Dave John

I use a blade set at about 1.5 for scribing the windows Mikkel. I have marked it and keep it for just doing that.

Well, keep all your all failed electronic junk . Rip out the transformers. Dismantle them with a whacking great hammer and a chisel. The E laminations in the transformers are soft iron, very good magnetic material. Some are down to 10 thou thick and can be cut easily with tin snips. Its a cheap source of thin flat iron, and bashing up the stuff can be fun. Long ago when modelling in N I tried a sort of magnahesion system with transformer bits and magnets on locos. It worked a bit , but magnets are available now which far exceed the performance of those I played with. Worth a try .

I have been making some more of the parts for the signal box. My idea is to generate a set of pre-painted assemblies which all sort of go together neatly at the end. Best laid plans…. So a snapshot of the main structure. Lower walls will be brick on this one. The 4 bits in the soffit are steel. Those steel bits are there to catch the magnets in the roof section. The open rectangle they are on allows a bit of down flex at the corners . Roof clicks neatly into position like so. Clicks off easily so can be painted separately. The lighting module uses a pair of warm white LED chips. Thing is all those windows make the insides a bit visible, so I don’t want wires to be seen. A bit of head scratching later. Make the lighting module so that it fits down inside the chimney breast. It can go in after all the interior detail is fitted, the roof can be removed without disturbing it. I will put a pair of spring contacts on the bottom of the pcb so it just slides into place. Lastly, a few bits prepared and ready. Interior bits are a nice etch by Severn Models. Just a few snapshots in bad light really, but helps keep me on track.

There is so much detail in those pictures. I just noticed the horseshoe over the signal box door. Nice touch.

Artisan, the way I did it was to make a mock up. I knew the boat I wanted in the scene was a waterline model of a Clyde puffer. So I got a photo of it side on , scaled it to the size the model would be and stuck it to some cardboard. I then placed that against a dockside made of various bits of cardboard box. the dockside height was adjusted with card and tape so that the boat formed part of the scene but did not obscure the sight line to the activities on the quayside. After playing about and squinting at it all from various angles I decided that a quayside of about 38 mm looked right, comes in at about 35 mm once the water is in place. Of course that figure is just for the model I wanted to make, but the general idea of messing about with mockups really does help when you are not sure about the sizes of things.

It is, they were sets of 4 most of the time. Well, that D1 needs something for specials .

Well, I have kit built all my coaches .... Then again I don't have enough really . Depends on what the hattons ones actually come out like. Of course by the time the CR ones come out I may have got to the point where a toilet roll tube on lego rails with CR on the side would suffice for what little brain I have left. In the meantime when I have built the signal box I might have a go at some more kit coaches before my ability to paint stuff goes completely. I have the wheelsets, 24 axles. Thats for how many coaches ?

Very interesting. Does the turnout at the lower right have a moving blade, or is it a fixed blade? I can see how it could work as a fixed divider with the the standard gauge wheels being forced to the upper line by the check rail and the narrow gauge wheels being forced to the lower line by the centre rail.

Very Impressive photos of an excellent layout Vitalspark. I have a Nikon camera, a D3400 with the standard lens it came with. I am slowly learning how to use it and I have a good level of light in the railway room so I can try and get ISO down and f numbers up. I have a bit of an issue with focus; my eyesight is not sharp and I tend to have to use the screen not the viewfinder. I know its supposed to be automatic but it never seems to focus on the bit I want it to, more study needed I guess. Annoyingly I find that it can't be used in tethered mode or I would connect it to a monitor. Slowly I am getting the hang of video a bit. Seeing what I'm doing and focussing is again my main issue. The down side is of course that if I get better at photography I will see even more of my mistakes and have to fix all sorts of things.

The heads are brass, posts are plastic. They are ok, but generally need a strip down, flash removed and a repaint. The lamps on the bridge there are the gaugemaster ones, but I rebuilt them, made the covers less fancy and shortened them a bit. There are very similar ones available direct from china at lower prices, but they need a bit more work. All of them are too bright, for a few add extra series resistors or the pwm type dimmer that come with the gaugemaster ones.

Lovely horse painting there. I have tried a dapple effect on a couple, but they did not come out as well as that.

Aye, well, sixpence was a lot of money in them days ........ I think it was the trigger which started my interest in train sets, so money well spent.

