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Will Vale

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  1. Will Vale
    I've been working on the assumption that I'd be able to use static grass with my electric tea-strainer and get through the scenery on Whitemarsh quite quickly. So I did some tests and ended up doing something almost completely different with the same materials.
     

     
     
    Possibly because this is 4mm scale using 6mm Noch grass fibres, the electric tea-strainer didn't do too well - see the right-hand patch here:
     

     
     
    I needed to use neat PVA to get the fibres to stick, and they weren't all that static or standy-uppy. When I used it a couple of years ago with 2mm Woodland Scenics fibres it was much better. So I was a bit disappointed and worried that I didn't have a back-up plan. Then I remembered this awesome video from Rick Reimer I'd seen a couple of weeks ago on another forum:
     

     
     
    I have a can of Super 77, so I sprayed a test patch and had a go. It's the left-hand one in the image above. Much more standy-uppy, but less coverage, more like tussocks and weeds than tall grass. But for Whitemoor/Whitemarsh this might be OK, there isn't really lush grass. It's easy (especially with the small scale short grass) to end up crushing the bits you've just stuck down, and you also need some sprinkly stuff to scatter over any remaining glue. It looks really good in profile, it's just that you can see the bald patches from above.
     
    I had another go which went even better (ignore the bright green tussock which is from a Mininatur sheet)
     

     
     
    What I didn't think it'd work for is the drain banks, which need to be ultra-lush, so I thought I'd try combining this at the top, with use of grass mats (Noch again) at the bottom, torn up into little bits as seen in a CM article on Vinkeveen, one of my all time favourite layouts. This is what you can see below, and in the header image. I started with a layer of PVA glue and some fine sieved crushed earth, gravel, and some Woodland Scenics ground foam. Then spray glue and hairy cigars at the top, and a jigsaw of the Noch grass mats at the bottom.
     

     
     
    It's not perfect - I think cutting the mats with scissors would make it look less tussocky, and you can see rather too much where the different materials start and finish, but I think it's going in the right direction. I'm now doing a larger patch of grass at the rear-right of the layout in the same way to see how that comes out. I'm going to try using PVA for the mats on that one as well - here they're stuck with the same Super 77 which doesn't really give enough working time.
  2. Will Vale
    At long last I've found the ballast I wanted and have started preparing the track surrounds - sorting out levels, etc.
     

     
    I've also started doing the around-track detailing - orange pipes and cable troughs are this year's GWR branchline if you like modern image stuff, but they look so good
     
    The orange pipe is leftover from my layout wire, with the conductors (mostly) stripped out and the end opened out slightly with a knife-point. It seems to be the right size, I think the Peco sleeper spacing makes it look too wide, but ballasting will hide some of this anyway. This pipe is carrying the entire wiring run across to the far side of the track since the trough ends on this side.
    The trough parts started off as a big pile of Evergreen strip, 1/8th" square. Most of it is closed and uses the cheaper square section, the open parts use H section beams. These are only half-depth, but they're a much better option than the Evergreen U-section, which is far too shallow. I suspect that when properly painted, buried in ballast, with some cables and things added, it's not going to be too noticeable. For the end piece I've cut the web of the H back a bit so the opening will appear to be full-size. Cutting up the pieces into 14mm lengths (should be 13mm but I scaled at 1:72 by mistake ) made for pleasant busy-work in front of the TV.
     

     
    It's laid with the ubiquitous PVA, along a ruled line which I haven't been too careful to follow. I thought I was going to fit lids to each piece afterwards, but the H sits a bit lower anyway, so I decided not to bother. Paint is a splash of one of the Games Workshop foundation paints (Dheneb Stone - presumably they were unable to trademark Deneb...) which is a nice concrete colour - it needs touching up, weathering and detailing with cables and things still. I'm not yet sure how much of this to do before ballasting, and how much to do after, but at least ballasting is getting closer now!
     
    Thanks to Merfyn and Jim S-W for dimensions and other tips for the troughs!
     
    The other thing I did recently was ballast a couple of inches of track to check colours. This is Hornby's fine light tan, which is sort of greenish-grey to my eyes. I coloured a portion of it with MIG beach sand to warm the colour up and provide some variety, and fixed it with clear. The final ballast is likely to be a mix of light tan and tan, possibly with some light grey added as well. The Whitemoor ballast was a pale grey when new, as far as I can make out, but I think in the model it should be a bit warmer and less consistent.
     

     
    The test piece is in-situ on the layout - although I did a test card first. It's fixed with Klear, which makes the job a lot quicker and easier, and is kind to the colours as you can see from the unfixed ballast lying around on the baseboard. I'm not sure about the sleeper colour yet - the base coat is Tamiya Red-Brown, I'm not sure whether to weather (haha ) it before ballasting, or after - it needs to end up a lot greyer than it is at the moment. If I do change the recipe, it doesn't matter too much since this is the end of a siding which needs to be trimmed back to clear the earth bank and Norwood Road Bridge wing wall.
     
    Hopefully there'll be some more progress next week since I expect to have a little downtime between contracts.
  3. Will Vale
    Part of the reason for slow progress on Whitemarsh Yard is that I've been held up by needing to get reliable working couplings and install uncouplers before ballasting can go ahead.
     

     
    I did some experiments with Brian Kirby's magnetic tension locks and came away quite happy, but when I started thinking about siting magnets I was less happy - even for a small layout like Whitemarsh you need quite a few. Plus because I didn't install them before laying the track, each uncoupler requires cutting out two sleepers, fitting two magnets, and making good afterwards. Not heaps of work, but not trivial either.
     
     
    I wondered about some kind of delayed action and remembered that Christopher Payne mentioned using "delayed action tension locks" for his minimum gauge layouts. He describes the system here (apparently he was in turn inspired by an article in the March 1969 Railway Modeller) and it's very elegant, much like the magnetic system in that respect. So... could these two neat ideas work together? On the face of it it looked reasonable, so I modified some coupling hooks and tried them out. Essentially this meant fitting a brass wire delay latch to the coupling hook to sit outboard of the bar, plus notching the underside of the bars in the middle.
     
    How it works (assuming a loco coupled to a wagon for the sake of avoiding "wagon A", "wagon B" etc.)
     

    When the coupling is over the magnet and tension is released, the hook lifts until the latch catches under the bar of the other coupling. Backing the loco off, the bar slides over the latch and hook lifts fully. Bringing the loco back, and propelling the wagon away from the magnet, the hook drops partially and the latch sits on top of the loco's bar. You can then propel the wagon to where you want to drop it off. Backing the loco off again, the latch slides over the bar and the hook returns to normal.
     
    This all worked fairly well, so naturally I looked for ways to spoil it The big difference between the magnetic tension locks and the ramp-operated kind is that the hooks lift much further with the magnets - with the neodymium magnets I'm using, the hooks lift easily to the limit of their travel, and I recall this was also the case with the recommend cupboard door catch magnets as well. This makes it both possible to use a simpler latch, and not necessary to notch the loops. I think when using ramps the hooks don't lift as far, so the geometry of the latch, hook and loop is a lot tighter hence the more complex shape. I also didn't bother to crank the hooks to the centre line on the second try. This resulted in a Mark 2 simplified version:
     

     
    It's not a huge difference, but forming the hook is easier, it's marginally less obtrusive, and not having to notch the loops makes installation less fiddly. (Ignore the different staple arrangement here - that was another experiment).
     
    Footnotes:
     
    I soldered the magnetic tail and delay latch, not something I'm very good at but so far they haven't fallen off. I didn't have any problems with soldering one desoldering the other.
     
    I'm currently using the delayed action couplings single-ended (so the hooks are only at one end). This makes installing magnets easier, since you only need one, but it does mean things have to be fitted more accurately (mainly in regard to mounting height) since you can't rely on the "other" hook to provide tension if one doesn't quite catch the loop properly. I don't think this is peculiar to the modified couplings though.
     
    I can't see why the delayed action wouldn't work with hooks at both ends, but it would be likely better done as a one piece etched arm since I perhaps the delay latches (which effectively make the arms thicker) interfering with each other. I might try and fit the latches on the reverse and see if that works - if it does, then using the couplings double-ended is attractive since it will allow stock to run on any layout, and locos to wear thin wire loops rather than tension locks at both ends.
     
