Philou

Hello Lez, I ought to do it in plasticard, but there are no suppliers nearby so it'll be in card (I know there are internet sales, but I like to have a look at it especially the channels and beams). I have a lot of good quality card in varying thicknesses and some not-quite-as-good that does take a nail-punch to form rivets. The latter card will be OK for forming cleats and angles. Once all glued together it forms a quite sturdy model. There was, years ago, a scale model in 4mm of the original Brunel Tubular bridge over the River Wye at Chepstow, in card, it was extremely well done and it was quite amazing how strong it was. Lord and Butler had it for sale at a price that was very, very reasonable, but I couldn't make use of it at the time. I hope it went to a good home! More this evening, Philip PS: No lumberjacking this morning due to rain - maybe this afternoon :( .

As ever, real life called wanting a day with me and not only Saturday but Sunday as well so very little was done railway-wise. I have tinkered with the General Arrangement drawing in 3D and I have set out the deck. Tomorrow (out in the woods cutting trees notwithstanding) I shall tackle the girder work underneath. In finishing the top part, I did note that the baulks could be shortened slightly and that has been done. I could also see that the central beam could do with beefing up a bit and this I want to raise by about 4mm making it a nadger's worth under 12mm above railhead height. I'm sure if I can do it in one go on the drawing as the only facility I can see will stretch it and not add to it (if you see what I mean) and may deform the span - we'll see. Here is a modified drawing: ^ The baulks have been shortened but as you can see, the central span needs beefing up height-wise. Generally, I'm happy with the GA. More tomorrow, Cheers, Philip

Wut??

Before the actual green question was settled, I was going to add that the Smith's seemed remarkably similar to the dark green used by Marks and Spencer years ago.

Hello chaps and chapesses, I thawed out enough to carry on doing some drawings in SketchUp and here are my plans - there is the decking and all the metalwork below to be done. I haven't gone to the nth in detail - there are no angles nor rivets shown (so you can't count them ;)) ) and the track is laid onto the ballast rather than sunk into it. The drawings are to be considered as general arrangements and the building of the bridge will fill in the details. Here we go: ^ A view from the Dymented side showing the two main outer girders plus the central one. ^ Unfortunately this view won't ever be seen normally as it's towards the rock cutting. A pity as I prefer the look of it. I've included the trackwork on this one. ^ This is the trackwork showing the baulkwork and ties. The model will be laid to a slight curve (24mR) but I wasn't going to do it on the plan as the 3D work becomes more complex - gives the idea. Tomorrow I'll do the bridge deck and all the under gubbins - the bridge will be straight but the track will curve gently over it, like this: ^ Picture copied from the RAIB report into a derailment near Wansted Park, London. Used with permission. My trackwork will not have a walkway covering the tiebars to the baulks. Cheers everyone, More tomorrow and stay warm. Philip

Brrrrrrrr ............ just thinking about makes feel cold. Anyone like a nice large friendly dog that needs walkies four times daily? Just got back in - I think it must about 0° but feels like -6°C due to a light North North Easterly wind that's blowing.

Hence why I'm waiting as I'm at the stage where glueing and plastering of the scenic areas is to commence. I know that PVA is sensitive to low temperatures and will go off (in a bad way!) and I've a largish area to do. There's mild weather due in few days certainly our way (don't know about you, Andy!). Cheers, More later, Philip

I do have a modern ceramic-type electric fan heater but the problem is that there is 110m3 to warm up! I would prefer gas, but the problem is with any flame based heater (gas or paraffin) it creates condensation which in times of cold weather means that damp will get everywhere - the Velux could be opened but then all the warm air will escape! At the moment, there is no damp in there so I prefer to keep away and work in the warm. The dew point is usually around 7°C (it does vary of course) so once temperatures rise again (we had +13°C yesterday afternoon, down to -2°C today), I shall be out there toot dee sweet. What I ought to do is decide early in the morning if I'm going to the railway room, turn the heater on and then go in the afternoon. At the moment it's just a quick visit, measure and then out again. Cheers, Philip

Hello chums and chumesses, I didn't update yesterday as there wasn't anything to report. I haven't yet figured out why, but I felt a bit in the dumps - quite flat in fact. I think it's simply I can't really get into the barn due to the cold - and it's lasted a week already and more to come! Besides, real life seems to be getting in the way and tripping me up! Anyway, today is better and I have started to create some sketches for the skew bridge - the longest side with be 350mm, the short side (nearest Dymented) is 200mm and the centre span will be 240mm. As the branchline is curved underneath, the skew changes hence the irregular spans. I haven't yet decided what shape to make the plate girders - I'm thinking of a curved top - Rule 1 and all that - rather than a plain rectangle as all the other bridges will be copies of the prototypes and they're in the main, plain. More to come, Cheers, Philip

