D3489gibson

Earlier in the week I decided to number my nine Peco Rugga hoppers. This was a little tedious as I haven't used transfers in a good few years, and the last time I did, it was on something I'd painted as opposed to got out straight out of a box. I opted to take the lazy route and just number them 1-9, and leave them as that. I've also had a new engine wrrive in the post, a small 2-4-0T with a Dolgoch cab and what looks like a Hudswell/ Hunslet saddle tank

Nice little delivery from the postie this morning, a Fourdees "The Pioneer" saddle tank body kit for the Kato-Peco George England chassis. Undecided on livery yet, but LBSCR IEG is screaming at me for some reason!!!

Whilst at the Statfold Barn show this weekend I managed to get my Bachmann 08 08833 (D4001) kitted out with high and low level pipes, as how the real one was. Looked the part on Beckwick. All thanks to Neil at Kitorama for painting them up for me! Even fitted a Modelu shunter to the front as well! On the Sunday morning the whole team went straight over to the driver for a fiver platform to have a go on Alpha! Only purchases I made were a England chassis from Invicta, and these six coaches from Elaine's Trains! Nathan

Pre night shift ramblings today saw me re-retrofitting Peco couplings to the four Dundas FR Style coaches' bogies following issues with the Hunts derailing them on curves. as a datum, ive used the small green brake van, which is a peco N gauge chassis with GR101's fitted. I've also grafted a pair onto the blue and white coach pictured next to the cutting mat. Next up it was stock box time. Four of these A4 size boxes fit neatly into an Rhino box from Tesco. Lastly, the final Dundas coach has entered the glazing process. Now for a gruelling 12hr night shift! Nathan....

The Vale of Rheidol coach is finally completed after a week of faffing with glazing. The roof is now secured in place, and I must admit, it looks amazing paired up with the BCC exclusive Linda! With this now completed, the final Dundas DM6X coach is nearing completion! This has been built during the week whilst waiting for the DM10A kit to dry glazing and paint wise. All that needs doing on this now is glaze in, and roof on. One final fix up, has been fitting a roof to my Dundas Toast Rack coach. Simply a piece of card cut to shape (over cut width wise) and painted RC417. Till next time... Nathan....

The DM10A kit has now been Teak'd and is waiting for glazing to dry before securing the roof down! Initially I grafted some Hunt couplings to the bogies however on testing against some Peco L&B coaches, they appeared to be just a tad too short in length to work well without derailing the coach, so I have had to resort to fitting BEMO couplings to them instead. Nathan...

The Dundas coach has been completed fully, with glazing plus glue n glaze, and the roof secured. With that, the next coach build has commenced, in the form of a Vale of Rheidol 3rd class coach. As many of you may have noticed, I'm a suckered for teak stock, so this kit is right up my alley with the paint suggestion being teak! The kit has been assembled in the usual fashion of poly cement and superglue (the latter for the whitemetal parts) and primed with Halfords primers. Now to get the topcoats on and teak it! Nathan...

This is a relief on my wallet!!! Got a very short notice week in NYC to pay for before July, so this news is actually welcoming 😅😅😅

Evening all! The Dundas coach now all painted up! I have used the following paints: Phoenix P84 SR coach Green for the body sides; Railmatch 635 SR Venetian Red for the interior; and Humbrol Acrylic 21 Black for the coach ends, vacuum pipes, and step boards. Now to let it dry before glazing and sticking the roof on, which has been painted in Humbrol RC417 Coach Roof Off White. I've also managed to paint up my Robex Flying Bench, which I have finished in Railmatch Royal Train Claret. Now the drying game begins (again)... Nathan...

