Horsehay Railway Modeller

Hello all, not sure if this is the right forum thread for this... correct me if I'm wrong. I am looking at designing a lever frame using Dcc Concepts cobalt levers. I was just wondering if anyone had one to hand and could measure some more accurate dimensions or knows of where to find them. I can only seem to find overall dimensions online but am looking for the dimensions of the lever assembly body ( the blue bit) I. E. Height, width, mounting hole spacing etc. Obvisouly I can measure my own switches if and when I buy them but I was hoping to draw up a full assembly and see how they will fit with my planed layout before buying. David

Here is the state of play before leaving the layout and returning to work. I hope to be able to work on the new module in the spring/ summer adding all of the scenery and backscene before turning my attention to whichever module I build next. I can only work on the actual modules when visiting my parents and unfortunately due to changing locations at work have had to leave most of my kit building / electronics projects at home too. I'll post as and when I buy any new, rollingstock or complete any other projects. I do also have some loco photos to post in the near future. Here are a few photos of the work completed over my new year break.

As I teased above I managed to blend the viaduct scene in before leaving my parents house and returning to work. I also wired in both modules. To add detail to the viaduct scene I added a row of seafoam trees along the backscene to blend in the painting before installing 4 woodland scenics birch trees ( I improved them before installing by adding some fine turf and hairspray). I also added a landrover which I had weathered up for a previous layout. The final tree I bought at the model shop was to go behind the model of my childhood home. I have built Many tree houses over the years so was taken by this skaledale tree with tree house attached, although I may 3d print a tree house that looks more similar to my childhood engineering attempts. I wired up the modules using 23/0.2 colour coded wires for track distri t bus wires, a 12v accessory bus and CBUS. The "brain" of the modules contains a MERG CANVOUT, DTC8A and a relay board from Amazon. I got this mostly programmed but much more work is required in future. The aim is to provide block detection to allow automation, as well as relays to turn on and off building lights and control absolute aspects signals. Speaking of signals here is one of my absolute aspects orders as installed at the exit to the future storage yard. The final bit of electrickery is my interboard connectors, for which I designed and ordered Pcbs from China before assembling with components from cpc and 24 pin pc psu extension cables from ebay. They provide means to connect all bus wires plus 10 spare connections across each board join. They have leds to show 12v bus power and 12v cbus power and finally a jumper that enables a Cbus termination resistor More to follow...

Happy new year

Well the resin was an experience. First pour looked great until I dropped on my little rowing boat and caused some ripples. Fear not I thought... If I make more ripples it will look good. Que pouring on more resin and pushing it around trying to create ripples to no avail. The next day some more resin comes from amazon prime and I pour another layer to hide my error. Success!! .... Except once the second layer self levelled it had sunk my poor rowers. All is not lost. I'm thinking of a little cameo where they are being helped by a man with a defender. Anyway here is the result. The house t glue shows where a small leak was plugged at the rear. Moving on... I got the track played on the new module and started adding facia boards. I cut, installed and painted the facia for the viaduct and started painting a backscene. I'm by no means an artist but after a few hours it's looking alright. Just have to blend it into the scene tomorrow. The bottom of the cooling towers will be covered up with trees

Wednesday was my first full day at my parents and I managed to get the baseboard built. It's an 18mm ply frame with a 9mm ply top. I bought all of the ply pre cut from an online merchant and was very impressed with the quality and squareness of the cuts. It's all glued and pinned together with a pin gun from screw fix. The stubby legs raise it to meet the height of the viaduct board. There was still quite a bit of cutting left for me to do as my designs called for a raised track bed on a slight incline. I simply cut out the trackbed with a jigsaw, notched it in to my frame at either end and then used some ply uprights to support it from underneath. The whole board was given a coat of grey wood primer to seal in the ply and protect from moisture etc. Today I moved on to the backscene. I'd made a slight blunder and ordered the ply slightly short so had to add some small offcuts to one end. However All should be hidden with some wood filler tomorrow... I also cut the track opening a little large and had to re fill the top section. My main struggle was getting the backscene to curve and hide the corner. It's made of 5.5mm ply which is supported from beind. I ended up managing to get it to bend using boilng water and some bricks, before bringing it in and gluing and pinning it in place. Below you can see my backscene gluing up. ( if you look in the bottom left you'll see a new (second hand) Bachmann 47!) I also managed to paint and weather up my girder bridge which is a mix of plasticard and resin 3d prints. This was glued in to its slot in the track bed. The final job of the day was re painting the road over and pouring some 2 part resin. It still needs another coat so I will upload photos tomorrow once complete. Here is a post paint - pre resin photo. David

I have arrived at my parents house for the new year. I have retreaved coalorsdale viaduct from the loft and am glad to say it survived the summer and autumn in the temperature variations. Hope to build the next 4ft module this week.

