legomanbiffo

Sugar cube speakers are the only way to go with the 08, anything else will be too quiet (I know from bitter experience). Fit two of them in parallel in the nose, after cutting out the rectangle of black plastic behind the grille. Only this week I found (again by bitter experience) that the Zimo sugar cubes are much louder than the CT Electronic ones, despite them appearing to be identical (apart from the colour - the Zimo ones are black, CT's are transparent).

I've had to set the Deltic to one side for a while as it was seriously doing my head in! However, one man's loss is another's gain as my time has been temporarily diverted to the recordings of 37901 made at the East Lancs Railway last year. Regular viewers will know this to be a habit of mine, switching from one project to another in order to maintain sanity and enthusiasm. Progress on the slug has been rapid and satisfying. Don't get me wrong, I love the Deltic sounds and they are really good in the Heljan loco but I've found the editing quite tedious and time consuming. In contrast, I am really enjoying the sounds of the chugging Mirlees engine in my Bachmann 37 test bed. I suspect it will be very popular with the 37 fans out there. The sound project is quite different to 'traditional' ones and although there are inevitably some looped engine sounds in there, you tend to hear them less than normal and the overall effect is more like a real loco. The engine sounds are 80-90% completed so it won't be too long before release. Thanks to Richard Armstrong for use of his photo here. Check out what Richard did with his recordings of the loco at 'The Armstrong Powerhouse' website. On the photography front, the alignment of good weather, a week day, and a day off have been few and far between, but today fortune was on my side and it was off to a couple of favourite local spots on the WCML. I've had my D700 for a while now and I'm starting to get the results I'm after. Finally, this evening's task was to fit a v4 chip and a pair of 'sugar cube' speakers into Maggie's 08 for Warren Lane, by way of contribution to this excellent layout. Listen out for it next time you see WL on the circuit.

Well that's the trauma of Christmas over for another year. Another chunk of modelling time irretrievably lost, bah humbug! Progress on the Deltic has been slow as a result but it's going in the right direction. The loco had the opportunity to stretch its legs on my pal's layout this evening and I'm pleased to say that it's shaping up very nicely. The slow wind-up to the highest notch is pure Napier heaven! The session also gave me a good idea how I can enhance the two-engine experience, something I now need to test on the bench. As a short aside from the Deltic, I did a bit of work on the 86 sound project as my Hornby / Heljan hybrid model is nearing completion. One of the sounds in the project was a nice Mk3 coach 'wail'; the sound you get from the airbag suspension, typically heard when they leave the station. Nice, but fairly basic. Well earlier in the year I heard plenty of these wails on a photting trip to Manningtree, where trainloads of Mk3's arrive and depart every half an hour. At the time I was kicking myself not to have taken my recording gear, but took the opportunity to capture it, purely for reference, using the voice memo app on my phone. Turns out that the recordings were far better than I expected. I have extracted 8 of the best ones and created a flowchart that plays them at random, on demand, and at just the right interval to simulate slow-speed navigation through pointwork or round curves etc. Once I'm happy with the execution I'll roll this feature out to other locos typically used with Mk3 stock (47, 67, 87 etc). I've also added the ability to run the traction motor blowers whilst stationary (already present on my 85, 87 & 90). The photo of the Mk3 was taken at Crewe Works open day, the same day as the Deltic in the previous blog entry. How long before we get a better model of them?

So far I've laid down some basic engine sounds (start, idle, stop) and all the 'auxiliary' sounds (two different sets of horns, door slams, compressor etc) and these are all working very well. Progress on the engine transition sounds has been more laboured than I expected as the techniques I normally use to make them smooth and seamless aren't working nearly as well in this case. Looking ahead, I've got to find out all the intricacies of the two engine set-up and model it accurately in sound terms. This one is going to take lot longer than normal... I do agree with Peter though, I don't believe a 4mm Deltic can ever be made to sound like a real one. This 7mm one will though, but a lot of work is still to be done. Bif

Very, very difficult, near impossible in fact in 4mm. Tiny speakers cannot reproduce deep bass and you cannot change that fundamental law of physics. It's a fear of mine that people will be disappointed with my Deltic sound in 4mm, unless I can work some real magic (which is highly unlikely). Even in 7mm my early experiments have shown it to be difficult, at least with the Heljan loco. One idea people might try is to completely gut a 4mm loco to make a 'mobile speaker enclosure', and push it around with a motorised coach behind. I'm thinking of trying an isobaric speaker enclosure as well. If I make any progress I will post here.

