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Ravenser

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  1. Ravenser

    Baby Deltic 1

    By Ravenser,

    I'm conscious that the blog has been inactive for a long time , and it certainly feels as if I've been inactive too
     
    However a certain amount of modelling has been done - I just haven't written it up.
     
    One project that has been making intermittant progress is the Baby Deltic referred to in an earlier post here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/296/entry-12459-baby-needs-some-new-paint/
     
    Much of the progress has been painting - however despite seeing this as a "quick win" project it's proved to be rather a slow process.
     
    Nothing very much got done during my convalescence - to be honest I didn't really feel up to much for at least the first week - and as a result the useful tip about Halford's paint wasn't taken up. Railmatch green in due course it was, and I've managed to get the bodyshell painted and lettered . Sourcing transfers for the headcode boxes was a bit problematic - I finally acquired some bits from someone but I've not certain they're all exactly the same size. I've done my best to cover any blemishes by deliberate misalignment
     
    The mechanism is a Chinese era Hornby ringfield pancake and trailing bogie : this has been oiled and test run - cue another lengthy delay until I dug Tramlink out from under a heap of magazines, as Tramlink is currently my only DC test track (It doesn't help that one board of Tramlink is currently dead due to a broken wire somewhere) . This had to be done prior to fitting into the bogie frames as it seems that once you snap the thing into the frames it's irrevocably located
     
    Some pictures:
     

  2. Ravenser
    I'm feeling annoyed.
     
    As mentioned I've started work on a Baby Deltic - a Silver Fox kit I picked up cheap secondhand at a show in January. It really should have been a "quick win": just paint the body, hack and assemble some RTR components I already have and there we are - a new Type 2.
     
    I want it in 2 tone green (as it will spend most of it's time working with steam stock) and it will become D5901 - which became an RTC Derby loco, allowing me maximum excuses if it appears on a north Midland layout in the blue period.
     
    I primed it with a coat of Tamiya detail primer , and brush painted the light Sherwood green along the lower bodysides. Three coats that took. Then I went to prepaint the warning panels and found that my pre 1985 yellow had dried up. I had plenty of tins of post 85 yellow, but nothing before. Sudden grinding halt to progress while I waited for a show on Saturday where Precision were in attendance. Couple of coats of yellow, then this morning , before my blood test at the hospital , I dug out the spray can of Railmatch Brunswick green . I masked up the loco laboriously , I shook the can (perhaps not long enough - it's supposed to have 2 mins agitation) I sprayed, or tried to.
     
    At first nothing came out , then I inverted the can and it sprayed. The result was a loco drenched in thick paint with blotches . I hastily wiped the lot off with thinners and kitchen roll, removed the lower masking and went off to the hospital.
     
    When I came back I gave it another go. Remasked lower area, shook the can for over 2 mins , went out to spray. Nothing came out. Well a very little mist. Then the button wouldn't depress - removed it , tried again and the can died with a faint gurgle. (It was an old can, but I'd hoped I'd get more than 2 locos out of it)
     
    I have now cleaned it all off with white spirit on kitchen towel and cotton bud. This has taken most of the primer off the sides as well , even though the primer must have been sprayed a fortnight ago. When I removed the masking ,parts of the Sherwood Green lower strip on both sides debonded.
     
    And I've chipped a buffer head, which will have to be patched
     
    I'm having a minor operation on Friday. I may not be able to drive for a fortnight . The nearest model shop is in the same town as the hospital - but not the same part of it - it's not walkable from the station or the hospital . Couldn't have got a can today - it's their day off. Don't think I can get one when I have my stitches out - I'll be dependent on public transport. I can't phone them and ask them to send me a can - Royal Mail have banned sending paint and spray cans in the post (Go to Jail. Go Directly to Jail. Do not pass Go . Do not collect £200, or a can of Railmatch Brunswick Green)
     
    I could walk to Halfords and try to get a spray can of a suitable green. But that would be cellulose, and you can't spray cellulose over enamel (meaning the yellow warning panel and the Sherwood Green band)
     
    So instead of being able to finish the Baby Deltic during my convalescence , I'm snookered.
     
    Drat. Double Drat. Triple Drat.......
     
    I suppose I'll have to finish an NRX and some Midland suburbans and start a 31 instead.
  3. Ravenser
    One of the "benefits" of a blog is that it records just how long certain projects have actually been stalled.
     
    This is a case in point - behold I bring you the world's slowest quickie loco kit!
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/296/entry-14093-baby-deltic-1/
     
    The Silver Fox Baby Deltic has been stalled and lying in the paint-drying box for a horrifying 4 and a bit years....
     
    I am at least now making some progress
     
    One issue was highlighted here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/137857-traction-tyres-repair-or-replace/
     
    I now have a traction tyre from Kernow - their last of that type apparently. On comparison with the wheel it looks a little small - but there are no other more suitable traction tyres available. (I also have a kind offer of large section heatshrink)
     
    For the moment I'm going to gamble and hope the superglue bodge actually holds in traffic. Tyre replacement , and heatshrink are fallback plans 1 and 2
     
    In the meantime matters have advanced this far:
     

     

     
    The bodyshell has been weathered, and given a coat of matt varnish to seal. The glazing has been fitted.
     
    The stretched cl29 underframe, which had been floppy to the point of breaking has now been heavily reinforced and is solid. I'm not convinced it's actually 100% straight, but I hope any error (of the order of 0.5mm-1.0mm over its length) will be taken out by natural flex as it is fitted into the body
     
    The etches for the fuel tanks etc have been formed and superglued in place. I've added plasticard between them to make the whole thing look vaguely solid rather than simply two facades. One of these has acquired a hand-carved shallow curve after I spotted that the thing projected rather lower than the bogie frames and panicked. The resin generator/alternator/whatever has been cleaned up (outside - resin scares me) and glued in place
     
    The motor bogie, which has been cleaned and oiled now needs a test run with clips before fitting into the bogie frame. Then it only remains to wire up, add a decoder (a TCS MC2 is in stock) and test run on the layout. A good run in on the rolling road can follow.
     
    Oh, and add another cost of glass varnish to the headcode boxes and side windows
  4. Ravenser

    Back in Business

    By Ravenser,

    I've had a fairly strenuous 6 months, involving being made redundant at the end of May . Thankfully I found a new job and started work again just three weeks later, but as all my time outside work was taken up with pursuing avenues for future employment no modelling got done at all. In fact very little else got done at all , with the result that I've spent the last 6 weeks in catchup and clear-up mode, and only now am I getting to the point where I really ought to start doing some modelling again.
     
    However my personal circumstances have changed , and that has a bearing on my modelling. Fortunately I've had only a small drop in income once travelling costs and other factors are netted out, and as I had over 10 years service with my previous employer the payout reached 5 figures, so overall the financial impact is negligable. I've been very much more fortunate than a lot of other people in my position, and I know it.
     
    The big changes are not financial. In the previous job I was commuting by train for about 2 hours a day, leaving home at about 7:20 to get home 12 hours or more later. Now I'm working locally, and driving to work in about 35 minutes. That's meant I've got an hour and three-quarter a day of my life back. It also means I've had to get a small car, after a good many years of not driving. And since my club is near to where I worked and I've surrendered my season ticket, I'm not likely to be going very often in future
     
    There's no doubt that up until late last year I was heavily overcommitted. I was heavily involved with a club project and with other club commitments that meant two nights a week at the club. I'm also actively involved with a society and that took up further time. Add in long working hours, a few shows a bit of time on here, and the rest of my life and interests and everything seemed perpetually to be crowding out everything else.
     
    All this has now been drastically simplified. I can't be involved in club exhibition layouts (except perhaps as an occasional operator or builder of stuff off-site). I suppose now I have a car I could join one of the clubs "near" where I live - but all are about 10 miles or more away. This, obviously, frees up a lot of time and eliminates a lot of commitments
     
    The flip side of this is I may now be in a position to take a layout of my own to a show, though I haven't even checked whether Blacklade would fit with the back seats folded down. And to be quite honest, my feelings about exhibiting are ambivalent. Getting to some shows and events would be possible in a way it wasn't before (bringing the car down from Lincolnshire I broke the journey by calling in on the Nene Valley Railway - somewhere I hadn't visited for a couple of decades). In the past there was no hope I could get to a members' day at Butterley or Chasewater - now it might be an option
     
    I also lose easy and instant access to the big smoke and won't be travelling by train on a regular basis (something I've been doing for best part of two decades). On the other hand I still live next to the railway and my new office is in a former station building. There's a model shop in the high street of the town where I now work - it doesn't sell model railways, but it does sell brass section, styrene sheet, paints and tools . Having lost our local model shop about 4 years ago , this is a useful plus. I should also be able to reach two other model shops within 15 miles drive if I need to
     
    At which point we can cut to the chase. How does all this affect the "catch-up and clear the cupboard" programme I ambitiously committed to in a posting at the start of the year - just a couple of weeks before I got poleaxed by fate?
     
    Actually , almost nothing changes - other than the fact that half a year has gone up in smoke with zero modelling. Pretty well everything on that list was for either the shunting plank or for Blacklade. The few bits that were'nt were for the potential group GE BLT . If I can actually focus on those things without distractions, and with more time at my disposal, I might start to get somewhere
     
    The obvious place to start now is the same as it was then... Finish the Southern bogie van so I have a suitable length parcels rake. Build the Cambrian open kit and fix up the wagon I bought at St Albans for the plank. Sort out the Pacer
     
    Not to mention chip and weather the Provincial 150/1 and the Central 158 . Someone remind me which member does the etched seat outlines for the 150/1 and where I get them? I only want to take the body off once, to fit decoder and seat sillhouettes in one operation
     
    Thankfully change of circumstances has limited effect on my collection of stock and plans . In future I won't have much access to a large continuous circuit . The full set of HST coaches I'd assembled is almost certainly redundant and I may decide to dispose of it at some point (fortunately I never got any power cars). The half a container train is a slightly different matter. I only bought the FEAs to support the cause , the locos can be re-used in a very limited way on Blacklade to haul an oil tank, and the eight or ten boxes are not a problem (I'd have wanted some of them anyway for personal reasons). I'll probably get a Dapol pocket wagon anyway- I've a high cube to accomodate
     
    The Voyager can be stored - those things are short enough that at some time in the future I'll probably build a layout which can accomodate it.
     
    Otherwise I'm more or less fine. The cheap black kettle I bought at Warley can probably just about be used for a steam special, and would not look out of place on the GE BLT. I will still , almost certainly , get an O4 to support the cause- it's just I want to wait to see if the NRM version gets discounted (she was a Frodingham loco until 1966). It would be a bit over the top on a GE branch freight, but not entirely impossible. I may even get an L1 if any end up cheap at the boxshifters - not only would it be suitable for the possible GE BLT, it would be more sensible as motive power for a steam special on Blacklade than the other two
     
    [ I know none are preserved. Blacklade doesn't exist either... And I did say , if I see one going cheap at a boxshifter]
     
    The only other change is that the forthcoming RTR class 144 would be very suitable for Blacklade and a lot easier than fixing Hornby 142s. I think I shall probably end up getting one.
     
    Everything changes , but things remain the same
     
    Now all I have to go is make a start
  5. Ravenser

    Bits and Pieces

    By Ravenser,

    I've had the layout up for a few days, and as well as a couple of operating sessions, I've taken the opportunity to sort out various jobs , as someone is slated to come and see it...
     
    The big one is that at long last the station building has been finished off, with an end, back wall and door, and the "bomb damage" is no more. Quite deliberately the effect is that a section has been taken through the building - rather than paint the back wall black , I used some Superquick red brickpaper - this marks the fact that this isn't really a wall of the actual building, but goes with the brown of the fascia, and gives a more muted effect. The overall result adds a seemingly substantial building as an end view block and adds surprising "weight" to the station. It does now look like a significant terminus in a substantial town.
     
    In a similar vein, the buffer stops that I started about 2 months ago are now done and in place. These are balsa buffer planks , painted red with some spare buffers fitted - a packet of old brass buffers which the header card described as GWR but which must have dated from Sir Daniel Gooch's reign , as they seemed to be Victorian solid buffers, plus two spare Mk1 coach buffers - the latter for the centre platform which is supposed to have been added by the LMR in the late 1950s when they were planning to divert trains from the Chesterfield Central line into Artamon Square ahead of the GC closures.
     
    Half a packet of Bachmann TMD figures have been installed - we now have a shunter on Platform 3, to avoid any awkward questions about how the driver of a departing loco-hauled substitute service can see the aspect of the starter when the cab of his 31 is past the signal
     
    While I was about it I had a rummage through my compartment box of small scenic details for any other figures. I came up with some rather useful BR figures and others which now turn out to be these http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/69215-1980s-model-people-in-00/
     
    A driver plodding down the platform with his bag, a member of platform staff , a woman in a leather jacket and a standing male passenger have been installed. I don't want a crowded platform - just a handful of people dotted around a half deserted station. After a hasty field survey of prototype examples locally I've come to the conclusion blonde is extremely difficult to paint effectively because it's generally a variable overlay over a darker colour . (I hasten to say I'm not married.... "Oi , what are you doing?" "Researching model figure painting , officer") Basildon station platform at 8am would be a figure painter's nightmare assignment .
     
    Otherwise a second Kadee uncoupler magnet has gone into the fiddle yard , for the release of kettles of the 2-6-4T and 0-6-0 varieties (it should also handle a 20 or 23) . The first one , on the long road, has proved effective in uncoupling the 31 on an incoming loco-hauled : meaning less physical handling of stock/fiddling with poles , which is useful when access to the fiddle yard is restricted and getting things on the rails properly distinctly awkward.
     
    Running with the BR Blue stock is now pretty rocksolid reliable, and certainly better than the steam stock - I have a feeling I'm going to have to do something about the pony truck on that L1 and the bearings on three axles of the LNW TK have been eased with an Antex so it runs reasonably freely
     
    The next job is sorting out the wiring on Tramlink so I have a proper DC test track.....
  6. Ravenser

    Bits and Scraps

    By Ravenser,


    Reflections
    This should have been a posting about ballasting, that being the next logical step with Mercia Wagon Repair.
    Ballasting began last autumn and quite a bit of work was done, even though it has proved a slow and painful process. There was also the little matter of swapping out four solenoid point motors and replacing them with MTB motor drives after I was warned that continued use of solenoids would ultimately lead to the breakup of the Peco switch blades. Given all the trouble caused by having to dig out one failed point from within the formation even at the unballasted stage, further failures would probably have doomed the layout, so the solenoids had to come out .
     
    Unfortunately life and other things then got in the way. I had an operation on my right eye just before Christmas, they put an air bubble in the eye, and dire warnings were given about the implications of getting dust in the eye during recovery. Did that include plastic dust from model making, I asked? They thought it probably did, so anything involving shaping plastic was out.
     
