eldavo

Good stuff Tony. One of my least favourite jobs. Never seem to get the pipe runs quite right. Cheers Dave

After further doodling and fiddling I came up with another version of the previous plan. To resolve the problem of having the goods facilities within reach of the operators I've switched the loco facilities and goods facilities round. This doesn't greatly change the shape of the overall plan but makes it workable. Still pondering whether this is the one to go for. If it hadn't been for the lockdown and the fact that I can't get 8x4 sheets of birch ply I would probably be slaughtering timber by now. A pause is probably a good thing. Anyway I have been getting distracted attempting to clear stuff off my workbench... The saint has been built from a Slaters kit and has been waiting for transfers and finishing touches for at least 3 years. The Heljan Deltic has been waiting for a buffer to be replaced and some weathering for a similar amount of time. It's still waiting. The class 66 has literally been on my workbench for 11 years! It's a pretty awful kit and I slung it in it's box in frustration and thats where it stayed under a ton of other stuff. It would have been thrown in the bin but I'm just plain stubborn so with the help of my 3D printer and a lot of bodging it's getting close to finished. None of these has anything to do with the Midland project but you know how it goes.

The itch of building an 0 gauge layout has been there for over 10 years since I built a workshop at the end of the garden. The building is 7.2x4.2 metres overall which gives me a floor space of approximately 23ftx13ft (just to mix up the units of measurement). The idea was that, at a pinch, I could get a small 0 gauge layout or a complete circle test track in the space. Assuming a minimum radius of 6ft. As with my other layouts, if I was going to build something in 0 gauge it would have to be exhibitable. Further, it would have to be visually appealing and fun to operate. Along the way I acquired a part-built 0 gauge layout. In fact I'm the 3rd owner of this, it having been started by our club chairman then passed on to another member and thence to me. It has an interesting track plan that I have been trying to reuse for a long time without finding a fully credible set up. A more serious problem was the baseboards. These were originally "substantial" in that they used pretty thick plywood frames and a very thick MDF top surface and so were heavy to say the least. Also they have been modified several times and could not be used for a mobile layout as they are. Back to square one then. I toyed with the idea of some sort of roundy roundy set up but even with pretty good space I have couldn't see how I could get an interesting track plan in. Another option was to build a small branchline terminus set-up. There's enough space assuming fairly short trains. The Midland didn't seem to have too many of these to choose from so I couldn't find anything that attracted me. Thinking on the 0 gauge layout then stalled for some time while I was distracted with other projects, primarily the clubs 00 gauge layout. All the time though I was building odd locos and stock and my target had become creating enough stock to allow a full Midland running session on the Winchester club layout Abbotstone. I've pretty much met that target and with the lockdown preventing me from doing anything on the club layouts, my mind came back to starting another layout. Many hours have been spent perusing the disused stations website and exploring OS maps via the National Library of Scotland. This is where I came across Buxton Midland, a really interesting track layout in a confined space. http://disused-stations.org.uk/b/buxton/index.shtml No way I could fit it all in in the space I have but it's certainly given me some inspiration. I think I can create a U shaped layout, station to fiddleyard, where I can assemble most of it in my workshop. For exhibition use there would be extra bits that can't be fitted in the workshop but they shouldn't be critical. My first jottings in Trax (can't get my head round Templot) are shown below... This is 24ft long and the lefthand 4ft by 2ft6" board is mostly station building and would not be required when at home. There is a goods shed and sizeable loco shed. Fair bit of interest and it retains the awkward operational aspects of Buxton. Operation would be from the bottom edge on the plan i.e. inside the U but that is where problems start to occur. The goods yard is on the furthest point from the operators so how the heck would I deal with uncoupling. More thought needed. I did print this out to see whether it really could be fitted in my shed. It did! There would be another 3ft or so of platform extending out of the door in this photo.

