kirmies

As many will know, York station is built from yellow/yellow ochre engineering brick (I'm sure someone can shed light on the history/origin) and is very characteristic of the buildings. So, pretty vital to capture at least a close approximation of this colour: As can be seen, as with most brickwork, there is variation in colour between bricks. Whilst this can be recreated to great effect by painting individual bricks using a range of similar but slightly differing shades/colour in larger scales, I'm not sure this is all that practical in 2mm: the bricks are SO small! So, as with many things in this scale, the suggestion of this may well be better and is certainly more practical than individual brick painting! I happened to have some acrylic sand coloured primer so thought this would be a good starting point: As can be seen, this is not a bad first approximation and this is confirmed when the back wall is in place on the layout: EXCELLENT news! Next step = how to introduce at least the impression of some subtle variation in brick colour? Enter my favourite weathering powder - AK Industrial City Dirt. This is a subtle grey colour and works very well in many circumstances. Here, to the left is a section with the roof beams in place, the coping stomes pick out in pale cream and a sparing application of the weathering powder: To my eye, that's not at all bad!

Whilst the label on the tin is important, it’s the contents that really count. So….. Back in February I produced a test section of the back wall of the overall roof using my Silhouette craft cutter to cut multiple layers of 10 thou plastikard MEKed together to produce the required thickness: Given that there are 81 essentially similar arched sections to this back wall it made sense to produce them ‘by machine’ in some way and, whilst I could have gone for 3D printing (pretty expensive as the back wall is over 5ft long), laser cutting (probably likewise) or resin casting, I chose to go with the craft cutter mostly because I have one and have got the hang of how to do this layering of thin plastikard thing. Fast forward several months and I’d finally reached the stage where I had fabricated enough sections (‘here are another 79 I produced earlier’) and could start assembly. I made a 6mm ply curved carcass to mount the sections on and then set about temporarily fitting them on this with double sided tape to see whether they lined up with the main part of the roof. Queue another lesson in cumulative error: the 2 arch sections I’d made were nearly 1mm per arch too narrow so, by the time I reached the other end of the roof I was about 8cm short! How could this have happened and, more to the point, what the hell could I do about it? Long story short, I ended up making single arch joining sections each around 2mm over width and then, after a lengthy series of mounting on ply carcass, measuring the error, removing and filing a bit more off each section and then retrying, I finally got there. This was a long and tedious process but, by now, I realised that, with now 54 separate pieces – 27 under width double arch bits and 27 over width single arch ones – an error of even 0.1mm per section led to a total error of over 5mm and, therefore, either a big gap or a back wall that wouldn’t fit! What I though would be a relatively quick job compared to the overall roof build had already taken up over 100 somewhat frustrating hours! I used a tried and tested method to bond the plastikard pieces to the ply carcass – Evostik. As long as you apply the glue to BOTH surfaces and let it go COMPLETELY dry before bringing the two together, it works brilliantly. I left small sections at a time clamped in place overnight for the glue to fully cure and, over a period of about a week, gradually went from one end to the other: I have to say I’m VERY happy with the result and, although every third arch is wider than the others, I don’t think this will be at all apparent once it’s fitted to the back of the layout. Next step painting!

Since there was no existing logo, signage or even paperwork this rebranding exercise will, in contrast to many others, have zero cost!

I most certainly did!😉 I consulted with my self at great length. The main topic of discussion was should it be YORK or YORK! In the end a majority (of me) took against the '!' as overstating the obvious! 🤭

An Update! Apologies to anyone who has noticed it’s 4 months since I last posted on this thread. There have been various reasons for this the main one being leading a project to encourage a population of swifts to nest in our village – Nibley Swifts. In short, we had swifts nest in boxes on our house for the first time last year and I thought it’d be good to get some nesting on other houses so offered to build people boxes for the cost of the materials. I thought I’d be doing well if half a dozen people were interested. How wrong can you be? There are now over EIGHTY boxes spread around 30 houses (plus a load on the local secondary school) and I have a waiting list for next year! This has somewhat distracted from progress on YORK but: The layout is now confirmed to be making its first public appearance at York Show Easter 2023 The main station board will make a single outing prior to this as a static ‘work in progress’ exhibit at Larkrail on Saturday 23rd July, The rear wall of the station roof (first section of which features in my last post of 17th Feb) is finally nearing completion so, in the next day or two, I’ll post more on that – with pictures! And finally, I've taken the radical step of changing the name of the layout from the rather indulgently long 'This is York' to the altogether more snappy 'YORK' (all upper case). Obviously this will completely transform the nature of the layout!