    (The operation was pretty successful – the sight in that eye has got rather better, not worse. It was this eye condition that panicked me into starting Mercia Wagon Repair since the initial mis-diagnosis by Vision Express was pretty bleak and not properly handled; I thought I'd better do something with the N gauge bits while I still could  since the eye might be gone in 5 years. Happily that is absolutely not a possible scenario.... I just need my new spectacles to arrive now)      
     
    The result was that the only modelling done during a little over two weeks off work was this:
     

     
    Two huts and a weighbridge hut built from freebee card kits given away with magazines over the years. Two of them are courtesy of BRM some years ago and one came with RM a couple of months before Christmas. I’ve accumulated a good few kits from magazine giveaways over the years but nearly all of them are 4mm scale. These three huts represent everything I could find in N from my stash that was usable. And you could fit the lot on the palm of my hand. It feels like quite a lot of effort for a very small reward.
     
    The BRM models were printed on glossy card and the sheen was unacceptable. I have a big bottle of Winsor & Newton artists matt medium bought years ago because someone claimed that it could be used for ballasting in place of dilute pva and the ballast wouldn’t turn purple. It proved unsuitable for ballasting as the stuff is too viscous, but it’s useful for killing the sheen on art paper and card. The printed card roofs on the BRM kits were way too light to be acceptable as slate and since I’m new to N I’ve got virtually no brickpapers in stock. What I did have was a small pile of Model Rail giveaway booklets from about twenty years ago containing various brickpapers. These included a set of printed slate strips in a decent dark grey.
     
    Now I’m pretty sceptical about relief on slate roofs even in 4mm and building up a slate roof strip by strip is pretty laborious, but needs must. I’m sure the rows should have been a little more even, but critically the colour is good. The printed sheet was brushed over with matt medium to kill the  glossy paper sheen : it swells a little but relaxes back into shape as it dries. The white edges were dealt using a green charcoal pastel pencil, with another coat of matt medium to seal it and stop it rubbing off. Similarly cut edges of the card elsewhere were treated with red/brown pastel pencils to remove any white line. Chimney pots were improvised from bits of kit sprue painted, then I remembered I have some whitemetal castings in stock…
     
    It’s been some years since I’ve had the opportunity to do this kind of modelling, so it was a matter of easing myself back in and I’m reasonably pleased with the results. It’s just that a week’s worth of work sits in the palm of my hand. I feel like I‘ve achieved almost nothing.
    It’s been way too long since I did any 4mm modelling in a scale I’m comfortable with and know what I’m doing.
     

    This is the bits of an NNK courier van conversion from a Triang Mk1 BSK. The bits had been sitting on the bookshelf almost finished for nearly a year. This one needs its own workbench post, but I finally fitted the vertical door handrails and blackened them, rubbed down and repainted the ends through several coats of black to erase the vestiges of removed detail and assembled the bits. I’ve even started adding the cantrail lining from Fox transfers.
     
    I’ve also been trying to finish off a clutch of N gauge wagon kits which have also been sitting on the bookshelf gathering dust. These too deserve a post of their own in ORBC, but there’s a Chivers SSA, painted with transfers applied, an NGS chemical tanker ex caustic soda in china clay traffic, and a BH Enterprises resin PNA body.

     
    These now at least now are painted, have transfers and are weathered to my reasonable satisfaction. They just need couplings to go into traffic. But applying 11 tiny scraps of transfer to each side of a chemical tanker was a painful reminder of why N gauge and I don’t necessarily see eyer to eye (I left off a couple of the solebar markings, too).
    While I was at it, I had a go at weathering a few of the RTR bogie wagons, since with N gauge you are always going to mix up way too much of a weathering mix for the job in hand. A useful technique has proved to be a tinted varnish – in other words the weathering wash mixed about 50:50 with matt varnish. This allows a much thinner weathering coat to be applied evenly to the model, since the varnish acts as a filler meaning you are applying rather more volume in a more viscous form. A china clay hopper, a Cargowaggon van, and a Tiphook hood acquired at Warley have all been treated and now look reasonable.
     
    And at Ally Pally I finally succumbed to the Model Rail/Rapido J70 I’ve been resisting for some years. The unskirted versions with waggly bits were marked down to £99.99 on the Kernow and as this was the version that tempted me, I bit – having first put the model up against a SR diesel shunter on the stand to check it was a lot smaller. (I know an 08 is too big to look right on the Boxfile, and I wasn’t spending a tidy sum on a loco only to find it wasn’t suitable). The skirted BR versions have sold out – soon after release I think -  but all the unskirted versions were still available and discounted . Given that 500 each of 10 versions were originally ordered, it’s fairly clear that people want Toby in his classic skirted form and pre-nationalisation liveries are something of a drug in the market. It’s now nearing 4 years since this model was released - how long it will take finally to shift the LNER unskirted models is an interesting question. Rapido
    I’m well aware of the reasons why the cost of new RTR has increased well above the rate of inflation and real wages in the last decade – and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It costs what it costs, there is not much to be done about it and nobody is making a packet in RTR. At the same time I notice that at a personal level I will buy a loco I don’t strictly need but like when it‘s priced in double figures. Once it’s into 3 figures I won’t. I have a Hornby Peckett and DS48 for the Boxfile – both were bought at shows for about £75 a time after I’d been resisting a while because I didn’t strictly need them – they run beautifully and are now front-line motive power. My last few loco purchases have been an N gauge Class 33 for £80 off the Dapol stand (I needed something earlier than a 66, shorter, and I wasn’t up for splashing the cash), an NGS Hunslet shunter (£81)  a Hattons Barclay (I finally succumbed when the 14” version was discounted to £84 in a decent livery) and Hardwicke (she’s do on railtour duty with 2 x blue/grey Mk1s). There’s a pattern here. I most emphatically do not expect manufacturers to aim at this price point, but I have more stuff than I actually need and at some point I’ll be out of the game – though hardly out of the hobby – at least as far as unnecessary impulse purchases are concerned. Someone’s 31 at 170 quid – er, maybe not. I’ve already got two 31s , and a pile of bodies, and a 37 as backup that sees little service, and a Rat project to do…      
     
    I had the J70 up on the rolling road for almost an hour each way to run her in the following weekend, and here she is.
     

     
    I‘m delighted to report it’s a diminutive loco, pukka Great Eastern, and runs beautifully. Ideal for the Boxfile . I also took the chance to commission the Barclay – that this has been sat in its box unused for 18 months was another reason to hold back on the J70. It now has buffer wires glued in place to take Sprat & Winkle couplings and I had an operating session for the first time in months to give it a run. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem quite as smooth or sweet as the two Hornby locos or indeed the new J70. Good but needs a prod too often. And then a feed wire to one of the points broke, and the session was truncated. (The wire has been soldered back: all’s well again)
    How many locos does a boxfile need? I’ve got eight…
    Meanwhile ballasting of Mercia Wagon Repair hasn’t made a scrap of progress in 4 months.
        
     
     
     
  7. Ravenser

    Butchering a Meat Van

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    I've been fairly quiet for a few months, partly because of work getting on top of me . But after finally managing 2 weeks holiday , having previously not managed more than an odd day off since I started the new job just over a year ago , I'm feeling human again , and I'm trying to resolve some of the various unfinished projects .
     
    One small project is nearly there - an ex GW MICA meat van.
     
    At present the main vehicle available for the cold store on the box file is a Blue Spot fish van from a Parkside kit. Nice kit - but it's really a bit big for the box file. The thought occurred to me that I should repaint the Blue Spot van as a BR Blue example in parcels service , for use as tail traffic on Blacklade - and replace it with a reworked RTR body from the junk box - either the Hornby ex NER refrigerated van, or an elderly Hornby Dublo GW MICA. As I didn't fancy scratchbuilding a 9'6" wooden underframe using castings, I went for the MICA.
     
    There is nothing original about the conversion - it's based on one of the first "proper" wagon-building articles I ever read as a boy - "Taking the MICA" by Grp Capt Brian Huxley , in the Railway Modeller for July 1977. It was the first of a whole series of articles covering different headings in the GW wagon diagram list - he was trying to build a "representative collection" of GW wagons, meaning a model of pretty well every wagon diagram
     
    However as most people won't have access to 40 year old Railway Modellers, the details of this exercise are worth summarising here.
     
    The old Hornby Dublo MICA is a hybrid. Most MICAs were 16' long and had full width bonnet vents on the ends. The last diagram, X9, was on a 17'6" RCH underframe with bonnetless ends . Hornby Dublo, Wrenn and Dapol sold you a 17'6" van with bonnet ends.
     
    There were therefore two approaches in the article.
     
    Firstly you could cut out the van sides neatly, reduce them by 3mm each end, chop 6mm out of the rest of the body moulding , stick the whole lot back together , add a suitable underframe (Dean-Churchward brake gear, anyone?) and get any type of 16' MICA.
     
    Or secondly, you could cut out the ends, replace with plain planking . add a standard RCH 10' wheelbase fitted underframe and get X9 of 1929.
     
    The world has moved on since 1977 - there is now a recent Parkside kit for the 16' X7 MICA , and that is probably the easiest route to the 16' vans. And these days most folk model post war, not - as was the norm in 1977 - the interwar GWR. The earlier vans are probably much less relevant now.
     
    So finally, after 40 years, I've done the deed. (Since the wagon had a cast Hornby Dublo chassis it must be nearly 60 years!)
     

     
    The ends are Slaters planked plasticard , as recommended by Brian Huxley. However the planks don't line up exactly these days, despite my efforts - mind you some of the preserved examples have the same issue.. The steps were removed from the original ends with a chisel blade in the craft knife . I seem to have found this rather easier than it was in 1977 , though there are plenty of spares.
     
    A Parkside 10' wheelbase underframe has been fitted from the spares box, built onto a 40 thou plasticard floor. Unfortunately, at that point I realised the kit was clasp-braked, and the prototype had 4 shoe Morton brakes. A rummage in the cupboard produced a packet of ABS Morton brake gear, and this was added with cyanoacrylate. I couldn't find the buffer beams so used some which I think came from a Cambrian PO wagon. They were rather too deep so had to be filed down top and bottom, and cut to an angle at both ends. The buffers had to be replaced with more ABS whitemetal castings for RCH fitted buffers. I had glued a couple of strips of lead flashing inside and with the whitemetal parts the total weight was up to the desired 50g (25g per axle)
     
    These later vans used dry ice, and had a single hatch at each end, not two - so the roof hatches had to filed off the model and replaced with new ones (7mm square in 20 thou plasticard). Brake pipes are DMR brass from the bits box, and spoked wheels are Bachmann
     
    It now needs only the end handrails and axlebox tiebars adding, priming (I'm not taking a chance with different coloured ends and white paint) and painting into BR (grubby) white
  8. Ravenser

    Contain Yourself - Assorted Conflats

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    I suppose it is inevitable that I would want railway containers to feature on the Boxfile. I've spent nearly all my working life involved with containerised seafreight, in one capacity or another, and in the 1950s railway containers were a significant part of British Railways freight traffic. Since it represents an urban goods depot, the Boxfile is heavily skewed towards van traffic and as I've said a couple of times recently my wagon fleet for the Boxfile is light in vans. So the remedy is obvious.
     
    This all started with my efforts to sort out the unreliable running on the Boxfile, and the unhappy discovery that  much of the wagon fleet wasn't really  serviceable. Along the way I found out that both my Bachmann Conflat A and the homebrew Conflat V  were dodgy, and weight and wheel changes weren't  enough to cure them.
     
    When I went rummaging in the modelling cupboard, one of the things I found in the box of wagon kits was a Parkside kit for an ex LNER Conflat S.
     
    So I bit the bullet and decided that the Bachmann Conflat A would have to go -  meaning to reuse the Parkside BD container from the Conflat A on the Conflat S which was to replace it. The kit comes with an ex LNER DX open top container - these were pretty rare beasts and in BR days were only to be carried in Lowfits, since they were thought not to stand up to the stresses of chain restraints. (I do in fact have a Bachmann Lowfit body in stock and will ultimately build it as an ex LNER wooden underframe vehicle , as in Iain Rice's book, to carry the DX . That can be traffic to a London building site. I have a second DX kit in stock now, to provide an empty sat in the yard as an extra scenic detail . But this has been on hold till I found the brass strip, as the plastic lifting basrs are terribly fragile)
     
     But for various reasons the BD container wouldn't quite fit on the Conflat S. So I ended up buying a new Parkside Conflat A kit, and building the FM meat container out of that, which is slightly smaller and which will fit the Conflat S. In due course the Parkside Conflat A will be built and given a Bachmann AF insulated container froma pack of 4 I found while rummaging in the cupboard. See below... (The AF wouldn't quite fit the Conflat S either. Before you ask.)
     
    The unloved BD was eventually found a home in a Dapol ex LMS 5 plank open , which had also shown a strong propensity to derail.  Tight, but after a little work, in it went... TI put lead inside the container when I originally built  so what was a lightweight open now weighs 50g. And suddenly the LMS open is running reliably . Result!
     
     

     
    Here we see the Conflat S , awaiting couplings, final weathering and chains. Behind is the ex Hornby ex NER refridgerated van.
     
    The Conflat A was a bit of a performance. In fact I ended up with a vehicle in which Messrs Parkside played only a limited role. I built the wagon - and then found that for reasons I can't quite understand the chassis was significantly and irredemably crooked. I can't remember when I last had a chassis so far out of true. Attempts to break out one solebar and adjust failed miserably , so the only way to sort the mess out was to cut away the plastic W-rons, fit etched compensated ones, and find a suitable spare solebar in the scrapboxes to replace the damaged one. Axleboxes and springs are ABS castings, as are the brake gear. Not that there is anything much wrong with the Parkside versions, but every scrap of weight is needed wherever you can with a Conflat.
     
    here we have the result , unpainted , without couplings and no securing chains. The various whitemetal bits are obvious. Tierod is 0.045" wire
     

     
    The container is one of the aforementioned pack of four AF insulated containers from Bachmann, finally finding a use. It's been stuffed with a decent amount of lead sheet. Another one these containers has become a sacrificial weathering test piece after a heavily diluted weathering wash removed much of the lettering on one side. White is a nasty weathering job without an airbrush.
     
    The surplus Bachmann Conflat A  was then reworked as a service vehicle carrying wagon bogies, in line with some photos on Paul Bartlett's site. These carrier TOPS codes FAV ior ZVV and were also used by Derby Works for carrying DMU bogies. I contemplated some ex Triang Metro-Cammell DMU bogies in the box and thought "perhaps not". So my wagon carries a GW-type plate bogie - one of the wretched original bogies off the Cambrian Walrus I built some years ago, which are almost impossible to build square. Wheels are the Gibsons out of the Parkside Conflat A kit, which I replaced with Hornby wheels. Baulks are bits of balsa, securing chains are spare bits of the Ambis etches left after I had fitted securing chains to my replacement Conflat A / AF container (seen finished, behind) . The wagon is now fitted with Kadees , but requires new TOPS codes applying. It can now be used as a Loco Dept / engineers wagon on Blacklade, at least occasionally.
     

     
    All of which means I now have a reasonable fleet of Conflat wagons, which can do a job or work, instead of falling off.
     