    The delayed action and non-delayed action magnetic couplers inter-operate quite well, rather like the way the magnetic and "vanilla" tension locks do, so no rush to convert everything.
     
    Disclaimer:
     
    Unlike Christopher and Brian, I haven't tested this modification extensively under proper layout conditions (although I intend to) so take this as an interesting suggestion rather than a recommendation If it turns out that it all goes really well though, does anyone fancy making an etch with the latches built in?
  4. Will Vale

    Plants and flowers

    By Will Vale,

    I shouldn't really be doing these, I should be doing more important things like weathering more track - but these were fun:
     

     
     
    This is supposed to be cow parsley, made from twisted wire, green paint and white scatter. Below is rosebay willowherb from brush bristles, static grass, lilac scatter and more paint.
     

     
     
    I *nearly* didn't post the pics, because I was a bit let down when I saw the close ups - I was quite excited about the individual plants before planting them. In the end I thought it was better to show something in progress and hopefully get some tips to improve things, plus it's a good alternative to sulking It's also a good demonstration of how useful close-up photography is for making you raise your game, since I think they look OK from the mythical normal viewing distance.
     
    What I don't like are the usual give aways - you can see the wire the cow parsley is made from, and the brush bristles I used for the rosebay willowherb are mostly too thick. I did some experiments with Hornby's field grass and that was much finer, but I was worried it would break if I breathed on it! I'm also not entirely sure about the colour of the rosebay willowherb - I remember it being pink when I was little, and I thought when I looked at pictures last night that it was purple, but I must have been dreaming or confused or something - looking at pictures again today: pink. Weird. I think I'll pull up and redo this one, although I need to make a few buddleia bushes as well and I might be able to re-use the stalks.
     
    So (apart from the colour) what do you all reckon - would it be better not to have them, because they give away the model-ness more than just static grass and sea foam, can they be fixed, or are they OK as they are? I should add that any fixes will probably have to wait until I've done some of the more important layout-finishing jobs, but I do want to come back to these when I get the chance.
  5. Will Vale

    Modified Peco track

    By Will Vale,

    I've removed some of the diagonal sleepers on my crossing - which involves a slip so I can't remove the other diagonal sleepers since the slip has it's timbers at an angle halfway between the two routes.
     

     
    Unfortunately I didn't manage to join the ends up neatly and there are three with joggles. I'm going to put something over those and run a duct through in the hope that the eye will follow that instead?� One thing I noticed was that all of this would have been really easy on the workbench, but is a fiddle on the layout since the soft cork tends to deform under the pressure of the knife and take the track with it. This isn't fatal, but it all needs a lot more care than it would on the bench.
     
     
    One thing I didn't take a picture of was that I've filled in all the notches left by removing the Peco springs and associated bits with Miliput, and they have disappeared nicely under the paint. Now I need to tone down the sleepers and get some ballast on there, but before that there are some ducts and other hardware to fit. Progress at last!
  6. Will Vale

    A truck for Tanis

    By Will Vale,

    Opel Blitz by Will Vale, on Flickr
     
    While I've fallen into the usual post-exhibition-leads-into-Christmas-holidays modelling lull, it's only been a railway modellling lull and I've actually got several non-train projects on the go at the moment. Thankfully I managed to steer my enthusiasm in the direction of railways again by building an Opel Blitz to use on a possible airfield extension to Tanis 1937.
     
    (If you haven't seen Tanis, it's an A3 diorama/mini-layout combining Tamiya 1:48 models and figures with scratchbuilt Decauville-gauge rolling stock in an attempt to capture something of the Indiana Jones movies in miniature.)
     

     
    The idea would be to extend the line off to the left, winding around/along a wadi and through a camp to the edge of an airfield. Given the theme the airfield is an intended as an excuse for some of the weirder WW2 Luftwaffe aircraft - I've almost finished a Do335 Pfeil, for example, and I have unbuilt kits of the Storch and the Go229 flying wing for when I muster the courage and skills to attempt them. I'm not going to worry about the combination of late-war prototypes and a pre-war setting, since Lucas and Spielberg didn't seem to either
     
    I thought a truck would be a good companion to this scene, and picked up the Tamiya-issued Italeri kit of the Opel Blitz in a HobbyLink Japan sale a year or two ago. It looked nice in the box but sat on the shelf for a while - I only got around to building it at the weekend and it's just seen the primer can today.
     
    I was intending to build it straight from the box since I don't know much about the real trucks, but ended up chasing up pictures on the internet and making various changes to suit as I went along.
     
     

     
    Things I've changed:
     
    * Removed the honking great screw bosses for attaching the cab and load bed to the chassis, which opens up the underneath.
     
    * Added a very rough scratch-built engine (and radiator, which isn't attached yet) since there was too much air visible through the (very nice) open slatted radiator grille.
     
    * Realised that I'd gone too far on the engine and arranged for the cab to be removable with a washer under the seat and a magnet in the fuel tank, so that I can still see it after the truck's finished.
     
    * Cut out one of the cab doors so I can pose it open, and added new pedals since what was in the kit bore little relation to reality.
     
    * Made framing for the canvas tilt from brass wire, rather than using the supplied plastic tilt. The load bed is pretty nice, but the tilt is the wrong shape (sloping sides, presumably for mould-removal reasons) and meets the top of the load bed in a straight line rather than a wavy fabric edge.
     
    * Removed the flag and tool clips from the wings and the towing triangle from the roof - I'm not sure if these were on the early trucks, and I think it suits the layout intent a bit better if it looks slightly less military. I've seen pictures of tools on the sides of the load bed so I might do that instead.
     
     
    I'm intending to make a new canvas cover from foil or tissue or something and leave the rear frame off, which is why it's probably OK to have the rather heavy wire for the tilt - it'll be hidden;) The primer reveals that the load bed pin marks need more putty... I also need to gently sand back the primer since it's rather grainy - this is probably to the good on the chassis, but the wooden sides and the cab will need to be made smoother.
     
    Anyway, hope you like it so far - I know this is only tangentially railway-related in itself but the skills do cross over and at some point it will have a layout to live on! For now it can share space with the Kubelwagen in the lower right, assuming I can squeeze it in there.
  7. Will Vale
    I spent the afternoon fiddling with couplings and have a bit more to report then last time. See here for the basic idea and where it came from. I wanted to try the delayed action couplings at both ends of vehicles, i.e. the normal tension lock setup with a hook at both ends, as opposed to Christopher Payne's version which only mounts the hook at one end. Apart from flexiblity, this would mean locos wouldn't have to mount hooks at all, and could just have a neat wire loop and full buffer beam fittings.
     
    I made up a new set of hooks with the magnetic tails and delay latches soldered to the outside, since it seemed likely they would interfere if they were on the insides of the hooks. The critical dimension is that the there should be a 3mm gap between the start of the hook and the delay latch. To speed things up, and since I wanted to do some shunting with a two or three rakes of wagons to give the couplings a proper test, I did a few at a time, with a "jig" consisting of two pen lines and some masking tape - classy!
     

     
    Removing the completed assembly needed a bit of care, but separating the couplers and trimming/forming the latches was really easy. The latch needs to slip over the other coupling's loop easily, and the end can be trimmed off almost in line with the slope of the hook, it's only there to give space to withdraw the coupling loop after propelling a wagon into position before the hook drops. So they end up fairly small.
     

     
    I did some hands-on and hands-off testing with an 08 and a mixture of PNAs, Seacows and TEA tanks, to try and cover a range of vehicles with both body and bogie mounts. This is much more of a test than I did last time.
     
