KH1

'Better late than never', as the saying goes so here a mere eight days but 192 very hectic hours (OK, I was asleep for some of them!), after the Trent Area 7mm Narrow Gauges' lovely showlet at Mickelover in Derbyshire, is a brief update on my contribution. A contribution which which spanned two tables with a six foot test track upon which four years work shuttled happily back and forth and and 14 out of the 22 planed models were displayed in some form of completion or other. It is rather scary that it is all taking so long but but the challenges such as learning 2 and 3d CAD and the art of etching as well as never having been so busy work wise due to a certain virus, have all contributed. But back to the present.... The rationale for this project was that if I couldn't get sufficient numbers of trams working in a realistic time scale then there was no point in going forward with the project. The aim of the display was therefore, to show the evolution of the vehicles from, plans, to CAD drawing, to etches and then completed trams. There was also included sub displays of the evolution of the wheels from 3d printed masters to lost wax castings to fully machined products. The lovely bouncy trolley poles were not left out either! It was not all static of course, various trams went back and forth all day on the auto shuttle test track reinforcing the fact that N20 motors are up to the task. Taking pride of place though, was the Tividale car that I had moved heaven and earth to complete in the final week, with the adverts being printed at 1.30am before the show. This was resplendent on it's little turntable revolving at 10rpm all day except from when I knocked it over which was rather too frequent! All in all , a very enjoyable day with a chance to catch up with lots of old friends and possibly make some new ones1

My last post concerned the WDLR Bogies I had designed for my 30 odd 7mm Narrow Gauge wagons and several marathon sessions to get the ready for the Cardiff exhibition. It was traumatic but I did manage it and layout, exhibition and bogies went well. While playing at the end of the second day one of the Hunslets managed to pull a load of 16 fully loaded wagons which proved the point of the whole exercise. After a suitable recovery period and to keep Andy happy, I will now turn back to the long running tram saga. There has actually been a significant development here because after a couple of years of development and some very had work by friend Trevor we now have the means to make the bogie trams go. Last week I nipped over to Wales to pick up a couple of completed bogies and sufficient parts to make up enough for the 3 Cradley and 3 DS10. They consist of a fold up etch chassis to which an N20 with transverse shafts is added and etched outer frames to which various 3D printed bits will be added. They are split frame pickup and use wheels which I had lost wax cast in Nickle Silver from a 3D printed master with the driving axle being free to float to allow some compensation. Gauge is 24.5mm to match the 3'6" of the prototype. That all sound pretty straight forward doesn't it? Well I can tell you that it most certainly wasn't in practice with quite a number of false starts and prototypes falling by the wayside. All that needs to be done now is a thorough testing on an actual body and then setting about making up the rest. They need something to run under of course and I have been steadily working away in AutoCad and now have all the etches produced for 22 vehicles spread over 7 different classes. The heap of wheels that still need machining should show the scale of the task. About half the etches have been built now but I have held back completion until we are completely happy with bogie / chassis arrangements. Here are a couple of pics of a DS10 Semi Open bogie car going together (slowly!), at the moment. Though I say it myself, I have become pretty good at designing the etches so they all fit together beautifully and strongly with much use of locating tabs and little tricks for getting alignments accurate and consistent. The seats form an important role in strengthening the 30cm long body and the brass 'H' section on the pillars will have microscope slides fitted for the glazing. Sacrificial straighteners are still in place across the open doorways and will be cut out when both sides and ends are in place.

It has been over four years since the layouts last outing and probably as long as that since I last blogged about it put that is probably because absolutely nothing ha happened to it in that time! But, with an outing to the Cardiff show in just ten days time looming there has been an intense rush of activity. I have just erected almost the entire layout and have coaxed several lazy points back to life and tested all the petrol locos and after some grumbling about having to work even longer before retiring (but that is very familiar to many of us!), they are now purring along nicely. Will get down to the steam locos tomorrow. The main area of work has been directed towards fulfilling a dream I had when designing the layout, namely, to be able to run up to ten or twelve wagon trains which the layout is capable of. Unfortunately the vagaries of rather ancient Wrightlines bogies have always denied me this pleasure, so while progress on the Kinver tram project has been moving along I have been refining the design for and etched version with a test or two on several successive tram etches. As time was running out I had to settle on version four although this is still not perfect but needs must. Who would have thought that I would have achieved this level of modelling nerdiness when this project started but I guess that was over ten years ago. So here we have my own design based on an etch of a sturdy fold up chassis with an array of overlays and pressed out rivets, beautifully etched by Grainge & Hodder and additional details 3D printed myself. But with the final size being only 40mm by 22mm and nearly fifty separate pieces they are pretty time consuming to but together. Hence my title of 'Four a Day' being my goal to refit all the stock in time. Unfortunately, like it's similar but more nutritional namesake, it has been a rather difficult target to achieve. Despite considerable extra time being available as we have now packed no longer little Iz off to University, some very unsociable hours I am still struggling to make the deadlines. That is not to say I am not going to do it but I am not going to be doing much else. I have realised that I don't really have to do every wagon as several of the 'specials' only run individually and even then these will provide an interesting comparison to the sleek, correct scale newcomers which incidentally can be used for either 16.5mm or 14mm gauge. I shall leave you with a couple of pics of the first few which have rolled (very smoothly!), off the production line.

