Jon Fitness

How do you know if you've made it as a railway modeller? There's no bits left in the kit box.................

will you be doing that with your coaches as well Larry ? JF

Excellent! I love answers like these...it means I'm right either way I think they'll look better with the arm colour on the spec plate but with the addition of a bit of weathering to tone them down a bit (only a little bit as my customer wants them pristine!) Cheers Jon F.

As I'm using the MSE SO34 GWR etch for building this gantry, I'll be using the etched walkways as well. To give the gantry a bit of depth I've fitted some bits of square tube and angle to stand the walkways off a fair way from the top of the cross beam. On the walkways there are etched representations of supports which are used as a guide as to where the stanchions for the handrails go. These don't really match where I need the handrails to go so I haven't matched them to the actual supports soldered to the gantry. The positions of the stanchions will be decided once I have finalised where everything else fits!! I have soldered up 3 sections of walkway together and trimmed them to length. As the dolls will fit where I want them to and not where the pre-etched holes are on the walkways I have filled the holes with little soldered in offcuts of scrap etch. This shows the walkway resting on the supports ready to be soldered on. Just a little decision to make here; I've built and painted an early pattern GW stop and distant for the BR period but I'm not sure about the extent of the colour on the arms. I have painted the whole spec plate black but some pics I've seen show the square section of the plate painted in the arm colour so I've mocked up a square of each colour for comparison. Any idea which is right for BR era?

Thats a very sweet little loco. I could almost imagine a narrow gauge chassis under that! I'm very tempted to buy one and build it non-working as a load for a 7mm scale GW bogie well wagon kit I'm about to build. Jon Fitness

Jeez... if they do I might as well chuck me tools away...... JF

GW Gantry Now that the L&Y signal is planted working and lit (had to change both LEDs, very rare) I've started on the GW gantry. It looks a little spindly but is only about a scale 6" short of the real thing in depth. Its main structure is based very loosely on one that was at Newton Abbot as pictured in Kevin Robertson's book on WR signals. The main cross beam uses 3 of MSE's GW bracket kits and has had a few rivets and a lower flange added along its length. The main stems should be "H" section girders but I have made up some false girders using box section brass and flat strip so I can run wires etc down the stems. It will eventually have 4 dolls on it with a total of 5 arms. Not many compared to Mikemegs epic structures but enough for an average signal-builder! This is the progress so far. The 3 etches joined. Formed, flange added and soldered up. A made up stem. Making the gussets from scrap etch The main structure built and braced. I'm sure my soldering looked better than that. Cameras can be very cruel looks like I've got a lot of cleaning up to do . And yes I know the stems are different lengths. Where it will fit is 25mm higher on one side than the other! More soon.

I didn't cut it but maybe that was part of the problem!! I have 2 more to build so I'll make more investigations as to why it didn't square up so easily. JF JF

Hi Paul. I've built a couple of the 7mm versions. (I take it these are a reduced version of the Warren Sheppard kit?) The hopper was a ****** to get square and my first attempt wasn't quite! Looking at your excellent work so far, I'm sure you've got it sussed but it's just something to watch out for. When I came to fit my first hopper to the chassis, even though it looked square (as did my chassis) it pulled the chassis out of line and a slight "compromise" had to be accepted (grrr). JF

I generally use Tower Pro SG90. I buy them in bulk from Servo Shop. Try the link below. http://www.servoshop...G90G&area=Servo Cheers JF

Cheers Simon! You're right about the route indicator box. A bit "cheaty" I suppose but it works for me. Spec plates.....On the upper quadrant arms, the later pressed metal spec plates were painted across the lens area with a continuation of the blade colour. This faded and weathered much quicker than the blade which is enamelled so when they were new they were coloured and as they aged they lost the colour or just got dirty. the Ex L&YR arms were always painted with the full colour all the way along right until the end of their use on BR. ATB Jon F.

