Revolution Mike B

Well I certainly lived up to my signature this weekend as I tried to propel the TC through the end of the traverser flat out with a 33! After extracting the loco from the second coach in, it's now about 4 inches shorter but on the plus side, given my recent celebrity status, it's now doubled in value! It's always good fun to help run Tidworth because everything (normally) works like clockwork, and despite just being the three of us, there were very few operating mistakes (although ask Ian about his new love for the trap point) as we worked very well as a team. The weekend flew by and we were even treated to a top rate Lasagne by Nigel's wife on Saturday evening.

I've not really done much of late due to work commitments and the loss of my 'Oak Road' mojo - it get's like that every now and then, so I just need to down tools for a while and do something else, in this case, practicing some weathering on some O Gauge track, and designing a 5'x4' Setrack Roundy Roundy based on the layout that Chris Nevard has just built for the new Kernow store in Guildford, which when built, will be auctioned off to raise money for the Meningitis Now charity. I've also done some more work on the remaining IOAs.... Before my mojo went awol, I relaid some more of the fiddle yard and painted the rails in the stone sidings. Last night I added a catch pit and some fresh ballast to the mainline. I'm away with Ian (Rhys, Paul and Nigel) this weekend with Tidworth - we're at Wimrail if anyone wants to pop along and say hello, and then next weekend I'll be heading to Penzance behing the new GBRf 50's, and the following weekend, there's a big football match for the lower league teams at Wembley, so there may not be much else done for a while..........I'm sure Steve Flint is supposed to be coming to take some pictures soon!?

I just got my fingernails behind it and it came away quite easily

Hi Pete Once you've undone the screw, remove the smokebox door and it'll fall out Cheers Mike

Difficult to say Ade - I painted the sleepers back in June 2016 (I can't quote the post as there's no numbers on them anymore!) It took me around an hour to paint 3ft of rail sides last night with a paint brush though. The layout is constantly evolving, just like the real railway because I'm forever digging stuff up and replacing it. I don't always blend it back in either which makes for a more realistic effect. Other stuff has had paint applied on top of paint, possibly 4 or 5 times over, which again, adds depth to what would normally be one block of colour. For reference, most things can be replicated with Black, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, White, Light Grey, Dark Grey and Antique Gold. There's also a bit of Purple and Red thrown in somewhere too.

Following on from the stone sidings post, I decided it was time to give the rails a coat of paint! They still look a bit too 'pink' so I may need to tone them down a bit, and to be honest, I really should've taken a fibreglass pencil to the rail to remove the ballast that's stuck to the side of them! I've got some fishplates to add to the outside edges of the rail joins but going on previous experience, I'll leave the inside ones off and just add some greasy looking paint.

I've had a break from spreading sh!t around and have added a new feature for Swansea - fully working stone sidings complete with auto uncoupling! After Ian told me about putting magnets under the track (Brian Kirby uncoupling) I did some Google and YouTube searching, and then put my own spin on it (probably the same ideas that everyone else has) so it would work with the non standard coupling hoops on the 66s, and it works really well. There's a bit of tweaking needed so that I don't need to back the loco up so much but I'm pleased with the outcome. It means for the first time ever (with the relaid track) stone trains can run in without derailments, from either the down main or branch (or even be backed in from the up main) and the loco can uncouple itself and run round. Coupling back up needs a bit more thought but it won't be too much of a problem once I've modified the coupling hoop. There's a bit of an issue for the operator though as they can't technically see where to stop the train, so I may need to add a few more magnets to give a larger target area.

Seeing as Bif doesn't use Zimo decoders, and it's a 66, there's a good chance it's from Kevin at Coastal DCC, failing that, an even better chance of it being Youchoos after looking at the lighting and wiring!

I got a bit busy over the weekend and scratch built a pipe that was missing from one of the sheds I got from Graham (the one at the top of the picture) ...and I finally got around to adding some discharged toilet roll to the track.... It still needs some work, along with some nice sloppy effluent (model form, not the real stuff!) and some litter.

Very interesting reading through the posts on this thread. 'Hornby = Trainset' both accurate and inaccurate at the same time (and I'm not being rude to the original poster either). My first proper trainset was Hornby, and I always remember looking through the Hornby catalogues as a kid and now thinking back, it was very 'toy' like. However, recently, Hornby have been turning out some serious models (some with glaring errors) but as they say 'you need to be in it to win it' and of late, they've certainly been winning it. My personal opinion is that other manufacturers make many glaring mistakes too, their media teams just seem to be better at hiding them or just blatantly ignoring them. There's also a genuine willingness by Hornby to listen to feedback, both good and bad which allows them to cater for a wider market - Trainset to Serious Modeller and with anyluck, that will be their success story. From my recent dealings with Mr Kohler and his team, they certainly have the bit well and truly between their teeth - they have a genuine concern for making people feel good about their purchases and have identified key areas of major concern. Long live the Red Box!

There's another slight error to my eyes too - but this could just be down to the paint on the 3D print highlighting the grills and windows. The grill nearest the drivers door gets wider towards the top - the one on the 3D print looks like its width remains parallel which is odd because on the CAD drawing it's correct. That's a constructive criticism which may help to iron out any little errors!