Hmm, I have a very hazy memory of a coin operated railway from my childhood. Probably in an arcade or similar in some exotic sea-side resort. Skegness or Blackpool perhaps. Sixpence in, then you could push buttons for a time and things happened. A train went round, things moved or lit up. I seem to remember it as huge , but to a childs eyes 10 x 5 would be. I wonder if these were more common, but I only got to see the one ?

It is just the basic portrait. Cuts 10 thou, but won't go all the way through 20 or embossed sheet. However even with 20 thou the fact that it can cut half way and do so accurately and repetitively means that going the rest of the way through the sheet with a scalpel is very easy The layers shown are 10 thou clear with 10 thou white each side giving a 30 thou laminate. The stair handrails are 2 laminations of 10 thou.

The signal box on Kelvinbank consists of a photo of Boness box stuck to a light bulb box. Ok, its the right style and size, but time to make something a bit more accurate. So the silhouette has been busy. The windows are all done as a single layer, the frames both sides laminated onto that. Cutting all those soffit brackets took a while, but I’d never manage it by hand. This is the second attempt, I got my dimensions wrong on the go. Some brickwork for the lower sides next.

Well there used to be something called a DCCT, or direct current current transformer. Its purpose was not power transmission, it was an instrumentation device used to measure a DC current without being electrically connected to the circuit being measured. Basically a transformer magnetically coupled to the DC conductor. Feed AC into the primary of the DCCT, the AC current in the secondary is altered by the magnetic flux in the DC conductor saturating the core of the DCCT. Load and rectify the AC output of the secondary and that will give a DC output proportional to the DC current to be measured. You are unlikely to come across one these days, tends to be done with a hall effect sensor now. My memory fades a bit, but someone dig out the circuit diagram for a class 50. The real ones, not the model.

Hmm, I need to build a signalbox, but I'll have a look at that kit afterwards. Brakes. Did the earlier versions have a simpler lever ?

The trouble is that all this debate about GWR colours means I'll probably never get round to building this one, which has been in the queue for a long time waiting for folk to make their minds up. A whole £2.50. I could just put a large wagon sheet over it I suppose.

I have used the 4mm version. This is how it looks when laid; I ordered directly from Redutex in spain when UK stocks were low. It needs to be cut with something very sharp and the surface on which it is laid needs to be decent, any wee blemishes show through. The nearest thing I can liken it to is laying 1 mm thick lino. I also gave the surface to which I was sticking it (thin card in the case of that bridge) a wash over with dilute pva to prepare it.

It was the window in the first picture which caught my eye U.B.L.U. Lodge 2. From which I learned; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Builders'_Labourers_Union Things you find out on here . Wonder if the police ever caught whoever nicked the legs of the chap on the shed?

Well, I have become a rivet counter. Really, at the price of rivet transfers I count them all on the sheet to make sure they are all there before they go anywhere near a model. Joking aside I used to omit rivets where I knew they should be because my limited skills ended up with a wonky line of badly spaced randomly sized rivets which drew the eye and detracted from a model. Since learning to use rivet transfers I can now create a straight line of consistent rivets which adds to a model. So I have started adding them. Maybe not in exactly the right numbers, but at least in the right place.

The pic shown by Melmerby is of a transformer secondary where the number of turns and therefore the AC voltage before rectification is varied by a wiper . Oddly sewing machines had a similar device operated by a foot pedal. It is not actually a Variac , in which the mechanical relationship between the primary and secondary determines the output voltage. A true autotransformer has only one winding, usually tapped, to step up or down an AC voltage as required. Used in distribution networks but rarely the low voltage side of the mains. Anyway , a Variac . If you think thats going anywhere near my models think again. 275 V at 10 A . I bought it for a job about 30 years ago, I had to show that some marine control panels I built would work on 160 to 260 V ac . If anyone has a use for it then shout. It weighs a ton though .....

Gawd, this is depressing. I'm going to shunt with a pug. A kinda rough pug from an anchoridge kit, but it stills runs very well. Just thought someone might like a pic of a train to cheer them up .........

Interesting picture Mikkel. I suppose it leads us back to the beginning with fish. Pickled herring, though its gone out of fashion a bit in the uk, all sorts of pickled seafood were much more common than they are now. In fact pickled all sorts of food.

If I turn the layout on and there is an instant short circuit the first thing I do is find a second pair of glasses so I can see which bit of track I left my metal framed specs sitting on. Long term I can see the attraction of battery and some sort of radio link system, the one shown above looks very good. Something I'm keeping an eye on. When I can find my specs......