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TT-Pete

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  1. TT-Pete

    A new beginning

    By TT-Pete,

    Well, it really has been a difficult and challenging couple of years; one of those miserable troughs that life sometimes puts in your path that just seem to go on and on and on…
     
    As a result the layout spent a good 18 months dismantled and stacked at the back of a garage with everything railway modelling-related being boxed up and put on hold.
     
    But, happily things are now back on the up again; new job, new home, getting married, and the layout has been retrieved, all the bits found, the dust blown off and the spiders evicted, and some first steps taken in getting the project going again with new track and turnouts being laid.
     


     
    Only a small step perhaps, but a new beginning.
  2. TT-Pete

    3mm at Warley 2014

    By TT-Pete,

    It was very interesting to be invited to help out on the 3mm Society stand at Warley a couple of weekends back – my first time “the other side of the table” at an exhibition.
    There was a good showing with 3 stands of TT;
     
    Firstly Andrew Shillito with his 3mm finescale layout Lindhurst
    http://www.uckfieldmrc.co.uk/exhib07/lindhurst.html
     
    Then a display of a selection of locos and stock made by various members;





     
    And lastly but not leastly, a table with Bob Brown and Kevin West demonstrating wagon kitbuilding and card structure scratchbuilding.

     
    What particularly interested me was sitting back and indulging in a bit of people-watching as the contrast and types of the general public and our modelling community wandered by. It was heartening to see the number of youngsters with parents and youths showing an interest.
     
    Ok, so across all the domains of our hobby there maybe a preponderance of greying heads in our demographic, but from seeing the younger element gleefully clutching their bags of purchases, it gives hope that our hobby isn’t dying out just yet.
     
    My vote for “most serendipitous coincidence of the year” has to go to a young gentleman from darkest Cornwall,
     
    Having had a long discussion with Peter Stratford about 3mm in general, Peter’s kit-built etched brass Midland 8F in particular and about making a start in kitbuilding and planning a layout, he expresses interest in joining the society, takes a membership form and wanders off on his further exploration of the show.
     
    A short while later another chap wanders over and engages us in conversation. He is from a model railway club in Cornwall. They have a running TT layout, but no stock and no-one to operate it since the only club member who ran 3mm had unfortunately passed on about a year ago. It is now unused, unwanted and gathering dust. Could we suggest what to do with it, or know of someone who might have an interest in operating it?
     
    At precisely this moment the aforementioned potential young recruit just so happened to be wandering back past our stand again in the opposite direction…
  3. TT-Pete

    How time flies....

    By TT-Pete,

    Crikey, it’s been 5 months since I have done any serious railway modelling. Constructing and populating a granny annexe took every free moment over the Summer, but now with the dust settled and my workshop/mancave finally set up only 8 months after having moved in, I have the luxury of dark Winter modelling evenings ahead.
     
    Looking through my boxes of half-finished projects, I have decided to take the half-built Class 23 “Baby Deltic” in hand.

     
    I started this project quite a few years ago, inspired by the efforts of the Baby Deltic project at Barrow Hill who are in the process of cutting n’ shutting a class 37 to recreate an example of this extinct locomotive class: http://www.thebabydelticproject.co.uk/
     
    Lying about in my rejects/scrap box I had an example of the old J&L models 3mm scale class 40 resin body. I had high hopes of this model when I first bought it in about 2001, but the quality and detail of both the whitemetal castings and the resin body itself left a lot to be desired, so even though their attempt to cater for 3mm modellers was to be commended, I thought that there was just too much rework needed to make it worthwhile.
     
    So chopping it up to make a Class 23 seemed to make much more sense…

    First off I used a scaled-down drawing to 1:101 scale from Colin Marsden’s “British Rail Main Line Diesel Locomotives” and cut n’shut the Whistler body shell to the correct dimensions.

     
    Having previously used the chassis from the Piko Taurus loco to good effect in my class 73 I decided to sacrifice yet another of these beasties.

     
    The good thing about these mechanisms is that the wheels are close enough to scale 3’6” diameter and a wheelbase not far off 8’6” – as long as you don’t look too closely. The bogie sideframe cradles are clip fit and can be easily adapted to carry new sideframes.

