Graham_Muz

Fisherton Sarum is of course based on the ex LSWR shed at Salisbury (I am sure I might have mentioned that before) and although primarily is all about the shed itself I wanted to incorporate a non railway related scene on the layout. At Salisbury the rear of the water tank building very much towered over and backed directly onto Cherry Orchard Road, although there were some houses on the other side of the road, I moved the road to incorporate some semi detached houses. These houses and gardens are totally freelance and unlike most of the other scratch build structures on the layout are based on a modified Wills Craftsman Kit. In the back garden of one of the houses the owner tends to his garden whilst in the other a gentleman rests on his bench watching, who we assume is, his wife hanging the washing. At the front of the houses the postman has made a mistake of letting the household’s dog get between him and his bike (the postman’s not the dogs) which he has left leaning up against the railings at the back. Image courtesy and copyright C Nevard/Hornby Magazine This is an extract of my main blog at www.grahammuz.com The full entry and additonal images can be read here.

Godfrey Perhaps maybe on both counts, but who am I to say... I don't wish to add to any potential frothing or speculation...

As Adam advised the trailer car in the Pull Push sets were converted from dia 2005 open thirds, and only 20 were convered for the pull push sets, and as this coach style was not already in Hornby's portfolio it made sense to create tooling that would give both versions. These open thirds, as opposed to comparment stock, were indeed generally used as 'loose' strenthening vechiles and were also ofetn paired with resturant / kitchen vehciles to provide dining seating as they also originally had provison for tables.

HI Steve The whistle was compressed air operated from the control system supply.

My initial review of the Hornby Pull Push sets now that the R3087 train pack has been released can be read on my blog here

Interesting stuff Mark, even for a dc luddite like myself. I look forward to being able to learn more from you with this concept

One the benefits of recently changing to slow acting ‘stall’ type point motors as per my Controlling Interests #3 post, where I describe my fitting of DCC Concepts Cobalt slow acting motors, is that the unprototypical spring and spring housing in the middle of the Peco turnout is no longer needed, removal of this certainly improves the look of the turnout. There are a number of simple improvements that can be made to the Peco turnouts even when using solenoid type motors that still require the spring to be in place. These include firstly removing the lugs at each end of the tiebar, that are designed for hand operation. Secondly, and if the motor is not being mounted directly under the turnout but under the baseboard, shortening the sleepers either side of the tiebar that have the slots in them for the Peco point motor fixing tabs. I had already done these modifications on Fisherton Sarum’s turnouts and now have been able to go a step further by removing the spring, spring housing, the spring housing sleeper base and trimming back the spring location moulding on the tiebar. The spring is easily removed along with the spring housing by simply bending back the metal clips on either side of the housing and removing complete with the spring. This then exposes the moulded sleeper base under where the housing was and this can be simply cut away along the edge of the neighbouring sleeper. I then filled the resulting space with a sleeper, from a spare piece of plain Peco track, cut to length and glued into position. Ballast was then also glued between the sleepers, and the whole lot weathered to match the original turnout and ballast. This is an extract from my blog at www.grahammuz.com Further information and additonal images can be found on my full blog post here

I look forward to seeing your pictures soon Matthew

Gary I have enough of my own unbuilt kits to get through before I start building for others!

This weekend the Country celebrates the Diamond Jubilee of her Majesty whilst bunting manufacturers reflect on the good times and worry about their ongoing share price and the inevitable drop in sales. To mark the occasion in Southern style I thought I would share a few pictures of my Adams A12 ‘Jubilee’ class 0-4-2 locomotive number 528. Built originally in 1887, at the time of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, hence them gaining the ‘Jubilee’ name, the Adams A12 class were built at the London South Western Railways own works at Nine Elms, and the first after a long period of its locomotives being built solely by outside engineering contractors. My model is a Nu-Cast white metal kit which was a little of a challenge to fit a reasonable size motor and gearbox into but manged it with a small Comet gearbox and Mashima motor in the end. Technically for the period I model 1946 to 1949 she should be in unlined black livery but felt at the time she would look better if she had managed to retain Maunsell livery just a little while longer. I hope you all enjoy the weekends celebrations and that her Majesty, unlike the weather, continues to reign over us for many years to come. This is an extract of my blog at www.grahammuz.com The full entry and additonal images can be read on my blog here.

