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Ravenser

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  1. 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......
  2. Ravenser

    Set 5 - Quick and Slow: Part 1 Quick (I hope)

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    After a long while contemplating the idea, I finally bought one of the Dapol LMS coaches in CKD form . I prefer CKD form as it's a little cheaper, and as I'm going to work on the thing I am saved the trouble of finding out how to dismantle it. The intended victim is a CK in BR Blood and Custard
     
    The CK seems to be the pick of Dapol's ex Mainline Stanier coaches - Coachmann's expert assessment is here
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/67996-making-use-of-Dapol-lms-coach-kits/?p=958249
     
    And it's also - perhaps not by coincidence - a notable omission from the high-spec range of Stanier coaches that Hornby produced a few years ago.
     
    Having decided to build the Mailcoach LNER Tourist Brake 3rd as a partner for my Hachette BR Mk1 SK (forming Set 4) , in part because their gangways match , I was left with an LMS Porthole Brake 3rd kit.The obvious question was what could it be paired with - and a Dapol CK seemed the cheapest and fastest answer. That would also provide some First class accommodation - something which will be conspicuously lacking from Set 4. Also conspicuously lacking from the steam stock is anything in Blood and Custard - because I don't feel up to doing two tone liveries myself . Getting a factory applied finish is therefore a big bonus.
     
    What needs to be done to these CKD coaches? The 60' underframe on the CK is basically correct - unlike the 57' coaches, which incorrectly have the non-corridor underframe . Detailing work is shown in the photo:
     

     
    The new whitemetal buffers aren't terribly clear, but they are there . I bought an LMS underframe pack and set of etched crossmembers from Comet at Stevenage , at the same time as buying the coach. The spare battery box casting will be donated to the MTK Porthole brake as an upgrade
     
    So to the body
     

     
    The first job - and the biggest "win" is flushglazing. I used SE Finecast vacuum formed glazing because Shawplan have not done this vehicle in their Lazerglase range - a surprising omission given that this is a decent model; and the only RTR option for a key type of vehicle. I also touched in the window edges in black to reduce the slab-sided effect - since my hand wasn't absolutely steady and the black line isn't absolutely perfect this is a double edged benefit, but it doesn't detract overall.
     
    The roof vents are a story of blunders . I "upgraded" with a packet of whitemetal torpedo vents. But... LMS official photos in Historic Carriage Drawings show shell vents on LMS Period 3 stock. Pothole stock - which was built under BR - clearly had torpedo vents , and so did the push-pull conversions of Stanier stock . LMS Period 3 vehicles in preservation often - but not always - have torpedo vents. I eventually found a photo of a coach on the ex GW Birkenhead route that seemed to have a mix of shell and torpedo vents - then I found a comment suggesting these were a special type of vents made at Wolverton.
     
    It looks as if some LMS Period 3 vehicles received torpedo vents at a later date , but how many, and whether it was while they were blood and custard, or only after preservation I don't know. By the time I realised there was an issue the vents were irretrievably stuck with cyano and the roof was painted a suitable muddy brown-grey, so I've left it. It may be right, after all.
     
    The interior was painted and a small number of figures added, though you hardly notice there are passengers in there.
     
    The plastic wheels were replaced by metal Hornby ones. I retained the Dapol gangway on one end, and used a Roxey pack to sort out the other . I say "used" advisedly , as most of it wasn't. To be honest the project stalled for a couple of months because I was scared of assembling the Roxey gangways , and in the end I looked at the etch, looked at the drawing and instructions, should my head in several places and only used the etched back of the gangway. The paper looked impossibly flimsy, and I used black card, but 5 folds proved too much and cased problems (read "derailments") on sharp curves , so I cut one fold away with scissors and reapplied the end plate. This was black painted plasticard - I used the Roxey etch as a gangway cover on the fixed end
     
    All it now needs is a weathering wash on the underframe
  3. Ravenser

    West Yorkshire Sow's Ear - 1 : Diagnosis

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    I have two Hornby 155s sitting in the pile of stock boxes
     
    One is in Regional Railways livery. I've had it for at least 15 years and it's never run. It was meant as material for converting into 153s to support a proposed club layout project which never happened
     
    The other is in West Yorkshire red and white . This was acquired as a modest priced placeholder for a later club layout project (which got as far as running bare boards and some scenery before it died ). It has a decoder (a Macoder if you ask), it's run , and as Blacklade is supposed to have services south from West Yorkshire via Sheffield, its perfectly in place. Since the thing actually ran quite well, it was a regular on the layout until I installed Knightwing point motors (the dummy prototype sort cast in whitemetal) . These fouled the "black box" on the underframe, so the unit was stopped.
     
    As the packets of NNK/MTK underframe castings have turned up, and as the 101 is now done, and the Kirk Gresley 51' pigeon van well advanced, attention has turned to the poor old W.Yorks 155 while I still have some modelling time. I want at least to get this started , and resuscitation turned from a good intention into an actual project.
     
    Sorting out the various RTR DMUs and their shortcomings has always been a good intention for the future. However with the 101 done, we move on to the next. The W Yorks 158 is in their later livery and not really suitable for an "early period" sequence set in 1985-90. The 155 is eminently suitable.
     
    The Hornby, (ex Dapol) 155 dates from around 1990, and has not been in the catalogue for a few years now. It's quite probable Hornby will never produce it again. It's not a great model, dating from a time when OO RTR was much more basic than would be tolerated nowadays, and originated by a company whose standards were some distance behind the cutting edge at the time . It was the least worst of the 3 modern multiple units Dapol produced in the Dave Boyle era - the Dapol Pendolino was a crude lemon beside its excellent rival the Bachmann Voyager, and the Dapol 150 is a model that is spoken of with a shudder when old modern image modellers sit in the pub by the fire and tell of the terrible hardships they endured in their youth. Hornby seem to have chucked the tooling for those two in the skip (where it belonged) but they re-ran the 155 for a number of years with a decent finish and an improved mechanism.
     
    However it's considerably cruder than the 156 they inherited from Lima , and since only 7 units survive, owned by West Yorkshire , the rest being converted to 153s in 1990-2, its commercial potential is pretty limited.
     
    For these reasons it is most unlikely anyone will ever produce another RTR model . Like the EM2s, it's been stranded by the tide of history. Unlike the EM2s, it's never going to be iconic. It's a grubby middle-weight Sprinter.
     
    And next to a Hornby 153 (like wot I've got ...) it looks rough.
     
    There's so much wrong with this model that simply listing the issues is going to be quite enough for a substantial post. I'm not aiming at "the definitive 155". Assuming anyone could ever be bothered to attempt it, you wouldn't go this route . It has been suggested that a 155 can be converted from two Hornby 153s - a sort of reverse version of what BR did. However that would cost you at least £200 in raw materials, and assuming a professional paint job is required, the bill will be close to £300.There would also be the fun and games of hacking the chassis and consisting two separate mechanisms requiring two decoders. Money is tight, and even if I could source 2 x 153 it's not on for lots of reasons. I'm not that desperate for a perfect 155.
     
    So this is an attempt to patch up the unit I have , at minimal cost using stuff I have in stock, and tackle the shortcomings as far as I sensibly can.
     
    Here's a picture of the trailer car dismantled to help you spot the problems:

     
    Starting at the bottom - the black boxes on the underframe have to go : not only are they very wrong, the model is out of gauge with them. Fortunately this isn't going to be too hard, as can be seen.
     
    The tension-locks go and Kadees need to be fitted. I'm hoping I will be able to consist this unit with a 153 - the mechanical mismatch between a Limby motor bogie and a big Bachmann centre motor drive having proved impossible. This also means close coupling to minimise the Straits of Dover between the two vehicles.
     
    Unfortunately it's not going to be possible to fit working gangways and eliminate the gap completely. I have an Express Models lighting kit - arguably lights are needed on a second generation DMU and they are certainly an operator's convenience. These kits rely on wiring through from the power car, and they recommend you route the cable and plugs through a hole in the gangway between the vehicles. That's incompatible with fitting a paper bellows gangway. The Kadees would be in the way if I tried routing it below the gangway. And it looks very much as if the gangways are a little too narrow anyway. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the whole unit is 1-2mm too narrow, and that they've lost it in the gangways. (I have a decent scale side elevation drawing from Railnews Stockspot, but no scale drawings of the end from which to check).
     
    There is no solebar. The bodyside has been continued right the way down to the bottom of the chassis, and no doubt panel proportions have been played about with in the vertical axis (I said it wasn't up to modern standards...) . I gather the traditional fix for this was to paint a "fake solebar" along the bottom edge of the bodyshell
     
    Ploughs will be fitted , as I have some. Correct from the mid to late 90s but not in 1987-91. So ok when running in a "late period" running session (2000-06) but not for "early" (1985-90)
     
    The interior is incomplete. On the power car this is because the motor bogie fills up the driving end and the start of the passenger saloon. The only way you could address that would be to scrap the existing mechanism and replace with a Black Beetle and dummy at a cost of about £65, which is a step further than I'm prepared to go. There's a vast gaping hole in the floor at the cab end of the trailer, because they've used the same chassis moulding for power car and trailer car. For reasons which escape me, they've left out any interior at the inner ends as well - the seat moulding stops one window before the end of the passenger saloon and the rest of the vehicle is empty , so you can see straight through to the end doors on the other side.
     
    Providing extra seats and partitions at the inner ends is easy enough. On the trailer car I can fit partitions behind the cab and behind the vestibule , and extend the seating forward by one window : unfortunately because of the way the bogie is pivoted and retained at the sides it's not possible simply to extend the floor all the way, and nothing but complete reconstruction of the chassis at this end, with a totally restructured bogie and an entirely new pivot and retention arrangement would address that. Again, this kind of drastic rebuilding is further than I'm prepared to go: the more modest work will address most of the problem, and a one window gap in the trailer car seating will have to be lived with.
     
    It looks as if there should be clear plastic covers on the gangway doors at the cab ends . One or two shots show a yellow plate (eg 155 341), but generally the cover is clear but frequently very dirty. If it's dirty , it will conceal the wires running up from the Express Models lighting. I'm not renumbering - Sandakan's quality of finish is very good indeed and for my purposes one W Yorks 155 is as good as another.
     
    The final issue - and a major one - is the glazing. The real things are flush-glazed. So are Hornby's 153s. The ex Dapol 155 is not, with very obvious ledges at the windows. The glazing comes out easily enough , but the only way I can see of fixing the problem is to cut out each pane individually and slightly oversize then file to a fit and fix . I am going to give it a first shot on the door windows , where the recess looks particularly bad - if that works , then I may be up for doing all 44 windows in the passenger saloons
     
    As far as I'm aware there's no replacement glazing available from any source
     
    If anyone knows how this problem has been tackled by anyone in the past, I'd appreciate the info. If the work is really too difficult or securing too uncertain I might have to leave the main saloon windows as is , but it's a big visual issue , and I'd really like to avoid that
  4. Ravenser

    Layout Operation - Some Definitions

    By Ravenser,


    Operational
    This arises from the recent thread on Ally Pally.
     
    Blacklade's modest experiences at the show are matter for another post, but one aspect of the post-show discussion was the claim by several people that many or most of the layouts were not running trains, and somewhere [probably at post 358] the idea arose that this was because the layouts and their operators were using timetables or sequences or something of that kind.
     
    As will be evident from the subsequent discussion http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/117493-london-festival-of-railway-modelling-alexandra-palace-2526-march-2017/page-17 there was some confusion as to exactly what was meant , what it is called, and what might or might not have been going on.
     
    I've no wish to blow on the embers of an almost dead argument; but by that stage the discussion was largely about general principles, rather than the specifics of a particular layout or even show. And as the issue and argument seems to recur I think a few definitions and clarifications are useful, in the interests of light, rather than heat.
     
    "Timetable" operation I understand to mean that there is a WTT with actual times at which a train runs. And there is some kind of clock, and the train does not run until the clock shows the correct time for it . Moreover the times of the trains are almost certainly derived prototypically, from an actual timetable for the full-size prototype, or from how long it would take to make the move in reality.
    The Yanks do this quite a bit I believe on their big basement permanent layouts, which are designed for private operation by a team of operators. A "fast clock" - running several times faster than real time - is often employed (Apparently the NCE Powercab has a built-in fast-clock function)
    For obvious reasons this is extremely rare, if not unheard-of at British exhibitions. I've never encountered such a layout in over 20 years of visiting shows. (I believe the Sherwood Section and Crewechester may have worked like this but those layouts had a lot in common with the big US basement empires in their concept). Post 426 notes that Heckmondwyke tried it once - and then reverted to operating a sequence.
     
    Suggestions that some operators /layouts at Ally Pally were standing around waiting until it was the right time according to their timetable to run the next train were at best extremely sarcastic (and at worst misleading - some people evidently started to think that there were actually layouts at Ally Pally running to a timed timetable . To the best of my knowledge there were none.)
     
    Running to "a sequence" is a much more common practice. There is a list of each movement to be run, in correct order, and traction and stock is allocated to each. There may well be a list of what points have to be set. But, critically, there is no clock. Once you've run move 22, you then run move 23 . You don't wait until it is "the right time" (If you have to wait until someone else has finished doing something else , then the operator's instructions will say so - "Wait until move 21 shunting is complete, then run move 23")
     
    The sequence may be based on the prototype timetable, suitably condensed - or in the case of a rural branchline, augmented - and the time the real thing ran at may be noted in the sequence - "Move 22 - 3:10pm Peterborough-Grimsby semi-fast". Some layouts display the move and its details somewhere on the layout , so that spectators know what they are seeing. But none of this makes a sequence into a timetable. There is no clock, and no "waiting for time" - Move 23 still follows Move 22 as soon as practical.
     
    This point is worth stressing, because it seems some people are under the impression that running a sequence slows down the operation of a layout, and results in periods - perhaps frequent periods - of inaction.
     
    On the contrary, a sequence should speed up operation. You cut out all the "head-scratching time" while the operator tries to work out what is possible given the current state of the layout and how he can or should make his next move. In fact this is probably the only practical way to operate a large layout with junctions that set up conflicting routes at all intensively . Otherwise you end up tripping over your own bootlaces at regular intervals and operating becomes limited and erratic to avoid the possibility of conflicts.
     
    But if a sequence is in place, operators can make the next move quickly and confidently, knowing exactly what they are supposed to do, and having full confidence that the move won't conflict with anything else. All the thinking has been done for them by the person who developed the sequence.
     
