Fastdax

A vacuum-braked train has a vacuum (or near-vacuum) throughout the train of vehicles. The loco creates and maintains the vacuum. The vacuum keeps the brakes *off*. The whole point is that if the train separates at mid-point anywhere, the vacuum is destroyed and the brakes come on automatically, stopping both sections of the train. It's a fail-safe feature. The vacuum can also be reduced under the driver's control, to gently apply the brakes on the whole train rather than relying only on the loco's brakes to slow down. I guess I should amend my earlier statement that the vacuum cylinder rod rises when vacuum is applied, putting the brakes on. Logically, the vacuum must keep the rod in the downward position, keeping the brakes off. But now you've really got me thinking, Peter. Photos do show the cylinder on the side of the shaft where I put it. So what applies the brakes when there is no vacuum present? Duncan

Thanks David, I'm always happy to find out the proper names for things. In a similar vein, I know that "Jinty" is a modellers' affectation (or possibly a trainspotters' term). Railwaymen usually called the Fowler 3F a "Jocko" AFAIK. But referring to it as a Jinty does convey a meaning to most modellers. John - you are quite right. I used the term "rivets" erroneously when referring to the wagon's corner plates. I guess they are dome-head coach bolts really and there should be a nut (recessed into the woodwork?) on the inside. The wooden interior kit for this wagon does have a representation of the interior fixings, but just a laser-burned dot really. Still - more than you sometimes get, as you say. Duncan

Hi Peter and thanks for the kind words. About the vac cylinder: the instructions are clear that it goes on the end of the shaft with one hole in the V hanger (i.e. the end with a normal brake lever, not the one with a dog clutch). To me this makes sense. When the vac cylinder operates to engage the brakes, it pulls its operating rod upwards. This will pull up on the lever arm attached to the shaft and rotate the shaft clockwise (in the photo above) which will push the brake rods towards the wheels. The brake lever on that side also rotates the shaft clockwise when pushed down, which matches the vacuum movement. So I think it's right but thanks for sense-checking me!

More undercarriage. The safety loops are provided in whitemetal and would need butt-joining to the chassis members. This struck me a a weak arrangement which, together with the over-thick castings, prompted me to bend up some replacements from scrap etch. These are soldered to the underside of the floor. Safety loops fitted. Also the W-iron tie bars, made from more scrap etch as the etchings provided are about 2mm too short. I know there should be bolt detail at the outer ends and I intend to test out some Archers decal rivets that I acquired recently. These will go on after the primer. The brake levers and pin-down bars are also on now. That about completes the chassis and underframe, so it's on with the body details. I scribed lines on the brass ends for the whitemetal brackets. There are also brackets on the sides. Like the ends, I soldered these on with 70 degC solder. The instructions recommend gluing the door strapping castings on, which I did (Roket Rapid). These are pretty thin castings and I would risk melting them if I tried to solder them on, so I was happy to go with superglue. The diagonal strapping was also superglued on. I must straighten that W-iron tie bar! At this stage I temporarily put a coupling in place and ran the wagon round the layout, under Jinty power. It went forwards, it went backwards and it didn't fall off the track. That gets a tick in the box. The doors got glue-on bang plates and the door bangs themselves I slimmed down from the chunky castings (on the left) to something which presents a thinner edge profile (on the right). I was in two minds about whether to simply replace these with brass etch but decided to see how the WM ones look and last. If they break off, it's back to brass. On photos of these wagons (I use Paul Bartlett's excellent site for reference, particularly this photo) there are floor support brackets quite obvious under the doors. I bent up some approximations and glued them on. It's strange, but once I have started gluing on small details, I find it somehow natural to keep using the glue rather than revert to solder. I know you shouldn't solder in the vicinity of cyanoacrylate glues. In this vein, I also glued on the ticket holder and maker's plates. OK, I take it back about not soldering after gluing bits on. I did exactly that for the vacuum pipes. The WM originals, whilst a nice shape, were cast with the two halves out of registration by about 0.5mm. In the photo below, the bright line below the curve of the casing is the flat back of the other half, IYSWIM. Cleaning this up would be difficult and would easily lose the regular corrugations in the pipe. I used to make scratch-built vac pipes for my EM Gauge layout, so it was out with the 1.3mm copper wire for the core and 5 Amp fuse-wire for the pipe reinforcement. I took the opportunity to make the pipes hang a bit more vertical to ease access for the shunter's pole round the couplings. A bit of extra fuse-wire wrapping at the top and some solder & filing gives a representation of the top joint. The free end of the fuse-wire at the bottom stands in for the "ears" on the coupling end. Cruel close-up: They were soldered on. Real solder this time, not 70 degC stuff. These are sufficiently far away from any glued-on bits that it didn't cook the cyanide out of the CA glue apparently, as I am still here. I need to do a bit of clean-up round the buffer beam but this gives the impression I'm after. Oh yeah - and buffers. Slater's RCH sprung ones. The photos of these wagons show all sorts of buffers in use, probably whatever was lying around the wagon repair shop, so good ol' RCH seems as appropriate as anything.

