Chris Chewter

I'm using these from ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-x-garden-sheds-wooden-made-with-REAL-WOOD-00-gauge-Free-P-P-laser-cut-NEW/254125488694?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 They seemed the right proportions of short and squat for beach huts, and I get four for a fiver! The windows are an inconvenience, but I'm hoping that they'll get hidden in the terrace. However I'm still waiting for them to arrive. Lets see what tomorrow brings...

Id love to use a load of Hornby sheds repainted, but I would need 8 at a cost of around £60. Ouch! The same applies if I use the Bachmann scenecraft beach huts. So I'm going laser! The beach huts at Goodrington appear like the end of a simple shed, so I've ordered some laser cut shed kits to paint up. One issue I can see is that they may be too deep and have to be cut back in size. However I need to be sensible about costs, after all its only a diorama! I just need the kits to turn up, but I only ordered them yesterday! Beach paraphernalia is also on the way, but I don't want to give the game away just yet!

Right. Lets get this cakebox started. It may be two and a half months late, but theres no time like the present! After a bit of hacking about with some plywood (Sorry neighbours) plus cutting up some polystyrene to what looks roughly like the correct height, it comes out something like this. But without the beach huts, its difficult to work out how far I need to push the railway embankment back to make it work. I'm doubtful it can be displayed with a loco on it after its been cut to size, the loco is there just for scale.

Thanks Marly51. I’m going to need it. I thought to be honest that Goodrington Sands was a bit cliche, but it has all the magic ingredients for a nice diorama. Differing levels and colour galore! What’s captured me on this one is it’s a diorama I’ve wanted to model for a while, (with a few other seaside embellishments which I’ll reveal when they turn up!) More updates soon. I can at least get started with the structure whilst waiting, so it looks like an evening cutting a glueing might await when I get home. I’ll let you know how I get on!

You say holidays with railways, and in my mind, I see this: Photo from wikipedia: Geof Sheppard [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)] Goodrington Sands. Steam, blue skies and colourful beach huts. Nice! I wasn't going to enter this round, and with the deadline fast looming, theres every chance that I'll miss the deadline. However, beach huts and people are on order. Lets see if the bits arrive and I can get this modelled in time!

Apologies for the music, but the other soundtrack I found was a tad too long for the clips I collected from my running session. its an experiment to see if videos with music fare better on youtube than clips without. No doubt some other videos will go live when I get a bit more time with the layout.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll take a look. I've also emailed where I purchased the ESU chip to see if they can sort me out a replacement under the 2 year ESU warranty. If they can sort a replacement, I'm loathed to chop off another DCC plug to squash it all back in!

I've been mulling over what to do with my failed DJ models 14xx. Firstly, to explain, I hardwired in an ESU sound chip because I wanted to use an accurate 14xx sound which I couldn't get from a provider who could sell me a 6 pin chip. The chip is a year old. I think that ESU give a 2 year warranty, but have I voided it by chopping off that 8 pin plug? So what to do? Well, Digitrains do a 6 pin Zimo chip which you plug in and solder a speaker onto. The downside is that I'd have to use a pannier sound file. Would that honestly sound that different from a 14xx? The big advantage is that if the chip fails, I haven't modified it significantly enough to prevent it from being returned. That sounds like a better option to me! Currently I don't have the cash to buy another sound decoder just yet, and with the kids off on their summer holidays, I need every penny I can scrape together! So I calculate that'll give me a month to solder in the 6 pin socket. I think that sounds achievable (no pun intended!)

