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richbrummitt

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  1. richbrummitt

    Seven Up

    By richbrummitt,

    I felt I had free reign when I set up my workbench again to get out and start or re-start whatever I liked. The bench is temporary for the moment, because I want to rearrange the furniture to move my groaning bookcase next to a supported wall. I have been good though: most of the items on it were part finished when I packed them. The only 'new' items out are some 4 wheeled coaches and I'm convinced that it is much better to build these alongside some other short coaches that I started a long time ago.
     
    You may have seen these etches before on the What's On Your Workbench thread in the 2mm section of the forum.
     

     
    They cover pretty much every variation of the particular kit that has a body or body kit in the association shop. I built them for an article that the magazine editor now has in hand ready to assemble. (It's very picture heavy.) Hopefully it will be of use to someone.
     
    This left me with 7 wagons to make. Some of the more modern variations were subsequently chopped about or cut down to suit my requirements for models. First up were a few more resin Minks. These really are lovely and whilst a little more expensive than a plastic kit they really are very lovely. I said that already, sorry.
     

     
    From left to right: V5 (centre bonnet vent added, DC1 brakes); V14 (DC3 fitted); V16 (DC3 unfitted); V4 (DC1).
     
    Some Opens of various types and styles.
     

     
    From left to right: O5 (DC1 - uncommon with this brake and much more likely to have ordinary lever); O2 (DC2 fitted, clasp - also uncommon); O9 (DC2 fitted).
     
    The middle example is an LSWR 8 plank with the second top one removed. It will look a lot less untidy once it has a tarpaulin on, otherwise I'd be making more effort to cover my tracks. Some vacuum pipes to be added, along with replacing the ties between the W irons on the V14 and O9, although it is possible to find examples of fitted wagons without these they are the norm.
     
    Here are some cruel close ups because I was having fun getting better acquainted with a 4x lens and liking the results.
     

     
    V14 again. Nice buffers. These weren't available when I put together a V16 previously. I should have made an effort on a self contained buffer ages ago but Julia helped us all out. Thank you.
     

     
    V4. Is this roof okay? It's on the fret labelled 16' Mink roofs and the lines match up to the features but I cannot find a picture of a Mink with this type of roof in the many books I've trawled. Mex roofs are like this but I've not seen a single Mink and I'm concerned about creating an aberration.
     

     
    That awful plank gap again. Look at the chassis instead
     
    Having made a good bunch of coupling links for these I've finally taken many of the photographs I need to explain how the couplings are made. Unless I get distracted again that will be written up soon.
  2. richbrummitt
    After an offer to Rabs of a file to try on his (then new) printer rather a lot of time passed and after an almost near miss with the postal service a little package arrived through the door recently with a bright orange one of these in it.
     

     
    The detail is comparable to some of the finest stereolithography that I have witnessed from professional bureaus. I know Rabs has spent quite a lot of time tweaking and practicing, refining the machine and the process and it has been worthwhile. The next picture shows a close up.
     

     
    The stepping is visible but was quickly cleaned up with some small fine sanding sticks over the course of an evening, trying to avoid destroying the rivet detail. They were all there in the CAD file The upper end was the worst but being the end it will usually be less visible than the sides and I think it will be okay but not perfect once painted now I've smoothed it out. Under 9x magnification the rivets seem to have distorted here but they are barely visible to the naked eye at 2'.
     

     
    The resin is supposed to have similar properties to some injection moulded plastics. (I didn't ask which ones, because it isn't important to me, sorry.) It is a little brittle and I have lost one of the buffer housings already, along with a small amount of the headstock. This, I suspect, is due to the very thin wall thicknesses. I don't know what I was thinking when I modelled them because I can't use the buffer housings that remain: this type are too small to drill such that they will accept a shank and head when the shank is 0.5mm. It will be back to brass for the buffers in due course, and I have some small repairs to make.
     
    I had considered using this as a master for resin casting a few more of these but there were never many of them built and their size meant they were not very useful except for bulk volumes of traffic, which were often conveyed between major traffic centres under darkness. They would be great for anyone craving a 47xx that gets one. Except for that they are a bit of a GWR modelling cliché. At least my model of a branch line isn't a terminus
     
    So for the moment I'm continuing on as a one-off. I have built the bogies up to check the buffer height and having used nearly all the packing pieces on the bogie etch it's looking pretty good so far.
     

     
    The GPV at the right hand side shows quite clearly why you can't produce one of these from two iron mink kits.
     
    To be continued...
  3. richbrummitt
    What might have been the last vaguely sunny evening of the year was used for getting the undercoat sprayed out in God's own paint booth. I am still working on a representation of the lake livery, which I personally think should be darker than most renditions I have seen. A mixture of a dark brown and deep red from the citadel range was used in this case.
     
    I thought I had all the details added and then, upon opening the white(ish) colour for the roofs, I realised there were no rain strips on the models! These were added in micro rod. You do need to have a plastic roof to solvent weld them on but they were easier to complete, and neater, like this than any other way I have tried for this detail.
     

     
    A couple of days later and the vehicles had livery and weathering completed. The picture below was taken at the 2mm AGM in Bolton and is the property of Mick Simpson (reproduced here with permission).
     

     
    I can't remember punching the rivets out on Mansel wheel inserts previously but on this larger than life portrait they do show. Unfortunately the short cuts I took with some of the brake details do too.
     
    According to the excellent articles in GWRJ on modern horse boxes 411 was delivered on the first lot of N12s during 1915 and 19 was delivered as part of the third and final lot of N12s before the end of 1918 so a workaday representation of the lake livery is appropriate for my c.1921 period and I'm reasonably happy with the final colour.
     
    With these finished it must be time for a rummage for the next project...
  4. richbrummitt
    Amongst the many other things that I alude to on my workbench in previous entries there have been a selection of horse boxes growing in number for some time. I am currently (still) working on a pair of GCR and an M&GN item from David Eveleigh along with a pair of Lima GWR items, that are the subject of this entry. I know they are branded LMS but from what I can gather from published books and photographs they are meant to be a GWR vehicle to diagram N16 and the LMS didn't have a vehicle anything like this.
     
    Lima horseboxes are not so easy to find for sensible money nowadays and I apologise to anyone who thinks such items should be treated as sacred. I was fortunate to collect one for £6 by blind luck and the other for a swap of a Chivers LNER horsebox kit that I never intended to build. As it turns out I could have quite probably scratch built the vehicles with a similar amount of effort because I only re-used the sides. Everything else went in the scrap box on the floor. At least I didn't canibalise models with in correct GWR livery! However, had I have tried, the initial outlay would have been significantly more.
     