I've finally got started on the back wall of the train shed: The first two sections, a combination of layered 10 thou plastikard (cut and scored with my Silhouette craft cutter) and Evergreen styrene strip. Not all the arches are infilled with brickwork: there are doors, windows and, of course, open arches to allow access to the far platforms. The LNER plan I have (seen in the background) will enable me to work out which goes where. Just SEVENTY NINE more sections to go...........

Tim, The valve gear etch can definitey be made available but I'd like to wait until some of the loco fitted with it have done some proper miles. It's very delicate (drawn to the recommended limits by the etchers PPD but still over scale) so I'm slightly concerned about wear and handling damage. I'm thinking of getting some etched in mild steel for the next batch as it should be more robust. This is perfectly okay for soldering using decent strength phosphoric acid flux, it's just vital to wash part thoroughly at the end of each session to avoid rust. Peter

Thanks Jerry. That's the sort of positive thinking I love: I'm now so far behind........I'm ahead!! Peter

So, having gone to all this effort and built 8 replacement 2FS chassis for my Dapol Gresley pacifics, was it worth it? Or perhaps the broader question is: Now that there is N-gauge Finetrax, is it still worth modelling in 2mm/ft finescale? First of all, what now looks similar whether N-gauge or 2FS? N-gauge trackwork (if using Finetrax) is now ALMOST as good looking as 2FS track. The main difference being the size of the flangeways With diesel locos, coaching stock and wagons looked at from a distance it's hard to tell the difference So what about steam prototypes? Let's compare a Dapol A4 staight out of the box: With one of my newly finished 2FS converted ones: (Please, for the purposes of this comparison, ignore the missing rear pony wheels on the 2FS version - I had forgotten to put them back on when the photo was taken!). Fairly obviously, the main difference is the finer scale wheels and valve gear (although the much improved hand rails also make a big difference). Having tried fitting finer valve gear onto the Dapol wheels I can report that this is NOT a job I would recommend! To me this demonstrates that all the time and effort is very much worthwhile and roughly equates to the difference between the Triang-Hornby Flying Scotsman I had as a boy and a finescale kit built A3 or one of the very best modern ready to run models. Or, to put it another way, the first photo couldn't really be anything other than an N-gauge model whereas the second just might be a photo of a 4mm model.

Finally the batch of 4 A3s and 4 A4s is completed. I've posted on here before how batch building is a double edged sword - one the one hand you do end up with a whole batch of stuff built but......it takes ages. When I first started building 'This is York' I divided the work up into 'modules' with a target completion date for each. This felt very efficient and positive at the time. So first the good news: the 8 Gresley pacifics are completed...... And now the bad news, the target date for completion was the end of March 2021. The best laid plans etc.

More A4s are planned - 4491 could be one of them perhaps with custom made nameplates 'DOMINANCE OF AUSTRALIA' and a decal of the Ashes urn on the cab side

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2022!! It’s exactly a year since I launched this thread and committed myself to getting ‘This is York’ ready for the York Show at Easter 2022. As reported a few days ago, this has now had to be delayed until Easter 2023 so it would be easy to be glass half empty and focus on what hasn’t happened. But I think it’s much better to be glass half full and look at what has been achieved: A year ago I had a fairly crude mock up of part of the layout made full sized out of foam board and plastikard: Since then, the roof has been drawn in CAD, test etched and built, amended and the whole roof is now complete and installed on the main station baseboard (which also didn’t exist a year ago): January 2021 mock up: Layout as of now: Mock up: Layout: Four A1/A3s are now VERY nearly completed: as are four A4s: and half a dozen other locos (J6, J39, O4, D20 and two K3s) are in varying stages of completion. Around 50 coaches have been completed. Around a third of these are ready to run Dapol Gresleys which just needed rewheeling, weathering etc. The rest are re-sided Dapol, Hornby/Arnold Pullmans or kit built. Finally, a year ago the return curves (AKA the fiddle yard) were built and track laid. They are now automated but still need the exhaustive testing I found so necessary with the fiddle yard for Blea Moor to ensure reliable running. So, looked at like, this a great deal has been achieved but there is much more yet to be done. My aim is to be able to post a video of a train running through station by this time next year. Given that this means building the four remaining 4 baseboards and installing, wiring and testing the track over all of them not to mention dismantling and painting the roof, I’d better get cracking! Here's hoping for a great 2022!

