Revolution Mike B

This arrived this morning, with massive thanks to Tim Horn.......... There's also an article on the Meningitis Now website which can be found here https://www.meningitisnow.org/support-us/news-centre/news-stories/model-fundraiser/ Thank you everyone that's supported me so far...it's really appreciated.

This image!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reading through your thread Rich makes me really envious of you and Ian (Temeraire) that you've both got space for a permanent layout - I'd much rather be able to have Oak Road indoors as a complete roundy roundy! I'm loving the track and it goes to show that you can make code 100 look just as good, if not better than code 75, and as for the brick work, what a novel way of colouring the bricks! I actually think they look good without the wash and would be tempted to leave some as they are with just the paint pen. Cracking stuff!

Oak Road is going back to Fareham Rotarail for the second time in two years! Chris Thomas has invited me back and will donate the money raised for the exhibition to the Meningitis Now Charity - this is another amazing gesture to help me raise money for Meningitis research. This will also be the only time that Oak Road will appear on the South Coast until at least the later end of 2021 and possibly not until 2022.

There's a whole loads of discussions going around on social media right now with people asking for RTR Peco O Gauge Concrete Sleeper FB track, so I called Peco to ask them why they don't make it. The initial response was that they offered it as indiviualay, which wasn't the question I asked. Eventually, I got the answer I was expecting whereby a)they don't sell enough FB wooden sleeper track, b) they wouldn't make any money, and c) it wouldn't be popular enough for them to fit in with all the other stuff they manufacture. Trying to convince them otherwise was like trying to win the lottery without a ticket but they did say 'show us the interest - get people to call us like you have' - so, the number is 01297 626204 and you need to ask for the Technical Advice Bureau. Get calling!

What have you used for the GWR wire fence Kevin? And can I pinch the idea for Oak Road? I need a bit to run down to the station fence in the car park!

After a great weekend helping Ian and Rhys drive trains on Tidworth at the Stafford show (we didn't crash any for a change), I spent the last two evenings making some changes to the track work in to the bay platform and stone sidings. The board joints here have always been a bit iffy and as mentioned previously in the thread, there's a rather annoying ski ramp on both sides of the join, so I've relaid part of it and made it all level. The downside was that it caused another issue further along with one of the points! That was fixed by taking a file to one of the switch blades and also lifting the outer edge of the sleepers slightly to raise track. I've also sorted out the run round headshunt so that it works, although I'm going to fit stay alive capacitors to the sheds so they don't get stuck on the overgrown section. Next up will be the ski ramps on the mainline but I'm not so sure about these! One thing to note is that the springy wire on the Cobalts doesn't seem to be man enough for my modified Peco points so I'm going to try a slightly thicker gauge to see if it helps. The 66 saga is still rumbling on and again, having fixed one issue, I've caused another! So here's the fix..... Remove bogie and take off bogie frame... Remove centre wheel There's a shoulder on the gear that needs to be removed..... ...like this.... Take two lengths of springy wire, in this case the old Conrad point motor actuator wires.... ...and put an 80 degree bend on them at one end... Drill two holes in the bogie casing and put the wires in to them so that they lay over the axle with the cut down gear swapped with the unmodified one...... ..and then put the unmodified axle back in to the centre bearing carrier with the wire beneath it... Too much tension on the wire will cause the front wheels to lift so there's a bit of trial and error getting it right....but once done, it provides a welcome bit of compensation to an otherwise rigid design. I've since cleaned out the dirty grease and replaced it with a tiny drop of loco oil! Now to the consequential issue........ The wheels now rock in the bogie block causing the loco to wobble (even more than most of them do already) quite badly, down the track. I'm no engineer so I'm hoping someone can explain why and what I need to do to correct it. Ray Norwood showed me a picture of a bogie whereby the wire went over all three axles, similar to the Penbits version and this will be the next thing to try. I'm not beaten yet!

Have a good show Nigel

Looking good Jim

Nope, his daughter's birthday

This is how the scenic section will look (ignore the black lines, they were a guide) - it's about 15" deep and 16' long. The emphasis here is to create the feeling of distance which is almost a scale 0.9 km and should provide a great backdrop for the HSTs. It would be very easy to become bored looking at it, so the scenery needs to be spot on, and will certainly be a challenge dropping down a scale! On the plus side, it'll be a doddle to run plenty of trains

Unfortunately, Dave needs to make some changes to his lifestyle (orders of his Wife) so Long Rock is now out of the question.....but I have another cunning plan! Having scratched my head for a while trying to come up with something that we can run all of our Western Region stock on, I'm going to build the section of line between Box and Middle Box Tunnels. I've kind of pinched the idea from Hatch End which is effectively a giant roundy roundy for tiny trains without any pointwork whatsoever. This means I'll need to up my game a fair bit with the scenery to keep people interested! Anyway, here's the plan but don't expect too many updates because I need to get Oak Road done first....