    I have only one problem still remaining- this:
     

     
    Or at least the semi-scratchbuilt Conflat V on the right . Bachmann container - the original load of their Conflat A - Red Panda chassis, spare Parkside floor and the edging/chain pockets scratchbuilt Despite an attempt to improve matters by melting in one of the bearings to give a little rock ("bastard compensation") it still falls off. It's currently sat on the bookcase , pending further thought. I'm not even sure if there's still a slot to squeeze it into in the stock boxes
     
    The old Ratio MOGO on the left is fine. That one's never given any trouble in its years of use.
  9. Ravenser

    Counsels of Despair

    By Ravenser,


    Mercia Wagon Repair
    Things have not been going particularly well for Mercia Wagon Repair recently. As a result I've become rather disheartened and I've been wondering whether I should in fact pull the plug on the project.
     
    Issue number one can be seen here:

     
    A key point, buried fairly deep in the track plan has broken up at the tie bar.
     
    This is the second point to break up at the tie bar out of 7 points I've bought so far (The first large radius point disintegrated at the tie bar before I even laid it.). That is within 9 months of starting work on this project. This particular one failed a few weeks ago during use. It uses a Peco motor fitted to the designed-in attachment holes: in other words I'm using a proprietary product exactly as it is designed to be used.  I've never had such failures in forty years in 4mm.
     
    At this stage there seem to be two possible approaches:
     
    - Extract the plastic tiebar, somehow, and try to wiggle a replacement PCB tiebar  under the rails and also over the actuating pin of the point motor. Not a nice or easy job  
    - Buy a replacement point. Cut out and extract the old point, wire and lay the new one. Reconnect wires ...
     
    Then there is the matter of frog switching
     
    The Peco leaflet with the Code 55 N gauge points makes no mention at all about connecting the frog to a switch to supply it with power. I've read the thing 4 or 5 times carefully through, and  such a reference to frog switching simply isn't there (though from memory such instructions do appear with 16.5mm electrofrog points). All that the leaflet says is "Turnouts are ready for immediate use - seperate levers are not necessary ."
     
    On 4mm electrofrog points there is a wire run to the side , for the purpose of feeding the frog off a switch. There is a linkage wire under Code 55 N gauge points , connecting the swtich rails and the frog - but there is no "loose" wire to link to a  polarity switch     
     
    There is every sign that Peco expect purchasers simply to lay their Code 55 N gauge points as they come, and rely on contact of the switchblades with the stockrail. That is an unreliable contact, and risks leaving the entire switchblade /frog assembly dead - about 3" of track.
     
    (Not a theoretical comment . I've seen this on the wagon works fan , and it is a serious issue for a layout designed around shunting wagons with an 0-6-0 diesel shunter. You should get away with it when running a bogie diesel with all wheel pickup, especially a long one like a Class 66, but wagons are supposed to be shunted around the Works by 0-6-0s)
     
    I tried to tweak the tips of the switchblades on the offending point to ensure contact. I think it may have been the point I had to tweak for switchblade contact - which may have ultimately led to the failure. You can understand why I'm less than impressed with this product...
     
    Having recounted this in a thread elsewhere , someone (with whom I've previously crossed swords several times) appears to state that you can in fact lift the linkage wire "frog jumper" underneath Peco Code 55 points and attach a wire to this "jumper" in order to connect the frog to a polarity switch on the point motor , thus providing a switched power feed to the frog and switch blades. (Which is the best way to wire a live frog) . But -
     
    I've already laid the points. To get at that wire connection and solder on a feed wire to a polarity switch I'd have to lift the points. 
     
    The track is laid and wired and running. Lifting it all and replacing the cork  would amount to "scrap and start again"
     
    It might - to a 4mm mind - seem possible just to accept the issue and carry on. But over the past few months I've picked up disturbing vibes that shunting and shunting/operational layouts are "not what N gauge is about" :
     
     
    It may be unfair to seize on a single comment, but it crystallizes a vibe I feel in the air.
     
    Shunting in N using the "standard" Arnold coupling seems to be regarded as pretty iffy. I have gone for the replacement Dapol Easi-Shunt knuckle couplers - effectively NEM Kadees in N. But they are costing me over £5 a vehicle. They frequently require packing of the NEM pocket to limit or remove drooping , which results in the tail fouling pointwork . And my impression after 3-4 operating sessions is that they are rather less certain and reliable in coupling  than the Kadees I use in 4mm on Blacklade. They uncouple over the fixed Dapol uncouplers, not always conveniently. As usual, successful delayed action is rather elusive.
     
    Put another way - can you remember seeing many "shunting planks" in N? (Either at shows or in the magazines.) Many branch line termini?  An N gauge Minories?  Micros or Boxfiles using N? N gauge inglenooks and other shunting puzzles?
     
    On reflection, the typical N gauge layout seems to be a longish continous run. Commonly on a 2'6" deep solid board , with 12" return curves at each end, and the fiddle yard hidden behind a backscene set 2/3rds of the way back. Operation consists of firing a train out of the fiddle yard, sending it round the the circuit and back into a road in the fiddle yard.
     
    "Cavalcade" layouts do not interest me. I don't want to build one, I don't have the space for one. That is not what Mercia Wagon Repair is about.
     
    Am I trying to do something in N that everyone knows cannot and should not be done in N? A project that cannot and should not be?
     
    When I've raised the issue of shunting in N - apart from the implications of trolling and being offensive - I've been assured that the NGS Hunslet is the very bee's-knees in N gauge running. There can be no question of things being possible in 4mm that are not possible in N.
     
    So I bought one, and here it is:
     

     
    It is indeed a very small locomotive. It cost me £82 which in this day and age is a remarkably keen price (I stuck a wagon kit for a TTA in with the order to bulk it up). The finish and printing is admirable. It does indeed run very slowly, being heavily geared down. But it does not run as sweetly or quite as reliably as my Farish 04.
     
    What it reminds me of is many a kitbuilt small locomotive on 4mm finescale layouts. It waddles a little. It runs slow, and it keeps going , but it waddles. Not quite a even movement. It's a decent locomotive and it will do a job of work on the layout. I'm not the "toys out of pram" type who returns things in a huff because they do not meet his exacting standards 100%... But it's not as sweet and smooth running as the 04.
     
    And it will  be obvious from the photo just how short the wheel base is and just how long the switchblades and frog are on the adjacent point. Any hesitation in contact - they're dead. And the Hunslet will stop. 
     
    Dare I blaze ahead with this project with electrically compromised "live frogs"?? Do I dare spend £145 on a Farish Class 14 in British Oak orange as an additional shunter??? Nobody has mentioned that one as an outstanding shunter. In 4mm I'd have not a shadow of a doubt that a modern RTR 0-6-0T would run shunt very happily over live frog points, smoothly, slowly, reliably all day. But in N??
     
    Disposable income is a little tight at the moment. My savings may be ample - but I'm not necessarily prepared to dip into them to buy a loco that turns out not to be capable of the job required
     
    I started the Chivers N gauge SSA kit. The Peco chassis used is wrong - leaf spring suspension not pedestal. In 4mm  that would be a show-stopper. But in N - nothing can be done.
     
    Then I read this in the current NGS Journal:
     
    That's me told then - the Chivers SSA kit and the NGS chemical TTA kit I'm currently working on can never be good enough to sit alongside a Dapol or RevolutioN wagon with any credibility......  not unless my name's Tim Watson
     
    I painted the main sprues in the TTA kit white - the suggestion in the instructions that they could be left as self-coloured plastic took me aback. Then the bag with the rest of the kit disappeared . Could I find it? I could not.
     

     
    The cars are some cheap plastic ones I managed to find in a model shop's box, which I'm trying to paint up and make passable. Modern cars are quite difficult to find in N . I've got boxes of the things in 4mm/HO needing a good home...
     
    How many more points will fail at the tie bar, and how soon???
     
    At this stage there seem a number of options:
     
    - Press on and hope. Try to fix the tie bar and leave other pointwork as is.
    - Replace the bust point . Maybe try to fit frog feed wires to one or two others.
    - Rip up most of the points and trackwork , and replace them, fitting point feedwires to the replacements. This would mean major reconstruction and rewiring
    - Pull the plug. Decide this project can't be made to work satisfactorily and get out of N. Dispose of the N gauge stock and bits for whatever I can recover before I sink more money time and effort into a quicksand  (I spent over £150 at Warley on a new loco, wagons and bits for this project)
     
    Since two of the locos were given to me and have personal connections, I couldn't dispose of the lot. 
     
    If I scrapped it , what would I do? 
     
    - I think the plan could be done in TT120. There would be some loss of train length, but with mostly 4 wheel wagons it could be manageable. Width might be a more serious issue in a larger scale. 66s and an 08 are promised in TT:120, and in some respects the project might be better done in BR days , with a 37 and 47 as the main line power. But the 66 is 10-12 months away in TT, and I'd have to buy every single item from scratch. This was a project to use a core of existing stock....
     
    - If we're talking about stuff I already have, that points towards either 3mm, (where I have a bag of wagon kits, some second hand Triang and half a dozen Peco points in stock), or OO9. But I have no serviceable 3mm loco, and no design. I have two OO9 Baldwins and some stock, but the design I came up with is 18" wide , not 11" , although I have more length than I drew out. 
     
    - I suppose I could try to come up with an LCC tram scheme in 4mm
     
    - Even Son of Boxfile in OO ????
     
    Or I could box the whole lot up, and put away all N gauge modelling until at least September . When I would re-assess what is to be done about this , in a more cheerful frame of mind.  All my modelling time has been going into N recently - I haven't done any 4mm for about 9 month's let alone had Blacklade up. I know 4mm works, and even more importantly I know I can make it work , within reason. Time to do what will work, instead of plunging deeper into the swamps of N?
     
     
  10. Ravenser

    Damage Control - 1

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    I had good intentions, but somehow a 101 didn't feature in them...
     
    I've got a 101 - I've had it for years. A Limby 3 car 101 in blue/grey was one of the things acquired in the RTR buying spree when I started building Blacklade a few years ago. Being ex Lima and a dowdy Modernisation unit it was rather looked down on as a quick placeholder. After all Bachmann would no doubt displace the Limby model with a splendid state of the art model in a few years
     
    Then the power car took a tumble, resulting in the pivot pin of the trailing bogie fracturing and detaching. A panic-stricken repair with superglue took a turn for the worse when I noticed I'd managed to get a superglue mark on both sides of the bodyshell. A hasty attempt to patch paint the mark with an elderly tin of what was supposed to be BR Grey only left it looking much worse. I then found the repaired bogie left one end sitting about 1.5mm high. At which point the wretched thing was bundled back into its box and buried under other stock.
     
    Where it remained for 4 or 5 years. I managed to source some better rail grey point, and also a spare trailer chassis frame and power car chassis frame, along with a pair of what were supposed to be class 101 bogies . But nothing was actually done. The list of jobs to be done was long and resuscitating one mediocre RTR DMU when I have a perfectly good 108 wasn't near the top of it.
     
    Having some modelling time available I thought about patching up the bodyshell damage. I dug out a copy of the shortlived MRM magazine which featured an article by Rich Bucknall on a simple conversion to a 2 car power-trailer unit . This seemed very quick and simple - and had always been on the cards as 3 cars is really a bit awkward on Blacklade.
     
    So one Thursday evening the poor thing was dug out of its box. An emery board and the 1500 flexgrit soon cleaned down the small damaged area on the DMBS bodyshell, and a little Precision Paints Rail Grey made a good job of touching in. It looked like repair might be a success. On the other side damage was confined to the glazing on one window - and after a little scraping with a finger nail , essentially confined to one quarterlight on that window. A little gloss varnish patched that .
     
    The chassis was robbed from the TCL for use under the second driving vehicle to turn it into a DTCL. The exhaust pipes on this were pulled out.
     
    And at this point it all started to get a bit more complicated....
     
    Firstly the holes left by the exhaust needed to be filled (Squadron green putty did the job) and patch-painted (Railmatch BR acrylic was to hand and was a reasonable match) . Not a problem
     
    Then the interior needed painting . That took a good deal longer than it sounds . Seats blue - except in First which was left unpainted to represent the faded gold upholstered armchairs one found there. Duckegg blue is a decent representation of the pale blue-green formica that featured in many Modernisation Plan DMUs , but which bits are duck-egg blue and which bits should be brown is a bit more complicated and I'm not sure I've left as much brown as I should. The interior needed populating - a raid on the figures box managed to cover that. Drivers were added at each end - Springside I think.
     
    At this point I realised there was no drivers' desk on the TCL interior - which by this stage was nicely painted and peopled for the DTCL. I had to cut it off the moulding I had swapped into the centre car, and fix in place on the DTCL interior
     
    The interior of the cab end glazing was painted dark grey where it is between the windows - this greatly reduced the prism effect round the edge of the cab windows
     
    One end of the DMBS was sitting about 1.5mm high because of the bodged repair . I was under the impression it was the chassis frame that had been damaged, but in fitting and removing the interior - to discover that the problem only manifested itself when the interior was clipped in - the repair to the pivot pin failed and I found out exactly what the problem was
     
    The bogie had to be stripped down - neither Humbrol solvent nor Plastic Weld would touch this plastic - and a rather better repair made with Hafix thick superglue. To avoid any repeat fracture I did not plug the bogie back into its hole until very late in proceedings , and I countersank the hole in the interior moulding underneath (using a craft knife) and opened it out with a rat-tail file, since clearly the top of the pivot pin had been fouling against this since the initial repair
     
    When Hornby retooled the power car chassis to take the new Limby motor bogie, they provided NEM pockets on the bogies. However the underframes on the non-powered cars remained exactly as Lima tooled them, complete with great big old style tension-locks . Those had to go and the hoops were trimmed off with Xurons . A suitable platform was left to mount replacement Kadees - I used #27 medium underset , with a single shim underneath, glued in place with a nylon Kadee screw taken through from the top and cut off below as a peg to anchor them. (These were obtained from Charlie Petty at Railex)
     
    This improves the front end appearance no end
     
    I also found a Craftsman DMU detailing pack . There were enough buffers for a 3 car unit - so I replaced the Lima buffers at the cab ends , since the Craftsman buffers looked a bit bigger - but left the buffers at the inner ends, which are less obvious. I still have enough buffers for a 2 car unit.
     
    However it became apparent that I could not fit the cast jumper cable connections , or buffer bean pipeworth as they would foul the swing of the bogie- mounted Kadees. Since I run parcels tail traffic - and it would be nice to work a DMU in multiple occasionally - Kadees are essential. As and when I build the parcels unit I could form up a 3 car rake, and with a considerable squeeze it may just be possible to run a 4 car short underframe set (101 + 108)
     
    A shot of the bits at this stage of proceedings is attached:
     

     
    Then I made the mistake of getting out the books to research a prototype identity , and things got more complicated......
  11. Ravenser
    Blacklade is in the North Midlands, with services to Birmingham, Nottingham and Sheffield via Chesterfield. The latter either extends through to Leeds or is worked by W Yorkshire units.
     