    The Lima model is actually pretty good dimensionally. Roughly to 2mm scale in height and width, but closer to 1:148 for length. I'd always overlooked the model because I figured that it was probably Limas all too common blend of a minimum of two different incorrect scales in different directions; I realised I was wrong after reading some discussions on internet forums and listening to Jerry Clifford.
    Diagram N16 was introduced too late for my modelling period, but there are some not too significant differences between this diagram and some earlier ones. To go back to diagram N12 (which is as far as you would go with this body because the earlier diagrams were quite different), to suit my modelling period, would only require the addition of bolections around the fixed windows and some new ends with a turn-under in addition to the details that need changing to make a better model, for example the quantity of roof furniture provided by Lima is excessive. With a couple of tweaks, and a new chassis, this body could be a really nice model, but here's how I went about making something a little different.
     
    First I removed the ends completely and cut back the sides so I could get to almost scale length for 2mm when the new ones were added from styrene sheet. The floor is cut back to allow a second thickness of sheet to be added inside the end at the bottom where the outer end piece will be filed to whisker thin in the next stage to form the turn-under.
     

     
    New ends were cut from styrene sheet and the curve of the roof profile filed out. The blue colour is where a permanent marker has been used to allow clear marking with a scriber to show the extent of the turn-under. The body nearest the camera already has this feature complete whilst the one behind still needs filing to shape. There are also
     

     
    The next stage was to add the bolections around the fixed windows. The photograph shows them in the process of being added. I worked carefully around a former made from steel adding 0.010" MicroRod with enough solvent to make it pliable but not enough to make it deform, stretch or break. Careful persuasion with a blunt cocktail stick to prod it around into shape, combined with a lot of patience, has given a result that I think will be acceptable from normal viewing distances once painted. I made the former from steel because I have some available. I did try a wooden effort first off but it failed miserably: the solvent managed to attach the MicroRod to the wood sufficiently well that the bolection was dragged into the window aperture and destroyed when I removed the former.
     

     
    a completed bolection on the other side
     

     
    the bolection in very cruel close up.
     

     
    Much easier after doing five of those was adding the interior. A few pieces of styrene sheet and a length of coach seating strip suitably modified for the groom. The seats were in two sections, so I made a cut and file job in the centre to represent this. You will also notice that I cut the partitions to the wrong width and then rather than cut them to the right width slipped a small piece of styrene in to make things good. It don't think this bodge will be very noticeable once the roof is in place.
     

     
    The floor was cut out to allow the windows to be added from underneath after the exterior paint is completed. After a question on Yahoo! groups I was pointed to a reference for the interior colour, which is similar if not the same as, light stone. A support structure was built up along the tops of the sides and along the centre of the vehicle for the roof with assorted styrene sheet. The roofs themselves were cut from 0.005" styrene sheet and whilst still flat locations marked and drilled for the roof vents and lamp tops.
     

     
    Further details have also been added: The gaps between the sheeting on the ends have been produced with a skrawker (a piece of hacksaw blade ground to have just one tooth), I thickened up the protrusions at the tops of the doors with styrene strip and I also used styrene strip to alter the rather odd rounded shape of the drop lights to something that looks more like it should.
     
    To be continued...
  5. richbrummitt
    A lack of posts over the last few weeks has been down to a lack of progress worth sharing. I've spent quite some time trying to get a system of operating the TOUs going over and over the options, trying and failing and re-thinking.
     
    Initially I used wires linked directly from the switches to the TOUs and when these were removed in favour of the lever frame I intended to use some kind of mechanical system and installed a crank arrangement to lead out from the frame.
     

     
    Servo arms were drilled out and mounted on telescoping brass tubing. This was connected to different control rod systems. The first wire in tube system from Model Signal Engineering was, in my opinion, very poor. There was a lot of clearance in the tube and a large input movement would be required to have any useful output movement once the slack is taken. This is worsened by every curve required. Sadly the movement from the lever frame and crank arrangement is not very large and although by not nearly the same margin the problem was found to exist in higher quality systems marketed as model aircraft control rods.
     
    I had a brief interlude considering servos based on some ideas I found on rmweb3
     

     
    The servo is stripped of it's control and microswitches with diodes are used to create the end stops. Although they would be cheaper than point motors there would be a lot of fabrication required that I don't have time for and I hadn't figured out how it would be possible to incorporate much, if any adjustment so I did what I should probably have done from the outset; dug deep and bought point slow motion motors.
     

     
    I went for cobalts because they are slow motion with a long springy actuation and a smaller footprint. I still had to cut them up a bit to fit them in where needed in this baseboard construction that, whilst it seemed like a good idea at the time, I continue to regret.
     

     
    The thing keeps consuming wire. I've moved the rest of the control to the front of the layout too. It should be possible to see from the photographs that the switches for the uncoupling magnets that I intend to need one day are recessed into the front.
     

     

     
    I had to have a good chop about to create access to fit the microswitches in the lever frames. This was not fun. What was worse was that initially I wired them up like am SPDT toggle but the common on a microswitch is not in the middle and so this didn't work. It took me a while to realise why the readings on the multi-tester did not make any sense. I had to unsolder and resolder the connections in these little apertures.
     

     
    Don't worry: I can hide the mess behind a facia covering of appropriate coloured mount board.
     
     
    It still didn't work. I checked the fuse and there wasn't one. When fitted I found that it worked and what's more I wired the first motor up the right way around first guess The feed is half wave AC provided by using diodes on the connections to the microswitches to avoid adding a further power supply to the layout. This winding on the transformer is shared with the electromagnets, but the power requirements for the point motors is not high and I think there will be enough juice to go around.
  6. richbrummitt
    For the first time in several months I had very very little on this weekend. Apart from a plan to get the first BBQ of the year in, that got rained off both days and is rescheduled for this weekend ), and a short visit to some of our significant others family I had a good chunk of time to use. Like many modellers I have more than one stash of stuff that I'd like to make one day. There are others that I would like to start soon. I have further stashes of stuff that I bought that is likely to remain wherever I put it. There is also the shelf of stuff that I started, plus the workbench(es) and finally there is a box of stuff that I consider finished. The latter has around a dozen wagons in it and I'd like to get more of the stuff from the shelf of stuff that I started, plus the workbench(es) into this box. Persistant readers will have probably concluded that I am easily distracted due to the lack of consecutive, or even subsequent, posts on any one subject.
     
    I built both of the 2mmSA GWR opens soon after they were released. One was finished fully lettered and loaded with an unusual (I thought) wood load, as previously seen in the post 'Wagons Also Spin'. The other languished on the shelf with the base colour, but no lettering. It was an ideal candidate for finishing off because it only required the livery completing, weathering and the couplings added. The lettering was a struggle. Thinking about a load, and flicking through some reference material I decided on a load of hay. This could be fully sheeted (two tarpaulins) and the wagon would virtually disappear, and the lettering wouldn't matter.
     