This will be the last of the rollingstock background posts (I think!). Some considerable time ago I acquired a Johnson class 1 0-4-4 tank loco, again from eBay. This one is another beautifully built Slaters kit but it was finished in early LMS lined black livery and had auto train gear. This put me in a quandry firstly because the black livery was beautifully applied and I hated the idea of stripping it off and secondly as I wasn't aware of any of these locos being auto fitted during the Midland era. I couldn't find any mention of them being fitted in any of my books on locos. Perchance I was looking through my tomes on coaching stock for background info on the Slaters arc roof bogey coaches and came across a photo of 1257 sandwiched between a pair of converted Clayton arc roof coaches. Whoopee I wouldn't have to remove the auto train gear. It still took me a while and some practice of painting and lining other locos before I summoned up the courage to strip the paint from the loco but eventually it went into the grit blaster cabinet and there was no going back. Having seen the pictures of the auto train though I just had to try and reproduce it. A Slaters kit for a Clayton arc roof brake compo came up on eBay and my mind turned to kit bashing. With some luck and a following wind I was able to knock out a reasonable representation of one of the auto fitted coaches. The kit had etched brass bogeys which are a detailed representation but are a pain in the whassaname to build. I built a pair for another coach but this time gave up on them and used my own 3D prints. 3 parts stuck together with super glue in 5 minutes flat, job done. I've been working on the other coach for the set but it's not in a fit state to be seen in public yet. The Midland had loads of non-passenger carrying 4 wheel stock so having had some success in producing goods stock with my 3D printer this seemed like a logical step. Digging through the books I chanced on details of a meat van that was painted in fully lined passenger livery as well as a very similar, if not rather obscure, corpse van. Some tinkering in my favourite CAD program and a few iterations of printing and these two arrived... They are far from perfect but from 3 feet they don't look too bad. Wheels, couplings, handrails and vacuum pipes are the only non-printed parts. I'm running out of Rover Damask red paint now so I might have to think about building a layout even though there is still a compound, well tank, 4F and a 1P tank still in my kit stash.

As well as trying to create a silk purse out of a sows ear (on numerous occasions) with stuff from my scrap pile I have also acquired a few things from various places along the way. The two 4-4-0s pictured below being a case in point. Both were bought from secondhand dealers at different shows. Of course neither are perfect! The class 2 (2P to the LMS and BR folks) No.378 is a nicely built kit though I'm not quite sure whose. It was purchased from a guy who had built it for someone as a display model but had then subsequently bought it back, fitted it with Slaters wheels and a motor and gearbox. A good price was negotiated and it came home with me. On close examination and testing all seemed to be well but the pick-ups weren't too clever and it ran a bit slowly. Extra pick-ups were fitted to the tender which sorted one issue but it was still sluggish. I stripped it down and removed the motor and gearbox and found the gear meshing was poor and the gears themselves had worn badly with just a little use. New gearbox ordered and fitted and away she went sweet as a nut. The compound 1005 was another find at a show and I was doomed to buy it from first sight. I just love Midland compounds. When I came to test it with a decent load on I found it couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding. Further examination and it was obvious that it was sitting to high at the front. Oh dear. Here we go again. It was stripped down and is actually a rather nicely made example of the Slaters kit, but... Someone in their infinite wisdom had decided to take out the springing on the driver axles and solder the axleboxes solid in the frames, badly. Out with the 100watt soldering iron and the axleboxes were removed cleaned up and the suspension reinstated. The mounting of the front bogey was adjusted and now she sits properley on the track and though not the greatest of pullers at least works OK. I've also added tender pick-ups to this one and will give her further attention in due course. Not all the engines in my fleet are red as the period I'm modelling is immediately pre Great war, 1913-14 when most freight engines were black. I have a quartet of goods haulers... The two class 1 goods tanks at the back of the pic were both eBay acquisitions and are very different. 1786, the open cab version, came to me in plain black with no motor and unnumbered. It's a beautifully built loco from an unknown brass kit. I stripped it down, fitted a Portescap RG7, numbered it, detail painted, added crew and coal etc. then light weathering. It's a great little loco. 1730 is a resin body kit and arrived painted and finished in BR condition. Well actually not truly BR condition as it represented a preserved example which had a non-standard open cab with and extra bit added to make it a full cab. It didn't represent anything that ran in Midland days. After much browsing of books and studying photos the cab openings were reshaped and a number of details were added to the rather basic model before it was repainted and numbered. It's not bad, runs well but won't win any prizes. It was cheap! 1943 is a Mercian kit with the older chassis design built pretty much as intended. Nice and straightforward providing me with a class 3 goods engine. 3076 is one of the ubiquitous class 2 goods engines built from a Shedmaster kit. Lots of nice detail castings but probably not the easiest of kits to build. This one came out of the crates of stuff and just to add interest it's former owner had ordered up the bits make a large wheel version rather than the version the kit was intended for. As I'm always up for a challenge that's the way I built it. It has a 3D printed smokebox door as I only had a Johnson pattern one.

