Leaderboard

On a number of occasions over the years, I have posted comments indicating my dis-satisfaction with the ‘Mainline’ Dean Goods that is currently serving on my North Leigh layout. It’s really too late for my period, with Belpaire firebox and other details that place it long after the turn of the century. My model Dean Goods at North Leigh I have recently been following Mikkel’s conversion of a ‘Belpaire’ Dean Goods into an earlier ‘round-top’ version and have thought of following suit but several events have sent me towards modelling an Armstrong Standard goods instead. As readers of my Broad Gauge (BG) blog will know, my BG models were inspired by the knowledge that one of my wife’s ancestors was based at Bullo Pill at the time of a major accident in 1868. The official accident report provided me with ‘recipes’ for building two ‘authentic’ GWR trains of the period: an express mail train and a goods cattle train. Since then, however, more research into the family history has revealed a number of other engines that were driven by members of the family and one of these was (standard gauge) Armstrong Goods No.684 (built 1872). As I thought about this, I realised that I had completely forgotten about having commented last year on ‘RosiesBoss’s conversion of the ‘Mainline’ model. Looking again at his version, I thought it also looked too ‘late’ for my modelling period, so I decided it was time to go back to some basic research. Armstrong’s Standard Goods The Standard Goods started life as the ‘388 class’ in 1866 and set a pattern which was closely followed by Armstrong’s successor, William Dean, with his own well-known ‘Goods’ class. The Armstrong version had a slightly longer wheelbase (by 2 inches) and a boiler that was 9” longer (at 11 feet), although the engine was a little shorter overall, owing to a much smaller footplate for the enginemen. The earliest engines had no cabs but these were added from 1879 onwards. As was usual with long-lived GWR engines, a long list of modifications was made at both the Swindon and Wolverhampton works, resulting in a bewildering number of variants. If only GWR engines really did all look the same, as some commentators have suggested! To build a model, the first thing I needed was a reasonable drawing and I soon found that there are several pitfalls that I shall record briefly. I first turned to Russell’s ‘Pictorial Record of GW Engines’, which contains several photos and drawings of these engines but they all show examples after they had been re-built with many Dean-type features, including large domes and shorter chimneys. I tried tracing some drawings from this book to compare the dimension with the Dean Goods and realised that they are not always reproduced accurately. When looking at a drawing by Maskelyne, it became obvious that the vertical dimensions as printed did not match the horizontal scale. Because of this, the boiler pitch appears very similar to the Dean Goods, whereas at should be 3½” lower, which makes a noticeable difference to the appearance of the prototypes. Next, I turned to Holcroft’s ‘Ouline of GW Locomotive Practice’, where I found a good side-on illustration of engine No.31 (built in 1872) with a cab but still with the smaller type of dome as originally fitted. This book also contains a drawing of Armstrong’s earlier goods engine, No.361. By E.L.Ahrons. When I overlaid this drawing onto the photo of No. 31, it was clear that they were virtually identical above the footplate, so I decided to use this drawing as a basis for designing my model. The earlier design had a shorter wheelbase to the leading axle and a different design of safety valve cover My plan is to use the technique I used for my model of a Broad Gauge ‘Gooch Standard Goods’, with a length of brass tube to provide a strong structural component around which I shall 3D-print the other features, such as smoke box front and backplate. I have not yet decided on the chassis. The wheelbase is so close to the ‘Dean Goods’ that I may look to use a commercial chassis. My intention is to present my model in the livery introduced in 1881. This was the first move away from the original Holly Green and also introduced Indian Red frames and orange chrome lining. At that stage, the wheels remained green, although this was changed to red a few years later. I have colourised an early photograph to show the effect I wish to achieve: My coloured impression of Armstrong Goods No.31, c.1881 I have taken the plunge and made a plan. In succeeding posts, I hope to follow through to a complete model – it may take some time Mike

I'm completely baffled by the interface of this website these days. Navigation seems like a challenge game. Anyway, here is some progress on the engine shed I'm building for my O.16.5 engine. It's modelled loosely on the shed at Maespoeth on the Corris Railway. Painting the stone blocks is a slow process and it'll take a while before I can move on to building the roof.