    In the 1980s this means that 3 depots would obviously supply units - Derby Etches Park (DY), Lincoln (LN) and Tyesley (TS). Oddly South Yorkshire never had a DMU depot, despite being a fully fledged PTE - their units came either from Lincoln or Neville Hill (NL). There is a minor metaphysical issue about Etches Park, since Blacklade and Hallamshire replace Derby and Derbyshire in the scheme of things, and Blacklade is not on the main line nor a major rail centre. I assume the Midland had their headquarters at Nottingham , their main works at Toton, and where the alternate for Etches Park depot ends up in this parallel reality is anyone's guess (Chesterfield? Burton? Long Eaton? Ilkeston? Swanwick?))
     
    Lincoln had the 114s - all of them - and some 105s. Etches Park (which sounds like it should have had a pile of Craftsman conversion kits and Comet sides) had 3 car 120s until they were replaced by the first production Sprinters of Class 150/1 in 1985. That leaves Tyseley and Neville Hill as potential homes for my 101.
     
    TS looked the obvious candidate till I got out my various ABCs for the period. TS was an exponent of hybrid sets, and when I hunted through the numbers I could not find any pairs of DMBS + DTCL on their books in the period. In 1988 they had DMBS M53222 on the books (scrapped by 1992) but no DTCL. The first relevant listing of TS formations I have is the 1992 Platform 5 volume, when 101 DMCL 53242 was working with 116 DMBS 53073. Even finding 3 car 101 formations to match the original Hornby set was tough although I found M53303/M59124/M53328 all allocated in 1988. No idea if they were in the same set though. TS doesn't work for my 101 unit
     
    Hornby's W-prefix numbers are taken from a photo in Morrison's book of a 3 car Canton unit C813 at Cheltenham Spa in 1982 (p56, bottom). That won't do either - such a unit would not have got past New Street.
     
    At this stage we are down to Neville Hill. You then start hunting through books and looking at photos , and realising that a lot of power/trailer sets were allocated to Chester (CH), Heaton, Hull Botanic Gardens (BG) , Cambridge (CA) and Norwich Crown Point (NC) , and are out of contention. A photo in Morrison just above the one Hornby used shows the end of DTCL E54218 at Leeds in 1983.My books show it allocated to NL in late summer 83 and still there in 85-6, having survived the arrival of the 141s. That's a start. The caption claims it has S Yorks PTE branding , which would be great - but MetroTrain was W Yorks PTE's branding. 101s definitely worked into Sheffield from Leeds - these will have been Neville Hill units - and definitely worked Sheffield- Doncaster: those must also have been NL units
     
    A hunt for a suitable companion found DMBS E51250, also at NL on both dates. Since NL does not seem to have maintained fixed unit formations it's anyone's guess whether they were paired - but you can't prove I'm wrong, either.
     
    The yellow stripe is an issue. Another photo notes the abolition of first class in W Yorks in 1983 - with a TCL which has been downgraded to TSL and lost it's stripe. However abolition of first in W Yorks would not affect units supplied for S Yorks PTE services (On the other hand the People's Republic of South Yorkshire in the 80s might have thought a tumbril to the guillotine a more appropriate vehicle for first class passengers. When BR reintroduced the Master Cutler a few years later as a Pullman, Sheffield City Council officially objected to the new service and called for its withdrawal as elitist.). I found a photo of DTCL E54365 on a Sheffield service around 1990 , with double arrows but no yellow stripe - as I couldn't find an obvious DMBS partner , that was a non-starter, too
     
    Another point which I missed - never overlook your own resources . It was only when I was compiling this - well after I'd finished -
    that I remembered I had this photo. Slightly tweaked as to brightness, contrast and colour for the occasion and with a sharpening tool applied to mitigate its photographic awfulness:
     

     
    In December 1981 we flew back from Sydney for contract leave over Christmas. Dad hired a car at Heathrow, and when we got home he was somewhat frustrated to find that the car hire company's nearest return point was Nottingham - especially as the weather had taken a turn for the worse. So we drove to Nottingham , and I got the rare treat of a train ride back from Nottingham Midland on a freezing day (The rare treat of a train ride on BR that is - train rides on the NSWGR were available for the price of a mile and a half walk to and from the station with some fairly steep hills on the way, and a 30 cent day return)
     
    This was taken at Lincoln St Marks - the 3 car 101 on the left had just brought us from Nottingham. From the fact we were hanging about on the platform at St Marks for me to take photos I think we were waiting to connect into a Newark Northgate - Grimsby train to take us to Market Rasen.
     
    (For younger readers - in those days Lincoln Central could not be reached off the Newark/Nottingham line, which continued through St Marks, over the High Street about 100 yards south of the surviving crossing , and joined the GC Lincoln-Barnetby line at Durham Ox, a few hundred yards east of Central station, just before you passed Lincoln DMU depot. A new connection into Central via the northern part of the former Lincoln Avoiding Line was opened in mid 1985 and St Marks and the last mile or so of the MR route into Lincoln closed. A facinating glimpse of St Marks in its MR heyday can be seen here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/30999-lincoln-st-marks-engine-shed/&do=findComment&comment=1624075)
     
    The salient point here is a comparison of the cab ends with these on the Lima model:
     

     
    Both 101s - presumably based at Derby Etches Park and certainly refurbished (a shot taken at Nottingham before departure shows the lefthand 101 in blue/grey) - retain the original single windscreen wiper, despite my belief these were incorrect for the 80s. The lamp irons are quite noticeable - against my decision not to try fitting the Craftsman ones. And I'm quite certain that the destination boxes are significantly deeper than Lima's letterbox slots. I couldn't get Worksop or Derby from Charlie Petty's sheet into the Lima boxes (Not that I'd have used Derby since Blacklade replaces Derby ) Here DERBY fits with room to spare despite being a much larger font than DONCASTER which only just fits vertically in the box on the model
     
    The reason for this is something raised by other modellers and quite clear in this comparison : the cab windows on the Lima model are rather too tall and more like those of a Derby unit (Yes I know I said these two 101s are probably Derby units. Just not that sort of Derby unit...)
     
    All of this is way beyond my ability to correct and I haven't attempted it.
     
    The difference in yellow is more complex. The Hornby yellow is definitely too orange, though I've toned it down a bit with washes and varnish. But it's not as orange in normal light as it appears here, and it represents the post '84 Warning Panel Yellow , which was a more orange shade. The DMUs in the photo are displaying the pre '84 yellow , which was a paler, more lemon shade .
     
    PS
    (By the way, it's very sobering to read this , when checking back down the blog to make sure I've got the tags right .
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/296/entry-5627-ive-started-so-ill-finish/
     
    Sorting out the 101 was then a pending job, possibly later that year, as the bits were in hand. That was four and a half years ago. Painting the interior of the 108 and weathering was seen as a quick win for the near future. It's still seen as a quick win for the near future
     
    The Pacer had one brief splutter of progress about 2 years ago . I have hopes of doing something about it later in the year. The Bratchill 150 is indefinitely stalled. Realtrack still haven't got round to a 144 in earlier W.Yorks livery .
     
    The loco-hauled replacement set is a reality. So, as of last autumn , is the upgraded Airfix 31. The Cambrian Dogfish and Shark mentioned are built and in traffic . It only took almost 4 years . So is the LNW set
     
    Some of the rest could be reposted....
     
     
    And I'm shocked to think how long the resin WD road van and DOGACOV B have been pending)
     
    http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/johnsons/idler/chap88.htm
  12. Ravenser
    We left matters with a part-fixed Limby DMU and a mild crisis of conscience about details, identities and my general rate of progress on things in general.
     
    Happily the 101 does not add to the latter as it's now finished - despite all the little extras that kept crawling out.
     
    The first little catch was when looking at various photos in Morrison's DMU book and online. Whatever the faults of the former as a piece of scholarship (The Railcar Association compiled 9 pages of errata to it, and I only managed to print off 3 of them before the Railcar website disappeared for protracted and extensive rebuilding like a medieval cathedral), a photo's a photo and dates are normally reliable. Lima produced 101s with both the early 4 cab marker lights and the later 2 + lower 2 digit code panel. What Hornby did not issue was a DMU with 2 marker lights, one over each buffer , and plated headcode box - which is what happened after their refurbishment in the late 70s /early 80s.
     
    This had to be fixed - which meant out with the Xurons and crunch , followed by a good deal of rubbing down with emery boards. Patch painting was also needed, and since Hornby's yellow is a bit orange this meant tinting the Precision Paints post 84 yellow with a spot of Royal Mail red (Railmatch - and to hand from work on the NRX). Since the coats showed further rubbing down was needed, and since yellow takes about 3 coats to cover adequately, this was fun and games - especially with all the colour-matching by eye .
     
    I chickened out on a full repaint because I doubted I'd get near Sandakan's finishing with 3 brush coats, there was a risk of getting on glazing and other areas it shouldn't be , difficulties with achieving neat boundaries and avoiding bits of the old colour showing through at edges and elsewhere. What I did do was give a thin wash over the rest of the cab end with surplus paint (I was painting ends alternately) and apply a satin varnish with a drop of Precision yellow. This should blend everything and knock back the orange tint a little - and it seems to work.
     
    Somewhere in all this I managed to ping off one of the plastic windscreen wipers and a micro-wormhole in the carpet swallowed it. It will probably re-emerge under the headboard of the bed in another room in 6 years time. The plastic wipers aren't great - but I now had to replace them anyway, a job I'd been hoping to avoid. I managed to find an etch of wipers from A1 Models and fitted a pair at both ends, as this seemed to match what was shown by 1980s photos. I know have my own photographic evidence of two refurbished 3 car 101 sets in the E Midlands in 1981 with single wipers so this obviously wasn't a standard change at refurbishment , but is probably correct. Whether the wipers used are entirely correct I'm not sure - but they're much finer than the original plastic and also the right colour
     

     
    The plastic gangways were replaced - I was lucky to have the rest of a packet of MJT British Standard gangways , part of which had already been used for the Ratio LNW set. This time I needed to use the cast whitemetal bases, and I made up new faceplates from 20 thou plasticard, using the gaps in the etch where the original etched plates had been as a template for the scriber. I now have proper touching gangways .
     
    A thin wash of blue-grey Humbrol wash mixed with dark brown wash was applied to the roof and the gloss shine subsequently removed with matt varnish.
     
    A little blue-grey wash with a touch of brown , heavily thinned was applied to the sides and any surplus drawn off with the brush to tone down the finish and blend in the transfers and patch painting . The wash also picked out the door lines, and I dry brushed the hinges with a little dirty black. Inner ends received a couple of wash coats of the blue-grey wash
     
    The underframe was given a wash coat of Railmatch frame dirt
     
    One major issue I ducked was the underframe "black box". I would certainly have had a go if the front bogie wasn't being held together by superglue , and liable to fail if subjected to the stresses of repeated disassembly and reassembly. The "black box" on this unit isn't bad actually - there's only a small area of plastic that shouldn't really be there , and for some time I couldn't work out how it could be cut away anyway. Enlightenment dawned when I saw a posting on another forum. Lateral thinking - or at least lateral cutting - is required. The black box is cut along its length, behind the moulded detail , leaving a thin "façade" on each side , then you file out the bits that shouldn't be there and build up the various boxes behind.
     
    But , as I said, because there is a patched glue repair on the power car I've ducked it for the moment. What I might do , however, is experiment with the "spare" chassis removed from the trailer when converting it from DMCL to DTCL. I could then relatively quickly convert to a power twin set if I ever wanted simply by swapping the interior and bogies from trailer to power chassis moulding and clipping it back into the bodyshell (The trailer car numbering would then be wrong, but how many people would notice?)
     
    What I did do was adopt a bodge mentioned on Jim Smith-Wright's P4 Newstreet website. This consists of painting the few bits of plastic that shouldn't be there with matt black - at which point the underframe equipment stands out and the spurious areas merge back into the shadow under the vehicle . He found it sufficiently effective that it was several years before he got round to doing the full underframe rework, and as the photos show it's quite successfu
     
    I reassembled everything , tested it quickly , then decided to remove the capacitor to improve slow speed running . Having snipped off the beige blob, I decided to remove the wires back beyond the collar . This was a serious mistake - when I put the chassis back on the track, it was dead as a doornail. Panic!
     
    Further inspection revealed not one but two loose wires. The horrible realisation dawned - the capacitor was soldered directly to the motor terminals along with the feed wires, and in wielding the Xurons to take out the remains of the capacitor I had also neatly cut the wires off the motor terminals.....
     
    Having dropped out the motor bogie (it's held into the chassis frame by a screw from above) I managed to resolder the wires to where they are supposed to be and we were back in business.
     
    It's now been cleaned, oiled and thoroughly tested through a full operating session after a proper running in session on club test tracks (something it never got when originally bought). Performance is pretty satisfactory, though not quite as good as other units with the same motor bogie but no traction tyres
     
    That, I think, constitutes a result

  13. Ravenser
    I know I promised a report on the final stages of the reworked NBL Type 2 , but a start has been made on the long- stalled Class 128 parcels unit , and it's getting a little frustrating...
     
    This posting has been sitting in draft for four years with the optimistic stub "Progress on the 128 has been slow, but like BR we're getting there" Very slow indeed... . However on closer inspection I find I am in no sense entering into the home straight with this one
     
    The project ground to a halt when I found that part of the bogie support at one end of the Replica chassis had sheered, and could not be stuck back together. This left one end of the chassis sitting lop-sided. I eventually found out that Replica could supply a replacement, I took it to Peterborough show the following year and they fitted the part .. and other things were higher priority and got in the way.
     
    Having finally got round to the 128  as a result of lockdown I started by trying to fix the mistakes that had begun to nag at me while the bodyshell sat gathering dust on the bookshelf. The lights didn't look right. I removed the whitemetal castings and found they'd been glued the wrong side round. They now look a good deal better, though not perfect. At the left hand end the cab handrail should be inboard of the door. With some trepidation I clipped out my first attempt at a handrail here and put in a new one in the correct place.
     
    There is a problem with door furniture. Two styles were fitted, one to the WR vehicles (of which my model will be one, as inherited by the LMR and modified without gangways) and one to the vehicles originally built for the LMR
     
    A good shot of the WR vehicles is here - M55993 - ex WR and an official photo of one of the LMR units adorns the relevant Railcar.co.uk page Railcar.co.uk - Class 128 page
     
    M55993 is going to be my "target unit" for this model:- the door furniture is visible if you blow up the photo - and I have absolutely no idea how to do the two small handrails either side of the handle , bearing in mind there would be 6 per side and they need to be exactly the same and in exactly the same places . The DC Kits instructions seem to indicate that there are two etched door handles to be applied , one on each door, and no handrails. That is definitely wrong for all units..
     
    After several attempts I eventually got suitable door handles for the three parcels in place, using bits off an NNK/Phoenix etch for Bulleid coaches. As a fudge I've done a rendering of the LMR style handrail , using an etched grab rail from the fret. It is at least regular and neat and more or less the right side, though I had to clip out the first attempts and reposition when I found a good photo.
     
