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GWMark

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  1. GWMark
    As a bit of a diversion I also built this back in March.....
     

     
     
    I purchased it as a used kit at Astrolat, the "chassis" had been built and I just had to finish it and build the interior and body. These went together very quickly, most unlike me. Unfortunately the wheelset was P4 - how did I not notice that one! So I ended up cutting the axles, big mistake, one is now too short and the back to back is a little too small - need to replace the axles some time.
     
    True to form, I may have got to this stage in about 2 weeks, but then I left if or 2 months before getting it out to photograph and starting to think about finishing it - don't panic - I've found another diversion now so the danger of actually finishing something is passing again.
  2. GWMark

    Back to GT3

    By GWMark,

    Well, the New Year period has enabled me some time to get back to doing a bit of loco building. The project, a resin GT3 from Golden Arrow with the detailing etches from Bill Bedford and Ian (macgeordie) of RMWeb. Progress has been slow until now, as with most of my builds, being interrupted by other projects, electronics modules for club layouts and the general things in life that take away our time. However since getting home from a Christmas visiting my mother I have built the buffer beam, cab windows, cab steps and front grill of GT3 from Ian's etches. I already had the top grill, and tender detailing done. So now I need to do the brake rodding and the tender axle boxes. The final thing to do is to sort out a tender coupling - I have decided I want to keep the Hornby tow bar so that I can have electrical connectivity for tender pickups and possible lighting in the tender. I have already got fibre optics and LEDs for the front head code lighting, so I amy also add cab lighting and lighting in the toilet compartment. I have needed to add some weight to the tender to keep it down against the springs in the Hornby tender coupling, but I think I am going to have to do something to open the tender to cab gap up, otherwise this will never get around any corners. In the picture the side grill and the cab steps are just held on by blutac and the tender has a simple screw to couple it to the loco.
     

     
    Two areas I still need to think about are the bogie side frames, I am not happy with these and may just cut off the moulded springs and buy some cast white metal ones - anybody know what might be suitable? Also there are wheels guards on Ian's etches that I have to work out how to fit.
     
    There has been a bit of filler added to fill the air bubbles and to try to get a better edge along the bottom of both the loco and tender body. Not long now until it gets primed and hopefully any blemishes that are left will show up better and can also be filled.
     
    Hopefully within the next few weeks it can get painted, it depends very much on the weather. I plan to use Halfords spray cans, so it will avoid by issues with airbrushes, but that's a whole other thread!
     
    Mark
  3. GWMark
    I wanted a little project to do during that time between Christmas and the New Year, it had to be a small project as time would be an issue - it isn't fair to lock yourself away from the family for too long at this time of the year after all! But I wanted something I could look back on in these depressing first days back at work and think - 'I actually did achieve something during the holidays'.
     
    I decided my long mothballed GT3 project would fit the bill, no major jobs, just lots of finishing touches to do, or so I thought.
     
     
    The tender had been painted already, and glazed, it just needed the round grill painting and the pickups adding - this ought to be a nice little job to get me started. So day one of the project saw the pickups added to the outer axles of the tender and the drawbar coupling arrange sorted to allow current to be feed to the loco using the original Hornby drawbar and a custom built arrangement on the tender. Also the buffers were added to the tender, round sprung buffers have been used, GT3 had round buffers on the tender and oval on the loco.
     

     
    The next day, and several days after that, were spent on the loco itself. The paint surface was still not right, so a little more time with fine wet and dry and a fibre glass brush was followed by a good wash and dry. In a break form the winter rain time was found to spray the loco body with the Halfords Rover Russet colour (probably not the right choice in hindsight). Once dry, the next day, Humbrol Metal Cote Silver was used to paint the window frames and the handrails. The interior of the cab was painted with a white acrylic, just to brighten it up before adding detail. the top grills got a coat of Chaos `black as did the steps on the front buffer beam.
     
    The brake gear was laminated, from Ian MacDonalds etch, and the front bogie guards bent up and soldered. I also added a section across the from of the bogie frames to fill in the gap between the resin fake frames. These brass and plasticard parts where then primed and painted with a Matt black Halfords spray can. The headcode discs similarly primed but painted with the same white acrylic used for the cab interior. Them came the job of assembling these parts, added the front buffer beam assembly, the oval sprung buffers at the front, inserting the front grill and starting to build up the loco.
     

     
    It is not finished yet, I still need to add the side grills, however I am not happy with the paint job of these, and it is easier to paint them before attaching to the loco. Also cab detailing and glazing is needed, transfers, lining and some more painting. Also, looking at these photos it is clear that a lot of the paint on the handrails has come off with handling and there is a bit of a droop in the front buffer beam area that needs to be sorted. I also have some fibre optics to add to illuminate the headcode disks.
     
    My quick little project for Christmas, with the satisfaction of "finishing" something before going back to work has not really succeeded, but I have a least made some noticeable progress. Maybe it will not take me another 18 months before I get GT3 out again to work on. In fact I will probably take it up to our clubroom tomorrow to give it an outing on the test track - the clearance between the tender and cab is a little tight, so I want to see if it will go around curves and negotiate pointwork, I may need to readdress the loco/tender coupling arrangement.
  4. GWMark

    GT3 and 72XX progress

    By GWMark,

    Well, for one reason or another I have not got a lot done recently or posted very much here on RM Web. I have, in the past 6 weeks made a little progress on a few projects however. My GT3 has got to the stage of painting, well primer at least, but will need some work still to sort out the blemishes the primer is showing up.
     

     
    I went on the Missenden Abbey weekend again this year and made some significant progress with my PDK 72XX kit.
     

     
    Hopefully I will get more time available to me now to complete some projects, for the past 12 months I have been making the trip up and down to Cornwall from Bucks about twice a month to visit my mother who was ill, however she has past away now so I will have some more time on my hands - once I've got some of the jobs around the house cleared from my wife's list.
     
    Mark
     
    I completely forgot about another project I started, it was meant to be something fairly quick to just keep up the momentum. However it was after I had got to this stage, shown below, that I realized I had twisted the footplate when I soldered the tank sides on.
     

     
    I think this one is destined to be dropped in a bowl of hot water and I'll start again. Still it was only one evenings work.
  5. GWMark
    Having now applied another coat of the Lifecolor acrylic loco green to my 72xx and brush painting the buffer beams and safety valve/whistles, I couldn't resist putting it back together to see how it looked.
     

     
    The black is Halfords Matt black car spray, the green is Lifecolor as already mentioned, the buffer beams Phoenix Precission enamel, the safety value/whistles are Humbrol enamel. All on a base of two coats of precision etch primer. So quite a mix of paints on this one.
     
    There are a few issues;
    My masking was not too good. I made the same mistake I have made before and sprayed the black first up to the edge of where the colour was needed and then tried to mask that off and spray the green up to the same line. There are inevitable small gaps that have crept in that show primer through.
    My surface preparation was not good enough, there are places that could have done with better sanding/filing. Some bits of the fibre glass brush have appeared in the paint; even after several attempts at washing the model before painting.
    I wish I had not used the whitemetal safety valve bonnet, the raw brass for the chimney cap looks so much better than the painted safety valve.
    I need to improve my method of holding the cab roof down, it shows up a gap in this closeup picture.
    I need to do something about the white metal crosshead/piston rod - do people paint (spray?) these successfully?

    I think I have hurried this final stage a little too much, I wanted the model "finished" to take along to the next Missenden weekend. If I had perhaps been a bit more critical during the preparation stage I would have something that looked better now. Still, I think I will complete it from here, as much as anything it gives me some practice. At least that way I can have mine done before Hornby bring out the RTR one later this year. If this ends up on the club layout we are just starting it would need a repaint into 1960's condition anyway, so that would be a good opportunity to strip it and sort out some of the issues. Also, if you view it from more than about 6 inches away it looks alright even with these problems.
     