A few bits from today's, or rather thus afternoon's session. Having found 90% of a DM67 Kit in a tupperware box, which i think has been in it since 2019, I managed to assemble prettymuch the entire kit, minus a few partition sections! I've decided to fit the bogies with Hunt couplings for the sake of matching the other two kits which have been fitted with them. Once fully assembled, I proceeded to prime it (minus bogies) with Halfords Grey Primer. As I was going to be spraying it, I decided to prime up a few other items including two further DM67 Kit roofs, a Dundas Quarrymans Brake Van, Peco GVT coach, and one of my first bits of OO9 stock - a Robex Flying Bench! Once dried, the Dundas coach will go into Olive Green to match the other two I have already done, and my Toast rack coach. The F.B I'm undecided on, the same with the GVT coach. Nathan....

Hiya, they're all DCC Fitted, mixed between hardwired and plug-n-play, and the only loco that worked was the fitted Ixion Hudswell Clarke tank engine which had an address of 10. The Sound Fitted Drewry was addressed 1053, and unresponsive on the app with Elite selected as the control style. Nathan....

Hiya Tony, I took my dongle down to the club room last night, and ended up testing it out on Medway Quay, our O gauge layout that will be at Ally Pally this weekend. I was able to control the non-sound locos, but couldn't control the Sound fitted ones for some reason.. Nathan...

Hiya, We have LZV100's at out club, all V3.0! I can't say I had any issues, apart from not being able to control my class 11 whilst running Lion. More testing will be done this Thursday when we have our test track up! Nathan...

Well, what a day its been! As well as painting up the Baguley Drewry (and then launching it off my diorama plank), I sucessfully managed to graft some Hunt couplings to some previously built Dundas kits, and this evening bought a second hand purchase back to life! The B.D has been finished in Humbrol Midnight Blue, and the bufferbeams finished in Phoenix Precision Bufferbeam Red! All it needs now is a driver, some proper plates, and varnishing! Nathan....

Recently I got the OO9 bug back having been discussing with club members about doing a combined OO9 and OO gauge club layout. Having found my left over Roco track, and two of my SMS diorama boards, I decided to put together a small demonstration plank of sorts. With this, I started looking at loco kits, and found a Baguley Drewry shunter 3D kit on eBay, and along with a Kato 11-109 chassis from Tramfabriek, it arrived in earnest last Thursday. After a dry assembly onto the chassis, and a quick run about on the plank, I decided to fully assemble the kit - lamps and all! I'm undecided on what livery to stick it in, however some other club members have suggested, for the frames at least, red fronts, and black sides. I guess I'll have to have a rummage through my vast collection of paints for that!!! One thing I did decide to do though, is add weight to the bodyshell. For this, I used 15g of weights that I had left over from a purchase from Roads and Rails, to which they fitted snuggly into the bonnet of the bodyshell. With this done, the locomotive was primed using Halfords Grey plastic primer. More to come on Sunday once I've decided what colour to paint the body!!! Nathan....

Being the sucker I am for odd coaches, I've always been fond of the Hornby "Shorty" Clerestory coaches. Whilst on long term sick from work in 2019, I managed to pick up three of the Blood and Custard liveried ones from a car boot sale. Not content with just three of them, in late 2023, I found two more on eBay. Once I received them, I decided I wanted to make them look less “toylike” so set about enhancing them. Firstly, I purchased some metal wheels and replaced the old plastic ones with these. I then started scouring the internet for replacement bogies, as it had come to light that the ones fitted to the models were MK1 style. Looking on Shapeways, I came across a seller who sold a vast range of 3D printed designs of GWR coach bogies – some of which were designed specifically for replacing these “shorties” original ones. After searching the sellers store, I settled on two variations of Dean 8’ 6” bogies. As I had ten bogies to change, I settled for eight sets of plain bogies, and two sets with Step Boards – for use under the guards compartments on the two brake coaches I have. Once the bogies arrived from Europe – where Shapeways are based – I started to see how well they worked with the coaches. To my surprise, I needed to make a slight adjustment to the pegs on each bogie where they insert into the coaches underframes. With this modification completed, I started to look at fitting bearings to the bogies, as with the metal wheels taken out of the old bogies, they wouldn’t stay in place. With thanks to a club member, I was able to rectify this and fit each bogie with four brass shouldered bearings. I did have to reem out the axle boxes though! With the new bogies all fitted and bearings pressed into the axle boxes, it was time to test! Over the working days after Christmas, we had TWES (The West Exchange Sidings) up in the club hall, so out the coaches came, and to my surprise, they ran really well, as you can see in the photo below! One extra thing I have done to one of the brake coaches, is fit a red tail lamp. The couplings fitted are one Hornby NEM coupling on both brake coaches, and Hunt Couplings’ Ultra Close magnetic couplings on the remaining eight bogies. One extra addition I’ve done, is to add interiors and some weight to each of the coaches. The interiors are 3D printed resin ones which drop straight into place on the inside of the coach bodies. These were acquired from an eBay seller, who specialises in Tri-Ang rolling stock interiors and replacement parts! 10g weights were secured in place on either end of the inside of each coach. These were bought from Roads and Rails. The last thing that needs doing, at the time of writing this, is painting the bogies up. I decided to leave these till last as I’ve been trialling everything with them before committing to painting them up fully. Once I've got them painted up, I'll be sure to post them up here! Nathan...