     
    The actual chassis itself is just a simple lump of some kind of lead alloy, easy to work with a hacksaw, bastard file and brute ignorance. The bogie centre dimensions are however much too close together, so I cut the chassis in two and grafted in extensions made out of plasticard glued in with Araldite.

     
    A trawl through my various bits boxes has turned up some suitable bogie sideframes (from a class 20 or 25 I think) and assorted panels, grilles, louvres, buffers etc…

     
    Final assembly can now commence…
  4. TT-Pete
    A chance purchase from the RMweb classifieds (cheers Damian!) means I am now able to show a comparison between the relative sizes of a class 73 ED in OO and TT scales:

     
    Unfortunately it also shows that the cab castings could have done with a little more work to make them more prototypical, but at the time I was only working from photographs and “close enough” was good enough.

     
    It also shows another comparison between the two scales;
     
    With OO you send off a cheque, get a package in the post, open the box and have a play.

     
    With TT it’s exactly the same,
     

    only the contents of the box require just a teensy bit of “fettling and fine-tuning” before you can have a play.
     

     
    (Thinks: and now I really must stop prevaricating and just get on with installing those blasted point motors!)
  5. TT-Pete

    Aaaargh.

    By TT-Pete,

    Being a hamfisted clot I have managed to push my fingers through the window frames when glazing the signalbox.

    This means many more hours to be spent, again, with a magnifying glass, tweezers and little sections of minuscule platicard strip that stick to everything *but* the place you're trying to stick them, and which then "ping" off into the outer reaches never to be seen again just as at the 5th attempt you think you've finally managed to get the little swines in place.
     
    Grrrrr.
  6. TT-Pete

    April Fools...

    By TT-Pete,

    1st of April - an auspicious date for getting my layout construction underway again. :-)
     
    It's been a month since my housemove so the first challenge is to find all the layout components; they were all stacked together in the spare bedroom when the movers turned up, but are now all strewn across the garge, conservatory and who knows where else.
     
    Having eventually found the ziplock bag with the wing nuts, bolts and washers, Jubilee Point is soon standing again:
     

     

     

     
    Trackwork is 12mm gauge Tillig "Modellgleis" from Germany, the class 40 Whistler is my current construction project, an etched brass and whitemetal kit produced by the 3mm Society, and the signalbox is scratchbuilt from plasticard sheet and based on the BR London Midland Region type 15 design.
     
    I didn't get much further than the basic baseboard construction in my last house, two boards of 50cm x 50" on a lightweight support structure designed to be modular and portable. With one thing and another the events of "real life" have been a distraction in the past 3 months resulting in little or no progress, hopefully a blog will keep me motivated....
  7. TT-Pete
    Well, I'm still feeling motivated but am starting to come down off that initial high of seeing the layout standing again, whatever I am doing just seems to take so much longer than it did when I was planning it through in my head! Plus having moved recently I'm frustratingly still spending a lot of time hunting through cardboard boxes for elusive but absolutely critical odds n' ends that without which work comes to a grinding halt, e.g scalpel blades. (I have a hospital-sized box of the dratted things - but WHERE?!)
     

     

    Anyway, a bit of infrastructure work has been done in spite of all that. Hopefully the backscenes are the last carpentry that I'll have to do for a while.

    The background stone walls are made from strips of MDF and sections of cardboard with Noch 1:100 scale contoured brickpaper stuck to them. Capping stones are also from the Noch 1:100 range cut with a hacksaw to various widths.
     

    A few blobs of Blutack hold everything temporarily in place so I can get an idea of how it hangs together. The overbridge girder looks a bit high to me, I'll probably try setting it down about 2 courses deeper into the stonework. In the meantime the class 40 has also had her first trip to the paintshop.
     

