kipford

This was our clubs 17th year at Southwold, we bring a layout every year as one of our members has a house in Reydon, so Rob only has to pay our transport costs from Portsmouth. As usual we had a great time and thanks to Rob and the team for a really relaxed and informal show. We are just deciding which layout bring next year.

D Will not be at club Thursday because I am taking Brighton to Southwold this weekend and I need accumulate Brownie points! Give me a ring to arrange a mutual time place to pick up if you want.

Duncan, love the setting shame about the railway company!!! I have three sheets of B&Q pink insulation foam left over from Brighton if you want them.

Quick Templot version. had to move the track slightly to clear the baseboard. Matt needs to print it now and check it for size on the boards. Points are B6 which is reasonable compromise for size and modern image stock eats them for breakfast.

You have to admit those boards are quick to make. As an aside, I am going to stick the track plan in Templot this evening to see what it looks like. I think it should look a bit more free flowing and make better use of the available space.

Steve Welcombe to 3rd rail world! Be careful about crowding to much into the layout, the old adage less is more is still applicable to an urban setting. If you can, make a scale model first to check your ideas out, Foam board and a glue gun give very quick results. Even when you have made you mind up be prepared to change things when you see it full size. Good luck with your build.

A chip off the old bock eh! As we discussed last night the wider baseboards make all the difference. The container crane is not an 'if' it will be made to work!

Saturday November 18th Admiral Lord Nelson School, Dundas Lane, Portsmouth PO3 5XT Final layout lineup for the SHMRC’s annual exhibition. We think the list of layouts for this years for this year’s show is exceptional so please come to the friendly show with great catering. Layouts: Clutton 4mm P4 This is one of its last outings and a very rare one day show appearance Benfieldside 4mm EM The first outing for a seminal layout under new ownership, it is looking stunning. Great Bardfield 4mm P4 Chewton Mendip 4mm EM Ynysybwl 4mm EM Rowington for Shrewley 4mm OO Heybridge Wharf 3mm Brixham 4mm EM Lee on the Solent 4mm P4 Staindrop 7mm 0 Wood's Wharf 7mm 0 Thomas 4mm OO For the kids Demonstrators: Gordon Gravett Roy Hickman Roger Sawyer 2 mm Road Show S4 Society Stand EMGS Society Stand Traders: Ron Lines Model Railway Developments AAR models. Falcon Masterpiece Models C & L Coastal DCC Squires Tools London Road Modelu Rumney Models Penbits Booklaw Publications

Looks great, the pre-order seems a long long long time ago perhaps I will get in time for Xmas! Only compliant is that Bl"£$Y awful looking tension lock coupling.

Unless it is a roundy roundy, front every time

Not posted anything technical for ages. So something slightly different, I have been experimenting with Wireless Throttles running off either an I-Phone or Android tablet over the last 4 or 5 exhibitions and now have the set up nailed. It is a bit marmite for some people but it is very now and the kids are very impressed when you walk around in front of the layout with no wires connected. So this is a quick guide to what has been done. Now the first admission, this has all been put together by Nigel Phillips one of my fellow club members and regular operators. He is one of our resident computer geeks and a regular demonstrator on the MERG display stands. So what do you need. First you keep the NCE power cab. Next you get an NCE USB interface (which I already had). Then you get hold of a raspberry PI and let the clever clogs load up JMRI on it and do a couple of other things I do not understand. Now the PI has an on board wireless router so it can talk to any other device that has a wifi link, like an I-phone, I-pad, Android phone or pad. On the I-phone you get install a free app called WIThrottle Lite, on Android the similar app is called Engine Driver. Photos 1 and 2 show my test track with a USB interface board built in. The USB board is plugged into one of the slave ports on the NCE power panel. The PI is connected by a printer into the other side of the USB interface. Photo 3 shows the PI attached to a touch screen. Photo 4 shows all the bits needed, Power Cab, PI, and an I-phone. Photo 5 shows the WIThrottle app logo Photo 6 the PI with JMRI running Photos 7 and 8, the WIThrottle app. The first photo shows the view where you select the loco number and the stack. The second shows the throttle. It has a slider throttle and the function are in the panel to the right. Slideing the panel brings up all the functions up to F28. The next step is to build the PI into the layout infrastructure which will be done for Southwold in August.

