antyeates1983

Today I decided to turn the smokebox door from brass rod. I didn't have any hard dimensions to go by, so just estimated something from photographs. Here are a couple of photos of the workpiece in the lathe. I first drilled a 0.4mm hole in the end - this will take a piece of wire to hold the handles. I then had a go at forming the domed end. I didn't take a photo at that stage, so the first photo here shows me with a different tool installed that I have just used to remove the material behind the door, leaving a spigot. For this sort of operation I use a small parting tool that came with a holder to go in the tool post. I'm a bit of a novice with the lathe but find that this small, square-ended tool is often useful for 2mm scale turning operations, not only parting off. At this point I determined that the door was still too thick, so I worked on the rounded end again to thin it down. This time I did take a photo, so you can see my setup for doing this. These kind of rounded shapes are quite easy to do by hand with a graver. I don't have a purpose-made tool rest (the Sherline one is crazily expensive), so instead am resting the graver on a length of tool steel held in the tool post. Here's a picture of the graver - I got this a few months ago from https://www.eternaltools.com/carbide-gravers at the same time as ordering some piercing saw blades, and find it very nice to use. Certainly compared to the ground-down needle file that I used previously. Here's the back of the door after cutting off. You can see the 0.4mm hole inside the spigot. Then it was a case of soldering to the front of the smokebox, after first opening out the mounting hole. It turned out that this was no longer precisely in the centre (likely after my inadvertent repositioning of the smokebox front earlier), so I had to open out the hole further and position the door centrally by eye. Later in the day, after soldering this on, I looked at a different photo of the real thing and noticed that in Highland days that particular loco (at least) had a noticeable rim around the door. The picture I was looking at this morning didn't seem to show such a rim, so I hadn't included it in my turning. I think it is probably better now to leave it off rather than try to add it on untidily with wire or something. The hinges and handles/darts will be a task for another day.

The next task was to fix the boiler/smokebox assembly to the chassis. Before doing so, I made a chunk of brass to fill the inside of the smokebox saddle, with the aim of giving something to tap a hole into for the chassis fixing screw. I initially intended to make this from insulating material, but didn't have any "engineering plastic" of a large enough size. I tried to make it from a lump of tufnol, but I realised that the space is actually pretty small, so opted to go for brass in the end as something more solid. I first cut a rectangular piece, filed it to size, then filed the seat for the boiler with a round file. (Apologies, I didn't remember to take a photo of this!). At this point I began a somewhat trying phase. Firstly. the saddle was soldered inside the smokebox, but the smokebox front shifted slightly in the process. On trying to fix that, the whole smokebox came off. So I had to clean it up and solder it all together again. Once I had this all attached, I did my best to file the base so that it sat flat on the footplate. But when I soldered the whole thing to the footplate, I found that the footplate was bent upward at the front, suggesting I had filed too much off the smokebox saddle. So it came off again and I inserted some shims of brass underneath, which then had to be cleaned up. Eventually I ended up as you see here. In this shot, the boiler has also been soldered to the tanks and cab front, and the excess solder cleaned up as best as I could. Next job was to drill various holes. Here you can see me drilling the chassis fixing hole through the smokebox saddle, from underneath. The footplate valance was useful for sitting on the jaws of the machine vice. I progressively drilled out the hole to 1mm, then used a pin vice to tap it by hand for the 12BA fixing screw. The next photo shows me drilling the holes on top of the boiler for the boiler "furniture". I measured them from the drawing. Somehow the hole for the chimney wandered to one side a bit on the initial 0.5mm drilling, but I was then able to drift it to central when drilling out to a larger radius. (I forget what radius - I'll need to determine this when I come to make the chimney!). The final step was to drill the holes for the handrail knobs in the smokebox and boiler side. This was also done on the Proxxon by holding the body sideways in the vice - I never have much luck drilling small (0.3mm) holes by hand! Here are some top and bottom views of the model in its current state. In the underside view I've left the body-to-chassis fixing screw standing proud. The screw at the rear end attaches the motor mount, and doesn't fix the body. I'm hopeful that a single screw will be sufficient.