It must be the iPhone fish-eye lens at work again. The axleboxes and W irons are cast as a single unit but, after your comment, I've had a good stare at them and they look OK to the eye. I find 150'C quite safe with WM except, as I said, for very thin bits. I'd try an even lower temp but that's as low as my cheapo Maplin soldering station will go.

Brakes. These started by soldering the V hangers inside the solebars as instructed. In the absence of detailed positioning, I butted them up to the underside of the floor where the bend in each leg of the hanger just lined up with the bottom of the solebar. Perfect - so you would think. The trouble is that adding the brake pushrods showed that they weren't very symmetrical. One was almost flat (the left one below) and the other descended at a steep angle. Not ideal for equal braking and certainly not as per the prototype. The V hangers were too high. A bit of head-scratching and I came to the conclusion that the brake cross-shaft, and thus the pivot holes in the hangers, should be at the same level as the axle bearings. There was nothing for it but to remove the brake rods/blocks (a dab with 150 degC iron and the "whitemetal" bit), then the V hangers (more dabs, this time at 320 degC with the "brass" bit). I re-attached the hangers lower down. A ruler placed across the axle boxes and lined up with the bearings showed that the hanger pivot holes were now at the same level as the axle. They needed lowering about 2mm. When the brakes went back on, the pushrods were much more parallel, as they should be. You can also see the vacuum cylinder and linkage above. To be complete, the brakes need safety loops, then the brake levers and pin-down bars.

Time for wheels. As I showed earlier, I'm going to fit a compensation unit to one axle. When folded up, soldered and blackened, it looks like this. I also blackened all four wheels. You can just see a thin strip of brass across the rocking unit, reducing the width of the oversize etched slots so that the prongs protruding from the base plate don't slop around, causing the axle to twist. The chassis members needed removing where the compensation unit will fit. Rather than be clever and use a cutting disc in a Dremel, I just attacked it with Xuron etch scissors and snipped off bits until I had the desired gap, then cleaned up with files and GRP pen. After I took this photo I saw how mangled the chassis rail ends were, so more dressing and filling with solder ensued. The bearing holes in the whitemetal W irons needed drilling out with a 2.5mm bit. I carefully held the irons in a vice and drilled them out in the pillar drill. I practiced on the two that would be at the rocking axle end. A trial go with the W irons showed that they sat a bit too far outboard. This meant that there was a lot of sideways slop in the axle (when the bushes were pressed home) and that the spring hangers stuck out beyond the solebars. The fix was to solder a bit of scrap etch to the inside of the solebars, to pack the W irons inwards about 0.5mm each. This made the spring hangers line up with the outside of the solebar much better. So, on with the fixed axle using 70 degree "solder" (it's not really solder but we'll just call it such) and the iron set to 150 degrees C. At this temperature it's quite hard to melt whitemetal unless it's a really thin piece. I tack-soldered the fixed-end W irons first, checking for square and level before blobbing in more solder to fix them firmly. After this procedure, the axle bearings were pushed all the way into the W irons, but not fastened and the wheels were now captive. When the W irons were finally fixed, I teased the axle bushes out of the W irons a bit (about 1mm per side) until there was almost no end-float to the axle. A tiny drop of Roket Hot superglue on a pin glued the bearings into the W irons. The compensation unit needed a couple of thicknesses of scrap etch to pack it up (down?) to the right height. It's not pretty but a good fillet of solder holds the shims and baseplate to the wagon floor. I've decided not to be too picky about cleaning up the underside of the wagon. It will be well painted and weathered and won't be seen in normal use.