Thanks guys only problem with article is it shows the tamper viewed from a distance the public and me do not view at. Showscit has a s#@t paint job, was quite annoyed with it!

We always keep running when being asked questions. Some times it leads to the odd mistakes, mainly running into points when they are against you, but we enjoy the audience interaction. So Basingstoke next!

First you need photographs of the area or a similar area to what you want to model. If you try and make it up it tends to look like what it is 'a model'. The photographs will show the range of colour and texture you need to try and replicate. The same comment applies to weathering stock, always work from a photograph. How did we do it? The picture below shows the base scenic materials used. The base foliage was glued in place with PVA and left to dry. The subsequent layers were in the main stuck with acrylic varnish from a spray can, supplemented by the odd bits using extra strong hairspray. The highlighting with acrylic washes was carried out last.

As I said this will be an occasional thread. Progress is slow due to other commitments and also still learning about using the machines, making bits of tooling etc. I fitted a new DRO system with optical scales. The old system was eating batteries and would randomly reset during use! Despite isolating the scales, etc nothing improved it so I cut my losses. After putting it off for ages I finally machined the horn block guides (after fitting the new DRO's), it was much easier than I thought. Attention then turned to the wheels. These are a representation of a 3 hole wagon wheel and I thought it may be of interest to descibe how they were machined. They started as a 100 mm diameter bar rashered into 15 mm thick blanks with the horizontal band saw. Without that saw I am not sure how I would have done it. Using the 3 jaw chuck, the blanks were faced both sides and the side shapes machined. Finally the centre hole drilled and then reamed to 12 mm. This was all new having never machined a wheel before. Then came the tread. I had already decided the final tread profile will be machined assembled on the axles between centres. However I still need to created the basic profile allowing 0.75 mm for final machining. After a lot of thought and some request for help on the interweb. A piece of 25 mm steel was put in the 3 jaw and a spigot 1 mm thinner than the wheel was turned to a slide fit for the wheels, add an M8 female thread and you can bolt the wheel to it. It stays in the lathe unitl all the wheels are machined to ensure there is no run out. The Flanges were machined in the sequence shown in the drawing I have got to step 3. Step 1 is rough turn a square flange. Step 2 using a 6 mm radius tool to put in the the 3 mm radius. Here I met the only problem so far. While the machined spigot works great, it does not fully support the wheel across its face, hence I am getting too much chatter with radius tool when it is cutting at full depth. I will try using a face plate or a larger spigot for the loco wheels. Step 3 uses the button tool again to put the flange and tread on 0.75 mm over size. The final cut for this stage was taken with the tool was set using the carriage and cross slide to the start dimensions shown on the drawing. Then the tool advanced using the compound slide the dimension 3.96 and 10.04 dimensions. The result is shown in the photo. Next stage is to drill the holes in the axle face, make the axles and fit the wheels, then machine up some HSS to make a turning tool with a 2.4 mm radius to use for the final machining. That will be another first. Hope this is of interest to some

Dave You will meet the standards no problem.

Looking through the pictures again this one stands out, no more until after the magazine article. PS I had to drop the resolution to upload it but the printed version is stunning, Thanks again Andy if you read this.

Mike Laser cut to my design by Jonathan Buckie at Clockwork models. I can arrange to get some made if you want?

I have no objection, but It is Andy you really need to ask! But it does improve the picture.

Yes that is real !"!!"£"$£$. I will get Andy to photoshop it out.

Vecchio Current exhibition schedule. 2017 is full, is getting there and we are talking about 2019 in some cases.

Hope Andy does not mind but two photos as a taster of what he took, the rest will have to wait until the article: Caroline in full glory, then the station platform building, with detail I forgot was there!

Just seen Andy York's photos, they are stunning!

Wow not done any updates for along time because nothing new to report. However had a very pleasant day with Andy York yesterday who photographed Brighton in the morning then the SHMRC's Hope-under- Dinmore (of which I am a team member) in the afternoon. Brighton should be in BRM in May 2017 with Hope in the April addition. Anyway we have an exhibition hiatus now until it starts again with 4 exhibitions in 4 months starting in January next year.