    Observations:

    Propelling after uncoupling is pretty robust most of the time, but on curves the latches can sometimes slip off the loops and cause the wagons to recouple. I tweaked them in a little bit which helped. Coupling up is reliable, the latches don't seem to hinder this at all. Having hooks at both ends helps when coupling heights don't match perfectly - one hook will usually engage even if the other doesn't. Some tweaking might be required to balance ease of uncoupling with accidental train breaks. The Seacows seemed to need more tweaking than the PNAs and TEAs - maybe because the mounts are quite low and droopy on mine. Even with my cack-handed soldering they seem robust enough. I did break a couple of latches, but they were easy to fix. If I was exhibiting with these I'd make up half a dozen extra and just clip a new one in if there were problems. Uncoupling requires a bit more care - like Kadees. You have to watch the couplings closely, or listen for the click of the hook lifting. With two hooks you need to be in just the right place. I suspect that with Brian Kirby's larger ceramic magnets this might be easier.
    The two biggies:
    If anything goes wrong (involuntary recouple, or a partial couple with one hook latched up and the other down) you can fix it without touching the stock. With a bit of practice I was getting about 80-90% success rate shunting rakes of wagons in and out of sidings using only the direction button (and a bit of momentum) on the Powercab. Very satisfying.
    Even more than before, I think this is worth pursuing. It would be better with an etched hook, since everything would be happening in the plane of the hook rather than outside it - it seems like it would avoid the recoupling on curves. Plus it'd save my blushes in that I would'nt have to show something I'd touched with an iron to the world at large I might see if I can draw up some artwork since I have a modelling friend here who sells etched brass kits. Either that or I need some flux and a better jig.
  8. Will Vale
    Whitemoor is handy in that it's a fen prototype with a bridge as a view block. The new incarnation of the yard is even better in this respect since significant earthworks have been done to build a cycle path on the west side of the bridge which runs parallel to the yard throat.
     

     
    I tried to rough in the embankment with Styrofoam initially, but it wasn't a good fit - the real thing is very artificial in form (it's not just an earth bank) and I took it out and used straight-cut 10mm foam board instead. This works much better and makes it possible to have the sharp corners and discontinuous slopes of the real thing. I have a piece of 3mm board cut out for the path surface, which is just thin enough to form the short transition curves without kinking, and also the road surface. I've cut it a couple of mm wider than the bridge deck so it bows up in the middle as per Norwood Road, though this all needs bracing up still.
     
    With the framework in place I had a look at the retaining wall. I thought initially it was some kind of concrete product like Criblock but after going through the pictures again (several times) and finding some more construction pictures it's actually a lot more interesting than that. The wall in question is the one on the left here: http://fenlandfotos..../p25785286.html. It's actually got a fair bit bushier since then!
     
    It turns out (from shadows on Google Maps) that the cycle path is on its own embankment, rather than the ground sloping up here. Obvious really, but I didn't spot it at first. I assume it was built as part of the work to screen the yard from the surrounding housing when it was re-opened. This embankment is very steep, and following the sequence of Geoff Tibble's photo's here (http://fenlandfotos....855009_121.html) it appears to be some kind of wooden former, with gabion-like bags or boxes of earth/gravel/something wired to the sides to allow plants to grow. Perhaps because it's too steep for an earth bank?
     
    This picture by Alexander Shaw shows the detail quite well, especially in full size: http://rail-image.fo.../p14398225.html
     
    So how to build it? I started off by cutting some mount board to shape for the two sections, and then making a pile of miniature bricks from styrofoam offcuts. These were PVAd to the mount board, and they looked sort of decent but unsurprisingly rather higgledy piggledy. I wanted to capture some of this, since there's variation evident in the original, but perhaps not as much as I did
     

     
     
    I went ahead to the second part of my plan anyway, and used a heat gun to round off the bricks and turn them into bags. Not so good... As I probably should have expected, any glue which bled up between bricks didn't melt as quickly as the Styrofoam and left ridges and other naff bits.

     
    I thought about things a bit and decided that a no-glue approach would be better, and would save me having to cut out all those bricks (that I'd already cut out) to boot. I cut new wall sections from 5mm black foam card, and peeled/sliced away the top layer of paper a la Emmanuel Nouaillier. Rather than embossing the sacks, I carved their shapes about 1-2mm deep using a mixture of ruled lines and freehand to try and capture something halfway between order and anarchy. So far so good:
     

     
     
    Applying the heat gun again to round off the edges and corners, I was pretty happy so of course pressed on and forgot to take any step-by-step pictures, sorry!
     
    And here's where the sewing comes in: I painted the whole thing with a mix of raw umber and gesso, and then dug out a fine needle and some nylon monofilament for the wiring. A couple of tries on isolated corners suggested that representing all the wiring (two or three wires supporting each sack) would be crazy, and leave the sacks with ragged edges from the needle holes. I ended up compromising and stitching one wire across 2-4 sacks at a time, staggering the stitches so the needle holes weren't aligned. It should be possible to cover them up in earth and greenery later, or just not worry about them (For the sewing-inclined, it ended up as a sort of messy parallel backstitch.)
     
    And here's the result, which I'm quite pleased with - it's not exactly like the prototype, but it's a lot more like it than an earth bank (too steep) or a brick or block wall (not green enough). I'm looking forward to planting it but I should get the rest of the major earthworks out of the way first.
     

     
     
    And on the layout - which looks a bit odd, I think it might be slightly misaligned and mangled by perspective, since the courses do line up properly really!
     

     
     
    The best thing about all this was that since I was working on the living room floor, my daughter decided to join in and used various offcuts and masking tape to build me some "background mountains" (her words) to put on the layout She's not always convinced that Papa's modelling isn't a waste of time, so it's a treat when she joins in and it passed a rainy day quite well. Next step is to get her soldering up some brass engines for me
     

  9. Will Vale

    Hydraulic crane

    By Will Vale,

    Nice to see RMWeb up and running in its new home - thanks to Andy and the team
     
    I spent some more time last week working on my crane, there's still a lot to do but progress is being made. I built new hydraulic cylinders for the boom to support the geometry I wanted - the kit cylinders and rams are all plastic, so they aren't too robust, and the LAV-R crane is stowed horizontally on the roof so the geometry is a bit funny. The new ones have styrene tube with paper clip or music wire for the ram, pivoted on more paper clip pieces spanning the boom sides. They're functional enough, although repeated play suggests they need a little something to hold a pose more firmly - perhaps a blob of glue on the end of the ram would do it.
     

     
    You can see I've also started on the slewing mechanism (rack and pinion) and pedestal. I found a picture of this type of crane arm on quite a tall tubular pedestal mounted on what looks like a ship deck, so I'm not worried that the tube looks thin - it's fairly legit according to the image.
     
    More fun was working on the hydraulic power unit, which is kit bashed/scratch built from a surplus TOW launcher sprue from the Tamiya M151A kit. I don't know much about engines or hydraulics, so this is to give an impression rather than to place rivets accurately, but there's a small engine, shaft-driven hydraulic pump, fuel tank, radiator, fan and coolant lines in there.
     

     
    I want to put a bit more panelling on it, for strength and realism, but not so much that you can't see the details. I've been bitten by this before, after building a fiddly engine for my Senussi loco and then ensuring that it was more-or-less invisible in the finished article!
     


     
    Once bitten, twice shy. Hopefully...
  10. Will Vale
    As requested, here are some pictures of the dents in my limpet and a spiel on how I did it.
     

     
    (Please forgive the image quality - I can't find the charger for my SLR battery so these are taken with a Sony digicam. It's a nice camera for a lot of purposes (fast, accurate colour, decent metering) but it seems to have a lot of problems with macro focus and general softness, especially at the telephoto end. Oh well.)
     
    I wanted to try some denting since lots of real MKA/ZKA wagons have dented (bowed out) lower body panels, presumably as a result of unloading. Most of the model denting I've seen involves softening the bars at the top of the frame, but that doesn't seem common in real life - the bars are box section so they're likely a lot stronger than the panels. Denting the panels is tricky because the Bachmann body is pretty thick - this is probably a good compromise on their part since it stops the sides bowing in and isn't that obvious thanks to the box section frame around the top edge, but it made my life quite difficult!
     