Thats better; can't beat a bit of weathering to show up the faults detail... All finished and ready to fit now. Many thanks for all your "likes" ... Now it's back to those GW signals for a bit. Gantry next I think ............. JF

Once I knew it fitted and looked reasonably OK I decided the next job was to provide for the servos. As the post extends below the base I fitted a small brass sub-base to mount the servos on and terminated the post wiring on a small piece of copperclad. The final construction job is the lamp-mans safety rail. L&YR used flat bar for handrails so these were bent up from a strip of 1/32 x 1/64. The rear one was fitted to 2 horizontal pieces of wire fastened to the post but the front one was left until after the painting and final re-assembly. I have also replicated bolt heads on the back of the post by drilling 0.6mm holes and glueing in short lengths of wire at the rear of where fittings bolt through. Painting time. The lamp cases and the end of the handrail wires were masked off and about four coats of Halfords white primer sprayed on, built up over a day or so. Plenty of paint was applied as the cheap wood of the firework sticks soaked up the first 2 coats! The arms were sprayed with the white primer, masked off and sprayed Peugeot Cherry Red (mainly as I had run out of Audi Laser Red....) and seemed to look OK (opinions welcome!) The spectacles were then glazed with MSE's coloured sheet secured with thickish superglue. Some of the "blackwork" was then painted to allow assembly and testing of the linkages and servos. Once this was done and I knew it worked, the backblinders were soldered on to the rear of the spindles, the handrail fitted at the front and the painting completed. It now looks disgustingly clean and fresh and will (as soon as the paintwork hardens) get a coat of lovely filthy weathering applied before it gets fitted and connected up. More soon JF

Now that the wiring is in and the groove filled with Squadron green putty, it's time for the lamps. Referring to pictures in books the standard size arms have a round lamp case, but smaller arms have a small square case with no visible vent on the top. These were prepared with LEDs and glued in place. The lamps were also drilled 0.7mm and had small "pins" of N/S wire soldered in that pushed into pre drilled holes in the post for extra strength. How to operate that little shunt signal? I did toy with the ideas of small wheels used like bell cranks as one or two people use but that (and I'm not ashamed to admit it it!) was beyond me!! I chose a small rocker arm fixed between the trimmers as being a little more substantial and easier for me to engineer. The pictures probably show better than I can describe... Once this was assembled I added the lampmans staging from 1mm ply strips The addition of ladders and the spandrel bracket took the construction to this stage .... so I took it to the layout and dug a hole in the platform where it is going to go. More soon. JF

Can't see linked or hosted pics at work as my employer blocks them so attached ones are always better!

Stand in front of a Scale7 layout and remark loudly how "that extra millimeter makes all the difference".......

Find every layout with loops, sidings etc and ask loudly "Shouldn't you have trap points there?" Start up every DCC sound fitted diesel and leave it ticking over on max volume.. . or do the opposite when you find a layout that has done the above and carefully place a coin on the track in a quiet siding somewhere.... Demo a re-paint of an NRM City of Truro in BR lined Black.....just on one side. Like I did on the real thing...

£20 from Wrexham market 10 years ago! Not from a pub but it has had a drop or 2 of beer spilt on it in that time.... JF

Assembly. 2 small pieces of coffee stirrer were cut and the ends rounded off to make the trimmers. These were fastened on with PVA wood glue and clamped up to set. Next up, whilst the glue was drying, I had another look at the arms (MSE) and decided the spectacle plates need a little work. The framework around the edge looked a little heavy so I enlarged the lens apertures slightly. I would have liked to gone a little further but with my luck I would have damaged them or made them too weak. I also rounded off the edges to make the spec. plate look more like a casting rather than a flat plate. The arms were then fixed horizontal (with a 14BA nut tightened on the spindle) and the arm stops formed and fitted with a spot of superglue. These were first curved round a drill shank. Again I thought these fittings were a little heavy and have subsequently trimmed them back a bit. A small recess was drilled in each post where the captive nut of the balance weight bearing was going to fit and the bearing plates fitted, again with a dab of superglue. The wiring for the lamps was next. I considered using wrapping wire for this but decided in the end to use fine insulated wire. Rather than have a join in the wiring, I have run 2 wires from each lamp down the post and as the photos show, this has successfully been crammed into the recess and exits through the base. Once the post is filled and sanded down the wires should all but disappear (he hopes!) Sorry about the "bleaching out" on the pics. Can't blame it on the flash as I never use it and the sun certainly wasn't shining that brightly ... More soon. JF

Tease!

Lovely stuff! If a 7mm bus could be produced to that standard I'd be in there straight away (depending on the prototype of course Did someone say Bristol MW? ) Jon F.