    A good sequence will allow your "party piece" operations to be shown to the public on a regular repeatable basis, as well as ensuring a good variety of stock appears front of house and your choicest models.
     
    And for exhibition use it's essential that the sequence returns all the stock to their starting positions, so you can repeat it.

    t-b-g notes that Narrow Road operated to a sequence that lasted an hour, and as part of this there were often multiple trains moving at once, sometimes up to five at once. You can only do that sort of thing with a sequence - and also quite a few operators, since controlling two different trains simultaneously is extremely difficult. Since operators' accommodation is the most expensive thing for a show on the layout side, there are practical restrictions on having large layouts with clouds of operators [And at post 442 we seem to have a witness to the famous comment about Heckmondwyke, with its authentic block-bells to offer trains - "the bells ring but the bloody trains don't run!".]
     
    For the record there was another well-known 1970s continuous circuit mainline layout, Winton, which managed a kind of hybrid between the timetable and the sequence. The layout ran to a sequence, but instead of using flip-cards they recorded a commentary/explanation on cassette tape for the public, and the operators had to keep up with the tape... It was written up for the Railway Modeller in the late Seventies, but nobody since has dared to attempt anything like it since.
     
    One caveat is that a complex sequence is not something operators can be expected to deliver on the fly first time. You do need a team of operators who have practiced, so they know what they are doing . Effectively, you are putting on a model railway play, called "a day at......." and like any play you need rehearsals before attempting a performance. That implies a team of regular operators, and opportunities to erect and run the layout away from shows. 
     
    Now such sessions can be rewarding in their own right. In fact - heresy of heresies - it is entirely possible that such sessions, not public exhibition, can be the main object of building a layout. That was the whole raison d'etre of layouts like Sherwood and Crewechester , two generations ago. I was fortunate to be invited along several times to a big coarse scale Gauge O garden railway that had several operating days a year , and ran to a sequence loosely representing a secondary MR main line
     
    And lest we assume that operational layouts are some kind of crude and primitive form of the hobby that went out with spring-drive , it's worth remembering that Peter Denny's Buckingham GC operated with several operators to a complex sequence covering both the Buckingham line and its minor branches for several decades. Buckingham GC didn't fade away when the constructional articles stopped - it was operated, for Peter Denny's pleasure, over many years. It's just that the British hobby, focused on finescale construction and exhibiting , wasn't really interested in that.
     
    In the US , on the other hand, operating a layout is very much the core of the hobby. Indeed I sometimes think that in some ways Buckingham was a rather American layout - it's just that Peter Denny was modelling the GC in the Home Counties, not some subdivision of the Union Pacific in the Rockies.
     
    But I digress......
     
    The next group of ways of operating a layout might be labelled "task-based operating". This can take a variety of forms, moving from the switching micro up to the basement empire; but what links these forms of operating as a group is that there isn't a set list of choreographed moves. Instead the operator is working ad-lib, but to perform a set task or tasks within rules and parameters.
     
     
    "Shunting puzzles" are the most obvious example, but all shunting layouts work on this broad principle. A train runs in, you shunt and sort the wagons into the sidings, and then you form up another train to go out. The arrival and dispatch of trains is a peripheral, vestigial activity - there is no sequence, just a "rest of the world" to send wagons out to and receive from. In some respects this is a game of model railway patience played with wagons rather than cards - and each train in or out is a shuffle of the cards.
     
    Canada Wharf at Ally Pally was obviously being operated on this basis, and so was Kirkmellington Most branchline layouts also tend to work on this principle. The main task is shunting the pickup goods, which can take quite a while - subsidiary tasks are running some passenger trains and maybe one or two "special" trains. Leysdown seems to have run on this basis .
     
    The fact is that shunting a train can provide hours of innocent amusement for all the family - in sharp contrast to what I was once told, that "You can't shunt on an exhibition layout. We never shunted on X"
     
    The big US basement empires commonly fall under this heading. It's startling to discover that a 40' x 25' basement empire with twelve operators for a session lasting a half a day may in fact only run 8-10 trains. However, in U.S. prototype style each train (with 2 operators per train) wanders around the layout, shunting a whole series of separate locations in accordance with prototype rules. This is task-based operating with a vengeance.
     
    One potential problem with shunting is the question of "what do I shunt, and why?" In the US it is normal to answer this question by implementing a system of wagon waybill cards, whereby each location has defined traffic generation, in or out, and cards are produced representing the movement instructions for a wagon to satisfy this. Thus each train is accompanied by a fistful of cards - each one representing a wagon in the train, with its load, and telling the operators where the wagon is to go to, and what is to be done with it thereafter. At each location, the operators find cards for wagons already there, with instructions on what is to happen to them.
     
    Effectively the train runs much like the real thing, and the second operator is there to deal with the paperwork, much like the conductor on a real US freight.
     
    You can do something like this on a British layout - in fact PD Hancock apparently implemented a wagon waybill system on Craigshire in its later years. But in Britain card/waybill systems and other such practices are things tolerated between consenting adults in private but not to be mentioned in front of the children.
     
    Essex Belt Lines seems to have been running a US style operation at All Pally, with a central dispatcher calling the shots and individual train crews working around a series of locations, but I think they had left the car waybills at home.
     
    The very simple layout where the operator performs the same basic operational task over and over again belongs in this group as well.
     
    Finally we have what I think of as the "cavalcade" style of operation. In this style of operation, normally found only on a big continuous circuit layout, there is no timetable , sequence, or tasks - just a socking great 14 road fiddle yard at the back, filled with trains. The operators simply fire out a series of trains from the fiddle yard round the circuit in each direction. Some layouts may run them round once, some may send them round for two or three circuits. Then they run another train . This goes on all day
     
    I have to admit that the cavalcade is not really my cup of tea - certainly it's not what I want to do for myself with my own layout, and I don't have a 36' x 12' space in which to do it. But there is no doubt it is what a significant section of exhibition goers want to see, and some tend to regard anything else as in some sense a fraud on the public perpetrated by the layout operators . As I was once told by a member of another club, "You must remember that people don't go to exhibitions to look at the layouts. They're there to look at the stock". And therefore in his view the actual layout should be as nondescript as possible - the set should not distract attention from the star actors .
     
    For this reason the cavalcade is the natural layout format for those folk who are essentially stock-builders. They simply want a stage on which they can display the trains they have built to the public.
     
    I find I can happily took at a cavalcade layout providing there is enough high quality structural modelling interest around it. Layouts like Gresley Beat, Dewsbury Midland, and Sydney Gardens are fine by me - I am effectively admiring a high-quality scenic model with the trains as an agreeable supplement. It's when the stage is nearly bare that I start losing interest.
     
    It's worth pointing out that a layout running a sequence might look like a cavalcade layout to the punters. I strongly suspect, for example, that Stoke Summit ran to a sequence - it featured authentic ECML services with authentic formations, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they ran in a set order, roughly corresponding to the time of day they ran on the real thing. But the average punter was probably unaware of these subtilties - he just saw a continuing passing parade of trains on a simple 4 track section. It was a very popular layout.
     
    At this point I ought to declare my own hand.
     
    I have 3 layouts (okay Tramlink has been dormant for years...). I've always tried to design in as much operational interest as possible, so that I have something to do with it when it's finished. All three in practice fall under the heading "task-based operation"
     
    The boxfile is a shunting puzzle. You have four wagons on-, and three off-stage. You have to work the three off-stage wagons on, under the hoist, and to the correct spot, and work off the three empties. You swap an empty for a full behind the scenes. Working your way through this can take over an hour. And there is a panel on the flap giving "The Rules of the Game"
     
    Tramlink, and to a certain extent Blacklade, were designed to work on the same principle as those puzzles where you have 8 tiles in a 3 x 3 frame , and one gap. With Tramlink there are two sidings on each board, and it was designed to operate with 3 LRVs, and one empty siding. So you have an empty slot, and a choice of two possible LRVs on the other board to run into it. Soon your choice is constrained (I've just run this in , so I must run the other out...) 
     
    Blacklade has 3 platforms on the station board and 4 roads on the fiddle yard board, one of which (the fuelling point) can only be accessed from the front two platforms. So you play the same game with DMUs, and in the BR Blue period (as we ran at Ally Pally) with a Loco-hauled Substitute - 2 coaches, worked Minories-style by two Type 2s . This can only really fit in the long back platform , and the long front fiddle yard road, with comfort. 
     
    There is a run-round loop in the throat, but that can only really serve the short centre platform. So there's a parcels train that runs in at the start and is run round , before collecting a CCT van which arrives as tail traffic on a DMU. That is then replaced by another DMU. In theory , every item of traction should spend some time on the fuelling point to refuel - think of it as a scenic road of the fiddle yard - and there's a TTA of diesel which either needs to be worked onto the layout and back to the fuelling point, or else worked off, by a loco. Cue some shunting....
     
    And for the first time at a show I managed to run the engineers' train, which comes on, runs round and goes back. That was at the end, when we were starting to box up the DMUs.
     
    So there's plenty to keep you busy , and trains were worked back and forth in rapid succession throughout the show
     
    But it's worth pointing out just how unprototypical all this intensive operation really is. In real life, Blacklade would see 5-7 movements an hour. So something would happen every 10 minutes or so.
     
    That's on today's crowded high-frequency network. Things were a lot quieter in the days of steam.
     
    In 1962 there were 5 trains a day each way between Kings Cross and Edinburgh, excluding sleepers. (In 1910 it was only 3, with two Scottish sleepers and the Aberdeen mail). By 1975 that had grown to 9 trains northbound and 10 southbound, and it went to 11 each way from 1978 with HSTs . It's a lot more today.
     
    Louth was an important double junction on the GN secondary mainline from Peterborough to Grimsby. In the summer of 1922 it had a service of 13 trains a day each way, of which 6 were local shuttles between Louth and Grimsby and a further one a shuttle which ran through to Mablethorpe. There were 6 more trains each way to Mablethorpe, and 4 on the Bardney branch. The entire service on the E Lincs mainline south of Louth was 6 trains each way.
     
    And on Sundays the branches were shut, and the mainline service comprised 2 trains each way.
     
    Freight traffic in 1946 comprised 9 up trains a day and 13 down, plus a pick up goods on each branch.
     
    That's 68 movements a day, spread between 4:00 am and 9:45pm. Almost 4 movements per hour, or an average of nearly two trains an hour each way.
     
    For nearly all the day you could have sat on the platform at Louth for 20-30 minutes without seeing a train move.
     
    This is for an important double junction on a secondary main line , with additional local services running in 3 directions.
     
    An important part of the character of the steam-age rural railway in Britain was the long - often very long - periods of stillness when nothing at all seemed to happen on a sleeping deserted station. The Central Line in the rush hour - which is what people seem to want to see at shows, or else - it was not.
     
    [edited to tidy up typos and commas]. And in a futile attempt to remove underlining...
  5. Ravenser
    It's been a very long time since I last started a layout project. For the last few years I've been stubbornly trying to get on top of the long, long list of stock projects for Blacklade, and the nearest thing to a new venture was the decision about 3 or 4 years ago to sort out my stray bits and pieces of steam stock, fill in the gaps, and try to have a "funny trains" steam period nominally set in 1958 . That inevitably resulted in me buying cheap new projects as fast as I cleared existing projects from the cupboard.
     
    On the credit side, I now have a lot more serviceable models than 5 or 6 years ago, some of which had been "and then I could do... " aspirations for a wearingly long time. And I have a modest steam age fleet capable of running the layout c1958 (never mind the Corporate Image signage...) , even if there aren't really any spares or coverage. I can field an entirely consistant BR Blue fleet, even if there are a few operational party pieces which still need an item or two of stock, or a rough edge removing. A significantly higher proportion of my stuff actually gets used than was the case 6 or 7 years ago
     
    On the layout itself , various outstanding matters have been sorted out, and Blacklade has been exhibited twice, at a large and a small event, as well as appearing in one of the magazines. Bar a ground signal and an aspect or two, it's a finished layout - and one that normally works pretty reliably these days.
     
    And with another exhibition commitment in less than 2 months, I really ought to be focussed hard on finishing off some projects which are nearly there.
     
    Instead I find myself playing truant and reaching automatically for pen and scrap of paper.
     
    I really shouldn't be contemplating any further projects. Reviving Tramlink and some repair work on the Boxfile ought to be the only diversions to be considered. Space is at a premium in the flat, and I have a great black cloud of unfinished and prospective projects hanging over me:
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/343/entry-5665-the-donkey-and-the-bales-of-straw/
     
    That, it is shocking to realise, was posted 6 years ago now - plus a handful of days. And precisely nothing has happened on any of those fronts (bar Blacklade) in the last 6 years. It's at moments like this that you feel your life running away through your fingers like fine sand.
     
    Well.... yesterday I saw this thread: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/119680-snack-boxes-are-back-at-ikea/
     
    And I thought the largest size box might make a boxed diorama. It would probably be slightly larger than the boxfile , but really almost the only thing that would work sensibly in such a small space is trams. And trams are unfinished business round my way.
     
    We have been here before.... http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/343/entry-7164-im-not-committed-to-building-this-you-understand/
     
    Nothing - of course - happened.
     
    Last year my club floated the idea of a "build a 4' x 1' diorama" competition . Since I rarely get up to the club these days I don't know if anything happened. I briefly flirted with the idea of a 1930s N. London tram scene, disappearing round a fierce 180 degree curve to a fiddle yard behind.
     
    And the idea of the tram platforms at Wynyard underground station as a boxed diorama has crossed my mind before - it's just I have one whitemetal kit
    . for which motorisation is less than obvious, and scratchbuilding a fleet of Sydney crossbench cars is "swallow hard" territory. Wynyard in the peak was a very busy place.
     
    But if you combine those ideas with an IKEA "Snack" box.... you might just be cooking with gas. At 57 cm x 37cm x 30cm , there's a fighting chance of finding somewhere suitable in the flat to keep the thing. 37cm wide = 14.5" . Accepted wisdom is that 6" radius is fine for 4 wheel trams , and some bogie cars might squeak round it.
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/75301-absolute-novice-help-with-minimum-radius-oo-for-tram/
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/75038-tram-tracks/page-2
     
    Allow a bit for the thickness of the sides, assume that the radius is measured at the centre of the track, and you have an inch from there to the edge of the drop-in baseboard
     
    The 180 degree curve is potentially very much on.
     