    I tried using a soldering iron held near the inside, but while it will create nice gouges, it's too localised to soften an entire panel and bow it out. I had a go with a bit of sheet brass as a heat spreader but it didn't really help. I didn't pursue this - I should have tried with a 40W iron instead of a 20W really, but instead went for the halogen work light I was using since it was nearby. I should add that I did some tests on a Hornby railroad mineral wagon which was a similar size and shape first (and only the centre section of that, since I'd already cut the ends down to make a narrow gauge tub for another project (throw nothing away!) The halogen light was warm enough to do the job, and the heat was spread over a wide area. There's a very fine line between "not long enough" and "too long" in terms of when to take the model away from the bulb and try forming it - in my case it was the difference between about 10 seconds and 10.5 seconds.
     
    To make the dents, I removed the body from the underframe and held it to the light (avoiding touching the glass cover!) at an angle so the base of the body was nearer - this was to try and convince the panels to soften at the bottom and not the top. As you can see in the picture I managed to bend one of the bars inward, which I'd really wanted to avoid - possibly because the bars are proud of the body they tend to soften first and are then very delicate.
     

     
    I got on better using a panel-sized mask cut from a postcard. I held this over the model to expose one panel at a time, which made the heating take longer and the bending more difficult, but kept the body and framing the right shape.
     

     
    To be honest I'm not sure I'd bother doing this again with a limpet - maybe once more to confirm my suspicions? I know this is going to make me sound lazy but it seems like a lot of difficult nerve-wracking work for small reward. I had a lot of trouble photographing the results in daylight, although I can imagine that a couple of dented wagons at the start of a rake would make a nice photograph with low afternoon or evening light along the body sides. I guess looking for that was what got me to try in the first place. And if I had a suitable cheap wagon with a thinner body moulding I'd be more inclined to have another try.
     
    Good things:
     

    The dents are mostly in the right direction and look believable. The bars are mostly intact. The factory paint and markings coped fine. The scratches I added afterwards were quite successful. I didn't end up with a pile of melted goo.
     
    Bad things:
     

    Hard work - requires good timing, vigorous pressure (I used my thumb and a dental tool) and very quick work before the plastic firms up again. I distorted a couple of panels slightly too far up the body and ended up with a wavy edge on the yellow stripe. I touched this in with a brush and it's not too apparent under the weathering. I needed to fill in some soldering iron dents on the inside. The small panels don't dent as much as the large ones - there's more plastic closer to the frame so it doesn't move as easily - which looks a bit unrealistic given that they're cut down from large panels.

     
    Has anyone else tried this, and if so how did you get on?
  11. Will Vale

    Point motors

    By Will Vale,

    I just heard from the local model shop that my last Tortoise has arrived, so I thought I'd better get the other two ready so I can finish up the second board. Because the depth below board surface is only about 70mm (50mm Styrofoam plus 1x1 PAR timber) there isn't space to mount the Tortoise motors vertically. I saw an article in RM or CM a few years ago about mounting them horizontally using a metal bracket and a nut/bolt as a pivot/retention mechanism. My version is much less glamorous and uses a few bits of wire and some cheap modern Meccano:
     

     
    The modern Meccano seems a lot more fragile than the stuff I remember when I was a kid - you have to be very careful when cranking the bracket not to snap it like a dry twig. The brackets go on the flat ends of the motor, with the aim to get the edge of the nut (and thence the vertical arm) near the centreline. Not that it matters too much - everything is bendy and the Tortoise fulcrum allows a fair bit of adjustment.
     

     
    The pivot arm is soldered to the nut, and it can then be spun onto the bolt - only a couple of turns are required - the thread will keep it in place since it can't rotate. The end of the original Tortoise arm is then bend into a hook which slips over the new pivot. Because it's flexible it's easy to remove it and take the arm off - e.g. to trim it to length after test fitting.
     


     
    The whole thing doesn't involve opening the Tortoise casing, so I doubt it voids the warranty - after all, they're happy for people to tape/glue them to boards since that's one of the methods in the instruction leaflet. I'm really happy with them - I used Peco solenoids on another project and while I like the satisfying clunk, I found they were tricky to adjust. The Tortoise motors are expensive but when you add the price of a solenoid motor and the accessory switch and maybe a mounting plate, it's not that much more. I intended at some point to try the SEEP or Fulgurex motors but I haven't found them for sale in NZ.
     
    Hopefully I can get the second board up and running this week, then taking the German layout to a show at the weekend, then a big work deadline next week which is going to get in the way of fun stuff...
  12. Will Vale

    Wagons in 1:35

    By Will Vale,

    As a lead in to building my Schoema, which is still languishing on my bench as a pile of plastic rectangles, I've started to build some rolling stock. I like this as a way to get a feel for the scale, although making locos is probably more fun because they go Anyway, I've built two (and a half) flat wagons as the base for a light HIAB-type work crane. The wagons are based on some tunnel construction stock used at the Neuer Distelrasentunnel in Germany - I found some detail pictures which I've since lost, so I can't post those, but you can see the general sort of thing in this image from Wikipedia:
     

    Image from de.wikipedia by Reinhard Dietrich. Public Domain.
     
    Edit: found the detail picture I was after here: http://fotoportal.fo...2&s=akt14&b=107. Still not sure if my representation of the brake line attachments is anything like the real one but it looks OK on the model.
     
    The chassis are from Hornby Railroad mineral wagons with some bits trimmed off, and everything else is styrene with a pinch of brass wire. Given the chassis choice, mine are much shorter than the real thing and have fixed knuckle couplers (Kadee no. 148) rather than the pivoted ones on the real thing. The HO knuckles are under scale here, but better than nothing. I kept the recessed mounting because it looks cool, and built a representation of all the end fittings since there isn't really any other detail on the wagons!
     

     
    Here are the two together with the start of the crane. The parts are from a 1:35 scale Trumpeter kit of the LAV-R APC, which I got for a bargain price - I was originally considering taking something from a die-cast toy, but didn't find what I wanted. I'm almost sorry not to make the kit up properly since it's really nice, but it's also full of lovely bits (and etched mesh, and other details) which are going to help me detail the crane's hydraulic power unit.
     

     
    I'm not sure if the second wagon should be a match truck pure-and-simple, or possibly carry some kind of unitised freight with the crane boom supported above it? I'm leaning towards the latter although I don't want to give away what the cargo might be for fear of incurring mockery...
  13. Will Vale

    Railex 2011

    By Will Vale,

    This is a week late, but I spent a couple of hours today going through my images from Railex, adding captions, and picking some to show off. We had a good show, packing and setup were both painless, and I opted to put the layout up on plastic crates (weighted with bricks) on top of the supplied table to improve the viewing height. I think this worked quite well, but I need to give a bit more thought to display next time: The pelmet made conversations with punters a bit tricky at times, and without a backscene the fluorescent tubes were a bit hard on the eyes for the operators.
     
    We managed to get all three layouts (Höllental-Hirschsrpung, Tanis 1937, and Igelfeld) plus stock, light fittings, bricks and two operators into my dad's Prius, although it was a tight squeeze for me in particular. I didn't have a backup plan for the event that the new layout didn't fit, but thankfully it did
     

     
    The venue got pretty hot in the afternoon on both days, and was at times very busy indeed. I managed to see quite a bit more of it than last year since it was possible to leave the layout alone with something running around and go for a wander - the plan works! We also had help from Robert's friend George on the Saturday which was fantastic, thanks George!
     
    The heat didn't seem to affect the track at all - I was worried about expansion in the yard lengths of finescale rail, but it all behaved beautifully (I had left one expansion gap) and the only minor issue was a bit of unglued track in the fiddle yard went a couple of mm sideways towards the end of the weekend - not a problem, and it's easy to fix in any case. The electrics were rock solid, and I'm glad I put some extra feeds in because it was possible to detect the voltage drop in places. Maybe some more are needed still.
     
    The control system also worked quite well - the fiddle yard roads are selected by a three position rotary switch and a push-button. Turn to pick a road, press the button to change the points, done. The only issue was we occasionally forgot to press the button resulting in the train leaving the yard happily but running into a dead road and stalling when it came back.
     