Over the weekend and Monday evening I pressed on with a bit more work on the Roxey Mouldings coaches I've been making. As covered earlier, the first of these is a brake third which I mostly finished last year, and the one on the right is a composite which I've made in the last week or so. Weirdly, the composite went together without any head-scratching, whereas I had to resort to a bit of guesswork with the brake. I was puzzled as to why this should be the case do decided to have a closer look at the contents. It turned out that the brake had been packed with the wrong instructions! Obviously they were still mostly relevant or I'd have been all at sea but I thought it odd that they made no mention of the corridor connections and left me in the dark with regard to the trussing arrangements. Other than the fact that you need to raid the scrap box for a few vital bits (I think queen posts are part of the basic structure of a coach, so should be included in the parts, similarly with cornice and rain strips) these are very good kits that go together without any difficulty whatsoever. The parts all fit straight off the etch and there's no need for any fettling beyond trimming back locating tabs and maybe opening up a hole or slot a smidge. With the first one, I followed the guidelines about forming the tumblehome. This involves forming the tumblehome first, then making a sharp fold beneath it for the lip or ledge which abuts the chassis. As I was forming the latter, though, I found that the lower beading at the base of the tumblehome was starting to crease inwards. With the second one, I took the route of partially forming the ledge first, then forming the tumblehome, then going back and completing the fold for the ledge. This seemed to work a bit better so I'll try to keep it in mind for the next one! I'm perfectly happy with the brake but it's one area where I wanted to improve things on the next build. Both roofs are now fitted and fixed in place and I've begun detailing and final finishing. There are no seats so these will need to be provided. Again, I tend to feel that some provision for these should be in included in a kit, although I know that many kits don't. But the Comet, Slaters and PC kits I've made did include seats so I've taken that to be the norm. I think I might be able to get away with some very basic scratchbuilding as there just needs to be a hint of the seats' presence through the windows. They''re not like Centenary coaches where the interiors are easily visiblle. Hope this has been of interest to anyone looking at the Roxey range. They made some good albums as well. Cheers!

Further work on the buildings continues with the 'new' sand dryer building, which from aerial photos in my my possession was built in the late 1940s . I found a stock of old Formcraft bricks which I decided to use to build the front with it's pillars and use slaters english bond sheet for the remainder. On reflection this was probably not my best idea as it took rather longer to build than anticipated. My first attempt at adding 'sand' by using talc did not convince so I raided that grand daughters covered sand pit - with permission - a borrowed a cup full. Next building project is to clad the arches of Barrow Road with Wills coarse stone........

I had previously made the cylinders and motion but not actually mounted them to the chassis. After pondering how to do this for some time, I settled on the idea of a removable unit to mount both cylinders. As you see in the first picture, this is made from a piece of thin PCB, which will be horizontal on top of the chassis block, held in place by the body fixing screw. At each end I soldered pieces of brass tube that will hold the previously-made cylinders, increasing them to something like the correct diameter at the same time. Usually the cylinders would be mounted in a vertical plate going across the chassis, but this wasn't possible with my solid chassis block design. This photo shows the unit before drilling the fixing hole: As you see in the next photo, I filed a recess in the top of the chassis block to locate the PCB: And here is a view of the underside. Note the gaps to maintain electrical isolation. The cylinders are just held in here by friction, but I subsequently glued them in with Araldite. The cylinders in place with the motion attached: They're not actually fixed in place until you screw on the body: Now it's beginning to look like an engine! The pistons still need trimming to length at the front, and I need to tidy up the fronts of the cylinders somehow - perhaps with some thin discs stuck on. It was very satisfying to find that (with the motor detached) the loco rolls freely up and down a tilted length of track. But I have to admit that this wasn't achieved without a bit of effort. Firstly, the coupling rods were too tight, and I had to gradually open out the holes until the chassis would run freely. Then I found that there wasn't quite enough clearance between the slide bars and the rods, so I had to unsolder the brass tubes from the ends of the PCB and shift them outwards a bit further. Luckily there's no scale drawing looking at the loco front-on, so I had some freedom in the side-to-side positioning of the cylinders. Even so, I won't be able to fit crankpin washers on the front wheels. In fact, it still won't run up and down with the body properly in place, because the other crankpins haven't yet been trimmed and just foul the bottom of the valance. But it's getting there! The next job is to sort out the motor.

