Middlepeak

Sorry to interrupt a 2mmFS thread, but here in the relatively bigger world of p87, I'm about to embark on an experiment using 15mm thick cork as an underlay. The idea is that the greater thickness gives better separation between the track and the baseboard top, and therefore less noise transmission. We'll see! Another advantage of cork is that the templot drawing can be laser cut into the surface, which is a great help for tracklaying. Regards, Geraint

Hello 5944 and thanks for your good wishes. I thought you would like to see some pictures of the Italieri ballast wagon that has now found its way into the RGVJ's PW train. It seems a bit wide for the loading gauge to me, but being a rather squat wagon, that may be a trick of the eye. Construction was, as I recall, rather complicated, given the need to pare away a part of the chassis to accommodate my springing units. This resulted in the whole wagon initially going out of shape in the middle, and was finally resolved by soldering the two springing units into a brass frame that the rest of the body was built around. Wheels are Alan Gibson 10.5mm disc, fitted to 2mm OD x 1mm ID muffs, which in turn run on Exactoscale 1mm steel square ended axles. The springing units are my own etchings. The springing units can be seen better on the shots of the F-van under construction. More on that when I've made more progress! Regards, Geraint

Let me start off with some sincere apologies for not posting for a while. In truth my wife has been seriously ill since the middle of November, including a period in intensive care in early January. Thankfully there is now some progress and we can begin to think about her homecoming, but modelling has really taken a back seat for a while. Because of the above, I'm sorry to say that I have had to withdraw Obbekaer from the Eurotrack exhibition in Southampton later this month. For me, that's a real shame, because I have always enjoyed the continental flavour of this show. Please try to get there if you can. I'm sure it will be an excellent event. There is however one small project on the workbench at the moment. Conversations with my Danish mentors over a coffee in early November led to a discussion about the use of foreign wagons on Danish lines. One that caught my eye was an Italian 'F' van with a characteristic peaked roof, which was typically used to transport early season vegetables such as new potatoes north from sunnier climes. My colleague Ian Thomson has come up with a Tutto Treno kit (now produced by Itelieri?) for one of these wagons, which is currently being fitted out with new w-irons and suspension. However, the prototype information on these wagons is a bit sparse. Does anyone know of any websites containing photographs of Italian wagons that might shed some light on underframe and body detail? Will post some photos as the project progresses. Regards, Geraint

Thanks Highlandman. The short answer is - quite a long time! The trick though is to assemble the carcass and then to start the brickwork at a number of different locations on the same model. This means that you can lay a course at one location, then a second location, then go back to the first to cut the vertical joints and lay a second course, then revert to the second location. Sorry, I didn't describe that very well, but hopefully you get the idea. It's actually a very therapeutic activity, and one that you can devote a spare quarter or half hour to and feel that you've achieved something. I usually run the building construction alongside other layout projects, for variety. A couple of other photos attached, showing the construction of the trafo tower for "Obbekaer", which hopefully illustrates the process a little more. Regards, Geraint

Please excuse a small Viking intrusion into this excellent thread. I just wish I had enough time to read all 55 pages of it! I've described my P87 Danish layout 'Obbekaer' elsewhere on this forum, but this time these are photos of a row of buildings for the next layout. This time I'm modelling a complete quayside scene from Ribe (Denmark's Oldest Town) in the early 1960s, with a railway station between the houses and the riverside. Fortunately, there's a strong sense of conservation in Ribe, so many of these buildings are just the same as they would have been in the 1950s. Some of the models have been built using architects' drawings. Others have been done from photographs and a serious bout of brick counting - bearing in mind of course that Danish bricks are a different size from those over here. All the walls are drawn out on TurboCAD and printed onto ordinary printer paper, which is then stuck to plasticard with solvent. Each wall is then built up in layers with the inner and outer walls separated by a framework of Evergreen microstrip that produces a strong cavity wall that is very rigid and stable. The brick courses are then added to the outside, one at a time, from .022" x .011" microstrip, and the vertical joints then cut with a scalpel to form the correct pattern of brickwork. A sprayed coat of grey primer provides the mortar colour, and the bricks are then painted using various shades of acrylics. The only purchased elements are the pantile sheets (Auhagen), which are carefully cut to shape before fitting. My favourite of the whole row is the half-timbered building on the end, which on the front face has different patterns of individually placed bricks between the timbers. The final photo shows the almost completed row in its display case at Rail 2016 in The Netherlands last year, together with a montage of the whole street. Before you ask, the cathedral tower will be on the backscene - any good artists out there? Regards, Geraint

