Leaderboard

With the bunker in place it was on to the cab next. First of all though some business below the footplate: steps. I wanted all the steps to be uniform section. Rather than try to bend neat channel up from flat sheet I reasoned to have a go at filing the required section from a piece of brass bar given how small they are. The whole bar was clamped in the vice for ease of holding whilst first the channel was formed. A serious of slits made to create individual step 'fingers' with a fine piercing saw. These were then fitted in place. A basic firebox has been bent up and soldered in place and the side beading on the cab has also fitted. The cab beading started as a thin etch strip, which was drilled close to the end to accept the handrail wire. The strip was shaped and adjusted and readjusted and adjusted some more with tweezers and small smooth jaw pliers until the shape matched closely with the cab side sheet before carefully soldering in place. A dimple was drilled into the footplate to locate the handrail and I started soldering there. (My first effort commenced with soldering the beading and caused a separation of the handrail - beading join and a fruitless search for ~10mm of 0.3mm dia. n/s wire on the floor.) Carefully the beading was held in correct alignment and soldered a little at a time until it was all in place before filing back to nearly flush. A detail that I noticed when poring over photographs is a detail on 645 class that does not seem to be present on any other type of pannier tank is that the footplate is cut away at the top of the cab steps so I've done the same. (The front guard irons will need to be cut off since I haven't seen a 645 class with any of those.) A cab roof has also been cut rolled and fitted. The final size adjustment was made by filing after fixing in place. I pondered whether fitting this now would restrict access for fitting further detail (springs, reverser, backhead, floor, &c.) but of those details that will be visible around a fireman and guard they are the larger items and the backhead will need to be glued in place anyway since I plan to use a steamprint/NBS one from shapeways, which is plastic. Here's the current status with the chassis and what's left of the Farish body balanced. A replacement safety valve bonnet is on order, and with a chimney and buffers it will be smaller and smaller details. That said the new motor mount (with the tanks lowered the old one will no longer fit and is unsuitable for modification) and body fixings are fairly major details still to be sorted and I shouldn't put them off much longer. According to a thread I found the other day but can no longer locate there is a picture of my chosen engine (769) in Locomotives Illustrated 118 on p19. I've not yet found a copy but I would be very interested to see the picture if anyone knows an alternate source of the image...

