Colin parks

Thanks for your advice about the common crossings John. As it happens, I do have two check rail gauges, so I will set the straight road with those. You are right about the camera showing up all the tiny faults, but it is best to find them now rather than later! All the best, Colin

I had mentioned concerns about the proximity of the tips of the second pair of switches to the heels of the first pair. I have now looked at the S4 Society/C&L templates, which I had not realised were available to society members. Examining the l/hB8,r/hB8 tandem template, it turns out to be almost exactly the same as the Templot design I am working to and exactly the same in terms of switch positions. After re-making two switch/closure rail components, the assembles are now behaving themselves. Here are some warts and all pictures of the assemblies, still in need of adding the correct chairs in places. The left hand common crossing in this shot has had to be rebuilt due to the misalignment of the crossing nose, as seen here. The [digital] camera never lies. In a rather unorthodox procedure, the point and splice rail have been extracted from between the wing rails and the point rail reshaped and re-soldered. This shot highlighted the need for some more curving to the closure rail in the foreground. The stock rail to the left has a slight kink at the end of the check rail, caused by threading on the rather tight check rail chairs. The blobby soldered joint is evidence of work in progress on that common crossing. All issues have been addressed now, more might arise when the rails are laid on the timbering...

Hi Terry, Super layout, and good luck for tomorrow! Colin

Hi Dave, What realistic layout! The flowing curves and proportions give your work a really convincing feel. (I could not work out if it was P4 or 0 gauge and would not have guessed it was EM until I saw the Post-it note by the track.) Following now... Colin

Hi John, Thanks for your advice. I have now found some packets which will take care of most of the queries I had about chairing the tandem. I seem to have avoided having problems with closeness of check rails at the expense of bringing the switch toes of the second pair of switches very close to the switch heels of the first pair and all this suspect because of designing the tandem with two 1:8 crossings (the second and third ones). You are quite right about the first crossing being an awkward angle on a tandem - mine is 1:5.6. I am going to try a crunge the 1:5 or maybe the 1:6 set of block chairs from the relevant Exactoscale moulding into place. I have come across a letter from Pete at C&L along with details of what kind of chairs to use on turnouts and slips. I will be removing the M1 chairs, because it seems they are only used on slips. I also have found two packs of switch detailing chairs, with a mind-boggling array of parts, though I do recall having a diagram which might help identifying these. All the best, Colin

Thanks Martyn, I suppose a chopped slide chair would make a good representation of a bolted half-chair, though more cosmetic than functional. Colin

Some queries about chairing a tandem turnout. I might have caused myself some issues by combining two diverging crossings of the same angle namely 1:8. I could be wrong, but this seems to have created conflicts with chair positions in quite few places leaving little room for adjacent chairs. I have temporarily threaded on some M1 small chairs (all references are to C&L Exactoscale products), but maybe in some cases they should be have been L1 bridge chairs. It is unclear to me when to use an M1 chair and when to use an L1 chair. Here are some photos which might help someone answer this conundrum. Here to the left of the check rail only an M1 chair would seem to fit, but looks intuitively wrong. In the same area the check chair second from the right makes even an M1 chair impossible to fit. . In this view, tow of the M1 chairs could be changed for L1s, but there will be a conflict when the nearest wing rail receives its chair. And what should be happening here? Should it be two M1s nearest the knuckles followed by two L1s? Here, between the two check rail gauges, there is one M1 chair that I can now see should be an L1. (Ironically, the only chair that needs to be changed is trapped between two soldered joints).

Hi Chris, Your handrails look much better than the cast-on ones. The loco look rather fine with all that 'plumbing'. Every bit a Brighton engine! Colin

The rest of your layout looks so consistent in the level of detail you have achieved Chris, so splash out on a MSE kit! Re. magnets. I used reclaimed Geomag 5mm x 3mm magnets which came from an old set of my son's. The magnets were arranged in rows of five, which gave an operating zone of about 50mm. They were retro-fitted like yours, the only thing that had to be carefully observed was to keep all the polarities the same way up. Colin

Hi Chris, I think we have a similar taste in stock and motive power! Indeed we have almost all of the Southern detailing in common: concrete walls; plate-layers' hut; Lamp posts, etc.. That is why one shot on your layout reminds of a picture taken at an exhibtion of NHH. Newhaven Harbour has gone to a good home, with people who are full of fresh ideas. I will say no more until they decide to reveal themselves. I am rather taken with your station building, which looks almost like Arts and Crafts architecture. I fancy a go at a model of a T H Myres designed station building one day: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/95218-singleton-west-sussex/&do=findComment&comment=1769110 Colin

'Like' does the latest pictures no justice Jeremy. This is going to be an outstanding layout. Can you actually lift it? I seem to remember you are building this section on a 6ft plywood board- is it braced or supported in any way?. Colin

HI Siberian Snooper, I think that the bulge is caused by some timber shoving in Templot in the wrong direction. I only found the way to invert the shoving from one end of a timber to the other relatively late in the design process. The track plan as stuck to the board should have been proof-read prior to fixing it down. There are a few conflicts in timbering to sleepering spacings which I am working around. The good thing about the bulge is that it is far less problematic than a deficit! Colin

No, it was just that one shot that caught my eye Chris. (It was the first photo I saw when reading the topic backwards!) Colin

Hi Izzy, That layout of yours looks really good. Facing point locks and all! I might try rubbing down my stained timbers and see if that helps. I am betwixt and between, having already stained half the woodwork and the other half not. Colin