    So now it is a case of touching up the paint, another coat on the buffer beams, transfers, plates, crew and coal. Then do I try my hand at weathering it? Most likely the answer to that is yes.
  6. GWMark

    Railbus returns

    By GWMark,

    In the last few days I have returned to a stalled project, my Dapol Railbus. The interior has been painted, and some passenger have been painted and added.
     

     
    I have also painted the lining on the doors and the kick plates. Glazing has been added and the Railbus put back together in the hope I might get to run it at the club open day tomorrow. Unfortunately I have yet to find a crew that will fit in the rather confined cabs, so it has host drivers at the moment. Also I need to add windscreen wipers and the control desks.
     
    I need to varnish it yet, hopefully that will loose some of the shine on the transfers. It has a slight bend on it, made to look worse in the photos, hopefully when the roof is on that will keep it square and get rid of the bow in the floor.
     

     
    As is obvious in the pictures, the roof is only placed on, I will need to find a better way to attach it, but still be able to remove it to get to the inside, especially when I need to convert it to DCC. The roof itself is still in primer, so needs work.
     
    It is a Dapol plastic kit, with Branchlines motorising and interior kit, the half dozen passengers are from Langley, I went for white metal figures to try to add a bit of weight to it. It runs reasonably now it has a bit more weight, but is rather a lot of noise for such a small thing. I suspect something is rubbing, since I had to slacken the screw that holds the bogie to the body slightly to make it run.
  7. GWMark
    Today saw the end of the Autumn Railway Modellers Weekend at Missenden Abbey. as is now the custom I attended with my son, now 17, for a few days of locomotive kit construction. This year the numbers of kit constructors was down, with people being seduced by the laser cutting, scenery, weathering and electronics side of the hobby. This meant there were two small rooms of us loco builders, we were placed under the care of new boy Tony Gee in a room with 5 other 4mm modellers, whilst next door Kevin Wilson presided other a collection of 3mm, 4mm and 7mm modellers.
     
    This year was a first of us, we both had kits from the same manufacturer, High Level. I had a little Black Hawthorn 0-4-0 industrial tank to put together and Daniel had his Hawthorn Leslie 0-6-0, he had made an aborted start on a year ago on this but stopped due to lack of the correct size wheels. Both of these kits proved to be superb pieces of design that went together with no modification. Extremely well thought out kits with a great level of design. Daniel progressed well with his 0-6-0 frames, adding large amounts of dummy inside motion detail and brake hangers.
     

     
    HIs soldering has always been a little heavy handed, but is improving no end, with help from Tony and others, not to mention the benefits of more practice. Having a good kit to work on has help boost both his skills and confidence.
     
    I on the other hand took by frames to the point at which I really needed to paint behind the wheels so that they could be fitted before the remaining detail. The frames themselves are rather substantial Nickel Silver etches with some very nice brass overlays that fit beautifully around the axle bushes. The inside motion on this little 0-4-0 was somewhat simpler and because I was building it in OO I am unable to fir the firebox.
     
    So having taken the frames as far as I wanted by Saturday evening I turn my attention to the superstructure and build the smokebox and firebox areas. Very pleasing curves and some lovely little details around the bunkers.
     

     
    These two kits have proved to both of us the value of working on something that has been so well designed, it is very tempting to buy some cheap, secondhand kit from the 70's to get started with. However this might well prove to be a false economy as it is hard to tell if the poor results are due to poor kit design or lack of ability. I would not say that the High Level kits are easy beginner kits, but they certainly remove one variable from the equation.
     
    Away from these two models we also had an interesting time dropping in on the laser cutting and observing first hand the results one of the other modellers in our room could obtain with his brand new resistance soldering unit. It was the first use he had made of it and he achieved some really stunning results on some siphon sides, building up, multiple layers of overlays. I even managed to have a go with it myself, which was a dangerous thing for my pocket I think - I new have one of these on my modelling wish list!
     
    As for Tony he proved to be a knowledgeable, entertaining and extremely helpful tutor, he even brought along some really nice locos that Peter Denny scratch built in EM before I was born. Some amazing techniques when you consider the age of them. It goes to show how inventive good modellers can be when the materials are not available and how spoilt we are these days. Also thanks to Tony for bringing along a ready built Black Hawthorn for me to look at. I hope we see more of him at these weekends.
     
    Now we have to wait for the spring for the next Missenden weekend, hopefully we can find a time for a family modelling day or two between now and then so that we can make some progress of these fantastic little locomotives.
     
    Thanks to Chris Langdon and all the others that organise these weekends and to the various tutors that impart wisdom and bad jokes!
  8. GWMark
    The autumn weekend of railway modelling at Missenden Abbey is almost here again, once again Daniel and I will be attending. This time I am going to start a new project, the Duke is to a stage now that I think I can probably finish it at home, plus I am keen to start a project that will run on my little shunting puzzle. Therefore my plan for the weekend is to make a start on a High Level kit of a Black Hawthorn 0-4- ST.
     
    As part of my preparation I have started (several times) to read the very extensive instructions and examined the lovely looking etches. I had to take a picture of the etches before starting, and probably making a bit of a mess of them, since they do look so good. Chris really does do a good job of both the etches and the instructions.
     

     
    Daniel will be working on a High Level kit as well, having finished the 14xx chassis, his is a the Hawthorn Leslie, a kit that has been to Missenden twice before, both times work was stopped due to incorrect wheels being purchased. Doing it once is an accident, twice is carelessness - or so I tell him. Still his comeback is that his project has more wheels than mine this time.
     
    Anyway, looking forward to 2 days of uninterrupted, well almost, modelling.
  9. GWMark
    Last weekend saw the Autumn railway modellers weekend at Missenden Abbey, this also coincided with Daniel's 15th birthday a few days before, therefore we both got the weekend of modelling as a birthday present for Daniel and an early Christmas present for me. So the workbench was relocated from the kitchen table to a seminar room in Missenden Abbey. This is the 5th time of going to these events for me, and the 3rd for Daniel, the chance to have a complete weekend, Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, of modelling without any distractions or pressures to do anything else is just great. Add to that the benefits of have not just the tutors to call on, but also the other modellers assembled in the various rooms, and it is a great environment to make some real progress on those difficult projects you have in mind.
     
    This year we had a collection of items to work on, we took the pair of 72xx models, I had a Mallard Models Duke kit to start and Daniel his GEM Prince of Wales, the chassis of which he built at the spring weekend - with some aid from Tim Shackleton.
     
    Daniel wanted some advice on the running of his 72xx, it turns out that the verdict was it was pretty good and just a few tweaks would probably get it as good as could be expected. My 72xx has presented me with a problem, the refuge for the rear lamp bracket, often mentioned as an omission in the PDK kit. It turns out that there is a mystery white metal casting that comes with the kit, the idea being to cut out the bunker back and fit this casting. My problem with this was two fold, how to do it without making a mess of the bunker back, and would the casting look right? This never really got resolved, as expected almost everybody had a different opinion on this one!
     

     
    Daniel had a issue with the running of the Prince of Wales chassis, it would lock up when going backwards but was really fine going forwards. A number of people looked at it, it ran smoothly with the motor removed, so maybe it was a gearbox issue. Bob Alderman eventually found the problem, the back and forth play in the motor shaft was such that the work would move enough for the collar and grub-screw on the work gear foul the gearbox, moving the worm slightly on the shaft and it ran fine. A 30 second fix that took 30 minutes of other peoples time to find!
     
    My Duke kit gave me an opportunity to play with my newest purchase, an Avonside chassis jig, a little bit of overkill for the drivers on an 4-4-0, but it did a great job of keeping everything square and it has to have been the quickest, most problem free chassis construction have done. A really nice kit for it's vintage, lots of Nickel-Silver and multiple overlays. I spent a very therapeutic time adding all the rivets on the footplate and soldering the overlays on footplate and cab. I was particularly pleased with the way the splasher turned out, after playing with my mini-rollers.
     

