brightspark

Very nice. I like the use of the dock shunter and the narrow gauge wagons to carry the tank.

It is there waiting for you. Listen to the Siren sound, calling, calling, calling you. Well you were busy with the Isle of White layouts. They are impressive. It was nice to have a chat.

Daisy had a good day today. The little 48DS shunted up and down all day with no problems A few people had a go and we have a new high score with the train still ending up in the wrong siding. But it doesn't matter about the score, it was the fun we had getting there. I look forward to tomorrow and perhaps see some of you. Happy shunting.

I am just starting to pack the layout up ready for the weekend at Basingstoke. I find it interesting that I now have to take 2 boxes of bits for the layout. The original plan being to take just one box. The extra box is filled with tools and spare stock. Including the spare shunter, still unfinished. Since Southampton I have done some work on the layout. This might be helpful for anyone following my steps. First the trees. These are sea moss just planted into the baseboard. One of these was starting to come loose and was beginning to break, so I stiffened the base with a cocktail stick and wrapped tape around it. The tree now has a fatter trunk and this has actually improved the look of it. I have also given them another coat of flock. For this I dabbed on some PVA and spinkled flock over the glue. I then shook the tree/ baseboard and then sprayed the tree with some hairspray. Hopefully that will stay on for some time. The uncoupling magnets. I found that in practice, that these did not drop far enough away, with the result that the coupling hook would remain dropped. So I have for an experiment installed a longer arm on the magnet in the back road, so the magnet drops further away. I also noted that some of the AJ couplings were not behaving when uncoupling. I checked all of the stock and found that this was its worse when coupled to the locomotive. It seems that the short hook highlights the problem that some couplers would not pull down clear. This turned out to be either, the dropper being too short and too high, or that the hook was pressing hard against the stop. [It should just rest on the stop] Finally some of the wagons were too free rolling. I had made the mistake of having a small rise on the rear siding, with the result that free running wagons will roll out. To reduce the free running, I have put some foam rubber under the chassis that touches the tyre of one of the wheels. It does not seem to introduce too much drag so that the loco stalls, but hopefully enough to stop runaways. I have also decided to simplify the puzzle for younger operators as the full 5-3-3 puzzle takes them too long and parents (and I) get bored. So I shall suggest that they just have to make up the first 3 wagons of the train and run it as either a 3-2-2 puzzle with 2 wagons in the headshunt, or just 3 wagons but allow the full headshunt. If you at Basingstoke this weekend, please do come by and say hello. It looks to be a good show.

It was explained to me, by someone who valued their own opinions a great deal, that a proper sport was one where people paid to go to into a stadium. So, according to him, the cycle racing I did was not a proper sport, at any level. Someone else told me that the only proper sport was one that featured in the Olympics. I was doing motorbike racing at the time, so not a sport. Perhaps my PE teacher at school was correct, when he wrote in my school report that I "have no sporting aptitude".

Hi Tony, I am glad that you have a plan for decent pipework on the class 5. Personally I find this the most enjoyable bit of building standards. I also enjoyed the pictures posted. To think that at the time the spotters thought them too modern...spaceships indeed! Anyway I am looking forward to the result.

Hi Tony, I disagree with that last comment. 🙂 You have the twiddly bit to do yet. I think of BR standards as build of three parts. The chassis, the body and then the pipework. The DJH pipework mouldings look a little feeble to me. This is an area that can be really worked up especially around the injectors. This is my attempt at the Standard class 5. It's a DJH kit but on a scratch-built chassis in EM gauge. The fittings are from Alan Gibson with copper wire for the pipework. (Yes the rear wheels are lifted off the rails. That would explain why it couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding. My mistake was correcting the tender height and forgetting to adjust the drawbar to match. All corrected now and this loco is good performer.)

Just beyond the petrol station and towards KFC, parked in the layby, is an excellent kebab van. The burgers are very good.

That's great. I am so glad that you took inspiration from me and I look forward to seeing your progress. Can I suggest that you start a new topic in this section of RMweb to describe your adventure. The process of putting into words and pictures, I find, helps get the creative juices flowing.

Thanks Nick. And thanks to everyone else who said nice things about Daisy. NIck C at the controls. High score today 75 and low score 18. Both by Alan (Bodmin16). The low score was a "lucky" draw on the cards. More of the same tomorrow. Do come and say hello and have a go. Andy

Colour? Would it help if I post a picture of the paint pots that I am using? 😄 Yes, very lucky with the wheelsets. Hopefully they are not the only source for gears. Just been confirmed for Mid-Essex show in September, so see you there. Just prepping Daisy for Southampton next weekend.