     
    I dug out an ancient email with a picture of a GWR sheet laid out flat attached to it and looked for a suitable item to pair it with. (Until I find a font that matches the GWR tarpaulin numbers then I'm a bit stuck for making any others!) Saturday morning was spent printing onto Rizlas, which is not as hard as it sounds. Print the sheet to scale size, then using the gummed edge of the Rizla stick it to the page so that the remainder covers the print, reinsert the page and print again. This time it should print onto the Rizla. I used the draft setting to get a faded look to begin with. The 'hay' is a suitably shaped chunk of expanded polystyrene (the same pink stuff I've been using as terraform for the layout). As long as you don't get them too wet when weathering (or use water fast inks) you should be fine. Now using small amounts of superglue and careful shaping with fingers and tweezers the load can be wrapped up in the sheets. Looking at photographs of the real thing will help to get it looking right. I only wish I'd removed most of the strapping, because the sheets seem to take their form, and the sheets lay quite flat over the wagon sides in the photos I looked at.
     
    Here's another view of 77046 from the other side. It's a GWR 5 plank open with DC1 brakes. The tarpaulins are pre-grouping GWR and LNWR styles. I read somewhere that they went grey in service (both letters and sheet) as they wore out, but I had to stop myself before the whole lot became a washed out grey. I also tried to keep the two tarpaulins a slightly different shade so they didn't merge. The couplings have only just been added and need a lick of colour.
     

     
    Sunday was spent cutting about 200 pieces of indentically sized bits of wood in a jig I made last week, but (as they say on the end of TTTE) that's another story.
  7. richbrummitt

    4FO+1UFO

    By richbrummitt,

    If you were hoping for Southern MUs then you might want to leave now ;-)
     
    I've been trying very hard to finish some of what I have started. The amount of visible desk (zero) had become an impossible situation, especially considering that our spare bedroom has three lengths of worktop in it and SWMBO only has a small portion of that. In attempting to paint more of the items I had built but not painted I had a growing pile of stock that was 'finished' awaiting couplings. Progress was being made but things were not getting to the point where they could go in the stock boxes I bought earlier in the year. (I have a rule that stock cannot go in the box unless it is finished with couplings - i.e. really finished and suitable for use on the layout).
     
    Here we have the results of painting and coupling fitting from this week.
     
    LNWR diagram 88 van.
     

     
     
    Long time readers will have seen this in a previous entry. Since then some further weathering has been udnertaken, mostly the addition of various chalked notes. It only really needed some couplings to be complete.
     
    MR D342 coke hoppers.
     

     
     
    These have been hanging around unpainted almost since my order came through when Chris Higgs originally offered these as limited availability a few years ago. Fortunately for Midland fans they are now available from shop 2. The paint specification in Midland Wagons 1 suggests the paint recipe contained more than 12 parts white or clear to one part black. I had my doubts whether the lettering would be visible on such a light colour (there isn't much contrast in some pictures of the prototype) and I darkened the left one a little with a very light black wash from the light shade I chose. The one on the right has been in service a while longer and the lead in the paint has darkened the colour. The lettering stayed bright because of the paint used, which had a 'self cleaning' property.
     
    GER cattle wagon.
     

     
     
    Built with a steel under frame. According to LNER wagons a small number of this diagram were on steel, rather than wood, under frames.
     
    GC Lowmac.
     

     
     
    Okay, this one's not quite finished, but it is painted and has couplings. These wagons had the securing chains permanently fixed to rings in the deck and I have run out of N Brass Loco container securing chains after loading up the Macaw Bs seen in previous entries. More have been ordered so I expect to be finished soon.
     
    I didn't so myself any favours with the to-do pile at TINGS recently. Having intended to get a couple more Mathieson wagons I got talked into a few more. Fortunately I dealt with this swiftly by re-painting internally, dusting with weathering powders, re-wheeling, and adding couplings such that they aren't going to be hanging around in the UFO pile.
     

     
     
    I'm a little way off a mimic of the coal train on the Dartmoor scene at Pendon, but until I have an 8 coupled loco finished there might be a problem with siding space...
     

     
    ...because I think I might have an addiction: I've ordered more!
  8. richbrummitt
    I've a good stash of passenger coach kits and to make a start it seems sensible to begin at the bottom and work up. Many of them are in firmly in the no longer available category, having been shot down from larger scales. (I am aware of plans to try and get one of these ranges reintroduced - fingers crossed.) These are bodies only and require the Dean type of bogie, which was not available anywhere, and so I had my own etches made to compliment the kits. The remainder of the coaches are Masterclass toplights. These include the bogies that have been added to the range available from the 2mm SA shops.
     
    The Dean bogies
     

     
    Front left: 8'6" wheelbase, Right: 6'4" wheelbase, Rear: 10' wheelbase.
     
    These are all destined for 5522 and Blacksmith kits. The stretchers that the scroll irons fit to are included on the etch but the axle boxes and springs will be the whitemetal ones available from the association shop.
     
    Some of the toplight bogies
     

     
    Left: 9' equalising 'American' bogies, Right: 9' 1914 'Fishbelly'? bogies. There are some more of each type and a pile of 8' 'American' bogies to solder up. The foot boards have yet to be folded or cut off as appropriate so they may look a little odd just now.
     
    I like to add bogie brakes to the bogies and to this end I've made up 20 sets.
     

     
    80 units look more like a pile of scrap!
  9. richbrummitt
    It's been a while due to reducing this sprawl
     

     
    to something that was presentable. There was a concession to keep one desk for now (by the window) and so I have this week finally manage to squeeze a few useful hours furthering the odd project not currently mothballed.
     
    The horse boxes had a number of parts made or cut from the frets with the potential for loss when packed and I wanted to get them fitted. I had originally planned to finish these for next weekend and am now on a promise to myself to get them ready for mid-November.
     
    I've managed to get the buffer beams laminated and fitted along with the buffers, whitemetal castings, steps (why must NPCS have so many steps?), and brake rods. The chassis are now very nearly ready for paint with only couplings and vacuum pipes now required to complete.
     

     
    You may notice a small improvement in the close up photography? I treated myself to a 4x macro 'filter'. The man in the shop suggested this was the most cost effective way of photographing small items whilst retaining a decent depth of field that is not evident in the next picture.
     

     
    Much work remains to finish the detail on the body; not limited to the emergency cord detail and the handrails on the end with steps.
     
    Finally a reminder of how far I've already come...
     

  10. richbrummitt
    The TOUs are finally finished. A little jig was made up to quickly and easily bend consistently sized dropper wires in left and right hand forms. These are long enough to fully engage the brass tubes fixed to the moving sleeper (no longer visible) but not so long that they have any chance of causing a short by touching the brass housing of the TOU. They are then fitted and carefully soldered to the underside of the switch rails.
     

