awoodford

Ah yes, the Tweedale Railway's northern office, shared with the North Star shipping company. The sign was cut from polystyrene ceiling tiles by young Angus McAngus for a bob-a-job. It took the poor lad all morning, so one doesn't like to criticise.

Thanks Mikkel. Alan.

I'd missed this blog previously, so I was absolutely bowled over by the backscene on opening this post. Looking back at past posts for more information, I'm even more impressed now that I know it was done in acrylics. I've never mastered acrylics (a serious drawback for any modeller these days), and have always been envious of anyone who can get more than an unholy mess from the stuff, but this is in a whole other league and I wouldn't have thought such a thing possible before. I salute you sir, some wonderfully inspirational modelling here. Alan.

Corbs, Mookie, thanks for your comments. Those drills do seem to offer quite a number of possibilities. For a portable model railway the main drawback would probably be the weight. I quite like the agricultural chunkiness of the thing, and the weight is not really a problem on this little module, but I suppose it could be an issue for some. Alan.

I don't know if its the same with you folk, but I do get a bit of a kick out of finding a use for something for which it was never designed or intended. So when it came to needing a turntable for the new Tweedale appendage mentioned in the previous blog, the first thing to do was look through drawers and cupboards for 'something rotatable' that could be adapted. That something turned out to be a hand drill... It had been bought some time ago from one of those bargain discount stores, but as a drill it proved to be totally useless - it just kept binding up when trying to twizzle the handle. Buy cheap buy twice, as the saying goes. However it did seem to run freely enough when turned from the chuck end. So if it refused pay for itself as a drill, it would just have to earn its keep as a turntable mechanism instead. This is what I ended up with... The drill handles were removed and the metalwork glued to wooden feet with Araldite, which were then glued to a ply base with PVA. The trickiest part was getting the piece of track centred on the top. The motor and gearbox were bought from an exhibition tool stand, however the turntable could have been operated manually with just a handle gripped in the chuck. The motor is wired to the track supply via a switch so that it can be operated from the loco controller. Power to the rails is via paper-clip wipers sliding on a piece of circuit board. Rather crude but it works... The whole contraption was screwed to wooden spacer blocks beneath the baseboard, then final sections of track on the board were added to line up with the turntable. At the insistence of Health & Safety some makeshift buffer stops were fixed to the edge of the abyss. These have already proved their worth after a visitor with the genes of a lemming and an unfamiliarity of the controller rammed a loco into them at quite an alarming speed. At some stage the turntable will be finished off cosmetically with an overall planked wooden deck similar to that on the old Bembridge (IOW) turntable. That will cover the rotating pit beneath. Here's the whole module attached to the main layout. It will be tidied up, but probably not fully scenified just yet. I should add that the scenic area will extend a few inches beyond the edges of the wooden track base seen here, and will disguise the sliced off turntable pit. Cheers, Alan.

Quote: ...as she had spent 5 months behind the Iron Curtain in Moscow just after we started going out... Good Lord. That seems like rather an extreme reaction. But you seem to have got over it. Nice to see a loco hauled passenger train for a change. Alan.

Thanks Corbs. The section will be scenified eventually, but I've not decided how yet. For now I'm more interested in trying out some ideas, getting the thing working and providing a bit of a change to Tweedale's operating patterns. Alan.

Ha, so you must be D. Long time no see. And I still have the loco and wagons. It was nice to see Horselunges mentioned. I built the original layout in EM in the mid 90's, and it went to shows for about 5 years before being sold on. It was later converted to P4 and generally upgraded by new owners, and returned to the the exhibition circuit. I've not heard of it for a few years so I don't know if its still around. Best Alan.

Tweedale has acquired a temporary appendage. Ultimately it will form part of a small tabletop modular system seperate from the Tweedale theme, but for now it provides a run round loop for the layout, which allows operation with just one loco rather than the usual two. The plan below shows how it fits in with the rest of Tweedale... I've tried to keep the length of the run round loop as short as possible. With a capacity of 2 short-wheelbase wagons, a small turntable at one end and a wheel-screaming 6 inch radius point at the other, it just fits into 18 inches. The photo below shows the standard end pieces that will be used for the modular system. The piece at the right is the master, on which a short length of track has been carefully centred. Other end pieces are then made up so they fit the master and their rails align. In theory they should all then line up with each other, and any number of modules could be plugged together in any configuration. One end piece has been glued to the new baseboard at the left, and the other one at the top has since been attached to the main layout board. I never fail to be amazed at what one can get away with in 00. The point is a case in point (so to speak), and breaks nearly all the rules of genteel point construction. Two parallel straight lines were drawn 16.5mm apart on a piece of paper. On another piece of paper the curved rails were drawn with a compass. The latter drawing was then glued on top of the former and the straight lines traced through onto the top sheet where covered. Sleeper spacing was marked every 10mm. That gave me the template for the point. With no transitions, a sharply curved point blade and a crossing angle of about 1 in 1.8, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, yet it actually works. A bit of tweeking of the check rails and the Bachmann 0-6-0 Drewry shunter lurches around it with no trouble at all. Those curves are no place to be pushing wagons though, so the loop will be purely for the loco to run around its train. The point mechanism beneath the baseboard is shown below. The slide switch provides appropriate power to the point frog. A hole was drilled through the knob of the slide switch and a piece of brass rod glued in, and passed through a hole in the baseboard to the moving-sleeper tiebar on the point. There is enough springiness in the rod to cope with the difference in throws between the slide switch and the tiebar. Scraps of wood and bamboo skewers complete the mechanism. The point will be manually operated by a knob glued to the skewer at the right. Turntable in the next blog. Cheers Alan.