If I recall, John Watson used torsion rods on his excellent P4 rendition of Laxfield MSLR - MRJ issue 0 I think. Regards, Geraint

Hi Jinty, Just looking through the latest updates from Rail Online photos today and there are three there of Talyllyn, which might be of use. The one of the tunnel board especially - a great project for etching! http://www.rail-online.co.uk/p265322570/e3b82fda1 http://www.rail-online.co.uk/p265322570/e27d0f312 http://www.rail-online.co.uk/p265322570/e20a723c9 I'm sure there's more in the main list as well. Look forward to progress reports on the layout. Regards, Geraint

Thanks for reporting that. I'll pass on the comment when I see them next week! Geraint

The best bet is to email Hobbytrade in your best English. Carsten and his team certainly speak better English that my Danish and are very helpful. They provided me with spares for their Litra D, which I've since used in a conversion to p87. Regards, Geraint

With Scaleforum to look forward to tomorrow, I thought I should make the most of the positive 'mood' by finishing off the jigsaw pieces for Skibbroen. You will recall a while back that I set out the argument for doing it this way. In short, I don't have room to accommodate the full layout at the moment, and were I to build the baseboards in their entirety, they would just have to spend their time in a cupboard with occasional forays into the workshop. Instead, the idea is to focus on smaller jigsaw pieces for the moment, which will be attached to the main baseboard frame at a later date. For now, the main area of activity will be on trackwork and the station area, and these can be accommodated on two basic jigsaw pieces, which are much lighter and easier to work on when it comes to track laying and wiring. There's also a bonus that they will just fit down one side of the workshop, so in due course there will be the opportunity to nip in there for a while to 'play trains' - an essential ingredient if momentum is to be maintained. So the jigsaw pieces have strange shapes, determined by such things as the quay wall and the edge of the street that runs along the back of the layout - Skibbroen. The jigsaws are designed on TurboCAD and laser cut from 6mm ply, and were very easy to put together. Track centrelines are also marked on the surface to aid the laying of a cork underlay for the track. In my continuing battle against noise (these boards, although light, are likely to 'drum' if I'm not careful), I've decided to go for a thick 15mm layer of cork this time. I chose this thickness partly because it matches the depth of the turntable well. We'll see how that works! The attached picture shows the jigsaw laid out on the dining room floor, looking from the turntable towards the exit to the fiddle yard at the far end. I've also attached a layout plan as a reminder of what I'm trying to achieve. Plenty of work to do now on winter evenings - track and turntable building and wiring. The aim is to get it working by the spring of next year! Regards, Geraint Plan with track jigsaw pieces.pdf

Hi Captain, Looking at the shot with the SR boxvan, it seems that the track runs mighty close to the backscene at that point, potentially making it more difficult to blend the modelled space and the backscene. Any plans to overcome this? Looking good though! Geraint

I suppose you would call it welcome plagiarism. A chance encounter with Danish manufacturer Witzel Hobby during Obbekaer's appearance at the DMJU exhibition in Kolding two years ago led to an enquiry last year about the station building, which as I've described before is a model of the ticket office at the old Farup station on the line from Ribe to Bramming and Esbjerg. I responded by sending my CAD drawings of the building to the manufacturer, from which they have produced a laser cut card kit of the building, which now retails as the 'Obbekaer ticket office' on their website. It requires details such as gutters and downpipes to complete the model, but now the modeller can complete his or her rendition of the building in a much shorter time than it took me! If it gives Obbekaer a little bit of recognition, then I applaud his initiative, but I wonder how many Danes will be disappointed to find that Obbekaer isn't actually on the railway map! For those of you who are interested, you can see the finished item on the Witzel Hobby site at http://witzelhobby.dk/spor-h0-byggesaet/8-obbekjaer-billetsalg.html There's also a short YouTube video illustrating the research, manufacture and construction of another of their models, this time of the station building at Bindeballe on the Vandelbanen, at And for those of you who haven't seen the 'prototype' of Obbekaer's station, here's a photo below. I'm quite chuffed really!

