Leaderboard

Since my last entry I have had a rethink on the curved scissors crossover. It is critical to the running of the layout and being on a curve I have decided to simplify the entrance/exit of the Up and Down storage sidings by using a single crossover at each end. These will be C12 1600mm radius one will permit trains to access the down main from the UP sidings whilst the other from the DOWN sidings to the UP main. My decision followed additional work on the working timetable and following the movement of trains in and out of the storage sidings. I realised there was no need for the second crossover at each end which enabled simplification of the trackwork. First page of 2 of the working timetable Proposed plan of Storage Sidings C12 1600mm curved crossover - Templot Here is the progress made on the first of the crossovers with the 1 in 12 crossing V's in place.

Having built all the signals it seems like a good idea to install them. The first step in the process is the baseboard waltz. Way back I was asked about my baseboard construction, and I said I would post some pics when I shifted it all about. Much has been said about baseboard building over the years but it basically boils down to designing them to suit the type of layout you want to build in the space available. So firstly, castors. All the boards and for that matter the workbench and various cupboards in the railway room are all on castors. Why ? Well, I am no spring chicken and I am not the fastest modeller about. Building it all from kit or scratch takes a bit of time, and there is nothing rtr out of the box for the followers of pre grouping Caledonian. ( well pre group anything really, in fact if you are EM or P4 the chances are that the boxes rtr comes in are more use than the models ) Anyway, back to castors. I expect this will be the last serious layout I build, I will be well into my dotage by the time I get anywhere near finished, whatever finished is. So to get at things and do maintenance I need to be able to move things about easily. Hence the castors and the lift up boards. Note that they are all on levelling screws; you would not believe the way these big old tenements move about unless you have lived in one. So castors on levelling screws. All the boards have 2 sets of connectors . The blue ones are 4 pole 20 A lighting connectors on 4core 1.5mm flex to give the bus for the up and down lines. The whole lot can be switched to DCC via the main controller if needed. At that size you are not going to suffer volt drop issues. The grey connector is a 25 way D type for all the control side stuff. You can buy the connecter and wire them ( yes I used to ) but really there are folk out there on the internet that will sell you a male to female 3 m one already wired for a few pounds. They might as well sell them to modellers, who needs a parallel printer cable extension these days? So, heres the two curved boards out and rolled back. They are really light and easy to move. I intend to keep the scenery light too. I have gone for a policy of local control. Making the baseboard framing 8 inches deep give room for all the control panels and more than sufficient sufficient depth for all the underboard stuff. Makes the control panels easy to wire and maintain. The signal control panel ready for installation. Bonnets up. The rear face of the boards are hinged, so they can be lifted and propped like a car bonnet. Again I did this looking forward to ease of maintenance in the future. Backscenes are held on with bolts and wing nuts. The photographic images I will use are going to be easier to apply on the flat, so having them come off easily is a good idea. These radio controlled plugs are a great idea, no grovelling about under boards to turn all the power to the railway on or off. So there we are. I appreciate that this is just one way of building baseboards but I do see modellers making layouts that will just be impossible to maintain as time goes on. I have done exactly that in the past and can testify that it is really frustrating to damage stuff while trying to get at something that has gone wrong, hence all the castors and hinges.

I have made significant progress on my Bakewell station project over the weekend and last few days. All four chimneys are now installed in the building roof. These included 3 double chimneys and 1 single which all match the correct height. One has been painted. Stonework details have been added including a representation of the Duke of Rutland's coat of arms carved out into the stonework above 2 of the window voids. Stone buttress details have been added by drilling random holes into the stone; the effect is quite pleasing especially now once the first base coat of paint has been added. I used Humbrol no.63 matt sand acrylic as the basecoat which has enhanced the dressed stonework details. I believe that the station will need a fair degree of weathering to recreate the dirt and grime from steam days. Certainly the roof slates need a fair degree of dry brushing as well as gutters and down pipes to be added The stonework at the moment is ultra clean which is how it is at the present building; this is currently used as office accommodation. Once the painting has finished I will be adding the windows and doors which will bring the station alive and I will be reporting this in my next blog entry