    Some work with pen and paper this afternoon produced this:

     
    This is very much a "find the problems and limits" sketch, not a final concept. We are in North London, 1933-38. This suits my reference book and the trams I have in the cupboard, and the conduit system avoids the problem of building overhead. I think we are around Highgate - Highgate Hill required the use of 4 wheel cars
     
    Availability of 4 wheel cars is not a problem. I have the Bec LCC B I built many moons ago for Blacklade - the homemade plasticard windscreen has come away anyway, and provided it is stripped back and repainted in LT red , it can pass for one of the ex LCC Bs that London Transport inherited via Bexley. The "bashed" Mehano single decker is closer to a MET E class single decker (as used to Ally Pally) than to the bogie first generation Kingsway Subway cars which inspired the bash. Again strip the paint , tidy up and repaint. I have an LCC stores van, another unbuilt LCC B from ABS, a Keilcraft West Ham kit, and one of Street Level models card kits for an LCC M .
     
    Whether a Feltham could be coaxed round 6" radius seems to be very borderline. Whether an E/1 - for which I have a couple of Tower kits - could be induced to do so . It would be nice if they could. London without an E/1 isn't quite right.
     
    A 4 wheel car is 5" long (I've just measured the Keilcraft roof - as the kit is 1:72 , it's the worst case scenario) . The stub spur at the front is a staging track - it allows trams to disappear "off-scene" to the rest of the system. The idea is that most of the front side-panel will be cut out to provide a framed view into the diorama. The spur track, and any tram sat on it, will be concealed by the frame. A little juggling may be needed to get enough length here to avoid fouling the curve. I think that should be possible - there ought to be an inch or so's "give" on the length
     
    This means handbuilt points, at 6" radius. I tried inserting a commercial point into a 180 degree curve on Ravenser - the much greater radius threw an already tight curve out, and resulted in some very nasty troublemaking geometry. I won't make that mistake again.
     
    Therefore handbuilt points on the depot side. I've assumed 5" long points, as Setrack is 6" . That may be generous . As drawn , the depot will take 4 x 4 wheeler trams. Stabling an E/1 may be an issue. If points are 4" long we're home and dry
     
    David Voice's book describes handbuilt points with full continuous checkrail, - that would preclude using flexible track elsewhere , meaning handbuilt plain track. But that might allow gauge widening on the curve. I don't see how to motorise the sliver-of-nickel-silver single blade he shows. This opens up a nest of problems
     
    DCC or DC ? How easy is it to convert old and new BEC motor units (I've heard it can be done)? Now Beetles are no longer available I have to be cautious and hoard some for DC Kits DMUs
     
    Scenery - I have quite a few card kits for buildings in stock , some of them specifically London models from Streetlevel, some of them low relief. I think the working railway viaduct as scenic break between the two sides is probably a step too far - I don't think there's enough width, though the idea of a Hornby Peckett pushing a couple of wagons up and down is appealing
     
    Nothing - except possibly a lengthy drive to an IKEA to buy some flatpacks - is going to happen till at least April
  6. Ravenser

    This Time I May Be Committed.....

    By Ravenser,


    Layout schemes
    I mentioned in a previous posting   Shifting Sands  that recent developments in RTR had tempted me to consider a possible 009 layout. Things have now moved on...
     
    In the end, the Bachmann Baldwins proved rather too tempting to resist. I think the tipping point was when a little internet research revealed that 2'6" gauge was a de facto British military standard up to WW1, accounting for the Admiralty operations at Chattenden and Devonport and the RNAD explosives factories and depots. 9mm gauge is of course just as "accurate" for 2'6" gauge as it is for 2' gauge. But lines like the Welshpool & Llanfair and the  Leek & Manifold were very much more "proper railways" in character compared to some of the 2' gauge quarry and industrial operations, or the traditional 009 "rabbit warren" layout - and as I noted in the earlier posting, I am after something a bit more substantial than the usual cute 0-4-0Ts and 0-6-0Ts. (The Festiniog was (and is) a substantial operation, but it's loading gauge is very tight - witness the saga of Russell's cab - and this makes its stock seem rather more modest.)  Now one Baldwin was re-gauged for the 2'4 1/2" Snailbeach, so re-gauging  to 2'6" ought to be possible... And if it was possible, why wouldn't a 2'6" gauge line operated by the British military have done exactly that? There must have been hundreds of Baldwins going spare....
     
    In short OOn3 representing 3' gauge would have been a significant hassle to do, but 009 representing 2'6" gauge is now dead easy, and would have some prototype justification. The Peco 009 "main line" track would be ideal for this look.
     
    So - the Dogger Light Railway it is to be. The back story is more or less as described in my original posting: the need to bring fuel, munitions and stores in by sea, and move them up from Doggerport to the RAF base provides a raison d'etre for the line, and a justification for running plenty of freight trains. The fact that the Great Dogger Mole is the only causeway linking the two islands will tend to force inter-island traffic onto the train, justifying some local goods (how else would you move livestock from one island to another?). In the inter-war period there would be hardly any private cars here - probably little more than motorcycles and bikes
     
    I can also justify running prototypical vehicles from other English narrow gauge lines. Some re-equipment would have been needed during re-armament in the late 1930s - the ex WD WW1 stock would have been nearing 20 years old by then. What would be more natural than that the Dogger Light would buy serviceable rolling stock from lines that were closing down, like the Leek & Manifold (1934 - and the same gauge) or the Lynton & Barnstaple (1935) and the Welsh Highland (1936)? In Ireland the West Clare - as the last 3' line to close - ended up with a motley collection of survivors from other 3' systems operated by CIE. A quarter of a century earlier the Dogger Light might have done something similar - after all the Longmoor Military Railway collected quite a few cast-offs from BR as well as its own ex WW2 WD-ordered equipment
     
    I have been quietly buying a modest amount of 009 RTR. I am now the proud owner of two Bachmann Baldwins. A decision has been taken to standardise on Bachmann WD opens , and Parkside kits for ex WD vans - not least because getting lead weight into vans is easy , and the Bachmann open wagons have the merit of weight. (This was after I bought 1 Parkside open wagon kit).  I bought an L&B open in plain grey, and an L&B composite in plain Indian Red. The latter was something of a mistake. I meant to buy the brake composite to give an instant passenger train. And these are really rather big vehicles - a slight embarrassment on tight curves. 
     
    An error when clicking to add to basket resulted in my buying two of the Golden Arrow Models whitemetal kits for the Southwold's 0-6-2T "Wenhaston" when I only meant to get one. Still they are entirely credible as locos ordered as part of the Royal Navy's pre-WW1 buildup. I assume that the railway's earlier locos - or most of them - were worn out by intensive use during WW1and the Baldwins represent replacements in 1918 or so, using what was then readily available. A scout round Newark show at the weekend produced a Minitrix 2-6-2T off a second-hand stall for a bargain price of £30 - it runs very nicely, though I'm a little daunted by the need to cut down the chassis block. Provisional names for these will be "Dogger" and "Fisher" ("German Bight" was vetoed as too long for the side tanks and conceding rather too much to the opposition... )
     
    I also acquired a Dundas 4-wheel passenger guards van at Newark - the composite needs a brake, the goods trains also need a brake and this option was cheaper than buying a Peco Glyn Valley brake and repainting into Indian Red - as well as an Irish 4 wheel open to go with it. This latter is no doubt a relic of the pre WW1 railway... I have a resin kit for a Southwold van tucked away somewhere, and I bought a pair of Peco flat wagons recently because you get two wagons for £17.25... Two whitemetal kits for IoMR bogie coaches (brake and full) from NNK  are tucked away as well. These are more modestly proportioned than the Peco L&B stock.
     
    Liveries of Bauxite/Indian Red for coaching stock and grey for wagons have been adopted.
     
    The concept for the layout is shown here - unusually for a concept sketch this one was drawn to scale.
     
    Dogger Light.pdf
     
    I have my eyes on the Airfix RAF Bomber Re-Supply set: a fuel tanker and trailer is needed to move aviation fuel from the railhead to the RAF station, bombs can be wagon loads, and many of the other items can find a use on the layout. Motor transport on the island is likely to be military. Having bought a boxed set of four Airfix 1/72 aircraft kits cheap a few years , I'm very tempted to have a Mk1 Hurricane coming into land dangling from a little fishing line. They became operational with the RAF in 1938, so that sets the date for the layout - military activity is presumably being prompted by the Munich crisis. Clive Mortimore suggested at Newark that a Bofors gun would be appropriate as both anti-aircraft and anti-shipping defences - Airfix do one of those, too.
     
    I haven't tried any Airfix military kits since I was a young lad - this gives me a chance to dabble in another branch of modelling
     
    I have also acquired two semi-circles of Peco 009 Setrack curves. So I now have a basic circle on which trains can run round on the dining table . Table-top railways indeed!
     

     
    Fortunately the IoMR coaches are at least a centimetre shorter than this one...
  7. Ravenser

    Served Up On A Tray - Main Course

    By Ravenser,


    Boxfile
    The deed is done - or at least most of it. On Saturday I duly trotted off to the local DIY sheds. Unfortunately Wickes and B&Q locally do not cut timber , and Buildbase - who might - were closed. But a sheet of 5mm ply in B&Q was only £5.47, so I bought it anyway.
     
    Having got it home and marked out the cutting plan I discovered that if you heavily score the desired cutting line on both sides with a Stanley knife you can snap 5mm ply along the line much as you would do 40 thou plasticard. This is a great deal quicker, easier and more importantly neater and more accurate, than cutting it with a tenon saw.
     
    I rapidly had a base plate , two sides 2" deep, and a back 1 3/4" deep (the lesser depth being in order to clear some of the switches and sockets at the back )- the components are visible here
     

     
    I then marked out where holes needed to be drilled for the two switches and one socket that fouled the back and drilled accordingly - the DIN socket required a 20mm wood drill and some hacking with the Stanley knife. A check fit revealed that the holes needed bevelling with a knife to allow the switches free play - this was done before I started assembly, with one side and the back glued to the base with PVA. This was left to dry hard overnight
     
     
     
     
     
    The next day - being Sunday - I set about trying to sort out the damaged track, removing about 2 inches of damaged Streamline from the fiddle yard area. I have to say that getting fishplates to slide on to anything was a terrible struggle - I managed to write off the first bit of replacement code 75 in the process, and the second had its integrity maintained by soldering in two sleepers improvised out of PCB sleeper strip. In the heat of the struggle, I ended up with the two rails about 2mm out of alignment lengthwise, which created further problems - ie gaps at the rail joints.
     
    Possibly I might have done better by trying to insert a couple of PCB sleepers into the original damaged track to restore it. However as one rail had ripped out of the moulded clips over at least an inch and a half , that too might have turned out to be a struggle
     
    And in the process of checking alignment with the other boxfile , I found that one rail of the point had also come loose, and had previously been kept in position by the fishplate. As I could no longer get a fishplate on the relevant rail, I had to resort to inserting a half-sleeper of PCB strip and soldering the errant rail back into place, assuring the correct track gauge by use of a roller gauge
     
    You will gather that having separable boxfiles leaving the track ends exposed at the joint is not a great idea if you want long term reliability
     

    I managed to get the two files together (I got fishplates to join 3 of out the 6 rails!), and stuck them down in place on the plywood tray and stuck the remaining side in place. We then reached this stage:
     

     
    At this point I retired hurt to bed.
     
    Having applied a second coat of laquer black, on the Monday night I was ready to attempt a little test running. The results were mixed.
     
    Yes, everything was now quick to set up. A little paring of one hole, and all the switches worked without obstruction. The points all threw reliably and emphatically.
     
    And locos ran. They ran across the joints between the files as well as they had ever done - which is to say not especially well. Because the gaps on the rails were in places pretty horrible. As the photo below shows....
     
    Next step - patch up the joints with plasticard, and touch up any damage to the scenic - notably where the Metcalf cobbles had been worn by track rubbers

  8. Ravenser

    Served Up On A Tray - Dessert

    By Ravenser,


    Boxfile
    We left the Boxfile last time safely installed on its new tea-tray, but with the track joints still to patch, and scenery to touch up.
     
    The track joints were not at all good - they never have been. In the worst place I think there was a horrifying 4mm long gap in the railhead.
     
    The solution was a bodge I've used in one or two places on Blacklade, though not on quite such a scale. This is to cut a sliver of 40
    thou plasticard and superglue it in place in the gap. Once the cyano has thoroughly set - i.e. after an hour or two - trim it down to rail level with a sharp craft knife, and the gap is patched. The plasticard "railhead" will inevitably show white, but the patches are normally very short, and the wheel ought to be fully supported across what was once a void - with all the benefits that implies in running
     
    This is fine if you have a fishplate underneath. You then have a firm base on which your scrap of plasticard can rest , and to which it can also be glued.
     
    However thanks to my losing battle with the fishplates, in several places I didn't have that luxury. At least on the middle road (cue a photo so you can see what we're talking about) there were plastic insulated fishplates underneath, even if they didn't actually connect with one side.

     
    I managed to get scraps of plasticard in place and solidly set with superglue . I trimmed them down - the rail is now more or less continuous - but unfortunately this revealed that the track is not quite flat across this joint, and small 4 wheel shunters may stall at this point and need a touch of the finger. Admittedly it's a lot better than watching the Y3 claw itself out of a pit, like a WW1 tank crossing a trench.
     
    The final joint was rather more trouble, and desperate expedients were tried. I superglued a scrap in microstrip in the rail web across the gap, I packed the Gaping Void with scraps of balsa and bits of Exactoscale support foam , and once the Void was no longer bottomless I managed to superglue another scrap of 40 thou in place in the gap. I left it a couple of hours to set completely , and trimmed down the plasticard - fixed.
     
    The Exactoscale foam proved an excellent colour match for the ash ballast, and I packed the gaps . Then I managed to find the original black flock to sprinkle over it - and found that the original black flock was not a colour match with the rest of the "ash ballast". I had to resort to off-black paint let down with grey - and it still isn't a perfect match , though you won't notice this in the photo.
     
    The next job was trying to restore the rubbed areas of the Metcalfe cobbling . I tried a grey watercolour wash, in the hope this would penetrate the card, so that the colour would persist. Colour-matching again proved a little tricky - and how far it will resist continued cleaning we will see. But for the moment at least the damage has been patched up.
     
    Then I test ran a few locos - and was sharply reminded of the running problems with the Boxfile. Further action required...
     