     
    As for Daniel, he made spectacular progress with his Prince of Wales, getting the wheels on, motor running and much of the superstructure of the loco body built. It needs a fair bit more detailing and fettling before he builds the tender and gets himself a good looking loco.
     

     
    As to the Missenden weekend, clearly we are hooked after all these visits. The question I have been asked is how worthwhile are they, well, the fact I have been so many times says a lot. Sure I don't learn huge amounts of new things each time, but it does mean I get a solid weekend of model making and having experts on hand is a great bonus when it comes to tackling things you have not tried before, when you need a second opinion or reassurance.
  10. GWMark

    Command & Control

    By GWMark,

    Progress has once again been slowed due to a combination of work, domestic and revision issues. One of the reason for doing this layout was as a joint project with my teenage son, sadly he is in mid-GCSE season, so is unable to do anything other than revise at the moment. So I am restricted to doing things he has no interest in and sympathising over the revision. Hence no scenic work has taken place and I have spent a little bit of time assembling the electronics that are going to run the layout.
     
    In my original plan for the layout I wanted to use it as a means to try out some different ways of doing things, so it will have a control system rather more complex than is really needed for a simple shunting puzzle. Partly I feel justified in trying things out on a small layout rather than jumping in with some big project and then deciding I had taken the wrong approach or simply wasting large amount of time and money. However it is also a case that I enjoy the electronics side of things anyhow and want to have a use for some of the neat ideas that are around.
     
    The trains are definitely going to be driven via DCC, but all the accessories and the interface to the DCC is going to be handled by the MERG CBus system. With such a small layout I don't really get or need, some of the advantages of having a layout control bus, but I still think it is simpler longer term. For those that do no know, CBus offers a way of sending messages between bit of electronics on the layout. This means that using the same pair of wires you can send a message to control some item on the layout, and also get status back from other items. You may think you have heard this before, when people preach the "DCC - two wires is all you need" message. But this does something different, it works both ways, allowing feedback as well as control. It does not replace DCC on the actual tracks however.
     
    The picture below shows the things I have built already...
     

     
    Starting at the back left, I have 4 block occupancy detectors, each one will support detection in 2 blocks, so this gives me 8 detection blocks. They are actually a MERG kit, DTC8, with the original circuit board cut up to give me four separate pairs. They are not CBus kits, but will provide input to a CBus module.
     
    To the right of these are a pair of DCC distribution boards I have built. These are basically terminal blocks mounted on stripboard. The DCC bus is connected at the two ends, one for bus in and the other for bus out. This is then connected to a pair of four way terminal blocks. this allows for 4 dropper pairs to connect to the DCC bus. There is also an LED and resistor on the board, this allows an indication that the DCC bus is functional to as far as this distribution board. I have done it this way as I do like like the idea of bare wires to run the DCC bus, once is one way I have seen people tap onto the bus. The other approach I have seen, using scotch-lock connectors also seems a little hit and miss to me - other may get on with it, but I personally am not keen. Therefore I am wiring by DCC bus through a set of distribution boards that allow be to connect droppers in a "hub style" network. The LED is part of my obsession with having diagnostic aids for when things go wrong.
     
    The next pair of boards to the right are a couple of MERG kits, CAN-ACE8 to be precise. These are general purpose input boards that will taken inputs from the block occupancy detectors and other sources and send them along the layout control bus - the CBus. This will let be sense things like point settings, train detection and possibly also switches on the front of the layout that viewers can operate. Each board allows 8 things to be sensed and will translate the state of these 8 items and send CBus messages whenever they change - e.g. a train enters or leaves a section. Other CBus modules can then act on this information.
     
    Below these boards are a collection of RJ22 interface boards that will be used to plug the control panel and the handheld controller into the CBUS. I have yet to build the MERG hand-held, this is the most daunting kit as it requires surface mount soldering.
     
    To the left is the MERG DCC command station, this is one of the few that I have tested out, and it works brilliantly. It is driven from the CBus and connects to the track with an inbuilt 1A booster. I have not yet got the external booster kit, I need to wait for MERG to get the kit back in stock. However I will probably not need more than the 1A from the command station anyway - this is only a shunting puzzle.
     
    To the left of the command station, and connected to it via CBus, is a USB interface - this is how I tested the command station, I sent CBus commands over USB from JMRI - using an iPhone as a throttle, to the command station and hence drove trains from the iPhone. This will be attached to the layout to allow JMRI panels to be provided for point control and mimic diagrams etc. Also I will probably have the JMRI setup for driving trains with an iPhone as well as the dedicated handheld controller. One thought is to have a touchscreen and display the mimic diagram on that and hence set points etc directly from the touch screen.
     
    The next board along is an LED driver - this will go into the dedicated panel and provide all the indications as to what is happening on the layout. Again connected by CBus, so just 4 wires have to go to the panel. This board is capable of driving far more LED's that I will need for such a small layout.
     
    Next we have a simple power supply board that will give me a source of both 5 volts DC and 12 volts DC - I need to produce a few more of these, since this on will only give me 1Amp of each voltage. I need a 12 Volt DC source of 1.5 Amps to drive the uncoupling magnets. I also need an interface between the CBus output module and these magnets - so yet more circuits to design and build. Although this should be fairly simple.
     
    To the left and below the power supply board is a CANSERVO8 board - this connects to CBus and allows 8 RC servos to be controlled. Three of the servos will be used to change the points whilst the others will be used for animation effects on the layout. I already have a setup for an animated figure and am looking into putting a moving crane of some sort on the quayside.
     
    The last two boards to the right of the servo controller are a panel switch board and an auxiliary output board. The panel switch board, along with the LED driver, will be inside the mimic panel and will take all the inputs form the push buttons and send them out as messages on the CBus, thus forming the other part of the panel.
     
    The aux. output board allows 8 accessories to be driven by the CBus, messages from any device on the bus can thus cause things to turn on or off on the layout. Five of these outputs will be used to control the uncoupling magnets, whilst the rest will perform functions like controlling the lights on the layout or operating other accessories.
     
    As well as these boards I have also been building the mains power supply, it will delivery 2 x 16V AC circuits to the layout and is in a separate plastic box, well insulated with short circuit protection and supply status indication built into it. The idea is that the mains stays on the floor in an isolated box and never comes anywhere near the layout itself.
     
    I also have some ready made frog juicers that I will use to switch frog polarity, these really are a bit of a luxury, since looking at the CBus way of doing things it would have been a lot cheaper to switch the frogs via relays that are triggered by the same CBus events that trigger the point motors (servos). However I wanted to try these out, and with only three points it is not a huge expense.
     
    One things I have to look at is how the frog juicers will interact with the block occupancy detection, I may have to live without detection on the frog, which is a little bit of a shame.
     
    I still have a few more circuits to build, the hand held controller, uncoupling magnet interface and probably another CBus output module. Then it is a case of wiring the layout up with this lo, once I have mounted all the boards, and building the control panel. I think the GCSE's will be over before I have done all of that and I will be chased up by Daniel to get a move on - oh well there never is enough time in this world.
  11. GWMark
    I noticed it had been a very long time since I wrote anything here, March of last year. I didn't even do my customary write-up following the Missenden Abbey weekends last Autumn and this Spring. This does not mean nothing has been happening, just that I have written nothing about it.
     
    Both Daniel and i went to Missenden in October and then again this March, in fact the March weekend may be the last for a while with both of us going as Daniel is about to depart for University life - although there may be an outside chance he will come back for the Missenden weekends.
     