     
    Once painted, ballasted etc. they it should be near enough invisible. The only part that remains on display is the small amount of wire protruding under the stock rail that prevents the toes lifting.
     

     
    A series of specially adapted hair grips are used to hold the various parts in the right place and ensure an adequate switch rail gap whilst soldering. A steel rule is used to check that the switch rail and stock rail have the head at the same height. The first side is fixed easily but then this must be held a half millimetre from the stock rail to ensure an adequate gap and the other side clipped to the stock rail. With all that checked and held the join can be made with a fine tip on the soldering iron whilst the dropper is held up under the stock rail with tweezers.
     

     
    Here's what the arrangement looks like for making the second join. The steel rule, rather usefully, happens to be 0.5mm thick.
  11. richbrummitt
    Despite the lack of posts I have got some work done. Much of it has been drawing bricks and stones but I still haven't got anything finished enough to print out and put together as a final version. Various draft station building have been trialled however. I have also made a pair of signal posts that await fittings and assembled some MSE arms to go on them. An order to Minx microdrives has provided the hardware to make them move when finished, along with bounce, and the interlocking for the lever frame has arrived from Australia this last week.
     
    The most visible work has been the terraforming. I started over with many areas to get a look I was happy with around the station area at the right hand end when compared with photographs. To the other end I have distorted reality to allow the contours to fall slightly such that rail level and slightly below rail level pictures can be taken. This was not possible with the previous shallow cutting for the whole length and will make the scene more visually appealing. I had been considering my options for adding the grass in the garden and embankments.
     

     

     

     

     

     

     
    This will possibly be the final entry for some time because sometimes life just gets in the way. Neither my wife or I wished to live in our current home forever but when we re-negotiated the mortgage last year we expected to be here a couple more years at least. I even managed to finish some projects off last year that have been ongoing for several years (since soon after we moved here in fact). It is highly probable that we are now in a situation to move to the kind of place we would love to have and that should we decide to have one be a family home. We have a need to de-clutter regardless but the time feels right to do this so we are very seriously looking at moving home in the near future if we can find a buyer and the right property becomes available.
     
    The spare bedroom is therefore required to appear like a spare bedroom again rather than a room for my tools and part built model train collection so it will have to be carefully ordered, packed and stored. I have no idea where I am going to store the layout yet and have considered whether starting over on it would be such a bad thing. There are a huge number of things that I didn't plan and the making it up as I went along could have worked out far better.
     
    It is unfortunate that I will have to break some of the commitments I made to exhibition managers but with this happening I do not see how I can possibly achieve what had been agreed as an acceptable standard of completion to present.
  12. richbrummitt
    No update last week because after I had fitted the first of my revised TOU mechanisms and feeling good about it I moved on to the others only to discover that the rebates in the other board were not as deep by 0.8mm!
     
    Oh-oh!
     
    I had to make the rebate deeper somehow and really didn't want to be rebuilding the switches. Inspiration came to me quickly and I was able to achieve the unthinkable in a reasonably short space of time.
     
    I used a 3mm graver for the one nearest the board edge where the facia was not in the way but there was no way I was going to fit the graver in the other spaces without grinding 75%+ off the length and resharpening. Another bit of useful quick thinking occurred. I really have excelled this week. Taking out the Minicraft and an abrasive wheel I set to work on a 3/16" tool blank to create a makeshift graver with the same section as the square section brass. I stoned the end off and set to work.
     

     

     
    The switch blades were removed for safe keeping and the rear siding was broken away carefully with a chisel for re-fixing later to improve access. (The rear siding needed to be realigned anyway so this wasn't a hardship.) Using a block of wood behind the blunt end provided a sizeable handle and prevented bruised and dented fingers. The tool could also be used as a check for depth because of it's shared size with the brass section.
     
    A couple of hours later and all the TOUs were installed. I fixed them with a couple of dabs of cyano before driving the pins in through pre-drilled holes. I treated myself to a pin pusher, which made fitting the pins much easier. I managed to go right through into my finger in one place. 1/8" is probably the limit of my pain threshold for such an incident.
     

     
    The switch rails are now back in place so that I don't lose them. They will be fixed permanently once again in the very near future. The woodworking to mount all the operating cranks to fit to is coming along nicely and two lengths of telescoping brass tube have been almost entirely consumed making the pivots. This has been achieved over several days because there is only so much pipe cutter action that my wrists will take at once, aside from the inherent tedium of round and round and round and...
     
    To avoid getting demotivated dug in crawling slowly forward on the uninteresting aspects I've painted up the lever frame in the correct colours in between. Some of the catch handles are stiff now. I expect once some of the paint has been worn away by the drop boxes it will start to operate more smoothly once again.
     

     
    I also stumbled upon the ring that I cut to go around the turntable. Rather than misplace it for a further two years I cut it carefully to fit around the rails and gaps and fixed it into position.
     

     
    TTFN.
  13. richbrummitt

    Double Heading

    By richbrummitt,

    I'm still working on having things moving on the layout at Expo with under three weeks remaining.
     
    Several weeks ago a pleasant suprise landed in my inbox, an opportunity to test build two new locomotive chassis kits. A short exchange of emails later and a subsequent jiffy packet arriving through the letter box and we were away.
     
    The chassis are to fit the GF 57xx body and the Dapol 0-4-2T
     

     
    Also included was a jig for assembling the frames
     

     
    First the frames are bushed before inserting into the jig, which is easily folded up sqaure using the tabs and markers provided.
     

     

     
    It is best to open up the bearing holes first and use 1.6mm drills to locate in the jig. I found this out afterwards. Phosphor bronze and even PCB frames are much stiffer than etched under the pillar drill!
     
    Next up the pick up springs were added and the motor mount attached...
     

     
    ...followed by gears and wheels. I quarter wheels by hand/eye.
     

     
    Next up was the brake assembly.
     

     
    I wanted to make these removable so set about insulating them from the frames to allow a complete cross piece from 0.3mm n/s wire through the bottom. Short pins of microrod were added at the top of the brake arms to locate into the holes in the frames. Once painted they are insulated.
     
    Here the locomotives are pictured working and near complete. Both have 8mm coreless motors. The bodies have had no detailing, but there is some minor interior modification to allow fitment of extra weight.
     

     
    This is especially true of the Dapol body. I mounted the motor the easy way (into the cab) and have virtually run out of space for lead to move the balance forward to gain better electrical pick up and adhesion.
     

  14. richbrummitt
    More work on the horsebox. I had hoped to make some more progress but it has been too hot and sticky to spend time upstairs in front of a window that looks west on an evening! I did manage to get some of my UPOs (un-painted objects) undercoated as a result of the hot weather allowing access to the garden without fear of disaster so it's not all bad.
     
