RobAllen

1 minute ago, NHY 581 said:

Anyone going to the Bristol show tomorrow ? 

Currently planning to attend on Saturday.

12 hours ago, NHY 581 said:

I can confirm that SWAG'25 will be held on.....

 

SUNDAY 6TH APRIL 2025.

I'm back from a week or so in the US for work. This is now in the diary and I'm more hopeful that I won't miss it!

Thanks all for the photos. It looked like it was an amazing event this year.
 

1 hour ago, CovDriver said:

Apologies for the lack of updates but with a little get away to Belgium for a week and a bit of stress from the day job normal service now resumes just a couple of pics to show what's been done recently.

The best thing about this hobby is that we attend to it at our own pace.

18 minutes ago, Captain Kernow said:

How can something as lovely as that be considered pollution!!!

I'm actually very happy with the photo I took too. Not often you see the Stove-R out either.

33 minutes ago, Gilbert said:

As requested  here's a link to some SVR photos with significant local interest..

My local line and 1369 looks great! I popped down on Thursday to get a photo of 13268 at the head of the LMS coaches. but I won't pollute the thread with a non-GWR loco :)

The DCC solution I chose is DCC-EX.

I didn't want to build it all from scratch, so purchased a complete system from Chesterfield Models. This included a box with a Motor Shield and an Arduino running DCC-EX to connect to the track along with a separate box containing a Raspberry Pi running JMRI as set up by Steve Todd. 

With the power supplier as well, I decided to put it all in a wooden box to keep it all safe and together.

The iPhone is an old one that I had lying around. It runs WiThrottle. The system creates its own WiFi network so the phone automatically connects and is ready to as soon as I turn it on which is nice. I run JMRI by VNC from my computer to the Pi.

It all works nicely and even provides a separate programming track output in addition to the main track.

Quite pleased with the holes that I drilled. Turns out that using a rule and pencil first helps!
 

I’ve always got time for a 7F. 13806 looks good. 

I intended to do some wiring today, but I don't have the right bits, so I have ordered them.

Instead, I decided to cross the next baseboard join.

There's only two for this one. Firstly the pretty straight line to the industry:

and then the curve… I bought some templates from WHWW and used the 638mm one:

and of course am now waiting for the glue to dry!

I'm hoping to attend on Saturday. 

After this weekend's work, the track in the station is laid:

All droppers in position too, but no point motors yet:

I think that I need to sort out the DCC buses (track and accessory) next which will require working out a solution for joining the wiring across the board given that I can't get at the underside until one board has been disconnected.

3 minutes ago, MAP66 said:

What about this as a solution from Modeltech, haven't used it myself but looks like a good bit of kit for aligning track over baseboard joins.

I looked at those, but couldn't work out how to use them with angled and curved track. 

All 4 done now though!

12 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

I'm sure I've missed many others...

In my modelling neck of the woods, Mangotsfield immediately comes to mind. They rather optimistically built 6 platforms at this junction station.

Remind me again why I thought separate base boards was a good idea?!

This sort of thing is harder than it looks!

Great progress Dan

31 minutes ago, jazzer said:

Still in the 1950’s the cleaners were still able to think for themselves and rely on common sense and care to stay safe ! 

Nowadays is that we think that someone shouldn't lose an arm or die on the job because of a preventable mistake.

Different times.

Taking advantage of the bank holiday, I laid the first three points. Looking at the plan, I decided that starting from the end of the curve made the most sense.

First thing was to lay them out and check: 

Which immediately showed a problem in that the point into the goods yard crossed the board join! 

I immediately worked out that I had picked one of long ones destined for the crossover at the end of the platform rather than medium one for the goods yard. Dug it out and it fitted.

I'm using the Peco bullhead points and added droppers. 

There's nowhere obvious to solder the droppers and you have to cut the webbing somewhere. I picked a place where there were two other pieces of webbing to hold the sleepers in the right place. One of the nice things about the unifrog design is that Peco have already connected every rail, so I figured that it didn't really matter where the droppers go.

After drilling a 9mm hole for the point motor and smaller holes for the droppers and frog wires, I glued them down the copydex and put some weights on:

Will look at it tomorrow evening and see if they are stuck down okay. Hopefully, I can continue next weekend. 

Thanks. Best of all notching means that I can defer the decision!

37 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

And, as always, most 'two minute jobs' take me a minimum of two hours.

My colleagues still haven't caught on that my understanding of this truism is why my estimates are much closer than theirs.

I'm still wrong of course because of Hofstadter's Law which states: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

 

2 hours ago, stivesnick said:

I find that topics on RMweb tend to fall into two categories. The first with loads of reponses, often from friends, the other with few comments. Don't worry about it. The crane modification looks great.

I find that I only comment if I can want to add to the conversation with a suitable comment, answer, or question. I will react to the post to signify that I like/agree/support/etc the post as a way of signalling to the poster that I read their post and appreciated it.

Thinking about laying the straight track, is there any benefit in cutting the ~1m lengths of track down to approximately scale 45' lengths to create the look (fishplates) and clickety-clack sound of track laid in 1920? 

Maybe a cosmetic fishplate and cutting a notch into the track (assuming I can find a thing enough cutting disk would also work?

Put down the underly today. This is 3mm XPS underlay insulation glued down with Copydex and painted a dark grey so that there isn't a bright green in any gaps in the ballast!

I rather quickly worked out that 126cm above the floor was a little too high for me to work comfortably, so used the floor and worked on two boards at a time.
 

Now I'm waiting for the paint to dry, before I drill holes for the droppers and then lay some points and track.

On 11/03/2024 at 20:53, phil_sutters said:

I am trying to remember if 7Fs ever made it up the Central line. Dad said the Somerset Central was the original line and therefore should never be called a branch!

Page 283 of The Somerset & Dorset Railway Bath to Bournemouth by Derek Philips has a photo of 18805 near Highbridge on a freight train. The caption is: "More used to tackling the steep gradients of the Bath extension than the less taxing Somerset levels, 2-8-0 13805 works tender first near Highbridge with a goods train on 23 July 1937"

I'm using this photo to justify 7Fs on my Holcombe branch :)