People tend to associate the Midland with clerestory coaches but when you read up on the subject, in the tomes written by those that know, in fact the majority of the coaching stock was of the arc roof kind, Slaters do a number of kits for 6 wheeled and bogey arc roof coaches so it was inevitable that a few kits would land on my workbench. In the pic below the two coaches at the rear are bog standard Slaters kits though the transfers are home made. I have a few more 6 wheelers I've acquired over time that are waiting for attention in the paint shop. The more interesting, and more challenging, example is the longer bogey coach at the front. This is a Bain period suburban. Mr. Bain obviously thought the quickest way to boost passenger carrying capacity was basically to rehash the earlier Clayton arc roof design just making a longer version. The origins of this coach are my stack of brass etches. I found 4 sets of etches for the bodies and interiors of these Bain coaches in the stash. The chap who had amassed all this stuff was a fairly prolific modeller working not just on railway models but also model boats and submarines. He worked in the aircraft industry and clearly knew a thing or two. The etches carried his name. As always I was convinced that as these were nice shiny new etches assembly would be easy. Yeah right! Halfway through after I had found that assembling the multiple layers of the sides was a tad tricky and that the interiors were too narrow it dawned on me that these were probably prototypes that had either been discarded as needing rework or that nobody had ever attempted to build. I wasn't about to let a little thing like that stop me. The underframe was built up from bits of PC models etches that I had previoulsy used for the 54ft clerestory coaches, the interior, roof, roof vents, gas lamp tops and bogeys were all 3D printed. It's a bit rough and ready and I haven't yet plucked up the courage to tackle the other three coaches to make up a rake. As you may have noticed there is a bit of a theme to my rollingstock building. Acquiring stuff cheaply does not mean assembly will be straightforward. I haven't learned! The pic below is of a 6 wheel clerestory full brake. Slaters do a nice kit for this and in fact the underframe of this coach is from Slaters. As part of the big stash I acquired several Slaters coach kit boxes full of bits for 6 wheelers. I started building what I though was a 6 wheel 3rd class clerestory. I managed to get it built and started painting it but when I looked at prototype pictures realised it had the wrong pattern of windows. I had managed to build a clerestory coach using a pair of arc roof sides. Argh!!!! I wondered why the interior partitions seemed a bit narrow. Doh! It was duly taken apart and I went rummaging in my piles of stuff again and came up with a pair of full brake clerestory sides. These don't look to be Slaters in origin but were persuaded to fit on the Slaters underframe with Slaters ends and roof. It doesn't look too bad.

No sign of a brass kit here. A while back, four years ago in fact, one of my Winchester Modellers buddies and I were commisioned by Ian Allen to produce a book on 3D printing and laser cutting. We needed examples for the book so an 0 gauage wagon seemed a reasonable challenge. Would have been rude not to pick a Midland Railway prototype. I only had a fairly basic 3D printer at the time so the results weren't stupendous by the standards of 2020. The wagon was built from a kit of printed parts. The only parts not printed were the wheels, buffer heads and couplings. Here's a cruel close up of a pair of wagons. Highlights the fact that I need to practice my lettering! I got distracted by other things after these so didn't push on to build more wagons until more recently. I acquired a whitemetal kit for a bunker coal wagon from another member who was selling up and then picked up the Furness models variant from eBay. These were both assembled and though a bit crude (normal whitemetal spawn of the devil stuff) turned out OK. I had also acquired another 3D printer that used photosensitive resin so thought I would experiment and lo and behold two more bunker coal wagons appeared. I think(!) the printed versions are the front two in the photo, the original kit is at the rear with the Furness models version 3rd back. Can't think why I would need bunker coal wagons but there they are.

