GWMark

I attended the Amersham model railway show on Saturday with my teenage son, and he came away with a purchase. A part finished Cotswold kit of a 72XX! Now, I wonder, is he trying to outdo Dad here! Anyway, the upshot is that my planned day of working on the PDK 72XX got highjacked, first by household jobs like fixing a leaking tap, but then by aiding Daniel get his 72XX chassis working. By Sunday evening I had lost my work area and tools to Daniel who was busy soldering whitemetal steps to his new 72XX kit. Now with school term starting again in the morning, maybe I'll get to build while he is doing his homework. Still I guess he could be doing worse things at thirteen than soldering whitemetal together. Mark

Hi Martyn, the cylinders are made up from nickel silver etches, maybe I got the top fold slightly wrong, so that it is not as tight as it should. I'll have to take a look and see if I can do anything about it. Have you got any pictures of your 7mm version of the 42XX anywhere? Mark

I think Horsetan is right, there is not enough slope to cylinders, this view shows them better. A little more progress last night, I really ought to get on with the chassis however.

Well, the 72XX has taken a few small steps forward. Now we have the next problem, the motion bracket has been laminated from three thicknesses and now doesn't fit over the slide bars. I think I will ned to look at that when I am feeling more awake. But for now this is were I am. The cab roof and the slide bar are just laid in place, everything else is firmly attached. I really do like this loco and can see it getting ever closer to being finished, or at least to be ready to be painted.

Well, I finally got around to doing some modelling tonight, so much for a long weekend of doing what I want. Following on from a few hours spent during the evenings, the 72XX is progressing slowly. The handrails have started to go on, on one side, I have added the rivet strip around the base of the tanks, the lips on the cab roof and soldered up the cylinders and added the drain cocks. It's also now a 2-8-2 rather than the 0-8-0 it has been up until now. The chimney has just been rested in place for effect in this picture, as has the cab roof. Whilst soldering on the handrails I seem to have lost some of the solder in the joint between the side and rear of the bunker, this had been nicely rounded, but I guess it is a job for filler now. Still a long way to go, but at least there is some progress. Mark

It's GWR no. 802, an Ex Rhondda and Swansea Bay tank loco, built by Beyer Peacock. I picked it up last year at Aley Pally. I had a thread in the old RMWeb discussing the origin of the kit. Probably not the best kit in the world, but a nice little tank loco. Mark

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.

Well, last night we had our last practice session for the operators before packing the layout up to take to the Watford Finescale exhibition on the weekend of the 20th of February. It gave us an opportunity to not just brush up the skills of the new and existing operators, but also to test all those maintenance issues we have attempt to resolve since our last trip to Wigan just before Christmas. It's amazing how quickly the time has gone by since the Wigan exhibition and how little we seem to have managed to do to the layout in that time. All the interruptions of Christmas and the bad weather seem to have really taken a toll on the progress we had hoped to make. Fortunately we didn't have too many issues to look at, mostly some stock failures to resolve and the odd sticky point motor. The main thing that has suffered is all those things on the wish list, still they will have to wait until we get back from Watford. Fortunately we then have some time before Peterborough and Warley later this year, of course, having said that the time will no doubt fly by in the same way it has since December.