A bit off topic for RM Web, and about 12 months late for the Apollo 11 anniversary, here is my first attempt at the Airfix astronaut figure set.... These are made of slightly squishy vinyl rather than hard plastic. This can be hard to paint (ask my 12 year old self), but it turns out a quick coat of watered-down PVA glue works as a primer (leftovers from IKEA). Paint used is a mix of humbrol and revell enamel, with some cheap watercolour paint from The Works for weathering. Think I will try assembling one of the moon buggies next.

As mentioned in the previous entry, I promised to document the building of my next Roxey coach kit in a series of photos, so here goes. The first thing is to have a look at the contents of the kit, in this case an LSWR corridor third. Most of what's in the box is here, except for a few castings and bits related to the corridor connectors, which I won't be using. The etches are excellent and well laid out, with no issues encountered in separating any of the bits from the fret. Note the two bogie etches. I like to start with the bogies as they can be a bit repetitive to do, so good to get out of the way. In addition, it's nice to have the bogies good to go when the rest of the coach comes together. I separated one of the bogie etches and removed the etched washers included within the same component. I haven't found them necessary with these kits but they're useful enough to go into the spares box. Step one is to punch out the etched rivet detail on the bogie sides: In this exciting action shot I'm using my new riveting tool. It's a pin-point Gibson axle in a pin-chuck, being tapped lightly with a small hammer. Crude, but it works! The next step is to solder in top-hat bearings. I think the ones I'm using are Romfords - I bought a bulk pack of several hundred. The holes in the etch are perfecr as they come, so no need to ream them out at all. I just tin the area around the hole with sole 145 solder, drop the bearing in, apply some more flux, then touch the iron to the etch, adjacent to the bearing. The brass gets hot very quickly so a clothes peg comes in handy for manipulating the work. The next step is to fold up the etch. This is easily done using a small pair of pliers - no need for specialised bending tools (yet). The etched folds can be reinforced with more 145 solder. The Roxey bogie has brake shoes built into the etch that just need folding down - fine by me and a lot quicker than the Comet ones, where the brake shoes have to be soldered in separately. I dab a bit more solder onto the brakes to reinforce the folded joint. With the etch folded, I'm also tinning the outside (and part of the inside) in readiness for adding white metal castings. Hopefully you can see where I've smeared a layer of solder around the area where the axlebox castings will go. Onto the axleboxes! These are invariably a pain because I've yet to find a set of castings where the hole in the back of them is deep enough to sit over the protruding bearing. The hole needs therefore to be deepened, and possibly widened, which I find to be a fiddly job. I use a drill in a motor tool, not turning too quickly or it'll heat up the casting, and then just go at it carefully. With these Roxey castings, I always seem to break through the side of one or two of the axleboxes. However, it's easily attended to with a dab of filler later on. The castings with this coach were a bit better than some of the ones in the previous two, although I still needed to drill them out. I see no reason that the holes couldn't be cast to the adequate clearance to begin with, but it seems to be a universal thing that they're undersized or not there at all! On with the castings: For these, we're soldering white metal to brass. Provided we've tinned the brass with normal solder. there'll be no problems. I dial my Weller soldering iron down to 6 (its maximum) to 4, and then let it cool for a minute or so. Then - using the same flux, but low-melt solder - I can solder the castings to the tinned area. A spring casting has to go behind the bogie frame on each side, and the method is the same. A footboard has to be soldered on as well (not shown). In this case we're soldering a brass part to a white metal part but the methodology is the same - just make sure the contact area of the brass part is tinned. Switching between high and low temperature settings makes for inefficient modelling, so once you get into the swing of it, you soon try to do as many jobs at one temperature before dialling up/down. With the bogie completed, the appropriate wheelsets can be sprung in very easily. I prefer this to the all-white metal type of bogie where the wheels have to be trapped in the bogie as you're building it, and are then difficult to swap. I use bog-standard Hornby coach wheels, by the way. They roll really well, are affordable, and stay on the track! Hope this has been of interest. I'll try to post another installment soon.