I disagree as the modern image fraternity is growing rapidly, or at least it's trying to, but keeps getting knocked back!

Any more progress pictures Rhys?

I need one of these camtrucks! Great footage and clear as a bell.

I found a video that my mate Nigel (Melangoose) took of the layout at Worthing and here's a great still image from it. It's hard to imagine but that area of station takes up nearly 5 ft and there's hardly anything in it! Once I've got the benches, signs, posters, flower beds, car park markings and the rest of the fencing in, it'll really start to come together and look more like it should do.

I'll moan...they should be right....oh hang on, I'm sure my Inter City 125, HST, Glorified Unit has 4 coach Bs for TSOs... A nine car would look fine and dandy on my layout to compliment the 5 car.......maybe I should change my signature to 'you can never have too many IETs'? .....er..... NO FECKING CHANCE!!

As promised, here's a photo montage of the recent progress. Both problem areas on the branch and yard lines corrected (no more derailments!), utx pipes added and reballasted. There's still some colour correction to do (rail sides, sleepers, ballast etc), along with sticking the clamp locks back on, putting the point lever back in, and running some cabling.... ...which brings me on to the trunking for the bay. Most people would shy away from taking up their hard work to change it....not me....I just crack on with it - I've learned that if you make a mistake, just do it again (and again...and...), so I dug a trench, and some holes... ....and then added another cabinet for the signal and ran the trunking around it. I'm not 100% sure I've done it right.......and it still needs more paint but there's only so much I can do in a day... Finally, I added the OSS grids - Peco only do one size so I had to cut them down to make a representation of the smaller ones.....and thanks to St Simon, they're in exactly the right place! I need to run the cabling for these too at some point and match the ballast around the signal back in with the rest of the bay line. Normally, I'd leave it to represent recent trackside work, but in this case, I want it to look like it's been there for a while. While I was busy working away, I was lucky to get a picture of 37403 signal checked whilst working a railtour down to Weymouth......look at all those flies stuck to the front!

I've been doing some 'therapeutic' work on the bay line over the last two days by way of some cable trunking, and some relay cabinets. I'll post some progress pictures up later but here's a picture I took earlier... In an ideal world, the end of the line lights would have a thinner post but Jonathan's dad couldn't get it any smaller, and to be honest, I can live with it as it's way better than anything else you can buy off the shelf! Things are starting to move forward again at last

My RBMN has a sugar cube under the chimney (removed weight) and a bass reflex in the tender. It sounds spot on. Sound is Paul Chetter via Digitrains

Somebody made them for me Will so I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell you. I know they use latching relays.

Yes they are buddy, and they're being controlled manually with push buttons

Having finally seen Cavan's layout for real, I could never use code 55 again....ever!

So not just content with Shed and Garage envy, I now have to contend with Lofts too! Great size to work with and the track plan looks awesome - with all that space it's possible to ease the curves slightly too.

Right, back to the modelling....well I say modelling, more remedial works! I've trialed a stiffer wire in one of the Cobalts and if I'm perfectly honest, it's not really made any difference, so with that in mind, I'm not sure if I'll bother changing the rest at the moment. Annoyingly, and even though I'm a great fan of their simplicity, as mentioned way back at the beginning of this thread, they're too slow for modern operation, and with no way of changing the speed, I'm seriously considering swapping them out for some servos. Again, as mentioned previously, the track leading to the bay / yard lines was seriously beginning to grate on my nerves. It's nigh on impossible to correct the ski ramps at the end of the boards so I levelled the track instead, and now the trains run perfectly over it (even the unmodified 66s) without any dramas. I also added some more UTX pipes for the cable connections from one side of the track to the other... ...the grease proof paper stops the board ends gluing themselves together when fixing / painting the new ballast - something I learned when building the N Gauge club layout! There was a similar issue between the points leading to the head shunt and stone sidings but this required a bit more work. The sleepers were completely replaced at the toe of the points and the main body of the points lifted slightly to smooth things out, and again, added the UTX pipes for the ground signal... The black stuff in the pipette is watered down acrylic paint. I'd managed to put a point motor box in the 6ft by mistake a while back so this has now been relocated to the right place.... Yesterday evening was a bit of a milestone event for me because for the first time since building the layout, I successfully managed to run a stone train in from the down line, across the up, and in to the stone sidings, run the loco round it, and then depart back along the up line to the fiddle yard! After weeks of feeling fed up at my 'all show - no go 20' x 2' diorama' I finally had something to feel smug about. I can even use the head shunt now because I found the wiring fault and fixed that too! The last thing to tackle is the ski ramps on the mainlines which I've been putting off for ages, mainly due to the track camber and the probability that I'll never manage to line it up. The only way to guarantee getting it right is to take the whole section up and relay it over the board joint............. ......so in the meantime, I'm just going to play trains for a little bit longer! Returning to the theme of my older posts, I'll leave you with a couple of pictures.....

On a display board next to the layout with some blurb from Hornby, and Meningitis Now