Greengiant

Yes, take the St Mary’s Road side exit, takes 10 mins to walk. Martin

There is nothing like a show deadline to sharpen the mind into action. Looking forward to seeing this one, you are going to need a bigger shelf for all the handsets. Martin

Looks like a BM crane superstructure? I built one on a Gas Mech chassis and then realised it had nowhere to go on Whiteoak, plus mine did not work as a crane! Ready in time for Warley? Martin

Rail crane? Now we need to get all the cranes on one layout and have a Crane Wars. Martin

The extra side pieces for the back road have now been painted black. Really needed to get on with drawing and cutting the 11 sets of railings for the rear wall, so an initial test piece was done in 1mmTrotec, the thinner rails are 0.5mm and the thicker ones are 1mm, all spaced by 1mm. Pleased to say the cutting settings Giles used on his E1 worked just fine on the E2. So I drew up a panel and went for 0.75mm rails spaced 1mm apart, which worked, but a bit twisty, this picture shows up a fundamental error I made on the drawing, it must have been getting late! I scrapped that drawing and started again, I went back to 1mm rails spaced 1mm apart, this has stood up well, there will also be an overlay laminate cut which beefs up the horizontal bars and outer frame. This time I got the railing spikes in the right place at the end of the railings. Using the thicker railings means they can also be seen easier viewing from the front of the layout. Encouraged by this I set to and drew up the doors that have always been missing on two of the buildings, one will be fixed in an open position, so is dead to size and made up of two the layers. The other a much larger door opening will be in the shut position, but also has a feature window at the head, this one is made up of three parts with a large border to give plenty of surface area when gluing to the wall. In the laser just after cutting, pleased to say the cut outs were dropping already which is always nice to see when you open the lid. The component parts. Roughly assembled. Then I cut the factory front wall windows to replace the piece of black card that currently resides in the apertures. The corrugated roof has seen some initial colouring. The gantry crane is also turning from grey to a variety of colours. I must remember to fix the hand rail on the steps. Martin

Work continues building the main road bridge on the layout. Martin

Exhibitions are getting nearer, Uckfield October 20-21, then EXPONG the following weekend. We had a knock on the door, some contractors were doing some tarmacing and had some left over, would we like some for a good price? Here it is along the rear road of The Yard. We have a lot to do, so stripped the layout of everything that needs work that could be done off the layout, not much left! The fiddle yard infills have now been painted. We binned the fascia panel/lighting unit and built a new longer version, the old one just did not look right. This has now been sign written. New LEDs have been ordered. The buildings are being stripped and repainted, never liked them the way they were but time was against us. The gantry crane hook has been remachined and rechained, plus a back up kit of spare chain has been made along with the tools to fit. Extra lorries are in production but may not be ready in time for the October shows. The crane loads have been refined with a new chain system on each load being installed, this should hopefully give us as near to 100% success rate on first time alignment and lift as possible, hopefully. Martin

The journalist came to the club rooms a few months back, took loads of photos and notes. Martin

A bit of Theobald’s Yard made it onto the BBC website today (scroll to the bottom of the page). Layout is currently being refurbed and slightly enlarged for it’s next outing in November, then out again April next year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45247637# Martin

Now the weather has turned and we have had a bit of rain, grass has started to appear on the layout! Martin

Soil has started to appear on some of the boards. This is the last board at the London end where the track goes under the motorway just prior to entering the fiddle yard. These are the approach tracks to the station at the London end. We had a delivery of Polak static grass fibres, guess what we will be doing next week? Martin

Yes, we had not planned for this little extra bit of work. Martin Today we dug out some of the points to fix the warped rail, now it is a little cooler the rail has straightened a bit, but not enough. Luckily there are fishplates an inch or so from the toe of the point, DAS was dug out and with the aid of a small hammer and a drift we were able to tap the fishplates along the rail. Hopefully we can wizzy disk off a small bit of rail, release the PCB soldered joints, ease the rail into position with the fishplate and resolder. Martin

Today we got to board four with the track laying initial stage. On the previous two boards the fishplates were soldered on using an RSU. This photo shows that we cut the web and head of the rail to simulate rails joins. Martin

Ten years ago I had local shed company build and erect a 28’ x 12’ shed, extra height eves at 7’, the roof was supported by roofing trusses rather than a large central beam. Heavy duty felt, double doors and windows down one side, total cost £2,700. At the time I could not even buy the wood for that to build myself. I installed the electrics, insulated and lined the walls, this year I refelted the roof, it is still doing stirling service as my workshop. Martin

These are some photographs of the basic main bridge structure, mostly made from 3mm ply. This will be clad in various materials to represent those of the real thing that the model is based around. Martin