    The end steps were added next. I thinned down some styrene angle to something like the correct dimensions so that steps could be cut uniformly to length from this modified section. I used styrene because a good bond could be made easily to the end due to the identical materials being easily bonded. A paper template was made to help with alignment, which flips over for the other side.
     

     
    The eagle eyed will probably notice the lower step on the left side. The drawing shows it the right way up but pictures show it fitted this y. After asking on the GWSG the answer came that this is a result of the GWR using 3 tail lamps in their early years and the fitting of the lower step was necessary to allow the lamp to be carried on a lamp iron fixed in this area just above the buffer beam. I'm not sure I'll be making too much effort to adapt the brass coach kits I have stashed that should probably also have this feature. It's likely that they match the drawings quite nicely, but not photographs.
     
    The ventilators above the doors have been added, along with those on the roof. These vehicles had lamp tops for roof ventilators so they look just like the lamp tops.
     

     
    I create lamp tops from PECO track pins with the head filed flatter and a sliver of stripped insulation, a method described by Frank Lax in some inspirational articles in RM from my youth. There might be a better way but they look quite acceptable when painted. Some spares are shown in the foreground of the photo above. Here's a 3/4 view with poor depth of field :oops:
     

     
    The chassis is substantially complete. This has been built up from an assortment of components, scrap, and surplus parts scrounged from other kits in a manner not dissimilar to that described for the Beetle B chassis here.
     

     
    The buffer beams are the most obvious thing remaining to be added, although there are other minor parts to go on. I am not looking forward to adding the lower foot steps because they will require soldering after the spring and axle box castings, which are whitemetal!
     

     
    A final photograph of the other horseboxes under construction. The bodies are from David Eveleigh kits with additional parts where required. The chassis are from the same 'source' as my other NPCS under frame constructions i.e. cobbled together from surplus. I did make some etches for a 10' chassis for 7mm wheels. It is a simple one part affair that comprises of fold down W irons that they brakes fold in from however I sold most of them to friends and other 2mm scale association members and left myself short. Never mind.
     

     
    Those eagle eyed people mentioned earlier might also be able to spot some other otems clogging the workbench: A GER passenger cattle box (This probably needs a better home), and an Ultima O11 Siphon G that haven't got very far with.
  15. richbrummitt
    No pictures today because I don't know where I last left the cable and they aren't very interesting anyway, just a pile of mangled nickel silver underframe parts that were looking lost on my bench.
     
    Those that read the 2mm VAG might have noticed that I decided to concoct my own RSU from a leftover car battery charger. I rewound the secondary coils to give three outputs similar to the commercial units (Don't ask me for any more details because I'm not electrically qualified and the moderators will likely remove such things to protect everyone legally in case you get hurt.) and adapted a spare soldering iron for the hand piece. A few connectors and a foot pedal have been added and tonight waiting on the doormat was the last piece of the puzzle - carbon rod. Total spend so far is around £50. Potential saving is therefore around £100.
     
    Having turned it on and played around with the settings I've managed to not solder anything satisfactorily. I can peel the parts away from each other afterwards. I've cleaned with a scratch brush, used flux, not used flux, used real solder as well as paste. It's not that I'm short of power either because The tip will easily get red hot on the high settings and I've fused parts together such that some of an overlay was left behind on the other part, but I am always able to peel them away. I tried my usual temperature controlled iron as well and suffered the same outcome. Often the material is deforming before the joint gives way, but I have been unable to make a soldered joint that could not be separated by my own hands yet this evening. Should I be dissatisfied
     
    The good news is that it should work and I haven't killed or maimed myself. The bad news is that I appear to have become totally inept when it comes to soldering and this is a massive pain because I also received a delivery from PPD today and feel unable to make a start if I can't solder properly. I may well have to look for a volunteer to do a test build. (Pre-requisites will be experience building small scale etched kits, preferably with an interest in GWR or NPCS.) Whilst waiting for my ability to rejoin me I will have to return to some Mathieson models wagons that I have been working on.
     
    Please help...
     
    Updated 23/07/11:
     
    I've tried some brass cleaned up with a nail file type abrasive stick until extra shiny. Solder appears to flow quite nicely. Force a knife through the joint with not too much effort and this is what it looks like. Both parts nicely tinned but not shiny unless you re-flow the solder. I used cored solder not paste because I thought this could be one of my problems.
     

     
    Everything is plenty hot when you grab a hold of it afterwards. I have a bunch of nickel silver parts in the bin in a similar condition. I even tried buffing the tinned parts adding flux and going for it again. Same result. Still scratching head. I have however managed to solder up a kit today, but didn't use this contraption.
  16. richbrummitt
    In between eating, drinking, partying, visiting, more eating, more drinking, more... (I shan't go on because I imagine we've all had to go through the same thing) I've wangled a day off and managed some time at the workbench. I really wanted to get the underframe finished on this milk brake van so that it was at the stage for painting. The roof and details will be added after the body has the base colour on. This allows me to easily paint the inside - essential where there are windows present.
     
    Last time you saw this vehicle here it had little more than the contents of the kit assembled. After sitting idle for about 5 years I had just rebuilt the W irons with some spares that included the brakes and added the trussing. This used nickel silver strip. Next on the list were the lower footboards. I wanted to devise a method that would allow easy and accurate spacing of the stirrups for soldering whilst ensuring they were upright. An off-cut of Tufnol and a few hours on the newest addition to the workbench (a Proxxon MF70 milling machine) produced a simple jig to do just that. First I drilled a series of holes down the centre of the edge spaced according to the stirrup positions. Afterwards I ran a milling cutter to form a groove down the centre for the upright of the step board to sit into against the wire inserted in the various holes. I hope the picture of the jig mounted in the vice explains it better than I can in words.
     

     
    An short length of the reduced angle used for the footboard is sat in place ready for the stirrups, bent from nickel silver wire, are inserted into the holes and soldered up. The ends can be trimmed to length once the soldering is complete. The holes are drilled vertically in the mill and ensure that the wire is upright when soldered on and the spacing will be the same for every one. Various additional holes exist so that I can use it again for coach bogie footboards and horse box steps, which are shorter and have different stirrup spacings.
     

     
    Before fitting the assembled footboards I fixed the whitemetal axle boxes (2mm Scale Association 2-473) and looked at the springs (2mm Scale Association 2-464). I realised that I couldn't fit these around the trussing, and on further observation of the line drawings in Slinn & Clarke to ascertain the size and position of the longitudinal tank I realised that the vacuum cylinder was on the wrong side and that I had soldered the floor in the wrong way around all those years ago (the instructions turned up as a page marker in one of the Russel volumes and were found to be misleading). Major surgery was needed! I unsoldered some items to enable a chunk of floor to be removed for re-insertion with the correct orientation. Before refitting on a new section of 0.010" nickel silver, making a complete floor for the vehicle for the first time, I added the footboards followed by the springs. Lastly the cylinder was added. I had some dowel the correct diameter so it was cut from that. It is cross drilled in two positions and slid onto a U shaped 0.5mm wire. This makes adjusting the vertical position easy. You will see the ends of this wire cut and filed flush in the underside view below.
     

