Skinnylinny

I'll paint the inside - might add some interior detail too. I quite like the panelled end though! Ad if I wanted the ends to match, I'd have to add end windows, too... (although I could fill those in, they're a nice reminder of the origins of the coach ) I also have ideas now for a chassis based around two spliced Peco 15-foot brake van chassis (with footboards also hiding the lack of underframe detail), although I need to come up with a viable coupling method still...

Listeners who are listening may have seen my cunning plan blog entry about hacking about a Tomix Annie and Clarabel into decent representations of typical UK four-wheeled coaches. I was hoping for a fairly simple job - cut/file off the noses and faces, repaint and plonk on the layout. When they arrived, they were too tall, too wide, and wouldn't negotiate my curves without falling over. I hemmed and hawed before deciding to carry out my first "proper" piece of model bodging. Cue buying a saw and filler from work, and after repainting a body shell crudely in maroon to see what it would look like (placed on a hacked-about Peco chassis) I discovered that height-wise, the bodyshell is not actually that bad. The Tomix chassis raises the body quite a bit above "correct" height. This is how it looked: Hmmm, not bad at all. Just need to worry about the width now. CAUTION: What follows is a very detailed blow-by-blow account of how I did this - it was my first attempt as a complete beginner. With my newly-bought saw, I cut a long slit down the middle of each end (very roughly - the saw blade was very flexible (note to self: buy a better saw)) then hacked my way down the middle of the floor. A bit of tidying up of this, then I trimmed back the ends until I reached the edges of the middle panel at one end, then removed the corresponding amount from the other end with a scalpel and filing. Once everything lined up nicely(-ish) I glued the two body halves together again with liquid poly, then carefully applied filler along the cracks. Being very careful with how it was applied, I managed to not destroy the beading detail on one end, although the other (smooth) end looked a little less neat - it was my first time dealing with filler! A little more filing and smoothing after the filler had set (in the bathroom, on the windowsill after complaints from my flatmates (that White Putty stuff has a fearsome smell and even worse warnings on the back of the tube!) led to this before-and-after shot with a somewhat worried-looking Annie seeing her eventual fate. (This is why I am apparently heartless! ) A lick of paint (well, several light coats to cover the white-orange contrast of the filler) makes a huge difference, and I'll leave you with two views of the opposite ends of what used to be Clarabel:

Actually, the buffers simply pull off, allowing the coaches to traverse my curves, as long as I don't expect them to run through reverse curves. Removing the body from the chassis is rather harder, though, requiring some slitting with a scalpel...

Mhmmm, sprung buffers might help, but on these curves, the couplings on reverse curves are more likely to be an issue, I think. Collaboration would be good!

Having a layout involving sharp curves (140mm radius), bogie coaching stock looks a bit silly (with three mark 1s covering approximately 180 degrees of curvature), so I have decided to go down the route of 4-wheel coaching stock. A quick look on eBay was horrifying and caused the student loan alarms to start wailing - they generally go for about £25-30 a pop! Then I remembered having seen the Tomix Thomas the Tank Engine range in N scale. Fantastic - one set of Annie and Clarabel available for £20 from the shop I'm buying my track from, so no increase in postage. Plus, being made by Tomix, they'd go around my ludicrously sharp Tomix curves, right? Well, the parcel arrived today. I say "arrived" - it got to the perfectly fine by the Japanese post office, at which point it was handed over to Parcel Farce. Long story short, they didn't even bother to put a "You were out" (I wasn't) card through my door, just threw it on the floor inside the main door for the building. One 'phone call to the nearest post office confirmed that the parcel was there, and so I went to collect it. The track was just as I expected, and the points are beautiful - very small, but you can still unclip a small piece of plastic underneath and slot in the standard Tomix point motor in about 15 seconds. Next out were the coaches. These actually look really nice, with a decent representation of the panelling on the coaches in the TV series. I don't know if there's any specific prototype these are meant to represent, but they make nice generic panelled stock: However, on playing with them on the track I had to hand, I came up against a problem; the coaches struggled with simple curves, tipping over when going from straight to curved track due to buffer lock. This photo (with the Rapidos removed) gives an idea of the angle the coaches are at to one another on curved track: Trying the on a reverse curve, however, pointed out a different problem with the long rigid chassis-mounted couplings; they wouldn't stand half a chance of staying coupled, even if the couplings could be extended to prevent buffer lock: Between the coaches, this could possibly be remedied by having a rigid bar coupling free to pivot at each end, but how to (removably) couple to a loco? I was thinking of fiddling around with bits of bent wire at this point, until I placed a Peco van on the track too. This led to another discovery: These coaches, despite being nominally 1:150, are somewhat larger than Peco rolling stock at nominal 1:148. So the question is posed: Do I cut my losses and sell them on whence they came on eBay, or do I persevere and attack them with a saw and file and try to make something presentable out of them? I'm loath to damage the finish on them, especially having paid just over £20. If all else fails, I may have to try to make something out of a Peco chassis and some plasticard, unless anyone else has any suggestions for how I can obtain four-wheeled coaching stock at a price suitable for a student budget? Also, does anyone fancy a Tomix Annie and Clarabel? Answers on a 4" by 6" piece of pulped dead plant or recycled electrons, please.

