, it was to have 2 turbo charged deltic 18 engines rated at 2300 hp each and with an overall (estimated) weight of 117 tons it would have been an extremely poweful machine. according to the book BR actually looked at ordering some i think around 1967 but nothing ever came from it, possibly the HST lobby won through... Anyway it looks to be a class 50 body shell with a deltic roof cooling group on the top, so remembering i had a very knakered lima 50 body and a scrap spare lima deltic i did a bit of measuring and it looked possible to merge the 2 so out came the drills and saws: With the roof sections of the deltic and 50 chopped out i had to think how to create the 2 bodyside grills as per the drawing, coudnt think of anything to hand that looked right until i looked at the 50 radiator bodyside grills and thoughts of cutting them out and mounting the horizontally aproximately where the diagram showed, so i bit the bullet and whipped out the drill and cutting discs. Suddenly, after the speculative cutting and filling it was starting to take shape and as the cutting and gluing progressed i found myself thinking instead of it being just a rough chop glue and then scrap it excersise for something to do it was actaully becoming quite a pleasing new might have been/never was loco project. Knowing it was a bit of 'make it up as you go' sort of project i stated thinking of possibilites for the the other grills, another raid on the scrap body box found a battered wester which fited the bill for some extra grills so, the cutting disc came out again: the grills were roughly (very!) hacked out and slightly squared up, i found the best way to get the into the body was to measure up the body and the grills and find a centre line and work from there, basically to keep it as simple as possible and using the old 'if i looks right it is right' mentality just drew around the cut out grills and the chopped out the hole in the 50 body and gluing in, thankfully the body thikness of the western and 50 arnt too dissimilar so a flush finish is easyish to get. After only a couple of nights doctoring it was starting to take shape. i should have stripped the 50 1st but with a lack of modelstrip and getting a bit carried away with the chopping itl have to wait. Lots of filling will be required i know but i feel its coming together pretty well, the roof still needs some work so its loose stil,l but i reckon itl be quite a handsome beast. Would love to know if anybody else has done one or has thought of doing one, as im sure alot of people will have a copy 'the deltic locomotives of british rail' by Brian Webb ( one of the drawings just creeping in at the botom of the pic above) so id be surprised if no ones attempted moddelling one of the drawings towards the end. Anyway thats all for now, so if anybody on here has any thoughts/suggestions or modelled one themselves drop us a reply, id love to see what other models are out there. Thanks James
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  3. Greetings. Over the last few days I have been experimenting with making pine trees using sea moss and scatter. I have not used this material before, but it seemed to be good for this small scale. I made up some grey slurry from PVA, polyfilla and grey acrylic paint for the bark coating, and used an idea I've seen somewhere about pushing soft wire up through the trunk to give it strength and allow it to be straightened safely. I needed to try to create some pines for theembankment and the hill behind the tunnel, as in this 1960's photo of Glenfield ( apologies for quality of scan): Here are a few of the model pines just temporarily put in place - though by no means perfect, I think they are starting to lend this part of the layout some atmosphere. : I am going to try a second batch of 3-4 pines plus some other varieties, though I'm not going overboard as I think it may be too much for the little hill on my version of Glenfield - I actually quite like it just with the four! Regards, Chris
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  4. Hi Tom. Your easitrackwork looks very neat. How are you intending to work the tie bars? I assume you're testing with a longbase or bogie vehicle at every opportunity? Regards Chris
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