PaulRhB

Testing each board as it’s built, Now trees are sold but they are only about 20ft tall so I had these for an old G scale project and they work out about 50ft tall. So I’m experimenting with covering the rubber g scale moulded leaves with more 7mm ish ones Initial test is promising so I think I’ll do one fully to see.

No, I found the JCB inedible too . .

I made up a jig using an end profile with a short length of track for aligning the ends. The mdf insert helps align a short straight to avoid kinks at the joins hopefully. I also made a sleeper spacing jig from a strip of soft brass that can be bent to follow the centre line. Every fourth sleeper is copperclad soldered for strength and durability as it’s portable. Copied from Dave Taylor’s Bridport but slightly less refined 😆

They all look great Tom, I’m not sure I could bring myself to ask for that weathering to a blue A4 regardless of accuracy, only in dark green days 😆 It comes from being overawed by Mallard looking so clean back in 88. The green A1’s and Sliver Link would be exactly what I’d want, majestic but hard working.

Well it’s about time I brought this up to speed 😁 Platforms went in made from 9mm ply based on drawings in ‘Measured & Drawn’ They are underwidth as the engineering brick platform edging needed to go on. Option one is plastic L strip that I will engrave the stones into with a multi pin scribing jig.

Oh yes, we were on a heavily loaded 8 coach train with 222 doing the standing start, absolutely fabulous!

Nice to see the original in fine fettle, when we were last there the heritage train came up the Brocken with one of the later build and our service train had 222 on the front. I was delighted 😁 The bug causing the firs dying is devastating that view 😔 I guess part two is the afternoon run to Hasselfelde & Eisfelder Talmühle, we had 7235, left Eisfelder half an hour late due to a fire delaying the Nordhausen train, arrived on time at Quedlinburg after some ‘spirited’ running 😝 https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/79954-hsb-in-the-süd-harz-hom-calne-april-2024/?do=findComment&comment=3304617

Hugh heads for the NEC . . .

Alonso got caught out using old tricks, his comment he was focused ahead not behind is rubbish, he knew exactly where George was and misjudged the unsettle him tactic.

Well that was interesting at last 😀

The endless debate as to loose or fly shunting

Unfortunately not as I’m at the Calne show.

Picked up my power cars today and they look very nice, Won’t be the first time, we had APT coaches months before the sets to draw them! They’ve managed to get the executive set out only a week or so apart, let’s hope the APT debacle isn’t repeated.

Knowing you will get it if there is a rush, barring shops shutting down, containers washing away etc

I run late era L&B in 009 and Southern I’ll be running all three eras in 7mm at NGsouth on 27th April And you’ve got to admit the L&B coaches with SR locos looks very good together. I guess it’s the fact that the big SOUTHERN lettering just really suits the locos. So I think you need to get to more shows 😆

0-6(2)-0 ? 😗

That is unfortunate but most shops have caveat in the small print that if the price changes they will give you the opportunity to cancel so none are guaranteed. My APT pre order with Hattons was cancelled when Hornby dumped them in tier 4 and cancelled their orders. Hattons never told me and replied to an email that they would send me a letter as I didn’t subscribe to the newsletter to find out. They didn’t bother to do that either, so I ended up having to order direct from Hornby at a higher pre order price as everyone else was sold out. Then Hornby raised the price to everyone else so I paid the same in the end. So raising the prices happens over short timescales too and is actually pretty common, I can think of three models where prices rose but I still bought it as I wanted the model. As with the 66 at least sometimes they add extra features and it’s still significantly less than Heljan’s new releases but looks to be going to be inline with the sale prices they go for. I’d love to have it sat at the head of my CDA rake but I’d rather it was as close to right as possible than sitting there niggling me with errors and then the irritation that it was retooled and corrected in the second release. We’ve waited 3-4 years for several locos from Bachmann, Heljan and Hornby too and like the APT they then sometimes release the first edition with a host of faults, capacitors, couplings, no second powered car for one set and suppressors that blew holes in the roof! Do we really want that to catch on? Yeah it’s a little irritating but patience is in short supply everywhere these days and if you really want an O gauge 66 where else are you going to get one in the next 5-10 years?

Here’s the photo of someone’s module at a Freemo US meet. I’m sure he said they were done with dowels painted with tree bark mix from Greenscene or similar, then cut and a few scraped to reveal the inner wood.

I painted an original Hornby HST white with a red nose where the yellow goes and the ComicRelief face on each side . . . NG HST Banana . . Magic

To be fair lack of communication yes but that’s nothing new as their policy is to only update when there is another stage complete. Their customer service on produced models has actually been rather good the couple of times I’ve had to use it. Because a lot of us pointed out errors when the EP was in the cabinet at shows. A couple of guys who drive them were having a detailed conversation with them on the stand at Warley. They made errors and are correcting them. Other locos like some of the earlier Heljan ones came out with the faults and we end up waiting to see if they will correct it. In its full context Which is the only other option I know of to the rtr one proposed. I get it’s frustrating waiting but there is another option, it’s dated, or scratchbuild.

Very glad the decision was taken to do it again rather than release a model we’d have been asking for a retool of and probably waited 3-5 years! No doubt those who’ve cancelled either didn’t really want one or built one from the old RJH kit? As there’s no othe rtr option if you want one for a layout then it’s really the only option apart from some serious reworking of the metal kit.

Yes there are horror stories but blown out of proportion in many cases by rants 😉 Oh I understand the frustration, I had a loco emit smoke that killed its decoder (it was replaced), two that just refused to go and required the decoder resetting to come alive and a few times they’ve had no sound until taken off and put back on a few seconds later. But then again I’ve had motors die in minutes on DC locos (Bachmann), locos requiring multiple mods to run without self destruction as an ever present risk (Heljan), motors that ran so noisily they were only tamed by a DCC decoder (Hornby) and locos that arrived with their internals hanging out (Dapol). DCC adds an extra bit to fail and as it is effectively a mini computer sometimes it needs switching off and on again, that was also true of the full size 66’s in the early 2000’s, so much so that it became a known thing amongst the Signallers to ask drivers if they’d tried it! 😆 As I said before the biggest issue I find is poorly written or non existent info on setup and fault finding, that’s not particularly surprising in small manufacturers as the ones making it are so familiar with the tech that it doesn’t occur to them that others aren’t and often struggle to explain it in simple terms. My father and brother are both electrical engineers and are befuddled by the concept that I have no understanding of electronics yet you’d definitely want me to wire your layout over them as I get electrics and I can solder and organise wiring looms far better because I expect and want fault tracing to be simple. They wired an incredibly complex relay bank that controlled automatic sections on our garden railway in just two colours! I have learnt the few basics and wrote them down as I find where it is in different manufacturers systems, failing that I ask here and I enjoy it 99% of the time. The other 1% I feel like defenestrating the loco or software designer 😉

These from Goodwood are a ‘woody’ stem of something not sure what exactly. I have seen it done with 3mm dowels coated in a textured bark then cut too.