     
    The model is now rested off the workbench with various other items awaiting the arrival of warmer drier weather so that I can get outside with the spray cans whilst I get on with the next item.
     
    Greetings of the season and all the best for 2012.
  17. richbrummitt
    I fixed the last of the wires yesterday evening. The layout has been electrically finished, but untested, for about a week. I just had to finish boxing up the controls and transformer. The controller is a Malcolm's Miniatures Pictroller housed in a Maplins box of appropriate size. This is the closest thing I could find to a Pentroller without the uncertainty of supply. The only major difference as a user is that the brake is not continuous - it has a pot to set and then the brake can be applied in three stages (roughly equated to some, more, and ooh eck!). The box is quite deep and suits my somewhat lengthy fingers quite nicely. The connection to the layout is from underneath.
     

     
    I had not used the controller prior to last night, and then only in direct control mode, so cannot really comment any further on it.
     
    The power supply is by a gaugemaster transformer that I have had in the draw for quite some time. Again housed in a Maplins project box. I have used one of the 16V~ outputs solely for the controller with a 1A self resetting trip and the other will provide the oomph for the uncoupling magnets and lighting (when I get that far)
     

     
    At the moment the lid remains off because I reckon it would get sweaty in there if used for very long. I'm going to find a small AC fan to put in the lid to keep things cool and power this directly from the second winding with the magnets and lighting.
     
    Aside from a few PW issues that I am already aware of, and some others that I am sure to be lurking still, I can play trains
     
    Here are a couple of (poor quality) videos of the trains so far:
     
    http://www.flickr.co...57594126202068/
     
    http://www.flickr.co...57594126202068/
  18. richbrummitt

    Bricking It

    By richbrummitt,

    Aside from running out of ideas and being in desperate need of linking a lever frame with my TOUs so that I commence scenic work I have been slowly putting brick after brick individually in various walls.
     
    I have a plan to produce my own brick paper 'kits' for the three station buildings (station building, signal box and weighbridge hut/goods office) on the computer using photographs of actual bricks arranged to proper bricklaying practices in as much as I understand them before printing them on sticky backed papers and wrapping them around a laser cut former. The latter so the sizes of the building and openings are more accurate than I can cut by hand. Fortunately drawings of the station building appear in the OPC line history and the signal box is a standard type that is covered in the Ericplans book. The weighbridge hut/goods office is similar enough to the one in this book to have just the West window changed for a smaller one, as indicated by pictures.
     
    I began by getting frustrated wrestling with GIMP until I realised that a vector graphics program was what I required. I downloaded Inkscape and got moving reasonably quickly after digesting a few tutorials. It is quite tedious work and initially I wanted to get a feel for how long copying and placing individual bricks would take but things have progressed reasonably quickly and some re-use is possible. For example opposite sides can never be seen together so you only never need draw one side of the building before making allowances for the window openings. No-one would know that the bricks repeat unless they read this!
     
    Thus far I have the weighbridge hut/goods office structure brickwork completed and have made a start on both the signal box and station buildings. The first step was to draw out a side and end. I drew these polygons with no border so that the line width does not need to be considered. I wasn't going to attempt to use the brick photographs as it was because of matching up the tile and patterning issues. I planned to use the bricks but not the mortar. I drew the mortar outlines in an off white colour as a series of rectangles. These brick outlines have no fill and the outline is a scale 3/8". I used four sizes - stretcher, header, queen closure, and a header plus stretcher for 'corner bricks'. When drawing these you need to consider the thickness of the mortar outline. The error is tiny but over the length of a building the error accumulates quickly. Inkscape allows snapping to the bounding box and to use the centre of the outline for the bounding box rather than outer edge of the line. This makes putting the 'bricks' together really easy. It is tedious though and at the moment there is only the mortar. Once I started drawing the bricks I found that I needed to adjust the sizes of the walls slightly to fit the bricks but these really are small alterations.
     
    Once you have all the mortar drawn in it is time to add the texture. I cut out the individual bricks from a texture available freely on the internet that had a colouring that I liked. I used paint to do this and copied each brick into inkscape as a separate bitmap. Try to use just the bricks and not select too much mortar. Resize the brick textures to the size of stretchers, headers, &c. and then duplicate and add the bricks. Using the snaps align them to the mortar outlines and then place them on a layer behind the mortar.
     
    Here's a crop of what it looks like

     
    I've printed this out onto paper and built it up around a shell of mount board to get an idea for how this method will work.

     
    and placed it in approximately the right position in the yard.

    It requires the glazier and tiler to visit now.
     
    I think this will work well and so am continuing to work on the other buildings. The bridge is taking some time because each brick also requires rotating to fit the arch. A lot of time will be saved painting things later though and I really quite like the effect. I must work on making the corners more square though.
  19. richbrummitt

    Unfinished Business

    By richbrummitt,

    Sometimes it will be the case that when you post a photo of your work on RMWeb there is a helpful person who will kindly point out what is wrong with it. That was the case with my MR coke hoppers. What was missing?
     

     
    The handrail at the right hand side of the wagon. Now they are finished?
     
    I was waiting on some more container securing chains from N Brass Locos to finish off the GC machinery/implement wagon. They arrived earlier this week and I probably spent as long cutting the hooks, screw link, and securing eye up and splicing them onto some very fine chain acquired from Fleetline as I did assembling the wagon! I think the end result is worth it though.
     

     
    In the same parcel I got some of the driver/fireman figures. There is a third figure in the pack with a shovel, but he is waiting for a tender locomotive to ply his trade: he'd be a bit wasted in one of my tank engines. I soldered the small bases of the figures to some wire so that I would hold them in a pin chuck for painting (an idea I got from Mikkel). I am quite pleased with how they turned out, although close up I am not convinced about the shape of the cap for my time period.
     

     
    Here they are fitted in 1425. Although the cab number is rapidly wearing off due to handling. This the drivers side.
     

     
    and the fireman's side.
     

     
    Along with a lick of paint they hide the fact the motor protrudes a long way into the cab, although it doesn't really obscure the view directly through the opening from one side to other it used to noticeable when looking down into the cab. The locomotive has been re-motored recently and had a few touch-ups cosmetically. There is a lot more that could be done to improve the appearance, however I wish to concentrate on other matters and one day I will get around to making the locomotives to portray the early 1920's pre-grouping scene, for which 1425 is not suitable.
  20. richbrummitt
    Thank you again to everyone who voiced an opinion last week. It is now too late to change my mind because the levers have subsequently been installed at the up/Thame/left-hand end of the layout and I'm not planning on taking them back out, ever.
     