     
    My little Black Hawthorn is now nearing completion, the motor and gearbox are fitted, the coupling rods, piston rods, steam glands are all in place. Pickups have been added and the frames treated with metal blue. It runs nicely, very slow with little hint of rocking. The addition of the buffer beams has added some weight to it as well to help with pickup and traction. I even had it pushing a rake of 15 wagons, which is pretty good for something so small and fairly light.
     
    The brake gear is made and just needs fitting. I need to add pipe runs, safety valves, handrails and sandboxes. There is also a back head to be detailed and fitted. In all not far to go with this one now. The fuse wire you can see coming from the front of the cab is a pipe run that needs to be trimmed and attached still.
     
    As for Daniel's project, the Hawthorn Leslie, that is also taking shape. He too now has a running locomotives, although it is lacking piston rods, cylinders and some other vital parts.
     

     
    As always the close-up picture reveals something to be improved, Daniel is not pleased with the Sandbox and intends to remove and reposition it so that it sits down flatter. The smokebox front also needs a little bit of cleaning up after he discovered a misplaced overlays which he moved during the last Missenden session. In general he too is pleased with his progress and the way his model runs.
     
    Hopefully I will finish mine soon, probably the next time I will go to Missenden I will start another project. We are not sure with Daniel, maybe once exams are over he will do some work on it over the summer holidays.
  12. GWMark

    A Quick Diversion

    By GWMark,

    Partly from frustration and partly because I like to see things move I decided I wanted to do a little project that was going to be reasonably quick to get to a stage were I could run a loco. About 2 weeks ago, at Expo EM I purchased an unbuilt Wills Finecast kit of an 1804 GWR Saddle tank, last week at Railex I also obtained the etched nickel silver chassis from SE Finecast and some Gibson wheels for it. So on Friday evening I decided to make the chassis. These Finecast etched chassis go together really quickly and using my Avonside jig made a nice square chassis in no time at all, a Comet GB1 50:1 gearbox and a Mashima 1620 mated to t made up the power plant. So on Saturday morning I sprayed the chassis with etch primer and left for 24 hours. Meanwhile Saturday evening gave me a chance to start on the body. So far all was going I might have my running chassis in time to test run it at our club evening on Wednesday.
     
    Sadly Sunday did not go to plan and I had no time until the evening to touch it again. Still I managed to paint the chassis at least and solder a few more bits on the body. I like to only fit Gibson wheels once if I can, so wanted to paint the chassis before fitting the wheels for the first time. Monday evening was spent adding the wheels, making the motor fit and working on reaming the rods out to take the Gibson crank pins. Only a few hours, so it has motor and wheels fitted, rods on one side ready but not finished on the other.
     

     
    Maybe I will get time tomorrow to do the rods on the other side and add the pickups, if not then the test run will have to wait another week. Still I did cheat and have run it with a 9volt PP9 battery and the rods loosely fitted, it seems to run acceptably, but the proof will not be known until the chassis is finished. I am a little nervous about the crankpins since I had to drill the wheels as the holes for the pins were missing. It would be easy to have one of the crank pins out of alignment and end up with a binding chassis.
     
    The other interesting thing is what the prototype really is. It is not an 1804 Class saddle tank as it says on the box, nor is it really an 1854 which is what it was latter renamed to be. From looking at my copy of J H Russell I suspect it is really a variant of the 1701 class - maybe somebody out there knows for sure?
     
    As a quickie project, for some nearly instant gratification, it is not looking too bad - of course finishing it is another matter
  13. GWMark

    XpressNet Interface

    By GWMark,

    Tonight's little triumph on the work bench was to finally work out what I got wrong with my XpressNet computer interface I was building. The result a fully functional interface between an ageing laptop and my low-end DCC kit (a Lenz Compact), however this gives me access to do things over Xpressnet, and if I every do get around to upgrading the compact I will be able to control lots more.
     
    The immediate gratification came in setting up WiThrottle and driving a sound equipped loco from my Android phone - plus I get access to more functions than are available on the Lenz controller itself - still not enough for sound really, but it's a small step forwards.
     
    This is really a stepping stone in a set of experiments I want to do to build (or at least prove the concept of), a bespoke control system to be considered for a future project. The idea is for a layout that will require 8 plus operators, the layout will run to a sequence and the locos will be DCC controlled. Now the issue is how to make sure the right locos get passed around the different operators, especially when the operator maybe 15 feet away from a loco - probably can't read the loco number to get the DCC address.
     
    The idea, have a computer that knows the sequence of operations for each operator, connect the DCC command station to the computer. Each operator has a throttle, not DCC, but connected to the computer, probably wirelessly. As the sequence progresses the computer sends a message to the throttle that is displayed to the driver. The message says what the next operation for that driver is, in effect it rosters the movements out to the drivers. Since the computer knows the loco involved, it sets the DCC address for that throttle. As the driver turns up the speed control, the data is sent to the computer, which simply passes this on to the DCC command station.
     
    The computer is not driving the trains, it is merely dispatching sequence information, assigning locos and being a bridge between the throttle network and the DCC system. So I now have the first bit in place, a link between a computer and a DCC command station. Next it's the throttles and the computer to throttle link. The throttles themselves seem simple, and as for the link, I'm thinking about using bluetooth modules - gives you wireless that is legal to use in this country and computers already have interfaces for it. Plus bluetooth stuff is available so cheaply now it's not worth spending time or money on anything else.
  14. GWMark
    In talking with St. Simon on Wednesday at the HWDMRS club night I realised it has been a while since I put anything on my workbench thread - checking back here I find it has been more than a year - how time flies!
     
    So, the latest thing I have been playing with is RC servos. This came about because we are looking at building a new club layout and need about 100 slow acting point motors - now that's a lot of motors and a lot of money for the likes of Cobalts etc. So I looked into servo - I used to fly RC helicopters, so knew a bit about them.
     
    First step, get hold of some servos. I found 4 servos on ebay, brand new, micro sized (9g) for a stunning £6.07 for 4 of them shipped to the UK - what a bargain. So 4 were purchased, and a MERG servo controller board that I already had sitting on the top of a cupboard (for about 4 years) was built.
     
    In order to test the servos I decided to build a simple board with a point, and an old ratio signal I had laying around from an aborted project about 10 years ago. The servos worked great, using the MERG software on a PC to adjust the speed and travel of the servo meant there was no need for any complex mechanical linkages, just as well because I probably would not be able to get them to work.
     
     
    I had removed the over-centre spring from the Peco point, to make it more link the hand-built points we are hoping for on our final layout, and added an omega loop in the brass wire I used to link the point to the servo.

     
    The servo was adjusted to hold the point blades firmly against the stock rails and all worked fine. I had the means to control 4 points and it had cost me about £12 in total. This looked very promising.
     
    The next issue was DCC control. We will probably be using DCC for the new layout, the MERG unit I had uses switches for the servo control - how to make it DCC. You can just add the DCC accessory decoder from MERG, but that means two boards and more expense, so I looked around and came across a site by a chap in Canada that some of you may know, Paco's Official Site. He had a simple PIC based servo DCC decoder, so I built it, and it worked first time. A very simple and cheap (there's that word again) solution. Problem is it had no opto isolation and the programming of CV's was not reliable on my Lenz Compact that I use to play with DCC things. O this is still a work in progress - I have a lot of "works in progress"
  15. GWMark

    New Challenge

    By GWMark,

    Obviously I don't have enough unfinished, or un-started, projects, so this weekend I decided to try something I have bean meaning to have a go at for a while - making my own track. To be precise A C&L B6 turnout kit that I have had on the top of the cupboard for nearly 2 years. Why did I choose now? I have no idea, other than I had to wait for some paint to dry on my 72xx, you know what they say about paint drying!
     
    Anyway, after 2 evening, about 8 hours, I now have this....
     