    I also added the vertical handrails beside the windows on the cab front.
     
    This brings me neatly to my big grumble and issue. What I bought from DC Kits was a package deal of 128 body and Replica chassis. The kit instructions are a little sparse and broad-brush. There were a couple of etches of detailing parts. Since what I'm trying to do deviates significantly from the original kit with floorpan and underframe the instructions are not always relevant anyway. There are some sketches but they are not always relevant either. And I'm finding that in a number of areas the parts needed are not included and there are parts included that may not be relevant.
     
    To be more specific - there are no bogie parts included . Since the Replica chassis requires bogie sideframes, I'm on my own. I've managed to find an unbuilt Kitmaster Mk1 coach kit in the cupboard with plastic sideframes that can be adapted to give a decent representation (I would use MJT bogies if actually building the coach , so the mouldings are spare)
     
    There were two fold up etched strips for the underframe equipment, but these were designed for the DC Kits floorpan moulding and the folds weren't in the right place to suit the Replica chassis. And after looking at it for several months I was certain that a fold up etched box with no detail on the face simply wouldn't convince . There are two plastic mouldings representing battery boxes in the bag of bits , so I've hacked away the etched box on each side and made good before fixing the plastic mouldings in place with superglue. But they are hollow, so I'll need to make a back from plasticard… The instructions refer to castings for engines, and two types of airtanks . No such castings are in the box. What lumps I have on the underframe look uncomfortably sparse (and thin) - certainly compared with photos. Golding's book of DMU drawings only shows one side of a 128 , so I'm left to guess if the other is the same , mirrored , or significantly different. The sketch in the kit instructions , and the two identical etched strips imply the two sides are the same but I'm not sure I trust that.
     
    Plastic buffer beams are provided as are etched brass detailing overlays. As I can't see anything on the etched brass overlays that isn't on the mouldings , I've just used the plastic moulded buffer beams. Plastic buffers are supplied but they are round , and by the 1980s M55993 had oval buffers . I found some MJT 1'8" Oleo buffers in the bits box and have substituted those. I butchered the etched brass coupling hooks to get them in, and left off the etched shackles as they would foul the Kadees (There's no diagram to show what the components on the etch actually are)
     
    And I'd already replaced the roof vents with MJT cast torpedo vents
     
    In short this is looking less and less like a 128 kit, and more and more like a scratch-aid for a 128 requiring the builder to conjour up much of the build from his own resources
     
    Progress to date is shown here. I can get a long way towards finishing this, but there are some parts of the underframe equipment where I am afraid I may find myself stumped.

     
     
    And I'm starting to wonder if I was a mug trying to build my own and I should just have paid £50 for a Heljan model out of the Bargains page of a boxshifter… Because I cannot finish this to the accuracy of the Heljan model.
     
     
  14. Ravenser

    DC Kits 128 - Bodyshell

    By Ravenser,

    [This is my third attempt at posting this - both the previous two having been wiped and returned to an incomplete draft entry by the software correction]
     
    Progress so far is shown below . Put simply - we have a bodyshell.
     
    I'm not sure it's absolutely perfect but as this project boils down to a bodyshell on a Replica MLV chassis with trimmings, it's a decent start.
     

     
    Bodyshell assembly has been slow . You get four half-sides, two cabs and a roof. The roof has to be cut to length , and then - as I found - you have the fun and games of making sure the cab ends fit square to the roof in both planes, and filing back the roof a millimetre or so in order to match the length of the sides - which at this stage are being dry assembled in a dummy run as a check
     
    It is possible that Charlie has a niche market of Hindu gods residing in West Yorkshire and modelling Modernisation Plan BR multiple units - ideally this assembly process would require 3-4 hands and I come with only two. The instructions recommend that you build down from the roof, and that all the vertical joints between the half sides and the cab are only glued together at a late stage. In other words you have lots of bits of ABS hanging off the gutter and waggling about in the breeze.
     
    The instructions suggest that you assemble the lot on a flat surface. This should be excellent advice: unfortunately I can't quite see how it can be easily combined with building down from the roof using ABS and Plastic Weld. Quite simply by the time you've got the brush to the joint you're frightened there won't be enough solvent left to weld anything, and by the time you can turn it upside down and get it to a flat surface you're irretrievably committed with the joint. There is zero adjustment time.
     
    In short I have a bodyshell that, despite my best efforts at adjustment when welding up the vertical joints, is about 0.5mm out of square diagonally across the corners. Under normal circumstances I'd just shrug my shoulders and reflect that the bogies hang off the floor and flex, it will stay on the track, and nobody will ever notice the very slight twist in the body. However this body is going on a dead square chassis block with a protruding solebar :
     
    I'm hoping that the spacer pieces which I've added inside the bodyshell will push the sides out and straighten the body, and that there will be no visible misalignment against the solebar
     
    A word of warning - the MLV chassis is surprisingly fragile in places . When I tried to pull the coupling out of the NEM pocket the whole coupling assembly came away and one of the mounting rings broke . I've reassembled it and it seems to be holding. Since the maximum load this unit will take is 1 x GUV/NRX + 1 x CCT drawbar pull should be limited and I'm hoping the coupling will be okay
     
    More seriously I found that one bogie was tilted. When I attempted to snap it back into place I found that the mounting bracket above the bogie pivot had broken on one side. The plastic is hard and shiny and I reckoned that superglue was the only option, but it was necessary to force it over with a jewellers screwdriver to get it into place against the break, and it seemed to take an eternity before any bond started to form
     
    eventually, in desperation, I dropped a sliver of microstrip into the joint - and the whole lot bonded firm in about 20 sec.
     
    Presumably this bridged the joint , and meant that there was only a thin layer of cyanoacrylate to bond
  15. Ravenser
    Well, I've actually made a start on something . When Heljan announced their 128, Charlie Petty announced an offer on his 128 kit, pairing it with the then new Replica MLV chassis to give an easy build unit. So I bought one. And it's been sitting in its box, next cab but two off the rank, ever since.
     
    As it's now very close to the top of the to do list http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/296/entry-17246-new-years-resolutions-version-81/ I' ve got out the box and made a start. It seemed a lot more promising than another bout with the 155
     
    And I'm starting to wonder why I've put it off for so long, because this isn't a hugely complex kit. I don't have to worry about getting it to run - the MLV chassis should take care of that , and its DCC ready as a bonus. There are NEM pockets. The basic bodyshell is 6 bits plus a roof. The livery will be plain blue. This is all eminently do-able.
     
    Needless to say I've created a few complications for myself
     
    Prototype inspiration is here , taken at Manchester Piccadilly on 10/4/85 according to the back of the photo. I'm reasonably certain this is 55994
     

     
    Now as you can see this is one of the 5 gangwayed cars ordered for the WR, with the gangway removed and plated over. All of the ex LMR cars built without gangways and with full cabs had gone by this point: the WR still had two of its batch, which retained their gangways, and the LMR had three, which had lost them
     
    Since Blacklade is somewhere in the Midlands I needed an LMR allocated unit , with plated ends
     
    Charlie sold me a kit with LMR ends on the basis that this would be easier to convert to the plated ends than the fully gangwayed WR ends. But 55994 retained her headcode boxes till the end - and scratchbuilding these onto the moulded ends would be a very awkward job to get right. However photographs show 55993 lost the boxes and had simple marker lights and 55995 seems to have been the same.
     
    Unfortunately I had removed the marker lights on one end preparatory to attempting split headcode boxes before I spotted these other photos. There were two packets of class 50 marker light castings in the box that I had sourced at some stage and these have been superglued in place as replacements on both ends. I'm not sure they're quite right, but they are the best fix I can now attempt. The centre of each cab has been plated over with 10 thou plasticard - I have virtually none left now , and it doesn't seem to be commonly on sale
     
    Here are the bits and the modified cab ends:
     

    Having now checked through what I have I notice that there are no engine castings and no bogie sideframes. Since Charlie Petty has all his kit material packed away in storage there's no hope of sourcing replacement bits from DC Kits, so it's a question of improvisation.
     
    I have an unbuilt Kitmaster kit for a Mk1 SK in my cupboard. I was always intending to replace the bogies with MJT Commonwealths , and I now have - somewhere - some development etched H-frame bogies with which to do the job.
    This means I can use the Kitmaster sideframes for the 128.
     
    Goulding's drawings are a bit basic around the bogies but the wheelbase and general style are the same. Some modification will be needed to cut away the tie bars and the representation of brake shoes , and I need to round the axleboxes and maybe add a couple of vertical strips to the frame. It won't be spot on - the bolster is different - but it should provide an approximation. I don't think there's any other source of suitable sideframes
     
    What I do about the engine is a good question . I suspect it will involve Milliput and probably plasticard, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
     
    There's going to be a certain amount of approximation on this model. If I were working in P4 , no doubt I would be Damaging The Hobby and I might even have Blood On My Hands - especially if I slip with the scalpel while bodging the bogies.
     
    But I'm in OO, and I'm hoping for something that very much looks the part
  16. Ravenser
    [What with a new job and sundry other distractions I've been pretty quiet on here for a while, though a certain amount of modelling has taken place. This entry has been sitting unfinished in draft status for some months - rather than delete the thing I've finally tidied it up and released it into the world out of its time slip....]
     
    I had the layout up and the result was a bout of decoder fitting and test running. And I'm beginning to see why some folk view DCC as black magic.
     
    Four locos or units were involved, plus that long-term problem child the West Yorkshire 155.
     
    First up, the little Hornby J50 which I bought at Ally Pally because I thought the bank might pull the plug on Hornby in the near future so this might be the only batch of the models we ever see. I managed to get a late crest loco for a decent price off Hereford Model Centre - this is a J50/4 and a little online checking reveals that 68982 was at Immingham, Colwick, and Frodingham , probably the only J50/4 with a long term E. Midlands career, most being London engines. Possibly I should have got an early crest J50/3 instead, but the deed is done, and at some point I shall renumber - I just hope that the transfers I have match Hornby's printing and I only need to change the last digit
     
    I had a TCS UK direct plug decoder in stock, so that went in, there was no need to remove any weight,and it runs very nicely.
     
    I have previously toyed with the possibility of using a station pilot when Blacklade runs steam - I have a GBL Jinty and Hornby chassis in stock and wondered about giving them something to do. Once all the decoder fitting was completed I had a kettle operating session and I found that having a shunter as pilot substantially improves operation. It gives you an alternative way of releasing locos when you're boxed in, it's excellent for rearranging parcels vans and a very useful and interesting addition to operating . So I definitely don't regret spending the money: the J50 will see a lot more use than expected.
     
    Here it is in the fuelling point having taken out the LNW set to release a kettle:
     

     
    I was also very pleased with the sudden improvement in reliability when running the kettles. The L1 ran an entire session without falling off, despite it's still unmodified pony truck, the LNW set ran without problems now a bearing has been eased, the MR set behaved itself perfectly and so did the parcels. I found the newly operational electromagnets under platforms 1 and 2 useful to uncouple locos , and generally it was a confidence-building session. The BR Blue period has worked pretty smoothly for a while - now the kettles are getting there, too
     
    I'm even toying with the idea of resurrecting the elderly Bachmann 03 diesel which has been lurking in a drawer since Ravenser Mk1 was dismantled. It will mean hardwiring a decoder and fitting Kadees, but it's very small and I should be able to find somewhere for it to lurk amongst the Blue period stock. There's a Bachmann 08 hiding away in that drawer as well - from the first issue, so there's no socket and hardwiring will again be necessary.
     
    Second up for a decoder was the Replica MLV chassis for the 128. This took a large Gaugemaster decoder, tucked in with double-sided sticky tape, and duly programmed. I found it a distinctly slow-running mechanism until I started doing some tweaks to the motor control on other locos and suddenly discovered that I had input max volts to CV5 as 128 when in fact the values go up to 255. In short I'd halved the maximum voltage... It's been corrected.
     
    Third up for a decoder was the Fowler 2-6-4T which I bought second-hand at Ally Pally a couple of years ago. I took the body off to see what would be involved in hard-wiring the thing - and found that there was a decoder socket in the thing. If I'd known that I'd have had it up and running ages ago....
    A Gaugemaster Opti Small went in this - and the thing barely ran. As it had run pretty happily when I got it (I took the precaution of testing it on the DOGA test track ) I applied a bit of lateral thinking and carefully oiled the valve gear and motion, and anything else that the service sheet said you should oil, using some .033" handrail wire to apply the oil. After two rounds of application, the Fowler tank ran pretty well, though it's not quite as smooth as the L1. I suspect that sustained use will help this over time, since friction in stiff motion is evidently the problem .
     
    The Fowler tank has since received Kadees - another job which I'd been dreading, but which proved surprisingly easy in practice - and is in traffic, replacing the O4 which found the undergauged spot in Platform 3
     
    The fourth loco to get a decoder was a Lima 37, picked up for a song at DEMU Showcase a couple of years ago because it was in two tone Sector grey and carried the number of the intended target loco. That - as far as I can now recall - got one of my last TCS MC2s, since it is a (straightforward) hardwired installation. As this is a vintage Lima ringfield mechanism - albeit a sweet-running one -the speed curve had to be tweaked to hold down the volts at the midpoint : this means that the loco is much more controllable in much finer gradations at lower speeds. In fact you have to get past speed step 90 before you are going to see any surge in speed. On an 8'6" long layout nothing ever gets turned up that far. Whatever may have been the case for Spinal Tap my PowerCab doesn't go to 11....
     
    One problem did emerge during test running - a tendency for the unpowered bogie to derail in platform 3 (yes that bit of track again) . This was tackled by adding the weight taken out of the 155 when I rebuilt the underframe. Unfortunately this proved a bit too much for the motor to handle with comfort, and I resorted to cutting down the weight to about 2/3rd size with a hacksaw. Although a silver metal on the outside , inside it was a soft dark grey metal. It couldn't be lead, of course. After all no Chinese factory would dream of breaking health and safety regs by electroplating a lead weight to disguise what it was....
     
    And so to the 155 , which simply refused to move when taken to the club test tracks a few months before. I put it on the tracks . I checked the programming . It ran fine . I checked if DC was enabled . It was. I have no idea why it refused to run on DC previously.....
     
    (But the wretched thing still derails on a 3' radius crossover, so it needs a third attempt at inter-unit Kadees. I do have some Parkside mounting blocks to take NEM swallow tail sockets, and I hope that will solve the problem
  17. Ravenser

    Electrifying

    By Ravenser,

    More of a brief note but - in between other distractions the layout has been up and run, and while it was out, I took the opportunity to sort out some outstanding electrical business
     
    The NCE PowerCab does not seem to have full short-circuit protection. I'm not sure of the technical details but I've finally installed some additional protection. This takes the form of a cheap and basic circuit breaker from Halfords, price £1.70 or so.
    http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/10a-auto-reset-circuit-breaker-ak07h?gclid=CPiBicHY5ccCFRI6Gwodp54PwQ
     
    As I understand it , the PowerCab doesn't shut off the juice in the event of a short. This little circuit breaker may not be a proper fast-acting breaker - those cost £20-30 - but it will turn the current off fairly quickly, limiting the time the PowerCab is exposed to any short. Instead of a screen full of gibberish and a reboot (pull out the plug, put it back in) you get a blank screen and a reboot . It's a damage limitation device , installed just behind the system socket on one wire of the feed into the traction bus
     
    While I was about it, I had a go at making the Kadee electromagnets work. When the layout was originally built , I installed three Kadee electromagnets beneath the track in the station - in a fit of enthusiasm for flash kit and clever tricks.
     