Got around to unboxing the Mgr wagons I've purchased so far. A mix of HAA HBA and HFA. I measured the length of a rake of 12 and think that combined with a further three that are already en route to my parents house that a rake of 15 is as long as will fit in my planned storage yard. Obviously I won't know until I build the rest of the layout including the storage loops but that's a few years off yet. Anyway, whilst I had them out I very delicately removed ( ripped off by hand) the streamlined canopies as I believe in the sixties these were mainly seen in Scotland. Also the only photos I can find if the ironbridge Haa trains show no hoods or canopies. I was considering renunbering all of the wagons and at the same time reclassifying them HAA. is there any difference in the Hornby tooling of Haa hba and hfa that would stop me doing this? They are all the newer tooling with sprung buffers etc. I'm also going to paint the hopper supports in freight brown as I believe this is the correct colour for the sixties. David

the evolution of a wall. Custom drawn on my laptop to match the original. Resin 3d printed on my elagoo mars 3 pro Textured paint applied to simulate render and capping stones and bricks picked out. White acrylic added and then a black wash on top. Glued in place

Thanks! Oh dear, don't get me started on another rake.. . Not sure my girlfriend is quite over the 15 Mgr wagons I've bought in the past few weeks. Wait until I tell her I still need 3 more. Jokes aside I may end up looking into it eventually but for now I've still got a dozen or so mk1 coaches along with no end of various goods wagons to buy. Thanks for the heads up. David

The next step was a large hedgerow between the back garden of the shops and the driveway of the house. The first step was selecting the correct seafoam pieces to fill the space. I decided to make adding foliage and shaping the hedge easier to glue the seafoam to strips of plasticard meaning I could make it in sections. I also left some lone "trees" on their own plasticard bases so I can see the in position roughly before I actually make the embankment that will be at the rear of the scene. Once selected they were taken outside and sprayed. And then woodland scenics fine turf was added straight Iver the paint and secured with hairspray. A final coat of matt varnish was also added. Once dry the main hedgerow was glued in place and the trees positioned roughly where they will go in the embankment. David

The final job yesterday was making a merg random lights module and adding some micro leds. The two front bedrooms already have interiors as shown above aso already have leds wired in. I added two leds for the downstairs rooms yet to have interiors added. I also quickly made up a back bedroom which will also be illuminated. The only lights left to add are some wall lamps on the front and rear porches. Here is the module and some leds installed. The additional back bedroom interior before adding a ceiling and gluing in place. It's only simple but it's just enough that if you manage to look in the back window as it lights up it looks occupied. And a terrible photo but you can just about make out the interior details in one of the front bedrooms - it's clearer in real life. David

It was then time for weathering. Not having an airbrush here at my girlfriends parents house I used my weathering powders and a black oil wash. Finished with a few coats of matt varnish. Once I was happy it was time to add some foliage. There was a clematis growing over the front porch. A bush in front of the dining room window and a large rose growing up the side of the house. For now all have been created using seafoam and woodland scenics fine turf. Although I will probably go back and add flowers at a later date. Whilst in a floral mood I also added a plant pot (a gaugemaster product) to the front step. Now except for the missing utility extension (there's no space on the layout for it) I think this is looking rather like my childhood home. I do need to add some guttering at some point.

I started painting the roof by using rail match sleeper grime to add darker tiles leaving the lighter brown as stripes. Then after looking at some more photos of the actual roof added a few random brown and grey tiles. The porch roofs are later additions and seem to just be tiled randomly with a mix of browns and greys. I then set about adding the doors and windows and picked out the flashing in a metallic dark grey I mixed up. It was then time to paint and weather my 3d printed chimneys. ......

I then set about gluing the roof on securely with plenty of hot glue before adding flashing and ridge tiles. The ridge tiles are my own 3d prints and conform well to the roof with some hot air from a hair dryer. The flashing is masking tape I cut into strips before applying and carefully trimming with a scalpel. Once happy I soak the tape in super glue and it dries rock hard. I gave the roof a quick coat of brown all over ready for more painting tomorrow. David

I've been working on the house which is a scratch build based on my childhood home. I finished adding an interior to the two front bedrooms. These will be illuminated and needed completing before I could glue the roof on. I had a small hiccup where my matte varnish went cloudy and I had to paint over the floor board paper I had used and also re print the bed sheets and rugs. But I'm happy overall. I then set about drawing up the windows in 3d cad before printing on my resin printer. I also gave the whole building a coat of "concrete texture" paint before applying a few coats of white paint followed by matt varnish. The chimneys are 3d prints a drew up based on some drone photos from when we had a tree sprouting from the chimney. ....