I've just updated the layout's website home page (link at the bottom of this post): ...and amended the 'Days to go' countdown from 106 days (to Easter Saturday 2022) to 463 (to Easter Saturday 2023). Far from feeling like an admission of defeat, it felt very positive and MUCH more comfortable! Reference by Bradfordbuffer to Eboracum reminded me of the latin saying: Festina lente - Make haste slowly. Whilst checking that my latin spelling was correct I stumbled across this: Hâtez-vous lentement, et sans perdre courage, Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage, Polissez-le sans cesse, et le repolissez, Ajoutez quelquefois, et souvent effacez. (Slowly make haste, and without losing courage; Twenty times redo your work; Polish and re-polish endlessly, And sometimes add, but often take away) by the 17th century French poet Nicolas Boileau (who I have to say, I'd never heard of) Although writing about composing poetry, this sounds like good advice to me - must try to remember it!!

THIS IS YORK for York Show 2022 2023 Confucious when he wrote 'May you live in interesting times' had clearly not lived through a pandemic! So many things haven't happened as planned since March 2020 and, I'm afraid, 'THIS IS YORK for York Show 2022' now has to be added to this long list. As of today, it has become THIS IS YORK for York Show 2022 2023 It was always an optimistic (some said foolish) plan to attempt to build a layout of this size and complexity to an exhibitable state in around 16 months. And so it has proved. As is always the case, everything has taken longer than expected but also, as a result of Covid as much as anything else, considerably less time has been available to spend on the layout than was anticpated and this has led over the past couple of months to the inevitable conclusion that there simply wasn't going to be time to get done everything that needed doing before Easter 2022. A quick chat with Ken Gibbons (the late Mal Scrimshaw's successor as York Show manager) a few weeks ago rearranged 'This is York''s exhibiton debut from Easter 2022 to Easter 2023 and, now the decision is made, it is a considerable relief. On reflection, I'd far rather do it well than do it quickly and progress will continue to be reported here as and when there's something worth reporting. Wishing everyone the very best for 2022. A photo update will follow in the next few days......

Close observers will spot the wonky columns siting in the corner at the end of the video. These are on the list of fixes to do but are inaccessible at the moment so will have to wait until I disassemble for painting.

Thanks for all the positive feedback - MUCH appreciated! The last few days have been spent 'consolidating' the build work over the weekend and installing the first attempt at lighting. As on my previous layout Laramie Engine Terminal' I'm using LED strip but, in the intervening years between then and now, LED strip technology has moved on and 'continuous strip' is now available. Whereas the stuff on Laramie had 120 LEDs per metre (so there were gaps between each light) this stuff has 480 per metre so provide a continuous strip of light: thus avoiding the tendency which the previous stuff had to create mini pools of light. As before I'm using a mixture of cool and warm light but this time all in one strip called 'natural white' which is said to be half way between the two colour temperature wise. As can be seen from this low flying drone shot, it seems to work pretty well. so, for once, the first attempt may need very little tweeking.

Thanks for those kind words Simon. My recipe for painting the teak is not secret, it's based on Maryn Welch's technique (see Model Railway Journal Issue 176 (2007)! In simple terms this involves first spraying the coach sides the sort of orange VW beetles used to be painted. Then streaking the grain using Humbrol gloss black and a very skinny (and worn) brush, then doing the same thing with Ronseal walnut or mahogany (NOT TEAK) coloured varnish and then spraying with gloss varnish for the decals. After decals are applied, spray with satin varnish. The worn wood effect is done after this using weathering powders fixed with powder fixative. Hope this helps!

This weekend has been a key moment in the gestation of 'This is York' - putting together the baseboard and the etched roof sections with two key questions: Will they fit? Will it look as I imagined/hoped it would? Given that this is the culmination of work that has taken up most of my modelling time this year the prospect of doing this was quite exciting and decidedly tense at one and the same time. So......how did it go? Day 1: fit the 9 sections of roof previously mounted on the test section of baseboard: On the whole pretty good - one or two minor adjustments needed but nothing too serious or catastrophic. Days 2 & 3: gradually adding on 15 more roof sections (each one consisting of three cross beams - all that soldering!). This can best be summarised in a kind of time lapse video: I am well chuffed! Here's what the final position at the end of the 3 day event looks like: This leaves the 4 column section of taper at this end to build and then the back wall (oh, and everything else that remains to be done!).