     
    Running was basically faultless provided we had the train correctly on the rails in the first place, less so if not - and this is easier said than done in 1:220. We did have a pile-up during an unprototypical banking of a 1930s streamlined express with a 1950s-condition BR85. It looked great and I wandered off for a bit, came back to find my dad saying "we had a bit of a disaster" and I was expecting to find my prize loco on the floor. Thankfully it wasn't that bad - it had shed its pony truck screw and then the truck, and the whole shooting match had piled into the wreckage on the next lap. Never mind, truck reattached and I think a dot of PVA as ersatz thread lock is warranted since it runs much better with that screw (which also retains the belly pan) loosened half a turn.
     
    Tanis I switched on in the morning each day and basically ignored - I think I had to give the loco a push once, other than that it was perfect. It still gets some very nice comments. As did the new project - the rocks generated quite a lot of interest in terms of how they looked, and how they were done. The presentation also got compliments which was nice since it's the first time I've done the whole proscenium arch thing.
     
    I did identify one major problem - while the train is visible for a good long time, it's out of view for slightly longer, and with the layout being very "new" looking and lacking in detail, there isn't much to engage the attention while we get the next one out. Igelfeld and Tanis are much better in this regard since more of the track is visible, and there are a far more non-train details to look at in the meantime. Apart from doing all the detailing, I think it might help to have some kind of flashing "train coming" light at each end so people know what to expect. Or some kind of moving feature, but I don't know what that could be that wouldn't also be cheesy. Possibly some prototype info wouldn't go amiss either.
     
    My favourite quotes of the weekend, apart from the usual "Look at the tiny trains!" were a German diorama modeller (whose work I've marvelled at before) asking me if I was also German, and overheard by George a small boy being offered a train of some kind by his parent and saying "No, I don't want that one, I want a Z gauge!" I do feel sorry for any parents who've been influenced in this way by our efforts...
     
    Finally here are some highlights from other layouts in the show:
     

    Kerosene Creek, originally by Raoul Quinn
     

    1970s Rhodesia, by Paul Napier
     

    Taumaranui (I think this is a club layout, I'm afraid I don't know which club.)
     

    Manners Street, by Kerry Willard
     
    There are more pictures and layouts in the gallery which should be attached to this post, or if you can see Flickr where you are, I recommend looking at them in my Flickr set since the full-size images are available there as well:
     
    * Railex 2011 on Flickr
  14. Will Vale

    Hardstanding

    By Will Vale,

    The right hand end of Whitemarsh has a couple of little sidings. Just space for some TMD-esque stuff.
     

     
     
    I picked Ipswich Freightliner stabling/fuelling point as the inspiration for this - it's the right area of the country and a neat little depot in a tiny space. Not as tiny as the space on the model though! I also think it'll add some personality missing from Whitemoor, which is really clean and tidy and new-looking. There's a useful picture by Colin Brooks which gives a reasonable view into the fuelling point:
     
    http://colinpbrooks..../p56888483.html
     
    From what I can make out, there's hardstanding around the track at sleeper height with a half-hearted bund around that. I thought this'd make a nice change from inset track at rail height, so I've tried to replicate it. I didn't fancy cutting plastic to fit around the chairs, so I've had a go with DAS clay - this is relatively easy to shape and not very messy. The down side is that you can't level it like you can with plaster, it's much more organic. I think I've managed to get a reasonably flat finish (wet fingers help, as does an X-acto handle as a rolling pin) although I had some minor subsidence where there were small gaps in the cork layer. Luckily it's easy to blend in more clay.
     

     
     
    I have to pick around the chairs after letting it dry for a bit to clean them up - this has been done by the pit, which was started last night, but the rest is only just laid. Between the rails, I've been along with a cocktail stick, but left the "burr" of clay until dry, since I don't think I can get it off without marring the surface in some way.
     
    I suppose this is rather an unorthodox approach, but it seems to be working so far, and if it all goes horribly wrong I can just cover it up with rail-height inset track using the usual plaster or plastic or cardboard
     
    I've also done some more trunking and fitted lamp bases along the pathway - this is nearly ready for ballast.
     

     
     
    Sorry about the picture! The path is just sitting there while I make up my mind about it - it's supposed to connect the TMD with the far side of the track via an occupation crossing over the board join. The idea is to in-fill between the path edges with finer chippings as per the prototype, see for example this picture by Geoff Tibble:
     
    http://geoffsangliap.../p63401988.html
     
    I was going to make it from wood, but realised the scale timber I'd bought without really thinking about it was much too thick, so my plastic mock-up might become the real thing!
  15. Will Vale
    Not much happening for the last three weeks since we've been away, but the jet-lag had receded sufficient by Sunday that it was possible to do some modelling without falling asleep.
     

     
     
    These are the abutments and central pillar for my attenuated Norwood Road bridge. It's been kind of a pain, since the only reference pics I found are about 400 pixels wide, but I've been able to find a few details captured in other pictures taken by heroic folk leaning over the bridge to spot some choice loco or other. As far as I can tell, the structure is made from blue engineering brick, so I started off with the Scalescenes dark blue brick sheet - it's not really the right colour, too pristine, but I thought it'd probably easier to weather that than re-colour their dark brown brick.
     
    The abutments and pillar have 1mm mount board carcasses build to slip neatly over the existing foamcard abutments seen in this earlier entry. Following tips from Ben A and John Teal (and after a false start using thin card and Pritt-stick) I printed the Scalescenes sheet onto an A4 sticky label. This was fun, easy to wrap around the carcasses, and seems to have stuck really well. I had to take one sheet off after I realised I had the height wrong, and it didn't really want to go  As a result I'm fairly confident they'll stay put in the longer term. All the edges are tucked under so they'll be prevented from peeling loose when the carcasses are stuck to the foamcard structures.
     

     
     
    The central pillar was a bit more complicated and needed a curved shape. I formed some 0.5mm styrene sheet around a wooden spoon with hot water to get a partial curve, and attached it with some very potent double-sided adhesive film. This is like a big sheet of double-sided tape which you can cut to size - I got it on recommendation from the local art shop, seems pretty good so far. Naturally I got the wrapper slightly mis-aligned, but when I tried to reposition it the mount board started to delaminate instead, so I gave up and trimmed it to fit. Any remaining bad bits will be hidden by the bridge girder and deck, I think.
     
    I also made the mistake of setting the "step" height a bit low, so the brick paper is cut ~3mm taller than the styrene, and is reinforced with a slip of 0.25mm styrene inserted from the inside - fiddly stuff. The rounded capstone (or whatever it is) I carved from balsa wood, then sealed with thin superglue and sanded smooth. Very satisfying job, that was.It sort of sits just inside the brick paper wrapper, with a bit of gesso needed to fill in the joint at the back. Could be neater, but the shape looks about right.
     

     
    Here's a picture of the bits in place temporarily (before I'd painted the capstone). I recoloured the papers quite thoroughly with MIG "Dark Mud" and "Industrial City Dirt", plus washes of dark brown paint, pale grey for blooms, and coloured pencils to add some variation in hue. It looks a might redder in the pictures than I think it is in real life, but hopefully you get the idea. It still needs a coat of varnish to seal it, since it's prone to rubbing.
     

     
    The graffiti on the left side (visible in the header image) is a truncated version of the squared "OK" seen on the prototype - I don't have enough depth in the bridge for all of it. The graffiti on the right is my little tribute to a famous piece of local graffiti which was more-or-less a shrine to Ian Curtis and remained in Wellington for nearly thirty years before the council saw fit to paint it out last year. It has since been restored and the council are apparently going to leave it alone I don't like graffiti generally - too much like cats peeing in corners - but I think this graffito is slightly different and deserves a bit of respect.
     
    All in all it was an interesting learning exercise - I haven't done any card buildings since failing to build some Superquick houses as a teenager. I like the Scalescenes sheets, but I'm not sure if I'm a convert yet. It's fun and quick to put things together, but it's also easy to stuff things up, and there's no facility to cut back/fill/sand for shape, or strip paint and start again, which you do have with plastic and metal. We'll see how the depot end of the layout (which is a work-in-progress in styrene) comes out so I can compare and contrast.
  16. Will Vale

    Finished MTAs

    By Will Vale,

    I've been distracted recently by the re-release of Space Hulk (a boardgame idolised by many of my generation) hence the lack of updates since I've been painting monsters - and working to finish a contract. It's over a decade since I did any figure painting so I'm a bit rusty, but it's definitely good practice for brushwork and related skills. I just need to figure out how to get some of the crazy paint colours onto a railway-related project - Warlock Purple for graffiti maybe?
     