After a weekend of 'two yard tap-ins', I had a great time helping Ian and Rhys entertain the crowds at Stafford......although we wondered if we'd ever get there! En route to the M5 we encountered a fair bit of snow, and an overturned lorry, causing us to take a lengthy diversion across to the A34 and use the M40. To be fair, if Ian hadn't listened to me, we'd have been fine! Once there it took about half an hour to get set up and we were ready to go. Saturday was very busy and Sunday, although slightly quieter still flew by and apart from a few minor mistakes, (by all of us, not just me!) the trains ran well all weekend. It was great to have people come over and say how good the layout was...I just smiled and pretended it was mine I've never been to Stafford show before but it was well organised and they even put us opposite the toilets.....clearly Ian had phoned ahead to give Colin prior warning! We even had a celebrity operator as Rylan Clarke turned up at midday on Saturday.....

Great to finally meet you at the weekend Cav and despite its size, BoT is a thoroughly entertaining layout. It’s also a miniature work of art!

Not at all!

Sorry Geoff, that should've said maybe you could book me in for 2020? and it wasn't anything to do with the top ten layouts. Oak Road is in my signature.

The gear thing was another thought I had last night too, but I couldn't get the thing off of the axle!

Can you scan and draw everything in future then please?!

Cheers Rich, that's what Lee suggested doing as he does it for his EM stuff. I wanted to try and keep the original size wheels if possible as the 66 has a lot of 'wheel' on show

Maybe you could be me in for 2020 Geoff?

I need to admit defeat with the 66, for now at least.....I may be able to build models but my mechanical engineering knowledge failed me miserably last night. After filing out the slots for the middle axles, I created a problem whereby the gears pulled the axle upwards on the trailing bogies in a forward direction, and although the loco still runs, it looks a bit naff! All may not be lost though as Paul (RHB) and Lee Davies have given me some advice on how I can try and cure it but for now, it's back to the drawing board. Please don't follow my actions as you may end up with a Shed that doesn't work! That said, if I can get my hands on a spare bogie assembly, or maybe even just the tower, I think it's possible to modify the housing and convert the bogie to two axle drive, leaving the middle axle to float unpowered.....I'm not beaten yet!

Well I certainly wasn't expecting that!! Thank you everyone that voted for me, I'm feeling really proud.

It was a surprise to be nominated in the first place and that in itself, was as good as winning and to be placed third below the late great Allan Downes, who I attribute a fair amount of my modelling skills to and Dave Segars is amazing. Thank you everyone that voted for me, I feel very humbled. Mike *edit* Andy Y, perhaps with the permission of Allan's family, we could name the modeller of the year award after him - The Allan Downes Award? That's got a great ring to it!

Having just acquired another two sheds from Graham, the dreaded code 75 / Bachmann 66 problem seems to have reared it's ugly head again, although each of them seems to have it's own issues! I thought I'd cured this with the EWS shed but even that's still playing up a bit, so I thought I'd have another go at making them more reliable on my not so standard, and very uneven track. There's a few little things on the snag list: Bogies catching on underframe, NEM pocket catching on sandite pipes / lifeguards / airdam, and middle axle rock. The catching bogies are an easy fix - file down the NEM pocket, and add a shim of 25thou to the top of the bogie tower. This cured both those problems straight away, but the centre axle issue is a real bone of contention and coupled with the small wheel flanges, it's not rocket science to see how the loco derails so easily. Due to the design of the drive train, it's not possible to un-drive the middle axle and for those of you not familiar with the drive train on these, a worm gear sat on top of the tower drives the outer most axle, which drives the middle one, and then in turn drives the inner most axle. The axles themselves have brass bearings that clip into the bogie tower, making them completely rigid, so I took a round file to the centre carrier and elongated it (as I'd done with the 37s) allowing the axle to float upwards until the drive gear stops against the other gears. I also removed the 'clip' part of the bogie tower moulding for the inner / outer axle so that the bearings could drop downwards - you can limit the amount of drop by filing (or not in the case) some material from the bogie frame moulding. It was a bit unnerving having to re-engineer a £160 loco that I'd bought from the Folkestone show before xmas, but I can get new towers if it goes wrong. After testing it at lunchtime, there's still a slight issue with the rear middle axle whereby it's not dropping back down so, I'll just need to open the slot up a bit more, but it didn't fall off on any of the problem areas. It didn't stay on completely though - it fell off on some code 100 in the fiddle yard, well a point to be exact so this brings me to the last part of the fix. During a conversation with Hattons, they told me that they'd increased the weight of their 66 chassis as they said the Bachmann sheds fell off because they were 'too light' - I'm not going to disagree with this either because I think some more weight over the cab ends will help the bogies track better. All that remains now is to add some lead shot in and around the cabs after correcting the sticking middle axle, and I'll be ready for another trial run. What will be interesting is to see if the Hattons loco with it's fixed axles, suffers the same 'see-saw' issue that the Bachmann one does....I guess it won't be long before we find out

Rich Papper, thank you so much for your donation to my Just Giving page! The generosity of you guys on here has been amazing.