Mim

Joggles Yes/No? What are peoples opinions on putting joggles in point stock rails in to which the switch blades can sit? My reading so far suggests they can be used, but are not essential. As a first time 2mm turnout builder, what do you recommend?

Now with paper rails and sleepers. Even easier than Easitrack I had a bad attack of brain fade and made the baseboard the wrong shape at the left hand end. I got it in to my head that the rails exited to the fiddle yard board in a different position, despite the Templot plan clearly showing that it did not! Didn't spot it till I came to glue down the track templates. The baseboard has now been modified as you can see in the picture below. I have also taken the opportunity to add a cutout that will accommodate turnout switches. How the turnouts will be operated is still open to question. Am undecided between wire in tube, operated from slide switches, servos and an arduino to drive them or, as an outsider, memory wire. The linear slides for the fiddle yard traverser have arrived. These are the sorts of things that are used in home made 3D printers and were remarkably cheap. They look like they will be suitable and so fiddle yard construction will commence soon. This will be bigger than Middleton Top really needs, but hopefully can be reused for other layouts later. I have had a lot of help from RMWeb member middlepeak. He has dug out photos from view points that I was missing and also explained how the track gradients at the top and bottom of each incline were arranged to ease the work of the folks taking off and putting wagons on the incline cable. They helped make moving wagons around easier with gravity, wagon brakes and pinch bars and minimised the use of locomotives. These gradients are very obvious in photographs. The down line grades are in the visible scene, so have been incorporated. An extra layer of 0.8mm thick plywood was added as a trackbed. The down line rises at around 1:30 after exiting the last turnout, then falls at around 1:100 to the fiddle yard at the right of the layout, representing the incline. I have left an option to have the up line fiddle yard on an incline to gravity transfer arriving wagons in to the scenic area. You can see the hump in the down line in the badly over exposed photo below. I now have to start covering the pristine templates with sleepers and rail. Eeek! Not built a 2mmfs point before and am reading everything I have on the subject . I have remembered to drill holes for uncoupling magnets. There are various other things going on in the background, with more research and drawings and parts acquired. The winding house is being drawn up on the laptop, based on some plans that middlepeak provided. I've put together images of stone and brickwork taken from my pictures of the winding house to make my own brick and stone paper, similar to the images that ScaleScenes supply. These are coming out well in test prints and may be used on the model. Mim

Hi Nick, Not sure what I am going to use yet. I have ideas around a thermoplastic sheet I can heat and bend around a suitable former at the corners, but this is going to need some experimentation. I've done this successfully with polycarbonate and a hot air paint stripper, but on a much smaller area. Didn't think of mdf. Could use it if the plastic idea fails if I thin it down where it slots in to the baseboard. What the backscene is going to be is another matter. On the prototype there is a long distance view over Derwent valley on the right, a hill with a couple of dry stone walls behind and a quarry, waste tip and a couple of corrugated tin buildings to the left. The quarry and waste tip are now covered in greenery and the tin sheds are gone. Painting would test my skills beyond their limits. A possibility is a grey mist. A typical Peak District day with the hills in cloud. It has been pointed out to me that the layout would be better viewed from the north side, rather than the south. Viewing it from the side I have means that a lot of the most interesting features are going to be hidden behind buildings. I agree and if the layout were ever incorporated in to a larger version then the viewing direction would be swapped. With the DJLC size limitation I'll stick with this way round. Mim

Progress in the virtual realm of ones and zeros. Progress in the physical realm of wood and glue. Middleton Top now has a baseboard. Constructed in 3mm ply, double and sometimes triple thickness up for the sides and trackbed. The front will be profiled to follow the ground level, once I've decided where the ground will be. Hopefully plenty of room for wiring and turnout operation underneath where the track goes. There is a 3mm wide slot so a removable backscene can be fitted, with curves to prevent corners in the sky. There are also slots to eventually take a removable proscenium arch with layout name and lighting. There is a slot there to take the engine shed and its inspection pit. The shed is going to be a very delicate structure, best added once the majority of the heavy work is done. Here it is, carved by an unskilled artisan (me) from the living plywood. The right hand fiddle yard, representing the incline is five inches long and has some edging strips round two sides to prevent wagons taking a plummet. To the left of the layout there is a eight inch area for the other half of a crossover. The end of the baseboard here is shaped so that the fiddle yard meets it perpendicular to the tracks. The fiddle yard hasn't been built yet, but is probably going to be a four track traverser, with a couple of roads at the other end long enough to take an engine and brake van. The only part of the traverser board that has been made so far is the end panel, where the holes for the pattern makers alignment dowels were cut along with the end board of the layout. I have a couple of linear slides on order for the traverser of the sort that are used in home made 3D printers. Only £13 from Hong Kong, so not a huge loss if they turn out not to be suitable. Mim

If you are planning to include any hops being grown, then photos from the area and time period are a very good idea. I remember my grandfather in the '70s commenting that the rigging (no idea what the technical term is) in Herefordshire hop gardens was different from that used in Kent for example. No doubt in each area it changed over time too. Mim

Thanks Jerry, I tried a search, but missed your post somehow. Looks like either path can be used to produce an acceptable model with a bit of work. Mim

What to make a J94 from? The Association produce an etched J94 Austerity chassis designed for the old Farish body. The Farish shell looks quiet crude compared with their recent models. P&D Marsh produce a white metal body kit, originally designed for a Farish 08 chassis. There is a review of the Marsh kit in the August '86 edition of the association magazine, which is reasonably complimentary. Dimensions are not too far out for 2mm scale. Has anyone used the P&D Marsh kit and Association chassis etch to produce a J94? Would this be a better route to take than acquiring and detailing a Farish body shell? I am thinking white metal is going to provide more weight. Mim