I might be going slightly mad, but after a hard few days at work I thought I'd look at some railway bits and bobs yesterday. I ended up researching coal trains to ironbridge power station. I already have a rake of 16 and 21T mineral wagons with coal loads that will be at the rear of a mixed goods service, but I want some longer pure coal rakes I think. I've been watching a lot of mckinley railway on YouTube recently and am starting to like the idea of being able to run trains from all years of my rough era. So I'm thinking for the start of my running sequence I could have this mixed goods rake with some coal at the back, representing when only the much smaller ironbridge A station was open. Then as we progress through the 60s, and the next few generators went online, perhaps a longer mineral wagon coal rake. And then finally for the early 70s as ironbridge B went to full power I'm going to swap out completley for a MGR/HAA rake. ( as an aside this also allows me to run my chocolate and cream mk1 set, followed by br maroon and then br blue grey) Here's a HAA train in the late 70s headed away from ironbridge. To that end I've bought up 12 MGR wagons of various guises (a mix of HAA HBA and Haa) All the later Hornby tooling. I'm thinking eventually I'll need 18 for the full train but 12 will get the collection started. I will modify them all to look like pre tops HAA wagons by removing any of the streamlined hoods and renumbering them. Some wagons will also need the hopper support frames repainting freight brown as the EWS variaty were easier to find on Ebay but are not quite the correct paint scheme. I've also started thinking about painting the iconic cooling towers on my backscene behind the viaduct. My layout is only very loosely based on the area and I don't care for accurate geography, just the right "feel" of various places I've lived or visited. So I am thinking that coalorsdale viaduct and village are a few miles up river from Buildwas power station and that the coal trains branch off further down the line before heading back along the river to the power station. This would allow for some. Decent length coal trains to run around the layout without the need for modelling the vast scale of the power station. It will also be a test for my very minimal painting skills. Here is a very rough computer sketch. Idea being the iconic orange cooling towers will be peeking out behind some hills. A quick Google image search for Inspiration. I might attempt some backscene painting in the very limited time I will have visiting my parents after Christmas. (the majority of the railway stuff is in their loft) but I have also bought the plywood to make module 9 which will be coalorsdale village itself ( my diorama and cardboard mockups as seen above.

No real diorama or building progress. 3d printer is u/s due to a silly mistake on my part and work has been busy. Replacement parts coming tomorrow. I do however have another cardboard diorama test photo. Something else I've been working on is starting the control modules. Each board will have atleast one "Group" consisting of a MERG CANMIO as the "brain", to link to CANBUS and control point servos. A DTC8a for block detection. And a relay board for both signalling control and building lighting control. The DC DC buc is there to supply 5v to the relay board. My idea is each baseboard will have a standard board (just under a4 in size) with a standard strip of terminal blocks all labelled up. This will allow the bulk of the wiring between each MERG module to be set up and tested off layout,before being installed on each module. This should mean they will be relatively interchangeable or replaceable. For now the pcbs are just held on to a plasticard sheet with some loose bolts, however I do have some proper stand offs on order. Also the merg CANMIO still needs assembling before I can wire the terminal blocks up. Here is the basic proof of concept before the pcbs are properly installed. David

And here are some trees terribly edited in on my phone. I will probably use seafoam along with some pre made trees. I think with the right amount of foliage covarage it should look natural without allowing the off scene exit to be seen As an aside I think once this scene is finished with a girder bridge and the road running off into the distance it should look quite good.

Decided to get some cardboard out to rough out how the embankment and retaining wall will fit behind the scene. The track is some flexi I use as a test track raised on some mdf offcuts and cardboard. In my designs I have a curved backscene with a tunnel portal before going off scene, however on roughig this out in cardboard I decided it looked contrived. There would have to be a cliff face on one side of the tunnel for it to fit. Having decided the tunnel wouldn't work I started looking at creating a low embankment and then using some dense foliage to hide where the trains exit through the backscene. Here is the embankment roughed out, the retaining wall is my own 3d printed design to match the incline...

Over the past few days I have started scratch building the next house. Based on my childhood home ( none of the family live there anymore). Made out of 2mm plasticard and wills roof sheets. It is very much in it's infancy. I also extended the diorama base with some more mdf offcuts to alloelw the full house and garden to be finished before installing in the next full baseboard when I make it.

Shop signs added using some old fonts in Ms word. Went for a cheap pun on wh smiths. Darby road is down in Coalbrookdale and is a nod to the history of the area. And the lane is what we always called the road through my village. And finally a 3d printed bike and post box. More updates to follow as I start on the next house David

The road was painted on to pva coated card. Pavements are a mix of the plasticard that came with the shops kit and milliput that I scribed. Finally the whole thing was weathered with powders and washes and some matt varnish

Some more progress over the last week or two. Road painted and weathered Van painted and weathered. 3d printed bicycle and pillar box. Lamp from viessman And figure from preiser Finally a punny shop name and some local road names. Today a Vegtable patch with faller veg. A greenhouse from wills. And some plant pots from gaugemaster ...... More detail below