     
    One more switch blade and the check rails to go. However it is rather pleasing that I managed to push a wagon through this with no derailing or binding. It is not the best looking effort ever, but it may actually work and that is a lot better than I had hoped for on my first attempt. Of course it will probably fall apart when I take it off the template - a case of it really being held together with sticky tape maybe!
     
    Mark
  16. GWMark
    It has been a while since I managed to do much (anything) to the little shunting puzzle, my problem has been that the layout had to go up into the loft in order to free the spare room for a visitor and has not made it down since. The problem being it is a big hassle to get it out of the loft to spend an hour working on it and then put it away again. Given the current weather conditions, and the amount of juke currently residing in the loft, the prospect of venturing upwards and doing work in the loft is also not very appealing. I was having the discussion yesterday when I said "I can tell you how long it is, I will look at my blog". It was then that I realised I had failed to document the last bit of progress I made, so in an effort to reawaken the enthusiasm I thought I would "back fill" the story.
     
    Soem years ago I started dabbling with RFID for train detection, this result in the production of a MERG RFID reader kit and has found use on a club layout. I wanted to also employ RFID on my little shunting puzzle, mostly because I wanted to use this layout as a testbed for ideas, but also because I thought it would be fun. The big question was how to link it into the control system, I didn't want something that just triggered slide displays like I had done before, I wanted to have it integrated. This layout uses the MERG CBus system for control, all the accessories, the DCC command station and the throttles are connected to the single CBus, so it seemed logical to connect the RFID to this as well. So the first task was to build an interface between the RFID reader and the CBus - those members of MERG that are interested can see how this was doen in the MERG Winter 2012 Journal. This gave me the ability to send a message to every device on the layout whenever a train passed over the reader, know the question was what to do with it.
     
    The layout currently has no dedicated control panel, instead it uses JMRI running on a laptop display a mimic diagram and control the points. The laptop has a connection to the CBus in order to allow this, so therefore the laptop and JMRI is able to receive the messages from the RFID reader. So my next step was to add functionality to JMRI so that it could understand the messages received from the RFID. Fortunately JMRI has the ability to have something called "Reporters", these are devices that report back train information to the software, they are designed for system like Railcom in DCC that can send train identification from block occupancy detectors. So I created a new one of these reporters to understand my new CBus message for an RFID tag read. The reporter allows a message to be placed on the control panel window when a report is received, this message can be tailored to contain any text you require for a given train identity. Since the layout also has block detection, once a train is detected using the Reporting, as the train moves from block to block, the report can follow it around the layout.
     
    The upshot of all this is that I now have an RFID reader on the single line that feeds into the sidings of the layout, as a train passes the reader a string is displayed that identifies the train. When it moves into the adjacent block the message on the screen will move with it, and stay with it as long as it is detected within any monitored block on the layout. When a second train enters it is also read and can be tracked in the same way. As long as both trains are not is the same block they will be tracked independently of each other. So I now have a mimic diagram that shows me not just what block are occupied but also the identity of the train in that block - just like the real railway does these days.
  17. GWMark

    Movement at last!

    By GWMark,

    Finally, after yet more distractions and life in general getting in the way I have got the major part of the wiring of the layout done. Last night saw the first train movements across all lines and points on this rather small layout (5ft x 2ft). There is still work to be done, the uncoupling magnets are not wired up, the wiring needs to be tied back and labelled and I need to build a control panel.
     
    Although this is a small layout I wanted to use it to try out a number of ideas, so there is rather a lot of electronics in a small space. The control system is MERG CBus and the trains are driven by DCC. There is block occupancy detection, with 6 blocks, one for the point ladder and one each for the 3 sidings, the headshunt and the feeder line. The picture below shows a general view of the underside of the layout and the "spaghetti" that I have just finished installing.
     

     
    The grey box in front houses the transformer and thermal cutouts that provide two 16V AC feeds to the layout via the thick black wire that plugs into the lefthand side of the board. These two 16V AC circuits feed out from the power socket onto some tag strip from which the 16v circuits go out to the general boards around the layout. Both the grey box and the tag strip have indicator LEDs for each 16V AC circuit, so that I can tell if there is an AC fault in the transformer box or the feeder cable. Also on the shelf with the power socket is a board that produces 5Volt and 12Volt supplies, each at one amp, again each of these supplies also has an indicator LED. From here the 12Volt and 5Volt supplies go to a number of supply distribution boards, again with LEDs. It is to these distribution boards that each circuit board is connected. The idea being that the supply can be checked at various points and that each board has its own connector on the block it get its power from. In the lefthand section there is also a track occupancy detector, a couple of electro-magnets, a servo for the point in this section and a DCC distribution board.
     
    Colour coding of the wiring is important in my scheme, any pair of wires that are made up of red and black wires are always DCC bus or dropper wires. A single green wire is connected to a frog. Blue and green twisted pairs are the CBus, Orange and Grey pairs are 5Volt supplies, White and Violet pairs - 12 volt supply wires. Green and yellow pairs are for occupancy detectors. A pair of red wires indicates a 16V AC feed. Servos are always connected by 3 wire cables, unfortunately the extension servo cables I have are a different colour coding to the cables attached to the servos, but the servo cables are very obvious.
     
    The middle section of the board is the really busy one, this contains the shelf with all the CBUS boards on it, including the DCC command station, the USB computer interface, the board that will control the electro-magnets (when I finally wire them up), the board that connects the occupancy sensors to the CBus and the servo control board. The picture below shows a closer view of this section.
     

     
    As well as the shelf with the CBus boards on it, there are also a number of boards mounted on blocks of wood that I have glued to the underside of the 4mm ply baseboard. Immediately below the CBus shelf are a pair of power distribution boards, a 5 volt and a 12 volt. It is possible to see that the LEDs are lit on both, so we know power is getting this far up the baseboard. There are three MERG occupancy detectors (DTC8s) that detect the DCC current flowing by using small transformers. This means there is no voltage drop in the detector circuit and yo get very sensitive detection for no lose of traction power. One of these detectors has a small stripboard next to it that is used to join the stock rails on each of the points. The point ladder acts as a single section, but detectors are fitted to each stock rail. This means that a single conducting wheel on any part of the points should trigger the detector, but it also means that the frog is not used for detection. This is important as the frog are switched using frog juicers, so current detection would not work currently across the frog juicer.
     
    The other boards that can be seen, one of them attached to the side beam, are frog juicers - a dual juicer and a mono juicer. A lot of dropper wires also come through the baseboard in this section, and each pair is feed through a cable tie base to act as strain relief and hopefully prevent the wires being pulled off the rails if snagged. The three droppers from one of the points can be seen just to the right of the servo.
     
    The DCC bus can be seen running down the left side rail, this is made up of heavy duty wire and is feed to a set of DCC distribution boards that are mounted on the opposite side of the board to the CBus shelf. It was done this way to keep the DCC as far away as possible from all the signal electronics (and I don't mean railway signals, I mean low voltage electrical signals). This means all the red and black dropper wires run down the picture to the DCC distribution board that is just out of shot. Again the DCC distribution boards have LEDs so I can check the status of the DCC bus at each board.
     
    The final section, on the right of the top picture, contains just a single servo, uncoupling magnet, and DCC distribution board. I have however included a close-up of the servo to show the way it is attached.
     

     
    I bought some very cheap mounts on ebay that allowed me to fix the motors side on the the baseboard below the boards. I then ran a thin piece of piano wire through the tie-bar, looped it around the servo horn, across the other side of the horn and bent it at right angles. This means the piano wire pivots around the centre of the servo horn, so a very small movement of the servo is needed to change the points. It gives a very direct and simple to install mechanism, but due to the small degree of movement int he servo, less than 10% of the entire movement, it becomes hard to accurately set the end stops on the servo. I am considering replacing this simple mechanism with something that uses more of the servo's throw and should be easier to set up correctly. As it stands it does work, but the servos sometimes chatter, and this can not be good for them.
     