The last two or three weeks have been a bit of a blur, with a week's working trip to Norway followed immediately by Warley and then another week away from home on a course. Work is such an inconvenience when you're trying to develop new sound chips :-) As is customary with Warley, everyone left their orders until the last minute so getting them ready whilst in Norway was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately this possibility was forseen and a family member received full training in the use of the Lokprogrammer before I went and had everthing ready when I got back! I've now taken delivery of a Heljan 7mm Deltic and 37, and an Aristocraft 66 for 'product development' purposes from Charlie. For some reason my missus doesn't see it as product development and unkindly tries to purport that I'm playing trains. I've fitted an XL to the 66, which comes ready-fitted with a great big speaker. Whilst it's very loud all I have proven so far is that Hornby and Bachmann aren't the only ones to 'throw' speakers into models with no regard to basic audio principles. It's going to sound fantastic once I've changed this but for now, people power has forced me to sideline it in favour of something else.... Yes I've finally been nagged into submission by all the Deltic fans out there. The question 'when will you be doing a Deltic?' is second only to the question 'when will you be doing a Western?' and has recurred with monotonous regularlity since I said I'd done the recordings. Well an XL has now been fitted in the Deltic and the first of two custom enclosures has been built, in the tanks. This will be sufficient to make progress on the sound project but I'd like to build another enclosure in the body to deepen the bass even further, just to see what's possible. I can confirm that test clips definitely make it sound like a Deltic though. As for the Western, I'm working on that. The general answer to any 'will you be doing a xxxxxx ?' question is yes, where xxxxxx is UK diesel or electric. Recordings are generally made on an opportunity basis though so some projects will take a lot longer to appear than others. Anyone with ownership of, or access to a loco or unit may short-circuit this wait by getting in touch with me! In the photo, 55016 Gordon Highlander looks stunning at Crewe Works Open Day, sometime in the 80's I believe.

Like an old PC adventure game, today's blog will be text only as I'm away from my computer this week. The eye-rolling title (think about it) refers to Saturday's visit by the 'Dream Team' to record Test Coach Iris, the ex-RTC Derby Lightweight DMU at the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway. This was adorned with more mics than you can shake a stick at (3 near the engines, one near the exhaust, one picking up just the wheel clacks and bogie sounds plus a hand-held to capture the horns, cab sounds etc). The guys at the Railway were great and were very helpful in achieving what was a very successful outcome. The unit is really nicely preserved and definitely worth a ride if you haven't partaken. In other news, the Class 40 project which has been quite a while in gestation is finally ready. Charlie will have a small number available at Warley so I suggest you contact him if you'd like to reserve one. I'll probably make a start editing the 37/9 sounds next. Bif

I often find that as a project is nearing completion it pays to step away from it for a while and do something else. You then return to it with a fresh pair of ears, add the finishing touches and iron out any last remaining niggles. As such, I have briefly stepped away from the 40 to the Voyager. I upgraded one end of my Bachmann Voyager from a v3.5 to a v4 some time ago but never got around to the other. Having now fitted the second chip and ran it, I found that the engine sound editing and programming was a little short of my current standards. Having spent a couple of days on it I'm now much happier. I've also added a handful of new features including; the ability to start the intermediate engines one at a time, two slightly different engine shutdowns, and a more accurate recreation of the 'forward' position on the driver's controller on the prototype. On a real Voyager, the driver selects forward when getting ready to move off. The engine revs rise but nothing more happens until the controller is advanced further, whereupon the set moves off. Similarly, when coming to a standstill, the set can be left in forward (and hence at slightly higher revs) until the driver puts the controller to idle or moves off again. The principle is exactly the same as my latest electric projects (85, 87, 90 etc), and has now been enabled with the Voyager. The project has been prototyped as a 'single' chip version, now I need to make the necessary modifications for the two-chip version so that the horns etc change ends when the set reverses, the engine starts and stops are staggered and so on. Tonight's good news was that Charlie has finally found a Heljan 7mm Deltic down the back of his sofa. This will be passed onto me at Warley so I can prototype the Deltic sound project in it. The photograph was taken at Milton Keynes, one of my series of 'railwaymen at work'. Try covering the despatcher and guard with your thumb and you'll find the photo much less interesting.