Love it! Alan.

edp2, Simon Dunkley, thanks for your comments. I wouldn't say there was a lot of skill required here, more patience and a methodical approach. Only basic modelling tools were used, a junior hacksaw, craft knife, pliers, wire cutters, a 1mm drill, a small file for deburring. The soldering was not absolutely necessary - Araldite could have been used instead. As I had a dozen wagons to convert, the various bits were cut, bent, drilled and filed in batches, to produce kits of parts that could be put together fairly easily once the old couplings had been hacked out. And at the end of the process, if it was not quite right, a bit of judicious bending generally cured any problems. Alan.

The standard tension lock couplings in use on Tweedale have been an ongoing source of irritation. They work reliably enough, but they are just so darned ugly. The original plan was to replace them with Alex Jacksons, but that has now changed and I've decided to stick with tension locks but make my own from from thin wire. They seem a bit less fiddly to set up than the AJs and the tolerances are more forgiving. I'm very pleased with the results, so I thought I'd share the details below on how they were made and fitted. I've been using Roger Nicholls 'Yorkshire Kadee' uncoupling system (see the 'Operation' blog), and for that I only needed a hook at one end of a wagon and a loop at the other. The uncoupling system is beautifully simple, but has its limitations and only really works on trains being pushed in one direction. As most of the sidings on the layout face the same way this is fine. However on the sidings at Dale End, which face the opposite direction, wagons had to be uncoupled manually. One unexpected bonus with the new couplings is that they are so fine and light that, with a bit of care, it is now possible to automatically uncouple wagons in the other direction as well. Here's a wagon to be converted, a Hornby box van. The van body was unclipped from the chassis to make things easier to work on. The old couplings were unclipped, and the associated mounts removed with a hacksaw and craft knife, to leave a flat base beneath the floor for the new couplings. The sketch below (not to scale) shows the critical dimensions for the new couplings. Dimension A needs to be a bit less than than the minimum buffer length, so that the hook doesn't hit the buffer beam of the next wagon in a train. The buffer lengths on my stock are around 5-6mm, so I set this dimension to 4mm. Dimension B depends on the minimum track radius of curves. The sharper the curves the furthur the loop needs to protrude beyond the buffers. For the 18 inch radius curves on Tweedale I found 3mm to be suitable for this dimension, and allows coupling and uncoupling on the curves. Dimension C, the width of the loop, depends on the severity of reverse curves in the trackwork. There are a couple of nasty ones on the layout (added to my list of things to avoid in the future) so a wide loop of 14mm was used. The coupling height was set to 10mm above the track, higher than standard tension locks, but it means the fittings under the floor are less visible. The old steel wire that I'd used for AJs in the past had turned brittle over the years and just broke when trying to bend it, so I used 0.3mm diameter nickel silver tramway overhead wire instead (I happened to have some in the spares box). The hook was was made by first bending the wire at right angles 4mm from the end, then bending it back on itself. It was then gripped in pliers 2mm from the end, and the long tail was bent 45 degrees. The tail was bent at right angles for the striker at 15mm from the point of the hook, and cut off 9mm from the bend. A small piece of brass rod (not sure of the diameter, but it's a loose fit in a 1mm hole) was soldered in the right angle bend of the hook wire. Any burrs were filed from the ends of the rod. The mount for this pivot rod was made from plasticard and Evergreen styrene strip, into which 1mm holes had been drilled. For the loop end, wire was bent to shape and soldered to a piece of copper clad sleeper strip. The wagon was pushed up to a 10mm height gauge (made from plasticard) to determine how much packing, if any, would be needed for the coupling assemblies. This wagon didn't need any. And yes, that chassis really is bowed, its not just the photo! The loop and hook assemblies were glued in place with UHU. Scraps of paper marked with dimensions A and B (mentioned above) were used to set the final positions. A piece of plasticard (X on the photo) was glued behind the striker to hold the hook at the correct height. The glue was allowed to set overnight, then the couplings rechecked against the height gauge. Any final tweaks could be done by bending the wires slightly. Cheers, Alan.