Thanks for your thoughts, chaps and chapesses, I agree with your views and I shall go with a similar design to that already done for the retaining wall facing Dymented station. I shall do arches but without batters this time. I finally got to give the wall a waft of varnish this morning and screwed it into place. The fun will now begin as I want to continue the rock face between it and the trackbed of the branchline. As it's darned cold in the railway room and I see no point in putting the heating on for just an hour, I shall tackle the bridge next as I can do it indoors. Milder weather due at the weekend - huzzah! Nevertheless, here's a picture of the wall before fixing in place: ^ Can't believe it's taken me since before Xmas to get this far!! Cheers, Philip

Hello chums and chumesses, After a stop - start day, I finally completed the short retaining wall and coloured it with my usual black and green weathering pastels. I haven't photoed it yet as I want to give it a waft of acrylic matt varnish first and it was too darn cold in the barn - -5° today and I doubt if the spray can would have worked well anyway. Down to -7° tonight so I may have to hold back any spraying until Thursday when it'll warm up. Anyway, save for the spray it's now finished. I shall now start on the retaining wall facing the branch fiddle yard. I may do some plain arches to break up the facade a little - no batters - just plain vertical faces. I could just go for KISS as I'll have three different styles otherwise and I think the engineers of old would have kept styles to a minimum. Any thoughts? I'm happy and it's moving again. Cheers, Philip

From what I have read elsewhere, locos are always going to be an issue in 3mm. I have seen that the 3mm Society do have some stocks locos and other rolling stock. Perhaps a visit to their thread may provide you with answers, particularly those of availability. I did see some photos and my impression was that most of the locos relied on the old Triang TT kit - there didn't seem to be much by way of 'modern' stuff. If I may boldly ask - why have you not gone for 1:120 (unless you've already got a lot of 3mm TT stock)? The new TT 1:120 seems to have taken off since last year and there's oodles of continental locos that could perhaps be adapted to your needs. Just my thoughts and good luck in your endeavour, Philip

Hello chaps and chapesses, It was a near-disaster yesterday at the AGM. I had three sheets in varying details of the accounts ready to give to everyone plus the now jigsaw spreadsheet for me and the Hon Chair and Sec to have at hand during the meeting when I noticed that the simple resumé (the one to be signed off as the correct record of the statement of balance) was not correct! Very much an EEEK!! moment. Fortunately the meeting hadn't started and I had to strike out the one figure and insert the new by hand (and no Tippex either) and sign the correction. The rest of the data and other sheets were - luckily - correct. As it turned out, it wasn't to be our usually comfy meeting as the local town maire turned up together with a big-wig from Paris (Hon Sec from the Railwaymen's Clubs Union (UAICF)). They had a perfect right to be there as we receive grants and subsidies from both and likely to get double this coming year (1200€), a sum not to be sniffed at. In the end it all went well following a mea culpa from me (being interrupted in my flow whilst correcting and printing the day before) and the accounts were unanimously accepted and signed off - phew. There was a question that threw me completely by the UAICF Hon Sec as to why there was a big discrepancy between income and outgoings (€1500) for the one show (so happens sponsored by the UAICF) whereas there wasn't very much for all the other seven. I didn't understand the question as I couldn't see the point - in the end it became clear as it was the first big show (for us) of the year and it was income from tables, meals and the bar that gave us a good return, whereas the others we were there as guests and therefore no income for us on those days only outgoings. In the end all was well. Today, well it was today and it was far as it went as I thought I'd better start the year properly and created a new set of accounts! Tomorrow, time is mine! Yay! Cheers, Philip

Hello chums and chumesses, On the home straight - the club's accounts are balanced without any cooking, I may add. There had been a lot of movement this year through the accounts but only because the club had been able to attend a lot more shows and exhibitions than before and everything fell into place - but there were a lot of loose threads that needed tying first. It all took much, much longer than anticipated as the itemised sheet has twice as many entries compared to last year, hence no modelling at all and no update yesterday! Tomorrow is the AGM and I have a huge pile of paper to dish out :( so I'll probably be away most of the day. Can I hope to do a bit on Sunday? Cheers everyone and I'll let you know how I get on. Philip