The latest loco project for Brent is to make a Modified Hall, to that end I have picked up one of the recent Bachmann model at a bargain price to use as a basis. The first question is which loco to model, for this I am rather torn. As it comes the model is in BR green (weathered) with a Hawksworth tender. The first Modified Hall to be recorded with a Hawksworth tender is 6971 which was built in October 47. (As an aside if I can find the October carriage working / working timetable my intention is to shift the operating period to October 47, which both captures the Mod Hall build and better justifies the number of Hawksworth coaches) So the work required: Re brand the tender to GWR - I am tempted to give a spare Hornby Hawksworth tender a coat of Klear to darken the green and use this given the Bachmann tooling is rather crude. Rebuild the front end with the Brassmasters parts (so it actually looks like a Modified Hall) Rewire the loco to get the decoder into the tender. Renumber / Name. Add GWR lining to the cab and firebox The alternative approach is to go for a wartime build loco, in black with plated cabside window and no name. This will need a full respray in black, and require the purchase of a Collett Tender to complete the job. So far I have made an attempt at removing the lining from the cabsides and replacing with HMRS transfers. The hardest part being the area above the cab window which was barely wide enough to fit the transfer (in fact I cheated and cut off the lower orange line.) This was my first attempt at lining a loco and I am actually quite happy with the result (which will look at lot better with a dusting of weathering to blend it into the cabside. The only problem is that the Bachmann lining is a lot more red (not sure if that is the BR colour, but its similar to the lining on my GWR hall from Bachmann). So the rest of the boiler will need lining as well. I need to work out how to get the Hornby tender to attach to the Bachmann loco, and get the required bits from Brassmasters to convert the front end.

I recently (last week at S4 North) aquired an MPD 3F built in P4 and fitted with a sound chip from Digitrainsound Zimo specifically for a 3F with a sound file by Paul Chetter. Now whilst I have DCC/sound for most of my diesels I have never been impressed by the sound chips for steam locos, untill now! I was blown away by the sound and that when you turn of the power the loco coasts (no chuffing) before coming to a stop. I had considered just running the layout in Dc for the steam era and DCC for the diesels, but this sound chip is causing a major re think. The problem will now be fitting sound chips into locos that are complete and where there is no chance of putting a speaker in the tender. Paul Marshall Potter on his Albion Rd blog has fitted some chips into ex GWR Pannier tanks so I think further investigation will be required. I also see that people have fitted sound chips into the delightfull Hornby Peckett so if it goes into one of them then anything is possible. The 3F since I aquired it has been renumbered (and re weathered to hid the shiny bits around the new number) to one of Shrewsburys allocation in the mid 1950s and the loco was photographed on the Coalport branch so I know it worked in my area. This could be expensive!

Couple more FCS builds done/near done Done is an EFE AEC Hoover artic, my usual construction, Faller wheels, guide, motor mount, Nigel Lawton motor etc, scratchbuilt trailer chassis in plastic. In build but nearly done, LBC cast resin AEC Regal III in West Riding livery, pretty much same build.

I have been modelling on a semi-serious basis now since the early 1970's and in my collection of rolling stock are items that I have no recollection of buying or detailing. Some of these have absolutely no place at Blagdon so occupy a separate box to the other stock which is relevant to the Wrington Vale. That box currently hold two Airfix auto coaches, both in as built condition (with windows both ends) and detailed with the Dart Castings kit, a Stephen Poole 64xx 0-6-0PT that recently acquired a Cotswold etched chassis and the Gem Cambrian 2-4-0T, this though may find a place on a future Cambrian micro layout (Fronfraith). In addition to these is the subject of this brief article, the Siphon H, not sure whether it was Airfix or Mainline that did this but I'm quite sure that the prototype would never have found its' way to Blagdon, or any other branch line for that matter. On a related matter, I do sometimes think that as modellers we overdo the incidence of Siphons attached to branch passenger trains. My understanding is that from the 1920's on, road haulage really ate into the railways share of goods traffic using army surplus lorries and being able to collect milk direct from a farm gave road hauliers an unbeatable advantage. Blagdon was supposed to have a reasonable trade in milk but the photos I have seen show this being loaded into the guards compartment of passenger trains. The amount of milk from the whole of the Wrington Vale would hardly justify even a 6 wheel Siphon (although I do have two of those). Siphons were of course used on other traffic, the strawberry trains on the Cheddar line for example and prior to 1920 there are photographs of Siphons on passenger trains, an early photo of the Abbotsbury branch train shows a milk truck (not a Siphon) attached to the branch train. Siphons appear to have been more generally used on main line trains, either attached to an express passenger or as part of a dedicated milk train that would serve a milk processing centre (the milk having been taken from the farm to the centre by lorry).. I digress, back to the Siphon H. This was detailed all those years ago with new bogies, brake rodding, wire handrails and lamp irons, additional trussing, brake and steam pipes and screw couplings. Sorting out the models for the "non-Blagdon" box I had another look at this and thought it could be further improved with, naturally, gas pipes on the roof. I laid out the two pipes running along beside the lamps, one of smaller diameter than the other but as I don't have any information about how the feed came up from the gas cylinders I have done no more than this. If anyone can clarify how the gas reached the roof I'd love to know, the vehicle had end doors so I can't imagine they'd have reached the roof that way.. I have also noticed that those who have commented in the past on detailing this model query the bogies that were used. The Russell book has several photos of Siphon H's and all have the American 9ft variety as my model. Sadly though none of the photos show the arrangement of the plumbing on the roof. Only 20 of these vehicles were ever built so they were very rare birds indeed. The Siphon G was far more common although there were more variations over the various lots. If I was doing this again I'd certainly change the handbrake levers and maybe add a little more underframe detail. I also need to remove the inner bogie step. Ah well, the trouble with this hobby is that as you delve further the shortcomings of your work become apparent with the ncourse of time. Like many people though I like the brown vehicles and the body of the Airfix / Mainline model is excellent. The model was quite heavily weathered using Hubrol washes, in this case "dust" colour which, from years washing my various cars, appears to be the predominant shade of "dirt.". You can rest assured though I won't be doing this to the auto coaches.