Thanks Kenton. I have been deepening the (longer) fold lines with a square file to get a 90deg corner as a matter of principal now. This kit is quite fun to make. There's just enough fettling required to make it more involving than a "shake the box" kit. The brass etches in particular are very crisp and well-fitting. Duncan

After the body comes the chassis. This is where I disagree with the instructions a bit. The instructions call for the chassis to be built as a separate unit and attached to the body later. This means assembling a set of loose brass sections together, square and level, with nothing to use as reference except perhaps a flat surface and some right-angle tools. Even then, if the chassis ends up a fraction short or long, it can't be altered. I started by trying to assemble the main solebars to the buffer beams on a mirror, using small engineering squares. I soon gave up on this though. Whilst perfectly possible, it just seemed more intuitive to solder the buffer beams accurately to the underside of the floor, level with the ends, then ensure the solebars were a good fit between them. One advantage of doing it this way is that there's a nice flat brass floor to tack each piece to, prior to checking for square and making a permanent joint. Much harder to tack-solder to glass. Six chassis ribs were fixed in place this way. These would have been waving around in mid-air if assembled "loose" and subject to ham-fisted damage. The instructions are very clear where these go - two in the centre and four 41.5mm from the outside face of the buffer beams. These are reasonably critical measurements as the cross members are used later to position the W irons and brake hangers. Those whitemetal parts can always be changed by some judicious filling or filing of course, but better to get it right to start with. Then two more longitudinal chassis rails. Finally a subtly different picture of one of the corner posts. Previously it had a nice square corner whereas, in reality, these wagons had a corner made of a single sheet of steel, bent to a right-angle but showing a definite radius. Out with the flat needle-file and glass-paper. As usual at the end of a soldering session, a good clean-up with the glass-fibre pen was followed by either a scrub in the sink with an old toothbrush and some soap (followed by a good rinse) or a dunk in the ultrasonic cleaner. The wagon *just* fits in!

Time for another wagon. This one is a 5-plank 13T BR open wagon from M&M Models, also known as Welcome Wagons. I bought it from eBay (from seller OnTheWagon, who is the eBay presence of Welcome Wagons). It was delivered promptly and comes in a nice snap-cover plastic box so there's no danger of damage to the etches. Here's what you get: the main etch, whitemetal castings and a laser-cut real wood interior kit. There's a pack of information and instructions as well. As usual, wheels, paint, transfers are needed to complete. My normal wagon standard for Offerston Quay specifies sprung buffers, sprung couplings and some form of suspension, so here are the bits I'll be adding to the kit. They are a compensation unit (to be used on one axle) and Slaters 7122 3-hole wheels. I'll also add sprung buffers as the ones in the kit are solid whitemetal, and sprung screw couplings instead of the WM Instanter ones. The main body is a single, big etch which needs careful folding in my Hold 'n' Fold. The sides want to bend along the lowermost half-etched plank line on the outside, rather than the fold line on the inside, so it needs a firm clamp and careful bending. Next time, I'd deepen the fold line with the corner of a square or triangular file to make the bend easier. Then the four corners can be soldered together, checking for square at all stages. I kept putting the body upside-down on a piece of mirror glass to make sure it was all level. The corner plates need their half-etch rivets pushing out. (I use a gravity riveter). Then they are folded to 90 degrees and soldered to the corners. Some clean-up needed inside, but only enough to allow the wood inserts to sit flat later on in the build. More soon. Duncan