I am glad Up the Line inspired you and just thought you might like to know that after a four year enforced retirement it is going to be at the Cardiff show 21st and 22nd September. I have quite a lot to do in the next six weeks and will hopefully manage a blog or two.

If it is anything to do with the GPO Trevor is probably your man. I should be seeing him at the Trent do at the weekend so will mention it then. Kevin.

Happy Christmas everyone!

A tram in a week! Well almost! I have got as far as I can for now. Unfortunately I got the geometry of the front windows a bit wrong so have included a revised version on the next etch which has been sent off. Also on order is an etch that has all the bogies and chassis for 16 trams. The wheels ,however, are a bit further behind although I have now finished the 3d printed masters which will now be sent off to our friends in Birmingham's Jewelry Quarter to be turned into Nickel Silver castings. Shapeways had a money off offer on Monday so several roofs are now on their way also. So, here are all the bits for the chassis frames and a few minutes later the assembled frames ready for their 3d printed springs and axel boxes fresh off the printer. Here is a slightly novel use for the bending bars being very useful with a few magnets for keeping everything straight and level for soldering. And the finished frames, surprisingly sturdy. A few bits to be added later - advertising boards and the controllers And now the almost finished body, the block of wood is epoxied on to protect the undercarriage in the absence of anything useful like wheels!

Hello Rich, Very carefully! The sides are mostly half etched 15 thou so that is only .2mm to play with. This does mean that they curve very easily but you have to go carefully. I just used a 12mm rod and gently massaged the the sheet around. When seem soldered along the bottom it all gets pretty ridged though.

Another evenings work has it all coming together nicely now. My etches are really just my own 'scratch aid' so there is still a whole load of traditional scratching to be done. Next job was the little air vents over the windows which are from 1.5mm 'C' section brass. These took ages to work out how to cut them accurately without squashing the section but eventually worked it out with a fine fret saw and a 3d printed jig. The RSU again came into it's own with fixing these into their half etched homes above the windows. After this the 'H' section window columns which also act as channels for the glazing which will be from glass micro scope slides. These were cut with my mini chop saw which is a great little tool but to make it even easier to accurately cut again and again I use a set of gauge blocks. These are a great albeit quite expensive discovery but they make setting up things like the saw and my guillotine so easy and accurate. The sides were completed by folding in the tumblehome which adds a significant stiffness to the sides. Now on to a bit more soldering with the partition ends first and then the sides. Once the sides are on it makes the body remarkably solid and stable.

At last, things seem to be happening on the new project front - it is not as if I have not been working on it but I just don't seem to have achieved much so far. One significant development though was the impulsive taking up of the BRM Black Friday deal for all the magazines and NO ADVERTS! So you might be seeing a bit more of me again and fired up with new enthusiasm here is what I got up to last night while the rest of the household were watching men kicking a ball around. Just as a quick recap, the project is Kinver Light Railway which was a 3ft 6in tramway in Staffordshire and not too far from where I live. Absolutely everything has to be scratch in 7mm so progress has been slow. I soon came to the realisation that I wasn't going to get anywhere if I didn't smarten up my efforts so I bit the bullet, learned CAD and designed my own etches. This is the second of four etches for the Tividale car - the only class of any of the cars that I am recreating that still exist. But.... when I started this we were still in lock down so the real one at the Black Country Museum was locked away and when I did eventually visit it was still locked away as the tramway was closed while building work took place. The model, therefore is based on the Alpha Graphics card kit, known dimensions and pictures. Contrary to popular wisdom I have found that I prefer to cut all the main components from the etch first and dress them all in one go, it seems to work for me. As there are no instructions I did make reference to the first one I built and I did make a few notes previously so this was useful as I had made a couple of little errors with the etch that needed sorting out. First task was to bend the lowered sections for the drivers platform with the aid of my trusty bending bars which also came in handy for the buffer frame and floor support. The Resistance Soldering Unit came in handy for fixing the floor overlay. Next up was fitting the seat supports in their half etched locations in the floor. In order to get them all vertical I use a steel set square and various magnets to keep everything in place while soldering. Once the seats are folded to fit and soldered in the floor becomes very ridged. That was enough for one session so everything had a quick bath in the ultra sonic cleaner to get rid of flux residue. So here is the result of one evenings work.