After my previous entry about the Gooch Standard Goods, I had thought that adding the smoke-box would simply be a case of copying the method I had used to fix the firebox. In the event, things were to prove not so simple! The main parts for the smoke-box comprise front and back plates, a wrapper (with a hole for the chimney) and a ring, described as “boiler ring (back of smokebox)”. A moment’s thought pointed out to me that this ring would have to be threaded around the boiler before attaching anything to the front – one trap for the unwary eliminated Unlike the fire-box, there are also half-etched overlays in the kit, to represent the rivet detail on the front of the smoke-box and on the wrapper, so I wasn’t going to have to raise lots more rivets! There were, however alternative overlays for horizontal or inclined cylinders, while the main wrapper also has dotted lines, to indicate where to cut off small sections, in the case of horizontal cylinders. This sent me off on another piece of research, to decide which version I should use. The RCTS volume covering Broad Gauge engines doesn’t appear to mention inclined cylinders, nor could I determine much from the various photographs I have of these goods engines. The Oakwood Press volume of Mike Sharman’s drawings does, however, clearly show inclined cylinders on the Banking Class ‘Plato’ and, less clearly, on Standard Class ‘Cato’. No doubt I could obtain the relevant information from the Broad Gauge Society but, since I am planning to use the boiler for a Waverley Class 4-4-0, which both drawings and photographs confirm to have had horizontal cylinders, I chose this option. Waverley class 4-4-0 So, following the method I had previously used successfully for the firebox, I formed the smoke-box wrapper around the etching for the smokebox front. This was easier than in the case of the firebox, because the sides of the smokebox are straight, rather than having the complex curvature of the firebox. I remembered to thread the ring over the boiler and then soldered the ‘smokebox back’ to the front of the boiler, exactly as I had done at the firebox end (previous post). To fit the ring, I tinned the joining surfaces of both the ring and the smokebox back-plate and then used my soldering iron as a mini-hotplate, by clamping it lightly in a vice. By this method, I could hold the back-plate, already fixed to the end of the boiler, against the hot iron, while teasing the boiler ring into position with tweezers. The iron melted the tinned areas and the two parts were joined, with no damage to the rivet detail on the ring. So far, so good. Sadly, I had not foreseen the next problem! Unlike the firebox, the length of the smokebox was not sufficient to allow me to insert my soldering iron so as to complete the joint of the wrapper to the back-plate I tried a longer pointed soldering bit, which could just reach, but I couldn’t see what I was doing and, sadly, ended up melting a blob of solder over those nice rivets on the smokebox ring :( Time to pause and re-consider my strategy. I turned to Iain Rice’s book on ‘Etched Loco Construction’ for inspiration and found a few options. I decided that my best bet would be to remove the smokebox front and, instead of starting from the front, I would attach the wrapper to the smokebox back in the first instance. Since I had already formed the shape of the wrapper, this was fairly easy to carry out. Next step was to ‘sweat’ the smokebox front onto the wrapper. Since there is an additional overlay, I did not need to worry too much about getting solder on the face of the smokebox front so, as with the ring, I laid the front on my clamped soldering iron and then applied flux and solder from the inside of the smokebox. I found it quite difficult to hold everything in alignment but, eventually, the front of the smokebox was secure. The fit wasn’t as good as I had hoped but the gaps on part of the curve will hopefully be covered by the etched overlay. Now that the parts were all fitted together, I used some desolder braid to remove the excess solder that I had carelessly run over the detail of the boiler ring. This worked pretty well From this stage, it should now simply be a case of adding detail overlays and various boiler fittings. I realise that this entry has only covered a very small part of the overall construction but it serves to document some areas that I found difficult. I intend to turn my attention next to the design of a chassis for the Waverley class 4-4-0 “Rob Roy”, onto which I shall mount this boiler. Mike

So, after finishing the Royal Scot it is time to return the Armstrong. At last!!