Just a quick post to add a link to my new Workbench thread at Duncan's 7mm Workbench. There you will find some details about converting my 3F Jinty to DCC sound and how well it runs. Duncan

I'm starting this topic to record my 7mm loco and rolling stock developments, as a separate thread to my Offerston Quay layout-building thread. A while ago I built a Connoisseur Jinty from an etched brass and whitemetal kit. It will be finished with a few added details to make it 47327, which I have driven at the Midland Railway Butterley, but in late-crest 1962 condition, i.e. mucky black. It isn't quite finished yet, so here I'm documenting the final steps to get it complete, running and painted. Most of the detail is there already. Except for the coal plate and whistle (which broke off during handling), smokebox door rail (how did I miss that one?) and lamp irons. Details already added to the basic kit include: - Jig built (Hobby Holidays chassis jig) - Centre axle floating and sprung - Connoisseur 40:1 gearbox driving centre axle - Extra chassis bracing - Sanding steam pipes - Sand pipe support brackets - Brake handle linkage - Brake pullrod nut detail - Extra inside motion detail - Slater’s wheels tapped for 10BA - Replacement crankpins and inverted tapped crankpin top-hat bearings - Replacement steel coupling rods with joint in rear rod, not on crankpin. - Relocated rear bunker step - Extra boiler band bolts - Removed tank filler (condensing pipe?) blanking plate - Added later-style tank lifting brackets - Added lead weight in smokebox/tanks/bunker (it weighs 1Kg now!) - Sprung buffers - Sprung cast brass working screw couplings - Removable cab roof - Smaller rain-strip profiles from brass angle - Extra tank-top control rod supports - Cab rear window hinges - Extra ejector pipework - Extra backhead detailing (clack/injector valve wheels) - Firebox open with new handle - Replacement backhead pipework - Added steam heating valve - Steam/vacuum gauges in cab - 3-outlet oilboxes on tank fronts - Steam-heating pipe support chains To Do: - Install DCC sound decoder and stay-alive PowerPack - Crop crankpins - Smokebox handrail - Replace whistle - Add coal plate - Lamp irons - Working LED lamps - Tank top wheel valves and tank top baffles - 3-outlet oilboxes inside frames (maybe!) - Additional rivets to cab front/tank tops - Cab doors - Cab water hose and valve - Paint - Transfers - Weathering - Crew - Real coal - Add 2 x works plate and water capacity plate - Add smokebox door number plate and shed plate (17A) The first job is to install a Loksound V4 DCC sound decoder and PowerPack (a stay-alive capacitor), bought from my local emporium, Rails Of Sheffield. I separated the body and chassis to reveal the motor and DC wiring. Here are they bits which I will be fitting. Top-left is the Loksound PowerPack, top-right is the Loksound DCC decoder with round speaker and 8-pin plug. Below is a pre-wired miniature 4-way plug and socket which I will use to connect the body and chassis. A 20-pack of these is 99p delivered from eBay, if you don't mind waiting for delivery from China. The wires are thin, but still thicker than the DCC decoder's own wires so that's all that matters. I removed the DC leads from the chassis PCB ... ... and soldered a red and black lead from a 4-way plug instead. I had to cut off the 8-pin decoder plug to do this. As they say "Red and black, to the track. Orange and grey, the other way". My 4-way plugs and sockets don't have orange and grey so yellow and white will have to do instead. The plug on the chassis side is wired to the pickups and the motor terminals of course. If I ever want to run this engine as DC, I can unplug the DCC decoder and plug in a socket which loops the pickups to the motor directly. The speaker is a nice fit into the front of the boiler. Its two mounting lugs touch the inside of the tube and were held in place with a spot of superglue each. I could easily remove this speaker to fit a bigger one if space allows. You can see some of the lead shot that the side-tanks, coal bunker and smokebox are stuffed with. Don't worry- these are held in with epoxy resin, not PVA glue due to the number of horror stories of PVA reacting with the lead to expand and split the model open! Here is the 4-way socket wired to the decoder inputs and motor outputs. To test it, I just blu-tac'ed the PowerPack and decoder inside the boiler and reattached the body to the chassis. Well it works! I had to play around with a few CV settings to get a nice slow crawl and the chuff rate is not quite synchronised to the wheel rotation yet, but it runs and sounds right. It's pleasing how slowly this loco runs at speed setting 1. Duncan