I must ask, only because you haven't said you've tried it, but have you had F0 on and tapped the cab roofs to make sure they haven't just gone off from that??? Nathan...

Well, I took my newly delivered HM7040 Legacy Dongle to the club rooms tonight before my final nightshift of the week! What a great bit of kit!!!! Plugged it straight into our Test Track's Xpressnet port and fired up the app. Fast and easy connection to the dongle!! Assigned it to my Sound Fitted Rapido Lion that I'd spent the morning assigning to the engine shed on the app, and after pressing the "Sound On/ Off" Function on the screen, she sprung into life, and pottered away round the circuit after I'd slid the speed bar up to 30%. I still need to tinker a bit with the function control allocations on it, such as changing some of the functions from push button to switches (safety valves, clanking, etc) but that'll come with further use. For clarification, our club uses, for DCC, the LENZ system, to which I can confirm there were no issues with the dongle and the system communicating to each other and the App on my phone. The screen grabs from my phone show the Dongle assigned to Lion, and also the Function map I've created for it. All of the functions worked accordingly when pressed. One thing I did notice, whilst another club member put one of their locos onto the tracks, is that if there is a short circuit on the track, which did occur, the Dongle stays active. This is pretty nice given that the signal in our club rooms isn't that great for 5G or BT for that matter!! As I've said above, a bit more tinkering with the functions is definitely required, but my next port of call is to trial a loco with more than 8 functions! Nathan...

Tested out A.D878 last night on the clubs test track. Fully fitted with the Roads and Rails supplied sound set and stay alive. Only modifications I needed to do was remove a small bit of the shrink wrap at the base of the SA where the wires come out to allow it to sit flush at the front of the motor, with the capacitor at 90* along the front of the PCB infront of the speaker. All sits together nicely. Running is superb now so it may make a brief jaunt to Tamworth for the Statfold show to see how it handles Beckwick's multiple crossovers and paintwork! Nathan

I was planning to do so, but it's just a fraction too big length wise, so have settled for a Loksound v5 from Roads and Rails with a single stayqlive capacitor fitted to the chip Nathan

Evening all! Hornby site is now showing the Legacy Dongle as in stock! Fingers crossed that means they'll be sent out next week!!! Nathan

Basra has thankfully arrived this evening! Considering hanging fire on chipping it till I've seen others get a TXS N18 decoder into one with no bodging.. Nathan...

I suffered the same issue with mine, still waiting now....

I see you've gone for 34 as the route code.. Any reasoning behind it or just a mix it up code? I went for 66 on mine personally due to me spending so much time when I was younger on the East Grinstead line. Took mine with my to Alton FebEx last weekend and ran it on Folly Lane, and it certainly didn't look too much out of place! Nathan...

Can you elaborate on the autotune bit please?? Ive got a Loksound V5 fitted to my 3514 and we were running it on Folly Lane this evening but it did seem a bit juddery at times. Cheers! Nathan