    I tried wiring one up ages ago - but nothing seemed to happen. I was under the impression that electromagnets were supposed to make a loud buzzing noise , and I assumed that the electrical joints were bad somewhere - presumably due to a failure adequately to strip the lacquer off the ends of the coil wire. (The lacquer made it impossible to perform the usual continuity test with the multimeter to check the joint - so I was stumped as to where the bad joint was). At that point I gave up...
     
     
    After a lapse of several years, I had a go at wiring the second electromagnet. I stripped back the lacquer using an emery board, carefully soldered up the joints, connected the transformer. No buzz.
     
    Then I noticed the coil was jolting when the button was pressed. This could not be mechanical action of the fine wire - and the coil was warm. We were in business. A check with a couple of parcels vans revealed that the electromagnets were effective. One remade joint later, and the electromagnetic uncouplers for both Platforms 1 & 2 were working
     
    (The transformer used is a switchable voltage DC power supply with a highest setting of 15V , which was being heavily discounted in Maplins a few years ago. It is rated for 5A at the lower voltages - no doubt a bit less at 15V. Kadee's recommendation is for 5A at 16V DC / 18V AC - my transformer gives a bit less than that , but it still seems to work)
     
    How much practical use these gadgets will be is a moot point. I installed them suitably placed to split 2 x 153 units , (or 153+Pacer) so they are too far down the platform to suit uncoupling a class 31, though they may suit a 128 unit. Practical experimentation is called for
  18. Ravenser

    Filed under box van

    By Ravenser,

    I've been building stock boxes : one last weekend and one this. And here are the results:

    which is the air braked box and

    the steam age stock for the shunting plank.
     
    There is absolutely nothing original about this - the idea was taken from Chris Ellis' book "Next Steps in Railway Modelling" , published a couple of years ago, in which it is credited to Stuart Robinson. The construction should be obvious from the photos - take one box file (price 3 quid) , rip out the spring clip and insert dividers using corregated cardboard from a dismembered box and parcel tape. The result is remarkably effective - because the compartments are close fitting and sometimes even a shade tight, the stock doesn't move around and doesn't get damaged. And because of the honeycomb effect , the partitions are strongly reinforced by other partitions and end up pretty rigid
     
    It also saves a lot of space. 2 box files for the shunting plank contain a total of 35 wagons and 4 locos. I reckon you save about two-thirds of the volume storing stock this way compared with leaving wagos in the manufacturer's boxes. Not to mention that the vast majority of my wagons for the plank are kits so there wasn't a box to start with. It's also much quicker and easier to find things in these boxes - just lift the lid and it's all there. As opposed to using the long cardboard loco boxes they sell for a couple of quid, where you have to hunt from box to box and unwrap everything to find the wagon you want.
     
    This was brought painfully home to me when turning out the collection of long boxes that was housing a lot of this stuff before. I found a Conflat or two I'd forgotten about and never run- not to mention a Red Panda Lowfit I'd forgotten I'd ever owned - built for Ravenser Mk1 and rarely if ever used, not least because it was stored somewhere else and forgotten about. Once fitted with S+W couplings it can go into use on the shunting plank.
     
    As well as helping to clear up some of the debris around the place and bring a bit of order and accessibility to my fleet, this exercise has helped to define my wagon building activities for the medium term. As you can see, there are a number of vacant slots. These will take the wagons I'm currently working on, plus the ex WD road van and the etched COV B which have both been sitting on the bookcase for an embarassingly long time. There are slots for a couple more wagons to be recycled out of the fleet from Ravenser and fitted with S+W couplings for the plank. And that leaves just 2 slots for further steam-age wagons.... Plans for Tranche 4 of stock for the shunting plank have therefore been abruptly curtailed, especially as once I'd turned all the "overspill" stock out of it's boxes it was clear I was already almost there anyway. So this just leaves space for a rebuild of a Hornby refridgerator van and an elderly Ratio coke wagon kit I picked up unbuilt at the club, and tranche 4 is done.
     
    On the airbraked side, there's no real need for most of the revenue vehicles now I'm less actively involved at the club. With a little bit of work with a knife, and some more parcel tape I relocated a partition in one of the stockboxes I built about 2 years ago - a further advantage of thistype of construction is that, if push comes to shove , you can modify the size of the compartments. This now provides a home for the Walrus which has acquired its Kadees (no 49 long overset , if you're interested) and in a burst of enthusiasm I coverted two more wagons to Kadees while I was about it. With some wagons transferred from the old box to the new, there are now slots for a Dogfish and a second Shark from the bag of Cambrian kits I was given earlier this year (The idea here is to have an engineers's train for both early and late periods - in the early period it runs with Walrus , Dogfish, grampus and Zander , using an ex GW Toad and a Shark - in the later period it has Seacows, Rudd, PNA, and a pair of Sharks. Hence I could use a Shark in olive green, which could run in either train) I could also probably squeeze in a Starfish with a bit of ingenuity (another kit from the cupboard) . On the other hand there's no slot for a scratchbuilt PNA . And the fact that there's a convenient slot for an old Lima CCT as well as for my PMV means that sorting it out has risen up the To Do list..
     
     
    Suddenly the way ahead on the wagon front is much more sharply defined. If it's in the boxes, it will probably get run....
     
     
  19. Ravenser
    Just to round off a couple of projects - and prove that I do occasionally finish things as well as starting them, here are some hasty shots of the Met Bo-Bo and the Set 1 coaches at the DOGA AGT . Two coaches proved a little too much for the card loco , though one was easy enough - at 100g+ each this is not too surprising
     

     
     

     

     

     
    This one was taken in it's working environment before weathering and lettering - also before I fitted gangways to the inner ends :
     

     
    Somewhere along the line I managed to lose the moulding for one pair of gangway ends . The work around for this was to fit the Ratio mouldings at the outer ends - representing retracted gangways - and working gangways to the the inner ends . I had a packet of MJT "British Standard" gangways in the bits box, possibly bought for use on a Mainline LMS BG which didn't need them in the end, so I found a use for them here. Despite fitting the shortest possible Kadees, there is still about 3-4mm gap between buffers and the final result is a little more reminiscent of Hornby tinplate than I'd like, but at least there is no tell-tale gap between corridor connectors
     
    Numbering and lettering is from some Modelmaster WR and LMR sheets cut up to get the required numbers. I have heard that HMRS have problems obtaining transfer paper for their Pressfix range - certainly their stand at Ally Pally did not have any BR 1948-65 coach lettering sheets so I was driven to improvise from what I could find in the Modelmaster range.
     
    I'm indebted to Bill Bedford for BR (E) numbers for the ex M&GN coaches surviving in 1952 . As none of the brake composites survived that long - presumably because their small guard's compartment wasn't ideal on a line where the main passenger traffic was holiday makers - I've used a number very close to that of the surviving brake thirds.
     
    The roof was originally painted in Railmatch Centro grey (because I have a jar and have no real need for it). This didn't look quite right , so it was overpainted with a 50:50 mix of acrylic Railmatch Roof Dirt and Frame Dirt, with a touch of Tamiya Flat White to lighten it. I brushpainted the sides with satin varnish to even out the fininsh(I couldn't face masking up the windows , and after 3 brushpainted coats on the body there seemed little point spraying the varnish) More or less the same acrylic mix ,very heavily thinned, was applied to the sides , working down, and drawn off where it gathered, and a similar mix, with a bit more brown, to the underframe. I'm satisfied with the result
  20. Ravenser

    First Night Nerves

    By Ravenser,


    Reflections
    The layout has been to its first show. We survived. (Actually it went quite well.)
     
    Some years ago I was involved with a rather unhappy club project. That layout's career culminated in a disastrous trip to a show as a part built item. Some of us in the group had hoped that this would mark a turning point in the project and that we could put on a good show for the public to re-establish some credibility. Unfortunately that was not to be, as someone who technically was not part of the group unilaterally decided to rewire one end of the fiddle yard and replace the control panel software during set-up. Neither worked, and having left the clubroom on the Thursday with a working layout I walked into the hall on the Saturday morning to be greeted with "We've just run our first test train: there are only 3 roads working in the fiddle yard, and you can only use them from that end."
     
    There were other problems, and in retrospect that awful weekend was the beginning of the end for both the group and the project. At a personal level I spent three-quarters of an hour pacing up and down my room that Saturday night vowing that when I finally extricated myself from the project I was never, ever, going to be involved in any way ever again with any kind of layout group or group layout..
     
    So it's fair to say that I have a lot of what Aussie cricketers call "mental scarring" where exhibiting, exhibition layouts, and operational reliability are concerned, and my attitude in recent years to the whole business of exhibiting has been rather ambivalent
     
    Yes, Blacklade can actually be fitted into the back of my car. Yes, in principle the layout could be exhibited. Yes, it has in fact been taken to a couple of small informal closed events on a "show and tell and run some trains" basis. But - I've not actually done anything to get it invited to any shows, or even tidied up a few loose ends that were left outstanding. If the idea of exhibiting ever crossed my mind I was inclined simply to lie down in a darkened room until it went away......
     
    That was until the chairman of a group I belong to volunteered me for the high-jump.
     
    The society was going to mount a presence at a largish show. The stand would be there, and so would be a couple of layouts owned by members. There was even to be a small dedicated room. Excellent news , and a venture emphatically to be supported.
     
    Then it appeared there was a small glitch. It seemed that there was some kind of small gap.
     
    At which point I get an email from the chairman: "How long's your layout?".
     
    To which I made the mistake of replying - "8'6" " .
     
    "Right , you're going to Middlemarch".
     
    After which there was a reassuring silence for about 6 weeks. Then an email from the organisers arrived. Details and photos were sent back to them, with which they seemed happy , and I received a formal invitation. The first symptoms of panic appeared.
     
    The first task was to tidy up some minor electrical work - detailed here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/343/entry-16577-electrifying/
     
    Then there was the question of drapes - which was ably dealt with by my operator and his wife.
     
    That sort of cleared the decks on the layout front.
     
    There were various administrative matters to attend to, but basically my attention could be focussed on stock. How productively is another matter.
     
    The big effort was a desperate attempt to push the 155 on to completion, since that would give me a spare unit to play with. More precisely - the layout was to be shown as BR Blue modern image layout, c1985-90, since that's the suite of stock that's more or less complete. For that period the red and silver wave West Yorkshire PTE livery on the 158 is strictly incorrect (although it doesn't jar); however the 155 is in the earlier red with white stripe and would be spot on. Having it in service would also allow me to consist, with 155+153; and that formation fits neatly in Platform 3 and in one road of the fiddle yard. Even better, if I could build my DC Kits 128 I could run 3 car Modernisation Plan formations by consisting it with my 2 car units.
     
    Sadly it was not to be. I'm at least 2 blog postings behind on the 155, but suffice it to say that by the weekend before the show I had pushed it to the point where I had started test-running the chassis - at which point it suddenly died and refused to report CVs. A desperate rushed installation of the new decoder (which I had hoped to avoid till after the show) ended with a dead chassis and the decoder refusing to report CVs. Frantic testing with a multimeter could reveal no shorts and no missing connections. Having apparently blown two decoders in quick succession, I could go no further.
     
    Meanwhile unexpected pressure of work meant that the 128 had dropped off the to-do list entirely.
     
    Back to layout administration. I had knocked up a layout description and emailed it to the organisers for the programme (though they lopped off my opening flourish "Welcome to BR's "crumbling edge of quality" - wholly appropriate I think as description of what I'm trying to portray")
     
    With a new operator, and first time out on the circuit, it seemed prudent to arrange some operator training.
     
    So my main operator came over one Saturday when he was en route to an evening engagement nearby, and we spent a couple of hours running the layout and going through the various party-piece moves and recovery measures. One further issue showed its face - he had only just bought a PowerCab and this was the first time he had tried using one in anger. As we had 2 PowerCabs available, I tried operating with his PowerCab as a "slave" handset. This works , but there is quite a crippling lag in response with the "slave" handset. Another consideration was that all the route macros are on my PowerCab . We agreed he would bring his Powercab to the show as a backup, but mine would be used for operation unless it failed.
     
    The layout behaved absolutely faultlessly throughout the afternoon- much to my surprise and relief. My decorative spirit thermometer was reading about 24 degrees - I suspect that the points may actually be heat-sensitive, since when I was struggling with point throw during the summer the ambient temperature was commonly 25-28 degrees
     
    One absolute essential for a DCC layout, at least in my book, is a sheet for the operators listing every single item of traction, with number and DCC address. Otherwise nobody knows what they're doing. I drew one up in Word as a table, and emailed it to a fellow exhibitor for plastic lamination. The address sheet shows the TOPS number, class, TOC/Livery and address, with a column showing whether the item does or doesn't have lights, and another one showing the consisting code . (see here) http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/343/entry-16399-multiple-as-in-diesel-multiple-unit/
     
    Since I envisage the sheets being used at future shows I added several other items likely to be finished in the near future (e.g. the 128) with a warning mark
     
    The exhibitor's paperwork arrived about a week beforehand. Wheels were cleaned during the week before, and I assembled an emergency toolkit - strictly out of duplicate tools in case I somehow lost the lot
     
    And so to the event itself.
     
    I loaded everything into the car on Thursday evening, and drove into work the next morning: since I have to park in the street on an industrial estate I draped a blanket over the boards and took the holdall with the stock into the office. I left work a little after 1pm , and was soon onto the motorway. An hour into the drive I stopped at a leafy service station for water and a sandwich , then pressed on as the gantry signs were warning of delays ahead - that proved to be a false alarm, and I was checking into the accommodation, a Holiday Inn in a nearby spa town, by 4 o'clock.
     
    I then got a phone-call from my main operator to say he was already at the venue, which was open for setting up, so I drove out with everything to get Blacklade set up.
     
    The venue, a modern museum in open country,, is one of the glitziest places I've seen used for an exhibition; but its one big drawback is that it is cut up into various relatively small rooms - in that respect it was more like the typical school venue. We were in a dedicated room at one end of the venue, with three other society layouts and the stand. For exhibition purposes Blacklade sits on tables (the legs are a bit embarrassing) and two tables (phew) had been provided. Blocking out had not yet been done and proved a little fluid, but to cut a long story I pushed the tables against the wall, set up the layout along the front edge - remember Blacklade is a maximum of 1' wide, narrowing to 5" at the central board joint - and got all the electrical equipment plugged in.
     
    Here we are - I was tense, nervous and uncertain, and not really up for recording every moment for posterity in case I fell flat on my face, so this is the only photo.