    As Warley was only a few days away, I headed for the West Midlands with resolution, my debit card and a list. On the Saturday evening I returned with a DCC Concepts rolling road, and a new Tenshodo for the Y3 - the existing one being a hopeless case. Branchlines sold me a 26mm wheelbase unit, which they tell me is what it should take. This replaces a 28.7mm unit, which is what
    was recommended when I built it.
     
    The Knightwing shunter was given a good long run on the rolling road and is greatly improved . The Boxfile's worst two locos are now as good as the best..
     
    Then I started testing the wagons in a fit of enthusiasm - and it rapidly became clear that all was not well. To cut a long story short, I ended up testing all the wagons , and even resorted to generating a spreadsheet...
     
    The problems largely involve wagons derailing when entering the back road which serves the cold store and wagon hoist. Clearly this is not an issue caused by a dodgy joint between boxfiles. In principle it's a track issue, but it's exposing marginal problems with the wagons. And since "the rules of the game" require all wagons to go under the hoist first, the problems need to be sorted out.
     
    The spreadsheet logs wagon description, weight, wheel type, company, work needed, whether compensation units could be fitted, and performance - Go (meaning it runs consistently reliably in both directions through both roads, either way round), Go? (a slight query over reliable running), Marginal (it derails intermittently) and No Go (consistently derails in one or more of the permutations)
     
    When wagons stopped because of broken or missing couplings were added to the equation I had a wretched 14 wagons serviceable out of 32...
     
    Of 11 vehicles marked No Go or Marginal , 7 have Romford wheels. 8 of them weigh 35g or less - none weigh the full 50g, though several were only a little short
     
    A GE open weighing only 30g on Hornby wheels is Go. So is a compensated single bolster weighing 35g
     
    Action was taken. Three wagons have had broken couplings fixed and are back in traffic. Two more have been fitted with Sprat and Winkles and released to traffic. The Blue Spot fish , which looked a bit too big anyway , has been repainted rail blue and consigned to Blacklade; I've pushed on with the MICA which is to replace it , and which only needs varnish and couplings. A fish van has received Hornby wheels and been pushed up to 50g - it's now fine
     
    I aim to finish off a couple more wagons this weekend, but I now have 22 serviceable wagons (plus 3 more which are unsuitable for the Boxfile anyway)
     
    And so the current state of play....
     

     
    The LNER van has acquired its couplings, the PO coke has had a coupling mended, and the MICA awaits a varnish coat and couplings
  9. Ravenser

    Served Up On A Tray

    By Ravenser,


    Boxfile
    This is by way of a short "statement of concept" note.
     
    The Boxfile (formally Whitefriargate Goods) has been out of commission for a couple of years, after the end of the fiddle yard track became damaged. At one level this simply means a basic and fairly straightforward repair. But it has thrown into sharper relief the main problem with this layout.
     

     
    That's the board joint. The two files are currently held together - when assembled - by fishplates connecting the tracks. This arrangement has proved vulnerable to damage of the exposed track ends, and it's a bit of a pig trying to slide everything together, as some of the track doesn't cross the joint at 90 degrees. It's very fiddly, and there's a risk of damaging the track.
     
    As a result of this setting up the 'file has taken 10-15 minutes of fiddling about, which is a serious disincentive to using the layout
     
    And when you've got it all together - the track joints across the gap are pretty rough, which has affected running
     
    When I was toying with the idea of building a tramway micro as a boxed diorama, using IKEA storage boxes (see http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/343/entry-18982-im-not-committed-to-building-this-you-understand-mark-2/) I noticed that there was a version of the product that was effectively a tray, and I had the idea of buying one and fitting the Boxfile inside it, permanently assembled
     
    This idea faded away when I discovered that IKEA weren't actually selling the storage item in question http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/119680-snack-boxes-are-back-at-ikea/ but has now resurfaced.
     
    I thought the stumbling block would be storage. At present the Boxfile lives in a storage drawer under the bed, along with two boxfiles containing all the stock, a small stash of modern N gauge which I ended up acquiring, the controller, light and some empty boxes. I had thought that if I mounted the complete layout on a tray it would no longer fit in the drawer.
     
    And the flat is very full, and there is nowhere else obvious to keep it.
     
    However some actual checks last night revealed that if mounted in a tray it should still fit.....
     

    (This picture may be some help to those folk who believe they "don't have room for a model railway")
     
    So it's game on.
     
    The intention is to use 4mm ply to construct an open-fronted tray to act as a frame around the assembled layout. This means in practice a flat piece of ply (tee-hee - the ply will have to come from Wickes or B&Q as the local timber merchant has gone) with strips of ply along the sides and back. The files can then be glued down inside, with the track properly joined , and the damaged piece replaced and relaid across the interfile joint
     
    I don't think the bottom of the files are entirely rigid anyway, so the whole thing may actually end up flatter. Sides will be 1 3/4" deep , as this should avoid some of the switches and DIN sockets . Holes will have to be drilled for the rest , and I might consider removing one or two of the entirely pointless section switches I originally installed
     
    The fronts and lids of the files would still fold up to provide a sealed and protected unit, but the layout would effectively be a single unit 29.5" long, meaning I could simply put it on a table, plug in the connectors, set up the light, add the stock and away we go.
    Some of the reliability problems at the joints would also vanish. No longer would trains auto-uncouple entering the fiddle track, or jolt across a chasm.
     
    The ply tray will probably be painted black - I have a tin in the airing cupboard, so long as it hasn't gone off
     
    And if the layout can be set up quickly and runs more reliably it should be used more. I can invest time in finishing off a few wagons, and maybe building up a Judith Edge Sentinel or two from the cupboard. A Peckett or a Barclay could be contemplated.....
     
    The DIY sheds beckon tomorrow
  10. 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
  11. Ravenser

    Winter Wonderland

    By Ravenser,


    Reflections
    This post is partly to link back to the card Met Bo-Bo, which has certainly been on my workbench and bookcase even if it got a seperate thread of its own: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/63781-elementary-my-dear-watson/&do=findComment&comment=832586
     
     
    It is now even more finished than before - the shoebeams are on, and a good deal of time was expended on the DOGA test track at Ally Pally trying to make the thing run. With very indifferent results until the wire detached from the back bogie and I bent the pickups away from the wheels. Then it ran fine. I'm still not sure why the MJT bogie etch was shorting out, but shorting it evidently was.... So much for my extra pickups to improve running. This fixed, it proved capable of shifting one of my Ratio LNW coaches and one of L49's featherweight Ashburys (front and back, like certain push pull trains) . I ended up buying a pack of card Ashburys , and although they won't be tackled in the forseeable future I will at least be able to build some suitable stock at some point. The pack also includes some detination boards , which should be a good deal neater for the Bo-Bo than any effort of mine . Thanks to all for kind comments on the model.
     
    Ally Pally proved a rather expensive show, despite my continuing intentions to economise . Despite the push to provide stock for a steam period on Blacklade it has become apparent that I'm rather short of locos that can actually run on a DCC layout for this period. Assuming I don't intend to operate a suburban service with a Frodingham O4 , I currently have just one serviceable loco - my L1. I was therefore looking for something cheap and vaguely appropriate , but the Bachmann stand seemed to be devoid of tank engines , and I ended up acquiring an early BR Fowler 2-6-4T from someone - this appears to be "secondhand new stock" and cost all of £56. It's also more authentic than some alternatives - a quick look at photos seems to show E Midlands LMR locals in the hands of 2Ps , 4Fs, 2-6-4Ts , 2MT 2-6-2Ts, and more rarely 3MT 2-6-2Ts, 1P 0-4-4Ts and Tilbury tanks. Admittedly the 2-6-4Ts seem to be on heavier trains such as 6 coach Nottingham/Lincoln St Marks services, but the Fowler tanks , as the oldest 2-6-4Ts, do feature. The model is not DCC Ready - but as I have a small stash of TCS MC2 decoders and Digitrains couldn't supply any 8 pin harnesses for them this should not be a problem...
     
    Another £50 went with Digitrains - two decoders (UK direct plug and a TCS Z2 to get the Standard 4MT up and running - having read Bromsgrove Models' installation guide I am not looking forward to this...) plus an NMRA plug harness for a T1
     
    £30 more went with a trader who had some Kirk/Mailcoach coach kits - a 51' LNER non-gangwayed full brake , and a Tourist Brake Third . I need some Parcels stock , and for preference something short, and this fitted the bill (as well as Platform 2) - it looks a straightforward kit, so long as I can attach Kadees, and being a parcels van I don't have to worry about getting matt varnish on the windows. The Tourist BTO will be a bit more interesting , as the sides are moulded in clear plastic - the rationale is that I need something with Pullman gangways to run with the BSL Gresley steel CK on the day when actually pluck up courage to build it , and this is something you can't get RTR , is not too grand and new, and delivers lots of third class seats. Both were modestly priced plastic kits
     
    Add in two packs of Modelmaster coach transfers - rumour had it that the HMRS can't get carrier film for their transfers , so I got what was available at the show - a replacement spray can of etch primer, flushglaze for the Dapol LMS noncorridor brake, nose door etches for an Airfix 31, bits for a possible NBL diesel electric Type2 and £25 in petrol and you get to quite a bit of money.... At least I have pretty well everything I want/need for the early period now.
     
    As for the show in general - well, perhaps I'm biassed but it seemed a good one, though something about the atmosphere , remarked on by many can perhaps be explained by the weather. Instead of the joys of spring , Jack Frost had Ally Pally in his icy grasp - and I think the cold did chill the atmosphere. One factor in the perennial debate about prices is easy to miss and bears comment. Car parking at Ally Pally is free (and easy) and getting from the car park to the venue is a 5 minute walk through wooded parkland in daylight. Compare and contrast the NEC where the price of the car park is almost as much as admission, and getting from car park to show means 5 -10 minutes wait for a bus on what is often a cold wet night
  12. Ravenser

    Troublesome Trucks

    By Ravenser,


    Operational
    When I built the tea-tray in which to mount the Boxfile, I had the naïve idea that replacing the damaged track and sorting out the track joints between the two files would solve all the 'file's running problems.
     
    Unfortunately what it actually revealed was that there were problems with the stock. A replacement Tenshodo rejuvenated the Y3, a little running in helped the Knightwing shunter - and then it became painfully obvious that all was not well with the wagon fleet.
     
    An extensive programme of testing , recorded in a spreadsheet , resulted and it seemed that Romford wheels and lightweight vehicles were the obvious issues. So I set to, and started tackling them.
     
    It's been very much a snakes-and-ladders experience and my last comment was, once again, over optimistic
     
    Things that were supposed to work - turn out not to. I took the boxfile along to a recent DOGA area group meeting, and a fresh clutch of gremlins crawled out to gloat at me. (What is the correct collective noun for gremlins? A breakers' yard?)
     
    The LNER unfitted van -compensated -that ran with rock-solid reliability before I fitted the couplings now falls off with absolute predictability. The GE open jumped the rails unless taken very gingerly. That one at least is explicable - at just 32g I was pleasantly surprised it ran in the first place. And several locos found a tight spot at the file joint on the coal siding and fell off.(The wagons didn't seem to mind it),
     
    The latter problem was duly sorted out with a couple of panel pins inserted to force the track back to gauge and a careful trimming-back of one of the plasticard gap-inserts , which was not quite flush - and now all locos run down the siding very happily.
     
    But the wagons are proving more difficult. I've just tackled another 4 of them with mixed results. An ex Airfix LMS van has received Hornby wheels and more weight, and lo and behold it now runs reliably. However at some point it's lost its vac pipes, so I need to reinstate those
     
    And while I was about it I managed to get a little more weight into the GE open , which is now about 45g and much more reliable
     

     
    (However the Cowham & Shearer PO seen next to it is still a bit marginal at only 32g and with nowhere else really to add weight)
     
    A little testing and tweaking of couplings meant that a Bachmann Conflat lost its red-card and was declared fit for traffic. But despite adding still more lead under the load and pushing its weight up to 50g a Bachmann 16T slope-side mineral still falls off, every time a coconut, when running one way round.
     
    What's disturbing about this is that these two wagons have ready-to-run chassis, and Bachmann wheels. Both weigh 48-50g. You'd expect these to be absolutely and unquestionably reliable - instead I've been struggling with them.
     
    Even more disquieting - when I started tweaking the height of the wire on the S+W couplings to stop the Conflat uncoupling at the file joint it promptly started to derail on entering the siding - every time
     
    I really don't understand why adjusting the couplings should result in a wagon derailing. The only thing I can come up with is the brass paddle touching the axle and somehow causing a derailment. Anyway I now have a Conflat that doesn't derail, but uncouples every time it's pulled across a particular joint. And if I adjust the wire I get a Conflat A that stays coupled - but derails every time it's pushed across the joint. Not a happy set of alternatives
     
    But this throws a worrying light on two of my other failures - the LNER unfitted van and the 16T slope-sided mineral . Is it the couplings that are somehow causing derailment? These two chassis really ought to be completely reliable. I have an awkward feeling the van may have couplings salvaged off the Blue Spot Fish - which also derailed
     
    I don't understand what is going on here, or what should be adjusted , and I have a regular problem with wagons becoming uncoupled at a particular joint. I can no longer simply put this down to a really ropey track joint because that has been patched.
     
    Some pictures to lighten the mood. Here's two I made earlier
     


     
    These two now have Sprat & Winkle couplings and seem to run reliably - touch wood.
     
    I'm now down to 5 "hard cases". The LNER van and the Chas Roberts slope-sided 16T have been mentioned already.
     
    There's the Conflat V I built with a Red Panda chassis under a spare Parkside floor and homemade bits along the edges (I don't think you can say a Conflat has sides) with a Bachmann container on top. It weighs 48g, the sheet says Romfords though they might just be Hornby under the paint, and it falls off with great reliability. My spreadsheet notes that the chassis is tight
     
    There's the Parkside BR van I built at a wagon-building class. It's always given trouble because the chassis was completely rigid and somehow twisted during drying. I ended up melting in a bearing to create a little slop - but it doesn't like the back siding. My spreadsheet says Hornby wheels and 48g. There is framing on the underside which rules out compensation. I really don't know where I go with this one.
     
    And finally the steel High - an old Dublo open body on Parkside chassis. 35g, Hornby wheels, and no room underneath to stuff more lead. Hmmm.
     
    Perhaps I ought to finish this off as another LNER van...
     

     
    It's been gathering dust on the bookshelf for a frighteningly long time - I think I started it even before the boxfile...
  13. Ravenser

    Postcards from the Layouts

    By Ravenser,


    Operational
    As Blacklade is effectively completed, and so is the Boxfile there isn't too much to post in the way of layout construction these days. Lockdown efforts have mainly been focussed on sorting out the litter of unfinished stock projects - and if the truth be known, drifting into one or two more. And those things have gone onto my workbench blog..
     