OK - frog switching. Again using the Megapoints recommended method, I cut some softwood blocks to 28mm and sourced some really micro switches. If you thought the servos were small ... The wood blocks are epoxied to the underside of the baseboards, close to the servos but not so close that the operating arm would touch them. Then some strong contact adhesive stuck the microswitches in place, so that the operating arm just clicks them over when at full travel. I may add some pins to hold the switches securely in place, but so far the glue is doing a fine job. I did this for all four existing servos, so that now all frogs are switched when the turnouts throw. I also knocked up this little bracket. It's basically a removable shelf to put the switch block on. It's a bit crude at the moment but I may paint or varnish it at some point. The upright portion is a bit of the softwood that spaces the ply beams apart, so it's a push fit into the gap in the beams. This means that it can be pushed in at a variety of places along the front panel and presumably along the rear of the baseboards too. Friction holds it in place quite well. And here it is in use. there's space at the front for an uncoupling pen light and my NCE Powercab controller just fits behind the lever switches. This, by the way, is total coincidence. I'm not that good at foreseeing and planning!

More wiring. I soldered droppers to each electrically-independent bit of rail. Red to the front of the layout, black to the rear. The big white cable in the pictures below is 2.5mm sq. household mains wire. This will be the main DCC bus. For now, the droppers make a bit of a rats' nest. The next picture shows two things. First, the neatness of servo wiring. I bought a few bags of 10 servo extension cables in 150mm, 500mm and 1m lengths from somewhere in China via eBay. Each bag was 99p delivered, although you have to be patient and wait for 2-4 weeks for the things to arrive. How they do it for the price, I don't know. But simply plugging the servos into extension cables makes for a very neat job. I'm using these plugs to bridge the baseboard joints for the servo wiring. Second, I made sure to run a red wire and a black wire to the vicinity of each servo, along with the existing green frog wire. These will be used for frog switching. Here's how I join the droppers to the DCC bus. I carefully remove a portion of the insulation, snip out the central earth wire, and wrap then solder the droppers to the solid copper core using a 50W iron and huge amounts of resin-cored electrical solder. The copper cores are solid enough that there's no danger of them touching, although I may wrap them in tape once it's all been checked out. In the hole you can see a blurry shot of a 4-way connector in the main bus, to bridge the baseboards. I used 2 contacts for each bus wire, to ensure a good connection. Here's a similar 5-way connector, again from Ebay for 99p. I got a couple of 8-ways as well, for future use. These are really nice, well-made plugs and sockets with a locking screw collar. You may have noticed that I'm a fan of neat wiring. Comes from 30 years in the computer industry I guess, where messy wiring is a nightmare to debug. The servo cables are small enough that any excess can just be looped up and held by a self-adhesive (Peco) cable clip. These droppers feed the two sidings on the right-hand board. So we got to the point where all the turnouts and plain track was wired to the main bus, except for the frogs. This meant that I could power the bus temporarily from a DC benchtop power supply and run my Jinty (which is still DC only). Its wheelbase is just about long enough to bridge the dead frogs, so it ran successfully end to end! I love the prototypical clunks and squeal as the 3F negotiates the turnouts and curves. In the pipeline now is frog switching via microswitches, to remove the dead spots. I must also convert the Jinty to DCC, but I'll document that in a separate thread in a more appropriate area of RMweb. Duncan