Thank you for that doctor quinn, I knew someone would know. I wonder if they sound the same when running on those different systems. I'll wager there are some differences. I was looking forward to hearing what the traction motor blowers sounded like and we didn't hear them, or indeed see them as the locos went past completely hidden by the unit. A real Doah! moment. And yes, I knew someone would spot the Jean Jaques Burnel reference. Of the two Stranglers solo albums of the time (Burnel's Euroman Cometh and Cornwell's Nosferatu) I much prefer Nosferatu, it's one of my favourite albums of all time, with a very gothic theme running through it. 'Wrong way round' is excellent, just like being at the Victorian fairground with Ian Dury as the barker. The only track on Euroman that really stands out for me is 'Triumph'. Brum, brummm!

No doubt someone can tell me what these locos are. Each one had three more pantographs than most electrics in the UK, presumably for multi-voltage operation. We waited 20 minutes to get a better picture without the catenary masts in the way, only to get 'bowled' by a poxy two-storey Dutch bogcart! Yes, after talking about it for several years my pal and I finally got round to visiting the Eurospoor show in Utrecht, courtesy of Stena Line from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. I was well impressed by the ferry; very clean and modern with excellent food, but less so by the 0600 alarm call (0530 on the way back)! Eurospoor is about the same size as Warley but instead of being crammed into one hall it's in three and as a result is much more spread out and enjoyable. And the food was miles better, NEC take note. There was much less sound on display than I expected, but I was most impressed by the Viessmann working tamper with sound, and a G gauge layout with some of the best smoke / sound fitted steam locos that I've ever seen. I also marvelled at a small OHLE maintenance vehicle, apparently made by Fleischmann, with a working pantograph and an inspection platform that raised up and down and then rotated through 270 degrees. Hornby and Bachmann have still got a lot of catching up to do. On the way back from Harwich we planned to do some photting but overlooked the fact that it would still be pitch black (and foggy) when we got off the boat. However, it was just getting light by the time we got to Manningtree, and we got some very atmospheric shots as a result. After a couple of hours there it was over to the ECML foot crossing at Offord Cluny (a 'Trainspot', and a truly excellent one at that). Being south of Peterborough it is very busy, with commuter EMU's adding to the usual ECML fare. The level crossing gives plenty of warning of approaching trains, and there are good pictures to be had in both directions from both sides of the track. Back on the workbench, progress continues on the class 40 project which is about three-quarters done. So far there are just three engine notches (plus idle), but some very long transition sounds which add greatly to the experience. With the v3.5 chip long transitions were a bit of a no-no because they lengthen the throttle response time too much but with v4 it's different story as you can program your way out of them. I suspect there'll be room for a fourth notch (and hence four different ways of departing) before I'm finished.

..the 40. I've found in the past that 7mm models ruthlessly expose any deficiencies in your sound clip editing, ones that you often get away with in 4mm because you're not hearing the full range of sounds (quite why I never noticed through the hi-fi at the editing stage is something of a mystery but there you go). For this reason I took the decision not to try and prototype the Deltic sound project in 4mm. As I haven't yet been able to lay my hands on a 7mm Deltic yet (just a matter of time), that particular project has gone onto the back-burner and the 40 reinstated at the front. Despite the insatiable demand for chips from Mr Petty I've managed to move forward with it and it's coming along nicely, whistling round the layout like a good 'un. The technique that I developed with the 20 & 37, to make the engine sounds less 'loopy' and more natural is working a treat in this case. For those interested, the sound editing workbench comprises the output of the PC going to a Sony TAN55-ES 110 watt per channel power amp and a pair of Tannoy 611 floor-standers (basically my old hi-fi, another interest of mine). Plenty of oomph to rattle the window frames and get the missus knocking on the ceiling when Emmerdale's on. Most of my clip editing is done with Cool Edit, an ancient and pretty basic sound editor but nice and easy to use and more than adequate for most things. Occassionally I'll use Sound Forge for some of the more involved jobs and batch conversions. All editing is done with 44kHz / 16-bit mono clips that have been converted from stereo original recordings. The photo is 40049, coming off the 'Cov line' at Nuneaton on a wintry day circa 1981.