I am reading this and now thankfully without adverts as have just taken up the rather good Black Friday offer!

And I am back! Not only doing a blog but at a model railway exhibition! Just as a visitor although this is an achievement after my Covid foiled attempt to get the layout to Ally Pally in March. It was good to get to the Bristol show on Sunday and meet up with a few familiar faces after two and a half years. Not much seems to have changed except the inevitable retreat into long sightedness over took my reluctance to carry even mild reading glasses and I now have two tints of metalic Humbrol brown paint for which I will struggle to find a use. A more conventional brown is what I intended for this the first item of stock for the new project which was finally declared finished today. I say finished, I guess I mean ready for painting but that in itself is a huge achievement. Just to recap a little, about two years ago I decided the next project was going to be Kinver on the Kinver Light Railway. I wanted something a bit unusual and a 3ft 6in semi rural tram model certainly fits that bill. As this was completely uncharted territory and as you might expect, commercial support is zero, I decided to concentrate on the stock first. About a year ago I gave you the first glimpse of my attempts. I quickly became apparent that if I was ever going to complete the twenty vehicles I planned a new tack was needed. This was designing my own etches of course but unfortunately this meant learning CAD which was a bit drawn out and not very blog worthy. So here we have the results of my first solo etching attempt. The subject is the Kinver milk van which was based on one of the original cars used on the line but later converted to accommodate the considerable dairy trade in the area. As this was the smallest and simplest cars this was the obvious place to start. The few pictures I took during construction have disappeared somewhere but it all went together surprisingly easily although the final detailing seems to have taken an age. So here we have Ernie ( older readers will get the name!), all ready for painting. The roof is 3D printed with some etched details. I prototyped it on my machine but this version is from Shapeways who managed a much better finish and was only seven quid. Before I show you the chassis I will explain the reasoning behind it. Over the last year there have been quite a number of prototype chassis kindly and expertly made for me by Trevor. As our aim was to keep everything out of sight as much as possible, several rather tiny and over hyped motors were tried but this only resulted with the test track being renamed 'The Wall of Death'! So, for this one we decided that as there were no windows it would be given the biggest, most bullet proof mechanism possible so that if everything else were to fail at least we would have one which worked. The frames were pantograph milled and the wheels hand made then attached to a reincarnated computer printer and here we have it; Well it looks good and it will trundle around all day. Everything has now been cleaned up and was etch primed this afternoon. Seven more etches are sitting here waiting for attention for two more tram types so there will be more soon.

I am not going to be boring and start this off with apologising for not posting for ages as I am not sorry - I have been busy!!! Life, work and a certain virus have obviously been getting in the way but work on stock for the new tram layout has now reached fever pitch - in relative terms of course as is over a year since this project was committed to but the six weeks that it took to build the first tram has now been reduced to six days though the miracle of CAD and the etching process. Don't worry there will be more on this soon but am enjoying myself too much building stuff at the moment to write anything. But, getting back to the reason for stirring myself from inactivity on the blog front is that Up the Line is going to make it's first appearance in public and indeed in private for two and a half years at the London Festival of Model Railways at Alexandra Palace next weekend. I did this show four years ago and really enjoyed it and must have been good because they have invited me back! I f you are coming along please do say hello but if you do fancy playing trains then do get in touch as we are a little bit short on operators so any volunteers would be most welcome. There will also be a sneak preview of a few trams as well! Have just included a little teaser as the heading photo also.....

All sounds a bit fishy to me!

As my posts on this project have been a bit few and far between I think a quick catch up is in order - 7mm scale Dudley trams running on 24.5mm track and starting on the rolling stock first. Although I am quite prepared to hand build the real track I really needed something a bit quicker and simpler for to test out the tram chassis design. At the end of the day if we can't get the trams running properly we will not proceed with the project. Set track would be ideal but unfortunately Hornby don't do 24.5mm gauge - or do they? A few years ago I put down some track that had belonged to my late Father in Law so we could play trains with his stuff just as he had enjoyed doing. This board was still hanging around and then I had a brain wave! I took up the double track and re-laid it with the gap between the two circuits being 24.5mm. The scale 3ft6in stock can then run on the outside edge of the inside circuit and the inside edge of the outer circuit. I 3d printed some very simple track gauges to keep everything in place with the only other inconvenience being having to cut a couple of pieces of track to make everything join up properly. It is running on DC at the moment with my trusty old Clipper but once happy with the design everything will go DCC. I put both the test chassis through their passes which has been most useful and various changes are to be made for the forthcoming models. I will devote a blog to the delights of these chassis soon.