I bought an N20 motor a couple of weeks ago, along with a pair of 3D printed gears to fit 1/8" axles & the N20. My original thought was to fit it to this small LNER tank I picked up at an estate sale; While the motor would probably fit, it won't fit between the frames. Which means needs to angle into the boiler. Which hasn't enough space. Playing around with the brass chassis, I think it was made undersized. The chassis will 'walk' on my test plank. I need to see if I can spread the frames some. Hopefully, if I can drop the motor into the frame, this'll all work. I might use the N20 on another project, though.

Retirement beckons and, like many, I had set my heart on building the layout of my (youthful) dreams. Having decided that N gauge was right for me, I set about picking up rolling stock, track, etc. at auctions (not Ebay). I 'scored' some major successes with only a single failure and I now have much of the bits and pieces that I require. However, one of the 'Lots' that I won at an auction included a box of Marklin controllers, switches and track but, sadly, no rolling stock. I thought that it would be a neat idea to create a very small Z gauge layout (the Marklin track being Z gauge). When I spotted a batch of Z gauge locos being auctioned I jumped in (feet first) and bagged several items. However, I identified that I would need some points and started asking around. I got into a conversation with a guy who was selling off his collection of Z gauge track, etc. and he still had a few items left. In passing, he mentioned that he also had an ex-exhibition layout that he had started dismantling. For whatever reason he hadn't got any further than removing some of the electrics and he was going to throw it into a skip if no one was interested. Rather tongue in cheek, I made him an offer and was surprised (and delighted) when he accepted. I am now the proud but daunted owner of an end to end Z gauge layout that measures 4 m x 0.28 m. It has been in storage for a number of years and spiders have taken up residence - it will need a thorough clean before I do anything with it. It appears to have two names, one of which is "Hauteville". One of the tasks that I have set myself is to produce a track plan (using SCARM) and then add a wiring loom which might help me to work out what bits are missing and whether or not the whole thing could do with re-wiring. Sadly (for me) the previous owner was pretty experienced in building layouts and didn't feel the need to label any of the wiring - troubleshooting was either a real challenge or he got everything right first time! I have erected the layout in my dining room (not currently in use) but have had to place it diagonally, from corner to corner, because it won't fit in anywhere else.

I really love photographing my layouts and my ultimate aim is to make the locos and settings as realistic as its possible in 00 Gauge. Getting as much as possible in focus has always been a bug bear of mine. The relationship between F-Stop, shutter speed and ISO is complex to understand and I should imagine professional photographers spend a long time to master it. I haven't quite managed this and have always found that the higher the F-Stop then the yellower the image simply because the more depth of field (or more in focus you want) then the smaller the aperture. In addition, my camera will only stop up to F8. A medium aperture but one that still restricts the amount of light you need. This always spoils the photo and no matter how long you keep open the shutter you can never get rid of the yellowing effect. Camera's therefore love loads of light where this is concerned so I decided to cobble together my own powerful lighting rig. It had to be on the cheap because professional lighting rigs are an astronomical cost. The above shot under the rig. F8 at ISO 400. The camera sets the shutter speed itself and I set a two second timer delay to defeat any camera shake. The 'Heath Robinson' style lighting rig. I found an old overhead projector at my local tip and took it apart. I put the fan and bulb assembly into a wooden box, created a reflective direction device out of hangers and mounting card and put the whole thing on top of a stand that I bought secondhand from a builder for a fiver. It was really cheap to construct and it works quite well. Mind you, despite the fan it gets very hot so I don't leave it on too long in case the whole thing falls apart! The rig is about as good as it gets in creating artificial sunlight. It's either that or lug the layout down from the loft and wait for the sun to come out and you could wait a long time over here for that! Now to get rid of those pesky shadows on the backdrop! This is my take on a smashing prototype picture in Hornby's latest mag regarding coloured light signalling on the Southern. The picture was of a Class 33 double heading with a BR Standard 5MT out of Waterloo in 1966. A summer afternoon at Folgate Street. Note how the light rig casts realistic shadows under the signal box gantry. Light and shade. Notice how the focus drops away and yet this is the best my Fuji Bridge can do. It's a lot better than my other smaller 'snap' Panasonic Lumix which has a much narrower field of focus. The only other route is photo stacking, but this seems like a magic trick far beyond my capabilities. I guess I'll always be an analogue fuddy duddy!