The first loco to emerge from the pile of bits was a Johnson single. I had several complete kits but for some reason finding a pair of large driving wheels and a part-built running plate led me to believe this would be a good project. Pretty strange given I've never really been a fan of these locos. This was another challenging build as again there were bits missing that had to be scratch built or 3D printed. The kit wasn't overly clever either but that's not unusual. Here she is still in pristine condition as I haven't got round to weathering anything yet. The original kit seems have expected the chassis to be built rigid but this one is compensated. Of course I didn't have any instructions for the kit so who knows how it should really have been built. It's built with Deeley modifications but I only had Johnson fittings so things like the smokebox door are 3D printed. The boiler was cut and rolled from plain brass sheet as I didn't seem to have that part. What did I find in another box just after I'd finished building? The driver is actually a representation of me. A 3D model was created using photogrammetry then printed on my Wanhao D7 printer.

Sometime later I started digging into the pile of stuff for things to build. Obviously with a large number of Midland loco kits to build the first thing I tackled was a Merchant Navy! Actually mad as it sounds this was to add to the roster of BR(S) locos that we sometimes use when exhibiting the Winchester Railway Modellers Abbotstone layout. Eventually though my eyes turned to the Midland stuff. Looking at the bits and pieces of coaching stock there were a number of part built Bain 54ft clerestory coaches that looked as though they could be completed reasonably easily. Of course that was far from the case. After looking at them it became obvious they had not been assembed well and also had taken knocks along the way. Fortunately a dig in the pile of etches revealed several sets of bits for the same coaches so I decided to build one from scratch. That was the start of the problems... The etches appeared to be from PC Models and I had sides, ends and underframes but no bogeys, interiors or roofs and only a few of the required cast bits. Good job I had a 3D printer as all the missing bits were created using it. The build was challenging to say the least but I seemed to have built 3 (so far). Of course I had to learn how to use a bow pen along the way. Can't model pre-grouping if you aren't prepared to tackle the lining!

Scarily it is 10 years since I embarked on a new layout for myself. I have been heavily involved in the building of the Winchester Railway Modellers layout Redbridge Wharf but maybe it's time to start a new project. I've had a desire to build a pre-grouping layout based on the Midland Railway for quite a while, in fact since I saw a couple of top-notch layouts in the Railway Modeller in the early 70s. I've built a couple of layouts in 4mm (00) over the years and the last layout, Waton, was N gauge simply because I'd never played with that scale. When I joined the Winchester Modellers there was an active 0 gauge group and they started to brainwash me and it wasn't long before I was building loco kits and coaches though mainly in BR(S). One day though a poorly built and basically falling apart 0 gauge Midland Railway brake van came up on ebay at a silly price and it had to be purchased. It was taken apart and rebuilt, including adding the missing roof, and painted up. The rot had set in... Not much happened for a couple of years then I had the opportunity to buy a large collection of 0 gauge stuff from the estate of a deceased modeller. There was a lot of stuff! I ebayed something like half the inventory of kits as they weren't relevant to my modelling interests, odd GWR and LNER stuff, which left me with a pile of part built or unstarted kits for Midland locos and coaches. The die was cast. Lo and behold 3 weeks later my old mate PhilH turned up on the drive having also bought some stuff from the same estate and handed over two large piles of coach etches that I had apparently "forgotten". In the pic below there is small selection of the etches plus 4 part-built clerestory coaches, a part built Slaters Midland Compound (yum) and 1 or 2 part-built class 1 0-4-4 tanks. This is the tip of the iceberg and there are boxes, correction crates, full of loco detailing bits and track components.

If you really want to get pedantic you don't sign the act nor do you sign an agreement. What you sign is a bit of paper saying you have seen a copy of the act. All UK citizens come under the auspices of the act whether they have "signed" or not. At least this is how it was explained to me over 45 years ago when I may or may not have signed something. ;-) Hope all are surviving this lockdown with a modicum of sanity. I've actually nearly completed a couple of projects that have been sat on my workbench for a while. One for about 5 years and another for a rather scary 11 years! Both run on parallel bits of metal. Stay safe. Cheers Dave

