supersonic

Remember TLAR works always

Dave, hi great to hear from you, I hope youe are well bud.

Jamie remember what I taught you; measure, at least. twice. go from known to unknown only in single steps and a trial fit or two worth their weight.  Looking good any way, the litteis look just great but you could havre given the some steps or taller stools, craning their necks over the top but wonderful to see them taking an interest.  Now who is Hippo whith whom I appear to be friendly??  Oh and when tapping use a square to get the tap properly squareas you start.  uncleT

Jamie, Dave Hunt and everyone else hi; long time no see.   Jamie Phil's layout has gone and cheque to club funds is on the way to the correct indivdual.

Just to put the record straight Jamie.  I used a very sharp blade to produce the pavement drops; I gave myself a good ignore about the Health and Safety aspects of using a naked blade.  This, of course, I could do as I am probably one of the last of the generations who were required to demostrate a sound knowledge of common sense; in other words I am still in full retention of all my digits.

The blade was much easier to manipulate than a lengthy, and may I say with my engineers hat on, still handleless file which was tried , with some difficulty, with the tang away from my flesh and rejected.

The Highway Men eh? Michael and a boat if I recall.  So, you do have some musical appreciation then - very old record tho'

We had fun, and not a little frustation chasing faults.   My Kirtley ran just fine but showed up a problem in the hand over sections - as it is wired on the American system - heyho - no problem tho'.  It just amazes me how many railends get damaged and need remedial action.

Endeavouring to model 'muck' is not as easy as one would imagine.  Real muck does not look 'reet' so we are slowly adding to the effect - ha.

Phew, slept well last night.  Jamie has passed on his thanks to many people for helping at the w/e and I would like to add mine; we were well looked after by the Nottingham boys and girls,  Well fed and entertained, we both enjoyed the show very much.  I must, however, give a special thank you to Graeme King for the time he spent with me teaching me the the fiddly bits about resin casting; his infectious ethusiasm for his "pastime" has to be experienced to appreciate the depth of his pleasure with this discipline.

On Green Ayre, I enjoyed the DAS work which I have fought shy of for some time now.  It was great to work in the realtively high temperatures of the school - PVA went off in about 20 minutes (rather than the week it takes in our cold clubroom).  There are a few things which just cannot be attempted with only a couple of boards up.  Jamies' work on the buildings needed quite a lot of TLAR to complete successfully (ie to look reet) and the aspect we were able to get sighting along the length of the engine shed area helped so much as 'we' are interpreting the area and not just copy building.   Incidentally jamie the decision to not run anything was TACTICAL, ps see me after club and I will teach you the difference between TACTICAL and STRATEGIC.  Good to see a fair amount of stock in place, and the first attempts at the overhead wire suspension itself.  All in all a good w/e.  May I also say what a boost it is to have the support of the people who take the time to follow this thread, thank you all  Great to be home again.

may I add my thanks to those given by Jamie to all of you who came along to see us at Warley.  Here be the pics (or is that sea monsters?):

just about finished painting the fiddle yard last night whilst Jamie was away playing trams in Leeds.  Looks good as now the whole fiddle yard is a single colour; just have the rails to clean up and thar she runs as it were.  Jamies mod to the yard switches seems to have worked very nicely had a good play with them last night and discovered yet another point which needs attention wit the soldering iron.  For Jon Fitness, Jon if you are reading this a friend of mine modelling in 4 mil needs a little advice re semaphore signals.

Dave

Another good evening at the club.  We started by moving some baseboards around so that we can ballast the next two in line (A5 & B6)  This takes us on to the start of the station platforms.    While Dave got busy with the modified vinegar bottle doing ballast I started to sort out the next signals that all go on board B7.  These are the exit signal from the coal yard to the Up main, the up Starter on Platform 2 which also has the distant for Ladies Walk on it, and the starter for Platform 3 (the bay platform) which is actually a rotary ground signal.  This might cause some consternation amongst rivet counters at shows when they see main line trains starting from platforms via a ground signal.  I will then produce the photo.   After last nights success. I dscided to wire up the Merg board first and then connect all four signals and set them via the laptop.  This is a lot easier than crawling under the boards plugging and unplugging servo cables.  This was done and all four work correctly and even at the correct speed.    I now have to curt the mounting holoes and get them installed.   All good fun but great progress.

 

Jamie

The 'vinegar bottle' makes me sound like some kind of pervert.  However, I am finding the ballasting somewhat therapeutic and the end result is rather satisfying.  More and more of the underpinnings are now starting to disappear under scenery and the result is encouraging.  When we moved the boards around the other evening we took the opportunity to sweep the floor - a much avoided chore which gives an easier, less trip prone working environment - to be recommended.  Work continues!

Last night we took down all of the baseboards in the club for Friday nights big shuffle round unfortunately just a little misdirected PVA got between two of them and we had a job to separate them with a little of the ply laminate coming away with the wrong board. Hay-Ho that's life with Jamie; more ballast down, and the last, ultimate, no more, final point being built for the sickies siding; the good news is that it will be dead, wh-h-h-h-o-o-f.  Tony Bond came up with a great idea for ballasting using a redundant vinegar bottle - patience required but the results are good as well we do not waste too much material.  Will try to get some pics online when the club rooms settle back to a slumber.

Happy New Year.  More Lancaster specific posts to come later

Ok Jamie I am in for the bike ride.  You organise it and provide the cavernous transport.

