kirmies

It's been over a month since I last posted here but work continues just not very exciting or photogenic work! Mostly baseboard building and track laying. All the boards are now completed, and track is laid on most of them.: Easitrak is an easy and obvious choice for the track but how to deal with track and baseboard joints? Reference to the excellent 2mm Association book 'Track: how it works and how to build it' revealed yet another hitherto unknow to me Association product: milled PCB sleeper units. These consist of 10 sleepers on a milled PCB base. Cutting these up, I've used 2 sleepers worth for track joints and 3 sleepers worth either side of each baseboard joint in both cases held down with some ancient brass track pins of unknown origin: N.B. photos taken BEFORE the rails were soldered to the PCB sleeper bases! I've always been rather 'belt and braces' when it comes to wiring preferring TWO droppers attached to each length of rail. The principle here is: should one fail there's another one still there. This has worked well on my previous 2 exhibition layouts with not a single section of track losing power in over 60 shows! It does, however, lead to rather a large number of droppers potentially making wiring up seem a daunting prospect: However, with DCC only needing 2 buss bars and the use of self-adhesive copper tape for those, it doesn't take long to convert this chaos into something approaching order:

I do use PPD for etching and find them excellent. If you follow their guidelines for minimum dimensions (basically no linear dimension less than 1.2x the metal thickness) you won't go far wrong. If you stray below that not only will they ask you to take responsibility for anything that doesn't come out as planned but also those pieces will be VERY delicate. Better to use thinner metal - I've been experimenting recently with getting some stuff (e.g. window frames) etched in stainless steel which is a much stronger metal than brass or nickel and so thinner sheet can be used giving (following the 1.2x thickness mantra) finer detail. If sand blasted and etch primed, paint sticks to it well enough. Although custom etching is not cheap, it makes so many things (like the awnings and, indeed, the station roof itself) SO much easier and I find PPD usually deliver sooner than their estimated lead time (usual disclaimers apply!).

Progress has been made assembling the first awning: First piece of good news - it all slots together as planned; Second piece of good news: it fits the curve of the platform pretty accurately And, what's more, it very much looks the part: Note: this is very much a trail fit (to make sure it actually does fit) so the holes in the platform/baseboard the brass rod goes through need adjustment so the all the columns are vertical and there's nothing currently holding the whole assembly down so, in places, it's not siting flush. But overall...........not bad!!

Hi Simon, What I'm using at the moment is described as 'natural white' which, I think, is roughly a 50/50 mix of warm and cool white. To my eye it looks like a pretty good approximation to the light you get in the real station. It'll be easier to tell once more of the model is painted/weathered at which point I may well alter the lighting a bit. As important to me is the largely shadowless nature of the light under the roof which the frosted clear plastic I'm now using on the skylights seems to capture well.

One of the other things that I've been getting on with has been the awnings for the open air platforms. These will only be viewable through the ends of the roof but they form an important part of the view: Drawing the awnings up for etching was made considerably easier by having a 1930s drawing from the Network Rail archive but still took quite some time. This morning the first sheet of etches arrived: As ever, all I really want to do is put it in a frame, hang it on the wall and look at it in wonder - how did I manage that? But this wouldn't help the layout to progress so, this afternoon, the first set of pieces have been cut out and now it's easier to see how it will all fit together: The lateral pieces slot into the lengthways ones, and then roof and valence pieces will be added which should make the whole thing fairly rigid. I'm very grateful to my good mate Andy Ross (aka Trams and Locos) for taking some time off from drawing up bits and pieces for his Hunslet layout to draw and 3D print the columns: As you can see, like all things 2FS, they are pretty small but have come out exceptionally well. The piece of 1.0mm wire going through the one on the left will solder into a slot in the awning lattice at one end and pass through the baseboard for fixing below at the other. This all sounds and looks great but the real test will be seeing if it fits together as planned!

Great minds think alike!

Sorting out the roof lighting part 2: As I said in the previous post, I was very pleased with the improvement the prismatic diffusers produced. BUT, the more I looked at them the more I thought I could do better: The wooden bars spread along the roof to support the diffuser sheet were rather obvious: The prismatic nature of the diffuser was also really quite obvious (above photo exposure adjusted to show this): I'd thought all along that the diffusers on their own might not be enough and had found some 0.25mm frosted clear PVC sheet on the 4D Model Shop website. For anyone who's not come across this site, it's primarily designed for architectural model builders. This means that, whilst it doesn't have the range of model railway focused items that say Squires or Eileen's Emporium stocks, it does keep an interesting range of other things including this stuff. So, what if I put a layer of the frosted sheet on top of the roof lights i.e. between the roof and the diffuser? Considerable improvement: The wooden bars have disappeared As the prismatic diffuser AND, if anything, the lighting is even better than before. The only problem now is that the two layers between the LED strip and the layout do a good job of attenuating the light level to the point that I now wondered if it was brightly enough lit. Okay, let's try the clear frosted sheet WITHOUT the diffuser: The lighting effect is every bit as good as it was before and If anything, the light level is brighter than it was with just the diffuser sheet. So, I've moved from 'result' to 'better result'! The fact that it took me several days modelling time to make the supports for the diffuser sheet, cut it to size etc. etc. could now be seen as a pretty annoying waste of time but I tend to look on it as all part of the development process: it often takes several attempts to reach a satisfactory result and I'm sure the diffuser sheet which is now spare will come in for another project sometime!

