Dufus

So, open passenger carriage removed. Figures more or less in place so I have a plan. Just got to get on and paint it all. The figures are not exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for a top hat. I did think about altering these but now decide that it is a stage too far. Modelers license will come into play here.

Here is the Rocket put together. The loco and tender are exactly 8 inches long but I need to lose a quarter of an inch in height. I can do that by remaking the rails.

Time for bit of an update. I have almost finished but though I would share a few intermediate photos first. First off are some of the parts to make up the tender to the rocket. Straight off the 3D printer. I need to do some work on my photography, especially depth of field!

In the beginning was the Railway. The Rainhill Trials are generally accepted as the beginning of the mechanised railway. William Huskisson the local Member of Parliament was hit by the Rocket on the first day of the trials and later died of his injury. As a retired cop having spent a lot of my service on traffic dealing with Road Traffic Accidents (RTA), I have decided for this challenge to go for the railway equivalent and model the first Railway Train Accident. Huskisson was taken on a door to a local doctor and died several hours later. I am going to take a bit of poetic license and place him at the scene. To add to the challenge I think I can get a scale 1 Rocket into the 8 inch by 8 inch by 6 inch restriction. At a scale of 1:32 the Rocket and tender should come out at 8 inches long. No wriggle room! The problem will be with the height, using normal rails and thick sleepers it comes in at 6 inches with no room for a base board. I am going to have to make my own track and thin down the sleepers. I have identified some suitable figures, I have the 3D printing files for a 1:32 scale Rocket and Tender. This is going to be an exercise in painting and weathering.

Submitted last night. Bit of a false start when I copied and pasted Phil's email it would not go. Had to type it out by hand. presumably some mechanism to stop computer generated spam.

Okay, nearly done. Still got some small details to finish that I hope to get done before Sundays deadline. Even if they don't get done, I am still pleased with the way it has gone. I have achieved most of my objectives. I have improved my small scale woodworking skills. I have had a go with a water scene. I did not get the static grass on here but I did get to have a go on the flat and on an embankment on a main layout. The grass on the flat looked really good but the embankment still needs some practice the get the grass growing up rather than 'out'. I decided not to ruin the beavers valley but to leave it until I have more practice. The other thing to do before Sunday is practice with the camera to get a better depth of field before submitting the final photos. To be going on with here is what I was originally thinking of,

OK, Making some progress. First off I have got the basic profile of the valley cut and some plaster bandage on it to seal it for now. I found a picture on google of logging on a slope. I bit of photo-shopping and I have a back scene. I have had 3 attempts at making the bridge, the first two went in the bin. Third one looks reasonable. It was one of my original objectives of this challenge to improve on my skills working with wood. I am not where I want to be, but getting much better. The bridge now needs fixing in place, I will need to build up the banks slightly so the beavers have somewhere to sit gnawing the bridge supports. It will also fix them to the bank at the same time. I have painted three of the beavers. They need to be smoothed down as the paint shows the layering from where they were printed. They don't look quite as bad as the camera makes them look but do need a little more work. Finally, I have made the wagon for the felled trees. This was a kit I bought at a show last year. I have not made any of these for 50 years. I used to make airfix kits at boarding school and even found an unmade break van in the loft which I will now assemble. I have made a log load for it. Still needs painting, chains adding and finishing off, but again more progress has been made. When the glue has dried on the bridge, I'll give it a paint wash then start working on cleaning up the beavers a bit more.

Currently sat in a hotel room in St Helier Jersey trying to cut polystyrene without making too much mess!! Just about got the basic valley cut out. Need to learn how to resize photos from my phone or I will have to wait until I get back to Norfolk and use a proper camera. below is a basic plan of action if it comes out. Chris