Having established a nice oval of track and got a train running by the slightly simplistic method of applying a 9V battery to the power cables, it was time to think about speed control. My nice Bachmann controller has apparently travelled to the dimension of lost socks during the move to the new flat, so I had two choices: Fork out for another one (not an attractive proposition for a poor student, especially as I wanted a PWM controller for low-speed running in N gauge) or put my studies for a degree in electronic engineering to use and try to build one. A quick look at the bank account told me that buying a decent-quality controller was out of the question, so it was off to Maplins... Surprisingly, the circuit I came up with was fairly simple, looking something (but not quite entirely - one component value has since changed from 100uF to 10nF) like this: On this diagram, the top potentiometer (variable resistor) is the speed control, by adjusting the length of the "high" pulses, while the bottom one allows the length of the "low" pulses to be varied to suit different locomotives. In the event, however, I used a single 20 kilohm variable resistor, with the middle connection of the variable resistor connected to the point between the two of them on the diagram (Maplins not having the ones I wanted, and a friend having a spare variable resistor lying around) After a trip to Maplin, the circuit was built on a scrap of veroboard, and the result was this: A quick attachment to some switches and a battery, and a loco was put on the track. After a few faltering starts, there was movement! A quick calculation showed that the Farish 04 shunter ran at a maximum scale speed of 26mph. Given that the maximum speed of the prototype is given as 25-27mph, I was fairly happy with the results of this little experiment. Low speed running is pretty good too, with the only objection to slow-speed running being the need to clean track and wheels on my test track... All in all, this controller, which was only meant to be an experiment to see if it could be done, may very well end up in use on my layout! (P.S. I should point out that this controller is only likely to work for N gauge and smaller, with adjustments to the supply voltage for T scale etc - the 555 chip I used can only supply about 200mA of current - plenty for an N gauge shunter, but possibly not for a 00 scale Pacific...)

JaymzHatstand: Surprisingly, this was fairly easy. I was being very cautious so as not to damage the nylon drive gear, but estimate about 10 minutes of (gentle!) filing achieved roughly this, with maybe 5 minutes of polishing up afterwards. I know about sharp curves - these curves are 140mm radius! I would not enjoy trying to get the 0-6-0 to go around the smallest radius that Tomix make - 103mm! I'm also looking into getting hold of some foreign-made N-scale 0-4-0s to try to convert them into passable UK might-have-beens... Particularly the Fleischmann 0-4-0 and the Tomix Percy (see https://www.newhallstudios.com/~station/images-lib/tomix_n_scale/TO-93808/TO-93808_02_lg.jpg ) which should only require the face removing and replacing with plasticard and a suitable smokebox door, followed by a repaint. As a bonus, it comes with three faces, perfect should I decide to have a "Day out with Thomas" event on my layout! EDIT: Have just removed the other wheel's flange in about 10 minutes, and it runs pretty sweetly around the curves. I'll run it in tonight, then look for any tight spots...

Having obtained my stupidly-tight curves for my N gauge shelf layout, I realised that my Farish 94xx (crudely repainted in maroon) wouldn't navigate them, with its too-long (!) fixed wheelbase. This is not going to be a layout where I can run 9Fs and Pacifics (although to see a Pacific navigate a 1-chain radius curve would be fun!). As such, I decided that I would attempt to modify my 94xx to allow it through the curves. How? Flangeless centre drivers, of course! Being a poor student, I don't have a mini-drill at present, so the flanges on the Farish drivers are currently being filed off by hand, using a needle file. One wheel is already done, and allows me to test the running qualities in one direction. More information tomorrow after test running has occurred, but some photos of the work so far: The bottom centre driver is the one that I have attacked. View along the chassis to allow you to compare the flanged and flangeless wheel profiles. Inside of curve, with flangeless wheel overhanging the inner rail. Outside of curve, with centre driver quite definitely moved sideways over the rail.