I am rested, refreshed and ready for our show now.  Next weekend I am off to Norwich with my other partner in crime. Mike Eastman, as we go to collect parts for our Vampire T22.  I am very pleased with the way Lancaster is coming on; looking forward to getting some movement going though, seems a long time since trains ran. Attached some more pics from Warley.

now Jamie have you seen this video of the Green Ayre electrics running? go to - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6VvD9cGBCU

You can see directly the real train going thro' our scenic break on the Castle branch, looks like we have it a little TOO bucolic for reality.  Great detail on the overheads, even if in 1965. 

Did we do al of that this week, looks good on the video, even starting to sound correct

The lattice work for the side of the footbridge was soldered up at Warley. The windows are shown with their appropriate lattice frame. More soldering and claening to do.

It is fun jamie, however, there are some truly boring bits and if you will forgive me the wiring is one! We have got a major part of the layout wired now, it will be nice to get back to the rinkydinkydoo of modelling proper; in which discipline I am involved in a substantial bit of 12 inches to the foot stuff on a Sea Vampire T22. I may have the footbridge in bits probably, but the components will certainly be present. Jamies etches are proving to be outstanding, much easier to detach from the 'fret' than commercial products, however trying to reproduce rivets in the very very narrow sections with the rivet 'bonker' without distortion is problematic at best and that is with half etch rivet marks, so ............. BUT, it is all starting to look good, we endeavour to post some pics when one of us remember s camera!!

Back from Telford where I assisted Nigel and his team in the running of the Bring and Buy stall; I am refreshed and ready to go. May I pass on my thanks to Lawrie (LHL), and Rupert Brown for their invaluable advice on subjects various; to Billy (of Premier Components) who always produces the goods and never ceases to amaze me with the quality of his work. Good eggs all. Telford was a good 'melting pot'. Now, I return to the job in hand. I have drilled and countersunk an awful lot of solid oak noggins to line the 'blind' side of one of the l-o-n-g platforms where we are unable to gain access underneath the baseboard due to all manner of impedimenta, such as stregthening ribs, the basboard edge et-al, so, now they will be affixed from above with the screws going down rather than the other way. I have sourced the material for the pillars of the footbridge and Jamie has, just about, finished the artwork for the etches of the f/b metalwork, including the strange but large windows. Yes, just as soon as I have something to show I shall post some pictures. As an aside to any of you starting to produce a portable/exhibition layout, think about end protection for the b/boards, Jamie has made crating ends to do the job when the l/out is finished, BUT, we have a number of damaged rail ends, and some rails to replace after suffering damage in just moving them around the club rooms or off to Jamies shed and back. The boys, (JP and Tony) are carring on now with the seemingly endless job of sticking down the 'stone' paving on the platform surfaces already built. It IS moving along I promise.

Ha, I remember the dark snowy nights putting Long Preston to bed

Did you play trains? Did the electrical system work? I am working on the finials for the canopies at the moment; full hard brass is fine to turn, BUT, half hard (which Jamie supplied me with) is like trying to machine chewing gum!!!! I am getting there, however, had to modify the drawn up version to make it look a bit better, get the angles just right etc. Hopefully will have some for you by next week (Fri) Jamie. I see from the pictures that the awnings throw a strong shadow along the platforms, that looks fantastic. I will try to put some images of the footbridge on this discussion in due course.

Jamie doesn't know it, yet! but I have had to do some delicate surgery to the entry to the fiddle yard. The gradient up/down the viaduct came to an abrupt stop at the baseboard joint and suddenly found itself level......eerrrrmmm not going to run very well in service. I have smoothed out the joint area which led to a much more natural gradient on the last part of the viaduct. The brown ply single track into the yard has been subtly parred down to attempt to achieve a gentle transition back to horizontal That should need less re-railing when running. I was ably assisted by our dark horse carpentry star Keith, he is a wizard with a plane. Sorry followers, will try to remember to take some pics.

I've spent much of the last 3 days trying to get the platform canopies looking somthing like before we go out to Upton on Saturday. This has involved gluing glazing material into three of the assembled roof units. The glue that I'm using is some model aircraft canopy glue and takes 3 hours to set. This means that to each of the four pieces to be glued into each awning have to be done over 2 days and left to set for several hours with weights in them. The end result is worthwhile and i have also got the first coat of paint onto one unit of three bays fof the west end of the up platform. The result looks OK and I will take some pictures over the weekend.

 

I've also managed to put the framing onto another three roof sections and have got 75% of the three painted. Steady but time consuming progress.

 

Jamie

Phil and I worked on last night, in spite of it being a holiday! For some reason it was lovely and quiet in the club rooms; anyway 'we' laid more track, cut some track (baseboard joints) did some wood carving in the baseboard side to allow access to the new controller................................and!!!!! I swept the da*n area up after finishing, just as I was taught to do before putting my ( sorry, HMQ's) aircraft to bed. We will have more pictures to show soon. I am finding this area very interesting JP is making half relief terrace houses, a road and footbridge to cover the scenic break, the start of which is seen in my last picture dated April 3. it will straddle the apparent single track ( the plain brown part adjacent to the traverser) behind the rule part of the square is resting near the orange handled screwdriver, hope that makes some sense

The boards Jamie posted yesterday were incorporated into the Castle branch area of the layout last evening (Monday) as follows:-.

In the background of pics 2 & 3 you can see the club layout Eagle Rock. Please note for the interest of casual observers I have endeavoured to include some human interest with various club/layout members in attendance.................................ha!

Oh! yes we also finalised the general ideas for the fitment of the control panel and transformer for this fiddle yard - remembering, of course, to ensure that all trailing electrical leads were to end up INSIDE the layout footprint (health and safety don't you know????)