     
    I had brought two clip-on lights, but to be honest the lighting in the room was so good that we decided they actually detracted from the overall effect and they went back in the bag. Stock went on the layout, the track was cleaned (do it the other way round) and I did a little test running. Coupled with operator training in recovery measures and stock recognition (Do not assume that a steam-age modeller knows what a 101 is)
     
    We managed to get a short on the station board. That knocked out the MERG decoder , all points on that board dead - unplug PowerCab and 16V auxiliary supply, plug back in, reboot. . Test decoder's back in business- try Point 3.
     
    Point 3 doesn't move. Try point 3 the other way.
     
    Point 3 doesn't respond. Sits there silent and still. Points 1 and 2 throw. Try again in rising panic. A 2 day show with one point on the station board dead and my longest platform locked out of use....
     
    Desperate measures taken. Clear the stock, tip up the layout. I had an earlier problem with intermittent failure of one output to respond . I solved it by moving the point concerned - this point - to the spare output. I'll have to put it back on the old output and hope to limp through the show with all the route macros out of sync.
     
    I had actually removed the first wire when the penny dropped. The point concerned was now on output 4 . Point 3 didn't throw - because output 3 isn't connected to anything. It's now point 4. But as I only ever use the route macros, I hadn't remembered that. Point 4 - throws.
     
    Panic over - stock back on the layout , and we head out of the venue, back to the hotel, and to a local waterside pub with decent food.
     
    The next morning, after an excellent breakfast with operators and adjacent layouts (including the striking sight of Simon Kohler sharing a table with his successor) we headed off to the venue and were in place for 9:30
     
    The first hour, when I was operating, was not good. The Airfix 31 would not stay coupled to the loco-hauled set, due to misalignment of the Kadees. It wouldn't stay coupled to the engineers' train either , thanks to the plough interfering with Kadee tails. (I thought I had sorted that). The parcels derailed. We had several renditions of the Hokey Cokey with the power supplies to the PowerCab and 16V auxiliary bus in order to reset the MERG decoder. A matter of 15 seconds each time, but I was getting tense and edgy given the need to deliver reliability in front of the public, and that tends to result in operator error.
     
    After an hour I handed over to another operator, and took the wretched 155 with me in quest of Digitrains. The venue was by this time packed tight with people, and traders were busy, but I left the unhappy thing with them to test the decoder, having bought a Gaugemaster budget decoder to supply a harness with which to test the TCS MC2.
     
    I also bought a little plasticard with a view to inserting it into the offending Kadee on the 31 to pack it up. That didn't work, so loco-hauleds were canned for the day and we dropped back to a plain vanilla DMU operation. From then on, Blacklade ran more or less without any problems until the end of the day - the only remaining issues being caused by an operator forgetting to set the route or moving the wrong unit. When I returned to Digitrains late on the day, the crush had eased and they confirmed that the decoder was not merely alive but running very happily on their test rig.
     
    We shut down for the day ,and went up to the exhibitors reception. This I think would have been improved by providing something a little more substantive to eat - certainly despite it being billed as a 2 hour affair I think pretty well everyone had gone after an hour. We were with the operators from the other layouts in our room, but somehow folk didn't seem to mingle, and I didn't meet anyone from other layouts. After this we headed back to the hotel and off to the pub for our evening meal. On the way I spotted one of those punning names that you only find on layouts - a local solicitor named Wright Hassell (Just say it... ) Someone is clearly modelling in 305mm to the foot scale.
     
    Sunday began with a determined effort to get the 155 into traffic. A seized armature was diagnosed, oil applied and the whole thing run for 5 minutes to loosen it up. This seemed very promising : unfortunately the plug of the Express Models lighting kit was catching across the gangway and derailing the unit, so that was that, and it went back in the box. On the plus side I remembered that I'd packed a 20 as spare loco, and while it wasn't suitable for passenger trains the oil tank and a limited parcels service could be reinstated. Watching it drift slowly down from the fuelling point into Platform 1 was very satisfying.
     
    Sunday was busy but not quite such a crush and we ran through the day pretty comfortably, with operators changing hourly. This meant we all got a reasonable chance to see the show and the standard was high . It isn't possible to mention all the excellent layouts present - a number of them have operators who are members of this forum - but one layout quite new to me which caught my eye was Sydney Gardens - a finely modelled diorama of an elegant part of Bath which happens to have the GW main line running through it. Cavalcade layouts normally leave me cold, but here the outstanding setting was modelled so well that it was an admirable foil to the trains (I have seen it suggested that Brunel deliberately designed this section as a showcase for the GWR, displaying his railway to the gentry taking the waters)
     
    There were - as it happens - no layouts in non-commercial gauges other than one 3mm layout. I only realised that after the show - which demonstrates just how high a standard of railway modelling is attainable in OO. The absence of P4 and EM simply didn't register - the show was full of top-quality modelling
     
    And by the afternoon I'd had enough of rebooting the MERG decoder and bought a Digitrax DS64 (like wot we have on the other board) to replace it.
     
    After the show closed at 4pm , we packed up the stock , dismantled the layout and took it out to the car. I realised that as Blacklade is my home portable layout I am actually pretty adept at breaking down; and the fact that the boards are light enough to carry in one hand through the venue helps no end.
     
    It's a curious fact that we ran through a 2 day show without cleaning either wheels or track after set up. I had too many other things on my mind to remember - and the stock never reminded us by stalling. This is quite a tribute to the mechanical merits of modern RTR
     
    With good access for vehicles outside the whole thing was quickly loaded, and my wheels were turning at 4:57pm
     
    The journey home was hindered by the major road works on the A45 on the south side of Coventry and at the junction of the M6 and A14, both of which cost at least 20 minutes, and by a stop at a Little Chef for a bite to eat.
     
    The following morning it was back to work.
     
    The show netted no additional invitations to exhibit , which is not surprising since there were quite a few big high-profile layouts at the show, and exhibition managers would naturally have been drawn to them instead. I have no illusions that I was other than last and least in the layout list - but we were to a perfectly respectable standard, and I don't think Blacklade looked visibly out of place in such distinguished company. I was extremely relieved and heartened by operational performance through nearly all of Saturday, and the Sunday. Despite minor problems the layout was running smoothly and reliably - there is a short list of matters to be fixed, but nothing that makes me doubt the fundamental soundness of the layout.
     
    Would I do it again? Certainly
  21. Ravenser

    Fools rush in

    By Ravenser,

    It's been a long while since anything was posted here - most of the modelling in 2011 was on the layout, where the bulk of the major work still outstanding was tackled , but some progress has recently been made on stock as I currently have a little spare time .
     
    Firstly the Ratio Van B. Work resumed last Autumn , only for me to find that that I couldn't find the etched sheet . Eventually I swallowed hard and decided to improvise. This meant fabrication of replacement door hinges from microstrip and of replacement chalk boards from card. The bogies were made up and I found a way of inserting Kadees.
     
    Three days ago the etch turned up - it was in the paint-drying box in the airing cupboard, where I had put it having primed the thing....
     
    A comparison shows that my replacement hinges are about twice as wide, but I think I would make a mess if I tried to cut them off now and I will live with a slightly chunky look . The chalk boards are slightly too long, but only slightly. The handrails, door handles etc etc can now be added using the original components. I hope it should now be possible to make reasonably rapid progress to a finished vehicle - though lettering and weathering make prove a further obstacle (But at least at that point I'll be able to run the thing in a parcels train)

     
     
    I have started dabbling again with the Pacer, which had been stalled for two years . I have a DC Kits 128 + Replica motorised chassis which I'm intending to build but that keeps not getting started ... In the meantime, I've been picking away at other jobs lying stalled on the bookcase . Two N guage containers with part applied YML transfers have been almost finished . A spare C-Rail 40' kit has been built up , and two more which had a first coat of paint have been rounded up (this being when I found the etch for the VanB ) I need some more transfers for these, and probably some paint as they are likely to change colour. This can be sorted out at Ally Pally this coming weekend
     
    Meantime, as the ex WD road van has been stalled for a long long time and I have no steam era brake - the boxfile doesn't really need one - I thought I'd get a refreshing quick win by building a kit I acquired as an easier alternative - a secondhand Parkside kit for an LNER Toad B , bought for £2 from a trader's second-hand box at Peterborough last autumn. (The kit has not been in the Parkside range for some years)
     
    Progress to date can be seen here .

     
    I was expecting the fit to be a little rough and ready in an older kit like this but so far it's been good. . However the big snag is obvious - no handrails. These have to be added , "freehand" as it were, by the modeller. The continuous H handrail on the side - with two handrail knobs thrown for good measure ., one each side of the ducket, is not going to be easy , and I've decided to cheat , and do them as 3 seperate handrails. I'm still not looking forward to this at all...
     
    The windows to the veranda have been glazed and areas that will be difficult to get at once the roof is on have been painted
     
    In parallel , I started playing about with the WD road van as well. More of the handrails have gone in - I'm about half way through the job now. One or two of the holes may need redrilling - which will have to wait till the weather improves . One handrail is not absolutely straight, but several attempts to adjust have not brought an improvement -- the problem is that one of the horizontal handrails touches it. The van has a further weakness in that one corner is not absolutely square . I didn't know that resin could be bent slightly if it's dropped into hot water and left. I now think I can get it very close to being finished - to the point where an afternoon's work outside will be enough
     

     
    The two brakes and the trailing car of the Pacer have had lead sheet araldited into them as ballast
     
    As my "quick win" was looking distinctly problematic , I went looking for another quick win, and dug out a Cambrian Dogfish kit....
     
    This is not a quick win. It looks like one of the most challenging wagon kits out there. The problem is that there is almost nothing to it . There is a nicely moulded one piece hopper, but that is no help at all because you don't build the wagon round it . Instead you are supposed to build the pretty skeletal underframe on its own. In fact the instructions tell you to assemble the headstocks and solebars on their own with nothing else attached to them. And you're supposed to get it square. Somehow. Multi-armed Indian deities are at a big advantage here - ordinary mortals may struggle
     
    I rapidly decided that this was simply not on, and I fitted the end plating to the two half-underframes, on the basis this would at least give me two reasonably strong, reasonably square, halves to join. A quick look at Geoff Kent's 4mm Wagon Pt 1 shows that he had serious problems with this kit . (Strictly speaking he built the Catfish , but I'm pretty certain it's actually the same kit with a different, shallower, 1 piece hopper) . He had to resort to bodging to get a square underframe , and I'm hardly in his league as a modeller. In the end I held the two halves together with large blobs of blu-tak at opposite corners ,with the wheels and bearings trapped in place, and tweaked it intil it sat square on the mirror, at which point I ran in the solvent at each corner , and waited till it set
     
    The pretty-well inevitable result was blu tak stuck to the plastic in one or two places . Not good, and not entirely unexpected, but by this point I didn't think there were any good routes out of this one. I've removed it, and the only visible damage is to the detail on about 4-5 mm at one end of one solebar. I have managed to clean this up, more or less, and once painted it should not show. This sort of thing is highly undesirable, obviously, but I think the only alternative would have been to abandon the kit as effectively unbuildable
     

     
     
    A second area where Geoff Kent had difficulties - and I'm struggling too - is in fitting the hopper . In order to get this to sit on as many places as possible I've had to add scraps of microstrip to the tops of the lower struts - a quick look at some photos shows that there is in fact a plate here to reinforce the join. Any residual difficulty will hopefully be taken care of by melting of the plastic when solvent is applied . The poor quality photo shows the hopper still loose in position . Getting the hopper to sit level in both planes also requires careful adjustment
     
    All in all , not a kit for a novice. I'm not a novice when it comes to wagon kits, and it's taken all the tricks I know to build it with some imperfections
     
    Why tackle such a difficult kit in the first place when there's a perfectly good Heljan RTR model? Well it was one of four Cambrian kits for Engineers wagons I was given by a friend about 18 months ago. It cost me nothing, it would suit an early period Engineers train for Blacklade and before starting
    I thought this was going to be the best kit in the bag (Also the alternative was a Shark - I didn't fancy a third brake van)
  22. Ravenser

    For One Night Only...

    By Ravenser,

    Blacklade had its first tentative public appearance a few weeks back, when I took it along to the CMRA Workshop event as a display item. It's been taken along to a society area group meeting twice, but this was the first time it had gone into the wider world.
     
    Chiltern Model Railway Association is the federation of model railway clubs and societies in the South East of England and beyond (Indeed over the last few years they've picked up members well into the North of England, and seem to be growing into the nearest thing to a national association of clubs we have.) As well as organising the St Albans exhibition each year in January, for a good few years they've run an event for members of CMRA clubs at Watford in July. Essentially it's a bit like the demonstrators section of an exhibition - except that there is no general public, just the folk demonstrating and other club members . (There's also a programme of talks and a couple of traders)
     
    It's a good event , and I've gone for a number of years and enjoyed it (both my club and a couple of societies I'm a member of belong to CMRA). This year I decided to take something along to display, under a society banner
     
    The theory was that the layout, spread across two tables on its side, would be a demo of DCC for layout control - as opposed to DCC for loco control. I don't claim to be any kind of guru , techie, or expert, but after being involved with a club project and my own layout where all the points etc were DCC controled without a conventional panel , I suppose I must know more about it than most. With three types of point motors, and three types of decoders on view , working signals interlocked with points , and route control by macros , I was hoping there would at least be something to talk about and show.
     
    If I'm honest , I wasn't exactly knocked down in the rush . A couple of people were interested to see the working signals, and whenever a potential punter came in view I gamely launched into my "what this is all about" spiel. I'd prepared some handouts on DCC , plus a sheet giving the background of the layout and a copy of the DOGA OO Intermediate standards, but I think only one of the DCC sheets was taken. However I did get a potential invitation to demo at a show so someone must have been moderately impressed, and I think there were some tables that were quieter than mine
     
    While in theory Blacklade was there as a static item, I did bring some stock on the sly, and for the last hour and a half I turned the layout right way up and ran it . What I hadn't realised was that Bradfield Gloster Square was also going to be there , and inevitably made my little effort look like a clockwork torch in competition with Spurn lighthouse. Even worse , the gremlins came out for a carnival as soon as they saw one of the Bradfield team was watching - and no layout on the circuit runs as flawlessly as Bradfield . I think part of the problem may have been that access to the fiddle yard is tight, and it is difficult to see if all wheels are on the track - some stock may not have been on the rails when it left the fiddle yard....
     
    Once this was sorted out, things settled down and it ran reasonably smoothly while a couple of people from the adjacent EM gauge tables were watching. The main weakness of the layout has been reliable throwing of the points - the Marcway points are very stiff , and I didn't cut adequete recesses in the cork before laying them. In the run up to the show I had done a lot of work digging out the cork around various points to free them up , and this paid dividends. I also refitted the Hoffmann point motor , which in one direction was buzzing - meaning that it wasn't moving quite far enough to work the cut-off switch . The overall result was that everything bar No 1 crossover worked every time and point derailments, except at No 1 crossover (which has teeth and likes a Hornby 31 for breakfast) stopped.
     
