GWMark

Owen, thanks for the suggestion on the frog juicer, I have to admit I thought the same might be a problem. I was hoping to find a way around it, but probably not, so I may go for relays driven from the CBus messages that move the servos, or microswitches. The only problem with microswitches being the physical mount given the servo mounts I am using. Thanks, they are fairly cheap to make. The strip-board is 24p (goes down to 15p if you buy 100) and the 2 way connectors I used cost me 9p each. So for a board with DCC in, DCC out and 4 pairs of droppers costs 79p plus the resistor and LED for indication, but that is optional really. Mark

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.

Good to see these being fitted. Now I must keep my end of it up and build the electronics side for you!

After a little bit of an enforced break due to work and other commitments, a few hours was found on Friday evening to lay the remainder of the track work on my little shunting puzzle. The steps in putting down the track were fairly conventional: The sleeper web was cut Dropper wire were soldered to the underside of the rails Holes drilled for the dropper wires to go through Masking tape laid along the edge of the foam underlay PVA glue (Unibond in this case) was painted onto the foam underlay Masking tape removed Dropper wires fed through the holes P4 Track company ABS fishplates added to the track The track put down into position and the sleepers adjusted to be reasonably evenly spaced and square Ballast sprinkled onto the wet glue surface Left for 5 minutes before tipping the board to remove the excess ballast Whilst I had the ballast out I also touched in a few areas from the first part of the track laying in which the ballast had not taken well. The next morning I brushed the ballast to remove any remaining loose ballast and took the board outside to get the shot below - I have removed the background clutter AKA the garden) to make it a bit clearer. I am reasonably pleased with the result, but there are a few things I would do differently next time. The addition of a simple jig for spacing the sleepers and getting them square would help greatly. Using this method you need to work reasonably quickly to keep the glue wet enough for the ballast to take, so the job of checking the sleeper spacing and alignment was a little rushed. Perhaps too rushed, I probably had more time than I thought, but you learn by these mistakes. As a result some of the spacing is a little out and one or two sleepers are not as square as I would have liked. I made the mistake of painting the glue on all the trackbed before laying any track, I could have done it one at a time to give myself more time and made the whole process less messy. I did manage to get glue on my hands when working on adjacent tracks, not very helpful to the whole process as I ended up with some glue on the rail tops that had to be removed before adding the ballast. The glue I used was not the best choice, in demos of this method I have always seen Febond used, but I was unable to find a supply so went with Unibond instead. This was not as easy to spread with a brush and did tend to "pull" a little, leaving areas or streaks with little glue coverage and hence little ballast stuck in these areas. The use of the very dark, almost black, foam was not a good idea. It meant that areas of thin ballast, or were the glue was not exactly to the edge, show through badly and will need touching up. A foam colour closer to the ballast colour would have been better. The ballast colour itself is a little light, I think an overall airbrush coat to tone it down is definitely in order. My cutting of the foam was not accurate enough, so my ballast shoulder is not as good as it could be and not as parallel to the track as I wanted. Some of the areas will be filled in, such as the wharf edge to the track and between the front two sidings, so it does not matter that much. None of this is a disaster, it can be tidied up in places and the subject is meant to be a little goods wharf, so I am not looking for mainline track laying standard anyway. This is in part a test piece for different things I wanted to try out, so I can't expect perfection first time around. This method of track laying does give quick results, and with a few changes and a little more care I think I can do a much better job next time. I think for the next project I will certainly use this method again, it saves a lot of tedious ballasting, but does require more preparation first, to cut all the sleeper webs and getting the underlay correct. I now have a layout with track laid, ballasted, dropper wires in place and uncoupling electromagnets buried in the trackbed, so the next step is some wiring up and getting trains moving. It is then that I will be able to really tell how well the experiment with hand-built points has really worked. Sadly work and other commitments will mean this will probably not happen now until next weekend.

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.