I received a parcel in the post from Japan, containing an oval of Tomix "Mini Fine Rail", and, following some experiments, have discovered that it *should* be possible to build a roundy-roundy-style layout in N scale within a 1-foot width board. Experiments with a Farish 04 shunter and some Peco SWB wagon kits show that they will run around the 140mm radius curves (admittedly with some grinding noises from the wheels of the 04), although the Rapido couplers will not work reliably on the curves. However, I have an idea for a modification which may work, but more of that later. The other issue with such sharp curves should be obvious to anyone who's ever built a setrack layout: the number of wagons required to take up a given arc on a curve. Obviously, on your "average" prototype curve, you would need a great many vehicles to take up a few degrees. On these curves (which scale up to about 1 chain radius - half the official minimum operational radius of the class 04!) five 10' wheelbase wagons appear to take up 90 degrees... This leads to some wonderful views from above, such as: This also leads to a slightly ridiculous appearance when running bogie coaches, as three mark ones take up an entire 180 degree curve by themselves. I think I might have to use four-wheelers. However, in terms of appearance, the track isn't that bad, being pre-ballasted, but with a lower ballast shoulder than Kato Unitrack. Sleepers appear to be slightly under scale length for UK track, but this may be to do with the overscale rail clips: There are two small gaps moulded into the ballast in each track section, for the neat power clip. Also, Tomix produce their smaller-radius curves (at least, I am not aware if they do this for larger-radius ones like this) with infill between the rails and outside them, because the smaller curves (known as "Mini Fine Rail") were originally designed for modelling tram lines. Therefore, they may be of use to modellers looking to reproduce dockyard track on their layouts. However, Tomix's products are not widely known of outside of Japan, and are almost impossible to obtain outside the country.

After some playing around with the shelf layout, the track plan has evolved somewhat, following the purchase of a Metcalfe brewery kit to add some operating interest. At present, the projected layout is looking somewhat like this: However, the Tomix Mini Fine Rail track system (primarily intended for trams) has come to my attention, and using it, it should be possible to fit an oval onto my 1-foot-wide shelf. I'm not sure quite how well it would work, but I have done some rudimentary experiments with some (protesting!) 009 flexitrack I had lying around, bending it to approximately 140mm radius (the second(!) smallest radius Tomix offer), and my Farish 04 shunter will just about grind through it with a short-wheelbase 4-wheeler. Bearing in mind that 009 flexitrack has a habit of kinking and therefore forming straight sections linked by tighter curves than the nominal radius, I bit the bullet and ordered enough Tomix track from a well-known auction site to try out an oval. If it works, the plan is to build a roundy-roundy slightly more train-set styled layout, while possibly retaining the BLT. However, I would be gaining a continuous run at the expense of severely limiting what stock I can run; while my 04 will negotiate 140mm radius (scaling up to 68 feet radius (1.03 chains!) or just under 21m) my steam-outline pannier will not. Any ideas of seriously-short-wheelbase locos would be gratefully received! If the 140mm radius experiment works out, the basic layout plan is something along these lines (all curves and points 140mm radius unless otherwise shown, and I am seriously rethinking that 103mm rad siding!: Any thoughts or comments?

Sounds like a giant Faller car system... is this a case of the prototype following the model, or the model following the prototype?