Thanks all for your nice comments. It's always a help to be able to frequently visit the area you're modelling, if nothing else just to soak up the atmosphere - which is what I'm doing this week! There's always a danger that if you rely on what you remember, the mind begins to play tricks in time, and you end up with a bit if a pastiche. Besides, repeating your research is all the more enjoyable! Regards, Geraint

Thank you Brian. I made a conscious effort to make the article a bit different from most layout descriptions. Sounds like it worked! Hope to see folks at Railex next weekend. Please drop by for a chat if you're there. Regards, Geraint

Thanks Robatron. I must say I haven't seen the pukka version myself, but I was really impressed with the way that Andrew Burnham used my words and pictures. A proof version sent back to me in ultra-quick time and no changes to make. First class editing indeed! Regards, Geraint

Thanks to all who responded to my query about the treatment of baseboards. I now have the first jigsaw piece fully assembled and sanded and am very pleased with it. Hopefully I can take the opportunity afforded by a short holiday in Devon in a couple of weeks to acquire some of Maurice's 'magic stuff' from source. In the mean time, I've attached a photo of the completed track board - one more of these to make in due course. Other p87 projects continue, and one of them on the workbench at the moment is a small boxcab diesel for freight services on the RGVJ. The prototype was built by B&W/Scandia in 1933 for the Kalvehavebanen, rebuilt after a fire in 1952 with a new Frichs 6-cylinder engine and then sold on to the Hads-Ning Herreders Jernbane in 1959. In my twisted bit of history, the RGVJ beat them to it and acquired this chunky bit of kit at the end of the 1950s. The loco was a one-off, but in many respects similar in design to some of the larger 'Firkantede' being turned out by Frichs for other private railways of the same era. There is a kit available for this from a small manufacturer in Denmark, but way beyond my means in price and containing a chassis which would be of no use to me. The decision was therefore a fairly easy one to commit to a complete scratchbuild. The main parts have been designed for etching by those nice chaps at PPD, and have produced a basic fold up body, footplate with solebars and buffer beams and an internal chassis that will carry all the working gubbins. The chassis is designed to take a central Mashima motor driving a pair of High Level gearboxes on the outer axles through universal joints, making it an A1A like the real thing. All axles are sprung, using CSBs, and the wheels are Exactoscale three hole disc with a slightly altered profile for p87 and regauged for 16.5mm. The next stage will be assembly and testing of the chassis, which involves installing the motor on its separate mounting tray in a bed of sealant, followed by installation of the gearboxes and UJs. Once I have a running chassis, there will be a follow-up etch for the body overlays and the roof, plus the fabrication of all the minute parts on the chassis - I could do with finding out what they all do! The prototype still exists in preservation, and one hope is that I can track it down during one of our two proposed visits to Denmark this summer. It goes without saying that the loco will not be finished for our next appearance at Railex in a month's time, but it would be nice to allow it the odd foray onto the main line at the end of the day when the punters go home! Regards, Geraint

Phil, Many thanks for the tip. I do recall Maurice mentioning this in a previous PM. I'll try to hunt some down. Lot's of finishing work to do on the basic carcass beforehand though! Have a good Easter, Geraint

Trevor / John, Thanks for your replies in favour of matt black. In fact the framework shown in the photo will not be seen in the final presentation, so that's not an issue. I was thinking more about something as a preservative - maybe matt white primer so that you can easily label wiring under the boards and still see the track centrelines as the track goes down. What do you think? Perhaps Maurice Hopper has a view when you next see him John - he seems to be the doyen of carpentry as far as baseboards are concerned! Regards, G