I'm using cheap analogue servos to drive the turnouts, using the Megapoints method of mounting them under the baseboards. These servos just need one of the mounting lugs snipping and filing off, as on the one on the right. They are made from a soft plastic so this only takes seconds. If you're buying these from HobbyKing directly, one tip is to navigate to the servos' page, then just wait for a few minutes. I got a pop-up box offering me a servo for £1.58 instead of £1.71 (if I recall correctly). I added this cheap servo to the shopping basket, then edited the basket to change the quantity from 1 to 10. Result: 10 cheap servos for under £20 delivered. These things are tiny! They come with mounting screws and a choice of 3 operating arms for well under £2. The mounting method calls for 15mm x 15mm aluminium channel. I got a metre of it from B&Q for a few quid. It's cut into 50mm lengths. Then two 2mm screw holes and a 1mm fulcrum hole are drilled. You can even use the small mounting screws supplied with the servo. The servo is a push-fit into the ali channel and a length of 1mm rod (I used some nickel-silver rod that was lying around, but piano wire will do) is bent into a Z at one end and slipped through the operating arm and fulcrum hole. The units were attached under the baseboards with a layer of sticky foam tape to help cut down on transmitted noise, then screwed into position. I was careful to line up the turnout operating unit perpendicular to the turnout tie-bar to minimise any strain. The operating rod goes through the loop in the tie-bar, of course. To operate the Megapoints unit, you need a simple on/off (SPST) switch. I already had a Brassmasters 5-way lever unit from my previous layout, so I'm using this. It has 5 microswitches on the back, which will do the job nicely. I mounted it to a bit of plywood and then wired the microswitches to the monkey-tail lead. In front of the lever frame is a length of 25mm x 25mm ali angle. This will hold any extra switches, such as those to control lighting etc. For now, this angle is just screwed in place, although I did take the trouble to mark out the positions for any future switches. I have a second Brassmasters lever frame kit, unmade yet, so this will fit alongside the first and control signals. For now, the ply base will sit under the layout out of the way, screwed to something solid like my turnout-building board. I plan to make a bracket to hold it just in front of (or behind) the baseboards to give me some flexibility in the future. So we have a lever frame connected to a Megapoints unit, driving turnouts via servos. Each turnout needed calibrating but that's a ten second exercise, performed once only per turnout. Here's what the result looks and sounds like. It's a bit "growly" when operating but perhaps no louder than a Tortoise motor and certainly much quieter than a Fulgurex unit. I'm pleased with how easy the Megapoints unit has been to set up and use. I look forwards to connecting it to some upper-quadrant semaphore signals and watching the random bounce as the signals drop to danger.

Back from skiing with no broken bones (although there were 2 hospitalisations in my group of 24 - perhaps I'm getting too old for this "bounce down an Alp" malarky). Anyway, on with some wiring. This is mainly to get the turnouts moving prior to being able to run some stock. The first step was to tip the baseboards on their back and fix a 4-way mains block plus power supply for the points controller underneath. The white plastic corner block stops the mains adapter sliding off the screws in its "keyhole" mounting points. The points controller I'm going to use is a Megapoints Servo Controller from Loolee.org. It will control up to 12 turnouts/signals via cheapo servos like this, so should run Offerston Quay's 5 turnouts and 2 (planned) signals just fine. There will be a few outputs left over for any other moving bits as well. I saw it in operation at last year's Warley show and I like the design and features. The outlet for the NCE Powercab controller is also mounted centrally underneath. The Powercab can be in front of, or behind, the layout as the occasion demands. The long "tail" attached to the Megapoints contains switch wires. These will go to the turnout/signal switches and are long enough that I can position the switch block either at the front or the rear of the layout. They may need shortening a bit though. The Megapoints controller needs calibrating for each turnout (left throw, right throw) and I thought it best to mount it on a small hinged slab of ply so that its pushbuttons are visible and accessible with the layout lying flat. Here it is in the normal, stowed, position. And here it is hinged down and ready for programming. More about turnout operating units and servos next time.

