Barry Ten

Thanks all, I look forward to seeing how this one shapes up. The idea is to have a layout that can be slung in the back of the car with no trestles, etc,

and just set up on a table and operated from a seated position.

On 05/03/2021 at 07:43, Mikkel said:

 

 

Edit: To answer my own question - yes, of course, big time:

 

 

Background here: https://www.tcmrm.org/special-events/the-circus-moves-by-rail/

 

Ian Holmes kindly showed me around that museum while I was in the Twin Cities. I don't remember the circus scene but the big O gauge layout was very impressive.

51 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

 

Thanks Al, that's good news if Wills have gone over to  a more "workable" plastic. I wonder if that applies to the whole range, must try it out next time I'm putting in an order. 

I've tried a lot of the Wills sheets and all the ones I've bought in the last 10 years or so have been of the more workable plastic. 

18 minutes ago, wenlock said:

It's all looking very convincing Al  As Mikkel points out those sets look very effective, as does the gently curving track in the goods shed siding.

 

I'm also rather taken by the lever frame that appears in the bottom left corner of one of the pictures, is that the MSE one?

 

BW

 

Dave

Hi Dave

Many thanks - look forward to catching up again.

The lever frame is made from the DCC Concepts levers which are quite nice to use, if not 100% reliable.

5 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Yes, wonderful scenes.

 

The "sleepy" view with the track coming out of the goods shed is my favourite. The undulating (not ululating, that would be odd)  setts are very nicely captured, hadn't noticed that before. How were the setts made Al - I can't recall if you've explained that?

Hi Mikkel - thanks for the kind words.

The setts are just the Wills ones. I cut off the edges (I think they're meant to be drainage channels or something) and butt them together as well as I can. then I go

over the joins with filler and re-scribe where necessary. To get undulations, I bend the sheets gently with finger pressure. 

The original Will sheets (I don't know if this applied to the setts, but certainly the bricks and others) were made of a more brittle plastic that was hard to cut and didn't

take kindly to being bent! But they must have gone over to a softer plastic as I've found that the later packs are easily cut and bent with no danger of shattering or

snapping. In fact I use nothing more sophisticated than a pair of kitchen scissors to do the main cuts!

Where there are more obvious lines between the setts, in the pics above, are where sections are meant to lift out to enable the scenes to be swapped around. I just

have to live with those.

Just now, Mikkel said:

 

Did you solve it? I'm not good at finding the reason for tight spots, it takes me ages. I suppose it helps to be systematic about it.

Sort of. There was a point where the connecting rod on one side was touching the motion bracket, so i filed away a bit more clearance on the bracket (just a 

fraction of a mm) until I couldn't feel any resistance when free-wheeling the chassis. But there's still a bit of cyclic resistance at very low speeds, which can only

be due to the gearing, such as a slight non-concentricity in the driving gear. It disappears above a crawl so it's not really a problem, but more importantly, there's

nothing I can do about it except lubricate and run the model until it either goes away or doesn't! I think one can go down a rabbit hole of chasing these small

issues if one isn't careful; often the best approach is to put the model away for a month or two, and the next time you run the model you've not only forgotten

about any niggles but you don't notice them again!

It's five 7Fs if I include the limited edition Bachmann one in Prussian blue! But that one only gets to run as a treat, as it's out of period with all the rest (not to mention, in a fictitious livery!). You're right, though, in that the layout doesn't really need more than two at a time if I want to have a representative selection of other typical S&D locos as well.

More work on the DJH one last night, which I'll probably write up in a separate post. I swapped the reversing lever from left to right hand (big job), as well as re-stripping the chassis to finally get at that lingering tight spot. Now it's a case of adding some of the missing boiler detail.

In case anyone's still reading this, I'd be interested in thoughts on Dorchester in rebuilt condition. It was one of the batch built with 8 foot 6 inch cabs, which I presume meant it got a narrow tender. Photos of it in rebuilt condition, though, look like it has the 9 foot cut down tender. The only way I can tell the two apart, other than the slight difference in width relative to the cab and the tender, is that the narrower ones are slab-sided whereas the wider ones have a gentle curve. Hornby have modelled both types with two of mine being the wider type.

My own fault, really, Mikkel, for being over-hasty with the weathering. I'd only just tipped out the old dregs of brush cleaner and put some new stuff in the jar, so I'm guessing the brush was a lot more potent when it touched the tender.