     
    I've weathered the last one of the four MTAs, and done the interior for the grubby one. I then had to tone down the exterior from sandy coloured mud to something darker in order to match the inside, which was a bit fraught but appears to be OK. The tag is intended to draw the eye away from the mud a little bit
     

     
    I also added a tag to one of the others and made some experimental loads (which look appetizingly like Weetabix or those sesame biscuits you get in health food shops). The loads need another layer of (finer) ballast but I can't get any locally at the moment. I'm also intending to build a plastic box to assemble them inside so that there's more of a 'meniscus' effect around the edges rather than the steep sides you see now - they look great from glancing angles but silly from above. For photos I could always sprinkle a bit of ballast around the edges of the load once it's in the wagon - I think removable loads and edge-to-edge coverage are always going to be rather at odds with each other.
     

     

     
    Here's the complete rake - if you can call four wagons a rake...
     

     
    and here's another view of the grubby one to show off the still-drying-out wet mud on the inside. This is a few coats of Johnson's Klear over a very smooth dark patch of paint, with the first coat blotted out around the edge to get a damp-looking fringe. I then stippled a lot of paint and powder around it to make the drier mud. I've only done one like this since it's a bit of an experiment, but I do like the results:
     

     
    I think I'm going to claim the MTAs are now finished. I'd welcome more tips but I'll aim to use them on the next lot of wagons (I have some PNAs and Seacows on my shelf) since all the shiny ones are looking a bit silly next to these. Then I might pluck up courage to do a loco!
  17. Will Vale
    I spent some time pasting together Google Maps images and watching cab rides to see better how the line behaves between Falkensteig and Hirschsprung. Then I laid out potential track plans in SCARM (which is brilliant) and tried to put the two together. It looks like I'll need to compress reality about 2:1 to fit the stretch I want in the space I can manage. For a "railway in the countryside" layout that doesn't seem too bad to me.
     

     
    I ended up truncating the fiddle yards to two roads each - I was thinking I could get three, but it felt like a tight squeeze and I wasn't confident in my ability to build them out into the back of the scenery. The joggle in the tunnel is probably a bit too extreme as well and would benefit from a gentle realignment, although it does make it easier to get the big foreground rock in.
     
    If you haven't seen the line this video might be helpful. It starts just before the bridge and Falkenstein tunnel, traverses the layout portion, and has a look at the rock pillars and the joggle around the upper tunnel. The tunnels have been edited out but you get the idea.
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj-twTaMl6Y
    [Video from Youtube user "hagugo", who has enabled embedding.
    ] 
    Once I'd got that worked out I made a perspective snapshot and traced/sketched over it in Photoshop (no scanner, you see) to see what it might look like. I'm not great with a pencil, or indeed a tablet, but it's a useful exercise, sketches helped me solve a lot of structural scenery problems on Tanis.
     

     
    I need to do one from the other end - the track re-appears from the Unterer Hirschsprung-Tunnel for 400mm or so before disappearing into the Oberer Hirschsprung-Tunnel and thence returning to the fiddle yard. You can just see the second tunnel mouth in the sketch. There's quite a bit of rock work to fit into the corner and I'm not entirely convinced there's room for it all, hence the need for this planning
     
    The bridge in the foreground is just on the other (west) side of the Falkenstein-Tunnel in reality, but I really like it so I thought I'd move it. Otherwise the visible section would be more-or-less entirely the road and the railway on a gentle curve separated by what looks like a scree slope (but presumably is netted or otherwise made safe from rock falls). In the sketch I've shown the side valley going in the same direction as in real life, but it'd probably be easier to fold it away if the road turned west towards the corner of the layout.
     
    I had two wacky ideas while doing all this: One is to leave the return curves unsoldered, so it would be possible to convert the module to a straight through one and model Falkensteig on the left, and/or Bahnhof Hirschsprung on the right. The other is to have the return curves off the module altogether, and just plug them in or have them on fold-out flaps. I think that might be over-engineering or over-thinking things though, and it might be best to just build things as simply as possible so that I can finish it
     
    One other interesting question is whether to have a backscene, given that in reality the valley side would be higher than the layout. I wonder what it would look like if there was a lighting pelmet in the foreground, and the rockwork and greenery in the background just went up to the "top" behind that, so that you couldn't see the end from normal viewing angles?
  18. Will Vale
    I've been looking forward to this for ages - the little yellow blobs have been sitting on one board or another for quite some time awaiting my largesse. Today they got it:
     

     
     
    Having got the left end of the layout to the right kind of state at the weekend, involving lots of sensible risk-addressing (doing the most sucky and/or risky things first) I thought this would make a suitable treat I stripped some fine wire and pushed/pulled the conductors out of it so that the insulation would fit over the tiger-tail peg I'd left on the lubricators. Feeling adventurous, I used a single strand of pre-tinned conductor as the hose clip, twisted around with tweezers and secured with superglue.
     
    Installing the lubricators was pretty easy - the Klear-fixed ballast isn't hard to shift if you need to and I made a couple of divots, added two drops of superglue and held them in place for 10 seconds. After that had gone off I brushed the loose ballast back around them to bed them in and set it with more (thin) superglue. Then the fun bit - detail painting! I'd already painted the bodies with GW Iyanden Darksun and Sunburst Yellow. Then they got a wash of Devlan Mud, most of which I wiped off since the ones at Whitemoor are pretty clean. I drybrushed some false highlights with a bit of off-white, and touched in the nipple and nuts (oo-er ) with Tamiya Flat Aluminium.
     
    I tried to keep the weathering pretty restrained - the examples at Whitemoor don't seem to get as foul as the one at Water Orton which Pete Harvey and Eldavo were kind enough to provide some close-up pics of - it was quite unpleasant, with white goop everywhere. I contented myself with some more Devlan Mud along the rail side, Flat Aluminium for the grease blades and pump gubbins, and then drybrushed the latter with Vallejo Brown Leather, which is my "track dirt" colour, to blend it in. The only remaining job was to paint in the sleeper numbers and arrows following a handy Geoff Tibble prototype picture (click Full Size to see them). Thankfully these are only on one of the lubricators at the entrance to the yard, as far as I can tell. These were done with thinned GW Skull White and a size 000 brush, then drybrushed over with more of the brown leather to tone them down. They aren't super-neat, but the white paint is more hardwearing than the white gel pen I have, so it seemed like a better bet here.
     

     
     
    Quite a quick project, at least in terms of work hours rather than elapsed time, but very satisfying
  19. Will Vale
    Bolstered by a cup of coffee, I thought it was better to attack the single slip before I chickened out. Inspecting Man was less than impressed:
     

     
    I should point out the rationale for doing this - the single slip really doesn't make much sense for the layout as it is, and if I'm going to be operating it on my own for a two day show I think it's worth some pain and delay now to make the operation as simple and sensible as possible. With a double slip, I can bring trains in on the correct line, and then work them into the yard with a single movement as opposed to a shuffle. It'll also be possible to bring longer trains in and it'll avoid clogging up the depot and loop to boot.
     
    So... having bought the slip, does it fit? I know it's supposed to, but nothing beats checking. Plus this bit was easy
     

     
    Next step was to disconnect the feeds to the stock rails and frogs, and remove the point motors so there wouldn't be any stress on the operating arms. Then I removed the paint from the rail joiners, and was pleased to see I hadn't soldered the joints because all the rails are powered by wires anyway. I cut through the rail joiners with a Xuron cutter for the meta ones, and a knife for the rest. Naturally this was after a couple of abortive attempts to open them out with a screwdriver Cutting them makes a lot of sense - it's easy to pull the remaining half off the rails that remain in situ, and there's no force applied to the rails.
     
    With all that done I went from one end to the other gently levering at the sleeper base with a small screwdriver.
     

