Leaderboard

SOMERSET & DORSET RAILWAY in 7mm This months video from Bath Green Park shows a wide selection of freight and passenger movements that would have been seen in the late 50's and 60's up to closure. In particular I've been investigating milk movements north of Bath. We are all familiar with the milk tanker traffic from Bason Bridge, Wincanton and Bailey Gate that was run to Templecombe for rapid movement to London but I've recently been aware of tanker movements from Bailey Gate which I now understand was part of a circular run of milk traffic from Bailey Gate to Carmarthen and return either empty or with 'whey'. This features in this video. Sit back, turn up the volume and ENJOY

Here is update on my latest project. I have finished the pub, but there are some small things to do. Pictures are some great judges! The pub is, as said in my latest blog entry, a Petite Properties kit. I have used textures from the internet (the lower brick part), Scalescenes and Clever Models for the pub. It took a lot of time to put all the small paper parts into the frames. For the stucco I made my own PDF file with the right size for the stucco parts. Also, the chimney’s needed some extra care. I always work on a small A4 plateau which can be used on almost every table. The Austin A40 woodie is from John Day Models. It is easy to assemble, but hard to paint. A lot of little details. Paint is from the Citadel (main colour and chrome) and AK range (tyres and woodwork). The side shown on the picture is finished. I still have to do the other side and the back lights. When I have finished all the painting, I can finish the model. Suggestions, comments etc are welcome. Thanks for reading. Job

6 months to go to the DJLC. I’m not at all confident of ‘finishing,’ the aim now is to get it in a presentable state now stock is reliably running through all the pointwork. In fact if you compare the how much has changed since June from the top, it doesn’t look like a lot has changed at all – though at least an angle poise isn’t providing the layout lighting now. The layout lighting is provided by three 60LED/m RGBWWW strips which seem at the moment to be more than adequate for the space required to be lit. Each of the 5 channels is controllable from an Arduino to adjust the white balance and eventually when I get some roundtoits, the ability to dim to a sunset/night mode. Each strip is attached to the rig using some aluminium channel which gets quite warm, not too surprising really given the power supply is 65W. Although the top doesn’t appear to have changed too much, looking under the skirt shows that a spaghetti monster has begun to swarm beneath the layout. It’s actually incredibly dull to look at but with a reasonable number of colours and a half-hearted attempt to keep wires in a loom, troubleshooting hasn’t been too onerous. However, my old Maplin wallwart transformer was a casualty, (I won’t be getting another one of those…) after what I think was an issue between my controller and a short across a couple of sleepers that I had forgotten to gap. A fuse has been duly inserted into that line to stop that from happening again. Despite the cautions of my peers from the midland area group, I’ve gone for servo control for the points, mainly due to the lack of space. I’ve fitted a power mosfet on the power feed to each of these, so that when they are not required to move, they cannot. There is also a big chunk of brass section between the delicate tiebars and the servo with engineered tolerance introduced into the mechanism to increase the angle required for the servo to move through. I have had to sacrifice the traintable fiddle-yard (for now anyway) and replaced this with a quick and dirty cassette adaptor. It’s a shame especially as I’d had curved brass strips laser cut by PPD for this rather than having to make a Copenhagen fields mangle to get the exit tracks right, but I’d have probably spent at least another week more than I have trying to make it work. You’ll have also noticed the distinctive shed roof has started to come together. Luckily, the National Rail media store has a copy of a drawing of this which was a good place to start to build up an etch artwork from though I refrained from getting it printed onto a mug as well. I’m a little dubious of the origins of the drawing as there are several things not quite right about it, but it’s closer than my guesstimates would have been. Each leg is made up of four layers of 15 thou NS, which where aligned for soldering using a frame. Yes that really is a lot of scrap NS for not a lot of part – it took 3 A4 sheets. Four layers let me build up the roof joists and create a hole for the cross member to be soldered in. In the end, the holes that I’d etched to allow me to use 1.5mm drills to line everything up with were useless and the layers were aligned by eye. I’d also etched a cutout in each leg piece in order to solder in the Y braces on each leg, though for convenience and adjustability these were designed as inverted V’s. A couple of long strips with square holes etched in made sure that the legs are the right spacing and approximately square. After soldering in some transoms to the roof to give some rigidity to the shed and giving everything a cleanup, the spacers were then glued onto the baseboard. This then still allows for the roof to be removed while I build the rest of it, but lets me ballast over the top of the spacer strips to hide them. Finally, I should mention that D869 of this parish has very kindly offered to build some appropriate motive power for the layout and his progress on this is on his new workbench thread. It should be pointed out that if it wasn’t suitable for his own micro layout, South Yard, he’d probably be building an M7 or a T9 instead, as he has threatened to on a couple of occasions. Please hope for good weather for me over the next week, so that I might get outside to put some paint on the tracks. Until next time, Chris.