Thank you for the kind comments and likes. The platforms have taken on a small change, I pinched the idea from the St Michael's Hill thread using Slater's embossed rivet Plasticard. So a trial piece was started using this technique. Rather pleased with the effect it gives for the bobbled slabs. Progress has been made with a start on the town end road bridge, here the basic ply shell is being checked for fit. Martin

'Euston we have a problem!' The heat in the workshop has had an adverse affect on some of the track, the parts where the rail foot is reduced to give space for the switch rail. The track gang will be out on Thursday with pick axes and shovels to remove some DAS so that the rail can be fixed. The point infills will be lasered again, this time they will be properly bedded in, we just ran out of time previously. On a happier note, the fiddle yard tracks have been infilled with 2mm MDF, this gives us a larger area to turn lorries providing there is no rolling stock in the way. There is still one more bit to do on this board, then it will be primed followed by a top coat of black. You can just make out in the photo the MDF has been chamfered towards the rail, this is so we have clearance when cleaning track so as not to disturb the painted surface finish. The notches are to clear were the wiring is soldered to the top of the copperclad sleepers, had we known that later we would fill in the surface we would have wired to the underside of the rail. Martin

Track laying has started, first is board six. The plates were cleaned up with a mop in a wizzy disk. Clip positions were marked out, then they were soldered to the rail using a 150 watt iron to get enough heat in quickly. We made a simple jig by routing a groove in some plywood at the depth to hold the upturned rail and the clips in exactly the right plane. For rail end clips and some mid point clips we have some that have been drilled to accept small screws. With end clips in place we used a rail bender to curve the rail until we got the flow we wanted. Note that the clips are not always central on the sleeper width, this is not an error, that is how they appear on the actual railway. One board getting there, still to do is fitting of the pandrol clips, blackening of the rail and final fixing to the sleepers. Martin

Yesterday we took advantage of the good weather we have had and laid all the boards out to give us an idea of the footprint required for the layout. Martin

I see an E2 lens upgrade has been released, will make cleaning easier, but not cheap. https://darklylabs.com/product/e2_lens_assembly-v2/ Martin

Time for an update. The gondola bases have now been painted in satin black. The small test section of track has had some moss deposit experiments take place and some fish plates added. Was unable to cut the web of the rail to simulate a joint, but on the actual layout the web will be cut when laying the rail. Sleeper distressing on the whole layout has now been done using these various tools. Sleepers have all had first stage staining. First stage ballasting has now also been done. We did call in some help with some borrowed track and stock to speed things up. Martin

Now the main structure of the platforms are built, attention has turned to the detailing of the platforms, so a small test section was made using the Peco concrete sides and some plasticard top surface with some bracing. The platforms have a multi row paving stone edge, this was simulated using 20 thou plasticard scribed with an Olfa cutter. This was then laminated to the platform top on both edges. Because of the size of the area to cover, MEK was drying too quickly, so we got some D‑Limonene (Orange Terpene), a citrus based product which sticks plasticard but does not dry as quickly as MEK, giving a longer working time. Down the centre of the platform is a drainage gulley, this was made from 20 thou plasticard which was scraped out with a curved blade, probably a waste of time because it will be very hard to see at normal viewing distance, but at least we know it is there. This was trimmed to size and stuck onto the platform. Next a coat of primer, an area was masked off to show what has been done at each stage for reference. The primer also shows were I over scribed in places. This may be filled or developed as a crack! This left the space between the paving stones and gulley, which on the real thing is tarmac. So I tried out a new product to me, that of AK Interactive and their Terrains Asphalt acrylic. This is a fine textured product in an acrylic medium. I masked up the edges and spread it on thinly (20 thou) with a spatula, on the actual platforms for the layout I will paint the stones first before this stage. Does not take long to apply and a little goes a long way at 20 thou. You can smooth it some more if the spatula is moistened with water. With the masking removed it leaves a reasonable finish, although this does look like newly laid tarmac, that will change once I have coloured it properly. With a bit of playing around it is easy to represent broken of rippled tarmac, actually I made a mistake with this bit! Martin

I use Casey Gun Blue. Martin

LG Miniatures. http://www.lgminiatures.co.uk/product-category/loco-cab/locomotive-detailing-accessories/general-locomotive-detailing-accessories/ Martin

Colour for this one is light green, one from the Vallejo range. I made a mistake in my hurry to get this one done and forgot about the inspection flaps, the rear one fouled the cab side because it is now slightly wider due to the external angle corner strip and rivets, so no other option to remove the flap and use it in the closed position in red primer. While paint was drying I got on with making a speaker baffle from plastic sheet, a mini two pin plug was soldered on. The wire strippers in the photo are great for stripping decoder wire, although not cheap they do a great job. All I have to do is get this lot under the bonnet! After a bit of fiddling it all went in, the side panel glued on, some name plates added and a grey thing I found in my scrap box stuck on, a bit of rough weathering is all I had time for, this loco needs to earn its keep this weekend at the Basildon show. Martin