     
     
    ...and with a bit of fiddling the feed wires through the holes, out it came. The surrounding trackwork is almost unscathed, but I did lift the rail from a couple of chairs at the lower left - odds of getting it back in are low, but I can trim half the chair away on the side away from the viewer so the rail sits flat, and trust the double slip to set the gauge, possibly with the aid of a drop of superglue.
     
    Cleaned up, the damage doesn't look so bad. I need to make some modifications and solder feeds to the double slip, spray it brown, and install it.
     

     
     
    Just hope I'm not chasing poor running gremlins for the rest of my life - the trains ran through the single slip very nicely indeed
  20. Will Vale
    So now thoughts turn to scenery and track plan justification, so I've drawn up (roughly) what I've done so far.

     
    This isn't totally accurate, but it has the right components in the right relationships. It's a bit more flowing in the flesh I think, although I may need to tweak the right hand side since it has too many board-edge parallels (they aren't completely parallel, but that's maybe not obvious enough).
     
    Download XTC file
    I have a reasonable idea of what I want to do, but I would really welcome any tips and suggestions to justify it, pick a prototype, and make tweaks if they aren't too destructive. Apologies for the following ramble, since it's quite long
     
    Synopsis:
     
    1) Inglenook for Dutch/Modern UK set in East Anglia on LH board.
    2) Join to RH board to make a junction plus yard of some kind.
    3) Yard could be permanent way depot and/or ultra-small fuelling/maintenance point.
    4) Looking for prototypes, justification for interesting traffic, etc.
    5) Interested in modern era (for which I have mainly EWS stock) plus possible backdating to blue diesels/Railfreight (for which I don't).
     
    The idea is that the left hand board can be used standalone, or with a clip-on fiddle yard/headshunt on the right hand side to give an Inglenook micro. Scenery for this should be based on the Fens, and ideally I'd like it if UK distinctive elements could be kept to a minimum so I can use it for Dutch-outline stock as well - there are plenty of bits of the Netherlands which look moderately like the Fens around Ely where I grew up. If it comes down to hard choices, the UK is going to win though since I only have one Dutch engine.
     
    The right hand board adds to this to make a simple junction (the two routes leaving on the left) and would be used with a fiddle yard on the left side. I suppose there's also the option of having a fiddle yard on the right (or even a complete oval) for through running but I don't have room to do this at home. The right hand board is intended to be UK only.
     
    I thought for theme that the complete layout could represent a small permanent way yard, or the first part of a larger one. I know this is getting very close to TMD territory - and I like many of the TMD layouts I've seen - but still trying to make it a little different. I thought the two sidings on the right could be the usual fuelling point and inspection pit, or possibly just storage for ballast wagons? They're maybe too short for wagons, and the fuelling point would be maybe more interesting to operate.
     
    One prototype which looks promising is Whitemoor Yard at March. This has (or had while under construction) a nice combination of the dereliction of the old Whitemoor yard contrasted with the clean ballast, new track and construction detritus from the new one. The yard itself is massive, but the throat could work and there's scope for the road bridge over the wye junction at the left end of the layout. Not many prototypes for road overbridges in the area, which is what led me to it in the first place
     
    Old pictures of Whitemoor: http://www.flickr.co...ott/1817364611/
    New pictures of Whitemoor: http://www.flickr.co...N03/1859049901/
    Google map
     
    (Thanks to the photographers!)
     
    Scenery would be a bit different to Whitemoor though - I really want a small drain (ditch) on the left board bracketing a piece of arable land at the front with a beet clamp on it. Childhood memories, you see. The NIMBY banks/walls would fit behind the line though, and these are also very appropriate for modern housing developments near Dutch railway lines - you see them all the time.
     
    One problem with Whitemoor is that since both sides of the junction lead back to the main line, you couldn't bring interesting 'through traffic' onto the layout that way. I did wonder about a staff halt as a DMU excuse, but they aren't exactly commonplace.
     
    Sorry for the ramble, and many thanks if you made it this far Any criticism or suggestions would be very welcome.
  21. Will Vale

    Norwood Road bridge

    By Will Vale,

    There isn't going to be much in the way of elevation on this layout, and what there is is nearly all at the road bridge and embankment.
     

     
    This has been quite tricky to research, since everyone seems to stand *on* the bridge and take pictures of locos for some reason The roadway and path are nicely visible on Google street view, and there are a couple of small pictures of the bridge itself on Flickr, taken on the open day I think. Unfortunately the photographer doesn't have larger versions available, although he was able to dig up useful a wider view which shows the wing wall:
     
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/17889585@N03/1859050951/
     
    http://www.flickr.co...N03/4705921484/
     
    It looks like the abutments are some kind of dark engineering brick, but I can't really see. The central pillar has curved ends with coned tops which should be fun to build - at least I only have to do one
     
    I don't have room for anything like the scale bridge, at least not without reducing the embankment to nothing, so some selective compression is in order. I widened the openings in the profile board to try and get a better sense of the (quite spacious) openings, and built a framework from foamboard. Dimensions are eyeballed from the photos.
     

     
     
    The girder in the first picture is a bargain bucket stand-in. It's about the right length for my compressed bridge, but it doesn't have the features or geometry of the real thing, which has a flat base and bows up with the bridge deck. It's also completely different as regards the bracing. So I really want to scratchbuild one, but it depends if I have time or not. If I don't, I'll probably need to add some more depth at the very least. The good thing is that with the abutments more-or-less defined, I can build the embankment and trim the profile boards back.
     
    In other news, I fixed a minor rail kink and ballasted the double slip in place. There are quite a few spots in the ballast where you can see edges resulting from multiple ballasting sessions, I suspect sanding or light remedial ballasting will cure these.
     

  22. Will Vale

    60014: Underframe

    By Will Vale,

    I made a start on the underframe today. The more I look at detail pictures, the more I marvel at Hornby's tooling - there's really nothing missing.
     

     
    The first step, as seen above, was to paint the entire underframe with Tamiya Nato Black, which is a useful not-quite black and has a very flat finish which should help the powders stick. It also means that because my finish is based on an out of the bottle colour, it's easy to paint out mistakes.
     
    Then I went looking for pictures - I found some shots of 60014 in 2006 looking generally tidy, with nice shiny beastie stickers and what appears to be a recently replaced or renewed piece of underframe equipment - one of the whatever-they-ares that look like generators is a much lighter grey than in later images. So my aim is something like this picture by Rob Reedman (for colour reference only since it seems to have been badly downsampled?)
     
    With the black out of the way, I spent a couple of hours this afternoon touching in details - please forgive me if I get the names wrong or don't even attempt them! The main bits were the cylindrical items by the outer wheel bearings and what look like lift/lashing hooks (but probably aren't) on the bogies. On the "generator", I added a warning sticker, and a dot of red for the plug, and in the tanks area some handwheels, and what look like green electrical cutout switches. I was hoping to refer to Brian Daniel's reference gallery, but most of the images won't load for me at the moment, hopefully they'll be back soon
     
     

     
     
    I've also lightly drybrushed the bogie frames and various corners with Vallejo Brown Leather, which is the same colour I used on my wagon underframes - I'm hoping this will provide some kind of visual continuity despite the 60 underframes looking more grey/black than brown. It all looks a bit stark and messy at the moment, but I think a gentle application of powders will bring things together. The big missing thing at the moment is that the bogie frames appear to collect quite a lot of matt brown stuff (brake dust?) on 60's, I'm thinking powders will represent this well.
     
    Here's the other side:
     

     
     
    One question in particular I could really do with some help with - what colour is the fine pipework on the bogies when it's new? It catches the light in pictures, particularly where the pipes curve up and disappear behind the top of the frames, but I can't pin down whether it should be shiny metal, or a flat light colour (white?).
  23. Will Vale

    Railex 2010

    By Will Vale,

    We had a good show at the weekend, although operating Whitemarsh meant I didn't have much time to do anything else - quite a shock after showing roundy-roundy layouts the last couple of years.
     

