SteveBedding

Very nice & simple - I've immediately used it to add the 'standard' GWR drivers for a quick reference. Cheers Pixie

This is sounding good My attempts at a 57xx frame have not been as successful as I would like and certainly not as detailed as yours - so hopefully the 'very close' is really very close... As to the 2251, that's going to be an even greater appeal, especially if it can be adapted for the 'eventual' Dean goods... What would these be? Can I hope for chassis for the Ixion Manor, and future offerings such as the Farish WD and the Dapol Hall?

Thanks everyone for the ongoing encouragement; and especial thanks to John for the box - it will greatly add to the character of the layout. Well, to paraphrase British Rail "I'm getting there...", the chaotic times of RW family commitments are just about winding up now and so some serious modelling time is owed to me. That said, even these interruptions have been enjoyable/useful in that a trip to visit family in Lancashire just happened to coincide with the 2mm Association Expo in Keighley, and Fathers Day was focused around a very fine lunch on the Avon Valley Railway.... (there seems to be a bit of common theme emerging here with trains and food ) Anyway, I have now managed to replenish my stock of rail and other essential building supplies and so can crack on with progressing the track work - I learnt a lot at the Expo on simple methods to make 'joggles' - very timely and will be put straight into practice. I did however manage to acquire one or two small distractions (coach bogies, wagon kits, and very nice etch for a class 45xx chassis) which will probably conspire to derail the best plans. Oh well, they will all contribute towards the eventual final layout... Thanks again and hopefully my next post may actually show progress rather than 'excuses' for its lack...

Gents, thanks for the concern; all is well but a small outbreak of 'loss of mojo' occurred at the same time as some seriously busy RW intervention/interference Is it really nearly 10 weeks since I made any progress on the layout !!! However, all was not lost, as despite the annoying interruptions, some important research has been achieved Firstly, pasties and cider on the South Devon Railway... ...a shame about the livery, but you can't go far wrong with a Collett 2251 Class... ...a good opportunity for a study of MOGOs, DAMO A, and a FRUIT D... ...just waiting for Dapol's future Hall ...and last but not least, a tanker with great family significance. Secondly, a trip to the Watercress Line for the fine dining on the Watercress Belle... ...OK, so it's not GWR, but SR is just as acceptable when there is good food involved... ...Don't let SWMBO claim that I don't get her flowers !... ...but don't tell her that all the ladies were given them when they arrived ...and I didn't get to this size by avoiding too many 6 course meals and Thirdly, a quick trip to Bucks for a cream tea on the Chinnor and Princess Risborough line... ...ah, back to GWR... (for any Weight-Watchers out there - this little lot is apparently equivalent of just over 50 Pro-points - that's more than a days food or a weeks snack/treat allocation - OUCH!) ...and when you reach the end of the line, thy really do mean it here! More on the up side, visiting the RMweb day in Taunton, and getting back to driving Witney Euston at both the Oxford show (actually in Witney) and at Railex last weekend, has given the juices a damn good stirring and I'm getting to point where the mojo is getting back to normal levels!!! More to follow soon...

Looks very nice Chris

One suggestion I have is that I use some old 225deg electrical solder for the nose and then 188 or 145 solder to attach the rails to the sleepers/chairs; this reduces the risk of affecting the nose with the later soldering. This has come about through using the association aluminium crossing jigs which can be a bit of a 'challenging' heat sink though the tufnol nose jig has no such problems

Quite impressive Kris, and certainly a vast improvement over the original configuration (though I'd have thought you could have squeeze a couple more sidings in there somehow... ). I hope to get down to Taunton for the show, so I'll get to have a good look at there. But do you have enough stock for the amount of storage?

That looks suspiciously like a pile of tokens ready for the swear-box strategically placed on the workbench , it's good to see that ALL of the essential 'tools' are readily available...