    So having wired this little lot up, I connected a computer to the USB interface, configured all the CBus modules (I'm using FLiM mode for those that know about CBus) and built a JMRI panel to drive the points and display the track occupancy. To my great surprise I only had two real problems; a bad connection to one of the frog juicers which was resolved by reseating a wire, and a dead sport caused by paint on the track. I was able to run a loco across all the points and siding within 5 minutes of first completing the panel design. There are a few rough spots on the hand-built track that will need a little tweak; one joint has somehow managed to loose it;s fishplate and the ends of on of the switch blades is causing a wheel to ride up. Otherwise I am pretty please with my first hand-built track-work and more than happy with the CBus control system.
     
    It was not long before I had a sound loco running and switched to using an iPhone to drive the loco. I have since added route controls to the JMRI panel - which makes it really easy to also set the points via the phone, and made it so the point control gets automatically disabled if a loco is in the point ladder at the time you try to change them.
     
    So is it worth all this complication, especially on such a small layout?
     
    Well, yes in my mind. I would probably not add so much if I was just building a shunting puzzle, I might do away with the block detection, but for anything bigger I would not. As a vehicle for testing out things it is really paying dividends. I would rather learn on this small layout then try things out and have my dream layout go badly wrong.
     
    It will soon be time to start on the scenic side of things, but some housekeeping jobs need to be done with the wiring first - like mounting the CBus RJ22 connectors, wiring the uncoupling magnets, building the DCC handset and maybe even a hardware panel. Another thing I want to try is to connect my RFID stuff up to the CBus, again not really needed on a shunting puzzle, but it gives me enjoyment and a place to try out the ideas.
     
    Now, where did I leave that labelling machine....
  18. GWMark
    I completed most of my Black Hawthorn at Missenden Abbey, however there were a few bits to finish off that I thought I would do at home, pipe runs, stays etc. Of course I didn't get around to it until today, needless to say those "little" jobs took a long time, very fiddly in places those pipes. However here it is, I think it is now ready for painting, after a bit of cleaning up.
     

     
    I added some lead shot in the smokebox before putting the door on and also in the base of the bunkers on either side. In all I managed to get the loco to weigh in at 84 grams. However that was with the backhead (white metal) not in place, so that might add another 5 grams, plus a white metal crew. Still I think it is not going to win any tug of war competitions anytime soon!
     
    I already have my next High Level kit underway, a Neilson Mineral, I do like these little kits, they are so well thought out and everything fits. Maybe I'lll post a picture on the progress of that kit next time I have it on the workbench.
  19. GWMark

    Absent but not idle

    By GWMark,

    I realised it had been a long time since I last did an update when Daniel asked me if I was planning to post about our recent weekend at Missenden Abbey. I decided that before doing that I really should do an update on the things that I have been up to between the spring Missenden Weekend and the Autumn weekend.
     
    At the spring weekend I took a break from my usual locomotive construction topic and spent the weekend with Ian Rathbone in the painting and lining room. This is not a subject I am good at and my expectations going into the weekend were, in retrospect way too high. I thought I would come out of the weekend being a master painter - not so of course. As Ian righty said it takes lots and lots of practice. So since that weekend I have done a little more painting, it can not be called perfect, but it is possibly passable. I plucked up the courage to paint a couple of the models I took with me, namely the Nucast GWR Steam Railmotor and the Mallard Duke.
     

     
    The rail motor still has a few issues, some of my masking was not accurate enough so I need to touch up the chocolate in places. But it has a base coat now, it needs window detailing, glazing, interior and of course the roof needs fixing. The roof is not joined exactly straight, so it sits up too high in the middle, I will adjust the joint to bring it level and then make it sit correctly. After that a quick spray with white primer and some black on the pane above the motor bogie should see it look a bit better. It is now fitted with DCC sound and manages to haul itself along reasonably well. It is never going to be a perfect model, the engineering of th white metal bogie is too crude for that. Plus it is a bit of a lump with the white metal body and roof.
     

     
    The Mallard Duke is a slightly better paint job, but there is some touch up needed on the splasher tops and the spring details. Once that is done I will matt the finish down a little and add the plates - when I can find where I have put them! This too will get DCC sound shortly and I am thinking it needs some brake gear - there was none in the kit, but I should not let that stop me. The backhead looks a little strange in the picture as it is laid in and not exactly straight. It will be fixed once I have painted the floorboards in the cab. I also managed to break off the brake standard on the tender - careless - so I need to reinstate that. I also need to add the buffer heads and front coupling hook. The current high gloss finish does show off the ripples in the tender flare where I did not do a perfect job, but hopefully the will be less obvious after some matt varnish to dull it down. The high gloss finish did allow the transfers to bed down nicely however - much better than my previous attempts.
     

     
    I even had another go with the bow pen. Using a Mallard 57ft rail motor body I tried my hand at panel lining. Not my most successful experiment, this will eventually be stripped off for another go at some point. I think I will do more painting however before I try to move on to lining.
     
    I have also started to paint my Black Hawthorn, but I will post that later when it is more advanced than it is now, and back in one piece.
     
    At least I have filled some of the gaps between spring and autumn, there are other things that I will post over the next few days before the update on the Missenden Autumn weekend.
  20. GWMark
    Some time ago I made a Dean Sidings Neath and Brecon Tank loco, which I managed to mess up the spraying of. I finally took the plunge and stripped the resin body, using Phoenix Paint Super Strip. My initial concern was what it might do to the resin, but I need not have worried - it was fine. The only casualty of the stripping was one lamp iron that was easily replaced.
     
    The loco now sports a respray - using aerosol cans this time, Phoenix GWR Green and Halfords Matt black. The result is much more pleasing. The cab detailing still needs some work, and I have not put any transfers on or crew in it yet.
     

     
     
    This picture unfortunately shows up some areas where there is not enough paint coverage, but that shouldn't be too hard to fix, probably a brush wash over rather than an other spray coat. Plus it could do with a little weathering. It is amazing how you notice things in close up pictures that you fail to spot when you look at the actual model.
  21. GWMark
    For some time now I have been thinking about ways to make things other than the locomotives move on my layouts. Radio Control servos have become an accepted way to control the points and semaphore signals, but we could use them for more if we had a good way to integrate the proportional control of them into our control systems. So instead of just having something move between two positions we could make it move to any point we wanted.
     
    It was with this idea in mind that I started playing around with ideas for how to get better control of servos. The obvious thing we all have is a speed control on our layouts to control the speed of our trains, so what if we could use that to control the position or speed of a servo. Given that I am a DCC person, the natural choice was a DCC decoder that instead of driving a motor could drive a servo. My first prototype was simply a decoder, based on an Arduino processor, that moved a single servo at the speed set by the throttle. This would allow me to position one servo to any point I wanted in its travel, setting a speed of zero would stop it. This was a good first step, but something like a crane would need more than one servo, it would be a pain, and a little expensive to have a decoder per servo. So the next step was to control multiple servos from one decoder. What I did was to write code for the decoder that would use a combination of a function and the throttle setting. Turn on function 0 and the first servo could be controlled by the throttle, turn on function 1 and you control the second servo. Turn on two functions together and you control two servos. Added to this I allowed the maximum travel to be defined, and the minimum time for that motion.
     
    So now I had a way, via DCC CV's to define the two endpoints of the movement of a servo, expressed in degrees, and a time in seconds that it should take to move between those points if the throttle was set to full speed. This gave me what I wanted to control something like a crane with 3 servos for the rotation of the crane, the angle of the jib and the winding of the chain. The prototype decoder was shown to my local MERG area group, who liked the idea so much we ended up doing a couple of tutorial evenings during which about 20 of the members built the electronics and learnt how to program the servos and DCC library for the Arduino.
     