Being curious, I just went to have a look at Google Earth and Cherry Orchard. It has very much changed since I went there as I walked under the bridge in c.2000. All the landscaping has grown up. ^ You can still see the NG alignment (the shadowed area) parallel to the road and where it went under the road on a skew to come out parallel to the road on the other side towards the roundabout - the light green track. As you can see, at the top right of the elongated 'S' of the NG alignment, there's nothing left of the brickworks. IIRC, it was mainly the land to the west of the road (the left-hand side) that was worked and in the summer only - presumably it being too wet in the winter. No pits were dug, but they worked the area alternatively taking the clay off in thinnish layers and coming back perhaps a year or two later. ^ However, the Google camera has been down the original Cherry Orchard Lane and lo! a piece of the original NG crossing is still in place (between the two arrowheads - didn't know how to get rid of them!) where the loco and trucks are crossing the lane shown in @scalerailmodelling 's link in the top post. Things you find - eh? Cheers, Philip

The mention of Cherry Orchard brickworks by @Nearholmer and @scalerailmodelling reminds me that Essex CC at great expense built an overbridge when they constructed a new road at Cherry Orchard so as not to hinder the railway (nor have a NG line crossing their new road) and insofar as I am aware, the bridge was never used by the rail line. When I left Essex CC in 2011, the brickworks seemed to have been abandoned. I was unaware that there may have been some NG stock lurking on the site (I would have had a look otherwise ;) ). Cheers, Philip

I'm afraid finances trumped modelling today - everything came together but as I've only got the bank statements to work from, I'm lacking the receipt details to put expenditure in its right category (oh yes, no lumping of everything into one column!). The proper accounts, as done by the mairies over here, can have a fair few hundred codes for all sorts of different expenditure - we're spared that! The day was partially taken up by Mrs Philou wanting to access the new contract with SFR and unable to get her password to work - as with every other site she seems to access - I have no idea of what goes on. I just type in the info required and away I go. By the time that was sorted it wasn't really worth starting any modelling. Tomorrow will probably be a non-modelling day too as I need to go see Hon. Chair and Hon. Sec and fill in the details and do a proper cooking of the books (only kidding - honest!) so that the accounts are in a form that are clear to anyone who would like to have a look at the details, no point doing accounts otherwise. I dish out a four-liner for the members to approve at the AGM that just shows start of year balance, end of year balance, income total and outgoing total. There is an accompanying generalised breakdown of income and outgoings (where things are lumped together). The detailed output where everything is grouped by class of expenditure is attached to the minutes but I don't distribute that, but it is available to view by everyone. This last sheet and the approved four-liner is what would be sent to the Préfecture if asked. Hey ho - and people wonder why the retired never have any time! More tomorrow, Cheers, Philip

Good news! Despite the over-night snow (only about 10mm) the SFR technician turned up and started giving the existing cabling the once over. 'Harrumph. The existing telephone cable's buried in your wall.' 'Not so. Just where it came out was a touch of plaster applied to give a nice finish to the paint.' He then observed that the phone cable then went into an internal conduit which, as I explained to him, goes into a roof space where it goes into a box and then splits up to serve 5 outlets. Despite the cold, he didn't want a hot drink and set off back outside and tied the new fibre cable to the existing telephone cable and then came inside again, up his telescopic ladder and pulled the old cable that came through the wall without resistance drawing the new behind. He pulled a huuuuuge length of new into the house and then tied the end of it to the the bit hanging out of the internal conduit. Off he went taking his telescopic ladder to the roof space. 'There's light already laid in there for you'. 'Hmmph, fibre-glass.' 'Yup, fibre-glass insulation.' No more was said and he drew the old and new through the conduit into the roof space and then proceeded to try and determine which cable went where as I never marked them - not ever intending to touch them again. After half an hour of tugging on the cables (all CAT 5) and no success, I started to tug at my end to see if he could detect which one was moving - no luck. I asked him eventually what it was he wanted to do. Turns out he wanted, for reasons of aesthetics, to pass his fibre through my conduit into the roof space and then back down to where the terminal box was to go - distance of over 20m. Why do it the hard way? The terminal box would only be 5m away from where it came in from the outside - d'oh! Mrs Philou and I said just take a short cut and we'll hide the cable by either painting it white from its existing black or put it inside some self-adhesive mini-conduit. The inside job was then completed in 5mins! I have a length of black fibre cable to paint later and it so happens, I'm going to have re-decorate anyway as it's been a very long time since the walls were white-washed (oh yes, real white wash!). By midday, we were wired up and I'm connected - it's not blazing fast as this laptop is starting to get old (tested it on another system and it was veeeery slow) - but it's x9 faster than before, so I'm happy. No modelling update and the club's finances must take priority tomorrow as I'm legally obliged to present accounts due to the laws (not regulations) governing societies (Associations) over here. Toodle pip, More tomorrow, Philip

Hmmmmmm ....... brain-fart alert! Yesterday's tomorrow is Sunday, the fibre isn't until Monday which is now tomorrow - d'oh! :))