Beavers Revenge I am coming to this challenge a little late. I saw it originally last year and thought it would be fun to have a go so in anticipation I bought a small base board from Justin at scalemodelscenary.co.uk. I have only been modelling railway for a couple of years but have in the past made a number of sailing vessels so I am not completely new to modelling. I wanted to do something that would make me try a number of techniques that I have not yet used. That might mean it is a bit of a disaster, but hopefully it will mean that I increase my own skills (or at least learn my limitations). I want to incorporate: Some kind of water feature. Although I have made a number of ships, the only time I have used water is when making a ship in a bottle or light bulb. Nothing like the water shown on many layouts these days. Static grass. My kids brought me a static grass applicator for Christmas over a year ago but I have never used it. I am only just finishing wiring my main layout, it is going to be months before I get to put grass on it so I would like the opportunity to use it now. I have loads of coffee stirrers, I tried making part of a building for my local model railway club and it looked terrible. I want to develop this further and so thought a trestle bridge might help here. I want to make some rolling stock or try bashing something that I already have. I have a free-be paper mill loco from BRM when I subscribed, what about doing something with that? It needs to be fun! Nothing too serious. When the topic ‘waiting for a train’ was announced I discussed this at the King’s Lynn Model Railway club. I thought I don’t want the waiting to be people so what about an animal or two. Cows or farm stock would be too easy, what about beavers waiting to bring down a bridge? Could I get any beavers at OO scale? Well I searched the internet and no I could not find any. I emailed my cousins in Canada, could they ask at their local model shops because this is a non-starter without the beavers! Still no. I did however find a couple of STL 3D print files (for free!) on the internet. I have a 3D printer but the nozzle is blocked due to me using it in a freezing shed so last week I brought it inside and spent hours servicing it. I managed to print some OO scale beavers. The project is on.

Hi Charles, I am glad to see that you have found a way of sharing stl files. It does appear that you can't attach them here which is a shame. It is very refreshing to see someone making files freely available and I have down loaded a couple of them to have a look at. I want a building similar to your shoe store and it might be a better place to start with your design than start from scratch. I have recently drawn up and printed a beam engine to put inside the bottom of my water tower. I do try to light up the interior of buildings on my layout, but there is little point if there is nothing to look at inside. My local model railway club (Kings Lynn) have asked me to print a second one for their exhibition layout. My view is, I have the model that I want, I invested the time for my own needs, if others want a copy of the files they are welcome to them. Thanks for posting these, Regards, Chris

Just realised I never did finish this off. I stripped the tender down and found one of the pickups was not seated properly. It did not look like it should have been causing a short but when I reassembled all worked fine. I have since converted the loco to DCC and it runs like a dream. Thanks for your advice. Since posting this query I have been given a couple of very old non-runner locos that I have had the confidence to strip and clean and get running again. Many thanks for all the advice, it has given me a lot more confidence in stripping engines down. Chris

Hi Guys, Many thanks for your advice. The instructions from John look to be sufficient for what I need. Several people have told me the bogies are very fragile but as I only intend for the coach to sit at the back of a layout as a crew restroom/tearoom it should be enough. The kit was in the £1 bin so if it doesn't work I have lost nothing but it looks like a nice little project. Many Thanks for your responses. Chris

I was in a model shop yesterday and managed to buy a number of old Ratio kits that had been marked down (a lot!). One was for a Midland Low Roof Suburban Bogie Coach OO gauge. Although many parts have been cut off the sprue, it appears to be complete other than the instructions are missing. This is going to be bit of a puzzle so I though I would ask if anyone has a set of instructions they could let me have a copy of. Many Thanks, Chris

There are couple of books. Middleton Press do one 'King's Lynn to Hunstanton including the Heacham to Wells branch', or the one I prefer is the Oakwood Press 'Lynn and Hunstanton railway and the West Norfolk Branch' My track is going to be somewhat different to yours, A family friend died earlier in the year, leaving a baseboard and a set of plans with most of the track. His wife was not aware that he had been working on it in his shed. I have laid out the track and wired is as per his plans. We have no idea what he intended to do with it scenic wise. I intend to do something like the local area but obviously the track layout shows no resemblance to real life. Most of the railway buildings along this part of the line were designed by Henry Le Strange and were built from the local carrstone. There are loads of buildings built of this stone in Heacham, Hunstanton, Snetisham area that I intend to photograph and use them as a 'brick paper' to cover kit bashed or scratch built buildings. Likewise, it is very flat, open with lots of trees and just a few buildings. Oh and a big platform because that is the only bit of scenic that Ken designed into his layout and I felt it had to stay. regards, Chris

Hi NXEA! I will watch with interest. I live on the route of the West Norfolk Junction Railway. The old trackway is just outside my back gate at Heacham. I'll send you a photo or two when I get back home. Like you I work away a fair bit. I have started on an N gauge layout that I intend will have buildings in the style of the old buildings along this line. regards, Chris aka Dufus