    ​Following on from this the idea of extending the decoder to also control stepper motors was introduced. In fact the motion obtainable from stepper motors was much better and smoother than the servos. I introduced the idea of either having the stepper motor run continuously or confining it to a number of steps in each direction, so that it behaved more like a servo. Next came the addition of lights to the decoder, so that we could put warning lights on our cranes. Until I ended up with a DCC decoder that could drive 3 servos, one stepper motor and 4 lights (with various effects). If anybody is interested the code for what I did is available on GitHub.
     
    I have been working with one of the members of the local MERG group to automate an LGB cement mixer in G scale. He now has a cement mixer mounted on a wagon that drives up to you, with the mixer turning via a stepper motor, swings the delivery chute out towards you, using a servo. Turns on a warning light. It then reverses the direction of the mixer and dispenses Smarties down the delivery chute into the hands of the waiting admirers!
     
    I also took the Arduino DCC decoder idea a slightly different way and created a decoder that could play sound effects, essentially a primitive sound decoder. The effects were recorded sounds files placed on a microSD card that was then inserted in the Arduino system. A particular function key would trigger the playing of a particular sound file. These effects could be adjusted to match the speed setting of the throttle, and hence give a synchronised chuffing effect. Nowhere near as good as a commercial sound decoder, much more a toy, but the bits for it cost me less than £10. It was more for my amusement than anything else, but it was fun to try.
     
    This has been another diversion for me from building rolling stock, working on my layout or all those other projects I have started but not finished, but it has got me to learn a lot more about the DCC protocol, I now understand exactly what gets put on the rails and makes the locos move. Also I have something that is at least able to animate scenic items under the control of the same DCC handset that I drive the trains with. Plus I have enjoyed working on it, so does it matter that it has diverted me from other things - it's only a hobby after all!
     
    ​Maybe the thing that makes this an enduring hobby is that there are so many ways we can go, just because I am not good at painting a back scene or my weathering skills are a bit dodgy it does not mean I can not enjoy some other part of the hobby. Equally I like making locos, but if that's all I did I would probably get bored with it after a while. It makes you think, or at least it does me.
  22. GWMark
    I've recently made myself a promise not to start any new projects until I finish some of the part built, stalled projects. We will see how long that one lasts, but by way of a start on this new resolution I got my Mallard Models GWR Duke out of its box and have done a little work on it over the last week.
     

     
    Although it may not look like it has progressed much, there has been a fair bit of fettling going on. I removed the pickups I had put on before, they were a little fragile and prone to get caught and short on the body. It now has much neater pickups made by winding some springy wire around a small diameter rod to create a spring. It means the pickups are very much shorter and less prone to getting in the way or moving around and creating shorts. The rear wheels have the pickups mounted on the underside of the frames, the front drivers on the top surface of the frames. They still need a little adjustment, and I managed to bend one so have a short again at the moment, but I think they will work out better than before.
     

     
    I have also put some work into the balance, with lead added where possible and making the tender bear down on the loco to help move the balance aft. There is still some room in the firebox for some more lead, but I want to get some sheet lead to cut to profile rather than using the lead shot. I should be able to add about 5mm thickness of lead against the cab bulkhead - inside the firebox. Also by the time there is a white metal crew on the footplate I should have more weight to bring the balance back.
     
    The dome and safety valve went on, the former being a large white metal lump that had an adverse effect on the previously mentioned balance. The cab roof was rolled and soldered on tonight, along with the ribs underneath and progress has been made on the tender with the addition of the axle boxes and some white metal castings since the loco last graced these pages. I have also put the steps in place, although I managed to melt part of one of the etched steps (middle tread overlays) with the RSU when I removed the probe before taking my foot of the peddle - actually I sneezed so it was not entirely my fault. There is still need for a considerable amount of cleaning up to remove some of the excess solder. Also the fall plate has been put in place and the ride height of the tender and loco is now much better.
     
    I also found I am missing the tender tank vents, hopefully I'll be able to pick some up at Railex this weekend.
     
    I've started to make up the cranks ready for the fitting of the rods, but I want to get the thing balanced better before I put the rods in place. Drive is to the rear axle via one of Chris Gibbon's very neat gearboxes. this means I can keep all the cab detail whilst keeping the gearbox between the frames and nothings shows below the frames. The motor is a Mashima 1020 mounted vertically in the firebox - not sure if this will ever be up to pulling much of a load - we shall see.
     

     
    Still lots of little jobs to do, making up the last of the cranks, tank vents, smokebox dart, lance cock, more cab detailing, handrails, buffers, lamp irons, sand boxes, the list seems to go on forever and all that is before any thought of painting, transfers etc. Although my new resolution may not include painting as I might well go for a batch painting session or save up the models to take to Missenden and do the painting there under the expert's eyes!
     
    [Edit - addition of the two later photos to illustrate what I was trying to describe]
  23. GWMark
    I'm not normally a builder of coaches, although there is no real reason for this, just that I got hooked on building locos and the occasional wagon. As part of my desire to finish some of those long started and put aside projects I pulled this Blacksmiths coach kit out of the cupboard. I was given this for Christmas many years ago and got as far as doing a fold and soldering the two ends before realising I had messed up by not putting the tumblehome in the ends. Annoyed with myself at making a mistake so early on it was put in a cupboard to be left for almost 10 years.
     
    So fast forward to 2017 and out it came, the ends were corrected and then the tumblehome added to the sides. The basic box was built, followed by the sole bars, buffer beams and retaining plates for the rocking W-irons. Steps have been added to one end. Last night I built the basic rocking W-irons, added the bearings and popped the wheels in. Now it looks like a coach and rolls up and down the track.
     

     
    Next stage is the under frame details, brake gear etc. plus the end details on the other end, but the instructions are unclear as to what is on the end without steps. It looks like there is some kind of pipe or bar across with the attachment points. However I have no idea if there are corresponding etches for any of this - the instructions simply do not say.
     
    Likewise the under frame detail is a little patchy in the instructions. The end wheels sets are covered in the diagrams and have enough detail to be able to work out how to build the brake gear. However the centre wheels are not shown, nor any of the casting locations. In fact the instructions are a fairly poor, difficult to read photocopy. Some the instructions have been cut off by the photocopier, ending in mid-sentence. There is a great part in the instructions that say "Attached as per diagram but" - it's anyones guess what the "but" might be! So some of this is going to have to be by guesswork or from interpretation of the pictures.
     
    If anybody has one of these kits with a better copy of the instructions or a complete model, I would really appreciate hearing from you.
     
    I would really like to get this to a stage that it can be painted soon since I am enrolled on the "Painting & Lining" course with Ian Rathbone at Missenden Abbey over the first weekend of March. If only I had planned better I would have more models ready for painting and not trying to do all those finishing touches to so many models in the next two weeks.
     
    EDIT: Since posting this I have now come across one photo of Diagram R2 in as built condition, http://penrhos.me.uk/Rdiags.shtml. This seems to show very little below the sole bar, certainly no brake cylinder or brakes of any sort. And not the very long take that comes as a white metal component in the kit. I must say I am struggling to find where to fit the tank that is supplied, it appears to be too long to fit between the articulated W-irons.
  24. GWMark
    As I said in my previous post I am now less than a week away from my next Missenden weekend, this time I am down to do painting and lining with Ian Rathbone, so my plan is to try to get as many of my current projects ready to be painted, at least in some state. So I have spent much of the weekend, and last week, doing those last little jobs, you know, all those things you have been putting off because they are fiddly. In my mind at east none of them would take long, but of course I was deluding myself. I have to thank my wife for putting up with me taking over a corner of the kitchen and spending so much time on modelling, especially given it was the weekend of our wedding anniversary.
     