    However just to prove that the silence is not that of the grave, here are a few snapshots from when each of them was last up - "Pictures from an Exhibition" as it were.
     
    Firstly , the last time Blacklade was up. As well as test running the NBL 21 and having a Blue Period operating session I got some of the post-privatisation stock out of its boxes to check it still ran and give it a touch of maintenance. For some reason - probably that the 1980s are of more interest to me, and I have a full suite of stock for 1985-90 whereas there are one or two things I need to sort out for post-privatisation - I've not run as 2000-7 for a long time.
     
    So the Type 5s got an outing each :

     
    57 011 has always been a pretty reliable performer, and as my most compact Type 5 , is designated for fuelling point diesel traffic and engineer's trains in the post-privatisation period. Here she is test running the two green Railtrack opens to check they are fine. (They were.) I really ought to apply a little mild weathering to this one. The loco-hauled substitute set can be seen in the background.
     
    (This loco was bought as a return off the Bachmann stand for about £40, over a decade ago in the days when Bachmann sold their repaired returns off the stand at Warley and Ally Pally. I think the Fox transfers and the plates to renumber her added 50% to the price... Someone else in the group already had 57 010)
     
    And here is the other green Type 5:
     

     
    This is more of a ghost from my involvement with an abortive club layout project some years ago.  66 532 isn't really that suitable for Blacklade being a good inch and a bit longer than the 57. The container train has nothing to do with Blacklade: I acquired two FEA twins , a Realtrack "ball-bearing" twin and a pocket wagon and built and painted some C-Rail containers. Several of these containers are work-related from the days when I used to work for a carrier. The Hapag 20'OT is a resin Mendip Models kit that hung around in the cupboard for years. This is as many of the wagons as I could get on the layout.: they hadn't been out of their boxes for about a decade.
     
    And now for the Boxfile:

     
     
    Construction of a Parkside OHV steel High and reconstruction of a Slater's rectangular tank from my youth were written up here . However handsome is as handsome does - they were built to replace one or two existing wagons of questionable reliability in the Boxfile's fleet. So they can't be deemed fully and finally "done" until they've run through an operating session and behaved themselves. Here we see the rectangular tank in action, and as a bonus I've finally fitted coupling bars for Sprat & Winkle couplings to the Hornby Ruston 48DS I bought at Warley last year. It runs nicely - so I also have an extra loco in traffic.
     
    And yes, both wagons are good 'uns. They slide in and out of the back siding very reliably.  Which is something of a relief. The Ruston 48DS also runs nicely, at a very satisfactory and controllable speed for the Boxfile. There is too little space for it to run with the supplied runner wagon for additional pickup so occasionally it hesitates at a frog, but that can't be helped, given the nature of the loco and the layout. All in all I'm pleased with my purchase, and the price at which Hornby pitched it was excellent.
     
    But... on checking the two boxfiles which hold the stock, I find I still have five wagons "carded".  One - the LNER unfitted van - is at least serviceable if run the right way round. More damaging is what is carded. Total stock currently stands at 13 vans (incl Conflats); 10 minerals (incl 1 tank) ;  6 opens. The correct ratio for the layout is supposed to be 4 vans, 1 open, and 2 minerals for an operating session. In other words I have 6x the opens, 5x the minerals  - and only just over 3x the vans. And what is carded is 1 van, 2 Conflats, a Bachmann 16T slopesided mineral, and a Dapol 13T LMS open. At the most optimistic view, I have 11 serviceable vans when I should have 18-20 vans. One of those 11 is questionable, another is slightly questionable, and a third is a rather rough Lima van with a new chassis
     
    And every single RTR chassis - a Conflat, a 16T mineral and a 13T open - falls off entering the back road. That's a very sobering situation.
     
    Surveying the stockboxes I find myself forming some further resolutions to address all this. An old Hornby refridgerated van is being reworked as an ex NER vehicle. It now has a scratchbuilt underframe so I gave it some test runs without couplings using the Ruston , and it seems to run very reliably. Lurking on my bookshelf is the long-unfinished DOGA etched van kit.  These two should at least address the fact that I'm light on LNER vehicles. The kitbuilt chassis on the  Conflat V is tight and rigid. Melting in a bearing with a soldering iron to create a little slop at on end might fix it. And ferreting in my modelling cupboard turned up a Parkside LNER Conflat S kit, and a packet of Bachmann small insulated containers. Since I can clearly build a kit chassis so that it stays on the Boxfile while RTR chassis fall off, this would be a possible nil-cost solution. With a bit of juggling I think I can just about get this into the stockboxes as an extra.
     
    I'm not sure what I do about the RTR wagons to make them run, so if  this ultimately replaces the Bachmann Conflat A a further slot opens up. I have two old Parkside BR van kits in the cupboard, one of which might fill the gap. That would get me up to 15 serviceable vans - a roughly  50% improvement on the current situation, at nil expenditure. 
     
     I ought to think about adding a figure or two to the Boxfile: nothing too much , but just a touch of life.
  14. Ravenser
    It is fair to say that the North British Locomotive Company's attempt to move into the brave new world of modern traction was an ignominious failure. After six decades as one of the leading locomotive builders in Britain it attempted to enter the diesel era via a licencing deal with MAN of Germany; but the results of this push can be classified into two groups - failures and complete failures. NBL folded in April 1962 under the resultant weight of warranty claims and lack of new orders, its financial position being made even worse by a commercial policy of selling the Pilot Scheme batches at a loss to buy its place in the new diesel era.
     
    Which of NBL's four classes of diesels - TOPS classes 16, 21, 22, and 41 - was worst is debatable. A sufficient commentary on them is that 3 of the classes were eliminated immediately by the National Traction Plan in 1968, and the Class 22 "Baby Warships" succumbed in 1971. Since the latter were still in original form and were further doomed by being hydraulics, they were arguably the best of the very bad bunch.
     
    20 of the Class 21s were rebuilt with new more powerful Paxman engines in the mid 1960s and became Class 29 , but even that was not enough to save them , and all the rebuilds had gone by the end of 1971
     
    Of NBL's British diesel designs only classes 21 and 22 proceeded beyond a pilot batch. 58 Type 2 NBL diesel-electric lemons (designated Class 21 under TOPS) were built between 1958 and 1960, but as early as March 1960 most of the ER allocation was reported as being stored unserviceable at Peterborough. The entire class was banished to Scotland a month later, on the theory that it would be quicker and easier to send them back to NBL under warranty from a Glasgow shed (although there was speculation that the move was in fact an attempt by the BTC to hide the debacle from the London-based national press); but NBL's collapse two years later put an end to that idea. Class 21 locomotives were being stored unserviceable as early as 1964; and some of them may never have turned a wheel again, being sent directly to the scrapyard from store. It seems to have been ScR practice to send them out on trains double-headed in the hope that at least one of the locomotives would still be working when they finished their diagrammed day's work.
     
    It is therefore arguable that Class 21 constitutes the worst design of diesel locomotive ever to go into volume production. Bad as the Type 1 locos of Class 16 were, there were only 10 of them, and they lived out their short lives at Stratford. Some of the Class 21s may have had service lives of as little as 4 years before they were stored; and there is no parallel to their mass withdrawal and exile to Scotland in 1960
     
    I've always been intrigued by these locos ever since Hornby introduced their "Class 29" in the late 1970s. This was a strikingly ugly loco, and a fascinatingly obscure one; when Ravenser Mk1 was struggling to find a small mainline diesel that would work, one turned up in my local modelshop second hand for not much money and I promptly bought it. I later detailed and repainted it as a Class 29, and getting the thing converted to DCC is now high on the agenda. (The back story being that RTC Derby claimed one of the last locos in traffic to replace the Baby Deltic, so it survived to c1980 as an RTC loco)
     
    At some point I also acquired a second battered body for £2, followed by a chassis frame and Hornby power bogie. The latter items went to my Baby Deltic project - but with that complete the possibility of a second compact Type 2 for Blacklade's illicit "steam period" began to stir in my mind.
     
    The "funny trains" period on Blacklade is nominally set c1958. We may imagine that an NBL Type 2 has been sent to BR's principal diesel-loco building works for evaluation trials to find out what is wrong with the thing. These trials can quite plausibly bring it to Blacklade on short trains. (Since Blacklade and Hallamshire replace Derby and Derbyshire , Derby Works doesn't exist under this scheme of things, and the MR's locomotive works is now at Toton. As there is a regular Nottingham/Blacklade service, the appearance of an NBL Type 2 hauling two Midland suburban coaches is perfectly plausible.)
     
    Dapol are bringing out a new high-spec 21/29 any year now. When it finally appears it will cost at least £150 - and I don't want a Class 21 that much. So this is an exercise in a fun loco on the cheap.
     
    For a power plant, I bought a second hand Hornby Class 25 at Warley. This will provide a 5 pole all-wheel pickup Ringfield motor bogie , and the Hornby body can be donated to a "high-spec 25/1" project
     
    I have a Class 29 chassis frame and weight from Peter's Spares and a pair of Class 29 trailing bogies - the second will donate a bogie frame to the motor bogie.
     
    Detailing bits come mostly from the scrap box - an A1 Models roof fan etch, another A1 pack giving cab-end detailing etches. These are supplemented by some very nice etched nickel-silver etches for cab windows from Shawplan. (A tip from C.A.T.Ford on the DOGA stand at Warley)
     
    Progress to date is shown here:
     

     
    The biggest problems with the Hornby model are in the cab front. They modelled a weird arrangement, with a Class 29 headcode box overlying nose doors - I can only believe that someone was working off an NBL drawing amended to show revised arrangements. For a Class 21 the headcode box must go - A1 provided a replacement etched nose door and etched discs.
     
    And the transformation provided by the Shawplan etch for NBL cab windows is dramatic . I have deliberately photographed the end where I haven't finished filing out one window so you can see what I've done. Getting these in place with superglue - and making sure they stay in place during filing - is a little awkward.
     
    One buffer head was missing - I've fitted replacement turned brass buffer heads from an A1 Models buffer beam detailing pack. I really had no other obvious use for these.
     
    This is about as far as I am taking the bodyshell . I know someone did an extensive conversion building up the nose and reprofiling it. I'm not really sure what was involved and I'm keeping it simple and leaving the basic shell as it is.
     
    Hornby modelled the original form of the main radiator grills - rapidly replaced by a squarish grill .I do have a set of replacement A1 Models etched grills, but as I am modelling a Pilot Scheme batch loco in 1959, I shall be leaving these grills alone.
     
    As an original condition ER loco, livery would have been plain green - which is easy enough to do with a spray can.
     
    The Baby Deltic proved to stall in some places on the layout - no doubt due to its deep flanges fouling lumps of ballast or chairs on code 70 bullhead. I've managed to remove projecting bits of ballast in several places , which has resulted in a partial cure. But (as noted elsewhere) I've developed a further fix - replace the chunky Hornby wheels in the trailing bogie with Bachmann coach wheels with their pin-points sawn off with a piercing saw. I still have to give the Baby Deltic a test run to see how much of an improvement this gives, but the theory is that if only one end of the loco is vulnerable to grounding then there should always be a supply of power to avoid stalling.
     
    (I also suspect that - as with other defects - once the underlying issue is found by a vulnerable loco and tackled I'll see better running from other items of stock , which were just about coping with it)
     
    The NBL Type 2 will be fitted with Bachmann wheels on the trailing bogie, and I bought a substantial DCC stay-alive along with a suitable decoder at Warley - I'm hoping this will result in a smooth-running and reliable loco.
     
    I'm aware the Hornby model sits too high. But as I can't see any obvious easy way to fix this , I'm intending to leave this issue alone
     
    I'm very pleased with the relatively quick and painless progress made to date. This should be a distinct cut above the 29 I detailed nearly twenty years ago
  15. Ravenser

    Magpie's Nest

    By Ravenser,

    A couple of weeks ago I was meant to have someone round to see the layout . Unfortunately they went down sick on the day, Blacklade was up so I had a bit of a play - and things weren't running especially well. So I started fixing things and well...
     
    In fairness I'm not sure the layout had been run more than once since Shenfield last September. My attention has been fixed on sorting out the Boxfile for the 4 months. If you don't use things it shows, so action had to be taken. I bought a rolling road at Warley, and while it proved very effective in freeing up the shunters on the Boxfile I hadn't used it for any of Blacklade's stock.
     
    First things first. I treated myself to a Bachmann 4 wheel track machine a couple of months ago . It is best described as a small self-propelled crane/ballast wagon in yellow. I duly fitted the Gaugemaster direct decoder I had bought , and programmed it. It wouldn't run on DCC. It would run, a bit roughly, on DC but not on DCC . A session on the rolling road on the Boxfile failed to cure it, nor did a little oiling - eventually another decoder (too big to fit under the diecast ballast load) revealed the Gaugemaster Direct was a dud
     
    The 37 was running badly. A thorough lubrication and a decent session on the rolling road along with wheel cleaning sorted that out. Unfortunately it kept stalling on the point at the entrance to platform 3, as did the Airfix 31, indicating that the whole frog might be dead. I decided to give the 31 some oil as well, and while I was about it a support clip on the motor bogie was reinstated , along with a whitemetal piece representing interior pipework that had fallen out and was glued back in - though you can't really see it through the grime on the bodyside windows.
     
    By now I was on a roll and the kettle-tanks came into my crosshairs. The Ivatt 2-6-2T got the running in on the rolling road it never received when I bought it last year, plus a little oil . I'm convinced there's something very slightly bent in the motion of the Fowler 2-6-4T somewhere , though I don't know where , and doubt I am capable of straightening it without making matters worse even if I knew where it was. Certainly it doesn't run as easily as the L1 or Mickey Mouse tank, can "stick" occasionally , and certainly needs its motion kept well oiled if it is to run well (I have a shrewd suspicion why I got it "new second-hand" of a decent price).
     
    The Bachmann Ivatt Co-Co had lost a bit of its sparkle . So I cleaned the wheels thoroughly, gave it a good run, and decided to take the top off, for a good lubrication. I then found myself confronted by a large metal block, with no obvious way of getting inside to get at the worm/gear. Oh, and there appeared to be a unit under the fan grill, with sprung prongs onto pads on the circuit board. The 150 equally has a massive block....
     