It was a pleasure to play trains Chris, thanks for letting me.

63670 looks excellent I will just need to change the early emblem for "British Railways"....

The Vossioh will be order as dual voltage DC for the current scheme and suitable also for 25KV as there are now plans in the future to include the main line through Rotherham as part of 25KV electrification plans so the tram trains will take this into account from the outset. Chard and I were both at the UK Light Rail conference last week where Norman Baker MP confirmed the annoucement and Network Rail also gave an update presentation.

Indeed hence me phrasing it "more obvious variations"

When I first built Fisherton Sarum I made the decision to use SEEP solenoid point motors to control the turnouts, this was partly due to being familiar with solenoid motors at the time and partially due to cost. In hindsight from both a visual and reliability perspective a mistake. It has become apparent after a number of exhibitions that reliability of the SEEP motors is questionable, even when used with a Capacitor Discharge Unit (CDU), and most frustrating issue has been the inconsistent operation of the built in microswitch. Originally I used the built in switch of the The SEEP PM1 motor for changing the turnout frog polarity and had glued a Peco PL-13 Accessory switch to the underside of the motor to provide switching for point direction indications on the control panel. As time has passed where the built in switch has proved inconstant or unreliable I have swapped the duty of the two switches over so that the Peco Accessory switch is doing the more critical role of switching the frog polarity. I have now decided to replace all the point motors with the slow acting type and have chosen the DCC Concepts Cobalt slow acting motor (note I have not gone DCC control, I am still of the analogue camp). I choose this over the other slow acting motors on the market due to it being slightly smaller than its competition, recommendations from other users and experienced gained with them on Ashland, one of the Hornby Magazine layouts I helped build. Installation of the motors on the whole is quite simple with the exception of one location where the motor needed to be installed to the side (where I plan to keep the unpowered Seep motor in place as part of the crank arrangement). I am utilising the existing wiring and control panel push buttons, but as the Cobalts require a polarity change and a constant supply, I have turned once again to my friend, fellow Fisherton Sarum operator and electronics wizard GWMark of this parish who is building for me some cleaver circuitry to take the push button inputs to and turn it into the constant feed required by the motor. Being operated from a 12VDC supply I am retaining a diode matrix system to operate a number of motors from one button when required such as on the ladder of turnouts in front of the shed. This weekend has seen the first 4 motors (6 to go) changed and wired up. This is an extract of my own blog at www.grahammuz.com and the full entry can be read here.

Although not iconically named after Arthurian legends until (Sir) John Elliot joined the Southern Railway in 1925, and set up what is reputedly the UKs first Public Relations Department, the N15 ‘King Arthur’ class of 4-6-0 locomotives were first designed by Urie of the London and South Western Railway in 1918. The design was adopted and modified by Maunsell as the newly appointed CME of the Southern Railway and this along with differing build batches, including some contracted to North British in Glasgow, means that there are a number of variations within the class both internally and externally. The external more obvious variations includ e: tenders, cab profiles, footplate / running board heights (to match tenders), smoke deflectors, blastpipe / chimney and safety valves. Hornby with their model of the N15 class, first introduced in 2007, have managed to successfully incorporate a number of these variations within their tooling. This post is not a full history of the class, as more can be found elsewhere such as here on the excellent SeMG website, but to simply illustrate the variations (and those renumbered, renamed and reliveried by myself) that can be seen on Fisherton Sarum. The first batch introduced by Urie between 1918 and 1923, numbers 736 to 755, featured the LSWR style high arc cab roof profile and Urie style safety valves and 5000 gallon bogie style tenders. During 1925 Maunsell ordered a number of G14 class engines to be ‘rebuilt’ as N15 class instead (although in practice these were new engines), numbers 448 to 457, and these can be identified from the original Urie builds due to the reuse of the G14 5200 gallon watercart style tenders. As the number of the class required by Maunsell in 1925 exceeded build capacity at the time a batch, numbers 763 to 792 was ordered from north British of Glasgow. Known as the ‘Scotch Arthurs’ these featured redesigned steam passages & cylinders and the new composite loading gauge style Maunsell Cab roof profile and safety valves. The final batch built at Eastleigh in 1926/7, numbers 793 to 806 were similar in design to the Scotch Arthurs but were paired with standard Ashford style 3500 gallon 6 wheel tenders, for use on the central section, and the running plate height at the cab end was raised to suit. I do not have a model of this variation. This is an extract of my full blog at www.grahammuz.com. The full post including additional images can be read here.