     
    The front profile of the board has also been finalised to be a gentle slope downwards from the road overbridge to below rail level at this end. The ground is not below the rails at Littlemore but I think this makes most sense for incorporating the lever frame as low as is possible and into the ground contours. It should make viewing a little better, rather than looking into a cutting, and defintiely improve the possibilities for photographing trains.
     
    I'm currently mulling over exactly where one of the signals is to go and what to do regarding the interlocking; I really want to make the operator use the FPL levers but that isn't a straightforward electrical problem with a single line unless someone with more elctrickery skill has an obvious answer? The only way I see it working at the moment is a compromise where the FPL has to be engaged to pass onto and beyond a switch on the through route. It is likely that the only locking required is for the FPLs and at the minimum one signal so the mechanism for that should be straightforward enough. A thought that did strike me was to include all the signals off the layout too and have proper locking but I haven't got enough levers and because it isn't a block post and many moves must have been signalled by hand back in the real world it would not work as well as I might like anyway.
     
    Once the levers were installed and whilst I finish my considerations regarding the above I began building some additional structure within the baseboards to create the lead up-and-out from the frame. I plan to achieve this by using a surplus of servo discs and arms drilled out and mounted onto brass tube, which in turn will rotate around a brass tube or rod fixed to the structure.
     

     
    You should be able to make out the loop on TOU that has been installed above the lever frame. A relatively long wire from a servo arm, driven by wires from the lever, will pass through this and take up any excess movement in it's deflection.
     
    I had cut away the top couple of millimetres along the sleeper ends and whilst the glue was out I have added on a ledge immediately below this level to create a small ballast shoulder and cess. The following photo shows the scene whilst the glue dries. The ledge is on the front edge only at this point because the rear is met by either the platform or the yard. The latter will have a covering of dirty filth up to sleeper level rather than ballast proper.
     

     
     
    The wood bridging to the front edge is not permanent: it is a makeshift clamp.
  21. richbrummitt
    Apologies for anyone who's been holding their breath: this entry has been a while because I keep getting distracted any time I come on rmweb and run out of time before I get to updating this. Sorry.
     
    This expands on a thread in the 3D Printing and CAD group on my experiment in 3D printing model railway items. I have a job that uses a 3D CAD system extensively so I have a 'leg up' (as one person kindly put it) on the skills required to create a file for printing. Having used similar technology for prototypes in this job I was somewhat sceptical about what could be achieved when asking for much smaller details on much smaller models. I chose a passenger cattle box (BEETLE) as a prototype because it has many different types of feature on the body; layering, planking, louvres, strapping, panels &c. Here it is when it first arrived from Shapeways in FUD (frosted ultra detail).
     

     
    There is a small hole where some of the louvre has broken away during the cleaning process. Below in black after a quick blast from the aerosol, which may make it a bit easier to see the detail (possibly not?).
     

     
    The smallest details are 0.1mm - the width between the planks on the ends. The layers are multiples of 0.125mm so that it matches up with etched construction, which in 2mm scale is almost always in 0.010" material and so matches with half etch.
     
    I was pleased with the outcome and so I continued to make the chassis. I was (un)fortunate enough to have a fair few Siphon underframes spare from test etches and mistakes that I cut and shut to 16'0" wheelbase with the aid of a chassis assembly jig from the association 2-312 RCH W irons fret. The brake blocks fold up from the W irons in this case so I was off to a good start. It still left a lot of bits to find. These vehicles are particularly busy underneath because they have central steps plus one at each corner, door bangers under the doors for the beasts, vacuum cylinder, and the longitudinal gas cylinder for lighting the drovers compartment!
     
    As can be seen I included the headstocks in the body. The solebars were added from nickel silver strip with wire soldered along the base to represent the bulb. The steps were made as previously on the milk brake with some extra holes in the jig
     

     
    The central footboards are very short, like on a horsebox. The brass wire holds the brass angle down in the jig to leave as many hands free as possible for orienting the stirrups (nickel silver wire), holding the soldering iron &c.
     

     
    This is what the component parts look like before assembly, and after cleaning up. There's no 1p, but the cutting mat should give an idea of size.
     
    Parts from various other sources were added until all the prominent items were present. The gas cylinder was mounted on a wireform as previously for the milk brake. There was a particularly scary moment soldering the door bangers in place once the whitemetal castings for the axle boxes and springs had been added where these could not be fitted afterwards.
     

     
    Here a top and bottom view of the chassis and a further picture of the bodies test fitted on them.
     

     
    Not the clearest photograph I'm afraid. It was at this point I realised that I had missed some items off the bodies. A pair of T stanchions from the ends and the water tank in the roof that was present on the early ones. (The models are meant to represent a pair from the first batch of diagram W7.)
     
    Now these details are added and the handrails and headstock details fitted they are ready for some more paint.
     

     
    I'm not sure what colour they should be? I thought they would have been lake in the early 20's but Atkins et al. GWR goods wagons 3rd Ed. seems to suggest that they would still have been grey until the grouping. Hmmm.
  22. richbrummitt

    Int Milk Brillyant

    By richbrummitt,

    I guess some of you might have been wondering how the kit design was going. If not then maybe you will be interested enough to read on anyway. I've now built enough to know that all the permutations will work and only some very very minor changes will be needed before I reach a final version. Here's the proof
     

     
    Left to Right: Diagram O4, Diagram O6 (O5 with end door conversion), Diagram O1. I stopped building when I ran out of parts. Everything else will need to be begged bought or otherwise obtained to complete.
     

     
    A close up of diagram O1. I had to file the chassis a bit to fit between the tabs for the solebar, but everything else went together well enough. Also in the picture is the tail end of the milk train; part of a milk brake van (also under construction and at the point where the parts run out) converted from pharmacy cars after WWI and allocated diagram O13. It is a Blacksmith kit.
     

     
    O6 showing the end doors. According to my main source of reference (the excellent work by Slinn and Clarke) there were not many of these built, but I couldn't resist doing the end doors as an extra. I have still to build the O5 kit as intended, but I was able to check it worked on the way to making this model. The filled in planks are missing from the sides. An oversight on my part that is easily fixed. I also need to make sure there are enough lamp irons for this version. It has different side ones compared to diagram O5 because of the end doors.
     