     
    First of all, let me offer thanks to my dad for operating Igelfeld and Tanis, and Micky for bringing us lunch on both days, and giving me a quick break from Whitemarsh to eat it. Also thanks to Kev and Rich for making trips to the coffee room on my behalf! 
     
    I was pretty panicky the week before the show, especially since I couldn't start the fiddle yard until Wednesday night owing to lack of supplies. As usual, I painted the fascias (primer + 2 coats) late at night on the Thursday so they aren't all that neat close up. They look nice in the pictures here though - the semi-gloss black definitely adds a professional touch, although it's a shame you can see the white primer on the feet-come-gusset plates under the layout.
     
    The scenics came together quite well on the Friday morning and afternoon - lots of bushes, some more grass, and various bits of fairing in around things like the bridge. Some of it will have to come out again and get reworked, especially where the bridge joins the retaining wall. I tried to get things up to a similar level of finish all over, leaving off anything which didn't look ready, such as the Ipswich offices and the pretty much the entire fuelling point. This did make the right-hand end of the layout rather bare-looking, but keeping locos on one or other of the sidings on the concrete pad helped.
     
    I'm really glad I bought the Turners truck too It filled a space where the office should be quite nicely, and added a bit of colour and verticality to an otherwise plain spot. It was also a magnet for sticky fingers which acted as a sacrificial anode to protect the rest of the layout - even my fragile depot sign survived intact.
     
    Operation was simple - with a short rake of MKAs (instanter couplings) and a rake of MOAs (Sprat and Winkle) I was able to bring a train in to the yard with 60014, uncouple and head to the fuelling point or the headshunt while the 08871 took the rake into the yard proper (rear road of fiddle yard). This was then reversed, and mixed up with various light engine movements, or 37510 taking the MKAs to and from the yard by itself. The pilot is only needed for the MOAs to avoid buffer lock on the slip, but that didn't quite work out in practice and I needed to help it a bit despite inserting an OCA at the front of the rake.
     

     
    There weren't too many problems - electrically things were solid - no soldering iron required - but the drive pin dropped out of the tie bar on the slip putting it out of action for the last hour on Saturday. I worked around it since fixing it would have meant turning the layout over - the downside of using the supplied tables. After the show closed it was a matter of five minutes to re-insert the pin, hook the Tortoise wire back over the other end, and reprogram the decoder's address for that motor - it turned out to have lost the address, so it was really a two-fold problem. On Sunday the motors were bulletproof and I stopped checking the routes visually since they were behaving so well. So thumbs up for hands-off uncoupling and turnout motors.
     
    On the loco front, 60014, 66722, 08871 and 37510 did sterling service. Great slow running, no stalls or stutters from continuity (I cleaned the track and applied a tiny smear of graphite) but the board join was a bit lumpy and occasionally the 08 would stall against it with wheels turning - I need to address this. I did have to reset the 66 (thank goodness for Howes sound decoders) to defaults on the Saturday when it got confused and did odd things like have the headlights come on at both ends!
     
    The Powercab also worked well - the layout rarely drew more than half an amp, and it was great to operate with one hand. I programmed all the routes I thought I'd need as macros so it was quick to set up for moves, but the somewhat arbitrary numbering occasionally confused me (and Micky). I think next time I'll number the lines and sidings from front to back at the left and right of the board, and set up the macros such that 13 means "route from track one at the left to track three at the right" - assuming there are enough macro slots.
     
    We were in a block of smaller layouts, and I didn't get time to take many pictures so they're mostly of our neighbours. I like these more anyway - the NZ club scene seems to prefer large freelance layouts which don't really do it for me. There are a couple of others I should really have got pictures of and didn't, but time was pressing. Rich and Kev did good business with Bad Horn across the aisle, and didn't make good on the promise of thrown peanuts, for which I'm suitably grateful
     

     
    I had some nice comments on the layout, and was surprised at how many people mentioned the autoballasters! I didn't know there was much interest in UK modern image here, but I guess it's more popular than I thought. I also got a chance to explain the "hairy cigar" grass to a few people who asked about it, so hopefully that'll start to get used a bit more.
     
    Kids were generally OK, but a bit less parentally-restrained than the other locations Railex cycles between, with a bit more reaching and touching. No real problems though, and no damage. I did have one middle-aged father explain at length to his son about how all the feed wires and point motors worked, his finger stabbing out waaay too far into "layout airspace". I didn't feel very guilty at all when I explained that the point motors and orange pipes were actually cosmetic details and all the real wires were underneath
     
    So... lots of jobs to do on the layout, or new layouts to build, but no pressure for a while since I didn't get any invites. I leave you with an "RMWeb special" picture of my dad's new stock on Whitemarsh:
     

  24. Will Vale
    Relay boxes by Will Vale, on Flickr
     
    ...have been greatly exaggerated. I have been modelling in my spare time, just not railway modelling, so I'm doing better than last year at least...
     
    But I have done something train-related today - I dug Whitemarsh out of the cupboard and finished painting all the cable trunking which had only had a base coat of cream paint until now. I'm trying to get the bridge end of the layout ready to take to the NZAMRC convention at the end of the week, so of course I left it until Tuesday to start. D'oh.
     
    As you can see above, I made up a couple of Wills (my!) relay boxes and set them on a styrene plinth which has been painted to look like concrete. The paint job on the boxes was an experiment which I think sort of worked - they look nicely galvanised, but the paint looks gritty and coarse which isn't really in scale. I also added a pin wash around the details which looks quite stark in close-up but helps them "read" properly from a distance.
     
    These are going to be planted at the back of the layout tomorrow to fill in a little gap which has been bothering me. I've cut a space but I need to fill in around them still.
     

     
    I'm quite pleased with the padlock, which is seriously small (under 1mm square, 0.6mm deep, with 0.3mm wire for the shackle) but annoyed that I got a glue blob on the surface while sticking it on!
  25. Will Vale

    Minor titivations

    By Will Vale,

    (click pictures for big versions)
    I spent time on Whitemarsh last week so that I could enter in the NZAMRC 2012 Convention competition. I opted to just take the bridge end - nothing's been done to the other module which is definitely lagging behind now
     
    My main aim was to try and fill in various unfinished or messy-looking areas. The worst offenders were the last-minute patches of grass I added before Railex in 2010 which were applied straight over the ballast, and didn't have any "reinforcement" from earth or weeds. They looked a bit odd as a result, so I've been sprinkling on various mixtures of scenic fluff to fill in around the grass, and tamping it down with a dry brush before wetting and applying matt medium. I also pulled up some of the grass and thinned it out near the bridge.

     
     
    You can see the results around the buffer stop and ballast/grass edges which I think look a bit more "faired in" than they did. I also replaced the (prototypical, but odd-looking) single Rosebay Willowherb between the two lines with some more subtle weeds:
     
     

     
    Another job was finishing off painting the concrete trunking. Once that was done I added some shadows on the ballast with a dark wash (not everywhere, but patchily) to define this a bit better. Also on the concrete front, I nicked the four lamps I made for the other end of the layout and added some new pads for them to sit on. They aren't wired up yet, and I need to get some more brass tube to make proper sockets for them, but they look nice and help reinforce the connection between layout and prototype.
     

     
     
    I noticed (only after a while...) that the neat alcohol I use for wetting the fine textures had faded the paint on the bridge girder, which was a bit annoying. Luckily it wasn't hard to recover it by drybrushing with the original colour, keeping a little bit of the faded paint in places for variety. On the other side of the girder I've painted some details on the footpath and weathered the road.
     
     

     
    Lastly I filled in the empty spot with a rusted Little Grey Fergie (TE20) since we used to see them around when I was growing up in the fens. The weathering job is very simple and comprised three steps - Dullcote, MIG washes, and MIG pigments. It's not subtle but I think it does the job OK. I also removed the overscale steering wheel.
     

     
    I'm afraid these pictures look rather strong and punchy, and the white balance is off in a couple. I think that my colour calibration isn't set up properly somewhere since they look more subtle in Lightroom. I'll try and sort that out before doing too much more.
     
    I've also done some quickie experiments with focus stacking, which is cool but tricky to get right, so I don't have anything to show yet.
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