Ian Smith

Following the Uckfield exhibition, I decided that before I reassembled Modbury in my lounge that I would take a few photos of the scenic boards from the non-viewing side, effectively from the break between the two boards.  What follows are a few of the 30-odd photos I took - all with a DSLR using only f-stopping to get a half reasonable depth of field (no stacking here).  For lighting, a LED tube was used (which isn't exactly the same as the normal layout lighting used at exhibitions (or for that matter at home!))  A sheet of blue card was blue-tac'd to the layout fascia to focus attention on the layout rather than the rest of my kitchen!!

I hope that you enjoy these images that are simply not possible when the layout is fully assembled.

517 Class (number 551) draws into Modbury with a pick-up goods (it is just about possible to see the 3-lamp head-code on the bunker - my lamps have short pieces of 0.3mm wire projecting from their bases which engage in the lamp sockets of my locos allowing me to alter the head-codes accordingly).

A view of the pick-up goods arriving into Modbury from a slightly more elevated position up the hillside.

A view across the yard at a quiet Modbury, hopefully showing that I have modelled even the non-viewing side of everything.  The lane along the back of the layout (to our right in this view) will one day become the A379.

A closer inspection of the buildings at Modbury, the waiting room building on the Down platform is probably my favourite of all those I've built for Modbury.  The couple waiting on that platform run a small market gardening business, and have some of their produce on the trolley close by.

Another view across the yard at Modbury, this time with wagons awaiting collection in the Goods shed.  The local coal merchant engages in conversation with a customer outside his disused van office while a couple of his employees are filling a few sacks from the coal piles at the end of the long back siding.

A "Brian Monaghan view" of Modbury as 517 Class, 551, draws into the station with a Down pick-up goods.

A somewhat less elevated view of the Down pick-up goods drawing into the station.  The Station Master is hopeful that an award might be forthcoming this year for the platform gardens!

Finally, a view of 551 shunting wagons in the yard.  The cattle pen water troughs have been filled from the stand-pipe between the two pens, and the hose pipe has been left draped over the rail fence.

Thank you for looking, and I hope that being able to see Modbury from the "back" has been of interest.

Ian

Not done too much model-wise recently, but I did get a delivery of number plates from Narrow Planet for my 517, so they have been fixed in place (with a dab of gloss varnish). I also knocked up some brake gear for it - the pull rods were fretted/filed from a couple of pieces of 0.010" etch waste sweated together, the brake hangers and shoes were similarly fretted/filed from some 0.020" phosphor bronze. The whole lot (once separated) were cobbled together to look a bit like brake gear, being built up around a couple of pads of thin double-sided PCB and 0.3mm wire. Once "sturdy" (a relative term as the whole ensemble is rather fragile), the cross shafts had pieces removed from their middles replaced with thin wire sleeving so that the two halves were electrically insulated. A quick prime and brush paint with Precision Paints Indian Red and the assembly was ready to install onto the bottom of the chassis.

The finished brake assembly prior to painting.

A crew of N Brass drivers were painted up (I chose just drivers because the fireman option is a "traditional" chap shovelling). Arms were bent a little (as one of them has his hand so far in the air and looks like he wants to ask if he can go to the toilet!), so that one has his hand resting on the cab opening and the other is reaching up to tap a gauge or something. Also a rather rudimentary backhead was cobbled up from a bit of black plasticard , a few bits of wire and a couple of slivers off the end of a bit of brass rod to represent a couple of gauges. Once painted, stuck in place with a couple of blokes standing in front of it there really is little to see.

Completed loco with brake gear, numberplate, and cab populated.


View of the rear of the engine showing what can be seen of the cab "detail"

Over the last couple of days, with Modbury's first outing for nearly 2 years coming up, I have given some thought to increasing the population of Modbury. The first of these additions is a Shire Scenes Farm Cart (although I made and painted this a few months ago). To give it a purpose, I made some sacks out of milliput, forming one so that it sort of hung over the back.  

N Gauge horses are very unsatisfactory looking lumps of white metal generally, so inspired by some re-carving that Tim Watson illustrated in the Copenhagen Fields thread, I had a go myself. A small chisel was ground from a gramophone needle, and employed to re-shape a 4 legged lump of white metal into something that bore a little more resemblance to something equestrian, a longer tail being added in low melt solder and then re-carved.

The driver of the cart I had already decided to feature standing alongside the horse rather than sitting in the cart, so I took an Andrew Stadden character and performed a little re-modelling on him too - an arm was removed, bent at the elbow and re-attached. His top hat was taken off, and a cloth cap substituted. His jacket was lengthened into a longer coat, which was then carved to be open with a waistcoat underneath.

Once man and horse were painted, the horse was glued between the cart shafts, and thin strips of Rizla cigarette paper cut, painted and formed for the reins. The idea being that my little man would be holding one of the reins. Further short bits of pre-painted Rizla strip were added to link cart shafts to the horse harness.