A great set of Pictures Al, as Neil said an impressive bit of all round modelling from the weathting, the scenincs and the wonderful subtle backscene giving great depth and realism to the images. Even the two swans look very natural. The first shot of the 4F on the bridge and the 3/4 front view of the T9 which looks particually North Cornwall (esepcially with those headsignals) / edge of Dartmoor to me.

Hi Josh The motor is a 7.5 deg step Unipolar 12VDC stepper motor from RS coupled to a 250/1 ovoid gearbox also from RS

In my controlling interest #1 post I mentioned the change of turntable control system to the Model Railway Electronic Group (MERG) turntable control unit.Since I first built Fisherton Sarum the turntable was powered via a Frixinghall motor and gearbox that did not have any form of automatic indexing. This meant that the rotational speed of the table was not easy to control and track alignment had to be done by eye (sometimes hitting the mark easier than at othertimes) via a toggle switch. Friend and regular operator of Fisherton Sarum and electronics wizard GWMark of this parish, has very kindly built for me a MERG turntable control kit which drives a stepper motor and gearbox. This clever bit of electronics can give up to 63 different positions (I only need 8 i.e. each end of 4 roads, on Fisherton Sarum) to an amazing precision of 0.03 degrees. The turntable is simply operated from the panel via a rotary switch (a binary hex coded switch, for those that understand such things) to select the desired road and then pressing the start button. The controller then automatically works out the shortest distance to the desired alignment. When turning clockwise the deck is stopped automatically at the correct place or if turning anti-clockwise it over runs slightly before stepping back clockwise to the correct position ensuring any slack in the gearbox is taken up. The controller has a learn mode to allow the desired positions to be accurately set up which it then remembers. The typical bank holiday weekend weather, just passed, encouraged working inside rather than other pursuits so the installation was completed. Installation has required a few slight changes to the control panel: firstly to incorporate the rotary switch, mounting inside the control panel the controller PCB card and changes to the wiring harness to get the required five wires to the stepper motor and gearbox that is being mounted directly under the turntable itself, replacing the previously installed traditional motor, gearbox and worm and wheel drive. It is imperative that the link between the gearbox outlet and the table deck is positive and has no possibility of slip. The Peco deck is designed to be an interference fit on to a Meccano shaft so to ensure no unwanted movement is possible I have drilled through the boss and the shaft at 90 degrees and pinned it with a short section of Brass wire. This shaft matching the gearbox output shaft has had a flat filed onto it and a brass collar joins to the two with grub screws ensuring a positive connection. Programming the turntable in learn mode has not gone 100% to plan and I did not yesterday manage to get it working correctly, so need to some additional advice. Once I have mastered the programming I will upload a video of the turntable under its new control in action, so watch this space. This is an extract from my blog at www.grahammuz.com and further information and additional images can be read here.

Here is my model of Hawkhurst for a future layout of mine...

Whilst Fisherton Sarum has now appeared in a number of the regular modelling magazines such as Hornby magazine, Railway Modeller and British Railway Modelling it has now made an appearance in the latest book from the Kevin Robertson, Noodle Books stable “Modelling the Southern Volume 1: Ideas and Inspiration†This 112 page paperback publication by Jeremy English, a finescale modeller and lifelong Southern enthusiast, covers a range of aspects of modelling the Southern Railway / Southern Region from locomotives, rolling stock, stations, architecture, train formations, freight, operation and infrastructure. A couple of pages of images (with thanks to Chris Nevard) and a brief introduction to Fisherton Sarum features in the Modelling Inspiration section, alongside a number of quality and well recognised Southern layouts. This hopefully demonstrates the scope and variety of possibilities when modelling the Southern. This post is an extract of my blog at www.grahammuz.com and the full entry with further details can be read here.