With another international move under my belt, this time back to the UK (at least for a third of the time, Outer Mongolia for the remainder) I’ve been left with much less space than I had available in Utah, with very little chance of this materially increasing in the near future. This coupled to the fact that I’d not progressed my plans of Lydford Junction in the last two years have led me over the last couple of months; OK Years again, to evaluate the different plans that I’d had. Lydford Junction’s temporary home. After several false starts, reading quite a few books and reading RMWeb quite a lot more than I should, I looked again at the part’s I liked from Lydford Junction, and came up with a new concept keeping them. The result is Lydford Town, a smash up of the layout of Bridestowe station on the western slopes of Dartmoor, placed where the line comes closest to the village of Lydford, just to the North of the viaduct, borrowing the attractive PDSWJR station building at Brentor. This should still capture running through the landscape feel I think suits 2mm so well, utilising Dartmoor as a backdrop, albeit not on the scale of messers Greenwood and Jones’ empire’s 3D Design for the revised Lydford Town. Only +20 coaches to build before then! Despite Lydford Town’s much smaller scope compared to Lydford Junction, I still have a mountain of stock to build and convert to run anything like a representative schedule, realistically making this a long term prospect. After more deliberating, procrastinating and contemplation, I decided that it would be a good plan to enter the Diamond Jubilee Layout Challenge for the shindig in 2020 as well. A couple of Idea’s bounced around for the DJLC included: · A scenic section of the Princetown branch, which might be a bit boring to operate, and suffered from a lack of points, without an improbable quarry siding shoehorned in. · A section of the old layout of Meldon Quarry, which the viewpoints & Scenic blocks wouldn’t really have worked for, and · A section of the end of Newham goods station in Truro, which again, would be pretty uninspiring to operate. It was at this point that I remembered the old baseboards that I’d put together for the semi-theoretical extension of the Callington Branch in East Cornwall, called Congdon’s Shop, with the aim of fitting this into a boxfile coming in at 714x 233mm. These are not dissimilar to the DJLC dimensions being 600x 239mm, or 240mm depending on how accurate your tape measure converts 9.42”. This has got a far as laying track, and installing TOU’s, but for one reason or the other, has failed to get beyond. A rubbish photo, almost showing the length of the layout. Rather than trying to modify a set of boards already built, it seems to make sense to me to recycle the concept (and correspondingly all the research, stock collated and idea’s) onto a new set of boards built to the right challenge dimensions. Fortunately the amount of tools and information available to layout planners has increased dramatically since 2012, with Templot and NLS maps freely available, coupled with the learnings from my own previous failings and successes. One of the main dissatisfactions with the original plan was that “714mm is just too small a length of track to be interesting.” This statement, on the face of it, is a problem. The DJLC length is specified as 114mm smaller than this. But templot and inkscape to the rescue: Layout plan on Scale map of Callington, showing the DJLC Dimension area and the extra extension after this. Actually, the prototype trackplan is quite a lot shorter than I’d originally guesstimated, and the more important, interesting bits of the station will reasonably fit into a 300ft scale length. This, to me, still feels stiflingly cramped having three entry points to the layout from the fiddleyard. So, I’ve planned the layout to actually be 900mm in length so that following the challenge in 2020, I can replace the backscene side to the full intended dimensions. This allows me to include the yard entry point and thus reducing the fiddleyard entry’s down to two and I feel gives a more open feel. The irony isn’t lost on me that the layout might only be ready for 2050 or the ninetieth anniversary, (a more realistic projected completion date?!?) I wasn’t particularly happy with the straight-curve-straight portion of the platform road on the initial rendition, the old trackplan solely using straight Easitrack B6 turnouts. This time I’ve planned to use B8 curved turnouts soldered up from templot printout’s. Curve radii were specified to be greater than 450mm which has, mostly, been adhered to. The soldered turnout construction will give me more strength, and greater opportunity to adjust and correct when I construct it out of gauge. I am keen to try to use a sector plate type arrangement with this layout to ease the amount of handling stock needs and the faff that this involves. I envisage that cassettes will still have a role to play, acting as the headshunt off the end of the traintable and potentially to load stock onto the layout from extra storage cases. To also assist with this, the straight portions of the table are planned to be made from brass strips, as anyone who’s tried to load up the traverser on St Ruth, this is a difficult task to do this on plain rail with fat fingers. Only three roads are anticipated to be required on the traintable, up to two for passenger and one for goods stock, the vacant road being able to act as the run-around road. A 70mm thrust bearing is used as the pivot, whilst alignment and power should come through cabinet barrel bolts, until I can think of a more unnecessarily complicated way to do it. Fiddleyard and lighting rig plan, along with check for strengthening ribs above things like tie-bars The 3mm ply construction of the baseboards has proved to be remarkably robust, to be honest they have now survived a couple of trips in the hold of a 737 so there can’t be much fundamentally wrong with this for the small size of board required. I plan to use 6mm stripwood rather than cut plywood strips this time though. Life’s just too short, trying to get straight flat edges from a sheet material. So there you have it, the grand sum of what 6 years of paper planning gets you… Nothing to show, a pile of materials, but at least a vague idea about how they ‘should,’ all fit together.

OK, first draft of the pointwork etc is done, some fettling to do but it's removed from the build board and had a quick clean. Isolation gaps next and some wiring then I can test the running with a real loco or two! I'm also thinking about making the narrow gauge track move to the centre of the standard gauge, without sharing a rail etc towards the fiddle yard exit, then I can make dual gauge cassettes that can be rotated easily. Fire up Templot again!