Sorry for the lack of updates. Work and family life has crowded in, so unfortunately nothings been done. I've been wondering whether the layout wasn't fulfilling my love of simply watching the trains go by, which is something you don't get on a terminus layout, so I started thinking whether Tetbury had had its day. Whilst watching some model railway clips on YouTube, my son came over and asked if he could play with the model railway in the garage. Why not, I thought, its got to be better than encouraging him to bury his nose in a computer, so off we went. So far this weekend, i think we've clocked up 6 hours ferrying Minions about on the railway! I did ask him if he preferred running trains back and forth or if I should rebuild it as a roundy-roundy. He seemed to think it was great as it was, so Tetbury can stay. Unfortunately the weekend then took a turn for the strange when I was cleaning the wheels of one of my 1400 tanks. Everything was going well until the controller showed a short circuit. So I started looking to see if something had come loose, or if a track pin had wedged itself into the motor. The more I investigated, the more the little tank was disassembled. Eventually I had a chassis, body and was testing all the wiring to find out there was nothing wrong with the loco, the sound decoder is faulty. I'm seriously struggling to justify spending £100 on a chip that needs hard wiring into a loco, so I think a 6 pin socket and decoder will go into this one for a bit. Until that arrives, it'll have to sit on the "shelf of shame." On the positive, I can now dismantle a DJ Models 14xx, and I must have improved it in the process, because I can put it together with less screws than it was manufactured with. On a serious note, if that weight could be removed so I can insert the wiring back in, this design of loco would be so much better. You'll notice I've also had to label the wiring, because everything is black and red making checking the wiring a right pain. Furthermore, I cannot see how you can ever remove the motor should it fail. What an absolutely frustrating design! Hopefully with a socket and decoder, this one can turn a wheel once again!

Another hastily posed photo using some dusty locos off my display shelf. I haven’t measured the diorama, but you can get two locos end to end, so I think it’s 2.5 ft long.

Card mock-up made. Unfortunately I ran out of time to get a roof on it, but it gives a good idea on its size. I've used the glazed elevation to A-shop as the edge of the scene. I think any further and the diorama gets a bit too big. Hopefully soon the King will have a slightly nicer surroundings than card and paper together with the slight whiff of spray mount! Now to do a few checks on scale dimensions before creating the laser cutting plans.

Progress has been a bit slow on this project. I've now relented and put a version of CAD onto my home computer, as getting the time during lunch breaks or staying late after work to make the alterations just wasn't happening. In addition, knowing that a number of people have or are working on similar projects has taken the shine off a bit, but I guess there's nothing new under the sun! Anyway, following earlier comments confirming the shape of the windows, I've made a few adjustments. The next stage is to scale it down and make a card mock up to check that the model is a manageable size.

It may just be me, or the photo, but the shade of green looks better than the usual Hornby washed out pale green self coloured plastic. Will be interesting to see what the final version looks like.

When I last ventured into laser cutting, the windows were produced on an inner layer of 1.5mm ply. Apparently that works best by leaving 1mm between cut lines, but that would mean the window glazing bars would be too thick. I asked this to be reduced to 0.25mm which was just about workable.

This is bare Chinchilla Dust affixed with diluted PVA

I think you’re right. The answer seems to be on the old Q shop, now the McArthur Glen food court. Looks like I need to get busy with the delete button.

Revised end elevation with the main gables corrected. It’s been very fiddly getting to this stage. There are a few inaccuracies, but it looks close enough to me. Now to scale it down to 1:76 and start designing the various laser cutting layers.

Progress has been a little slow of late. Work has been a little stressful, so the idea of returning and designing buildings is a little unappealing. However I made some progress yesterday to sort out the west windows of A shop, which are massive. Trying to line everything up has been a pain, but i think its there now. I'll post up some images shortly. Windows are on my mind at the moment. From a distance, the windows appear to be long oblong panes like this: However upon closer inspection, they are broken up by intermediate glazing bars like this: I was going to get these laser cut, however the intermediate bars are a bit too fine for that. If laser cut these bars would be 1mm thick. Because they are so fine, I think these either need to be brass etched or 3d printed, so a bit of research is needed to decide the correct way to model this. The alternative is to leave them as long rectangular panes in the knowledge that these intermediate bars would be invisible at 4mm scale. Personally, it would annoy me to omit something, but would people notice the small glazing bars being missing?

Thanks Phil. Missed those. I think it’s shaping up to be a nice looking model.

Received emails both from Bachmann and Rails of Sheffield with images of the EP samples. I would post them here but I’m unsure whether that would be a copyright issue.