The rake of Barnums is approaching completion - two of the seven seen here: These are Recreation 21 3D print bodies from Shapeways, 2mm Association Midland bogies adapted to make them a bit more Great Central in appearance and scratchbuilt/custom etched everything else: They still need door handles, interiors, couplings and corridor connectors plus the brakes need the characteristic grills they had over the windows but I'm quite pleased with how they're turning out: They were a fairly common sight at York up to the late 30s passing through on excursion workings from the midlands to various Yorkshire east coast resorts.

How can it be over TWO MONTHS since I last posted on this thread? People must be wondering what has happened and be waiting patiently (or perhaps incrreasingly less patiently) for an update. I can cite two reasons for this lengthy gap: Everything takes longer than anticipated - many are the jobs you think will take an hour and take all day, few are the ones that you think will take all day but only take an hour. LIFE gets in the way of modelling. This has been happening a lot recently in the Kirmond household. Sometimes it's because good and positive things happen e.g. going to see our daughter who lives in Munich for the first time in nearly two years. All too often it's because something less than positive is going on (examples too many and tedious to relate). BUT, I can report progress has been made. First of all, the main baseboard for the station roofed area is taking shape: A flat surface is absolutely crucial to good baseboard assembly and the flattest surface in our house is the peninsula worktop in the kitchen - a takeaway only catering service was provided during this stage of construction with the actual surface protected with a layer on lining paper! Those familiar with the underside of my old layout 'Blea Moor' may well notice some reuse of weight saving holy plywood! Once the basic structure was flat and rigid, further progress could be right way up: The fascia was added: Cross beams to support the 'lid' and make the whole thing even more rigid: And finally the 'lid' fitted. This will protect the etched roof from damage during transporting, keep off the dust and provide a convenient place to mount the lights (LED strip). Having discovered with the test section of baseboard that I was not going to be able to cut the curved pieces any where near accurately enough, they have been CNC routed. Laser cutting would have been just as effective but I couldn't find a local supplier of the birch ply I wanted who also had a laser cutter.......but I could find one with a CNC router! This does now start to give an idea of what the view will be like: More to follow.......

Further progress on roof construction: Given how complex an etch it is, I was amazed how well it went together with the first test etch: somehow I expected some fairly major errors. But, no, although there were a few mistakes, nothing serious enough to prevent assembly and now I have about a third of the roof completed, seen here on the test section of baseboard, it's possible to see what it will look like when complete: The end screens have turned out particularly well: ..and the columns with 3D printed tops and bottoms courtesy of Simon Thompson really set it off. Although the transverse beams as it tapers down are (as seen here) much wider than prototype, when viewed from a normal viewing angle, this is not so obvious: Next step is a test section of the rear wall to work out how to build that.......

Mike, Yes, a 21:1 worm drive in the loco so the inline gearbox on the motor is only about 5:1 meaning the ouptut shaft is easily turned by hand. The original idea for the flywheel was just to provide a way of getting from the 3mm diameter shaft coming out of the inline gearbox to one end of the flexible drive to the loco. But I reckon it does make a difference (the output on the shaft can reach 6000rpm) as it seems to provide enough momentum to be a bit of a 'physical stay-alive'. Whether this is actual flywheel effect or just the extra weight in the tender providing better contact between wheels and track I'm not sure - it's probably a bit of both!

Andy, Thanks for the link. It has a maximum 46rpm final drive which, with my 21:1 gearbox in the loco would produce a max. speed of around 2 revs of the driving wheels a minute which is, perhaps, taking slow running a but far! But.......other gear ratios are available and I've just ordered a couple of ones which give a 6400rpm max output equivalent to a max loco speed of around 40MPH.

Nigel, Thanks for that - much the same conclusion I'd come to - pointing me towards Glies's stuff will, I'm sure, help me track down suitable micro gearmotors without, as you say, having to pay Swiss prices. In fact the N20 gearmotors are of more use than I thought and will fit into smaller tenders than the Gresley 8-wheelers: From left to right: Dapol Great Northern Gresley 8-wheeled tender body Dapol LNER group standard 6-wheeled tender body (from a B1 destined for a K3) Great Northern 3150 gallon 6-wheeled tender (ATSO 3D print for a J6) As can be seen, there's plenty of room for a DCC chip and a flywheel in the Gresley tender, the LNER group standard will be a somewhat tighter fit but should be okay and there just might not be enough room to make the N20 work in the GN tender even though it will fit in the body shell. In each case the final drive shaft will be trimmed. Anything smaller than the GN tender will definitely need something smaller.

Wheel slip? It’s a light engine!