MAP66

Superb work Neal, it's all about the fettling as I am beginning to find out. Can I ask where you source your coal from, is it real coal crushed up or do you use one of the so called realistic scatter types, as I have never found anything of the right size and realistic as yet.

That's the way to spend an evening. I do hope the 7F ends up a success, it will be my first sound decoder install. I will be following a step by step guide from a back issue of Hornby Magazine HM166.

50% success so far with the track cleaning wagon. One bogie assembly has set and has wheels fitted. I’ll try the other end tomorrow, however a massive distraction has occurred which is testing my urge to resist until the wagon is completed. What’s the distraction I hear you all ask? Well this arrived in the post today… The bits I need to give the 7F sound. There's a compromise to be had here me thinks. Tomorrow, when the other end of the track cleaner wagon is setting, I don't think it would be cheating if I take the tender of the 7F apart and take a peak inside. You know, just while the glue is setting.

You're quite right, if I sneeze in the near vicinity there is a danger that I will blow it off the tracks 😆 However, if my cunning plan works, the flatbed will accommodate the necessary weight required. The weight on the flatbed will oppose the spring trying to push the wagon upwards and If I get the balance right then there will be just enough force to keep the hardboard track pad in good contact with the tops of the rails but not too heavy that a loco struggles to get it up the helix. At the moment, the construction of the wagon is waiting on one bogie assembly curing with araldite. The stupid black plastic doesn't want to bond with anything. So far I've tried numerous superglues, deluxe materials plastic magic and a few other glues, all to no avail. Araldite is good but it takes ages to cure, so I can only do one bogie at a time for fear of dislodging it all at the other end.

Hi Travis, I’m not familiar with the Cumbrian coast line areas or St. Bees, but I’m impressed with your track plan. Very creative for such a small room and offers bags of operational interest using the 2 fiddle yards off scene. Now we seem to have solved the concerns around the helix through our recent exchanges, I will be following with interest and looking forward to watching your layout develop. Mark.

I thought it was time for a small side project diversion and that diversion would be track maintenance or track cleaning to be precise. I intend to keep my track work as clean as possible, lets face it, we all know that when I eventually embark on laying trackwork on all the upper level scenic sections, it will soon be subjected to all manner of unwelcome invasions. Glues, scatters, paint, coffee (mostly beer) are just some of the unwanted guests to find themselves stuck to the tops of the rails, despite my best efforts of prevention. So, I thought, let’s have something in the tool box to help keep that track clean and at the same time make it a bit fun, after all, who wants to clean all that track by hand within a twin track helix more than once in a lifetime, and I will have two of them. I purchased a Parkside wagon kit ‘PC562 GWR Bogie Bolster’ for the donor wagon. Early developments are shown below… On the work bench we have the Parkside kit. I intend using a piece of hardboard (rough side to track) for the track cleaning pad. This will be suspended beneath the wagon under a little tension to force it against the rail tops. Others have done this type of thing before and this is nothing new, just my version. I have made an attempt to start assembling the bogies which are made from some 'orrible black plastic which refuses to bond, no matter which glue you use. I will go old skool and bring out the araldite. While I'm having a moan, the black plastic parts had more flash on them than Lord Flashheart himself. Don't talk rot, no ones got more flash than me, Woof Woof. A side on close up of the hardboard track pad and my cunning Heath Robinson device for providing the tension. We have two 8BA brass bolts which are soldered together at their heads. The top bolt has a compression spring over it and passes through the deck of the wagon and is secured by a nut and washer. The lower bolt passes through the hardboard and a recessed nut is used to secure the hardboard in place. Underside, showing the recessed nut so no fouling on the track. How it all looks when fitted. It will be a fairly easy procedure to change the hardboard pad when it gets dirty. That's it for now, I will be attempting to get that black plastic to actually stick next and then I will be able to get the wheels on.

Well there I was, finger hesitantly hovering over the confirm purchase button. My shopping basket containing lovely items to make my recent Bachmann Fowler 7F purchase sing. My conscience wrestling with the idea of departing with £148 of cash, a moments relapse and boom the deed was done. If all goes to plan, within a week from now, my 7F will have full sound.

Nice work Neal, I will soon be tackling something not too dissimilar when I attempt to install a sound decoder, speaker and stay alive into the tender of a Bachmann Fowler 7F. Having never tackled anything like this before it was timely to see your efforts have paid off and it was good to hear the sound on the video.