Progress with the layout can not exactly be described as fast, the last week can be summarised as full of distraction. It started well, I airbrushed the sleepers and sides of the track, both the points I have built and some lengths of SMP flexitrack. The paint I used was Lifecolour acrylic Matt Sleeper Grime, perhaps a little two dark, but at least it gave a nice finish, and took off the plastic shine. I even went as far as to paint the points of the check rails in a sleeper grime colour in an attempt to make then look slightly rusty and dirty where the wheels never go over them. Having completed this, rather than start the task that was really needed, track laying, I got sidetracked into building the power supply. This itself hit a brick wall when I found I didn't have enough spade connectors to make up the leads needed to connect the power inlet socket, transformer and cutouts. It didn't seem worth a trip to my nearest car accessory shop just to buy a few connectors, at least a 10 mile trip for me. So down from the loft game the baseboard and the process of working out where to place the track started. Despite the vast amount of planning, ok maybe I exaggerate, that went into the baseboard; the placement of the points turned out to be a problem. The baseboard has two girders running that run from front to back, the spacing of these was just less than the distance between the tie bars of the two outer points. On top of this one of the diagonal members was also in the way. Much shuffling back and forth was needed before the tie bars lined up and space was allowed for the point motors. In my case the point motors are SG90 servos. My aim is to have the servos as close as possible to vertically below the tie bars themselves. With the positioning of the points settled on, the remaining track pieces were cut to length and the whole lot laid down on the board and drawn around. I then cut C&L foam underlay to match and then glued it down with Unibond PVA. I'm writing this whilst I wait for the Unibond to dry and allow me to continue to prepare for the track laying. My intention is to use Norman Soloman's method of track laying, so I need to cut and prepare the holes for the wires to activate the points, make the holes for the dropper wires, having first attached them to the track sections. I also need to drill the holes for the uncoupling magnets and fir them before laying the track and ballast. I also need to cut the web on the SMP track to allow the ballast to flow onto the wet glue beneath the track. My next task to tackle will be to paint the cess before laying the ballast on top, I intended to use some grey textured paint for this[EDIT - bad memory, it turns out it was Green Scenes Light Earth. Still it did the job.]. I may also paint the foam, since the C&L stuff is almost black and will show badly of any ballast comes adrift. [EDIT: Painting the foam turned out to be a hopeless task - the paint just soaks in - it would take many tinlets of Humbrol to do the entire trackbase] Lots of tasks still to do before the track is attached to the baseboard and wring and running of trains can commence. Sadly after this weekend I have a work trip, this combined with some other commitments will probably mean a couple of weeks of no progress on the layout.

After a long break, caused in part by my need to get replacement switch blades, a trip to California and then having to get replacements for the replacements, I finally got back to the pointwork I am building for the layout. Not a great deal was left to do, but of course it took longer than I thought to get the final pair of switchblades in, the check rails and finish adding all the chairs. However, finally I have the track components in place and added the tie bars. I had decided to go with the C&L ones, but I may live to regret this. They seem a little flimsy, and unlike the first one I built, they had no loops pre-bent in them. They do not seem very sturdy, being essentially two brass wires with a rubber tube connecting them. A couple of them are already starting to allow the wires to move in the tube - I wonder if these will stand up to a great deal of use. As you can see from the photo I was even foolish enough to remove one of the points from the template. It seems to have survived well enough, with just a couple of sleepers needing a touch of superglue gel to stop them falling off - ones that have just slide chairs and so are more vulnerable. The other two have been built as a single unit and will stay on the template for now, at least I can align the points now that they are not on the building boards and check everything. I now need to add the wiring, but first i want to put the points on the layout to get the positioning sorted without having all the dropper wires get in the way. Hopefully this can be done during the week, first I have to get the baseboard down from the loft so I can check for clearance of the cross members etc. With this done it should be possible to get around to track laying this weekend and then the project will really start to come together. One thing I will ned to work out pretty soon is how to connect the tie bars to the point motors, in this case I am planning on using SG90 servos for the job. The tie bars seem a little bit difficult to attach to, so I was planing to solder a plate between a pair of the wires and then have a wire come up from under the baseboard into this plate. Probably I have not explained this well, but if anybody has any experience with this sort of setup I would welcome some pointers. If all else fails I will replace the C&L tiebars with copper clad ones. Sadly another work trip is about to interrupt work on the layout, so I have a two week window to make some progress before another enforced break.