As a member of the Winchester Railway Modellers on occasions I get asked for help or suggestions for other members projects. The most recent came from our chairman who is building an OO gauge GWR layout and wants to build a route indicator box for a signal. Of course as he is a bit of signalling enthusiast and the layout would be controlled via mechanically interlocked lever frame the route indicator would have to work. He sent me a rough sketch with some dimensions based on a standard GWR pattern box with the question "any chance you could 3D print one of these?". The whole indicator box will be about 10x9x4 millimetres and it needs to have 3 working indicator boards that slide up in to view as required. I have a Wanhao duplicator 7 resin printer so it sounds as though it should be possible. I knocked something together using my favourite CAD program, Designspark Mechanical, and attempted to print the complete box a a single entity. It came out OK but I couldn't successfully clean out the uncured/semi-cured resin from the slots where the indicator boards were meant to slide. Back to the drawing board then... Mark II was created from a kit of parts, a rear panel, a couple of dividers and a front panel. Here's the parts as they came from the printer. They are about 0.7mm thick at their thinnest and were printed directly on the print bed.. You can clearly see there is a ridge around the edge, rather like flash on a plastic moulding, which is caused by the first few layers being fired longer than the rest to bond the model to the build plate of the printer. A couple of gentle passes with a small file easily removed the ridge but these parts a pretty delicate! The pieces were bonded together as a sandwich with super glue (cynoacrylate). I simply positioned the pieces the put a few spots of very thin blue along the outside edges. Capillary attraction was enough to draw the blue into the joins. I then cleaned the assembly a bit more with a file then set about roughing out an indicator board to test it. A bit of work with some thin brass, a piercing saw and a file and something good enough for testing was obtained. The pics below show the completed prototype. A kit of parts will be posted off to Mr. Chairman for him to build the final model, mount it on a Dapol signal and figure out how to drive it with 3 servos! Cheers Dave

I have had good results on an 00 turntable using a slotted optical sensor detecting brass wire pins mounted on a disc. Something along the lines of this http://www.vishay.com/optical-sensors/list/product-81147/ I used a microprocessor to control the various movements but simpler methods are available. Cheers Dave

I seem to recall some years ago we had one at MVEE with the turret removed and fitted with a V8 lump from a Buick. The thing was tuned up somewhat and would out accelerate the test engineers car. No doubt caused a few second glances as it travelled faster on the test track than the cars on the M3 that ran parallel! Cheers Dave

The Winchester Railway modellers used Trylon Modelfoam on their Redbridge Wharf layout. Not cheap but a range of sizes and thicknesses. https://www.trylon.co.uk/design-and-technology/modelfoam/modelfoam/ Cheers Dave

Surely if you had OCD you would have made sure the shunter marshalled the train with the fitted stock at the head! ;-) Certainly a very smooth take off for a small loco. Cheers Dave

Redbridge recently had another outing to a local show at Romsey. This was the first time we have had all the elements of the layouts presentation in place with backscene, lighting, curtain and information panels. There's a lot of green! Late on Sunday afternoon there were some interesting light effects due to sunlight (haven't seen that for ages) streaming through the windows. A view from the river Test towards Southampton... Seems to be a fair bit of activity on the wharf and around the creosote treatment plant... That Clyde Puffer must have taken a wrong turn somewhere! Cheers Dave

Whoa! Go easy with the flames buddy. You just need hot air (slightly warmer than that which is most prevalent on RMweb). I will happily have a look if you want components replaced as I have fiddled with these nasty little LED things in the past for N gauge tail lights and the like. Cheers Dave

Generally using a soldering iron on surface mount components is the hard way of doing things. Solder paste and a hot air gun is much easier. I use my old Black and Decker paint stripping gun! Cheers Dave

Now we're cooking on gas! Cheers Dave

Google suggests the number you quote is the model number. That would make it of around 2000 vintage and unfortunately not worth a great deal. :-( cheers Dave (a bit of a Seikofile)

No wonder we've got storms. Just surprised it isn't snow! Well done big G is great too see the trains running. Cheers Dave

If the printer missed a page how did "This page intentionally left blank" get printed on it? ;-) Certainly in the world of IBM pages were left blank so that manuals could be put together in sections in 3-hole ring binders and later updated (all too frequently). Cheers Dave formerly of the blue suit

Given you largely use the machine for templot tinkering and not for your general browsing or email and it sits behind a firewall in your router the chances of a hack have to be miniscule. Just keep using it. I'm still getting security patches for win 7 on my machine and have no intention of upgrading as it would require replacing the machine. Heck, I'm still running a machine on Windows XP! Cheers Dave