I think we’re all a bit guilty of looking at models we worked on years before and thinking, I wish I had done that bit differently, I certainly do. Even stuff I’m working on now, I constantly ask myself “why on earth have you done it like that.” Thanks again for all the comments and for sharing that image of your Pannier which I think has definitely stood the test of time and those window bars look dam good to me. Fifty years ago, that would have been the envy of every modeller to own it and It still looks amazing now.

That’s a shame, I missed SWAG last year as the Mrs was in hospital. I do hope your able to attend the shows again soon.

I'm using Peco code 75 flexi track which is nickel silver.

Thanks are in order for the avalanche of likes just received on this thread and the layout one. I must be doing something right then! It would be nice to meet up at the SWAG event and put a face to a name. Best Regards Mark

The helix is still getting taller, but its progressing very slowly. Let’s face there’s nothing much exciting about building a helix and how many images can you post, it all looks the same just a bit taller each time. In other news, while trawling the interweb, I came across a second hand Bachmann Fowler 7F 2-8-0 which had already been weathered, re-numbered and re-liveried to LMS ‘13806’ and at £65.00, I thought that was a bargain. 13806 could be found at Bath in the late 1930’s, so it would not look out of place on my, at the moment, fictitious stretch of SDJR railway. I went ahead and purchased the model anyway and it arrived today. It was transported immediately to the railway room, where it received a thorough visual inspection. All looked in good order and so, to the test track. A sigh of relief was expelled when the motion and wheels all moved and turned as they should. 13806 ran nicely up and down the helix and across the diamond crossing without issue. The testing concluded with the loco hauling a maximum of 5 coaches up the helix without wheel slip. This loco, I thought, could potentially manage 8/9 coaches with say 2 magnets fitted. That will be tested at some point but my next venture will be to fit a sound decoder to 13806. I was trawling that interweb again and found a feature from the April 2021 edition of Hornby magazine where the very same loco was subjected to having a sound decoder inserted into its tender. I have never installed a decoder before and I thought following a step by step installation guide, would be the way to go. With that said, I ordered a back issue of the mag and am currently checking how deep my pockets will go for that sound decoder, speaker and probably stay alive. Watch this space for further developments… Well here it is, my latest purchase 13806 is about to ascend the helix in charge of a rake of 5 coaches. And only because you love these pictures so much, yet another view of the helix which is currently about two thirds through the second circuit.

The Traction Trials - Results are in I shall summarise; my findings have resulted in no less than 5 magnets to be fitted on the underframe of the 51XX to haul 7 coaches up the first 4th radius circuit and even then, some minor wheel slip was observed. A disappointing result and certainly not the expected 2 magnets to do the job. The full 12V was required from the controller and it will be interesting to see if running under DCC will make any difference. Unfortunately, that test will be some time in the future as I do not presently own any decoder installed locos. Maybe, some further minor tweaking is possible to enhance performance by way of securing the magnets under the loco, so that they are slightly closer to the track to increase their pull. Failing that, if I want to run 9 coach holiday specials then I guess there’s always double heading. So now I am embarking on building the second circuit and will soon need to order a load more powerbase. There was also a pleasant realisation and that is, you can never have too many clamps when constructing a helix. That impulse buy of a set of clamps from the middle of Lidl paid off 😄 A ridiculous amount of magnets was necessary for the tractive power required. These are all temporarily secured with blac-tac. It will be a real head scratcher to come up with a workable solution to fit the magnets permanently without covering any of the cover plate screws. Side view showing the magnets which are held within the blister bubble carriers which form part of the powerbase packaging. You are advised to secure the blister packs with the tiny screws supplied drilled into the locos cover plate. With 5 magnets the cover plate will end up looking like swiss cheese. Beginning of the second circuit, start collecting clamps if your taking one of these on.

Ahhh, that's interesting to know, I think I must have an earlier version as the tops of the wheels foul on the bottom of the sole bar on the 3rd radius. There's a few things I can try to improve the extent of pivot rotation on the bogies, including modifying the sole bar where the wheels catch it and of course introduce a bit of side play on the wheel sets. I'm grateful, however, that I haven't any 1st radius to contend with 🤪 Thanks again for the heads up.