When someone asks me about hobbies, I always say I am a railway modeller, but actually, in casting around for anything to put in my blog I begin to wonder what I have done in the past few weeks that could be counted as "modelling railways". Apart from layout operating at Wycrail and Warley the closest I have got to anything that might be seen as a modelling task is painting some figures and turning a piece of plasticard into an uncoupling ramp, scoring planks and rivets and painting it. The rest of the time has involved soldering irons, wire and electronic components, is this really railway modelling? Worse still, given I am a software engineer by trade, I have even spent time writing and updating software related to layout operations - the proverbial "busmans holiday". So what have I been doing and why? Well, I made some optical sensors for a club layout to replace some reflective infra-red ones with ones that use ambient light instead. The reflective ones didn't work on all the stock and were unreliable, so the new ones measure the light level between the track and the light level beside the track. If the between the track level is lower then it decides the track is occupied and prevent the signal to enter the block, in this case the fiddle yard, from being pulled off. I've been trying to build an indexing turntable controller that uses magnetic field alignment to detect rotational angle - this is sill an ongoing project and very much work in progress - a long winded way of saying "It's not working.... yet!" I been looking at ways to solve a problem with the RFID readers I designed to allow them to work in close proximity to each other - this has also involved some software development - hence the busmans holiday comment. And finally I built an uncoupling ramp for tension lock couplers that rises slowly and silently using memory wire as opposed to the harsh, and loud, mechanism based on a solenoid that is commercially available. At least this task allowed me to decorate a slice of plastercard and get my paint brush out! So, can I say I am a railway modeller, or an electronics hobbyist? I know one thing, I can't wait to get back to a loco kit or building my challenge layout - ah, but maybe then I'll have to become a carpenter! Maybe this is just a multi-skilled hobby? Enough of my musing, it's back to work time for me, after a cup of coffee maybe..... Mark

Now that Wycrail is over it is time to put right all those things we found to be a problem before the next outing to Wigan in just over two weeks time. We now have two more Wednesday evenings to do the testing and any fixes we need before it gets taken down again. We have already fixed a couple of wiring faults and I am now working on building some new optical sensors to replace the ones we have in the fiddle yards that interlock the signals controlling the exit from the scenic sections. We have been using some infra red sensors, that rely on reflection from the underside of vehicles, but these have proved to be unreliable, fien we some stock, but other items are invisible to them. The new design, which I have tested on the bench, uses two sensors (Light Dependant Resistors), one measures the light between the track and the other, placed beside the track, the ambient light. If the track is significantly darker than the ambient light level, then the assumption is that there is an item of stock over the sensor. Initial findings are that these work well in a number of different lighting conditions, but we shall have to see how well they perform in exhibition conditions. Following that, and time allowing, I want to replace the current tension lock uncoupler in the goods yard with one that is powered by memory wire. A small ramp will be raised up by the memory wire to raise the hook on the coupling - much like the solenoid operated ones you can buy, but slient and hopefully less obtrusive. We only use this for detaching pick up goods locos, the actual wagons are equipped with Spratt & Winkle couplings, these being another area that needs some work before Wigan if we are to avoid the "slip coach" impression from a number of items, particularly one of the guards vans. We are planning a few stock changes for Wigan, with at least one new loco introduced into the sequence, so my final job will be to update the PowerPoint displays we use for the RFID controlled public information system. This is a system in which passing trains control the display of slides in PowerPoint and give the, hopefully, watching public some information about the train and the movement it is about to make. Every fixed rake or loco has a small radio tag attached that transmits the identity of the train to readers under the baseboards, this information is passed to the information displays and the fiddle yard operators to aid them in "driving" the fiddle yards.

Sorry to report the turntable controller was not a success. Although it worked for me using my test motor, the current drawn by the one n the layout was higher and it failed. I shall have to find a higher current device and have another go - sadly it will be too late for Warley however. Mark

Another 3 for you Graham.... How many model magazines has Fisherton Sarum appeared in this month. There is the picture you mentioned in Hornby Magazine, also it appears in the news section of Railway Modeller and also the news section of BRM, behind Mike Wild. The news items are both about our clubroom extension, but it does give you 3 pictures! Mark

It was good to see the progress with Summat Colliery, the last time I sure it was at the members day 15 months ago. Sadly between my hall management duties and driving on Hinton Parva I didn't get to have a really long look, but from what I saw on the Friday during setup it looked very impressive and certainly did a lot to contribute to the high standards on show on Saturday, you should be rightfully proud of it. Hope it wasn't too cold for you by the door and that you got plenty of cups of warming tea! Mark

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