Thanks guys, The contacts don't appear to be bent but something is obviously shorting. I have found my multi meter in the shed so I'll start probing. I like the idea of permanently wiring the two together, they will always be run together and this will stop this kind of thing happening again. I think the tender will be coming apart this weekend and I'll work from there. Thanks for all your suggestions. I'll let you know what happens. Chris

Hi All, I need some advice please. I am building a OO layout which includes a girder bridge on a curve. Today I have been trying to run a couple of trains around the curve to measure what clearance I need on the passenger carriages and with various goods trucks. I have the track all set up on the baseboard with the inclines in place and have been able to test that my locos can manage the slope under a full load. All this went OK with my little goods loco. When I went to test the Flying Scotsman it would run for a few inches then the light went out on the controller and I had to unplug everything before power would restore. I am using the Hornby DC power supply as supplied with the Scotsman set. I intend to convert to DCC with a Gaugemaster set that my daughter gave me for Christmas but not until things are set up. My plan is to use the DC controller to test the track first. I have found that the loco will work fine when running solo without the tender. I can put the tender on the track without attaching it and it still runs fine. The moment I attach the tender to the back of the loco every thing stops. I can see two wires that connect the two on the top of the pin and there are two contacts that attach to the pin below the hole. They appear to connect in the correct places. I obviously don't want to convert this loco until I have resolved this issue. Any advice please? Can I run the loco just using the pickups on the loco, if so what is the best way of isolating the tender?

When I saw the picture, I immediately thought of the back of Kidderminster Magistrates court. It is right next door to the Severn Railway Heritage station. Years ago I used to train staff there, several used to work part time on the heritage rail and gave me a guided tour behind the scenes. A great distraction watching the steam locos waiting at the platform outside the window!!

Well I have done the first 4 of the market stalls. You can see on the right is the Wills Fruit & Veg barrow, Next to it is the book stall made of the spare stall and canopy together with the legs printed on the 3D printer. The next stall is the mead which was my first attempt at a complete scratch build. The produce was printed on the 3D and the canopy is printed on card with a little touch up with water colour paints. The last stall is a record stall. For those that frequented Cambridge Market in the 70's and 80's there is Andy's record stall. I am pleased with the way this came out. The stall with its display stand was printed on the 3D printer. The record covers were found on Google, reduced to 4mm square in Paintshop and printed on photo paper, cut out and glued onto the stand. The records came out better than I expected. You can see the covers quite well. Those 3 in the front on the right are: Abbey Road, Sgt Peppers and Buddy Hollys Greatest Hits. Thanks for the ideas and tips on how to do them, they will look good in the layout. Now to build the other two Wills barrows, I need more practice making plant pots and flowers to stock it!!

Hi Brad, 50 odd years ago I was a kid living in a married quarter at St. Athan in South Wales. My dad was in the RAF stationed there. There was a railway that ran near the bottom of our garden, around the quarters, then across the bottom of the airfield. There used to be a small private branch line onto the camp, but that was before the Beeching cuts. I have just looked on Google Earth and the mail line is still there running across the old airfield. Regards, Chris

This free kit comes with both the fruit and the books but only one market barrow. There are also two canopies included in the free kit. I want to put about half a dozen stalls on my layout so I bought on of the Wills kits, together with the freebee that gives me three stalls/barrows. I thought about what to do with the other produce sheet and canopy. It seems like a waste not to use them. I had intended making the stalls static rather than on barrows so thought, I wonder if I could make some ends to convert them into a static stall. I had bought a 3D printer on Black Friday for a VERY good price, so this is the first test project. It took a couple of goes to get the thickness right but I soon got the hang of it.. Two ends promptly printed. Then I thought. No good having all the same produce. I need some variation. I sell my honey to be sold on a market stall but that would be too small to model at this scale, so what about mead? The flat platform of the stall was easy and it was not a big problem to model a bottle, scale it down and clone it a few times. When printed, it was not too bad, but it does lack definition at this scale. Hopefully it will look better when painted. I love Vulcanbombers Florist, that will be copied! That will be 5 stalls sorted, just need to think about the 6th one. Having just tripped over some old records on the stairs, that seems like another good idea. This is my first post to this forum, I will try adding a couple of photos when I have worked out how to do it, and add to it when I get the rest finished and painted Chris