The last bit of lower-level trackwork. This is where the kickback siding crosses the board joint. As before, the rails will be soldered to brass screws driven into the board edges. The screws are dressed back a bit ... ... and the sleepers are glued down and the rails are soldered to the screws. I whittled a sleeper to fit between the screws to make them a bit less obvious. Finally, the rails are cut with a razor saw. Here's an example of the etched brass C&L cosmetic fishplate superglued in place. Like the plastic Exactoscale ones, these have an inside and an outside face. This is an inside face. I have cheated and stuck them only on the visible sides of the rails. So the kickback is complete, all metal fishplates are soldered for electrical continuity and cosmetic fishplates have been added. I know I should make provision for expansion of the rails but a ) this layout lives in a house at pretty well constant temperature and b ) any expansion will just push the rails towards the open ends of the sidings a bit. I have even soldered green dropper wires to all four crossing vees because, y'know, frogs are green. This is my last post for week or so. Skiing in Italy awaits, tomorrow! Duncan

I have been fixing down the turnouts and sidings. Here are the 3 turnouts feeding the 3-way Inglenook sidings, plus the kick-back to hold a brake van. Before each turnout was finally glued in place, I drilled a 6mm hole under the tiebar to take the operating rod, plus a 1.5mm hole just behind the frog to take its polarity-switching wire. Then it was on to the straightforward task of laying the sidings. All the track work is glued to the underlay using ordinary PVA glue and weighted down until it dries, which isn't long in a warm house. I find that a small mirror is an invaluable tool for judging whether bits of track are aligned properly. It allows you to look along the rails from a real track-level point of view without having to lay your head on the board. I also use a straight-edge where possible, not that there's much straight track on Offerston Quay! To lay plain track I just smear two lines of PVA under the Peco track webbing, then lay and weigh down the track for a couple of hours or so. The middle siding once again exits the board at right-angles. That gives me the option to connect it to a fiddle-yard one day. The trackwork for the lower level is nearly complete! It needs the kick-back siding fixing down and electrical stuff doing to the trackwork, to add dropper wires and bond fishplates with solder etc. Some cosmetic (etched brass) fishplates will be added to draw attention away from the Peco metal fishplates below them. These can be superglued in place once soldering is complete. Soldering (i.e. heat) and superglue don't mix. The combination gives off Cyanide gas.

In between building turnouts, I gave the front of the baseboards a coat of primer ... .. followed by some acrylic satin black that I found in my box of assorted paints. I painted the canal basin black as a base coat for the mucky brown that will follow. I also completed the final (low-level) A4 "Y" turnout. Same procedure as before so no in-progress pictures. You can see the two "loose" chairs on the right, waiting to be glued to the timbers that form part of the previous double unit. That's all the turnouts made for the goods yard and I will start laying them tomorrow, then adding the plain track for the sidings. Soon I'll have somewhere to run my sole loco!

Please keep us up to date as these builds progress. I also have an MMP 08 and 16t mineral waiting to be built for Offerston Quay and any prior experience is worth its weight! Duncan

Work on the double turnout continues with fitting the blades and closure/wing rails. Apart from the toe of the first turnout and the two rightmost heel-end lines, which are all gauged to 32mm, the rest of the double turnout is 31.5mm everywhere. The scribbled arrows on the Templot plan are to remind me to face the chair blocks away from adjacent fishplates. Here's the almost-complete pair of turnouts, only needing the tiebars and cosmetic chairs adding. To fit the cosmetic chairs, first I trimmed off the excess copperclad using a small circular saw blade in a Dremel. Then I prepared the chairs by cutting off only the portion outside the rail. These could then be glued to the timbers to hide the ends of the copperclad. Duncan