It's been nearly a month since my last post but much has been happening. One is trying to crack the lighting under the roof. I've used LED strips and was pleased with the result they produced on their own but not 100% satisfied. So now I'm in the process of fitting prismatic diffusers - like the stuff used, for example, on office and shop ceiling lights. The upper picture shows the lighting effect produced by the LED strips on their own and the lower one with the diffusers in place. To my eye the lower version is a considerable improvement: The shadow on the platform under the lengthways columns between the pillars has gone As has the strip of light on the platform in the foreground The rear wall is lit MUCH better and If anything, below the footplate on the loco (always a hard thing to light properly) is more visible Result!

At Larkrail the other week someone made the suggestion of putting a row of coaches outside the backwall of the roof to form a '3D backscene'. Unfortunately, I can't remember who it was but it was a great idea so THANK YOU: it works brilliantly! This is just a mock up at the moment of what it can and will look like using Dapol Gresley coach bodies: I'm even going to extend the idea and include a tender body at one end to suggest that it really is a train and not just a load of coach bodies! Note that these photos do show up rather cruelly some of the work still to do e.g. bedding the base of the backwall down on the platform properly, making sure all the columns are vertical etc.etc. This will all happen when I take the roof off one more time to finish and ballast the trackwork, detail and paint the platforms etc.

Thanks for the kind words! Larkrail gave me the impetus to get on with it. I'd spent the weeks leading up to it frantically getting it to what I considered a presentable state and, as a consequence, could only see what was wrong. All the many positive comments on the day and since have helped me see it through different eyes and, whilst there is much still to do, I'm incredibly pleased with the progress so far and how well my initial concept is turning out! Thanks again!

Progress in being made on the external platform boards that will be either end of the overall roof board. These will ONLY be seen by looking through the end screens of the roof. Here's a frst glimpse of what the view will look like: Not sure yet how the trains will be 'vanished' beyond the end of these boards (each 600m long) but I suspect the 'disappearing into a black hole' effect will be less obvious once the platform awnings are in place.

I do use a fixative - also made by Abteilung 502 and cunningly called 'Pigment Fixer'. This is NOT a varnish but merely fixes the powder to the surface it's on rather than putting a layer over it. This means it does little if anything to change the level of sheen of the paint underneath the powder. It pretty much MUST be sprayed on as brushing it on will move the powder and potentially wreck your carefully crafted weathering finish. It only needs a very light 'misting' at low pressure - too much and it'll start to run and again wreck the finish. And BE WARNED: when first sprayed on it looks for all the world like it's ruined everything. HOWEVER, once dry, you really can't tell it's there i.e. the look returns to exactly how it was pre-application. I haven't applied fixative to the YORK roof yet mostly because (fairly obviously) it fixes on what's there meaning you can add more but you can't remove what you've previously applied and I might yet decide I want to. As long as the powder is on a surface that's not going to get alot of handling (and the roof isn't) it'll be fine in the short term.

I just wanted to thank everyone who commented so positively on my new layout YORK yesterday. Having spent many hours on it (particularly in recent weeks) I was tending only to see what's wrong with it. It seems there's quite a bit right with it as well! Here are a couple of photos takne this morning (first opportunity to spend a bit of time on the layout with a camera since painting the roof): Morephotos have been posted on the YORK for York Show 2023 thread

Grateful thanks are due to everyone who was SO positive about YORK at Larkrail yesterday. Having spent an awful lot of hours working on it (particularly recently), I was tending to see only the things that are wrong with it. Seeing it through many other people's eyes has made me realise that there is MUCH that is right about it and how well it works as a concept. As promised, for those who were unable to attend the excellent event which was Larkrail 2022, here are some photos taken this morning:

With Larkrail tomorrow I can reveal that YORK is back together and ready to go but it was close (3pm this afternoon!). Fortunately, I reckoned I had a couple of days in hand which was just as well as it turned it……. I didn’t! The Tamiya masking tape worked brilliantly. The liquid masking fluid less so as it was a total pain to remove. I’ve used this stuff before very successfully but not this time - maybe it was the hot weather! I’ve done a quick weathering job for tomorrow using my favourite Abteilung 502 Urban Industry Dirt powder . This looks like a simple grey colour but it’s much more subtle and complex than that giving red rust tones in places and looking very different depending what colour surface it’s going on. Weathering in 2mm is a matter if understating so, to my eye at least, this is a good start and I’ll give some time and thought to what else it needs. As with everything to do with this roof, there’s a lot of it so it took ages - around 6 hours to put this layer of powder on. Before on the right, after on the left! For the lengthways beams I drew the fancy scroll work full etch thickness with the surrounding beam half etched. This was then soldered onto a plain second layer for strength. The idea was to paint the beams, gently scrape off the paint on the scroll work and then metal black it. I hadn’t tried this technique before but I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it and it’s worked well. In a few days time I’ll post some photos of what the whole station now looks like partly to protect Larkrail’s world exclusive first view status but mostly because I haven’t had time to take any! Looking forward to seeing you there tomorrow!

Whilst laying down the basic trackwork proved much quicker than I anticipated, painting the roof has, on the other hand, been every bit as long and painstaking a job as I feared it might be. The thing is, although it takes apart into 3 sections, these sections are still quite big. So, first problem, how to clean it? Answer, in the bath! The towel is to prevent scratching the bath's enamel surface. An entire bottle of Cif and much scrubbing with a toothbrush later and I'm ready for priming: Whilst I'd normally cover stuff being painted to prevent dust landing, I just didn't have anything big enough for this so I converted the entire workshop into as near a dust free environment as possible (basically not doing ANYTHING else in there for the duration of painting). This combined with fast drying acrylic paint I'm using seems to be working well. The painting 'schedule' had been worked out with the back wall roof sections so: Sand coloured primer (lots of nooks and crannies so took a while) Pale cream colour (ditto) Then mask off the cream coloured areas priot to painting the rest black(ish). I've just reached the end of stage 3 and, whilst stages 1 & 2 did take a while, this took SEVERAL DAYS. But then with 81 roof sections and at least 8 pieces of Tamiya masking tape per section........that's alot of masking! The really fiddly bits (e.g. the longitudinal beams with the scrollwork on them) got masked using Mr. Hobby Masking Sol R - a more modern version of the old Humbrol Maskol. Meanwhile, the columns have been primed, sprayed cream and masked prior to the tops and bottoms getting sprayed brown: This does look a bit like something you might find on a hillside overlooking Athens but it works well. Today's job (before it gets too hot) = the next stage of spraying! Wish me luck.

Thanks Steve! And good to meet you at the Derby Jubilee event the other week. St Ives WILL get finished some day!

As reported in this thread a while ago, the YORK station roof board will be making its first public appearance at Larkrail in a couple of weeks. This will be its ONLY outing before the whole layout premiers at the York Show next Easter. Larkrail’s approach has rather focused my mind on getting it to a presentable state and the two main things I’m hoping to get done by then are painting the roof and laying the track. More on the first later but, for now, a bit about the track. I’m using 2mm Association Easitrak and my main observation is how incredibly well named it is – it is SO easy! The Easitrak PVA glue gives an ideal combination of immediate grip to hold a section of track in place whilst allowing sufficient movement for long enough to get everything properly adjusted. A couple of things I’ve used to aid this process are the late Keith Armes suggestion of putting just ONE rail in the sections of track before gluing them down and only sliding the second rail in once the glue is properly set. This prevents the annoying habit of, every time you curve one bit of a section one way it produces another curve the opposite way further along. The other is I made myself some simple jigs to space the outside tracks a consistent distance from the platform edge and to space adjacent tracks at a constant distance apart. This were milled from 6mm Tufnol and worked much better than I could ever have imagined. Because the platform edge was CNC routed, its curve is a consistent one, so if the track follows it, the curve will be spot on. Despite sticking to the universal 2mm mantra of proceeding slowing, gently and carefully, the track laying has been remarkably quick aided by the accelerated drying time of the glue in the current warm temperatures. I have always been advised (by Mike Edge amongst others) to lay track in a heatwave. In the UK this is usually quite hard to organise but, by happy coincidence, I’ve achieved perfect timing!

There are 11 sections in each direction all the same length and capable of holding a 10 coach train, say around 5 ft. So distance from leaving the scenic section in one direction and reappearing in the other = approx. 55ft. Much like the trains on Copenhagen Fields, YORK's trains are going to need to be built with high mileage in mind!