     
    O4. The same subject as in the original post about these items though now the roof profile is corrected, the fill ins for livery are present. All I am going to change here is the same as for all the others. That is, to give the springs a little more material where they meet the hanger because they are rather spindly for my liking and a probable weak point. This is the only vehicle here built with a cleminson chassis. The others have my own design with a sliding centre axle that will be provided. Any of them can be built by either method. Also in this picture is another brake van from a Blacksmith kit. The dean bogies are something I've been working on for a few kits. Fitting the spring hangers will require removal of the footboards. More on this one another time.
     
    Hopefully next time you see the siphons they will be finished. I keep telling myself that I must finish things.
  23. richbrummitt
    A New Year means that exhibition season is under way. It used to start earlier back in the North but there isn't a lot locally until January and then it's St Albans, Southampton and then it is busy through until March until it's over for another year. Returning from St Albans the realisation hit me of what I had done to myself. Then I get an email from an exhibition manager to confirm details for next year that very much confirmed it. I am an idiot. I unwittingly talked myself into this over a year ago and now I have to live with it.
     
    Since that conversation some work has been done on the layout. This has been to remove some items I wasn't happy with. When making the platform substructure I had second thoughts about the ground contour and after asking second opinions of many people with the prototype photographs I have I concluded that the rear siding had to be relaid. Up it came...
     

     
    ...and back down it went - a little higher than before. It is now nearly platform height at the buffer stops and the ground levels can look much more like the real thing must have been. The many rolls of solder make useful weights until I get around to using them up on my unbuilt kit mountain.
     

     
    Another area that has given me massive headaches and continues to do so is the turnout operating units. These were built as a moving sleeper below the track bed with 0.3mm wires coming through a slit in the 2mm plywood and soldered to the point blades. They worked until someone prodded one loose at Ally Pally where the boards were sat on the Association stand as a demo piece. A repair was impossible to effect and the truth was as bad as I feared as the design was proven wholly unsuitable. Proper planning...? Idiot! They had to go and I'd put it off for over six months. Finally I built up the courage to cut out the mechanisms. This is an example before surgery:
     

     
    First the electrical connections were severed and the sleeper removed.
     

     
    The plywood was cut away along with the sleepers because they were fixed to baseboard far better than they were to the rail.
     

     
    Now I must replace them. A more robust solution would be for small tubes to pass through from the TOU to just below rail level with a thin wire soldered to the switch rail that is a sliding fit in the tube. To begin with a jig was milled in Tufnol to create a gapped structure with the small tubes at the correct separation. The following series of pictures demonstrate its use.
     

     

     

     
    I now have seven of these soldered up waiting for divine inspiration to provide the rest of the mechanism from my ganged DPDT slide switches to these. This hasn't worked out well so far. I have read the Associations latest publication Track How it Works and How to Model it and that didn't result in any tungsten filament above head moments either. I have some parts mocked up from telescoping styrene sections but I am not sure how I can actually assemble the only idea that I keep coming back to in my head. Anything that is fitted needs to be less than 4mm in depth because that was how much space I thought would be needed when I had the router out and put the recesses in for the TOUs. A consequence of the baseboard design is that it is not possible to access the switch from beneath the baseboard. I used 20mm ply and it is not much wider than the cess at each side of the track so cutting this up would have been unwise to begin with and very difficult to achieve now. The remaining requirements therefore are bombproof reliability whilst being sympathetic to the small section loose heel switches and plastic chairs. I've done various things in the meantime to distract me and remain motivated but I really need to get this problem of my own idiotic making behind me to move on with this layout.
     
    I have trains and I have a venue and a date and I need some reliable working switches.
  24. richbrummitt
    A picture heavy blog post to ask a fairly simple question. If it is possible to have a poll on a blog post I can't work out how but it would be useful in this instance.
     
    I had previously consigned myself to the replacement of the unsatisfactory toggle switches, which had only been bought because they were available in 3PDT and 4PDT flavours, with banks of linked slide switches. With the TOUs coming out as well I figured I would change these too.
     
    Having played with the S4 Society lever frame previously on Jerry's Tucking Mill and seeing them again on the S4 stand at the Southampton show I could not resist them any longer. The slide switches went in a cupboard and 10 levers worth (2 kits) were ordered immediately on returning from the show. The signal box at Littlemore had 15 levers, reduced to 7 and was then demolished leaving an actual ground frame where the box had been reclassified as one earlier. I figured that 10 levers would suffice because the layout isn't big enough to model any of the distants that could have existed but I would need the odd extra one where a switch was operated manually.The discussion on how the layout might be signalled based on my needs for the model and to use 10 levers is in a separate topic here. The electrical work will be covered in a later blog post with the help of a bulk purchase of microswitches that arrived today.
     
    This brings me back to the question. When considering where to house or attach the levers on the baseboards, which are a bit minimalist, I thought that it might be fun to have them located behind the signal box. I like the idea of operating from the front and this location would be convenient because very few operating rods would have to cross the baseboard joint. One down side is that it could make it a pain to photograph the layout. This problem could be overcome by making the frames detachable but I will demonstrate later why I do not think this is much of an issue. What might be the biggest problem is that it spoils the overall impression of the layout when exhibited. I've trial fitted the frames where I'm thinking of putting them and taken some overall views of the layout as best I can in it's current location.
     

     

     

     

     
    So does it offend you?
     
    It should still be possible to get some good photograph opportunities without the levers in view, or with the possibility of them being cropped out without losing the subject or the composition of the image as demonstrated by the following viewpoints looking along the layout.
     

     

     

     

     
    I'd appreciate yes or no answers to the above question, along with any other comments. Eecially from any people who exhibition manage.
     
    It's not possible to have them any lower than in the pictures without moving them outside of the baseboard facings because of the internal structure of the boards.
  25. richbrummitt
    So here it is. TOU Mk2 and yet another moving sleeper with a difference. The shaping has made a lot of use of the milling machine. In fact the only part that I used a saw for was cutting the milled channels to length.
     
    First I milled some channels to receive the sleeper tie bars in whatever this material is?
     

     
    These are sized to fit into square section brass and were cut into 20mm lengths. The thickness is 2.5mm leaving a 0.5mm for the tubes that are soldered to the sleeper and a shim of 0.040" plasticard to make a snug fit in the brass section. Originally I had intended to glue the sleeper tie bar into some telescoping styrene sections but that didn't feel like the right move to make. This is shown in the top of the picture.
     

     
    In the middle is a prototype for the final design: an off-cut of 3/16" square brass with a slot milled lengthways where the tubes protrude through. The various parts that fit within are shown beside it. At the bottom is the final design, which includes the lugs that fold around to retain the channel and shim, plus tabs for pinning the device to the sub track bed.
     

     
    Here is the final design placed in situ. One of the wires will be used to link up to the operating lever but both are used as track feeds to the droppers for the switches. I'm thinking to cover it over with some paper because that is all the space I have!
     
    Now to finish the other six and get them fitted.
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