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Penrhos1920

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  1. Penrhos1920
    Today Dave and I have made a massive leap forward. Over the last few months I have first cleared loads of rubbish out of the garage and have then been making five fiddle yard boards with help form Dave and Rob. Today Fiona has helped Dave and myself completely clean the garage of 100 years of spiders, cobwebs and general dirt. We virtually emptied the last remaining items and have put up the new multi-purpose fiddle yard that will serve 3 layouts:
     
    26'6 long for Awrhyllgwami Quarry and Penrhos (ADR)
    36' long for Picton (2 extra 5'6 boards are required)
     

     

     
    In a couple of weeks time the doors and windows will be replaced with 21st century double glazing and the main door with a well insulated water tight door.
  2. Penrhos1920
    I just received two packets from DCC concepts, via Bromsgrove Models. The first is a sample pack of their FlickerFree lights and the second a packet of 6 working guards van lamps, in 4mm. After a little messing around with resistor values to get the reds the same brightness as a normal 1.8mm LED this is what I've achieved today:
     

     

     
    The white lights stay on for about 10 minutes after removing the track power and the reds are still on over an hour later.
     
    Phosphor bronze pickups are used to charge the FlickerFree unit from the track:
     

  3. Penrhos1920
    2 sheds where delivered and erected in August and ever since then I've been trying to fill then with stuff from the garage so that the garage can become a layout room. On Wednesday the tool shed was almost finally filled with the garden tools. Today I've almost finished fitting 5 old kitchen cupboards and a worktop into the large shed, just 2 more shelves to go on the wall and them it will be ready to use. The only problem I can see it that it is a 1/4 of the size of the garage....
  4. Penrhos1920
    A second brake van with lamps at the veranda end. This has been a lot harder as there is so little space on the veranda to get my finger into to position the led. Its' not working yet because I need another flicker free unit.
     

     
    I also need to touch up the damaged paint and weathering.
  5. Penrhos1920
    Since my last blog entry it has been one step forward and 3 backwards on several occasions. But now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel - or is it a headlamp of an oncoming train?
     
    The double glazing was installing in the garage on budget and schedule. But the roof, wood burner and main door were not. I couldn't find a roofer who would touch the roof for less than £2000; all I wanted was the ridge re-pointed and about a quarter of the eaves tiles replaced. I couldn't find a water proof garage door that would fit in the current opening without taking up too much layout space inside, and could I find a wood burner installer who would do the job for sensible money?
     
    So for the main door I've added 2"x2"s either side to fill the big gaps and used that wonderful spray foam to fill the small cracks that were left. For the roof I have slid in plastic support trays for roof under lay from Screwfix instead of the missing eaves tiles and added more spray foam to stop the drafts. I also spent yesterday morning sitting on the ridge, chipping out the loose mortar and re-pointing it - I now have a very sore bottom. Fortunately my wife found a wood burner installer who not only gave us a good quote, but fitted it only 8 days later. Plus it was £700 cheaper than the cheapest quote and it did not cost £75 to get them to come and quote!!
     
    So the garage is now in a state where we can work in it whatever the weather and the layout stays dry, mostly dust free and no spiders yet.
     
    Similarly it has been much the same with the layout. Back in October and November we though we were going great guns. Track was being laid in the fiddle yard, the viaduct board arrived from Rob's and we connected up and we thought we were on schedule for a show this April, even though the scenery would not be complete. Then it got cold (actually it was very cold in the garage) and we had a couple of disastrous modelling sessions. Track was laid, but the glue was forgotten; track was glued in place; but the wrong place; point motors were fitted and working; but stopped working the next session; and so it went on. We pulled out of the show with almost 5 months notice and put everything on hold until last weekend.
     
    March 17th. We decided that the top priority was to lay 2 tracks all around and get them running. To do that the last but one corner baseboard was needed; the last baseboard on has sidings and sits inside the oval. So we got everything ready to build it in place and what do we find? We are only 12mm out on the level. The rest of the day was spent working out what was level and what wasn't. It turned out that we need to rebuild the right hand end of the viaduct board. At least we would be able to get everything ready to start the final board next weekend.
     
    March 24th. We finished off the viaduct board rebuild and reset the whole scenic side as it had been moved to allow access for the wood burner installation. What do we find? Again we are out by 11mm. The laser level shows that it was all along the fiddle yard which was level last week and hadn't been touched since. So the fiddle yard was re-leveled and everything double checked and finally the gap for the last baseboard is level.
     

    Double glazing, no holes in the roof, viaduct board rebuilt. Tracking laying here we come.....
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