GWMark

Thanks for all the comments. I certainly tried to get the rails with the correct curve, the switch rail has a bit of spring in it, but hopefully not so much that it will distort anything. I have now added the missing rails and soldered on the tie-bars. My test wagon runs through both routes, so I am reasonably happy with the result I have - for a first attempt. I'm not sure about the C&L tie-bars, I might replace this with a copper clad one, if only to make attaching a point motor easier. I know of a couple of mistakes, a few of the keys are the wrong way around and I think two of the timbers that only have slide chairs on them are liable to fall off. Maybe these will get a little spot of super glue to hold the slide chairs to the stock rail. It has been an enjoyable challenge and I think I will probably do some some more point building in due course. This point might get a friend and turn up on an inglenook - it would be good to make use of it.

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

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.

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.

Well, it was forecast to be a wet weekend, at least on the Sunday, and with the looming return to school this week Daniel and I decided to make Sunday a modelling day. The idea was to setup on Saturday evening and then spend the entire day on Sunday making progress with our various projects. My aims being to get my 72xx to a state in which it could be painted, to get the GT3 to the same point, the finish the interior of my Railbus and maybe to drop my 802 in boiling water and sort out the warped footplate. Daniel on the other hand wanted to rebuild his E2 body, finish and paint the chassis for the said E2 and sort out some of the issues with the secondhand 72xx he bought as an unfinished kit. We had varying degrees of success, the E2 chassis was taken to the point of painting, and painted. The E2 body was dropped in water and a second, more successful attempt at building the body was completed. I on the other hand got all but 1 detail fitted to me 72xx, mainly because I couldn't find the lance cock casting and painted the slide bars/cylinders assembly. I also sorted out the cab roof and fitted the wheel balance weights. I lined the tank sides with lead to stop the wheel slip I observed when it took 68 loaded wagons on the curve of Hinton Parva. My GT3 body filler was sanded, and I as about to think about painting it when the promised rain arrived and put pay to that. The rest of my day was then spent working on the slide bars and cylinders of Daniel's 72xx for him - funny how I got conned into that one. The difference between my modern 72xx kit from PDK and Daniels Cotswold kit really shows up with the motion, the PDK one went together so much easier and was a much better fit. Here are the two 72xx's as they appear now. The piston rods on the Cotswold kit where too long, so some delicate surgery was required to shorten them and prevent the motion seizing. It's still not the smoothest runner, and work is going to be needed to ease the rods to make it run well. The important thing however was that we both had a good day, despite the frustrations when things didn't go to plan. There are still lots of projects to go, so hopefully we will be repeating the day again soon, it is nice to still be spending time with my teenage son like this.

I've done a bit more work on my 72xx, steps have been added, vacuum pipes, smoke box door and a coupling loop. So I thought it was time to see if it would pull anything. So it went back to Hinton Parva tonight, I borrowed the coal rake normally pulled by one of the two Garretts at exhibition and off it went. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqXNVKTKNzM It seemed to manage with the 68 loaded coal trucks, but did have a bit of wheel slip if not driven with care. Still a bit more work to do before it is ready for painting, but it is getting closer.

As promised I did a little video last night of the 72xx moving on Hinton Parva. It's not the best video ever and it is a little short, but it does show it moving. http://youtu.be/xWOIUcAB2Fo Later I had it doing circuits of the club test track, it was taking 10 minutes to do one circuit, I'm not sure of the size of the test track, but I think it is about 20 feet by 10 feet. Now all I need to do is finish it, there's that word again, "finish", I must look it up some time, something to do with Scandinavians I think Mark

Following a trip to see the excellent McKinley Railway, and a conversation about the RFID projects I had done before I have started another project - just what I need, one more thing to add to the list. What I am looking at is something that can read the train id and feed it back to the computer that is running the layout, however there is more to this than just reading the RFID data. The RFID readers I have used can not be placed close together, they interfere with each other. So I need a solution to this problem, and also I need to add extra information about direction. The idea is to add pair of optical readers either side of the RFID, the one that triggers first can be used to determine the direction of motion of the train, this then switches on the RFID reader - it is normally off to prevent interference. This reads the train ID, then the second optical will trigger. At this point we know what train we have, what direction it is moving in and how long it took to move between two fixed points. Add a second tag to the opposite end of the loco, and we can tell if the loco is running tender first or boiler first. Further to that add a tag to the first and last vehicle of each rake, and you can tell which rake the loco is pulling and if the rake is complete or has been separated. Just about everything you might desire to know about a train on the layout. Location, direction, loco id, loco orientation, speed, train id and the train is complete The problem then is to send all this data back to the operator/computer. This one could take a while to sort out....

Hi Mikkel, Sure, next time I'm at the clubroom - probably Wednesday, I'll try to remember to do some video of it. I must admit this is the second of the Dean Sidings kits I've built, they are great for getting something done quickly and give you something that is that little bit different. Much as I enjoy soldering up white metal and brass, sometime it is just nice to get something built and looking reasonably good just to prove to yourself that you can get there - hence the Railbus I did recently. Although, truth to tell I haven't quite finished either yet. I really hope that the small kit manufacturers can keep going, it must be tough given the quality and diversity of the RTR market and the need for instant gratification that seems to have become the norm these days. Mark

Hi Nick I'm not sure what livery to out it into, originally it was going to be GWR green, but since I started we have planned a new club layout, which is based on Oxford in 1950. So there is an opportunity to run it on there in BR guise. The thought of it being able to stretch it's legs with a long coal train on a 30ft layout may overcome my prejudice towards GWR livery. Mark

The 72xx that have have been building for quite some time now has progressed a little more since my last posting here. For some reason I only ever seem to work on this when I go to the Missenden Weekends, so one or two weekends a year makes for slow progress. The job tackled this year was to get the chassis moving under power - this took somewhat longer than expected, mostly because it turned out that not all my insulated wheels were! I'm sure you can guess how I discovered that one. A lot of time was also spent in fine tuning the chassis, effort that was well worth it. It now runs so smoothly and slowly that I'm really pleased, I measured it at a scale 3 miles per hour without any stalling, on clean track. I've also done some trimming of the rear of the cylinders to allow it to take the curves on the club layout, Hinton Parva. I've had it circulating the 32 foot layout, but at slow speed it takes several minutes to do so, it moves at a real crawl. It helps that it has pickup on 8 wheels, a big motor (Mashima 1632), a 50:1 gearbox and no shortage of weight. It also proved it power when I sent it down the wrong road and it pushed 6 Bachmann collets and the mogul on the front out of the siding - the mogul was unpowered at the time! I really should have keep an eye on it, but it was taking so long to get around I got distracted. The chassis has been painted, at least behind the wheels, and the brake gear added. Unfortunately the sand box casting where such a mess I decided not to use them. Thankfully a quick email to PDK has got some replacements, so I need to simply add them and the missing rear guard irons and then that is the chassis done. Then it is some final detailing of the body and time to paint it. Maybe it will get a coat of paint before the summer is out

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.

Nick, The seating is the Branchlines interior kit, I've got a couple of more partitions to solder in and the driver desks to make up. Mark

Sorry, I have butchered them - I cut down the axles and that is what is in it at the moment. If I had engaged the brain before the saw it would have been a good idea - Doh!

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.

Yes, it is a Hornby 0-6-0, on the whole these Dean Sidings kits are designed to fit onto off the shelf chassises. May not be my first choice but it makes for a quick job and the result is reasonable.

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.

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"