With the baseboards all but finished attention turned to the track. One of the goals I had in starting this project was to try my hand at building points and making use of them on a layout. I had previously built a B6 point, but this was a little long to use on such a compact layout, so I decided to go for A4 points for this little project. With only 3 point to build it didn't seem too daunting a prospect, so Thursday evening saw me embark on point building. The first, a right hand point was built on a board on its own. This went well and was complete (excepting the soldering tasks) by mid morning on Friday. It was built pretty much following the C&L instructions and using the Norman Solomon video (from the Right Track series). The only addition is the P4 Track Company fishplates to join the switch blades to the wing rails. These are very nice ABS representations of the real thing and have the advantage of giving you an easy alignment for the switch blades at one end, whilst still giving electrical isolation for the switch blades. Then came the next point in the ladder, and a thought about sleeper alignment. Given that the sleepers on the first point are all parallel, I decided it would be good to keep the sleepers parallel on the entire ladder. Having checked a few photographs of the prototype this did seem to be done at times. In order to get the sleepers to look right the second and third points are being built as a single unit. A pair of C&L templates have been attached to a single board, and the timbering added, with one of the points laid out with the timbers at an angle. The build them continued as normal, up until the end of Friday, when the final set of switch blades was required. This is where things faltered, I believe there is something wrong with the milling of the blades (I have posted a picture on a thread elsewhere on the forum for some advice). So progress has stopped for now until I can resolve this. Besides the missing switch blades on one of the points, the check rails are missing as are some of the chairs. These are no slide chairs in place, and the crossing vee needs some cosmetic half chairs added to it.

After the start with the beams last weekend, this weekend saw the assembly stage, the beams where glued and screwed together to form a framework and the trackbed baseboard glued and stapled to the structure. It wasn't laying very flat, so I came up with a different way to use the workmate, a cast iron patio umbrella base and some floor tiles. Not how these items were designed to be used, but it gave me plenty of weight to hold it down. It will at least be as flat as the block paved section of the back garden. It was left like this for the rest of the day for the glue to dry and hopefully hold it in this position. Next day, with the glue dry I had a flat, reasonably stiff structure. Today (Sunday) it was just a case of adding the riverbed board, some diagonal beams to help stiffen it more and the river edge strip. The diagonal members are a single piece of 4mm ply glued at the ends and along the length, one is attached between the end beams and the next beam in. The centre section will get a diagonal as soon as I am sure it will not get in the way of the servos I will be using as point motors. The last thing to attach was a strip of 4mm ply to form the river bank, or at least the base for the wharf and the scenic section. The picture below is what it looks like this morning with the glue dry and the masking tape that held it together removed. There is still a little bit of flexing in the board, but some of the joints need a little more glue and there is an extra diagonal to add. I think it is going to be good enough for my purposes, and above all it is still very light. Just what I need to lift it up into the loft. I tried to weigh it, but the bathroom scales would not register it, which means it is less than 1Kg (2.2 lbs to you and me). Today will see a trial run to make sure I measured things correctly and it will actually fit. I am sure my wife will be glad to be rid of it in the kitchen!

Chris, it is not based on any particular place or area, I just wanted to do a slight twist on the standard shunting puzzle. I suspect it will be a west country based river wharf, but may end up in Wales since I seem to have a little bit of a collection of Welsh tank locos. Daniel is keen to do a High Level Hudswell Clarke, so it might go private rather than one of the major companies. As for time period, definitely steam, probably between the wars, but may slip slightly later. More than anything else this is an opportunity for us to try out some ideas and a few techniques before moving on to the project we have been planning for some time now, the Falmouth branch terminus. Mark