On 04/11/2020 at 12:11, pbkloss said:

 

 

Postscript: I thought of two the things that are visually obvious: 1. The cab windows that were small and 'flat' on the original cabs, but they were changed very early on to the 'sloped' or angled variety 2. In a top view of the unrebuilds, originally the boiler had a cluster of three safety valves forward of the dome. Later, during the rebuilding period they were changed for two safety valves rear of the dome. There is a great top view of 34043 in Ivo Peter's 'The Somerset and Dorset in the 1950s - Volume 2 1955-59' photo 29 taken in July 1955 where the triple safety valve cluster really stands out, as well as the cut down tender, small lion & wheel centred on the tender side and the number on the same level - lower than the  unrebuilts with high tender sides. Unfortunately the lining can't be seen!

 

PS my rebuilt will be 34028 Eddystone, having seen it and photographed it so many times on the Swanange Railway ...

I guess you're talking about variations over time within a specific loco's history, but also maybe worth mentioning the difference in cab widths between the earlier and later batches, another pitfall. Blandford Forum had the wider cab so any renumbering has to fit in with that as well.

21 hours ago, railroadbill said:

Excellent stuff, some nice locos and the weathering works very well imho, I really like 75027.

 

Many years ago, in early 1980s actually, being an S&D fan, I renumbered a mainline class 4 to 75027,  lined it, added coal, sprung buffers etc. I went to great lengths to research what colour the loco had been when on the s&d, and in all the colour pics I found it appeared to be black. I saw the preserved loco on the Bluebell and it was green.   All the photos I had seen showed the loco in service so dirty that it looked black. So my model (that I've still got) represents the loco with early emblem as it originally was on the western region in black...

 

ps the old tractor hiding away behind the parapet is a good touch.

Thanks! I found a couple of pics of 75027 in green in one of the later colour volumes - something like "Sunset of the S&D" or somesuch. It's still mostly black, even so!

The tractor is an old white metal kit, one of the first I made - Langley I think.

Thank you, Quintus. Observations such as yours are like gold dust.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, my great grandfather was a porter at Blandford, and I was born a week after closure. Hence, the S&D is very much in my blood.

Thanks. Mikkel!

Yes, the lamps need some attention - they are Springside BR ones, which seem a little cruder than the SR ones fitted elsewhere, even though those

are undoubtedly out of scale as well. I've seen elsewhere the people are using more accurate lamps from the likes of ModelU, but I'm a fan of the

twinkling lens effect of the Springside ones.

Given that I want to rename/renumber one of my Blandford's, I'm zeroing in on 34102 Lapford or 34103 Calstock as likely candidates. If I've done my homework right, neither was rebuilt, both have 9 foot cabs and both can be run with the same cut-down tender that comes with 34107. 66 Squadron is also a possibility but it's the one BoB that didn't have the airfield badge.

1 hour ago, wenlock said:

Nice looking loco Al!  If that's a "Light Pacific" the heavy ones must have been enormous

Have they passed you the smelling salts yet, Dave, after you fainted at the sight of a loco built after 1908?

D'oh! I wasn't sure if there was an Irwell book, so I Googled "The Book of ... Bulleid Light Pacifics"! and nothing came up! Another one for the shopping list.

Yes, I had a suspicion it was going to turn into a minefield!

I've ordered a copy of The Power of the Bulleid Light Pacifics, which I hope will shed some more light on the matter.

Many thanks!

The one thing I'm particularly pleased about is that little glimpse down the gap between the goods store and the station building, which is great for watching trains roll in and out.

Look good to me! I'd be very pleased with that.

I'm getting Deja Vu now and wonder if you've pointed that out to me before, in some other thread.

Early references to rail travel are always interesting. In one of my CDs it mentions Mendelssohn working on the Hebrides overture between 1829 and 1834 and wanting to get the taste of "seagulls and train-oil" into the piece.

12 hours ago, Mikkel said:

 

Thanks Kit.  Well, Dickens got Herbert a bit wrong you see. Not nearly enough drama in his version! 

 

Dickens was a shareholder in the GWR, which seems out of sync somehow, but the railway existed for the last 38 37 years of his life. For those who haven't seen it, there was the wonderful matter of his christmas turkey: https://blog.railwaymuseum.org.uk/charles-dickens-missing-christmas-parcel/

 

 

 

I'd seen somewhere that Dickens had something of an aversion to railways after being involved in/witnessing a serious accident?

Not sure if this was mentioned earlier, but is the extension getting a light of its own, or will you just be relaying on ambient exhibition lighting for this bit? I'd imagine that it won't matter if the view through the bridge looks a bit dimmer than the main scene.

That's fantastic, Dave - it opens out the vista no end.

I can't wait to drive the passenger train even faster than normal!!!