Keira

There's much work to be done with sculptamold to smooth out the landscape, I conformed the plaster cloth quite closely to the foam underneath to let the few areas of contouring show through, but this also showed through all the bits I didn't want to show through too, not a massive issue though. I'll also have some more mounds to add with the sculptamold that I didn't make with the foam, especially by the (temporary foam!) bridge where the landscape will filled out a bit more than it looks currently, rising slightly above the track level to gently transition from the cutting. Speaking of the bridge area, I haven't yet landscaped the bit to the right, but it shows the height of the foam bed from the baseboard, giving clearance for the canal scenery to drop down at the lock under the bridge. Here is the other side of the bridge where the lower level of the canal can be seen going into the lock, the (very rough and temporary!) buildings show the small industrial scene here, the inspiration for which came through some I think they are mill buildings on the Caldon canal, the setting here is very different to that scene, but it was the mishmash of different heights and buildings was the inspiration to create a little higgledy piggledy industrial area, I quite like it! I'm happy that even behind the bridge out of immediate sight there's a little scene with bits poking above the bridge, ooo what's that chimney part of, where's the pub sat, and you have to peer over to see them. The other side of the bridge has a prominent lock overflow point, which needs to come out somewhere, unfortunately I don't have much room back here, so it comes out rather close to the lock gates, such as those on the Huddersfield narrow canal. The tow path is behind the camera, this will be lined steeply with narrow cottages to emphasise that cramped feel for this scene. The block of foam in the background is the position of the local pub "The Holbrooke and Lock" for which the railway station was named after, a fun quirk from real life. The pub is at a height where it can still be scene from the other side of the bridge, creating a nice little view. The other side of the bridge, showing the pub still visible, along with the chimney from the little industrial bit, the higher side of the lock overflow can be seen here to opposite the lock landing, suitable for a boat of about 70 feet in length.

Here's what things look like with the plaster cloth applied. A very satisfying process! There are bits of interesting contouring to the landscape, which I took from real places I've been to or pictures I've seen online. The camera doesn't pick it up so well, but to the right on the photo below, the landscape squishes flat and out for a short section, a little odd feature of a canal local to me that I thought looked quite interesting. The squished shape also continues on the other bank behind the track, I'm trying to imagine what the landscape would have looked like before the trains, and how the railway and canal have cut through the landscape.

A bit of a while since I posted an update on here, not because of a lack of progress though! There's been lots of wiring and fettling bits and bobs that were taking a bit of time, but weren't particularly interesting to blog about. However, they are now done and I've started on the scenery! I've begun work on the long canal scene first, which follows the railway for a decent way and works its way through a lock and under a railway bridge. The end of the scene into the fiddle yard has had to curve off slightly to accommodate the fiddle yard road access, to disguise this bend the scenery builds up a bit just above track height, which I think gives a nice effect and with lots of trees will hopefully disguise the hole in the backscene and the curve, and will also be a bit of a squeeze for any passing narrowboats! Here is the base foam scenery, just roughly to shape, this now has a layer of plaster cloth over it to provide a hard shell. And here looking over the bridge...

It’s painting time! The V5 has had its GWR lake colour applied, I want to paint everything this colour now! You can just about see that the roof handrails have made an appearance after all. Armed with some recommendations from members of my local model railway club on how best to fit the handrails, they have been soldered to the body, and they simply slot into the roof, works very well indeed. Speaking of the roof, it also had a going over with the airbrush, a mix of white, cream and grey to get this colour. And lastly an Oxford Rail AA3 Toad, when these first came out they were met with many… interesting reviews shall we say! Unusually for me I haven’t done anything to this one, just going for a simple repaint into a darker grey than what it came with. A mix of Phoenix GWR wagon grey and a bit of cream to get a slightly lighter and warmer tone of grey, just to spice things up! Of course a good coat of gloss varnish will be next before adding the transfers. The wagon rake project is going well behind the scenes, I’ll post some photos of the progress of them soon hopefully!

Not much done today but I’ve just spent a few minutes fettling the running and the bogie clearances to the underframe, there’s always some chaotic enjoyment of hurtling a carriage across the layout at warp speeds. This is the first Comet carriage I’ve built without compensated wheel sets, so far performance seems really good on the layout which is fab news. And with most of the bits together, this was also an opportunity to snap a photo of how things are looking currently.

More progress on the LMS period 1 brake. I remember these things taking me much longer, but the underframe is now basically done, I like to add little bits like the brake pull linkages extending from the v hangers to the bogies, the dynamo belt and the steam heat pipe running from one end of the under frame to the other (this is suspended and such visible on GWR carriages, was it like this on LMS ones to? Rather difficult to tell from photos of the real thing), I haven’t got round to adding these details yet, but they are the next job on the list. I’ve also completed the bogies, soldering the whitemetal castings really speeds things up, no waiting around for glue to dry! I forgot add the spacer things that the bogies use to rotate on, another thing to add to the list of little jobs. This build is quickly coming to its conclusion, the main bits left to do are the roof and interior, with little jobs on the underframe, bogies and body shell still to do of course.