    I had been planning to use the upcoming long weekend to get stuck in to track laying, but having had a look under the boards I think I need to concentrate on sorting out my "temporary" wiring bodges as a first priority. What a mess!
  8. TT-Pete

    Electrickery

    By TT-Pete,

    Well, I thought my plan of spending the entire Easter weekend working on the layout sounded like an excellent idea, but for some reason it was not met with unanimous enthusiasm and was vetoed at the committee stage. (Well ok, fish n' chips on the promenade at Lyme Regis, a spot of gardening and a walk along the towpath taking in the 1812 beam engines in operation at Crofton locks on the Kennet & Avon canal - all in glorious sunshine - was an acceptable subsitute. )
     
    But I have been getting the wiring sorted out and have now got power back to the track, so at least I can trundle a loco with a couple of wagons back and forth a couple of feet. My design principle is not to have any actual switches or controls on the layout boards themselves, only the 3 mains transformers (2x 16v AC and 1x 12v DC) which are built into the frame underneath Board A.
     

    The train controllers, isolating section switches, point and signal switches etc... will all be built into two separate handheld modules so that the operators can walk around and operate the layout from the front, back or wherever.
     

    I am using standard PC 25-pin parallel cables (aka "D plug") for connecting control modules to the boards and for board-to-board jumpers, with the plug cut off one end and the cable fitted with "choc bloc" terminals instead.
     

    This does however require soldering up the sockets that the cables plug in to, a little bit of a tedious job perhaps, but having done a few of them (and mucked up one or two in the process) I've now got the hang of it.
     

    Each connection is then individually tested with a LED to make sure I haven't (literally) got any wires crossed. (Channel 8 is being tested in the picture.)
  9. TT-Pete
    33 Total Images
     
     
    I had a very pleasant outing to the Salisbury MRC 50th Anniversary Show today. I was on a very definite mission to see two layouts in particular, first up Redford Junction in TT scale, built by fellow 3mm Society member Paul Hopkins:


























    A real inspiration and an excellent demonstration of just what can be acheived in "The Modellers Scale".


    The man himself. 
    Second up was Mr Muz's most excellent Fisherton Sarum - back on its' spiritual home turf - where a half hour or so was pleasantly spent watching Graham dealing with recalcitrant Bullieds.






















    A few other views of the event:
















    All in all, a cracking day out.
     
    Postscriptum
     
    In the car on the way down I had been silently chanting the following mantra to myself: "don't buy anything, don't buy anything, don't buy anything, don't buy anything".
     
    But as things go, what with it being such a lovely bright sunny morning and having got into the spirit of all things Railway - when the bargain opportunity of four 00 LMS wagons for the price of three presented itself - well, it would have been churlish not to...
     
    (sigh) I don't even have any track to run them on! It just remains to be seen whether if in the view of the Domestic Authorities they can be entered under the "sound investment" heading, rather than "oh god, not more toys".
  10. TT-Pete

    Wagons roll

    By TT-Pete,

    It’s great when the modelling Muse strikes when you least expect it and leads you down tracks you had forgotten, or were unaware of…
     
    Very early on a rainy Bank Holiday morning, the weather having put paid to my carefully-crafted plans for the day, I sit down at the workbench with a strong coffee and start idly browsing through my project boxes. My hand falls on the box containing my “cripple siding” - failures and abandoned projects.
     
    The Iron Ore tippler wagon catches my eye.

    It’s one of the first kits I built when getting into 3mm, I was quite pleased with the finish, but overall it was a disaster; it wobbled and wallowed down the track like a three-legged dog and derailed on every turnout it ever encountered. At the time I put it down to my inexperience and assumed I must have bodged the chassis in some way, so it has spent at least 10 years relegated to the cripple siding. Maybe now I can get it running better? I turn it over to look at the chassis and notice that I had fitted it with Kean Maygib 9mm diameter wheels – and I remember that there was a kerfuffle in 3mm circles a good many years ago over a batch of dodgy KM wheels that didn’t run true. Hmm. Worth a try…
     
    I had bought a stock of 9mm dia metal wheelsets from 3SMR at the 3mm Society AGM just last weekend, so I gently prise out the old wheelsets and drop in the new. Voila! A perfectly free-running and steady wagon!
     
    Rolling the old KMs across the bench shows they are badly distorted, so they are definitely ones from that dodgy batch. Next thought is: hmm, I wonder what other wagons also have KMs and would benefit with replacement?
     
    A pair of LMS pattern steel mineral wagons.