For the last week I have been battling away with the first of the laser-cut jigsaw pieces, and for the first time tonight I was able to put the two halves together and get some impression of the size of the finished item. The 'kit' has gone together very well. The most difficult part is making angled corners that are any different from 90 degrees. There's a little side play which will accommodate a few degrees either way, but a 30 or 45 degree angle is a different matter, so out comes the saw and the sandpaper. I made a couple of mistakes in the drawing - two slots in the wrong place - but these are easily filled and new ones made. Having got the basic structure done, there's now a lot of work in the final finishing. I haven't decided how to treat the plywood yet - varnish? primer? What's the general view out there? I expect them to have a long life and to maintain their stability, at least until there's a main baseboard carcass to attach them to. I've positioned the Litra D and a couple of coaches in what will be the platform road. The track centrelines have been marked by the laser cutter and the turntable can be seen in front of the locomotive. The front edge of these boards is effectively the quayside. The buildings on Skibbroen run along the back, roughly where the initial row is standing in its display case on the workbench. I feel quite inspired after this. Time to do the drawing for the other baseboard I suppose! Regards, Geraint

With the winter's exhibition commitments out of the way, and a break before our next outing to Railex in May, I've found some time to pen some words on the layout for Continental Modeller, which will hopefully appear in the May issue. I always feel that when the time comes to write an article, it's a sure sign that the project in question is to all intents and purposes finished, and it's time to move on to something else. Of course there's still the matter of maintaining Obbekaer as a viable exhibition layout, and there's some more stock to be built, but I judged that it was now time to get back to the original project that I had in mind before the 11-year long diversion to Obbekaer took place. So the attention has now shifted to the supposed terminus of the RGVJ at Ribe Skibbroen. If you go back to my article in CM way back in 2004, you will see that this effectively takes an existing quayside scene in Ribe and puts a railway along the waterside. The design has been around for some time, and over the years it's been discussed with my friends in the Ribe club, to the point that I'm now happy with it. The attached track plan shows the result. However, the logistical problem with this is that my relatively tiny workshop has no room to accommodate the baseboards for this project. To compound the problem I could envisage things like trackwork construction and certainly the required buildings taking a long time (I'm not the fastest worker), so if I adopted the conventional idea of building the baseboards first, there would be acres of bare plywood left uncovered for a number of years before they could become useful. Then the idea occurred to me that if I adopted the 'jigsaw' principle of layout construction, advocated in Iain Rice's excellent book on layout design and employed with great success by Vincent de Bode on his layout 'Flintfields', I could still make good progress without committing a great deal of space to my endeavours. So, the first stage will be to construct a couple of lightweight plywood jigsaw pieces on which most of the trackwork for the layout can be completed, tested and rendered operational. Buildings can be constructed in parallel to this and stored until they are ready to be mounted on their own pieces of the jigsaw, and at some stage in the future, when hopefully space is at less of a premium, I can build the basic layout carcass on which all of these jigsaw pieces can be mounted. As you can imagine, the CAD package is playing a big part in this, and the jigsaw pieces for the track have now been designed. Last night I accompanied my good friend David Barham (Fen End Pit) to the inner reaches of MakeSpace in Cambridge to subject the first piece of birch ply to the laser cutter, and I now have a set of parts for the first section of board, with more to follow. One of the advantages of doing it this way is that the positions of things such as baseboard joiners and bolts, turnout operating units and uncoupling magnets can be marked on the board, along with the track centrelines, and everything cut at once. There's also plenty of access holes around the structure to allow for wiring and soldering irons and the baseboard section (60mm deep) is shallow enough to make eventual mounting on the carcass quite straightforward, whilst still giving enough room for point motors and uncoupling magnets. The next stage is to put the first pieces together, and I'll report back on progress later, intermingled with further news from Obbekaer. Regards, Geraint

Nick, Can't quite see from the photo which point levers you've got, but I used Epoke Modell levers and lanterns on Obbekaer and they are well worth the finger-singeing fun of putting them together! Since I made the lanterns operational, they seem to be noticed a lot more by the public on the other side of the barrier, and they're actually helpful in confirming to the operators that the points have switched properly. I like the scrap load on the stake wagon - presumably home made? Regards, Geraint