Spotted at Daisy. We should really start a thread for these.

Hi Nick, Daisy is back at Southampton at the end of this month. So you have a chance to see it again. Even better, if you are there, say hello and you can play with it. Daisy has also been booked for Basingstoke and ExpoEM. And maybe one other show in Mr Barclay's manor.

I was thinking that either the oil has attacked the plastic or that it was the latest plastic from Dapol. The later has a tendency to gall and so seize up. If it is an old hard plastic, that will happen slower, unless the oil has had an effect. The advice from 33C sounds like a good place to start. Jeff is correct, plastic on plastic will have a short life.

I have a theory, but let's try and understand the problem. Am I correct in thinking that this is a Dapol kit as out of the box? If not what? What did you use a lubricant?

Thanks Mike. The GA drawings I have are very poor copies and not good enough to read that detail. Looking at it again, I think that my model of 38 may need revisiting to add some filler to the top of the cylinders. Although after reading John's (Dunsignalling) comment, perhaps you have to pick a specific loco at a particular time to get this feature right. Is this starting to turn into rivet counting? I wouldn't know. It might be possible to make it fit. I ended up making a chassis up from scratch. It seemed easier than trying to modify something else and is quite satisfying. Andy

Yes the Beatie drawing is wrong. Cylinders are in the wrong place. I don't know about the height of the footplate. Would have to check against the GA drawing. To be fair to him, the drawings he did were probably the best considering the information available at the time. Errors happen and as they are discovered we can correct them.

...from my files, not thinking that I would need them again.

I didn't know that, but that explains a few things about the variable quality of that period. The bit I like is that the holes are starting to break through the edge of the plate. I used the Mainly Trains etch available from Wizard. But there is a better etch with the tender brakes (missing from my model) by South Easter Finecast. But I don't know if this is available on it's own. The brakes for the King Arthurs are what you will be after. I thought that I saw the same thing, but came to the conclusion that it is either an optical illusion and/or variations to the shape of the cylinder casing. The cylinders are angled, but sometime the casing appear to be flush and almost parallel to the footplate. That probably explains why the DJH model has them laying horizontal and why some of the scale drawings seem to be variable. Iain Rice discussed this model in his book 'Locomotive kit chassis construction' (I found this book to be very helpful). He points out that the cylinders are at an angle and notes the J hangers. But later photos show that he missed off the J hangers and left the cylinders as per the kit. If you do lay the cylinders flat you will find that the J hangers won't fit, so angle the cylinders until they do align. I have found some photo's that I took for my build thread and slowly uploading them. But this one may be of help as it is my sketch as to where the cylinders should be. The round shape is for the curve of the front footplate. Note that I added filler to lengthen the cylinder body to 12,8mm. The other positions are for the J hangers and the end of the slidebars. This page on the Hornby website is also helpful as there is a low resolution drawing of the loco and tender. https://uk.Hornby.com/community/blog-and-news/engine-shed/s15-class-decorated-sample-and-tts-king-class-sound-test "Me fail English, that's unpossible."

Yes, hunting them down and loading. But its a slow process and I deleted some.

It shows how much kits have come on. It has just occurred to me that Tony questioned why I compensated the S15. But Mike, you questioned why I didn't compensate 11001. It was partly because of the poor compensation I did on 30383.

The DJH frames that came with my S15 kit.

Hi Tony, The DJH S15 is an interesting beast. Here is my one made to EM, photographed by your good self a couple of years ago. I think that the fireman is wondering when the track gang is coming back from lunch. At least the chassis you have there is better than the one in my kit. I ended up scratch building one. My second attempt at doing such a thing. * Here is a link to my build thread. I will try to repost the missing photos. The only problem that you may have with the supplied chassis is that the cylinder block may be too far back and not inclined. The rest of the problems are with the body and even that I got wrong as the boiler taper should finish under the dome. But for a first time kit, providing that your pupil is not looking for too much finesse, it should provide a good training ground. Andy *You very kindly complemented me on building a chassis from scratch, but did question why I made the loco compensated. Well after putting it on a layout for the first time, I asked the same question as it could barely pull itself along without wheel slip. That was a little frustrating, but I later found my mistake and fixed it. Although it was fun to watch the 'experts' tell me that there wasn't enough weight in it. Then to see their faces when they picked up a whitemetal kit with a chassis full of lead. 😄