...you mow the lawn and find a car. That was just one of the laughs on the list of 'You might be a redneck if...' that amused me a while back. Well I had a similar moment today when I found a Heljan 86 whilst tidying up the heap. I remotored my Hornby 86 some time ago using a Heljan Hymek mechanism, which has the same wheelbase as the Hornby model. It's a great runner but the fact that it is the wrong wheelbase started bugging me almost as soon as I had finished it. Sometime later a cheap Heljan 86 was acquired to put this right but as with so many projects, it got sidelined in favour of other things. So with SWMBO out for the day and the Rolls Royce DMU sound project completed, the opportunity arose to put this right. Good progress has been made and I am very pleased with the results. I was unsure how to fix the body on but it is such a snug fit that fixing isn't necessary. Sound is provided by a v4 chip driving a bass enhanced speaker built into the underframe. I did try a sugar cube which would fit without surgery but it just wasn't loud enough. Thoughts are now turning to what will replace the RR DMU in the sound lab. I have tried some of the Deltic sounds in a test bed loco with a bass reflex speaker and the results were quite pleasing. Then there's the unfinished 40 project, and some great recordings of 37901. Decisions, decisions... In the photo, an unidentified 86/3 passes Hartshill circa 1979 on a Class 1 express.

I suspected there would be differences. There are various pitfalls for using these or the Leyland engines as generic sounds for other DMU's (type of transmission, number of engines, number of cylinders, type of exhaust etc, all of which can have a bearing on what they sounded like). I'm planning to offer two or three fairly generic DMU chips to begin with and enhance the range with completely authentic sounds as time goes by. There are dozens of classes of DMU so I think this approach makes sense.

Yes Paul, the picture is from my iphone. In good daylight with a stationary subject the pictures are superb given the size of the lens, but not so good in more challenging conditions. Very handy to carry around with you. Superb HD video too! Best gadget I have ever bought. I'm not aware of any models of the 127 but a handful of other DMU's used Rolls Royce engines as far as I know, including the 110's which Hornby make a model of. Not sure if they were exactly the same engines but... The new recorder is a Roland R26, it's a superb piece of kit. Very flexible in terms of inputs, small & easy to carry about, touch-screen operation, great sound quality, built in speaker, batteries and memory card would probably be good for 24-36 hours of continuous recording, works on AA's if all else fails etc etc.

Coming soon to a DMU near you, Rolls Royce engine sounds courtesy of the Class 127 high-density 'Bed-Pan' unit at Llangollen. After a very successful weekend spent recording the 104 and 127 with Paul I'm afraid to report that the 127 has leapfrogged everything to the top of the editing pile. The unit had a lovely rasping exhaust which we managed to capture in addition to the engines. Rasping exhausts is something the previous DMU's I've recorded didn't have so it had to be done. I know there are some who would question why on Earth I would edit DMU recordings before I did the Deltic or the 40, but there you go. Good things come to those who wait. At the end of the second day I found time to have a look around the shed at Llan and see the incredible restoration work these guys are doing, not only on DMU's but also wooden bodied coaches and so on. To compare these 'works in progress' to the operational sets is a real eye-opener. As I think I said in the previous post, the Wickham unit is a pleasure to behold and its art-deco interior has been restored to a very high standard. If you haven't made the trip yet I can thoroughly recommend it. These two trips were the first test of a new solid-state recorder which permits the simultaneous capture of up to 6 tracks at once (three stereo pairs, or combinations of mono & stereo etc). It's quite a step up from my old Minidisc recorder which will now be retired.