    In the run up to Watford Workshop I also , finally, managed to sort out various ragged edges to the ballasting , and touched in exposed cork with brown cork acrylic, as well as touching up a few bits of the hard standing. That dealt with the obvious defects - the rest of the scenic work had to wait till after Watford (and merits a separate post)
     
    One discovery was that Blacklade is most comfortably operated from a chair at the station end , with the layout set up on a pair of tables. Unfortunately the clutter in the study at home has prevented it ever being set up as originally intended - on top of the bookcases and modelling cupboard. It only ever gets set up in the sitting room with the (very basic) legs....
     
    I also had a running session with the layout the week after Watford . One of the Bradfield crew recommended a Peco railer, which does seem to help get things on reliably in the fiddle yard. The main problems seem to be with the parcels train - the body of the kitbuilt Van B was lolling to one side enough to catch the bridge abutment and derail (I've tightened up the fixing screws on the bogies as far as I can , though one bogie is still loose) and the 31 and No 1 crossover kept disagreeing. As this is one end of the runround loop, and as at present the Hornby 31 is the loco that works the two parcels trains and the trip TTA , this is unfortunate. One solution may be to get on with the detailed body for the old Airfix 31 (not to mention the fitting of Kadees) on the theory that Hornby 31s are a little track sensitive, DMUs seem to cope, and a loco with a slightly coarser wheel profile may be better
     
    (This is in no way a problem of the track standard - it's a question of the wire from the point motor to the tie bar being a little too flexible leading to closure not being quite positive enough. A more drastic step is replace one or both Tortioses with Cobalt Blues - meaning shorter, stiffer wire, over £30 and a certain amount of rewiring work.)
     
    It's clear I need a second 31 if I'm to run loco hauled stock as a DMU-substitute - that will have to go into Pl 3 as the only platform long enough, and that doesan't have access to the run-round loop. So the Hornby 31 will still be needed, and it's not as if I'm adding an extra project to the list
     
    Also on the subject of Pl 3 , despite efforts to ease the clearances of the edging slab - through repeated rubbing with an Xacto knife handle to crush the balsa down - the 108 seems to stick , derail and somehow this scrambled the decoder. I tried to reprogram in haste, forgot that the MERG point decoder is sensitive to programming commands , and scrambled that... Reprogramming the thing requires flyleads , taking down the layout etc so that was the end of a running session.
     
    I hope this is the last time for this particular problem. Some time ago I removed the NCE AutoSwitch which was supposed to switch off the rest of the layout when programming - because it didn't seem to be doing anything. I fitted a DPDT switch instead - and that doesn't seem to be doing anything either. It looks like I have somehow created an inadvertant connection across the isolation of the programming track (the fueling point siding) . However all this meant I had an unused NCE Auto Switch in the decoder bag, so I installed it between the MERG decoder and the DCC bus.
     
    Oh and a fault book is now in operation , to identify any gremlins...
  23. Ravenser

    Fruits of my Labours

    By Ravenser,

    After a rather more protracted effort than it should have been, I've finally finished the vans and here they are:
     

     
    From left to right , ex LNER fruit, BR vent van, and rebuilt BR Shock. And yes , the Fruit and Shock still need couplings.
     
    Unfortunately I've noticed the chassis on the vent van is not 100% square . It seems to run fine, because it's been out on the shunting plank without trouble - it was only some time later that I noticed a fractional rock when stood on a mirror. Since I built it on a flat surface and (as far as I was aware) it was fine then, i don't quite know what has happened . I suspect part of the problem may be the excellent fit of the parts . On the other two vans the wheels are a little loose in their bearings , and there is a bit of slop which will accommodate any slight irregularities. But on this van the whole assembly is tight and the axles have no slop at all.
     
    I'm not sure what , if anything, I can do. The van seems to run fine in practice , and possibly will do, though now I know it's not 100% right I'm uncomfortable and a touch annoyed with myself. The only thing that comes to mind it to attempt to shift the errant bearing slightly with the tip of a hot soldering iron - either down fractionally, or in, which would then make the wheelset a slightly loose fit, and the slop would presumably solve the problem
     
    The box lettering on the Fruit is rather larger than the photograph I have (in Cheona Wagons 2) shows. However an old set of BR transfers (GeeDee?) had a ready made up transfer for the BR built batch of this wagon type and so I used that . The vac cylinder was replaced with an ABS one (I needed extra weight) and the buffers are ABS LNER fitted.
     
    The Shock shows why I thought it worth preserving the body. The brake shoes and cross rods on the new underframe aren't perfect - trying to cut down the Red Panda shoe moulding is not nice and I had to work round the lead weights stuck on underneath. I've added as much more as I can, but it's still only a fraction over 40g and really a bit light
     
    Fruit and BR Vent vans have canvas roofs (one ply of tissue stuck to the roof with solvent - I didn't dare try it on a painted body) and a suitably motley array of rainstrips, based on photos in the Cheona book (micro rod or strip ) . The end cappings were slivers of very thin card or think paper
     
    And yes , I will try to get the couplings on this weekend
  24. Ravenser

    Good Intentions

    By Ravenser,

    This posting should have been called New Year's Resolutions but that posting was cancelled due to a shortage of serviceable rolling stock and delays to the inbound service.....
     
    I'm still trying to clear the decks of projects started last year, before starting anything new . However one small project - a rework of an old Mainline GW Mink to supply a van for parcels tail traffic for the steam stock - has slipped through the net and is now at the weathering stage.
     

     
    Still outstanding is completion of the NRX van conversion, which is almost there; the Baby Deltic, which has a nearly finished body and much of the chassis done; and a final matt varnish coat on the two Shark brake vans (one Cambrian and one Hornby)
     
    That leaves on the bookcase the long-term inhabitants: a mostly finished Bratchill 150 missing one etched window frame, a Hornby Pacer rebuild which I started and haven't finished, the Smallbrook WD road van, and a partbuilt vintage Parkside kit for an LNER Toad B . Since the Smallbrook kit is resin and I only dare work that outside, that kit will have to wait for warm light days. There is also a Branchlines 04 chassis kit part built and a part built etched brass LNER van (a DOGA starter kit) that have both been stalled for years, and are hardly on the to-do list at all....
     
    Of that lot, only the Pacer would definitely be of immediate use and I really ought to finish it off this year.
     
    In the meantime income may again be tight this year, so yet again I'm resolved not to go out spending on new projects. Despite my best resolutions 2014 saw various acquisitions - a GBL Jinty and Butler Henderson (plus a cheap Hornby 0-6-0T to motorise the latter), a Bachmann J11 and 10001 , both of which ought to be weathered at some point. But at least not much money was spent , and I'm not planning any RTR acquisitions this year (unless Bachmann somehow deliver a C12 for Christmas or Charlie Petty does a W Yorks 144 in early red).
     
    I've got quite enough stuff to sort out already.
     
    The first new project is slated to be an Iain Kirk 51' LNER full brake , which is needed to complete a proper steam age parcels train. The Hornby LMS CCT can be weathered at the same time.
     
    I've got a number of locos which are in need of decoders and new couplings , and weathering or rework.
    Top of that list is a Hornby Fowler 2-6-4T which would address the noticeable shortage of steam traction in the steam era (and the total lack of LMR steam on an allegedly LMR layout). I also need, finally, to face up to putting a decoder in my Bachmann Standard 4MT 2-6-0. Chipping the Lima 37 (which will need detailing up) and the dormant 29 , which needs some small repair, is rather less urgent.
     
    A rummage through all my boxes at New Year in search of something else turned up treasure - both the packets of MTK 155 underframe castings I bought at DEMU Showcase a few years ago from the late Alaister Rolfe. They were in separate boxes, which is why I had become convinced I had only bought one packet.
     
    The importance of this is that Sprinter DMU underframe castings are a key detailing item currently completely off the market. Hurst Models has quietly slipped into an almost dormant state, and seems unlikely to reappear - it looks very much as if a few residual items are being slowly cleared. That has removed their 156 castings from the market. And although the MTK moulds passed with the rest of NNK to Phoenix Precision, the castings are known to be split over several moulds and though Phoenix would like to rerun the 155 castings, they admit they don't actually know on which moulds they are to be found....
     
    So - a full scale rework of the elderly W Yorks 155 is on the cards. It's always run surprisingly well, but it's currently stopped because the black box fouls some of the dummy point motors I installed 18 months ago. I'm fully aware this is an attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but with a detailed underframe, a full (and painted) interior, a fake painted solebar, detailed gangways, close coupling, Kadees and lighting I might get something passable. The biggest unsolved issue is probably flushglazing.
     
    Then there are a clutch of electrical projects to finish.
     
    The external CDU for the boxfile is done, and attention turns to Tramlink, where one board needs rewiring as the feed wire has come off its connection. Arguably the whole thing needs rewiring , to install point motors, a better interboard board connector, attach the external CDU , and probably relay one point.
     
    There is an Erkon ground signal to build for Blacklade, with a decoder to install to work it - and I might build the spare colour light kits as route indicators for the fiddle yard roads
     
    This is before I even contemplate the possibility of dabbling with some trams, and then there's the idea of building the Judith Edge Vanguard Steelman kit - I'm sure I have a suitable Beetle in stock
     
     
    The 108 needs weathering and populating, the station building needs finishing.......
     
    I really mean to build the 128 kit this year
     
    Plenty to keep me busy , even if I find I have a little more time this year
  25. Ravenser

    Gremlinology

    By Ravenser,


    Electrical
    In February I had the layout up after a couple of months and all was not well. Things stuck and stalled because they needed a thorough cleaning, the 128's body sat visibly too high, the NBL 21 needed a wheel adjustment, I was reminded that the NRX van needs one Kadee re-setting...
     
    And most importantly, the point that leads into the fuelling point (and which forms part of one end of the run-round loop) stopped throwing . I tried adjusting the motor to release it with my fingers, tried adjusting the throw wire. And all I achieved was a motor that ground and whined without moving anything. 
     
    There had already been a problem here - about 18 months ago locos with limited pickup started stalling on the frog when the road was set for the fuelling point. Checking wires, remaking screw connections didn't fix it.
     
    In short - a new point motor required.  Because of the very constricted space under the boards in the throat area I had used a Hoffmann motor  on this point . And on searching the forum I found an old post from Dagworth reporting that he'd had problems with Hoffman /Conrad motors when the switch failed. Clearly that had also happened to me.
     
    The Hoffmann motor was originally sourced from Finney & Smith, who have been gone for years. A cheap grey clone was available from Conrad, and one or two people swore by them; but on checking the Conrad website these motors are no lonnger available. A like-for-like replacement was therefore not possible.
     
    The original installation is described in an old post here but here is an old photo of the relevant area:
     

     
    It is the upper board that concerns us,  and the Hoffmann motor is the little black and red thing in the bottom left corner of the board.
     
    Here we are again - and the tightness of the location is obvious . You can also see in this shot that the point itself is located to one side , under the board framing , a piece of which has been chiselled away to allow the throw arm to operate. Dear reader - do not create this kind of situation, except from dire and compelling need. 
     

     
     

     
    Clearly a Tortoise was never going in here, and the best and smallest thing I could find was a Cobalt Blue . One has already been used satisfactorily for a good few years - the blue motor just below the Hoffmann.  So a Cobalt Classic Omega motor was ordered from DCC Concepts as the cheapest option. This now comes with 3 switches: one low-powered LED connection and two high power switches. The Hoffmann motor had only one switch, which is why the Erkon ground signal controlling movement off the fuelling point was never installed. Now, potentially, it can finally go in.  (I should say here that the colour-light signals on the main board have been a minor disappointment. Because the platform roads are not in line  with the board edge, the signals are slightly turned - so it's difficult for an operator to see the aspects without deliberately moving to look. As a result they don't really serve as an indication to the operator of what route is set)
     
    There  is, of course, a catch. Cobalts and Tortoises are designed to work a point immediately above them. The throw wire is driven from a mounting in the centre of the casing, through a fulcrum hole positioned on the side of the casing. Making them work a point which is off-set to one side of the motor is  not exactly obvious. And quite clearly there is no way a Cobalt (or for that matter a Tortoise) can be positioned directly above that hole right up against the baseboard frame. Which is the whole reason [sorry, pun not intended] why I orginially used a Hoffmann motor in this location.
     
    Fortunately there is a commercial solution, at least for the Tortoise. Exactoscale have for many years sold a moulded plastic mounting plate to which a Tortoise can be screwed, and which is then fixed to the baseboard by further screws. The throw arm then moves a thick plastic bar which slides from side to side beneath the mounting plate - and a secondary pin projecting up from this then throws the point. The arrangement should be pretty clear from the photos below.
     
    I bouight a number of these adaptor plates when Blacklade was originally built, but only used one of them. Now a Tortoise won't go in this location - but the adaptors aren't designed for Cobalt motors. 
     
    But they can be adapted to take a Cobalt motor - so this posting may be of wider interest to anyone who needs to use Cobalt motors in an awkward location. Details should be fairly obvious from the two photos below.
     
    The recess in the Exactoscale mouldings is just too small to receive the lower flanged base of the Cobalt. But it will take the sticky pad supplied with the Cobalt. All that then needs to be done is to mark locations for new holes for the fixing screws inside the recess. Using the Cobalt as a template to mark the locations I drilled a pilot hole with a pin vice then opened it out with something much larger.
     
    Several of the fixing projections have been removed from the Exactoscale moulding to get it to fit, and I also had to saw a sliver off the back of the moulding. The loss of these fixing points doesn't matter, as the fixing screws supplied with the Cobalt are long enough to go through into the baseboard , so the original fixing points are a little bit of a belt-and-braces exercise.
     
    The sticky pad is then inserted in the recess in the Exactoscale moulding, and the Cobalt added on top - this holds it well enough for setting up. The throw wire needs shortening and fits into a hole drilled in the Exactoscale bar (I left the wire too long, drilled too deep and found I'd effectively pegged the bar to the underside of the baseboard when I tried operating the motor. Once the wire had been shortened a little more all was well)  
     
    The photos were taken before the  main fixing screws had been inserted into the new holes, and before the wires had been connected up, but the details of  installation should be pretty clear.
     
    The current design of Cobalt has 3 switches , compared with 2 on the original design (see the other blue lump in the picture). One of the high-current switches is used to switch the live frog. That leaves at least one switch available to control the Erkon ground signal that was originally going to be installed to control egress from the fuelling point. As there wasn't a contact available on the Hoffmann this never happened, but now it might. However now I am back at work time is limited and the list of  outstanding modelling jobs is long so don't hold your breath... (I am not quite clear how the low current LED switch works. Does it switch either DC feed to a wire , meaning that an LED will light up /not light depending on which way it is connected to the wire??)
     
    The replacement point motor has been thoroughly tested through a full running session - it works reliably, and the frog is live and properly switched. Since it is part of a crossover it is connected to the same output terminals on the accessory decoder as the other point motor with which it works in conjuction. This ensures the crossover always throws together , and saves the cost of an extra decoder output. Since stall motors are low current devices the total current drawn from the output is perfectly acceptable

     
     

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