Hi Chris, Just discovered your layout topic today. Very nicely done! The latest picture reminded me of a certain Newhaven Harbour layout... Colin

Hi Jeremy, I regularly watch what you are getting up to, though seldom comment. The level of track building skill that you are attaining in 2mm are very high indeed. I am struggling to build track to this standard in 4mm! All the best, Colin

More progress from earlier today. The sleepers are now all laid on this board, leaving just the catch point and the timbers which will have soleplates added (the upturned loose ones). These timbers have to be set lower to allow for the thickness of the soleplates, which will be fashioned from 10 thou. plasticard. I am wondering about the merits of pre-staining the sleepers, as the stain I have been using is leaving a powdery surface on the timbering stained so far. This might affect the bond between the plastic chairs and Pandrol bases and the plywood - not a good idea.. Here are a couple of images of the three flat bottom rail turnouts, with corrected crossing on the l/h one. The rail assemblies are just loosely laid in position, but the slinky appearance of the B8 geometry and Templot's facility to insert turnouts in curves of any radius can be seen here. Much to do before laying anything permanently on the baseboard, but it is slowly beginning to come together. I will have to investigate why there is a marked bulge in the timbering on the l/h side of the tandem. Must have been shoving the timbers about too much.

One step forwards and two steps back characterises the work done yesterday. Using a cluster of roller gauges, the exact positions of the switches and closure rail assembly of this turnout found some slight misalignments between the switches and closure rails. This was easily corrected by adjusting the switches in relation to the stock rails, with some careful re-soldering of the brass packing strips - just visible under the + 0.1mm gauge. What was not so easy to overcome was the fact that I had cut the point rail of the crossing 8mm too short, leaving a gap between it and the stock rail of the next turnout's stock rail. The only thing to do was to fabricate a new crossing vee with a correct length point and splice rail, then insert it between the original wing rails, having removed the offending vee first of course. I have got away with it, but would not recommend this procedure as an easy fix.

Hi Izzy, Yes, there are many standards out there. I will stick to the P4 standards for now, though I acknowledge that a number of people such as yourself are findings individual ways of improving running on their layouts. I have heard of the Pendon Standard. Indeed, I have a set of Ultrascale 00 wheels for a Hornby class 73 to this standard. (It never derailed on my 00 layout!) It certainly is confusing for the newcomer to P4. One thing that only became apparent to me after ordering Exactoscale coach and wagon wheels was the fact that most P4 offerings are not to scale width (steam locos may be a different matter). Gauge widening is also a dark art, which seems to be necessary around switches and stock rails, where a 0.1mm allowance is made to avoid gauge narrowing on divergent routes. Colin

Meanwhile, just to show I am actually doing some modelling, here is an assortment of completed stretcher bar brackets. There are enough here to all the brackets I will ever need and they include 11 left and right-handed ones with drive rod tabs and 25 plain ones. The whole process took three and a half hours, which does not seem a bad return on the time taken. I found that the scrap etch was marked a 8 thou., which was as I thought having measured it with my metric vernier gauge at 0.2mm. (Ah, what did the EU ever give us? Er, metrication. (Hmm, must buy a set of imperial marked rulers in the next two years.) These brackets have all been reduced in length by 1mm. I was concerned that they not only looked too long, but that the length of GEL strip between them was going to be too short, which could have caused unnecessary stress on the GEL stretcher bar. It is a matter of balancing the appearance with the function: too small and there would be insufficient surface to bond the the bracket to the GEL strip. This has to be right because the operation and reliability of the switch depends on these tiny, yet still over-scale parts. The next amusement before going back to university on Tuesday is to fabricate some drive rods out of brass wire and strip. My friend Howard Bolton suggests fitting these rods the driven brackets before fixing the brackets to the switch rails. It does look almost impossible to do otherwise!

Hi Izzy, From what you are saying, my comments about oxidisation would probably not apply as you you have not disturbed the plated tread and flange. The times I did fiddle around with flange depths on 00 wheels I used a parting off tool to reduce the flange and needle file to round it over this was judged it by eye. The 3" chuck I have in my lathe is a three-jaw -not the most subtle of machines, but it worked. I seem recall reading in the notorious article in MRJ 234 that modeller also turned Jackson/Romford wheels down to a P4 kind of profile like you have described. Colin

Hi Izzy, That is very nice bit of turning you have achieved with those wheels. You are certainly not the first to have done this kind of thing, though perhaps one of a handful who admits to it! I have been wondering about deeper flanges in my darker moments, then resolve to carry on with P4 wheels. How did you manage to hold the wheels securely during the machining process? I have been known in the past to have reduced the flange depth on similar wagon wheels by Hornby and Bachmann. The one snag I found was that over time, the alloy oxidised, being devoid of the original plated finish. Colin

Hi John, Good question. I am going to use the Exactoscale P4 slide chairson the bullhead tandem. But on flat bottom rail, the P4 slide chairs are a little short, bearing in mind the extra width of the rail foot. There are of course Exactoscale slide chairs for 00/EM which could be used. However, when comparing the Peco and Exactoscale slide chairs against prototype reference photos, the latter seemed not quite chunky enough for this application. As for any more permutations of scale/gauge combinations for 4mm, I reckon we have enough to be getting on with. I totally agree that EM is the logical choice for those who do not wish to use P4 standards (which are definitely not for the faint-hearted I am beginning to realise!) All the best, Colin

Well I am actually engaged in 4mm scale modelling with P4 track, so what others say are entirely their own opinions!

I somehow knew you would have it covered Martin!