    The Black Hawthorn needed one little job, as it now ready for cleaning and primer, the Neilson needed more work, especially in the cab area, but that is now done, although I did note after taking the picture that I have still to add the makers plates. The under frame still needs work, it only has half of its brake gear for instance!
     

     
    The Duke I know needed more work, in particular I had been putting off the handrail due to lack of holes for the handrail knobs, but that is now done. The only thing left is the top feed - although to be honest it has been on once, but I detached it (broke it off) when adding the pipe run.
     

     
    After taking the picture I noticed it was not on the rails correctly, why is it you only see this when you upload the picture! I hope to add th topped, again, on Monday and do the pipe runs from it. I need to think of the best way to do the pipes, my issue was using stiff brass wire that as I bent it around the boiler put to much pressure on the topped and pinging it off. Maybe this time I will use fuse wire. the handrails turned out to be easier than I had thought, thanks to a tip I picked up from Tony Wright about how to mark out the positions.
     
    My next project was my NuCast Steam Railmotor, the main job to doing being the steps. After my last post it was suggested I look at the Dart Casting Autocoach detailing kit to get a set of the folding steps. So pending a decision on that I put off the NuCast for now in favour of a different Railmotor.
     
    Many years ago I picked up a Mallard 57ft Railmotor for £10 at an exhibition. It was part built but missing its bogies and all the white metal fittings. My thought was I could make use of some of the bits on the NuCast version, in particular the bits of valve gear it had. However that never happened and it has sat in a cupboard for nearly 10 years. Over time I have collected all, or most of the bits to complete this, but not actually started. I decided it would not take much to get the body ready for paint, with the thought I could paint it in GWR Lake and use it for lining practice, even if I would need to strip it later so that I could complete it. When I got it out of it's box it looked like this...
     

     
    First order was to clean of some of the tarnish and then make a start cleaning it up, removing excess solder, before adding body detail, after making sure I have added the captive nuts that would allow me to fix the under frame on after it was painted, and once I had made it! These things have a lot of handrails, so a lot of .45mm brass wire has been cut, bent and soldered on. A few of them still need a little bit of tweaking, but now they are all in place. As are the lamp irons, steps on the front and those that hang off the buffer beam. Also some buffers are now in place. Once thing I did discover was that the original builder had soldered the body together but glued the overlays for the droplights - the glue was not very good and did not stand being drilled into, these are fiddly to put back when the body is soldered together and the internal partitions are in place. Then I was struck with the idea of tinning the body side and using a rubber block to manoeuvre the droplight in place whilst looking from the outside. I could then apply the RSU to the outside of the body, having attached a clip on the body itself and generate enough heat to have the droplight tack solder themselves to the body. Then I simply applied the RSU on the droplight itself to get a permanent bond. This solved the problem of lining the droplight up and getting them soldered in such a cramped spot. By the end of the night it looked more like this
     

     
    As a footnote, whilst researching handrail positions for this railmotor I looked at lots of pictures and noticed the different door arrangement, some with single doors and some with double doors. So I need to look at a DK1 kit from Dart Castings to see if it is for the same door arrangement as my NuCast has, otherwise I might be back to square one on this one.
     

     
    I still may look at taking this, since my plan is to paint it in chocolate and cream, much of that work can be done without the steps in place, so maybe it will get some paint after all.
     
    In the few days left I want to at last apply primer to a few models, so I can practice top coating them, and hopefully have at least one I can use to do some lining. If that is to happen I really only have one more day to attach any more bits to these models. I also have a couple of ready to run body shells to play around with and a scratch build loco I picked up secondhand for £10 - that spent a few hours in paint stripper, so will hopefully make a good thing to experiment with. Maybe one day I fix it up and have it running again.
     
    What all this does prove, to me a least, having a deadline really does focus the mind to get things done. But even then I put things aside as "too difficult", like the second go at the top feed and those pipes!
  25. GWMark
    Following on from the progress on Sunday, I now had a baseboard with the foam underlay glued down, a cess painted in textured 'Light earth" and a ballast shoulder rather crudely cut into the foam - not the best cutting job in the world, but then this is not a mainline layout so I wouldn't expect a perfect ballast shoulder. This mornings job was to attach the electro-magnets for the Dingham uncouplers, these are the ones supplied by Dingham and have a coil with an M5 bolt through the middle. I worked out my positions and drilled a 4.5mm hole through the foam and the 4mm ply. I then screwed them in from the underside, marked the bolt and removed them again to cut the bolt to length.
     
    I worked out I had a requirement for 4 uncoupling points given the way that I intend to run the layout, but that a fifth might be useful if it was used in a slightly different way.

    The photo shows the underside of the board with the five magnets installed and also shows the light construction method I used. The magnets are just held in place by the screw thread they cut into the ply and the foam, when the PVA is put down for the track and ballast this will also help hold them in position, so hopefully I will not need any other kind of fixing. The arrow points the the hole for the servo motor to control the point that caused me such an issue with positioning yesterday - there is just about room to fit a servo as it stands now.
     
    Having placed the magnets I went on to prepare the track, cutting the web on the SMP track, and soldering the various dropper wires to the underside of the rail. Each section of plain track had two droppers, and the points three each - the vees and switch blades had already been bonded. The track sections were placed on the board and holes drilled for each of the dropper wires.
     
    I had decided to not lay all the track in one go, I was concerned the PVA I had would set too quickly given all the work to do to feed the dropper wires in, align the sleepers and pour the ballast. So I settled for the point work, that defines the datum for the rest of the track, and the short feeder section and headshunt.
     
    Having prepared everything, and fitted P4 Track company ABS fishplates to the track ends, I put masking tape along the cess and proceeded to paint PVA onto the foam trackbed. Then I placed the various track sections, feeding the dropper wires into the holes I had made, aligned the sleepers and then proceeded to cover the lot with ballast. To be honest I could have done with at least 3 more hands to get all this done whilst trying not to get everything covered in PVA. It was made worse by the slightly fragile points section with six overly long dropper wires that needed to be feed through.
     
    It was slightly alarming to see it all covered in ballast, but this is the way Norman Soloman shows in his demo and on the Right Track DVD's, so who am I to argue. After a few minutes, probably not long enough, but I was getting a little twitchy that my point work was buried under all this ballast and may end up seized solid with PVA - I upended the board onto newspaper. The idea being to catch and reuse the surplus ballast. The result was not too bad, some ballast was stuck in the switch blades, vees and between the running and check rails, but it was loose rather than stuck with PVA. The picture below show a section of the board covered in ballast and a similar section immediately after the surplus had been poured off.
     

     
    I resisted the temptation to do more cleaning up as the PVA was still wet and the track was able to move about on the foam. So in order to prevent myself fiddling I went off and ironed some shirts instead!
     
    After about an hour and a half I came back to it and brush it all down, clearing the ballast from the various nooks and crannies and removing the loose stuff. It still has a dusty appearance, and the ballast colour is a little but on the light side, but it can be weathered down.
     

     
    My finish is not as good as Norman's, but then it is my first time trying this method. It is a little patchy in places, down to not having enough PVA I think. Also I used Unibond as I could not find the variety that Norman had recommended (Febond). I had not done a great job with the masking tape in places either, but next time I will take a little more care. I probably could have done the entire layout in one go, it only took about 30 minutes to lay and ballast what I did, once the preparation had been done, so to do the other 3 sections of track would have been fairly quick. T be perfectly honest I suspect the extra preparation time to cut allthe sleep webs and do the droppers also contributed to my original decision - I was impatient to see some track laid.
     
    I will need to do a little patching of the section I have already done, but hopefully I can have it wired up and run some trains when I next get a chance to spend some time on it. Unfortunately that is likely to be a couple of weeks way now.
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