    The man on the Bachmann stand at Ally Pally assures me you aren't supposed to break in, and that the gear trains oughtn't to require additional lubrication by the user. And the fan isn't supposed to work. It is possible to oil the axle bearings, but you need an electrically conductive oil.
     
    Having done the 101 and 108, I got to the 155. And it wouldn't run at all, despite a current draw of 0.63 amps... I suspect that the central spindle of the Ringfield has seized (again) and that this is probably the reason for all the troubles with this mechanism over the last 2 years. The problem presumably originates from the years it spent in store without being lubricated , but I think we are probably past the point of no return with this motor bogie now - it's never going to run well. I tried to find a suitable replacement Beetle at Ally Pally (12mm x 34mm) but without success.
     
    I now have two options - rob the motor bogie out of a second Hornby 155 which is languishing at the bottom of the stock pile and has been there for nearly 20 years, unrun - or rob the Beetle out of the Bratchill 150/2 kit which has been standing stalled on the bookcase for many years. I'm strongly inclined to the second option, as it should produce better running , and allow full seating throughout the unit. But doing that will probably finally kill the Bratchill 150. It might possible to finish the trailer car and use it as a trailer with the 150/1 - as was done with some of the real things to build them up to 3 car I've invested too much effort in upgrading the 155 to scrap the thing now.
     
    Next on the list was the Turbostar - and the problems uncovered prompted a thread http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/132711-help-Bachmann-170-turbo-threatening-national-grid/
     
    I haven't had the heart to open up the 158 which popped it's drive shafts to see if the same problem has manifested itself there....
     
    Oh, and the feather had fallen off the starter signal to platform 2 and was nowhere to be found . I managed to rework a LH feather I had spare to replace it , and I was able to buy a spare LH and RH feather at Ally Pally - I still have a couple of Erkon kits in stock
     
    My other find at Ally Pally was this:
     

     
    which is going to be built as this https://transportsofdelight.smugmug.com/RAILWAYS/LOCOMOTIVES-OF-BRITISH-RAILWAYS-EASTERN-REGION/TYPE-C-442-LOCOMOTIVES/i-MxPHtMm
     
    Honest! I even bought a Mashima motor for it from 3SMR (a 1024) . All I need now is wheels gears, courage.and time...
     
    The real thing was shedded at Louth from 1925 to 1955, and then seems to have ended up around Peterborough , working the Stamford line until withdrawal in 1958 . So it's more or less in period and not far away from Blacklade - and it would look rather more sensible on a 2 coach train than a 2-6-4T
     
    At £35 I reckoned I had a bargain - Craftsman had a good name , and etched brass should be readily solderable. On peeping inside the box, the kit is unstarted, and it has preformed cab roof, tanks and boiler. Very promising
     
    Wheels - well that's a question. A full set of Romfords for this kit is listed at £44.74 - and that's the 2013 price. Those are 20 spoke drivers . and I'd like insulated wheels both sides, as this will be DCC. Meanwhile Scalelink offer plastic centred 18 spoke drivers for just under £4 a driver. Is 18 spoke right? I can't see the whole wheel on a photo. But if I count a half wheel - I get 10 spoke if I include both the start and finish spokes of the semi-circle, and 9 if I only include one. But if I include both doesn't that mean there are only 8 spokes left uncounted....?
  16. 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
  17. Ravenser
    Having decided on a target loco (31 415 , MR then BS) http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/296/entry-14486-a-decent-31-prototypes-and-problems/ and with an Airfix body in hand , what needs doing?
     
    Firstly, remove the numbers and symbol with surgical spirit and a cotton bud. Next , a swift appraisal.
     
    The Airfix model was state of the art in it's day, but that was 35 years ago. Still, many competent judges seem to rate the moulding highly in terms of basic shape
     
    The body side steps and roof filler recess need removing. An etched fan grill to be fitted - A1 Models etch in stock. Nothing to be done to the main radiator grills. Flushglaze - SE Finecast pack in stock. Engine room pipe runs - I have a set of whitemetal castings in stock to use . These will sit behind the glazing and have to be done after glazing and therefore after painting. Cab door handrails are beyond me to replace neatly, so leave them.
     
    Much of the work is on the cab front. Cab doors should be plated - I have an A1 Model etch available. The moulded inverted-L handrails are grim and must be replaced in wire , and a top handrail added. Replacing the lampirons is too ambitious.
     
    The buffers are almost 2mm too short compared with a drawing. A1 oval buffers are between 0.5mm and 1mm too long but more substantial - a marked improvement even if not quite perfect. Once Kadees are in place on the chassis it will be possible to see whether any buffer beam pipework can be fitted.
     
    As far as I'm aware, no significant modifications apply to the chassis . This was one of the better runners on my teenage layout - with a decoder fitted it runs quite nicely even if it growls a bit. It didn't see a lot of use so it's a virtually new mechanism
     
    Airfix took the yellow right down the front to the bottom of the buffer beam. A few locos - I think on the WR - had this but normally the buffer beam was black and this substantially changes the look. Photos show a recess under the cab doors producing a notch in the bottom edge of the cab front. Airfix don't model this. All shots except very early ones show two little wings on the shoulders of the cab doors . They're quite noticeable - but Airfix omitted them and I don't see a way to model them neatly so they'll have to be omitted. Possibly windscreen wipers
     
    There's no cab interior of any kind - some basic provision needs to be made
     
    This little list does show why the Airfix 31 didn't really convince me from the front
     
    And here's a shot of the bodyshell with work well under way
     

     
    An A1 etched roof grill has been fitted (I think this is actually meant for the Lima 31 not the Airfix model) , and all the side steps and roof recess filled. The filler I have is not great stuff - it crumbles away at the slightest provocation leaving a pockmark - and I really need to invest in something better. For once the Milliput worked and set - evidently this time the stuff wasn't past it's working life - and was much better to sand down
     
    The etches for plated doors are in place: these were quite difficult to get flush , or reasonably flush , over the underlying moulding despite my filing down.
     
    The replacement handrails are on. It is surprisingly difficult to bend them up exactly alike on both sides despite using one of Bill Bedford's handrail jigs. I was rather nervous about this part having recently acquired a roughly modified second hand Airfix 31 for a spare chassis and seen how crude its replacement handrails were - but mine seem ok
     
    The new buffers are in place - AI Railmatch oval brass buffers from the bits box . Possibly fractionally long - but a good deal better to my eye than the anemic Airfix efforts
     
    The body has been sprayed in Rail blue with a Railmatch aerosol
  18. 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.
  19. Ravenser
    A very long time ago, in my teens, I tried to build a layout. It was my first diesel layout and it was definitely modern image : not only was it BR Blue , it was contemporary. For some reason I decided I wanted some parcels vans and I duly bought a pair of Lima BGs and a pair of Lima CCTs. These things have been lurking in boxes ever since the half built layout was abandoned and dismantled (Several years in Australia, followed by university , didn't exactly help progress)
     
    Several decades later, there is still no alternative model in 4mm for the BR CCT. So far as I'm aware there has never even been a kit. Blacklade is small so small vehicles are attractive, and the idea of a CCT as a "swinger" - DMU tail traffic - seemed worth pursuing. When the layout was started I bought one of the Hornby re-releases, but although the body finish and the wheel profile is much better nothing else has changed since the Lima model first appeared 35 years ago.
     
    I had a little time for modelling a couple of months back, and I finally managed to tackle the long intended rework of one of the CCTs - bits had been in stock for a couple of years
     
    Firstly , some shots of the real thing, rather folorn, at the Lincolnshire Wolds Railway this Easter:
     

     

     
    And here is a shot of an unmodified Lima vehicle:
     

     
    (To be strictly accurate, this has an unmodified Lima body with a Hornby underframe swapped under it. I have 3 CCTs, and I decided in the latter stages of upgrading the first one that as I had castings and etched brake gear for only two, and as repainting the body and transfers was a major job, I was only ever going to do 2 CCTs, the Hornby body would save me a job, and the spare components could be assembled into a complete vehicle and sold on second hand)
     
    There are a number of problems with the original Lima models.
     
    The self-coloured plastic bodies do not look good . The windows are not flush , and the recessed effect with slab sides is bad.The internal window bars are just scratches on the glazing
    The wheels are badly wrong - something which should be obvious from the prototype shots. They should be 3'6" wheels (14mm) but Lima fitted 12mm pizza-cutters.
    The underframe is fairly approximate: the buffers are too small and wrong , the brake lever's not much good, the axleboxes and springs are pretty representational, and the brake shoes are an extension of what passes for J hangers
    The roof vents are hopelessly inadequete.
    The massive tension locks are a problem if like me you are using Kadees. No NEM pockets here.
     
    I've probably overlooked several second-order problems in that list , but there's quite enough to be getting on with.
     
    The first step was to tackle the body. The roof was removed - it is a one piece clear moulding, with the glazing on both sides as an integral part, so you have to push in the windows to release it. Then the body was released from the chassis (push in the 4 lugs from the chassis and try not to break them) , and the body sprayed with 2 coats of Railmatch blue . At which point the can expired, but the Lima lettering was virtually invisible by then. Once dry I used a packet of SE Finecast flushglazing which has been in stock for years for this job, stuck in place with UHU - the improvement is huge. Glazing bars were concocted from the spare elements in the Roxey Van B/CCT etch, cut down to fit
     
    The side glazing was cut away from the roof moulding with a razor saw, leaving a small strip about 2mm deep below the guttering to locate the roof . (I had to file this down in places to clear the flushglaze inserts). The very perfunctory roof vents were removed with a file, and I just about managed to avoid damaging the roof ribs in the process. I fitted whitemetal torpedo vents, as a man at Warley sold me some as he believed they were correct for a CCT . Neither the photos in Parkin's book, or on Paul Barlett's site are conclusive, but I've a nagging feeling the real vehicles may have shell vents.
     
    The big problems lie with the underframe. The undersized wheels cannot be readily replaced because not only are them on Lima's 24.5mm European axles, but the bearing holes in the plastic axle guards were set too low, to compensate and adjust the ride height. Not that Lima's representations of axleboxes, springs and W irons are much good anyway
     
    There are 3 possible approaches at this point.
     
    - I know Captain Kernow devised a tool to bore out new bearing holes in the Lima axle guards , and set them at the correct height, and this was written up in an article in an early Hornby Magazine. I couldn't identify the issue in question, and it's probably out of print so this route was closed. I think he left most of the underframe largely "as is"
     
    - I believe Bill Bedford has produced an etched brass kit for a CCT underframe. However I also understand that he doesn't provide any instructions with his products on the grounds that anyone who needs instructions is unfit to build them. My etched kit experience is strictly limited - while I might well be able to build a well designed kit with good instructions , I stand no chance with a naked etch to a complex design which may or may not cater for OO and which may require unspecified modifications in unspecified areas to do so . So that route was not an option, and 15 quid stayed in my bank account
     
    - The third route is to cut away the Lima W irons and springs , and replace the lot with whitemetal castings from ABS. As I didn't fancy my chances of assembling whitemetal axleguards dead square, especially on such a long wheelbase 4 wheeler, this also meant etched brass W irons - which automatically results in a compensated underframe: highly desirable here. This was the route I took.
     
    This shot of the underframe as modified should show the work involved:
     

     
    The whole of the central spine of the underframe has to come out, and so does the floor of the underframe in order to recess the W irons suffiently - I glued a large piece of 40 thou across the area to provide a new false floor. This means you have to discard the long iron plate that Lima use as a ballast weight, since it will no longer fit. I aradited lead sheet into the centre section of the underframe , sufficent to bring the total weight of the CCT up to 75g . All the components and subassemblies were put into the pan of a set of kitchen scales and lead added to make up the weight (Health and Safety note - this is all my scales are ever used for , so there is no risk of heavy metal contamination of food)
     
    Chopping the whitemetal W irons and locating areas away from the axlebox/spring was a very awkward job - every single J hanger broke from the casting in the process and all had to be stuck back with cyano at least 3 times. In retrospect this was unnecessary trouble on the fixed axle - they should just have been stuck in place on the solebar - a scrap of microstrip needs to be slipped underneath as packing . This should be omitted on the rocking axle else it won't rock - and there you really do have to stick the darn things back on the whitemetal spikes at the ends of the spring
     
    I chickened out on thinning down the whitemetal castings before sticking them to the W irons with cyano, so the model is probably a little chunky around the axleboxes . However the overall improvement in appearance is so great I can live with this The W irons are MJT BR heavy duty plate , which are probably correct. The etch supplies coupling hooks - which Lima omitted, though I seem to have used ABS whitemetal ones
     
    One or two bits of struts were lost in the process of attacking the underframe with a cutting disc - my el-cheapo fixed speed mini drill runs at a nominal 18,000 rpm which may be too slow (t's hardly ever been used - which doesn't encourage me to splash out on a more sophisticated one).
    These were reinstated with microstrip and damage where I had to thin the solebars from behind to get the compensation units in patched as best I could. I tried to save the brake levers but eventually concluded they had to go anyway. I drew reference lines across the plasticard floor sections with a set square to enable me to locate the compensation units but I'm still not 100% sure they are absolutely square : all you see is through a small hole in the etch , and to compound the uncertainty my lens prescription does interesting fish-eye things to plane surfaces (think Esscher's goldfishbowl-world engraving, only very very slightly) . However the underframe seems to run okay. Wheels are Hornby 14 mm carriage wheels .
     
    I didn't have an exact match to the buffers fitted - the nearest I could find were a packet of InterCity Models wagon buffers. The fabricated lower-door stops were represented by gluing a cube of 40 thou plasticard to the casting with cyano. Whatever their imperfections they look the part - and a good deal better than Lima's efforts
     
    Brake levers came from a Mainly Trains etched fret drawn by Ian Rice which just happened to have 2 sets of long CCT levers on it (It was at this point I decided I was only ever going to do 2 CCTs). Perhaps they are a bit heavily cranked in order to clear the castings but again they are a big improvement
     
    The tension locks were chopped off with Xurons, 40 thou plasticard glued underneith and the hole made good with scraps of plasticard and liberal quantities of solvent (not filler , as it needs to take the fixing screw for the Kadees, which are long centreset , to cope with the buffers - I think they are no 46)
     
    Lettering is from the HMRS pressfix sheet for BR coaches. I gather Express Parcels is a rare branding but it appears on a 1980s reference photo so is in period and the CCT looked a bit bare without it. I had some trouble with the data lettering - one panel broke up , one was slightly damaged by weathering washes and that meant I used up all the CCT lettering on the sheet - another reason for using the ready finished Hornby body for the next one and stopping there... I had already cannibalised CCT lettering for the PMV I built some time ago . End electrification flashes are old Woodhead transfers, held on with varnish - the CCT and the Van B have used up my last old style electrification flashes and I must get some more (from Fox?
     