Thanks for looking, by the way the little chap is only just over 1cm tall so please forgive the (extremely) cruel close-ups!

Ian

A little more progress on the Steam Railmotor ...

Over the last few days, I've been trying to finish off the roof.  At the end of the previous update, I had fitted some fine wire to represent the rain strips and the lamp tops had been fixed, so the first task was to cut a suitable piece of nickel silver for the engine room roof panel.  I elected to cut this from 0.004", but in the end wish I had cut it from 0.008" instead - once rolled to shape and temporarily placed on the roof it didn't seem to provide quite enough relief, so I tacked a couple of strips of 0.004" along the lower edges to raise it up a bit.  By marking diagonally from corner to corner, the centre was marked and a hole drilled to line up with the chimney hole previously drilled in the main roof to help when aligning and soldering the panel in place.  Before fitting though I had to remove a little of the upper rain strips where the panel overlapped them.

According to the drawings I had, a strip of L angle was attached 6" up from the lower edge of the panel (possibly as a rainstrip) - I tried to fabricate a bit of angle from 0.004" but with the foot and upright being less than 0.5mm wide I gave it up as a bad job and elected to just solder a bit in 0.25mm wire 1mm inboard of the lower edge instead!

The top half of the chimney was turned on the lathe (predominantly with gravers), and was cut off with a 1.5mm diameter locating peg on its bottom (to fit into the hole in the panel/roof).  The prototype has a weather proof cowl just below the copper cap of the chimney (to help keep the rain out of the engine compartment), so a piece of 0.004" was cut to be a snug fit around the chimney and shaped into the oval shape of the prototype (quite why the cowl is oval rather than round I have no idea as photos show that the chimney projected through at one end of the cowl not centrally as one might expect).  Anyway, once filed to shape the cowl was soldered in place around the chimney such that there would be a slight gap between the roof panel and chimney cowl.  The next stage was to complete the roof panel by drilling a 0.35mm hole where the whistle will eventually go, and also drilling then filing an oval hole above where the safety valves were attached on the boiler (oddly, although the whistle has a little weather proof cowl around it, the hole for the safety valve exhaust doesn't).

With the engine compartment cover panel done, I then lightly scribed the lamp pipe runs on the roof.  The pipes were made from 0.2mm copper wire (having first rolled it between a metal ruler and flat surface to straighten it).  It was then a simple matter of making the bends in the main pipe runs and tack soldering in place before making good the soldered join along the full lengths of the pipe.  Further short lengths of wire were added between each lamp and the main pipe before trimming the wire (one end soldered to lamp pot, joint made with main pipe then the excess cut off).  It would appear from photos that the gas feed pipes of the different lots came up through the roof in different places - No. 93 has the pipes appearing fairly centrally, but No. 61 (which I'm basing this build on) has the pipes appear above the driving vestibule at the non-engine end of the carriage.  In both cases though a small cover is positioned over the place where the pipes come up through the roof, so I filed up a bit of 0.014" brass to represent these covers and positioned them over the tail ends of the wires representing the pipe runs.

With all of the solder work complete, today I have fitted the shell vents.  The exact position of these has been estimated from photo evidence, and holes for each vent were drilled before Ultima vents (available from the 2mm Association) were super-glued in place.

The photos below show the current state of play (the body is just plonked on the under frame for these photos) :

At the moment, the chimney and its cowl are just pushed into the hole in the roof - its an interference fit (in actual fact the hole is big enough to allow small screw driver access to the motor bogie retaining bolt, so I may leave the chimney as a removable feature!)

The next step will be to add the mouldings needed to the central doors to finish the conversion of the single access door to the double doors that I'm trying to represent.  This can now be done in 0.005" plasticard now that all of the soldering is complete on the upper works.

Once the upper works are done, I will then move onto the undreframe (including fabricating the headstocks and buffers - I hope that N Brass will have suitable auto coach buffers at TINGS when I'm there helping out on the Association stand in a few days time), then it will be on to trying to make that flipping Walchaerts knitting that I keep putting off for as long as possible 

Thanks for looking

Ian

A little more progress on the SRM ...

Over the last few days I had marked and drilled holes for the gas lamps along the centreline of the roof.  I had to estimate where these went from a side-on view of a suitable vehicle.  In marking and drilling holes, I had also drilled a small hole where the chimney will eventually be - I will use that to locate the roof panel above the boiler eventually.  The gas lamp tops themselves are some that Nick at N Brass gave me a few years ago when he and Modbury were back-to-back at an exhibition.

I have also drilled and filed a rectangular hole above the engine end driving compartment for a sliding panel in the roof.  The panel and retaining strips were filed from 0.004" nickel silver and soldered in place.