Due to a senior moment, I forgot that I'd ordered one of these some time ago from Model Railways Direct. I duly ordered one from Kernow so imagine my surprise when two finally arrived. Hey ho. As has been documented elsewhere, the colour of these vans looks a little on the light side. As I never saw one in service prior to 1923, I'm not qualified to say whether the LSWR brown is the wrong shade. The general opinion is that it is. Having a second model meant that I was prepared to have a go at doing something about it. The chassis unscrews with 4 screws and drops away. The false floor then comes away without difficulty. I simply pushed it out by poking a small screwdriver through the veranda opening to tap it out. The tricky bit is the glazing. Despite my original assumptions, the door ends are not part of the glazing shell and can be removed carefully. The guards look out duckets are part of the glazing shell. Working carefully with a blade, the glue seal can be broken and the glazing can be prised inwards. I found it helpful to snap off the two retaining lugs fitted to the underside of the roof. All in all it took about half an hour to disassemble. The lettering was removed by gentle rubbing with a scratch brush, as my usual method of IPA and cotton buds didn't seem to want to work. I then brush painted the sides and removed duckets with Vallejo Acrylic Chocolate Brown 70.872 and was able to work around the existing handrails etc. I have no idea how accurate this is but it seems a fair representation. Refer to earlier point about qualifications. I did paint over the tare lettering on the lower plank. The body was then given a couple of coats of Klear before transfers were applied from an old PC Models set (sheet 13). A couple more coats of Klear to seal and it was time to reassemble. I cut away the nicely moulded stove and handrail from the cabin interior as you can't see it and I wanted to add some lead for additional weight. Taking it a step further, I fitted P4 wheels after first removing the brake gear (this pushes out after breaking the glue join) and cutting a small recess to allow it to go up against the thinned down W irons. These have to have about half a mil taken off for the axles to fit nicely in the new brass bearings. All reassembled, just waiting couplings.

A quick report from our trip to Pontefract this weekend. An excellent show where the organisers made everyone feel really welcome throughout the weekend and with a bit of a 'do' after the show on Saturday evening. St Ruth also won a pot for the best scenic layout . Our congratulations also to the layouts that won the other cups including Mills Bridge which was awarded best layout. I must confess that I completely failed to take any photos whatsoever so there are no piccies to accompany this post... Sorry! EDIT: Andrew Hyatt kindly sent me some photos so here are a couple showing the layout 'in context'... but one of those was when we were packing away.

In my previous article I mentioned that the next job was to align and join the ‘stage boards.’ What I didn’t mention was a particular feature that one of these must have. The board that needs to be removable is the one in front of the door on the left. Portable layouts normally use some form of alignment which can be part of the joining mechanism or can be stand alone. Almost without exception these stick out and this means that some ‘wriggle room’ is needed to disengage a board from its neighbour. However, a large and heavy permanent layout is not amenable to wriggling. Thus I required a means of being able to align a board as well as allow it to be removed without moving it’s neighbours. The method I used is not, I am sure, novel or unique and I lay no claim to its invention but it seems to work. I anticipate that Bosmelin will remain ‘up’ most of the time and only taken down during the winter for dry storage or hopefully on occasions when it might be required for an exhibition. And as it fills most of the ‘Railway Parlour’ – blocking the door in the process – easy access is definitely required as few of my circle are lissom youths any longer! Furthermore Dawn requires access to the garage. Essentially, I have fitted removable dowels at each end of one board. I had some brass tube and round bar which by a stroke of luck were a sliding fit. The problem was I didn’t have much of either. The tube was o/d of 5/8″ (a tad under 16mm) and the i/d was 1/2″ (about 12.5). As I was attending the London Model Engineer’s Exhibition I assumed that I would be able to easily obtain some matching brass tube and bar even if it was metric now. Not so. All the stands that were selling such material had none that were a sliding fit and it seems that the gauge of the tube was less. In discussion with stallholders it seems that my tube and bar were left over from a special job. (Or as I suspect they are quite old and in those days material was more generous!) Much humming and harring followed about the best way to overcome the shortage of material. To cut the story short my solution was to cut the bar into short lengths and to use this as a ‘bush’ fitted into the wooden board ends. The 1/2″ bar is pretty sturdy so there’s little risk of any misalignment due to bending. The chief risk is that I lose one of the four dowels I made from the bar for reasons which will be obvious. So next I need to concoct a means of attaching the dowels to the boards permanently. I think a length of cord attached to an anchor will suffice. Dowels and bushes during manufacture. Won’t win any prizes but are functional and hidden in the ends of the boards. Drilling holes in round things can be tricky and in my collection of acquired tools I have a vee block with a ‘U’ clamp. I used this to cut the bar for the dowels and will also use it to drill a hole into the bar for the cord to pass through. An excellent way to hold round things when you need to cut, drill, mill or anything really. For drilling accurate holes a drill press is an enormous help although a high quality one with assured accuracy will be expensive. Most hobbyists therefore tend to look at the more economical machines most of which are made in China. I expect that the quality of today’s offerings is higher than older machines. Mine is an older model which I’ve had for some time. The main area of concern is spindle wobble and it was a bit hit and miss if, and how bad, these earlier machines might be in this respect. I was lucky and mine was always quite good. I was however, never very happy with the supplied chuck and had in mind a replacement for some time. A new 13mm chuck was therefore one of my purchases at the MEEx. The taper on the machine is a B16 and RDG tools sell a range of suitable replacement chucks which seem much better than the original. They are noticeably chunkier and consequently heavier. When I removed the old chuck the spindle also came out of the drill. The spindle is the part driven by the motor and is held vertical in the head by the quill which usually has two fixed bearings top and bottom. The quill is the bit which moves up and down and is held in place by the handle and a spring. The spindle is held in the bearings by a single external circlip. It’s anything but complicated. When the spindle came out the circlip had obviously failed. This necessitated taking the whole contraption to apart to access the circlip which was bent. At least it was an opportunity to clean the sliding surfaces and re-grease and oil the moving parts. I thought I had some circlips but despite searching high and low I could not find any. I did find my tin of M8 bolts which I needed so the effort was not entirely wasted. Resigned to buying some I retired to browse the Screwfix website. Circlips……. right…….a Thousand! I don’t want a thousand. £13.00 as well. I only want one and maybe a spare. I found the range sold a small blister pack of various unspecified sizes for £1.49. It was worth a punt – but nothing inside was the right size. Eventually I found a handy pack (64 clips) at Toolstation for £2.71 advertised as ranging from 6mm to 25mm but no mention of the intermediate values. Fortunately, there was one in the pack that fitted and the remainder are now on the shelf where I expect they’ll gather dust for ever. So now I was ready to drill the holes for my alignment bushes. I had tried to find a 5/8th drill at the MEEEx with no success the nearest I found was 41/64ths – a fraction too big but as I planned to glue the bush into the wood a tolerance would be useful. But, 41/64 was too big for my new chuck. I had toyed with the 16mm option but it was a good deal heavier than the 13mm and decided it was too beefy for my drill. I returned to Toolstation and bought a 16mm ‘Blacksmith’s’ drill with a reduced shaft that would fit the 13mm chuck. Away we go! Not so fast Gunga Din! The board end that I was drilling was so big it could not be fixed to the table so needed to be held this meant that the big drill tended to vibrate the wood. This was not going anywhere. So it came about that I drilled the hole with a 16mm flat bit held in a Black & Decker hammer drill. The depth drilled was at the most 68mm and I was concerned that it wouldn’t be straight. As it happened I got away with it. The bushes were glued in with Gorilla glue and while this set the dowels were inserted to ensure alignment and the boards held together with 2 off M8 bolts held by T nuts (one in each board -a threaded and a clear drilled.) These also help alignment and can be used alone but accurate dowels are er.. well… more accurate. The finished fitting. Sliding brass dowel for alignment and M8 Bolt in T Nuts for joining.