Some goodies arrived in the post the other day, a couple of Comet coach kits, and I couldn’t resist starting on this one! One of these beautiful LMS period 1 non corridor carriages. I haven’t dabbled outside of the GWR much, so this is going to be fun! So began the marathon of door detailing, it is in these moments I envy the building of a Mk1. That said these kits have the drop lights pre etched in, hurrah! I do over exaggerate of course, and before you know it all the doors have hinges, handles and handrails. The body carcass was then assembled, and as I write this, I’m waiting on the araldite to set gluing the roof in place. When the roof ends are flushed off, I will add the rest of the matchboard end detail. I set the type of roofs supplied with comet coaches flush to the coach ends, although in most cases it is supposed to leave some overhang, I find the aluminium roof ends look a tad to chunky for the look I’m after. The roof in place, with the glue mostly set now, once fully cured the roof ends will be cleaned up.

Well it certainly feels strange to complete a coach build in no more than a few days, although it is only a little one! I’ve gone ahead and added the door handles etc, it would have been sensible to have waited until the painting stage, but I wanted to solder them in. The body is soldered to the chassis and access to the interior is done via a removable roof, I’ve never taken this approach before, bit of an experiment! Those two rails on the body sides don’t interfere with adding a full width interior as much a you might expect although I don’t see a reason to retain them and would remove them in future if doing a similar installation, I did away with the bottom ones when I decided to solder the body to the chassis. The roof locates to the body using some rails made from brass strip off cuts, the roof is fixed using magnets, they are strong enough so that the roof is held firmly, but can still be removed easily, the hold I think is just about right. The shelves in the body that hold the magnets can be seen here, along with the roof magnets and guide rails. The problem with a removable roof though is the issue of handrails, there are suppose to be handrails extending from one of the body ends up to the roof. I was thinking about fitting them without being fixed, so that they could be removed when required, I’m not sure if that would work or not practically, at the moment though I’m pretty content with just omitting them. Here’s a cruel closeup of the other end, with the train alarm gear which I quite like. Into the paint shop next after degreasing. I feel I might tackle that autocoach kit I’ve had for a while next, but perhaps I should get back to the list of painting and weathering jobs first.

Progress on the V5 The basic body carcass has been assembled with Comet door hinges soldered in, the door bangers will be Archer’s rivets added in the primer stage, I’m also probably going to wait till the paint is on to add the door handles and handrails too. The whitemetal duckets have also been added. The body etches come flat and so require the tumblehome to be formed, this was done using a combination of rubbing the back of a file handle on the back of the coach side where the bend was required, similar to how you can curl paper by running the edge of scissors along it, with the coach sides flat on the cutting mat and doing a similar motion but holding the coach sides up to a steel ruler with a bit of leverage. Still quite a bit to go on the build, the body shell is just resting on the chassis loose in this picture, but the basics are there and it gives an idea of the finished product, exciting!

I feel I haven’t picked up the soldering iron in a while, and with all the painting/weathering going on I felt a brass kit was in order to spice things up. I saw an Alan Gibson GWR V5 van kit up for sale, and thought, ah yes, that’ll do nicely! This is where I’m up to, chassis pretty much all done, minus vacuum pipes, sprat and winkle couplings and a general clean up, bit of filing and all that, that will all be done closer to the carriage’s completion. Not much to report on the construction, although I made a bit of a fool of myself with the wheel sets, one of them is designed to wiggle slightly to go round curves, the fixed wheelbase is quite long otherwise. Well I soldered them both in place, one of those moments where you just do something, and then proceed to feel like a bit of a sausage afterwards. It was desoldered and with a bit of clean up it would have been just fine, but instead I decided to fit a “comet” style bogie fitting with a cheese head bolt and nut, and it works a treat. (yes those buffer heads need cleaning up a bit more!) I haven’t come across a build of this kit before, it’s quite lovely, a lot of the bits in the design you just think, yes, that makes sense! Anyway, onto the body, and then paint! Into lined crimson lake you go!

Visitors from the Island of Sodor! Something a bit different from my usual, two of the new Bachmann 812 locos on the bench! These two were in for a repaint from BR black into NWR blue (Humbrol 109 WW1 blue) to become Donald and Douglas from the railway series books. I'm doing these for a friend, my bit was to paint the bits that should be blue, blue, they will then add the rest of the paintwork, details and 3D printed faces too! I'm really happy with how they turned out and look forward to seeing them all completed!