I said I'd try to explain how the automated queue system I'm using works so here goes....... I used the same system on the Blea Moor fiddle yard and it worked extremely well and reliably so it has been used again (both the design and the electrical equipment): Essentially magnets in each brake van trigger reed switches in the track which (via latching relays) control dead sections in the track. When a brake van passes over a reed switch it latches the relay controlling the next dead section back along the track allowing the next train to move forward and unlatches the relay controlling the dead section the brake van has just passed over so that this next train will stop when it reaches that dead section. By this means, when a train is driven across the visible part of the layout, the trains behind it automatically move up the queue. The idea is there is always a dead section between trains so pile ups, at least in theory, should never happen and, if a train splits or stops, the system grinds to a halt until the fault is investigated and sorted. This diagram shows how it works: In this example there are 4 trains (trains 1-4) separated by short dead sections (A-D) with a read switch in front of each. The 4 steps shown here should illustrate how it all works At step 1 a train is moving forward from A because the dead section is live, all the other trains are stopped because the locos are standing on dead dead sections. At step 2 the brake van at the end of train 1 is passing over the reed switch in front of A. This causes the section at A to go dead and the one at B to go live and so train 2 starts to advance. By step 3 train 2’s brake van is passing over the reed switch in front of B making the dead section there dead and the one at C live so train 3 starts advancing. At step 4 train 2 has reached dead section A (which was switched off by the magnet in train 1’s brake van) so stops. Train 3’s brake van is passing over reed switch C making the dead section there dead and the one at D live meaning train 4 starts to move forward. Just after step 4 train 3 will reach dead section B and stop. Not long after that train 4 will reach dead section C and also stop. So, all the trains have moved forward one place in the queue but have always been separated by a dead section. The YORK/Ivybridge return curves have a total of 22 sections as against the 4 in the diagram but the system is the same. This means there is capacity for around 18 trains (there always need to be some empty sections for trains to advance to). Sounds complicated but is actually very simple and effective.

If anything, yours are the neater ones!!😍🤩

The back wall is now finished and I'm really pleased with the way it looks: The back wall is slightly above the platform surface at the moment because there's thin layer of 1.6mm ply to make the top skin of the platform so, hopefully, when that's been fitted the bottom of the wall will be flush with the platform surface. Next job = dismantle the roof for painting and to allow the trackwork to be installed.

Yes, the Blea Moor fiddle yard did have the occasional exciting moment! 😕 The front was designed to be a more relaxed 'watching the trains go by' so did indeed tend to be less exciting!

As I’m sure has been reported elsewhere, The 2mm Association Diamond Jubilee (+2) weekend was a great success and a big thank you to everyone who said such positive things about the Ivybridge/YORK return curves despite the odd teething problem in their running. The return curves were met with alot of puzzled faces and many questions so I though I should try to explain their design. When first seen they look quite mind boggling: But are really quite simple in concept: They are essentially folded figure of eight so that all trains appear (over time) in both directions. : So if, for example, there were 10 trains in action and you were watching the layout, the 11th train you see pass by will be the first train you saw going back in the opposite direction. You would have to wait until the 21st train to go past before you would see the same train going passed in the same direction for a second time. Unfolded the track would form a continuous circle of single track with the two section that runs across the front of the layout at opposite sides of the circle. To avoid flat crossings, there is an upper level (blue in this diagram) and a lower level (red). Trains climb (or descend) from one level to the other via a shallow (and pretty much imperceptible) gradient (something like 1 in 200) across the front of the layout. Every train going both ways across the front of the layout does mean differences in formation in the up version of a train versus the down can’t be modelled BUT only half as many trains are needed to provide a given length of sequence. Those who remember my 4mm layout Blea Moor will notice a similarity in this track design and the control system is also strangely similar as I’ll explain next time.

This post is about how satisfying making something can be when, despite set backs, trials and tribulations along the way , it all starts to come together. Having decided I was happy with the painting/weathering sceheme I'd come up with for the back wall/roof, it was time to replicate it along the whole length (81 columns/roof beams etc.). The roof sections were primed with the same acrylic sand primer I'd used for the walls, sprayed with a pale cream/off white colour and then the roof panels masked to allow beams to be painted black: When I say 'painted black' I hardly EVER use pure black any more but one or other of a really excellent set of complex grey shades in this set: In this case, black uniform base. The whole lot, wall and roof sections were then dusted in AK Industrial City Dirt (now marketed as Abteilung 502 Urban Industry Dirt) and once I was happy with the finish, everything was sprayed with AK Pigment Fixer. Now for the best bit (I hoped!) attaching the roof panels to the wall and seeing it all grow. As with fixing the plastikard wall sections to the ply former, I used Evostik, clamping each section until the glue bonded: An unexpected benefit of the current hot weather is that the glue goes off in about an hour. So, glue a section on, clamp it, set a timer for an hour and go and do something else (e.g. sit in the shade with a cool drink!) go back, glue the next bit. And repeat! I have to say I'm REALLY pleased with the way its's turning out: The windows need finishing, a bit of touching up needed here and there but, essentially LOOKING GOOD! YORK won't be at the 2mm Association Diamond Jubilee event this weekend.... but I will with John Aldrick's Ivybridge and the return curves that will also supply the trains to YORK. This will be their first test under exhibition conditions so here's hoping it all goes well! Come and have a chat!