A while back a built up four Cambrian Kits with a Southern Railway theme. They were given a coat of primer and have been awaiting spraying as well as the internal planking painting on the open wagons. One of the newer Cambrian Kits is the LSWR 10T van kit. I understand the S&DJR had some of these wagons as well. The SR classified them as D1410. The kit itself goes together nicely. I've used Gibson wheels and brass bearings. I've sprayed the underframe in Tamiya Nato black and preshaded the bodywork. The main body colour is Tamiya Hull Red. I think the sole bars should be brown also. Can anyone confirm this? Buffers are from the excellent Lanarkshire Models range. I just need to fit a rain strip on the roof and paint it. I'll finish this wagon in mid-30's-40's livery with smaller lettering from HMRS. Here the van is seen in the company of a SR/LNER 12T Mineral Wagon built between 1945-1946 at Ashford to D1390/D192. Same process again with painting but I've feeling I need to repaint this wagon in unfinished wood effect with painted in iron work. I'll put an order in with Eileen's soon so will order some metal strip to make door bangers. Below are the last of the SR builds for the time being. From left to right are an 8 plank 12T D1379 wagon as well as a 5 plank D1380 wagon. These are built and finished the same as the first two kits. More soon and apologises to Sal Solo for the title of this entry. Cheers, Mark

Due personal reasons and some other modelling interest there is been some silence from around my modelling projects. I still have to paint some cars, but that have to wait. In a box I had a lot of OO gauge cars waiting for a project were one of them could be used. Some months ago, I found two cheap showcases. The cars moved from the box to the showcases. Now I noticed I had just bought cars from which I thought they could be useful. But I like to use them in my favourite way as historical elements in a diorama. I bought a small book called “Cars we loved in the 1950’s” from Giles Chapman. This book is my guide to build up a collection of 1950’s cars. For every car I did some background research. Very useful, because I discovered for instance that an Oxford model of a Morris Minor 1000 was to date in the early 1960’s due his colour. I also made cards for my models with the name of the car and the date of production, with a black and white advert of the car. Some adverts are Dutch. For instance, the BOVAG advert . I also started with a new building project. This time a small diorama with the pub from Petite Properties. A friend of me, a picture frame maker, helped me with the design of the base. The base is to be finished, when the pub is finished. I will build the pub using textures from Scalescenes, Internet and self-made textures. Progress is going slow, so you will have to wait a while before you can see the finished diorama. But for me the process of my modelling activities is just as important as the result. I want to thank everyone who is reading my blog. I appreciate the comments and support I have received this year. I want to wish all of you a good Christmas Holliday and a healthy New Year. Greetings, Job