Ian - as a 'corkhead' myself I have a definite fondness for all things to do with the IoW and with Freshwater being my first home, this is of especial interest. I wish I'd registered it at the Expo, but being new to 2mm then I was somewhat overwhelmed by the range and quality of the layouts and models under development there - that said, I'll make up for it with watching this blog with great interest. One contribution I can offer for the background/character is that there may well have been a small Austin A35 van (in either grey or green...?) lurking around the village in the early to mid '60s; this belonged to "Bedding & Parker - Electricians" - and if you can fit a Silver Cross pram in the back, tied down with bungees, I'd be proud to make an appearance...

Ouch - mirth currently suspended! Enjoy the well-earned beer...

"...Really...its okay to laugh ..." But you didn't caveat that dispensation with 'how much...' - yes there is mirth, but not with CJ, but with your frank appraisal ! I've only got about 2 ft of 'straight' to fill in so I'm watching this with great interest - and waiting 'till you get it right before I steal your ideas Best you have a therapeutic G&T (or two...) before the jack hammers come out...

What a lovely gem of information - though I suspect that he would have moved to somewhere in the Midlands by the time I'm looking at... I didn't think Stanier was a GWR Ch Eng, though he worked under Churchward and Collett, eventually as the Works Manager at Swindon. Even so, that should have been enough for the staff at Calne and Chippenham to be on their toes whenever he was passing through.

Thanks Andy, those dimensions make sense - I'd been reading the yearbook for all the other dimensions, but just missed this one Thanks also for the offer of the CAD drawing, I'm OK as I found a copy that I was sent a while ago, and so I have enough to get on with at the moment. Am I right in guessing that the wheels are 7mm?

Andy The chassis looking very nice - one day I'll pluck up the courage to mill something other than PCB I'd like to get straight into the brass blocks, but I think Tufnol is a good starting point for practice. By the way, what is the separation between the frames? Keep it coming please, with lots of the very useful pictures of the various stages.

Sorry to jump slightly off-topic here, but I got a two of the 30:1 gearsets from Ultrascale a month or so ago. Although I saw the quoted turn-around timescale was 5 months, it would appear that this is normal for custom, or out of stock items; a quick email to David Rogers identified that he had several of these gearsets in stock and they were delivered in a couple of days They came in packaging exactly the same as previously available from shop 3, but they were slightly more expensive, and the P&P was, (dare I say) rather high Andy, This is looking very nice; your soldering is setting an example for us to follow here. I've got one of these (one of Alan D's seconds) purely as a practice for soldering, but the more I see of it, the more I rather want to have it running properly. After much digging, I've found the copy of the chassis that Missy did (I thought I'd deleted accidentally several months ago ) and so its now on the list of projects. Just as a matter of interest, how are you planning to mount the NL MidiMotor - I could do with some alternative ideas for the 57xx.

I think you already have one! Missy Yep, found it Heave sigh of relief! I'd deleted the folder where I'd saved the drawing, but fortunately found I'd still got the original archived email. Thanks

If you put a long head-shunt/siding off each end of loop 4, and made loop 4 the 'through route' this should allow the 3 longest loops to act as storage and provide for your DMUs (I did a picture to show what I meant but couldn't attach it to this reply - I'll PM it across to you).

Looks like a definite improvement Kris, certainly adds capacity for several 'pre-formed' trains to run and give an interesting operating sequence. When you refer to a 'DMU siding' are you considering a head-shunt off the 4th loop? Keep at it and I look forward to seeing this enhancement in the future.

Now there's an idea - Sodor in Wiltshire... That'll be a fourth option for rolling stock, and one that I think will get SWMBO's approval It would even be appropriate to run "D7101 Bear The Hymek Diesel" and that was blue - should keep Pete happy...