This weekend saw a start on the baseboard building process and a realisation. The baseboards are going to be built using the Barry Norman technique of constructing beams from two lengths of 4mm ply (5 foot long and 70mm tall) with 18mm block of 70mm square blocks of softwood sandwiched between them. To start with progress was a little shaky, with some uncertainty as to whether this would be strong enough. The first 5 foot beam was made up, with a block at each end, two equally spaced blocks for cross members and three smaller packing pieces to prevent the unsupported lengths from flexing too much. The blocks are glued and stapled to one length of ply, and then the other length of ply is glued and stapled to the other side. The whole thing seemed a little flexible and not all that straight, so the first beam was weighted down on the kitchen floor and the glue allowed to dry over night on Friday. The idea to see what it would be like when dry before committing to making the other beams. I should not have worried, by the morning it was dry, reasonably straight and more rigid that I would have ever thought. Above all it was very light, just what I need for lifting the finished board up through the loft hatch. The last thing I want is to heave some heavy weight board 8 feet into the air every time I want to get it up or down through the loft hatch. I learnt from this, and the other 5 foot beam and the 4 cross beams were clamped into the workmate to make sure they were straight before stapling. Saturday morning saw all the other beams made up and the top cut to allow for the two levels. At this point work stopped to allow the glue to cure before cutting out the drop in the side beams that will accomodate the river bed. It was at this point that a realisation occurred, the proportions of the board, laid out in the garden, did not look remotely like the drawing I had - something had gone wrong. Going back to the computer it very quickly became evident that I hade made a stupid mistake. When doing the track placing I had been playing with how to cut up an 8x4 sheet and had accidentally left the length set to 8 feet and not 5. At this point I felt rather stupid and rejigged everything for the smaller size, sadly it looks less generous and open now, but I think it will still provide some entertainment. Nothing was done on Sunday, apart from the purchase of many assorted bits and pieces to put on the layout - we spent the day in Alexander Palace! The evening did allow some time to complete some CBUS modules and also to start the building of a turntable controller, although that is for a different layout and is to repay a debt.

In order to keep up some momentum in the project and whilst waiting for the plywood to arrive, I have built the first couple of CBUS modules, a USB computer interface and the DCC command station. Both went together without problem, very well designed kits, and worked first time. The result is that I now am about to drive trains using these modules, albeit a little bit of a convoluted route. I have JMRI Panel Pro running on an old PC talking to the USB CBUS interface with the DCC command station attached on a very small bus. From JMRI I can use the on screen throttle or via Engine Driver from my phone. Maybe not the most exciting progress to anybody else, but is a small step forwards in the number of tasks to get a small layout that actually runs.

Hello Mikkel, the tack plan was drawn on RailModller, a Mac based program for drawing track plans.

Like many, no doubt I have been thinking up ideas for layouts for years without actually getting as far as making a real start on any before moving on to the next idea. Until now I have satisfied my desire to run stock by making use of layouts at my railway club or using the "test track" that I have constructed in the loft at home. Originally this "test track" was meant to be a layout, but a combination of mistakes and over ambition has consigned it to being a 24 foot by 10 foot double line oval with storage sidings and a few other features, but nothing that would make it a layout. The time has come to tackle something less ambitions on which I can try out some of the things I have been wanting to do for a while now. Therefore the thought of a little shunting puzzle style layout was born. The idea is that Daniel (my son) and I will build it together and both use it to increase our skills and test out ideas. We have a few constraints, the only real storage location at home is in the loft, so the baseboards must fit through the loft hatch. So 2 foot is about the maximum width of a board, fortunately height in the loft is not an issue, so the length can be more generous, but I want something that will go in an estate car with relative ease. The boards also need to be light enough to be lifted into the loft. Therefore this first board is going to be 5 feet by 2 feet, actually 1524mm by 610mm as far as the wood yard are concerned. Plans have been drawn up, based on an ignlenock design with an added headshunt. The concept is a set of sidings alongside a wharf, with the line entering from the left though a wooded area. The land to the left of the wharf will slope gently down into the river, whilst the wharf itself will have a section dropped down to accommodate a barge or similar alongside. I want to avoid a totally flat layout, but equally I not not intend to set it in a mountainous location. The things I want to try out on this little layout are: Hand built points - I have made one so far and it looks ok, but only time will tell on the running side. Servo motors for point motors - again I have experimented and they seem to work fine. Use of the MERG CBUS system for control I want to ply with JMRI for a panel, and may even go as far as a touch screen Mimic diagrams with track occupancy detection fee back [*]Creating some scenery, and making use of my static grass machine. So far I have concentrated on rolling stock and electronics for club layouts, so I would like to branch out a bit. [*]Add some working accessory, such as a small crane powered by some of the servos This weekend the wood has been ordered, in fact I have ordered two sets so that I can have a second baseboard ready for when we want to move on to the next project. The baseboards themselves will be built using the Barry Norman technique of 4mm plywood top and beams made of 4mm ply sandwiches. There is enough in an 8 by 4 sheet of 4mm ply to allow me to build a flat top 3 foot board to act as a simple fiddle yard - probably cassette based. Whilst not big this would allow a few small goods trains to be made up off scene and then driven in to be shunted. As for a name, I think we will name it after the source of the little wooden coffee stirrers we plan to use to face the wharf. These came from the coffee shop on board Independence Of The Seas, so we think we might christian the layout "Independence Wharf".

This weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the Missenden Abbey Railway Modellers weekends, I have only been going for a fraction of that time, and my son Daniel even less, but off we trotted on Friday afternoon for the now familiar routine of a weekend of uninterrupted modelling at Missenden. This time my Mallard Duke made a second appearance, all started well until I realised that the motor and gearbox choice I had made was not going to fit within the confines of the firebox and boiler. So I wasn't able to proceed with fixing the firebox, boiler and smokebox to the footplate and cab that I had prepared at the event in October. Despite the intervening time, I actually managed to do the sum total of no work to my Duke between these two weekends - I had been either finishing my 72xx or distracted by other things. This is the advantages of the Missenden weekend, as well as having plenty of help and advice on hand, you just do not have the same distractions as working at home on a project. I satisfied myself with building a number of components that can be added to the model once the motor and gearbox have been replaced with a new one, probably High Level, the will push the motor forwards and clear the cab interior. I was particularly pleased to have formed the firebox and the complex curve on the smokebox. The boiler overlay on the boiler tube was soldered into place courtesy of Bob Alderman's blow torch, another tool I need to get myself. A number of overlays have been added to the footplate valances and the front bogies was made up of 21 pieces, with some very small overlays that took ages to get lines up, and in the end are covered by the spring hangers! Daniel and a good weekend working on the running of his GEM Prince of Wales and building the complete tender and tender chassis over the course of the weekend. I think he particularly enjoyed hacking out vast amounts of white metal in order to get the tender chassis to fit onto the body. A technique he picked up from our tutor for the weekend, Tim Shackleton. It is amazing that both the body and the chassis are from the same manufacturer, yet if you try to attach the body to the chassis the ride height is about 1cm too high. It may not seem like much to show for Friday evening, all day Saturday and Sunday morning, but it was actually a fair few modelling hours, and above all lots of time in the company of fellow modellers swapping tips, views and general comments. Over the 3 years I have been going to these events I have picked up a fair number of tips, met some great people and had an enjoyable time, hopefully they will continue for many years to come. Now the question is, will any work get done to the Duke before the next Missenden weekend in October?

Thanks for the kind words and suggestions. I did a quick patch job by brush painting over the bare metal and primer. This at least allowed me to take it along to Doncaster. Many thanks to Graham Muz for letting me put it on his layout, Fisherton Sarum. Unfortunately the curves were a little too tight for it, and the drain cocks tended to catch on the screws used on the brackets to attach the cassettes and on some of the line-side ash. It did make a few appearance on the Southern shed, making us of the mutual agreement to share timetables. Once I am back from holiday in a weeks time I will do a better job, strip the paint, respray and put fresh transfers on. Hopefully I can get that all done in time to take it to Missenden. It was really good to see it running on a real layout in a near complete condition.

Tonight was going to be the night I got my 72xx to a runnable state, buffers, plates, a little paint touching up, coal, crew and transfers, Not too much to ask. It went fairly well, I had the buffers in place, the plates attached, the cab interior finished, except for crew and the transfer went on well. The I noticed my mistake, I had spaced the lettering differently on the two sides. Looking at my picture in Russell of 7240 I decided it was the side with the most spread out lettering that was wrong, the R was too far forward. No problem, the transfers have only just gone on, a little spot of transfix and I can probably get them off and use a couple of new letters. So on went some transfer, wait a minute and use a blunt cocktail stick to see if the W would move. Well the transfer letter didn't but the paint did, right down to bare metal. So now I have a loco with plates etc attached but in need of some respraying. I was not happy, I can tell you... ...new words may have been learnt if it wasn't for the fact I was alone in the house at the time. The paint sequence was Precision Spray Etch Primer, from a can, two coats. Followed by Lifecolor acrylic, several coats. Is this a combination known to give problems? I was a little surprised it went right down to bear metal. So now I have to think how best to repair the damage. I don't really want to strip the model completely if I can avoid it. Although I suspect I will as a minimum have to repaint the entire tank side, maybe from the cab door to the front of the tank. If not I suspect the join between the old and new paint will show up badly. Any comments, suggestions etc would be gratefully received. Unfortunately I am going away for work tomorrow, so will have to leave the loco like this for a while. I don't know if that is good or bad. Plenty of time to keep kicking myself for being so stupid as to get the transfer spacing different on the two sides. Looking at the photos here I am not sure now if I was right in my assessment of which is wrong either. The undamaged size looks too close, but the looking at 7240 the R should not be under the tank filler. I was using the rivet lines on the tanks a guidance, maybe they are not right? We learn best by our mistakes, but I would rather have no learnt this particular lesson at this time. I had hoped to take this loco to Doncaster with me, but I don't see that happening now. It will take more than one night to sort this out.