Corbs, thanks for your comment. Alan.

Thanks, John. Alan.

Hi Job, Someone recently pointed me to an archive of good quality colour photos of Birmingham in the 50s/60s. When I saw the photos I immediately thought of your dioramas. You may find some good reference shots/inspiration/colour information there. In case you haven't already come across the site yourself, here is the link... http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/chrysalis.html Alan.

Well, mark 2 might get started this year, but at the speed I work it would probably be a good many years before it was fit for a show. Alan.

Ah OK, I've got it now. Thanks for the information. Alan.

This caught my attention, as it's an area I was familiar with at one time. The house that I was living in then had a curious raised mound across the middle of the back lawn, which turned out to be part of the old Louth to Mablethorpe track bed. I always found Saltfleet to be an interesting place. The Rye & Camber's Golf Links station could have been dropped down there beside the haven and felt right at home. Not that I'm trying to influence you! It'll be interesting to see how the layout develops. Alan.

Hi Job, I'm not quite clear on the first step of the roof sheets. Were these drawn with pencil/pastels, or did you start with photos of actual corrugated sheets? They are very nicely done, whatever the method. Alan.

Yes indeed. Well worth investing in another 6 issues. I'm particularly intrigued to see the Mallorca trams article in the next issue, having 'discovered' the line on Google maps recently. Alan.

Simon Dunkley, Ian Holmes, wenlock, Ian H C, many thanks for your kind comments. I do have a couple of ideas for the future. I originally wanted to keep this layout self-contained on a single baseboard, however I think it might benefit from a short extension board from Slaghill with a run round loop (one wagon capacity would be sufficient). That would allow the whole layout to be operated with a single loco, rather than two (which seems a bit like cheating). The other more long term idea is to build a new, exhibition-friendly, version. The current layout is not robust enough for that, and the corner configuration only allows two other people to view the layout at any one time, by peering over the operator's shoulders. Should either of those ideas come to fruition, they'll be reported in this blog. Alan.

Thanks ess1uk. Alan.

A great achievement, and a wonderfully amusing thread. Good for you, Alan.

Replacement Windows The layout is now in its final stages of construction. For the past two years it has endured cardboard mock-ups for the windows which seperate each of the scenes. Now that the scenery is all but complete, I've finally been able to determine the exact size required for the windows and replace them. Here is an overall view of the layout without its windows, now moved to a corner of the spare bedroom.... ...and here it is with the new windows in place, and lighting on... The window boards were cut from 4mm ply and just slot into place along the front of the layout, so they can easily be removed for better access to the inside. The 'mouseholes' give the operator sight-lines for checking points and sector plate. Pressing the Pause button In the introductory post, 10 months ago, it was explained that the main purpose of the blog was to give me the impetus to get on with the layout (which was wallowing in the doldrums at the time). Having committed myself to writing an update each month, I then felt obliged to make continuing visible progress. The plan seems to have worked, as I'm sure the layout would not have got to this stage by now without that pressure. There are still a few outstanding jobs (the most notable being replacement of the couplings), but none that really deserve a blog post of their own. For that reason I'll no longer be updating this blog on a regular basis, though I might add the occasional post if anything significant happens. The 'daily goods' will still continue to be operated, while I move on to other, unrelated, construction projects. However I've not finished with the Tweedale theme yet, and will likely return to it in the not too distant future, at which time the blog will no doubt be resurrected. I'd like to thank all who have taken an interest in the project, especially those who have posted comments and 'likes'. They've been much appreciated. I'll leave you with final shots of each of the four scenes. Grimley and Slaghill... The Pits... Poshington-Upon-Twee... Dale End... Best wishes, Alan.

Simon Dunkley, thanks for your comment. You're right in that it does help in the transition to the backscene. The back siding at Slaghill goes right up against the backscene and the new viaduct does help to disguise that. I think the problem is more to do with the size and shape of the viewing window at the front (10 inches high by 12 inches wide). From the normal viewpoint, which is a tadge higher than in the third photo, the modeled part all seems to be lurking at the bottom of the scene, while the top half is relatively empty. In hindsight I think it would have worked better if the top edge of the window was a couple of inches lower, and the painting on the backscene was not so high. As it is now, lowering the window would crop the top of the steelworks, and just encourage the viewer to stoop, which would be even less satisfactory. Alan.