Excellent suggestion Nick, and one I've promptly acted on (well it would have been a bit quicker, but I couldn't access RMweb for much of the past 48hours - some network issues I suspect ). Mike very kindly, and promptly, answered confirming your statement on the reasoning behind the change in the route restriction designation, and then gave a nice, simple, and comprehensible explanation of what the 'hammer blow' effect was... Yet another piece of information gathered; whilst not strictly relevant to the period that the planned (...and domestically 'authorised'...) Smokey Bacon is set, it may well come in handy for a 'possible' second set of rolling stock that would take the Calne Branch through the BR steam era... ...but that's for another day

Nick, Thanks for this. As I understand it, the 57xx class retained their axle load/weight restriction class as Blue throughout their entire GWR operational career; however, post nationalisation, they were re-designated as Yellow as a part of a scheme to rationalise the various loading systems used by the Big Four (the aim was to standardise the 'boundaries' between classes). Eventually, BR adopted the (ex-LNER) Route Availability system, and the (GWR) colour coding system eventually disappeared.

Andrew, I suspected that this was the case but it's nice to get another perspective. I've done a bit more 'digging' and found that the Calne Branch was subject to a 30mph limit along its length; the line was only 5.3 miles long, and the scheduled time allowed was 15 minutes so this was not really an issue. However, this was not always adhered to - there were several (in)famous recorded 'runs' where the 'need for speed' ruled! On one occasion, a 45xx out of Bath was timed at 7.5 minutes, a Westbury 54xx set a 'class record' of 8 minutes, and a certain Chippenham driver regularly did the run in 9 minutes in either a 54xx or a 48xx/14xx! As to the loading and weight restrictions/prohibitions, this also seems to have been ignored when expedient A Bulldog (Bird) class (3443 Chaffinch), also Blue disc, hauled a troop train in the early 1940s and 3829 County of Merioneth was drafted in during train drivers strikes in the 1920s. This County class loco was not the only 'Red disc' engine to work the line; after Nationalisation, 94xx class 0-6-0 panniers drew the duty, and although I cant find the reference to hand, I'm fairly certain that 56xx worked freight runs up from Westbury. Lastly, during the last days of the line, D7000 (a Hymek Diesel-Hydraulic) worked the snow-clearing trains. All this is very useful, as it gives a precedent, in addition to the usual 'operational expediency' during wartime, to include some unusual locos to haul the specials - oh goody, that'll be a cause for the Ixion Manor, Dapol's Hall, and hopefully someone will make a County soon . [Oh, and not forgetting the Q1, the forthcoming WD Austerity 2-8-0, a 28xx, and even a ROD 2-8-0 (though that's stretching it a bit...), and even a visiting WD J94 0-6-0 from Bicester (this last one is another stretch, but there actually could be a plausible justification...)] Yes - but I'm not sharing... Seriously, I'm not that quick! A days serious modelling time was wasted by the need to help (allegedly) increase the national deficit, as will tomorrow However, I think I now have all the bits I need, the small adjustments to the intermediate gear and motor height are being applied, and SWMBO is working this weekend. I should be able to have a first stab at the real chassis and the modifications to the Farish body in this time... ...stay tuned

Three reasons for the 'thorough' approach - 1) I'm not a 100% sure of what I'm doing so it prevents me rushing in..., 2) it gives time for people to shout out when I'm about to go drastically wrong!, and 3) it's a thinly disguised cover for procrastination It had never crossed my mind to include any representation of the inner workings - and now that you mention it I find the thought scares me witless If all goes well, I'll include the brake work and obvious pipes on the exterior of the chassis but that is as far as I aspire to get to. The little 'daylight' that can be seen between the leading and driving wheels will be nice, and so will being able to see the (dirty) 'reddish' colouring on the inside of the frames. For me the choice of plasticard for a mock-up was an easy one, (again stealing someone else's idea - thanks mitziblue!) I bought SWMBO a RoboCutter about a year ago and that coupled with the basic CAD packages means I can 'print' to plasticard the components as drawn - the down side is that it only scores 0.5mm plasticard as it's cut depth is 0.3mm max, but that is enough to get the outline done. The real justification was to eventually produce the frames/carcasses for the buildings on both Smokey Bacon and the Oxford groups layout, but I keep finding other uses for the toy tool. As to the body drawings, I have several books on GWR locos (to be expected really... ) and Russell's Pictorial Record of Great Western Engines has drawings of pretty much all the required motive power. I'll have a look through the good book to see what I can find on the large prairie (I assume you mean the 61xx class?) but I don't think I've much on the BR standard classes. Thanks for the tip on the metal. I'm still not that confident with using the mill for this sort of task and so I was intending to butcher the body with a saw and files. I suppose that this is a good time to get practising with the mill so I'll see how that this progresses.