Thanks Stationmaster, my plan is to finish it as 7242, it seemed poetic to include the 42 in the number given the origins of the 72xx. By shear coincidence I have some pictures of 7242 working goods trains in the Salisbury area, even though it was a South Wales engine (Cardiff Cathays 88A and then Llanelly 87F). I know a certain Southern layout based on Salisbury, maybe it will be allowed a visit!

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.

Thanks Mikkel, here is a picture of the wagons, I have given them another coat and removed the masking tape since last night. I am actually fairly pleased with the way they came out in the end. I also plucked up the courage to spray the 72xx with the Lifecolor Loco Green. The colour looks a little wrong in this light, I rather soaked it with light to show up the surface of the paint. Unfortunately the close up shows some issues with the preparation of the model, but the paint finish is better than I had expected.

After a small interlude to try my hand at building pointwork it is back to the long term project of the 72xx. More track work will follow, but that will have to wait until after Doncaster now - I'll pick up some more C&L components there. My PDK 72xx has moved on a bit, the lamp refuge and the lance cock have been added, it was given two coats of etch primer, from a spray can and the footplate and smokebox have been spray with Halfords matt black. So the project for Sunday was to spray the main body. I happened to have a can of Phoenix Precision GWR green, so I thought this would be the quickest route to getting the main body colour on and I could put off still further breaking out that new airbrush I had for Christmas in 2010! I duly masked off the model, spent what seemed like an age shaking the spray can, that had been stored outside down, I did a test spray onto newspaper. The can spluttered and splattered paint, not a good start. Off with the nozzle and a good clean, still no better, and then it stopped all together. The can was empty, now what? My excuse for not using the airbrush is the lack of a spray booth, and given it is too cold outside at the moment to think of sitting patiently with an airbrush, I decided to take the easy approach, pack up and have a cup of coffee instead. I did decide to use the time to spray over the railbus with Testors Dullcoat, in order to try to blend the very shinny transfers in. I can't say that has worked however, they are still as prominent. After consuming said cup of coffee I decided this was a feeble approach, and I remembered that I had some acrylics that I had purchased at Warley, the British Railway colours pack, so I might give those a try. But would the finish be good enough for my prized model that I have spent 2 years building? I also have a number of Parkside wagons, that received a coat of primer about 6 months ago, I could practice on those. The acrylics would not smell like enamels, so I could get away with using a corner of the kitchen. So out came the compressor and new airbrush; problem number 1, the hose on the compressor was the wrong fit for the airbrush. Plus I have a mini-regulator I have never fitted. So out come an assortment of connectors and hoses in an attempt to get the airbrush connected to the compressor. After much fiddling and a little bit of vocabulary extending, I had a setup that appeared to work. A quick check on here for topics on spraying acrylics, Lifecolor in this case, I had a 50/0 mix of paint the Lifecolor thinners, a low air pressure and the moment had arrived. There was nothing more that to press that button and start the air flow. A quick spray onto some newspaper revealed to me just how controllable my new Iwata airbrush was, but also how translucent the paint was as well. Never mind, I had read this was he case and that it would need several coats. So in I went and sprayed two wagons, it didn't take long and was was duly cleaning the airbrush, running first thinners and then airbrush cleaner through it. A couple of hours later I repeated the procedure, and now I have two wagons with a passable interpretation of bauxite. They still need at least one more coat, the grey of the primer - yes, I know, it would have been better to use red oxide - still shows through in places. A very matt finish, great for a goods wagon, but I will need to do something about transfers if they are going to stick well. As for my 72xx, well it has masking tape on it, but still no green paint, maybe later this week.