CoombeTown

Having been away for 5 days, work has resumed with some annual leave.

First few colours added to the figures.

And sub-assemblies created for the coal merchants cart

Which will eventually look more like the below, and be parked up in the Goods Yard.

Does anyone know where I could get appropriate transfers for the kit? It was a slight impulse buy having seen an assembled one at Railwells and Dart Castings being present...

A wonderful day out at Railwells today. It was a great show with high quality models and a good range of trade exhibitors lightening my wallet.

Particular highlights were the Ventnor, an impressive styrene station building and mammoth canopy.

Arun Quay somehow oozes a sense of space as well and just captures interest.

I also spent an enjoyable hour or so operating Bob Alderman's (now owned by YMRG) Hobsons Brewery.

With the attendance of Modelu I've picked up one of the new postmen figures and plan on adding it to 5 others to create a few cameos around the town side of my photo Plank.

My custom solution, just done a rough costing. ~£20 + ply per Cassette, not really dependent on length. You could do it for less if you owned a 3D FDM printer and used a less UV resistant material.

25mm x 25mm x 3.2mm aluminium L pieces on a 6mm ply base.

You also have to account for the aluminium base sheets where it's mounted and the adaptor, but they're not too bad in the scheme of things.

Overall Cassette

Adaptor

the connection between the two

The shelf storage solution

Happy to share the .stl files for the 3D printed elements via PM if anyone is interested.

Yup, nothing is safe. 3D printing is better than some, but as ever it's down to each individuals skill and care in manufacture.

Either way, plenty of food for thought on the livestock lorry. Thanks all!

I agree Rob, it is a shame that a lot of these kits are no longer available. Although I do find myself leaning more towards 3D printing for the flexibility it offers.

Further studying of the RTI website has beared fruit though.

I belive this (image linked to RTI website) would be suitable, albeit a tad more expensive.

Thanks Rob, they look perfect for the job, will have to keep an eye out.

Looking at the Springside website the kit is now out of production completely.

I've had a look at RTI and Langley Models as well, neither produce something suitable unfortunately.

Cheers,

Dom

Thanks both, the plan is to put hedges along the either side of the track anyway, but I will look at maybe adding a tree on the embankment run as well.

My concern is more the view straight down the track, although I may be stressing over nothing when more of the layout is complete.

The view below shows the view I am concerned about

17 minutes ago, Graham T said:

Wot no bus?

Not sure the road is wide enough! Definitely need something to hide the corner of the backscene.

Any thoughts on a reasonable agricultural vehicle to hide it?

I was thinking maybe a sheep truck?

And just that small patch, makes such a difference. Couldn't resist posing an engine and having a mini-running session this morning.

8 hours ago, Graham T said:

Nice!  Getting some static grass down always seems to make a huge difference 🙂

Thanks Graham, it does make all the difference. It's nice to have a little patch that looks like something while you're doing the slow stuff everywhere else. Just to remind you that it can get close to something!

8 hours ago, MrWolf said:

 

Looking good, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who takes a sideways move into wagon building for a bit of inspiration or just good old avoidance!

Cheers Rob, wagons are good and now I'm eyeing up an Enparts Mink D... but for now I should probably finish some track, or a wagon, or a plane. Who knows!

Well I got a little overexcited and started ploughing through with progress.

Rust colour, (weathering powders and decal fix), there's a bit of magic coming.

followed by static grass on the embankment, and then the end of the sample bag of ballast!

It's only taken 3 years, but it's starting to look like a railway!

Harrier FRS.1. Flies vertically, nobody said it had to be the right way up...

More progress so far today. Embankment painted and dirt down for the track.

I also got around to finishing the underframe on the 16 ton wagon, which has now had a coat of matt black paint.

Hopefully some further progress later on this evening.

Further progress this morning. Sculptamold is now down around the bridge across the baseboard joint. Hopefully this will be dry by the time I finish work, it's not exactly cold in the room!

Taking advantage of the recent heat I've managed to prime, paint and glue in position all the concrete bases for the point rodding on the first board.

My plan is to now focus on the land form next to the bridge so that I can lay the ballast up to the point over the weekend. This will hopefully give a small area that has a complete feel to it and a bit of a boost.

Ballast has dried well overnight so took a couple of photos this morning.

A comparison of ballast, pristine and the top, Weathered at the bottom - definitely the latter for Coombe Town.

And "Henry" taking an open wagon across the road bridge. Really pleased with how the ballast has completed the scene.

Well after an enjoyable trip to the Minehead show yesterday, followed by a little bit of train spotting. Today I had a bit of time and mojo.

Today saw the newly arrived Geoscenics ballast samples applied to the photoplank.

The embankment track is new granite and one end and weathered ballast at the other.

With siding ballast used in the coal siding below. Annoyingly my spray bottle is 100 odd miles away so I can't properly glue the ballast down there, but the top track is fine.

9 hours ago, Accurascale Fran said:

Hi everyone,

 

Back during the heatwave of the other week, we decided it would be a fantastic idea to look at some steam locomotives. So, we made our way to Didcot to do a small video on the Manors. 

 

Check it out on our YouTube channel as we look at all the different detail aspects, features and more, as well as an update on progress.

 

 

Cheers!

 

Fran 

 Really interesting and informative video. Great to see. A question if I may, will unpainted accurafolk be available, using the more traditional printing method?

I'm not entirely sold on the quality of the colour print from pictured, although admittedly I have not seen them in the flesh. It would be great if the custom poses for the specific locomotive were available for those of us that do wish to paint as well.

Thanks!

Well it's been a while... life, and a lack of motivation both hit so progress on Coombe Town has come to a grinding halt.

Over the last couple of weeks I have managed to pick up an Airfix kit I started a couple of years ago in an attempt to regain some mojo.

This evening, I've put a coat of primer on a Parkside 16ton Mineral body, maybe I'll make some further progress on that over the weekend...

I'll hopefully get some ballast samples over the next couple of weeks in order to kick start some scenic decisions.

Accurascale have just tagged Rails of Sheffield with the YouTube link on Twitter. If that doesn't scream Class 89, I don't know what does...

Oh well, back to wishing for Collett Sunshine Stock 👀

16 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

Plodding on with my wiring. This beast is my cack-handed way of driving a pair of Kadee electro-magnetic uncouplers via DCC.

So this is a spare DCC Concepts AD2fx unit where I am using the LED drivers on their board to drive two timer relays via a pair of opto-isolators and an Ardunio. This allows me to switch the heavy current on the magnets for a fixed length of time by changing the accessory bus setting. To make this work I am using spare capacity on my under board Ardunio to turn the change on the accessory bus to a pulse to fire the timer relay. Bonkers but it seems to work and by using a second hand AD2fx not too expensive. No doubt there are much better ways of doing this but my brief search of the web did not reveal any.

Interesting work Andy, it's interesting to see how different people approach a similar problem.

I've designed a circuit/ PCB that created a 30s pulse for the electromagnet from a 12V momentary push-switch. That might work off a solenoid decoder and cut out the arduino?

The new ammo mig powders arrived this week, so I had a shot at the cattle wagon.

I found that the Ammo powders have a tendency to dissappear when the varnish is sprayed on, so it took a couple of attempts.

In the meantime, I stripped the decoder from the 3MT for something that is hopefully arriving this weekend...

On 01/06/2022 at 12:45, Andy Keane said:

Nice - how about some dirt in the gutters?

Yup, now you've pointed it out I can't unsee it...

I'll add some in next time I get the powders out.