Ah, it all comes back to me now… …said the skunk, when the wind changed direction! Lots of fiddling around and thinking/planning rather than actually doing anything - the discrepancy between my ‘theoretical’ frames and the spare ones I was using as a baseline was nagging me – until I had an brain storm, and realised that they were the Mk I version that was designed to fit straight into an unmodified Farish body shell! (I’m sure I had been told this before, but with a memory like a sieve, this had some how been overlooked!). Suitably reassured, it was time to look in detail at the Farish body casting; since this is an N gauge model (nominally 1:148 scale as opposed to 1:152 for 2mmFS), I expected it to be slightly oversize. In reality this would be a slight advantage The difference between the two scales is around 2.7% and a quick measure of the length & width of the body shows that whilst it is still slightly oversize, it is close enough for government work... For instance, the length over the buffer beams should be 55mm at 1:152, thus at 1:148 it would be 56.4mm, and the Farish casting is 57.4mm - I don't know about everyone else, but my eyesight can't tell that difference! (These are very rough measurements (particularly the 'depth') and will be refined once the footplate and surplus material has been cut away) The 'cavity' space in the casting is adequate in terms of width to fit the NL MidiMotor and there is still the option of some slight 'widening' between the leading and drive wheels should this be required, though I suspect that when the rubbish under the panniers is cut away, this will not be an issue. There is some concern over the 'roof' of the cavity in that it slopes down from the cab end towards the front; this may require some adjustment of the motor positioning, or grinding away some of the surplus material in the roof. Whilst looking at the Farish body, there are several areas where the casting needs to modified, either to fit the chassis, or to enhance the detailing and look of the model... Interesting point I've just noticed. Whilst I'd not been able to find any definitive Route Availability information (GWR colour coded weight restrictions) for the Calne Branch, there is a snippet in G Tanners The Calne Branch (pp9) that states "From Chippenham... At the the approach to the point where the track became single, a notice stood which stated that no engine classified blue or red was allowed on the branch". A quick check (Farish was right!) showed that the 57xx/8750 class panniers were designated Blue disc, and theoretically could not have been allowed on the line - that said they were the standard engine for the goods traffic (and some passenger services) from Chippenham.! The other common loco's on the line (54xx, 48xx/14xx, 45xx, Dean Goods, and Collett 2251 were all Yellow disc or unclassified (no disc) and so were not restricted. As previously indicated, a plasticard mock-up of the chassis would be a sensible test of the design and 'proof of concept'. Although the draft plans at this stage are based on true 2mm scale, and some adjustment will be required to match the exterior dimensions of the Farish body, the principle dimensions (wheelbase and gearing) will remain the same. Again another advantage of using CAD allows a quick drawing to be made by copying the major components which can be fed through a RoboCutter that will scribe the outlines directly on to plasticard sheet. The resolution of the RoboCutter is not as good as the mill, but is sufficient to replicate the gross dimensions of the components which can be assembled into a reasonably accurate prototype of the chassis. (I've fitted an additional 'spacer' between the frame sides where the motor mount would be to reinforce the plasticard prototype - this will be omitted on the final version) It's very rough & ready and no effort has been wasted on the finishing but it proved that the assembly was viable and components all fit together as hoped. It also showed that when the final chassis is built, it will have to be made as two major sub-assemblies (the frames/spacers, gears, and wheels, as one, and the footplate/beams as the other) as the wheels cannot be fitted and quartered when fully assembled in one go. The motor and decoder will have to be properly fitted last. I've still got to get busy on destroying adapting my 57xx body casting to fit the new chassis profile, and I hope to be able to test-fit the prototype chassis block (in true Blue Peter style - here's one I prepared earlier...) to Missy's model this evening, but I'm getting quite confident that apart from some (already known) alterations, there is a light at the end of the tunnel