The three turnouts that feed the 4 sidings are sort of a linked unit, but I'm building the two that face the same way as one unit. This is because the third "backwards" turnout which feeds the headshunt will be isolated by two plastic fishplates and doesn't share many sleepers with its partner. I thought this would be a weak arrangement if all built together, so a double and a single it will be. First job is to print out (twice) the Templot excerpt and stick one copy to my building board (an old kitchen cupboard side which is long enough for the 700mm double turnout). I find it useful to have a second printout to hand, which I can use to place bits of rail onto, to get the bends and curves exactly right. The long stock rail was slightly bent at the toe end of the switch blades and curved in between as per the plan. Here it has its chairs threaded on, ready to be glued down. I cut bits of 1mm copperclad to support the common crossing ... ... and superglued them in place. I made up the 1 in 4 vee using my jig and tried to make it look like the blunt nose should by filling the web with solder at the tip. The toe end of the turnout can be gauged to 32mm as it joins to standard Peco track. By the time the switch rails get to the crossing, they will be 31.5mm. I'm trying something a bit different this time with the slide chairs. On my previous turnout, some of the sleepers were loose (and fell off!) when I removed it from the backing paper. This time I superglued (Roket Rapid) the slide chairs to the side of the stock rail first and clamped them until dry. The bottle says 5-10s but I like to clamp it for a few minutes. When dry, I will glue the slide chairs down to the timbers.

Thanks Jim!

More trackwork. I've glued down the two "hidden" sidings which make up the Inglenook headshunt. This is how I've done it. First, the track has a thin bead of PVA glue applied to the underside of the sleeper webbing and then it's dropped into place with the correct insulated and metal fishplates in place. Since this will be a DCC-controlled layout, only the common crossing (frog) area of the turnout is isolated from the rest of the trackwork. All other running rails will be permanently wired to one of the DCC outputs. I made sure that the two ends of the sidings come right up to the edge of the board and are at right-angles to it. This will (hopefully) allow me to add a cassette-based fiddle yard in the future, but obviously not with Offerston Quay in its usual location (unless I want to punch through the wall and end up in the bathroom). Somehow I don't think that would get approval from . Plenty of PVA glue is squeezing out here, but it dries almost clear as you can see from the upper track and will be hidden by ballast. The plastic fishplates are Exactoscale as they mechanically locate the rail ends as well as isolating them. Bolt heads to the inside, nuts to the outside (as it were). I think I'll solder the metal fishplates and add cosmetic etched brass fishplates to the rail webbing. I don't like the look of frequent dropper wires soldered to the sides of the rail so this will help reduce their number without relying on the conductivity of slide-on fishplate joints. If I ever want to remove the track or turnouts, a quick dab with the soldering iron should free them up without damage. I used a heavy, flat weight, appropriately the "AA book of Steam Railways", to hold the track in position and stop any tendency to lift until the glue has dried. After waiting overnight, the first wagon movement (digitally powered) could take place. If the wagon didn't derail at a scale 100mph, it's probably going to be OK at normal shunting speeds!

Now that I have a bit of trackwork to lay, I've started with the sole turnout and the bits either side of it. One of these bits crosses the board joint, so I attacked this in the following way. I plotted where the track would sit and marked through to the underlay: Then I screwed brass screws (solid brass for rust resistance and ease of soldering, not brass plated) into the edges of he board in line with the rails. I cropped the sides off the screw heads so that they don't protrude too much from under the rails, dressed them flat with a fine file and cut the sleepers to fit round them. The underlay takes a bit of a hammering during this procedure, but it should all be hidden underneath the ballast: Then I soldered the rails to the screws and glued the sleepers in place: And finally cut through the rails with an Xacto razor saw: Hopefully this will accurately locate the rail ends if the baseboards are disassembled. This is a cruel close-up but certainly a wagon rolls across the joint with hardly a click. I can always slide shortened fishplates over the rail ends to help align them if necessary.