Jongudmund

Ooh, sounds like it will be worth a trip in the near future. I got paid this week and all

After the previous post about track plans I acquired another track expansion set (half price at Hobby Craft) that contained two opposite points. This gives me 6 points for the lay-out meaning I can bring a train into the inner loop and back out onto the outer loop and have two sidings. This is just a mock up to see how it might work. I may change this again and push the two circuits parallel and have the inner siding with more of a gap. The inner siding is going to be running into an industrial area - possibly a place to unload oil tankers. I'm trying to work out how to make the outer siding a mini out of sight fiddle yard, i.e. hide the line in a tunnel so I can assemble trains there instead of just plonking them on the track. It could lead to a bigger fiddle yard in time. Comments on this track plan welcome.

Thanks Mike, I appreciate that. It's slow progress I'm afraid, for various reasons as noted in the post about the Lego train set. I am due another post about possible track plans, so keep an eye out for it

A short while ago I saw a Dapol advert in one of the modelling magazines for a new 2-wagon set of Black Park Colliery, which operated pits in Chirk and Ruabon. As my Dad was born in Ruabon (and likes wagons) I told him about it. On one of his trips to the Wrexham area he took a small detour to the Dapol shop to look at (and buy) the wagons. What I didn't expect was that he also bought me a set. To complete the coal train he also bought me a wagon Dapol have done from the Llay Hall colliery in Wrexham, Now this has particular family significance as it is the pit where my great uncle Ishmael worked as a collier, so when Dad saw it he bought one for both of us. The first thing I want to say is that Dapol has vastly improved the quality of its wagons. I have some from a few years ago and compared to Bachmann and Hornby they were distinctly third rate back then. Well, not any more. I was very impressed with the finish and detail on these. Coal wagons are fairly plain and can look really cheap (and the ones Dapol used to do did look very cheap), but these don't. They also come with coal loads, which manage to not look too plastic and fake. That's quite a hard thing to pull off. I'm not sure how these are going to fit on the DCC train set when it is built. As previously mentioned, the engines and rolling stock in the set are more suited to a Northern England lay-out. Realistically Northern England had plenty of its own collieries and I can't imagine they would have transported much coal up from North Wales. Sending coal to Newcastle is, after all, the classic idea of a waste of time. More in keeping with the North England theme is another wagon I have acquired recently - a Hornby Railroad "NE" box van. Here it is with the coal wagons. Now this wagon is very basic, but considering I bought it for just £4 brand new from a city centre toy shop, it's alright. The idea is to use it to practice weathering because at that price it doesn't matter if I make a mess of it. Of course, whether I ever get to weather it is another question. If When I build the train set, you'll probably see pictures of it rolling round still in it's shiny just out of the box state. But it's one for the project list.

Thanks Steve - it is a lot of fun. Ozexpatriate - cheers for that and the link. That's a nice looking loco. I was impressed with the loco in the set as it's a really nice build. My only gripe was the use of stickers instead of printed bricks.

I've had a very strange and busy nine months since I last blogged here. Going back to Uni, health issues (I won't bore you) and a change of job, but I am working towards getting a DCC train set up and running. I'm just not sure how. I also got distracted by a birthday gift of a Lego train set. Being a fan of Lego, I already had a 9 volt train from about 15 years ago. This is one of the new radio controlled types. I've augmented the set a bit with two bonus tanker wagons and changing the cow in the open wire-frame wagon for a scrap metal load (actually Lego technic spars and Lego Bionicle bits). Anyone who complains about Peco or Hornby set track spacing should have a gander at Lego for a rigid system without any give. Here are some photos just for fun Lego is very easy to customise. Not sure about weathering, though.

That tank wagon is very cute. Not seen one like that before.

Oh yeah. Didn't see him at first. The bridge reminds me of something out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Love the view of the fish in that bottom pic as well!

Maybe a tagline would help. The Furness Railway Wagon Company ~ reproducing UK wagons since 1999

In a town scene, the little non-conformist chapel on a side street in-between shops. Or even a Church of England in a town centre. On model railways they only ever seem to be out in the country - usually stuck on top of a tunnel. For the modern image lay-out, one of those chapels will probably now be a mosque or discount goods warehouse. Seems to be the case round here anyway.

Tile works (bit like a brick works I suppose) I know cattle were transported live, hence the cattle dock on the classic BLT, and there were also meat vans. Would abattoirs be served by a rail link? Otherwise how did meat get on the vans? Post / parcels.

Free P&P though, Cleefy.

I love how half the train is empty, like they ran out of coal before they ran out of wagons. (Cool train though)

Hi Nick - thanks for that. I guess I just assumed the wagons would be used to transport stuff out rather than stuff in. You make a good point there. Hi Julie - yeah, if I'd been a bit more sensible I would have gone and got the camera, but on my phone screen the photos looked OK. It was only when I swapped them onto the computer that I realised they looked awful. I will try and do better photos next time. Thanks, both, for the comments

I agree with corneliuslundie.

While looking through the components of the train set I realised there was a discrepancy between the outside box, which said it should have included some extra power clips, and the contents. There were no power clips. I emailed Hornby through their web contact form one evening and got an email back the next morning apologising and saying they would send the clips, which arrived a couple of days later. Reading some of the comments on RM Web, there seem to be plenty of people who knock Hornby, but I thought this was very good customer service from them. No quibbles, just sending the missing bits out. The leaflet that came with the train set mentions these little clips that pop into the points on the DCC trainset to keep everything live. As I've bought some bonus extension kits, I realised the other points didn't have the clips, so I went looking for them. I tried Hobbycraft initially as I thought they might have been in the clearance sale along with everything else, but they weren't. I then tried the ModelZone concession in WH Smiths as they seem to have everything else Hornby. But no clips. I stopped in the new Hamleys and looked in their Hornby area. Guess what, no clips. Then I tried the Ian Allan bookshop where the lady at least knew what I was talking about, but told me they "must have sold out." Finally, as I left the city centre I went into the Antics model shop, which has a bit of train stuff at the back. They had the clips! It was only the fifth shop I'd tried. Admittedly, I'd probably got them first go if I had gone to one of the dedicated model railway shops outside the city centre, but it seemed strange that some of these places that sell the DCC sets don't sell the bits you need to expand your layout and keep it DCC. Anyway - these are the bits in a poor resolution phone camera picture: A few posts back I listed the rolling stock you got in the set and said how annoying it was that you couldn't build up a rake of them. Well, there's a shop in the city centre that sells second hand railway stuff and imagine my surprise when I saw the four wagons from my DCC set sitting in one of their glass cabinets. I mulled over whether I wanted to get doubles of the wagons, and decided later that the plain box van would probably be a useful addition. The golden rule when you see something for sale second hand is to buy it and risk regretting it later. On this occasion I ignored the golden rule and the box van had been bought by someone else. However, I made up for it by buying a second Breedon and Cloud Hill open wagon. So, at least I've got two of those. Box vans are fairly generic anyway so I'm sure I can pick up some that look close enough. I don't really want them rolling around empty so I'm going to have to find out what a load of lime will look like and mock something up. If you can save me the effort of researching it, please leave a comment