I am very happy indeed with the Deltic recordings this time around; they are nice and clean with very little in the way of 'running sounds', wind noise or rail joints. Interesting what you say about 002, thanks for letting me know. With the demand for reblows being what it is now, development of new projects is taking two or three times longer than it used to so it could be a while before the 33 gets upgraded, or before the Deltic sounds are all edited.

I'm just reviewing the latest set of recordings from a full day at the ELR yesterday. Fortunately the rain didn't impact on the recordings themselves but merely added to the general discomfort of standing up all day, holding mics in uncomfortable positions and struggling inside confined and dirty places (no, not Bury). After leaving here on Tuesday morning it was raining within 15 minutes and it didn't stop chucking it down until early on Wednesday morning. 50mph all the way up the M6 in heavy traffic and spray, and the same coming back yesterday. Anyway, enough of that and on to the subjects of my attention; 33109, 37901 and 55022 (again). The 33 was of interest because the first set of 33 engine recordings I did are not that great; adequate but no more. The latest set are much better, still perhaps not the definitive set (I have higher standards these days) but nevertheless better. The horns were very good at both ends. I'll have to compare these with the ones on the existing project to see if there's room for improvement. I also grabbed some good brake release and application sounds which I was missing. Second trip of the day was on 55022. Again the main objective was to capture better engine sounds than the previous trip. I deployed two mics, and one of them gave me almost exactly the results I was after. It has taken 30 years to improve on the Deltic recordings I made with a cassette recorder at Peterborough in 1982! Finally it was the turn of 37901, Mirrlees Pioneer. As far as I remember (not that far these days) I've never heard one of these before but I really liked the sound of the engine. Again two mics were deployed, one near the exhaust and the other in the engine room. Having just finished doing the 60 the similarity of the engine sounds was notable. Even the priming pump and cranking sounded very similar. I preferred the more mellow sounds from the exhaust-based recording though and it's probably those I'll run with as they capture the character of the loco better. I'm looking forward to editing these, more so than the 33 or Deltic. They might even leapfrog ahead of the 40 (sorry to those of you who are waiting for that). 55016 Gordon Highlander is pictured at Crewe Works Open day. I forget which year it was (I've got the ticket somewhere) but no doubt someone can tell me. Off to pack the bags again now as I've got to be at another preserved railway at 0900 in the morning. No peace for the wicked...

...will be a bit late. Once again it's been a case of 'real life getting in the way' in the last couple of weeks. I had hoped to have the 60 & 67 out by now but Mrs. B had plans for me in the garden, and the day job, well it's such an inconvenience. Despite this, progress has been made and I now have a few days off so things should pick up a bit. The 67 is almost there, just a handful of improvements to the flow of the engine sounds to satisfy myself that it's ready. The project sounds great in the Hornby model, credit must go to them for putting the speaker in the right place. I'm waiting for the DB-liveried version myself so there will be a delay before I do the video. The 60 isn't far away either. A couple of the engine transition sounds are quite long and I need to build escapes into them in order to maintain responsiveness (something that wasn't possible with the v3.5 chip). This is another loco that is going to need a bass reflex speaker for best results. I'm using one of my 37's as a test bed and it sounds really good through the bass reflex facing down, but it's not quite so good through the speaker fitted to a factory sound-fitted 60. It's still better than the Hornby chip though (not difficult I know but...). I'm planning to mill the tanks off mine and fit an extended bass reflex, but I reckon that you could fit two normal bass-reflexes in the roof space with a little plastic surgery. Thanks are due to Pete Harvey for lending me a couple of Hornby 60's to play with during the project's development. I'm looking forward to Barrow Hill on Sunday. If anyone wants to say hello, drop me a PM. The two recording sessions next week will probably be the last of the season unless something special pops up. All will be revealed once the recordings are in the bag. In the photograph, 67029 approaches Reading with a 'Rugby Special' heading for Cardiff Millennium Stadium on 6th August 2012.

I haven't recorded a 57 yet and have quite a number of projects already in the pipeline so mine will be a while yet.