Exhibiting a layout can be a hard work and great care has to be taken to avoid damaging the layout. Stock and 'removable' scenic feature are also liable to damage in transport so packing can be very important. Having an 'everything in its place and a place for everything', approach limits both the potential to forget to take things and the potential for damage. So this week I've been making boxes to help transport bits of Fen End Pit. First up is are the boxes that fit the new large engine shed, a load of various power supplies and controllers and the dragline. (the box with the 'nose' is the one that takes the dragline jib. The plan is that these fit nicely in the foot well of the car when the seats are down. I designed a standard loco box which fits each of my narrow gauge locos. These 'unfold' around the loco holding it gently in place with foam. The 'jig-saw' tab on the top ensures that they remain closed. These boxes have 6mm ply bottom and ends and 3mm ply sides and top, the result is light but sturdy. Finally, one of the concerns I've always had taking the layout out is what happens if I have a catastrophic failure of the DCC system. Given that if the command station or booster fails I would not be able to run any trains at all I decided that having a spare would be a good idea. As I am now using the MERG kits for both buying and building a second control box wasn't a ridiculous cost (~£60 for the CAN-CMD and NB1B booster). I've put these in a box which is the same size as the loco boxes, just added some additional vents and lots of sockets on the ends. So the preparations for our second outing with the rebuilt Fen End Pit to Leighton Buzzard continue, I still have to sort out a better box to put the wagons in, but we are getting there. David

Well it's taken a while, but my Dean Goods project is finally completed. I'm lucky enough to have access to micro-abraisive blasting equipment, so before painting could commence the model was subjected to air abraision. Fifty micron Aluminum Oxide particles were used at 3 bar pressure to clean the surface of the brass. This process ensured that the paint would have a clean matt surface to adhere onto. I like to use an acid etch primer on brass kits, but don't like the idea of spraying an etchant through my air brush for obvious reasons! With this in mind I used can of aerosol acid etch primer from Clostermann coatings http://www.clostermanncoatings.co.uk/products/aerosols.html I usually use grey for priming my models, but at the time only had a can of black to hand, so this was used as a first coat of paint. The black paint made it quite hard to see any surface imperfections, so once it had thoroughly dried I sprayed a quick coat of grey primer on top of the black. Once the primer had dried any imperfections were filled using Milliput putty, which was sanded using extra fine wet and dry paper to give a smooth surface. Once happy with the primed surface, It was finally time to start applying the top coats using my airbrush. The surfaces of the loco that would eventually be green, were masked out and then Indian Red was applied to the remaining areas. I used a 50/50 mix of Precision Paints and Railmatch paints versions of Indian Red, to get a colour that I find convincing. The masking was then carefully removed and the Indian Red was allowed to dry for a couple of days. Once the areas that had been sprayed Indian Red had dried, they were masked out and the loco was then sprayed in Precision Paints pre 1906 GWR green. The green paint was once again allowed to harden for a couple of days, before the footplate, smokebox, chimmney etc were brush painted black. China red was applied to the loco front and tender rear buffer beams. The edges of the frames and valances were also picked out in black using a fine tip brush, befor lining out in chrome orange. The loco was lined using a combination of fox transfers and my Bob Moore lining pen. I find I can get a pretty reasonable result with the pen, as long as i've got an edge on the model to hold the pen against. However for things like boiler bands and cabsides I chicken out and use the Fox transfers! The tender monogramme was from the HMRS sheet. Once the lining was completed, the loco and tender were sprayed using my airbrush with a 50/50 satin finish polyurethane varnish / white spirit mix. Once everything had dried for a couple of days, final assembly could begin. The dome and safety valve cover were were attached to the loco with 5 minute epoxy resin, having previously been polished and then varnished using Humbrol gloss to prevent any oxidization. The boiler handrails were slid through the handrail knobs and held in position with a drop of cynoacrylate glue. The cab windows were glazed and couplings were added using components from CPL products. The buffer heads were fitted into the buffer housings, lamps were put in position on the socket lamp irons and a loco crew was glued onto the footplate. The tender was given a load of coal, a water bucket and some fire irons. Once the Number/Builders/Tenderplates arrived, they were attached to the loco once again using 5 minute epoxy resin. So it's taken a while, but number 2467 is finally finished, I hope you like her as much as I do! Best wishes Dave