I hinted in my last post that a new piece of rolling stock was due to hit the RGVJ rails, and in fact it made its public debut at the Rail 2016 exhibition in Houten near Utrecht last weekend. Some time back I noticed that Danish retailer Felderbanen had a few examples of the Heljan Triangel railcar (Litra ME) for sale at a reduced price, so I plucked up the courage to make an 'unseen' purchase, something I very rarely do. Out of the box, it seemed to have quite a bit of potential, but there were a number of issues to tackle, aside of course from its conversion to p87. The first of these was the rather poor way in which it had been assembled - presumably a Friday afternoon output from distant China - with some parts inadequately secured and others retained by oversized blobs of adhesive. I therefore stripped most of these off the body and chassis, and after tidying them up, replaced them one by one using superglue as an adhesive. The next stage was to fit the cowcatcher, which is a neat etching, but it comes without the very visible brackets up to the solebars. These were fabricated from brass sheet. The guard irons and crossbars were removed from the front, as the cowcatcher made them redundant, and new ones were fitted at the back. As far as the works were concerned, conversion involved fitting turned down 10.5mm disc wheels from Alan Gibson to the existing axles. The DCC chip was also removed, and the revised analogue wiring runs back to tagstrips in the toilet, from where leads feed to the motor. The final task was a complete repaint. Many of these railcars were turned out in varnished teak matchboarding, but I'm afraid to say that Heljan's rendition of this is pretty unconvincing. However, I've had even less success with it myself, so I found a colour photo of a similar railcar on the Horsens Vestbaner that was painted in a much darker red varnish. I used Humbrol 73 (a matt wine red), followed up with a coat of satin varnish, both applied with the airbrush. The chassis is sprayed with Railmatch Weathered Black. At the moment, M4 awaits numbers and crest before weathering is applied, but she is seen here on the layout during her first tour of duty. I also had the Litra D running in fully weathered state last weekend, as nr. 850 from Esbjerg shed and a regular performer on the Bramming - Ribe - Tonder line at the end of the 1950s. A final thought. The Houten show was notable for the number of SLR and tripod toting individuals who thought nothing of setting up camp in front of the layout and snapping away without any polite request for permission. The final photo shows my Danish colleague Anders Lehnsted coping manfully with such an invasion. We also had three organised photo sessions with magazines - all three during the public opening hours and one of which prevented us from running a proper show for the public for well over an hour! I like to think that we have a more balanced attitude to such things over here - or have we? Enjoy the photos. Regards, Geraint

Never let it be said that I'm a fundamentalist! Besides, it has too many unsavoury connotations these days. I must admit that the turning down of wheelsets was certainly a hit and miss affair for me at the start, especially for wheels with plastic centres. Any amount of heat generation through turning, even with the wheel mounted in a collet in a minidrill, could generate a degree of wobble when the wheel was mounted on an axle. Recently, I've found the best method is to rotate the wheel by hand on a piece of grit paper stuck to a flat piece of MDF or similar. It probably works because your fingers are far more reactive to the heat generated than the wheel is, so you know when to stop and take a breather! It takes some time to achieve the necessary final dimensions but it seems to work. Of course this approach is not advisable for steam locos, although it's perfectly acceptable for wagons, coaches and diesels. But to come back to your final question, I have recently fitted P4 profile wheels to a Heljan Triangel railcar, and initial tests on Obbekaer show that it works fine through crossings provided that you set the back to back correctly. However, I don't have any complex P&C formations, and a very simple track layout, so I can afford to spend time making sure that all the stock runs properly without derailment (he says with fingers crossed!). Don't take this as firm evidence that this will always work, but in this case it appears to have done so! I'll post some pictures of the finished article in due course, but there's some more work required in the paint shop beforehand. Regards, Geraint

Looking good Robin. Full circuit completed for next Christmas? All the best. Geraint

A quick reminder that we're appearing at the Wycrail show at High Wycombe on Saturday 7th November. Just finishing the weathering on the Litra D and adding the all-important loco crew, then we're ready to roll! Please drop by to say hello if you're at the show. Geraint