The modelling mojo has been on annual leave it seems for far to long, its back now though, so its time to crack on with some of the new projects on the bench (and then some of the old projects on the bench, dearie me will I ever learn!) This is a old mainline dean goods, the real life ones simply look fab in my opinion, one of my favourites, and this model was available for purchase at my local model railway club in good working condition for a really good price, so I picked it up! I'm going to be making many detailing modifications to it and its going to definitely be a project to keep me busy (if I don't already have enough of those!). One thing that I am not planning on doing to it though, is replacing the chassis, and mechanism. Have I gone mad? Absolutely! The mechanism is getting on a bit and going round the club layout it certainly sounded it, but now after a thorough clean and service, the resulting noise levels are pleasantly surprising. The gears for the tender drive are visible on the tender underframe which I want to try and hide if I can and I think the 1980s would there wheel flanges back! They are monstrously huge! I'm going try and bring this existing chassis up to standard and to begin, I've had a look at the wheel flanges, to the lathe! This is my "micro" lathe, it lives on my desk, and its great for small scale railway modelling! I got this one second hand at much, much lower than the retail price! Anyway, the plan was to turn down the wheel flange profile and when trying to figure out how to remove the wheels from the chassis I was surprised that the wheel tire just popped off, rather convenient for my purposes, and I could simply plop it on a mandrel (a lip stick lid). The tire is held very close to the chuck jaws, and I really should have made a proper mandrel to hold it a tad further away, but the tool post cleared the chuck and all was well. The before and after... It's amazing the difference this makes! Now what to do with the tender wheels, they aren't as noticeably huge as the drivers but I'll have to check whether they go through finescale points. If they clear points ok, I might not turn them down, but we'll see.

One of the pivotal criteria for this layout was the automated run round process for trains at the end of their run. The fitting of couplings capable of automatic uncoupling is well underway with the layout's rolling stock in the form of Sprat and Winkle couplings which can be uncoupled using magnets. I'm experimenting with home made prototypes at the moment which is going well, although the distance between the coupled vehicles needs to be reduced somewhat. As for the layout side of things, uncoupling is simply achieved using these magnets bedded in the "ground" between the rails. To achieve automatic uncoupling using computer control, the platform road uses 3 block sections and with a bit of foresight to the train types that will be run on the layout, a train can draw past the fouling point in the platform road and would then land in a 3 coach space at the platform, the train knows when to stop when the fouling point block section is cleared, there are uncoupling magnets placed at each coach interval to allow for different lengths of train to uncouple, the platform can hold a maximum of 3 64 foot coaches and there will be lenience in the magnet placement to allow for shorter coaches and trains with goods vehicles attached to also be able to uncouple in this space. The loco can now decouple from the train and make its way to the third section which is the head shunt, and from there can run round the train. The loco backs onto the train and shunts it as far back as for the head shunt to register occupancy, the train is now in such a position that it can depart without magnet interference and the couplings can take up tension and pass over the magnets without accidently uncoupling. Here is a video of some early testing for this system, I haven't fitted any locos with the couplings as of yet, so its just testing with a couple of coaches for now, the system seems to work a treat though!

Some more testing on Holbrooke and Lock, exciting times! The first train has officially run the full length of the scenic section of the layout, now awaiting a full test with the traverser installed. For now though here's a couple of videos with 813 and the Great Western railcar. Not all the stock for the layout has had their Sprat and Winkle couplings fitted yet, so do excuse the rather bodge couplings between the locos and stock! CSP Models 813 (currently under a repaint) taking trains back and forth on Holbrooke. And the railcar shuttling back and forth with a Collett brake composite.

I've been putting it off for ages, but the time has come to wire up the layout. I've been waiting on the traverser project, to see if my ideas were viable, before continuing with the rest of the layout; and, as the the traverser seems to be working well in this prototyping stage, the other night I decided to get the rest of the layout up and running. As the layout uses block sections into the DR-4088, there are lots and lots of wires going all over the place and it took some time to route them where they all needed to go. I've also added two bus wires down the length of the layout, one for track power signals to sections not going into the DR-4088, and an accessory bus wire, currently working from the outlet on the back of my analogue controller at 16V AC for lighting, accessories and point motors. Speaking of point motors, I've gone for tortoise slow action point motors as the picture above shows (along with my rather unsightly installation) but all works well despite many of them being in difficult areas for installation. These tortoise motors require a medium for compatibility between themselves and the accessory decoder (DR-4018), for me these come in the form of the DR4101 interface boards, I've used 3 here to switch 5 motors (as some work as a pair). The DR4101 interface boards between the tortoise motors and the accessory decoder Here's the accessory decoder in the form of the DR-4018, CV 47 has been set to the point motor control value 6 for tortoises. So here's the fruits of my labour, turnouts successfully operating from the Z21. Amazingly I managed to wire all of them the wrong way round, so the frog would short when anything went over it, sorted now though! I'm pleased to see my slight bending of the turnout's geometry to give them a bit of a better flow through the station hasn't done anything to upset the mechanism, and trains stroll over them without issue.