    I had totally forgotten ever building these! Again, quite pleased with the finish, but both wonky runners. Out with the KMs, in with the new; two perfect runners and it’s not even 9 AM yet.
     
    Flushed with success and on a roll, I have a look at what else is in the cripple box.
     
    A 24 ½ ton steel mineral wagon.

    Finished and complete, a good runner, but for some reason I never got around to actually fitting couplings to it. A quick dive into the bits box and a couple of dabs of Araldite later - another wagon to add to the quickly-developing rake.
     
    An LNER pattern 20t coal hopper.

    Er, a little embarrassing, this one. Again, a complete wagon but running like a dog as the wheels don’t turn freely and there’s a rasping noise. Well yes, as there would be if you put 10.5mm dia coach wheelsets into a chassis designed for 9mm wagon wheelsets. (D’oh!)
     
    LMS pattern brake van.

    If I ever build one of these kits again I will remove the moulded handrails and use wire instead. Painting the handrails went well enough on one side, but the other had turned to an unsightly splodgy mess. But today however I am in the Zone and can do no wrong and in a mere matter of minutes it’s all sorted.
     

    There. A nice little rake of wagons to trundle around the layout, that when I woke up I had no idea even existed, that has cost me nothing and has enjoyably whiled away a rainy day. Result!
     
    (But the lawn remains unmowed, the bushes uncut, the car unclean and the BBQ unlit…)
  11. TT-Pete
    I have terrible affliction in that I am totally unable to resist the temptation to start fiddling with things before the glue has fully set, or before the paint has fully dried on them.
     
    To try and keep myself distracted from inappropriate fiddlings with the Baby Deltic yet *again* (having just had to remedy as uncured paint has rubbed off on my fingers) I have resurrected another project out of the unfinished box to keep myself occupied whilst things dry or set.
     
    A while back I had started a rake of four COV AB/VCA vans. The bodies come as kits from the 3mm Society and contain the body ends and sides (image from the Society online catalogue below), but nothing else.

     
    As mentioned above, the Society PP21 chassis kit purchased separately, provides the chassis and frame details:

     
    But even with both of these kits in hand, it does still leave the solution for floors and roofs to the modeller.
     

    My approach has been to cut the floors as a rectangular section of 1.5mm Plasticard, with the chassis solebars (fitted with brass bearings in the axleboxes) glued to them. Romford 12mm gauge, 10.5mm diameter metal wheelsets have been used.

     
    The roofs have been cut from brass sheet and rolled with "Metalsmith" rolling bars to curve them.

     
    The resin body sides were glued as a box using Araldite. The roofs being added later when the glue was holding, but not yet fully set, again using Araldite. Using an engineer’s square all the dimensions and angles were checked and adjusted where necessary. With everything square to satisfaction they were put down and allowed to set.

    The floor/chassis sub-assemblies were then glued into the bodies.
     
    So, they were at quite an advanced state then, should make a nice little distraction from more inappropriate fiddlings.
  12. TT-Pete

    Progress.

    By TT-Pete,

    Things have been coming on quite nicely of late;
     

    The Baby Deltic bogies have had the white-metal sideframes grafted on to the nylon/plastic cradles with Araldite and are now ready to go back into the chassis.

    The chassis frame has been fettled to fit snugly into the body, which has been receiving the first round of panel/vent/louvre details:

    Unfortunately there have been a couple of “grrr” moments along the way. Going back and re-checking the reference materials proves that the centre roof panel is too narrow. Also it’s also .5mm skew which although may not be that noticeable, it’s got to come off anyway.
     
    Also, I’ve made one side vent the wrong size and put it in the wrong position. Better to notice now rather than after things have been painted…
     

    The vans have been serving their purpose as fiddle mitigation. Buffers and couplings are fitted and they’ve had a coat of primer.
     
    Couplings. These generate as much impassioned discussion in 3 mil as in any other scale, I have dabbled with Spratt & Winkle and Kadee, but I decided a good while ago that all my built stock needs to be operationally backwards-compatible with my original Tri-ang tension-lock coupling stock. So I use Bachmann OO gauge couplings as they are less obtrusive, un/couple well and with 3 different shaft/housing variations they can be stuck on to just about anything.

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