    The underframe was painted Railmatch Roof dirt, and weathering featured washes mixed from frame dirt and roof dirt , partly taken off with a cotten bud soaked in whitespirit
     
    The roof was a bit of a nightmare with at least 4 coats with various mixes and washes needed before I got something which was roughly the right shade and reasonably even , not streaky. A coat of enamel matt varish over the lot finally killed the sheen and blended it in.
     
    The whole thing recieved a final coat of Railmatch matt varish from a can (along with the Van B and some 2mm containers) . At which point the can expired...
     
    Here's the finished result:
     
     

     
    And if anyone knows how to delete the duplicate large version of the underframe phot I'd be grateful . It's not showing up on the posting text
  20. Ravenser

    Safety Valve

    By Ravenser,

    This is by way of a moan... I'm trying to sort out various bits-and-pieces jobs, and one is to replace the Bachmann/ESU 3 function 21 pin decoder in the 150 , which doesn't support advanced consisting, with a rather expensive TCS 1344 21-pin decoder that does. I have no need whatsoever for 6 functions - it was just that 21 pin decoders are few and far between, and a DMU that won't work in multiple is rather a nuisence on a layout where operational interest is supposed to be boosted by joining and splitting the things
     
    (Memo to Messrs Lovatt and Kohler - consisting is a Useful Thing, and even your cheap decoders should support it. I don't give a stuff about Mars Lights, function mapping and flickering fireboxes, but I do care about Advanced Consisting in DMUs)
     
    Attempt one was an ignominous failure - I couldn't get the body off because the two small screws at the gangway end wouldn't come out , being too small for any of my jewellers' screwdrivers . Having bought a new set of jewellers screwdrivers from a local shop, for a couple of quid - this time with some very small ones in - I managed to get them out with a 1.0mm flat screwdriver . The screws, though crossheaded, were way too small for my smallest crosshead Phillips screwdriver (00 - what else - it seems crosshead screwdrivers are numbered like paintbrushes or model railway gauges...). Thankfully I hadn't mashed the heads fatally in the first attempt
     
    The game plan was to switch the Bachmann decoder into my nice new ROD 04 . The decoder sits in the tender and all you have to do is remove the tender top . Carefully poised upside down , using the packaging as a protecting cradle, out come the back 2 screws withb a 1.0mm flat , cos they are way smaller than 00 crosshead. The front two won't come out.....
     
    The ROD is not going to be up and running this Bank Holiday weekend
     
    A hasty check of the Squires catalogue reveals - in 3 pages of jewellers' screwdrivers - just one set with 0000 screwdriver , at £13.99 . Which I will have to order - tools, Bachmann locos, for the opening of....
     
    Question to Barwell - why are you fixing together parts of your models which lots of people will need to undo , using fastenings that require tools which are very difficult to source in order to shift them???
  21. Ravenser

    Route One

    By Ravenser,

    With DCC Installing the point motors and decoder isn't necessarily the end of the story. Yes, it gets the points working , but more than just that is possible, and yesterday I took the final steps in commissioning the installation
     
    Working the points one by one through the handset is a little slow and clunky . Probably no slower than flicking a set of switches on a DC panel, but just as liable to operator error. I suspect that one of the major causes of derailment and intermittant running on the average layout is the operator having failed to set some point in the route somewhere, and I'm no better at it than anyone else
     
    Much more sophisticated automated approaches are possible with DCC, and most of them cost a lot of money. In fact I believe several small building societies are now offering mortgages of up to 80% LTV for first time buyers of Railroad & Co software... Having been born in Yorkshire I'm not going down any route that involves several hundred euros and the installation of lots of special electronic devices sourced from someone unpronounciable in the Black Forest.
     
    Fortunately that's not necessary. The NCE Powercab - which is what I have - offers a feature called "macros" . These allow you to store instructions to up to 8 accessory decoder addresses , and send them as a single operation. There's even a nice prominent button labelled "macros" between "select loco" and select accessory". Just press it. type in the number of the macro and press return - and instructions to up to 8 accessory addresses can be sent at once (I'm being very careful in my wording here - both the MERG point decoder and the DS64 accessory decoder have 4 outputs and therefore 4 addresses . The Lenz LS150 has 6. And one output/address can work two points , typically as a cross-over. )
    The PowerCab supports 16 of these macros , numbered 0-15 (I presume the Procab does the same)
     
    Blacklade has 9 points (2 of which form a single slip), two point decoders, and 7 addresses in use - there are 2 crossovers, wired as pairs. There are 3 platforms in the station , one of which (Pl 2) can be reached by either front or back routes , 3 roads in the fiddle yard and the fuelling point. That gives 4 x 4 = 16 possible route options , though in reality it's only 14 , as you can't reach the fuelling point from platform 3 (the back platform) or from the back exit from Platform 2
     
    So each possible route on the layout can be given it's own macro which will fire all the points necessary to set it up with a single instruction. Full entrance/exit route setting - for nowt. 'Cos it comes as a standard feature on the Powercab....
     
    The first step was to check each point address and work out which way was Normal and which Reverse (these are the 2 options in NCE - Digitrax prefer Closed and Thrown). I drew a very crude panel diagram in pencil to record this - the standard convention being that Normal is a thick continuous line, and Reverse is a break in the line . Then I started programming the macros starting with macro 1 (Platform 1 to fuelling point) , programming the correct setting for each point in the route with reference to the pencil diagram. When route started to involve the slip it seemed like a good idea to run something through to test it and make sure I had the polarity right through the slip, so out came a153. Program macro , press button, enter macro number, hear points throw, run train. And so on steadily down the list of possible permutations
     
    After about an hour and a half I had a layout where I could set up any possible route in one go , just by pressing a button and entering a number . And the appropriate signals came off as well.. The 153 ran slowly and reliably back and forth across the layout.
     
    For ease of operation, I've written out all the macro numbers as a table on the back of an old business card and stuck it on the backscene at the station end. I've also drawn out the panel diagram neatly on two business cards , with point numbers, so that if I have to change points "manually" I do at least know which way to select on the menu . It doesn't really matter which way is Normal for a point so long as you know which option to select to set the point in the direction you want. The amount of time wasted trying each option in turn until the point moved was embarrassing, and trying to work out the number of a given point without aclear memory aid is very difficult - which is why the real railways put a block diagram with all the lever numbers marked in every signal box. I'd strongly recommend drawing out a panel diagram whatever your system, for these reasons alone.
     
    I don't usually do DCC techno- posts and this posting may leave folk with a different DCC system cold. However the PowerCab is quite a popular DCC system and I don't think I've seen any comment on using this particular feature before. Obviously 16 route macros will only go so far on a large layout, where there are more than 16 possible routes and some involve a lot more than 8 points; though I gather from another thread that great northern has been experimenting with macros on Peterborough North. However you wouldn't use a PowerCab to run a large layout anyway, and for the average small terminus 16 macros should be more than enough, especially if the fiddle yard is a sector plate or traverser. It really is a powerful feature to be able to set up any route completely and reliabilily just with a single entry , and the improvement in speed and ease of operation is dramatic
     
    Something similar should be possible on an number of other systems. The Digitrax DS64 accessory decoder supports "routes" at the level of the decoder itself. Unfortunately you can only set up routes involving points controlled by two different DS64s if they are linked by Loconet, the Digitrax cab bus, which means that you can only get comprehensive route setting thisway if you have a Digitrax system. I think Lenz support route setting , though I don't know any details and I have a suspicion it may even be available with the Multimaus
  22. Ravenser

    Points Arising

    By Ravenser,

    Things are a bit heavy at work at the moment which is probably why this posting's three weeks late, but the wiring is finally done. Well, sort of just about.
     
    The new DS64 decoder is in , the NCE switch it is disconnected, the last two motors (Cobalt and Tortoise) are in , they're all wired up , and they work. I admit that one half of the slip is only about 98% reliable, but this was clearly the stiffest tie bar on the layout and always going to be the place where any intermittant incomplete throw was going to appear
     
    The whole lot is very tightly packed , as you can see - which was always the issue and why it took so long:
     

     
    The Cobart Blue seems slightly more positive in its operation than the Tortoises, even though I've now replaced the wire supplied by Circuitron with something thicker. Also very useful is the solder free connector block - if you have to disconnect or swap over wirews to reverse the direction of throw it's dead easy
     
    A minor benefit is that theboard is potentially self sustaining. Although the DS64 is powered by an independent 12V DC supply from the stabilised converter, and this requires the 16V AC feed from the other board, , in its absence it defaults to drawing power through the DCC data connection. This means the decoder works even without being connected to the other board. The Hoffman motor controlling half the crossover doesn't work (since this draws 16V AC) but the other 4 motors do
     
    The next stage, when things calm down a bit and I can have another play with the layout, is to draw up a panel diagram, showing which way is normal and reverse for each point and their numbers, to stick on the back or end of the layout. And once that's done, I can program Route Macros (a feature provided by the NCE system) for each possible route. So in future all I need do is key in the correct macro and an entire route through the layout comes off, complete with signals. The PowerCab supports 16 macros - there are a total of 14 possible routes on the layout . (For the curious - Platform 1 to fuelling point, FY branch, FY main 1, FY main 2; Platform 2 via crossover to pl 1, to fuelling point, FY branch, FY main 1 & FY main 2; Platform 2 straight ahead to FY branch, FY main 1 and FY main 2; Platform 3 to the three FY roads). Full entrance/exit route control with no extra wiring or cost, and no control panel at all
     
    I've also noted the wiring colour code on the back of a business card and stuck it in a suitable spot under the boards
     
    What hasn't been done is to install the ground signal under the bridge controlling exit from the fuelling point - it will be on the left of the track in this view, taken from the chair in front of the computer looking to my left...:
     

     
    This is because I've run out of contracts on the relevant point motors (the Hoffmann has only one, for the frog, and the spare contacts on the Tortoise at the other end of the crossover are used to switch the 16V AC supply to power the Hoffmann) . The only way to work the ground signal is as an opposed pair of LEDs inserted into one of the power feeds to the Tortoise: one LED will light if current passes in one direction, and the other if current is reversed....
     
    I also intend to install a spare Erkon 3 aspect signal + feather in the fiddle yard as a visible indicator of what routes are set, in an effort to minimise the risk of driving into a point set against the train, and I have to sort out the electromagnet I wired (and which doesn't work) and wire up the other two. I suspect the issue is that I didn't scrape the lacquer off the wires throughly enough to get good electrical joints- afriend suggested using avery large iron (I have a 70W in the workbench) to burn off the lacquer
     
    But I'm leaving thisfinal round of wiring for the moment - the next major task is going to be building the screen walls round the station , the last big scenic job outstanding. Then it's down to detailing, stock, and operation
     
    It should now be possible to use the layout as a programming track while in situ in the study - meaning I don't have to set the whole thing up in the sitting room first. I just need to get at a suitable power socket...
  23. Ravenser
    I said in a posting on my workbench blog that layouts required seperate comment, and I've remarked a couple of times that I got myself hopelessly overcommitted on far too many fronts , even before work matters absorbed all my energy in the first half of last year. The two things are linked..... so perhaps a survey of my layout commitments is over due, at least to show where I'm coming from
     
    For quite a number of years I was extremely heavily committed to a layout project in my club . It wasn't without it's frustrations and difficulties, but I suspect a good many clubs have housed a struggling project with large ambitions and limited numbers of people and experience actually behind it. Eventually it all got too much, especially when coupled with administrative responsibilities, active membership of a society, long working and commuting hours, and the household chores arising from being single. Something had to give and late in 2009 I dropped out of the project, in the hope of getting my life back - only to be hit by a train coming the other way.
     
    Changed personal circumstances now largely rule out my becoming involved with a club layout group again , even if I wished to. I no longer work near my club, and just getting there costs almost £20 and involves an hour and a half of travelling each way. I've managed it only once in the last 6 months, and while I certainly hope to do better in 2011, those aren't conditions which allow you to be actively involved with a project. And the project itself has been taken on by new people and gone in other directions. There is a club nearer to me where I have one or two contacts, which has a couple of layout projects each of which might connect with some of my interests - but to be honest I'm rather enjoying my freedom and I'm really not sure I want to get involved with layout groups and the Exhibition Circuit in that way again. Quite a bit of my life had to be put on hold in the years when I was spending 2 nights a week at the club and getting home at gone 11 o'clock, and it's nice to have the chance to pursue other interests inside and outside the hobby again.
     
    So that's one bale of straw - a big one - out of the way.... Plenty still to go.
     
    First and foremost there's Blacklade, which is nominally the subject of this layout blog. Unfortunately the lack of postings in the last year would suggest - quite correctly - that nothing has been happening on it. The job is 85% done - I just haven't been in a position to focus on the layout and carry out the few remaining major jobs.
     
    For those who haven't been living in these parts since the last century, a bit of background may be in order. About 4 years, and 2 iterations of RMWeb, ago , there was the Layout Building Challenge. The rules for this were build a layout in 12 months, with a maximum footprint of just 6 square feet, including fiddle yards. Andy Y's Keyhaven started as part of the Challenge and so did a couple of other rather fine layouts . My initial thoughts and a photo of the layout as it stood 14 months ago (and still stands) are in the first posting in this blog , not very far down the list.
     
    One of the major reasons for building it was that I'd started to acquire - almost involuntarily, as you do - stock for use on the club project. I wasn't really supposed to be a stock provider but I'd started picking up a few brightly coloured DMUs that were being discounted and would fit the project perfectly. It was only really backup stock so I didn't work on it, but when we ran the club project there were inevitably gaps to stop up, and you get sucked in. I tucked the boxes in the gap between the bookshelves and the wall and before I'd realised what was happening the pile was 3' high and climbing. Whoops.
     