Well, the time came for another trip to Harburn Hobbies (usual disclaimer applies - no connection other than satisfied customer, etc. etc.) and departing with a yellow bag that felt much lighter than when full of 00 stuff (although the wallet felt heavier, so that's probably not such a bad thing!). Some more track (almost enough to complete the station and scenic area), a Peco platform kit and one wagon (to test my tracklaying until the rolling stock I made last year turns up in the unpacking!), a roll of scenic mat and a pack of Metcalfe stone "railway cottages", of which more later. It has to be said, I was dreading buying a grass mat, with mental images of those huge mats sold by Hornby et al., with enough grass to cover 6 double-decker buses (or something...) but was delighted to find one nestled in a box at Harburn that was 48" by 12". Excellent, I'll have that! It fitted perfectly, and suddenly, my shelf looked a lot more green! It's amazing what a kick-start that provided to the modelling juices, too, seeing some progress so quickly. I set out the track I'd bought, and the goods shed, and started on a Metcalfe house... (Apologies for the dodgy focussing - a mobile 'phone camera is all I have access to at the moment until I can persuade one of my photographer friends to come around with some decent equipment) That evening, work started on the first of the Metcalfe houses (I have space for three of the four in the box - four sets of semi-detached houses for £6 seemed like a good deal), and then it really started to hit home how tiny N scale is... And, jumping ahead a little: However, the Metcalfe kits are very well designed, and were an absolute pleasure to build, and don't look bad when finished either! On the other hand, those chimney pots! The instructions implore you to try their method of rolling chimney pots from paper, and while they do look pretty good, they took the most time of anything in the entire kit! Still, as a first card kit I'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out. The sheds are quite nice, too. Pity I don't have enough space to fit them at the back of the houses where they belong. (Paper is there to mark the position of roads and buildings) On another note, the goods shed is now painted and finished, and (bar a few glue splodges) I'm quite pleased with it. Still not sure how prototypical it would be to have a goods shed so close to the platform (although I might add another siding), but "it's my train set!"

The way things are looking right now, this layout will either be built on wood offcuts if I can source any locally cheaply, or on corrugated cardboard left over from the moving boxes. As said before, this layout is being built on the cheap, so I'm loath to stick much down because it will make removing buildings etc. in a few years' time complicated. On the other hand, a form of baseboard would make life a lot easier in stopping track moving relative to platforms and so on. Does anyone know if it would be possible to simply glue down the track with PVA? Would that be strong enough? If so, I think I'll head down the cardboard baseboards route, if only because I already have a lot of cardboard here, taking up more space than necessary.

JaymzHatstand: an interesting idea, though at present I quite like the simplicity of what I have, I'll pop down to the local hardware store and see if they have any offcuts going cheap. As a student, of course, this layout is being built very much "on the cheap", with second-hand or kit-built (using the wonderfully cheap Peco wagon kits at £3 something each) rolling stock. Scenery-wise, a roll of grass mat that happened to almost exactly match the dimensions of my scenic section has made a world of difference, and I may well glue scenic items to this (possibly even ballasting *very* carefully to prevent glue soaking through and avoid using track pins) if I can find a way to reliably hold the mat down without marking the shelves...

After a year in university halls, in which I dabbled a little in 009 and N scale (mostly building wagon kits and two Parkside 009 coaches), I moved into my flat for the next three or four years on Monday. Considering that I had the smallest room of any of the bedrooms in the flat, I didn't hold much hope of having any space for modelling. Cue two surprises when I arrived. The first surprise was a shelving unit with shelves 5'6" by 1'. Hmmm... enough space for a small N scale BLT? The second surprise was finding that Lone Star diecast track (in "000" scale) is actually a pretty decent representation of the geometry of Peco N setrack... So, as I had a box full of Lone Star track and some trains, I set out a fairly simple terminus with run-around and three sidings, and then a small fiddle yard at the other end. The result was this: My thinking is something along the lines of using the far supports to hold a scenic break (road overbridge or tunnel, anyone?) to disguise the fiddle yard, which will probably have the controller in the corner kept free by the curved storage roads. I've also started on my first ever N-scale building kit... I have to hand it to those who've been doing it for years; even though I'm young and still have (relatively) good eyesight, I found it a struggle to get all the parts lined up and in the correct place. Here's a photo of the Peco goods shed, prior to fitting gutters and downpipes and bargeboards: As this isn't my shelving unit (it came with the flat) I can't make any permanent alterations to it, so this means all points will be operated by the big hand in the sky, track may well be held down with blu-tac and scenery may well be grass-on-a-roll. It'll be very different from the big permanent 00 layout at home. I've got no idea how well this is going to turn out, but it'll be an interesting experience, both in a new scale and building a scenic (well, as much as possible) "temporary" layout. As it's planned to be a temporary layout, though, I have no intention of trying to get the tiniest details right and perfect, on the basis that things are liable to get damaged or lost quite easily. I'm happy creating a generic station, something that "looks right" and gives me somewhere to run/show off some of my rolling stock and dispel the "playing with a train-set" myth. What do people think?

What I meant to say was, because the Hornby bodyshells are one-piece mouldings, I only applied glue to the compartment walls, not to the edges of the seats, which are pretty floppy (as in, breathe on them too hard and they move). A strip of plasticard under the seats would probably add enough strength though. I'll try that on the next coach I attack...