Today's task has been to fit the rain strips to the roof, as is my wont I always add these from fine copper wire (probably about 0.2mm diameter although I haven't measured these).  The first one I tacked in place in the centre then added solder out to either end, for the 3 subsequent ones I tacked at one end then moved along the length to the other end - the latter was probably easier!  These wires were added over long, and once happy, were cut through at the end and heat applied to dislodge the excess.  I will use the same method to remove a section above the engine compartment as the roof panel extends below the upper rainstrip at this point, but first I need to make the panel!

Now some photos :

The current state of the roof with the lamp tops and rain strips in place.  The sliding roof panel above the driving compartment can also be seen.

Another view, hopefully showing the rain strips a little better.  In reality these were flat strip, but I seriously doubted my ability to cut 4 equal width strips from thin solderable material - I did consider adding them from sticky tape but again would have to cut equal width strips and be extremely narrow and be prone to sticking itself together - that way madness lay I felt!!

The other thing I've done over the last few days is add electrical pickup from the non-driven bogie.  The wheels had their blacking removed (with a fibreglass pencil), a small pad of thin PCB added on the underside of the bogie, and back-scratcher phosphor bronze wires soldered in place to bear on the backs of the tyres.

Underside of the bogie with the back-scratcher PB wires acting on the tyres.

A pair of fine enamelled wires pass up to a further PCB pad on the top of the bogie onto which a pair of sprung phosphor bronze wipers are soldered.

Top of bogie showing the sprung phosphor bronze wipers which conduct the power to the underside of the coach - the acting part of the wipers are at the bogie pivot end to minimise their rotation and hence contact patch.  A further PCB pad is located on the underside of the coach floor against which the bogie wipers rub.  More fine enamelled wire is used to conduct the power inboard.

Finally, a couple of lengths of PCB sleeper strip (old type that was about 6" long) is glued against the uprights on the inside of the coach to get the power to the other end of the coach - I could have extended the enamelled wire here but I originally intended fitting a couple of bits of tube to the PCB at the driven end so that I can plug/unplug the powered bogie for maintenance.  A rethink has decided that this is just adding complication so will just solder the powered bogie wires to the PCB instead!

The inside of the coach floor showing the wires coming up from the non-powered bogie to the PCB bus rails.  I have temporarily unsoldered the leads at the powered end until I have built the Walchaerts motion thereon.  The holes above the rear bogie wheels are a relic of a rather stupid idea I had to get power from the tops of the bogie wheels (about which I will say no more!)

Thanks for looking

Ian

Life has kind of got in the way of modelling over the last few weeks, but today I found time and inclination to make a bit more progress with the Steam Railmotor...

Todays task was to fit the motor unit into the underframe, and although no modelling had taken place in the last 2-3 weeks I had at least formed a plan on what I was going to do!  The first thing I noticed was that the bogie spacing on the underframe wasn't quite right - the bogie spacing seemed to be 52'0" (104mm) whereas the diagram I had in Russell's GWR coach book showed 50'11" (as near as damn it 102mm).  Unfortunately, I had already fitted the bolster for the coach bogie at the other end of the coach, so I had to make the adjustment at the motor end.  Therefore a new 1mm hole was drilled 2mm inboard of the one already there.

During my deliberations, I had decided that the best way to fit the motor bogie was to provide a pivot in the top of the gear block, although this meant that some form of fixing would be required up in the roof space.  My idea was to provide a cantilevered pivot point above the motor bogie, and shape it so that the supports for said structure would be hidden behind the side panels between the engine compartment window.

The first step was to tack solder a length of 1mm rod up through the newly drilled bogie pivot point so that I could ensure that the cantilevered support would be in the right place.  I also made a start on the cutout as once the cantilevered support was in place it would be awkward to cut around it. (I do plan ahead sometimes!! )

Next a piece of 0.010" nickel silver was fretted and filed to shape, having first established its dimensions so that it was a) tall enough, b) wide enough and most importantly c) the upright supports would be hidden by the side panels.

Once it was bent to shape, a 1mm hole was drilled centrally for the pivot point.  Additionally, although not strictly necessary I also shaped it a bit to look a little prettier 

The support was then slipped over the vertical rod, and a check made that its legs fell between the marks I had made on the underframe that delineated the area on the coach side where the panels were.

Happy, I soldered the cantilevered support in place and unsoldered and removed the sighting rod.  It was then a simple task to introduce the piercing saw into the holes around the new support and remove an area of floor to accommodate the motor bogie.

With the floor removed, the motor bogie could be temporarily bolted to its cantilevered support so I could check the clearances.  For the time being, I've had to pack it up a bit because the crank pins were catching on the solebars under test.

Finally, the body was dropped on!

Satisfied that everything fit, it was taken to Modbury and given a bit of a test ...

Thank you for looking,

Ian