    The project I was involved with was DCC, so I needed a test track and DCC programming track at home to enable me to do my own installations. I didn't want to be dependant on others to chip locos , especially if that was going to mean paying for a topline decoder every time (My normal fleet decoder is a TCS T1 , which at one point was available for £11.50 sans plug. Prices have climbed a bit since then, I'm afraid) . It occured to me that if I had a layout at home on which I could run this stock , it would give me an incentive to do something with it, and would at least ensure that it all ran properly. And if I could also use the various bits of stock that I had for what was supposed to be my real modelling interest (1980s ER secondary) that would be even better. There were enough gaps to require a bit of retail therapy, plus some kit building, which was better still... If the club project ever fell through or my stock wasn't actually required on it I'd have a Plan B (If this seems a bit dour, somewhere at the bottom of that pile is an elderly Hornby 155 in Provincial, bought to be converted into 153s in support of a previous proposed club project. That dropped through without anything actually being built, and I don't think the 155 has ever run. I suppose one day I'll tweak the wheels, stick in a Macoder which lurks at the bottom of the decoder bag - it's all it deserves - and there'll be another early period DMU. Yes , I know they were all allocated to Canton. It's running trials after visiting Derby for overhaul. It's nil cost - and quite as far down my list of jobs as it is down the pile of stock...)
     
    As it happens, I've ended up there by a different route . However, although I'm now out of the club layout game, with a couple of exceptions, all my stock fits Blacklade very nicely.... Blacklade gets erected in the sitting room when I need to program a decoder, and I even managed one short running session about 2 months ago
     
    I need to motorise the last three points, finish off the wiring, and build the station structure (largely surrounding walls) . I also need to sort out the one major problem to date - the Marcway points are very stiff and the wire supplied with the Tortoises is too flexible, resulting in points not throwing completely. I bought some suitable steel wire for replacements at Warley just over a year ago, but haven't got round to fitting them. If - a very big if - I can get this all done by the middle of the year , there are two modest group events I might just take Blacklade to . Although I originally intended that it wouldn't be exhibited - which is why the boards are 4'3" long - I now have a car, and a bit of measuring suggests I might just get them in with the back seats folded down, and without having to fold back the passenger seat - so a second operator could travel in the car. We shall see.
     
    This is very much my main layout now, and while I'm not really sure if I would want to be on the circuit, I would at least like to finish it and if possible take it out in public a couple of times, just to show that I can actually build something that looks ok and runs ok. At which stage, point made, I might bow and retire
     
    Then there's the Boxfile, which I've referred to from time to time as my shunting plank. It does have a proper name and it's actually two boxfiles, linked, but it's the Boxfile . It was built for the DOGA competition some years ago, and represents a smoky hole in East London which handles a few wagons: the track plan is a loop and two sidings(sort of) and it functions as a shunting puzzle, with a loco and 7 wagons. Period is post war - ranging from the early 50s when the Y3 is running/slipping to the mid 60s, and if I manage to build the Y5 in the cupboard it may even run as early as 1948
     

     
    One of the attractions of the exercise was that it allowed me to build all those interesting wagon kits which are strictly out of period for 1980s Lincolnshire - but which had somehow found their way into my cupboard nonetheless. Suddenly I was free to go out and buy all those kits I really fancied but which were normally strictly off-limits for me; not surprisingly I've ended up with way more wagons than are needed to operate the boxfile. About 4 times as many, to be precise - I'm now slowly reaching the latter part of Tranche 4 - and four times as many locos as well (05, Hunslet tram, Y3 and Knightwing shunter to be precise). I've got a part built Branchlines chassis for an 04 sitting on the bookcase, and a second hand Stephen Poole kit for one of these lurks in the cupboard
     
    :
     
    I believe North Woolwich museum has closed: does anyone know where the Y5 is and whether it's in good keeping?
     
    Quite a few of these wagons have passed through my workbench thread ORBC- the Boxfile is where my steam-age wagons end up. It may seem excessive producing decent kitbuilt wagons just for a boxfile, but turn it the other way round - the Boxfile does at least give me something to run my wagons on. I
     
    've also salvaged and recycled a few of my early teenage efforts, and got decent wagons for the 'file out of them.
     

     
    I originally posted these shots at the start of the very first incarnation of ORBC on RMWeb. The Conflat is "scratchbuilt" to match the Bachmann container (the old Red Panda clasp braked chassis kit, with a spare Parkside floor and side/chain pockets added in styrene) and the Mogo was stripped down , patched up and reworked from a teenage effort
     
    The finished wagon is seen here alone with a Ratio Mink built at much the same age, and also recycled and refurbished:
     

     
    This was one of the reasons behind the whole exercise - get things out of the cupboard, get them sorted out , and get them into use so I have something to show for myself. Both wagons have seen a bit of service since they were done and I'm quite pleased with them
     
    I'd hoped that the boxfile would give me a layout I could run quickly easily, and potentially a lot at home, and it was designed to be set up and run on the dining table. But the sheer pressure of other commitments and stuff needing to be built has meant that this has only happened occasionally. Now I have a bit of time again, I hope that will change. But at least this is one layout I finished (which is more than can be said for the COV B kit, which is supposed to run on it..)
     
    Then there's the little layout which a small informal group I'm involved with are nominally building. We meet up every 6 weeks or so, and it was suggested that we build a small layout as a focus for our activities. So far two baseboards have been built (not by me) and a third is required, for the fiddle yard. That's as far as matters have got.
     
    The other members of the group are a bit older than me, so this layout was only ever going to be steam or steam/diesel. Since anumber of group members would be running stock they've had for some years, it will be DC - in any case there's very little advantage to DCC on a small steam layout of this kind. Track will be Peco code 75, and the track plan is an Iain Rice design , Broadwell Green, which appeared in the fifth issue of the late lamented MORILL. Although based on Fairford, we decided to do it as a minor Great Eastern branch line terminus. My wagons off the boxfile would be ideal, and so would be the Dublo 20 I detailed up a couple of years ago. I've got a second hand whitemetal N5 in a box somewhere... I can't quite recall whether the headshunt was long enough to take an ROD on the pickup goods or not. I remember a B12 would go , but a Sandringham definitely wouldn't. A Hornby L1 would certainly be easier than a kit built Gobbler
     
    My potential contribution includes a couple of Ratio ex LNWR coach kits, as handed down via the M&GN, one of which has got as far as a preliminary undercoat of brown on the sides before construction starts, and a GE station - one of StreetLevel Models' kits sits in the pile. But I'm not the prime mover on this one, and, until it starts to develop, this one is on the backburner as far as my own modelling is concerned.
     
    Then there's my light rail project, Tramlink. I had seen the Alphagraphix kits for light rail, and a book on Croydon Tramlink, then newly opened . I thought a model light rail unit could be made via that route, at modest cost - at that time Mark Hughes was offering a whitemetal kit which would cost at least £100 all up when motorised, and I reckoned that this way I could do it for about £35, with flushglazing and livery ready applied. There's no point building models if you've nowhere to run them, and I rapidly decided a little diorama layout based on scenes from Croydon Tramlink could be done. The unique selling point was that it would be entirely card, even the stock
     

     
    I was younger then, and innocent, and my life was a great deal less encumbered. I was also a great deal less experienced , and several errors were made. The layout was making good progress until I found my second LRV , a Croydon unit , wouldn't take any kiind of curve , and the first (Metrolink) didn't like a reverse curve through a Setrack point in one direction, so it derailed every time it reversed out of the cripple siding. And at that point I was shanghai'd into the club project and the whole thing came to a grinding halt. It got a little further than the photos show, but not that much
     

     
    Tramlink sits, boxed up , in the study, under a pile of magazines, and gets dragged out occasionally when I need a DC test track. A wire's broken underneath so only one board is currently live. And I look at the buildings and think they scrubbed up well (and that the photostat mockup of the warehouse needs to be replaced with the actual kit), and then it goes back in its box again. Two boards , 3' long by 11" wide with integral plywood backscenes, opposable and forming a case , small enough to take on public transport and get through the automatic ticket gates
     
    Then we come to the shadowy realm inhabited by the Ghosts of Layouts Past and Yet To Come (complete with Prieser figure of Bob Cratchitt carrying a 30lb goose)
     
    The first spirits to visit us are those of Ravenser Mk1 and Mk2. Ravenser was a minimum space (in theory) freight only layout set at an imaginary small port in N. Lincolnshire. Think Boston Dock (or Gunness) transported to the banks of the Humber and the top end of the N.Lincs Light Railway from Scunthorpe and you have the scenario. It used a plan published in the June 1988 RM , entitled White Swan Yard, which incorporated a fierce curve, but I enlarged the board a bit and added a fiddle yard.
     
    I made lots of mistakes with this layout. The curve proved unworkably sharp - derailments due to coupling issues were frequent. An elderly Wrenn 20 and Lima 08 proved hopeless for reliable running. Initially I thought only a low standard would be practical on such a portable layout, a decision I rapidly regretted, and could not wholly reverse.Setrack points were another very bad decision: I learned a lot about wheel and track standards as a result. A Lima 20 upgraded with Ultrascales and all wheel pickup could not be got to stay on the track round the loop: I never had the heart to tackle the body as a result. Ravenser Mk1 resulted in my first serious successful attempts at kit built and upgraded RTR wagons, through the fleet was ultimately limited because I ran out of space in the stock box (a converted cassette case)
     
    Ravenser Mk2 was to be built around two walls of the study in my new flat. A design was prepared , this time incorporating a small passenger station. I was going to have 20s, 31s, 114s , maybe a 105. It was never started, because I got involved in a club project. However Ravenser the layout has its place in this story because the stock is slowly being recycled into other projects. The 20s, 31s, and DMU kits can be used by Blacklade running early period. The 03 could be reused for the oil tank on Blacklade, as ultimately could the Bachmann 08. The Knightwing shunter is an interloper on the boxfile, and some of the wagons have gone the same way. Most of the Crane Train I was buil;ding is being recycled for the early period CE train on Blacklade. I still have the buildings , including a scratchbuilt 18th century warehouse from Louth and a freelance 1950s office block. And the baseboard, after cluttering the study for many years, went to the tip a fortnight ago.
     
    Then , older and fainter, come the spirits of the trams - the other Blacklade Artamon Square, and the possible London tram layout.
     
    Long, long, ago, in a far-away galaxy, sorry continent, a teenage boy built a OO tramway in his bedroom. I would very much have liked it to be a model based on the Sydney tramways, but kits were not readily available. I only ever saw such things once - someone was selling home made kits done with glassfibre resin (like wot you use to make surfboards) at Sydney exhibition one year . He had some of them on his layout, built up and they looked good. I only had enough money on me to buy one kit, and no motorising units - so I passed . I'm still kicking myself.Scratchbuilding wasn't an option for me then - Sydney was into crossbench cars big time (and a K-class is still fairly high up my list of Things I Don't Want to Scratchbuild). Anyone got a kit for a Sydney corridor car?
     
    What was available was a Mehano US outline model which I bashed into a British single decker, vaguely resembling the LCC's single decker cars for the Kingsway Subway (guess whose references comprised a couple of magazine articles, a booklet on the Kingsway Subway, and NSW Tramcar Handbook Parts1+2). There were also BEC whitemetal kits available, and I built two - an LCC B , and a balcony car. Both were modified to fully enclosed with 20 thou plasticard and painted for the fictitious Blacklade Corporation Tramways in a simplified version of Sydney's new Mercedes Benz bus livery which I rather liked. One of the minor mysteries of transport history is why Regional Railways then adopted a Sydney bus livery...
     
    I've got two photos of how Artamon Square looked when I dismantled it - annoyingly the scanner refuses to scan them, so you'll have to make do with a blurred shot at a very early stage of proceedings:
     

     
    This does at least show - very badly - the Mehano car, the BEC LCC car (almost certainly still under construction) and the general arrangement. More buildings - the Builder Plus terraces and detached Victorian houses- and some scratchbuilt buildings as well - followed. Builder Plus even did - briefly - a big shop based on Hamleys. I had that, and cut it down to fit the tapering site. This was the first Blacklade Artamon Square..... I reckon the railway station I'm now building must sit in the cut-out.
     
    The stock and buildings came back with us when we returned from Australia and have been sitting in boxes ever since. I collected the remaining buildings from Mum's loft at Christmas and brought them home - most of the Superquick and some of the BuilderPlus were too far gone to keep, but the terraces, Hamley's and the scratchbuild stuff is ok. The trams are stored in the cupboard, though my efforts with the 20 thou had shed too many window pillars and had to be removed. Thorough refurbishment will be needed.
     
    Track was OO , of course , and the back story said this was a 4' gauge system, like Derby and Bradford. Nice little get out clause
     
    Over the years since I've picked up 2 of the Keilcraft Birmingham kits (one for 50p of the DEMU second hand stall) and one of their West Ham kit , a Tower Models Feltham and E/1 (all plastic) another LCC B (ABS/BEC) an LCC stores van (ABS/BEC) and an LCC single deck subway car.
     
    You can see where this is going... I keep picking subjects with overhead, and keep not building the said overhead. The LCC was a conduit system - so no wires. I've got plenty of reference material. I'd definitely want North London not South London , but all the North London routes bar those through the Subway went by 1940. I want a Subway route. I want something more than a straight length of track (Blacklade had a dogbone loop double track route, with a single track branch, and a depot) Highgate Archway in the mid 30s has distinct possibilities....
     
    I'm definitely not committed to this of course. Or do I build the Keilcraft Birmingham cars and revive Blacklade? If I see a cheap Corgi Feltham around I really should grab it. The Festival of Tramway Modelling is back at Kew Bridge this year.... Maybe if I have time on my hands I build the Keilkraft kit for this:
     

     
    Last and faintest ghosts are the other scales. Someone gave me a low emission Dapol 66. I've subsequently acquired another one, a Farish 57, and 04, some modern wagons - the large ones that are such a problem to fit onto a layout in 4mm. Maybe I should build a freight distribution park they can run to?
     
    Then there's the large padded envelope of wagon kits left from my flirtation with 3mm, not to mention the small collection of Traing TT, the Brush 2 and the unfitted new armature, the BEC/2SMR J11kit. I was thinking of an urban goods station, but maybe the boxfile's got that out of my system. Then after I'd built two wagon kits and bought some 12mm Peco points I got heavily involved with a society and the whole thing wasdropped...
     
    Not to mention the HO - a NSWGR 422 class and two NSW coaches in Tuscan. But Currawong Heights, a small terminus in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, is scarcely even a ghost
     
    Projects, projects, projects. All too remininscent of the story of the donkey surrounded by bales of straw, which died of starvation because it couldn't decide which bale to eat first....
     
    No. Blacklade , the railway, comes first. Followed by tidying up stock and bits for the boxfile. Everything else can wait - and some of it, I suspect, will be waiting avery long time
  24. 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....
     
     
  25. 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
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