A few days off work has, for once, coincided with decent weather so two days of photography was kicked off with my newly-acquired D700 at Elford & Portway on the NE-SW route between Burton and Tamworth. Despite being just down the road I'd never been before. It's a cracking location though, and was pleasantly busy. As well as the usual fare of 170's, Voyagers and HST's I saw two 60's on the Kingsbury tanks, Colas's 56094, two 66's, and a DCR 31 towing another 31 and a 56, all within three hours or so. Tomorrow I'm off on an East Midland Ranger so you might see me in Leicester, Nottingham, Grantham or Peterborough. Progress on the 60 engine sounds has been laboured, hampered significantly by the remaining flakiness of the Lokprogrammer software. I'm getting there slowly though. I've still got about half a minute of space to play with, which will be put to good use 'gilding the lily'. Amongst other things the chip will feature 'multistart' and different horns in either direction. Following recent progress, the horns will be playable right down to short 'toots'. Mr Petty informs me that there's a Hornby 67 on its way to me, which will give me a chance to tweak the project to suit the new mechanism, and will no doubt prompt a bit of upgrade work before the orders roll in. On the modelling front, all of my IC-liveried Mk4's have now got Keen System's underframe skirts fitted. I'm planning to get some reference shots on the ECML tomorrow. These will be forwarded to Mr Harvey to produce some etches to cover the Hornby underframes, which bear little resemblance to reality.

No, not flared trousers, kipper ties or mind-altering drugs, I'm afraid it's bad news for whistler fans; the 40 project has temporarily returned to the back-burner as the weekend threw up another opportunity to attempt the Class 60 engine recordings. I wasn't going to take any chances this time and with Paul Chetter's assistance, three mics were brought to bear; one in the engine room, one against the grille closest to the engine room, and another on the bodyside near the exhaust. The engine room track captured the character of the loco very well and also sounds great through a bass reflex speaker in a test-bed loco so we're now cooking by gas. The auxiliary sounds are all done so as soon as I've edited and programmed the engine sounds and completed final testing it's a runner. I'm guessing two or three weeks. It's worth highlighting the cost of recording trips such as this. On this occasion the venue was two and a half hours away from me and an early start was called for so I travelled down the day before and stayed in a hotel. Being a Bank Holiday everywhere was booked up and I ended up paying over a hundred quid including breakfast. Add an evening meal and a tank of diesel for the return trip and you're looking at close to £200. This is in addition to the cost of getting the rest of the sounds last time (same venue, cheaper hotel, perhaps £150 in total), and before you count the 40 or so man hours of editing and programming (and any fee paid to loco owners etc in other circumstances). It's tough work but someone's got to do it :-) In the photo, 60011 breezes up the Lickey on the 28th Feb 2012. With the loan of Hornby's latest 90 & 92 models from Charlie, the two sound projects have been tweaked to suit the modern mechanisms. Sound fitting is very straightforward on both and even with a standard speaker inside they sound really good.

After trying the 60 engine recordings through a bass reflex speaker in a loco I have reluctantly decided that they are not going to be worth running with. Whilst the pounding bass sounds stunning through the hi-fi it simply isn't cutting it in model form. I need to go back and record again from two or three different places and hopefully I'll end up with something more usable. All the other sounds have been edited and sound great from the model so once the engine sounds are captured we're laughing. So with that hiatus it's time for another English Electric on the workbench; I've made a start editing the 40 recordings made at the ELR back in April. Initial test-runs with the engine sounds have been very promising and I think I've got another good project on my hands. The engine recordings were made on the uphill run from Bury to Heywood with about 6 on. After stopping on the bank we did a run up to notch 1 and back down to a stationary idle. This was repeated for notch 2, 3, 4 and so on. The higher notches from stationary were of course very entertaining. Separate runs were made to capture notch 1-2, 2-3 and so on. Both sets of horns were good. Watch this space. The picture is 40030 at Nuneaton on a rake of what look like HTV's, circa 1979. The factory unit behind the loco is no more, swept away by the new alignment up to the WCML flyover from platforms 6 & 7. On the subject of the flyover, the new alignment to the north is well advanced. All of the major civils are in place and most of the track appears to be laid, which will allow trains from the Leicester line to access the northbound WCML slow line without crossing all four tracks in the station. As long as they don't plant any trees there could be some very nice shots to be had from the Jodrell Street footbridge.