We..e..e..ell yes but no but ...... apparently France Telecom as an entity doesn't really exist - it's all Orange. In this département, the overseeing cable backbone provider (the physical bit) is Orange and the fibre here was laid outside the door 4 years ago and we were expecting great things then - but we are the very last district to be physically connected to it. To break up the Orange monopoly as a provider it was specified that once the backbone was laid ANY provider could have access and do the final connection. We've gone with SFR as they're the only ones that bothered to call and sell their wares. The département also specified that the connection to the fibre from a private dwelling should be free - as in free beer whether 4m or 400m away. The downside is that our final bit of the connection from the house to the main will be aerial despite the fact that the conduit is outside the door and the draw-cable was put in place last summer. The whole shebang has cost the département €200M in cable laying and final connection to the box inside the house. As ever the optimist, it should all be done tomorrow, but in case there's no message on here tomorrow night, you'll guess that we have had a problem! If the technician cuts us adrift from Orange and doesn't reconnect us, then we're stuffed as there'll be no phone - fixed or mobile and therefore no t'intertubes either! Fingers crossed. Cheers, Philip PS: I did say rather flippantly yesterday that today was our third Christmas meal - wrong! Mrs Philou did the maths at table today - the seventh!

Well tomorrow came and went and became today with nothing done except putting some wrappers around the buttress caps and then wrapping up parcels for our second (or is it third) Christmas lunch. Bit of a house clean too as with three cats and the hairy Lump, there tends to be a collection of tumbleweed sized hairballs that chase each other around the floors .............. So that is it for a few days - Christmas lunch, then a Sunday birthday party lunch and Monday fibre is being connected from the street to the house - yay! However, I have to get the club's financial report ready for the AGM a week tomorrow so there'll be much getting paperwork up to date - another day I think. So just maybe Wednesday I can get back to 'work' :))) . Cheers everyone - enjoy the weekend as it's just begun! Philip

Hello everyone, It was a start ...... and that was about it, really. I did go into the barn and it wasn't as cold as I thought and retrieved the wall that I had nearly finished before the holidays, made some slight adjustments to the fit and grabbed all my materials to continue cutting and papering. Unfortunately Mrs Philou's friend (and mine) called around and an exchange of holiday notes ensued - that was modelling time down the pan before lunch. After lunch it was walkies and I hadn't been in long when our Dutch neighbour called by for a further exchange of holiday notes and to say they were off tomorrow - so most of the afternoon disappeared too. I did manage however to get the third pilaster made up and all the copings cut ready to finish off. This led me to have altercations with the printer as I couldn't do what I wanted to do directly from the laptop and had to use the titchy tiny screen on the printer to enable an enlargement of a copy of some stonework to be printed. Hoorah! you'll all be saying - but no - Mrs Philou has lost her Hotmail account password and she can't access her Gmail one either (incorrect password) so the last of the afternoon was spent trying to sort that out - but I'm none the wiser despite having sent my inside leg measurements and the promise of a kidney from my first born to Microsoft so we can recover the account - I'm not holding out much hope!! I might get a little done tomorrow morning before we head off to Big town to buy enough food for Christmas lunch on Saturday (yes another Christmas lunch - this time with my daughter, partner, grandson and his other grandmother plus world and dog :)) ) I think I may have over estimated the amount of work I felt I should have got done today. Never mind, it'll come together - eventually! More tomorrow - maybe. Cheers, Philip

Hello chums and chumesses, Well the New Year has definitely begun, so welcome back! I'm home and so is Mrs Philou plus dog. Rain, rain, and more rain for 500miles! Oh, and the strong cross-winds on the motorway today - not much fun at all - but we got back a little before nightfall to a very cold house but three happy cats who were pleased to see us - awww. No modelling today - can't think why though. Restart tomorrow even if for only a short time as I expect the barn will have cooled right down as well. More tomorrow, Cheers, Philip

Today's the day! I'm doing this now as it'll be hectic later and likely to be rather jolly to, so ........... Happy New Year to you all and thank you for your thumbs up and support in my endeavour. Hopefully progress will continue at a good pace through 2024 - real life notwithstanding! Good luck too with your particular layouts/constructions. Best wishes, Philip

Mmmmm ..... sounds like you all had a good Christmas. Beef Wellington, curried goat, beef rib, c(h)apon (we had that), pud ...... mmmmmm. I do have a hankering for a good UK style Xmas dinner despite having been here 21 years - pigs in blanket, devil on horseback, the little trimmings that just make it so - British - yes and even the humble Brussels sprout tossed in the frying pan with finely cut bacon - even the kids eat that! Have a good day, Philip