Progress in the virtual realm of ones and zeros. I am steadily putting together the trackwork in Templot. I have rotated the 600 x 240mm area with respect to the track plan compared with the sketch in the initial post. This will hopefully draw the eye away from the track exiting off scene at each end and in to the scenic area. Top is the rear of the model, bottom is where it is viewed from. The ground rises from front to back, with most of the track level. The rear siding drops slightly away from the down line. Up and Down lines are literal here. The incline would drop away at 1:8 to the right of the winding house. Here is a screen shot as it currently stands. My templot skills are very basic, but the crossover has been done on a transition from the curved to the straight of the run round loop, which seems to replicate photos quite well. The area of the underlying old OS map is the scenic bit. Will probably be moved up about half an inch to bring the winding house right to the front of the board and allow space for the fence behind the rear siding. I've decided to include the crossover, though over half of it will be off scene. Leaving this out would make operation of the fiddle yard, in whatever form it takes, too artificial when trying to simulate realistic movements. Doing this has given me an appreciation for just how compact the site was. Scaling from photos shows that space between the engine shed road and the up line is only six foot at their closest, in to which the shed wall has to fit. On the south side the corner of the engineman's house actually intrudes through the wall of the shed. The corner of the stonework is shaved off to clear the locos. You can still see this on the house today. The minimum radius is going to the shed, 14", on a B8 turnout This is still greater than the famous Gotham curve on the line, which scales out to about 13" in 2mm, so the short wheelbase locos and stock should still negotiate it. One idea I had for the DJLC was to model the whole of Gotham curve, which fits nicely in the area and has a continuous check rail. Unfortunately there is no turnout, so it wouldn't have been eligable. Mim

Message sent regarding coal tank etches. That and the NBrass bits could become the basis of a Chopper. One of the reasons I started this topic was to stake my claim to this location! Good luck with your mystery, for now, build. Mim

Yes, 2-4-0 for a Chopper tank. My typo! Thanks for the pointer to the NBrass chassis kit. Will take a look, but definitely a longer term plan. There is evidence that they were used on the section between the Middleton and the top of the Cromford incline too and an early photo of 2-4-0's that look like Choppers on the site of Middleton Top shed when it had burnt down before the final shed was built, so I reckon I can get away with one. Mim

I'm one of the 2mm Scale Association members that the DJLC was aimed at. Been a member for a couple of years. Done a bit of dabbling, but not really produced anything much. Hopefully the small area and the time deadline will push me to actually complete something. Skill levels are going to be right at the bottom level of the range of entries, but I don't care. Publishing what I am doing as I go may even keep me on track. Since cycling the route years ago I became interested in the Cromford and High Peak Railway. It was very unusual. Trains were short and the sites were often compact. Combine that with the distinctive and beautiful Peak District countryside makes it popular for modelling. I looked at a number of sites against the allowed size. I've picked Middleton top, from the end of the run round loop to the start of the incline. This has two points and three major buildings, two of which still exist. The engine shed was a wood and corrugated iron structure, very narrow and increasingly bare as the howling hilltop wind steadily removed the cladding. This has now gone, but plenty of photos exist. The winding house has been fully restored and the engines are run regularly. The engineman's house next door has been modernised, but the basic structure is there. A rough outline plan, based on a National Library of Scotland map is shown below. The latest version moves the whole thing up and across a bit to exit the tracks on the left hand side, rather than the front. There are two off-scene areas. To the left will represent the run round loop and the line towards Parsley Hay. To the right will represent the Middleton incline heading in the Cromford direction. The left hand exit will hopefully be partly hidden by a fascia framing the model. The right hand exit will be behind the engine house. The right hand area will be short, just a couple of wagons long to exchange empty and full loads. Not sure what the left hand one will be. May be a traverser, cassettes, train turntable, or a shortened representation of the loop. Plenty of time to decide. There should be a surprising amount of operation for such a small area. Wagons going up and down the incline and being shunted at the top, with arriving and departing trains and even the occasional enthusiasts charter with lots of brake vans and people in open wagons. Very pre-Health-n-Safety! Longer term, the DJLC version could be incorporated in to a larger layout with the run round loop and part of the incline modelled. Period to be modelled is probably late fifties, early sixties, before the incline was closed. The site changed only a little over the years, so earlier stock could be run and not look too anachronistic. In later years J94 Austerities were used and one should be relatively easy to make using the association chassis kit (I hope!). Other possible locos were ex North London railway with outside cylinders (eek!) and ex LNWR Chopper 0-4-2 tanks. I'll need to build plenty of wagons and some brake vans. LMS 16 and 20 ton ones are in photos and there are association kits. A distinctive, possibly unique feature are several converted old locomotive tenders, used to supply water to various sites on the summit that would be hauled up the inclines full and returned empty. Much of the Peak is on limestone and water heads underground to the cave systems, so getting a reliable water supply is difficult in many places. I have visited the site and taken plenty of photos, along with measurements of the existing buildings. There are lots of photos available from various eras when the line was running and the ones in the link should give you an idea of the kind of atmosphere I am trying to recreate. The first bit of actual modelling is the engine shed. The wooden framework has been set out in OpenSCad and the design sent for 3D printing. Wasn't convinced I could make it in microstrip, especially the curved framing around the north wall windows. Wish me luck! Mim

In the station building at Insch there is the Insch Museum. This includes a model of the station in OO, built by a former signalman. Wonder if there is an even smaller model inside the model station building?