Ha ha ha ha ha, boom boom! He's not just a puppet, he's a British icon! The Tweed jacket, the refined accent, the toothy grin, the razor-sharp wit. Remember his constant interruptions that would cause 'Mr Roy' to grab him round the snout?! I'm laughing now just thinking about it. Pure TV heaven. On the subject of brushes the most recent task has been upgrading the 92 project to v4 standards. I've yet to do a full recording session with one so a little artistic license has been used along with the recordings I have got. It's in the final tweaking stages now and I'm very pleased with the results. Other editing work has seen upgrades to the Leyland DMU project using new material recorded at Llangollen, and work on the Voyager, again to bring it up to v4 standards. I've also come up with a method of shortening the minimum length of playable horns so it is now possible to do realistic short blasts as well as longer ones. This improvment is being rolled out to all projects on an opportunity basis. The last couple of days have been concentrated on my rake of Inter-City Mk4 coaches. I recently discovered that Keen Systems do resin parts for the underframe skirts and the TSOE coach end piece (the TSOE is the coach next to the loco, which has the corridor connection blanked off). I bought a set of each to try. Being resin the detail is not high-definition but they're both better than scratch building. I'm minded to send some photos to Mr Harvey and get some etches made up to go over the skirts. Finally, did I mention that I recorded a Class 60 last weekend.....?

A week off work has enabled me to clear the decks of reblow work and progress loads of dormant modelling projects; 08 After cracking the sound, attention has moved on to the weathering job. I've tried to make mine look faded, oily and dirty similar to this one; http://www.flickr.co...9@N22/lightbox/ I'm really pleased with the results so far. I'll post some pictures once I'm finished. 108 After trying various methods of passing two wires down the train to the second speaker I've finally come up with a really effective and completely hidden solution. All you can see in between the vehicles are the Kadees and a set of bellows through which the wires pass. Again I'll post some pictures when I get a minute. OTA's Weathered the last wagon in the short rake of 6 (one of the new Bachmann ones) and cut some more 'logs' from the tree in the garden ready to go on it. BG & GUV Weathered a blue GUV and blue / grey BG for the parcels train. There should have been a third BG but the Newspaper van I bought at the Northampton show (39-182B) has a printing error on the window bars which couldn't be seen until it came out of the box. It looks awful and there is no easy fix so be warned. Voyager Removed the v3.5 chip and 100 ohm speaker from one end and replaced them with a v4 and bass reflex speaker. Still got to swap out the other three speakers and the chip at the other end. 318 Touched up the paint job on the Bratchell kit (round the doors mainly), and fitted the motor and pickups to the centre car. Now waiting for Kadees and a pantograph from a well known, noisy retailer from Yorkshire. Anyone hazard a guess at the location of today's photo, circa 1986?

Kids; here's a tip for when it's your turn to play the 'seeker' in a game of hide and seek. Reduce the time consuming count by saying 'one, two, skip a few, ninety-nine, a hundred' and off you go, job done. Not really. Play fair, and eat all your greens too. Yes, it's skip time in the sound lab as the Class 67 gets its v4 upgrade in readiness for the new Hornby model. And this time the model has a chance of sounding half-decent when you fit it because they have finally listened to criticism and put the speaker where it needs to be; in the tanks facing down. Well, let's hope the decision was like that and not because the speaker wouldn't fit anywhere else. Perhaps we'll see with the next loco? Just a few finishing touches to go now. As well as 'Multistart' (a normal start plus two different failed starts, selectable on demand), it will feature different horns in either direction plus a stationary compressor speed-up on a function key, like the 66. And now I've got the extra DVT sounds I was after, there will be a matched 67 + DVT sound pack too. I struggled to find a half-decent photo of a 67 in the collection but this one on Thunderbird duty storming through Grantham is just about acceptable.