When you start to look at running in boards you soon realise that they are as individual as the stations they adorn, even within the same region. It's quite fascinating when you start studying their various designs. This site has some useful pictures of various Southern running in boards and may be of some interest to anyone modelling the Southern areas: http://www.semgonline.com/infrastr/ribs_01.html Some aspects of the Hawkhurst branch differed from station to station, the platform construction being one. But many other elements were exactly the same across the board, including, by all appearances, the running in boards. This gave me less flexibility in terms of design as I wanted to be as true to the prototype as possible. They appear to have been constructed from a pair of metal beams attached to a central board, an enamelled sign was affixed therein. A simple bracket supported both elements either side. The rounded tops and bolt detail is simple but striking. Older photos seem to suggest the outer frame of the name board would have been painted paler, possibly white. I'm not certain when enamelled signage would have come into use. Most photos I can find that clearly show running in boards were taken in the 50's and after - I'd be interested to learn what might have been used before if anything. The image above is the only one I have of this particularly curious setup on Goudhurst's second platform. The board looks to be identical to the others but the (enamelled?) sign is almost comically smaller! I suspect this was a spare that was placed here in lieu of something designed for the purpose. Or else the board itself is significantly bigger, it's hard to say for sure. Many of the plastic kits and parts that feature running in boards are rather generic and I couldn't find anything that matched the design exactly. So I decided to build my own. I happened to have a sheet of rivets from Slater's Plastikard... yes, for the first time ever, my modelling takes me into literal "rivet counting" territory! I selected rivets that looked about the right size for the bolts featured on the posts. I cut two strips, one for each leg. I aimed to keep them the same width a some plastic strip I already had. Then came the tricky task of removing some of those pesky rivets as the spacing and amount wasn't right. I used the flat of a sharp craft knife and removed the remainder with some very fine sand paper. The result wasn't perfect and there were some scars from some dodgy blade wielding, but overall the effect was satisfactory to my eye. The strips were glued to plain strips of plastikard for strength and thickness. The tops were rounded off by cutting the corners and using a sanding stick to even out the shape. Then another piece of identical strip was bent and wrapped across the top as shown below. I tried heating the strip in boiling water to aid bending, but actually found that caused the plastic to break instead of being more flexible. I also found adding too much liquid cement caused the plastic to weaken and split too, so this part took some patience. I had a name board lying around from another kit - likely Peco/Wills/Ratio - which rather conveniently suited the size of the printed element I would be attaching later on. I backed this with another piece of Plastikard for the sake of width and stability and then glued between the posts. Next, some small strips for the brackets underneath the name board. These were half the width of the strip used so far, bent and glued in place. I got a bit excited and sprayed with primer before attaching the brackets, hence the images below! I followed this up with a coat of primer (again!) and then, once dry, a coat of Phoenix Precision Paints Southern Middle Chrome Green. I'm quite pleased with the overall effect and the bolt head details on the side were well worth the (slightly) extra effort. Finally, a custom made name board courtesy of Sankey Scenics. Even the miss-matched greens at work here seem to be prototypical! All for now, Jonathan