Just to put the sheer size of A-shop into perspective, this aerial photo from Historic England seems to be centred on the building, with the rest of the works sprawling behind. The bit I'm planning to model is the tiny recess to the bottom left hand corner, so it probably only represents 5% of the total building. https://viewfinder.historicengland.org.uk/search/detail.aspx?uid=59988 Likewise, on the aerial photo from the Almany website, its only the bottom right hand corner: https://www.alamy.com/great-western-railway-works-swindon-wiltshire-1920-aerial-view-image221500530.html

Those of you who have followed my Tetbury build will know I have a soft spot for modelling real locations. I enjoy the historic research plus it takes away the uncertainty of whether the layout looks or operates correctly. I'm not too sure why Swindon works, after all, its been modelled beautifully in 7mm already, however it hasn't been done in 4mm as far as I'm aware. Also, it'll make a good diorama to put some nice GWR and Br(W) locos to photograph. (Perhaps, I've just visited the McArthur Glen outlet centre too many times whilst the wife goes shopping for shoes!) I was thinking about modelling the track behind the old J shop using the elevations available from the Swindon Borough Councils website, however Bambrick Studios are planning to do this http://bambrickstudio.co.uk. Anyway, having to manually carve the stonework would be a pain, but not insurmountable. Given that J shop was already planned by someone else, what other aspect should I model? After all, there should be plenty of locations at Swindon Works that could be modelled. After a bit of studying old photos, and ruling out locations such as the Hooter House (Too few locos there) and the turntable by the Pattern Store (A bit big and the wrong orientation for my liking), I found the following photo on Wikipedia showing the south west corner of the site. This location gave me the chance to pose several locos together, plus the ability to use A shop itself as a backdrop and scenic break. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D1052_and_D1009_Swindon_Works.jpg Unfortunately, whilst some of the Swindon Works buildings are still in existence, sadly when BREL sold the site, A-shop was demolished. I don't know whether this was to sell the land for housing, or whether there was simply no buyer for such a vast bespoke building, but the building is no more than a memory. Photographs of this massive building only give glimpses of details, probably because no one could actually stand back far enough to photograph the elevations! A shop was truly an enormous structure! A copy of The Great Western at Swindon Works by Alan Peck was obtained for a reasonable price, but whilst some plans and elevations were present, there was no drawings of A-shop. Rileys Heyday of Swindon and its Locomotive and Morrisons Great Western Steam and Swindon Works give some useful photos, but what I really needed was a set of elevations! After speaking to archivists at STEAM, Didcot Railway Centre, and the NRM, I was put onto a lead that the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham had a massive archive of railway infrastructure plans, building plans and elevations, not only of Swindon Works, but also covering the western region (Including a site plan of Tetbury which I wished I knew was in existence!) They confirmed that they held a full set of elevations, and an enjoyable morning was spent pouring over plans and elevations in their archive. I obtained permission to photograph the elements from the plans that I wanted to use, although sadly this included a copyright clause preventing me from replicating the photos here. However I have managed to start translating the elevations I want to use into CAD, with a view that this can be sent to a laser cutter to create a model. You'll notice the oddity to the top right gable, where the blue engineering brick is not in the middle of this elevation. I thought it was a drafting error, but two plans and several photos show this to be correct. Trying to get the upper gables has turned out to be a real pain. The draftsman decided not to show the massive glazed expanse, so I've had to use photographs here, which have shown some drafting errors. I'm still adjusting that bit at present. Hopefully, after a bit more CAD work, one day locos can be lined up here once again. I may adjust the design so it can operate as cameo layout, with locos being extracted from the side door being pulled out into the open, ready to head back into revenue earning service, or as a diorama demonstrating a time when Swindon Works was at its best!

A bit late to the party on this one. I’ve been trying not to buy one as it doesn’t fit my layout, but I love it’s diminutive size, as well as reminding me of times in my youth traveling in the cab of 1369 on the SDR. So here’s a video of mine running briefly on the rolling road. Lets see how long 1367 lasts before she’s gets renumbered!

The Spring 2019 Bachmann times indicates that an EP version of the 94xx pannier should be arriving soon. Interestingly, whilst browsing the Bachmann 2019 catalogue, it indicates that the loco would be fitted with a firebox flicker function. It'll be interesting to see if that's better than the Hornby 28xx back in the 90s!