Due to a lack of forethought, I found that I hadn't made a large enough hole in the cab rear to accommodate the motor mount. I couldn't get in there with a file so I resorted to a burr in the minidrill to carefully remove the metal. Below you see the body in place on the chassis. If I were to use a similar motor mount in future, I would ensure that it was entirely in the bunker! You can't see it here, but I've also filed down the chassis block so that the body sits at the right height. Thanks to the footplate having a PCB layer underneath, the body is insulated from the side frames. The next job was to prepare the boiler and smokebox. These are made from brass tube, of diameters 8.73mm (11/32") and 9.5mm respectively. These two sizes are nicely telescopic, and a close enough match to the real thing for me. I first cut a length for the boiler, then used the piercing saw to remove the part that would otherwise interfere with the gears and motor. Incidentally, for cutting the tube to length I used the lathe, as I find it easier to get the end square compared filing/sanding after a saw cut. When cutting the smokebox it was a simple matter to cut a representation of the smaller diameter band at the inner end. The smokebox was slit across the bottom, and the previously prepared nickel silver front used to mark where to make the bends. The reverse curve in the smokebox "skirt" was bent using pliers, then it was soldered on to the boiler. The next photo shows my set up for doing this. Since I've never got around to making a proper wooden right-angle for this kind of job, I just rigged one up using a clothes peg that was sitting nearby. I found it useful to attach a piece of tufnol to the boiler with masking tape, so as to be able to hold and position it by hand and also to see more easily whether the smokebox was orientated correctly. The smokebox front was attached last, flat on the bench against the clothes peg. This photo shows it before cleaning up. Here's the boiler after cleaning up and shaping with emery sticks. (I left the smokebox front a little oversize originally to give me some wiggle-room): Finally for today, I soldered on the tank tops. I'm not attaching the boiler yet as it needs to be drilled for furniture and handrails, and I also need to sort out the body fixing hole and screw at the front.

Thanks - there's still no guarantee that I finish it in four years, but I hoped that posting on here might guilt me into doing so!

With the footplate ready I decided to press on with the basic body shell. First stage was to laminate two layers of 0.25mm nickel silver, again taken from the scrap surrounding an etched sheet. The pattern is stuck on with double-sided tape - I arranged the parts on the drawing to make use of one straight edge. The buffer beam is crossed out to remind me that I already made it! Before cutting out the pieces I drilled the various holes using the Proxxon. Then it was a case of cutting out roughly with the piercing saw (quick) and filing to the right shape (laborious - this is where etching saves time!). I used a brass tube of the planned boiler diameter to guide my filing of the large boiler holes - any imperfections will be filled with solder. Below you see the parts after desoldering the two layers and removing the pattern. The front and rear of the cab are not identical as only the front needs to house the boiler, so this was further filed after separation. Only one tank front and smokebox front are required, so I ended up with spares of these! From past experience, I know that getting the tank tops shaped to fit precisely up to the boiler as well as horizontal is a pain, so I soldered some n/s strips on the inside of the tank sides for them to sit on (made from 2mm Association plain rail). I also soldered similar strips on the cab front at each side, and also for the bunker rear to butt against. Assembly started by fixing the cab front to the footplate. I made a simple wooden base that fits inside the buffer beams to give me a flat base to work on, as the footplate is still a bit flimsy. Masking tape is useful for holding things in place (it doesn't seem to come loose when heated, unlike double-sided tape). Here the cab front is stuck to a tufnol block and located up to a measured line scribed on the footplate. Next, I attached one of the sides. In fact, the cab front came loose at this point and shifted, and I had to start over again, but I got there in the end. This is where designing an etch could make life easier by building in tabs and slots to locate all of the parts. In the next photo, I've added the cab rear and the tank front piece. And here is the other side attached. The last piece to be attached in this session was the rear of the bunker. In fact I had to cut this out separately as I didn't bother to draw it on the computer. It's just rectangular with a bend in. The metal strips made it easy to align, then I filed the top to the right height in situ. The tank tops will wait until the boiler is in place, but that's a task for another day.

This week's progress has been on the footplate. First step was to cut out a rectangle of 0.8mm (single-sided) PCB, and a slightly larger one of 5 thou brass, and laminate these together with solder. The first photo shows the assembly on the Proxxon with the pattern attached by double-sided tape. I decided to mill out the cut-outs rather than using the piercing saw. I'm not sure this saved any time but it made it easier to get straight edges. And here is the resulting unit from underneath. Even more will need to be cut away to clear things like the coupling rods and (probably) motor, but I thought I would attach the body before I make it even more flimsier! Next step was to cut the buffer beams and valances from two sheets of (scrap) 10 thou nickel silver laminated together. I used the Proxxon to drill the three holes in a straight line before cutting out the buffer beam, but this time the parts were cut out with the piercing saw and filed laboriously to shape. The valances are very thin! This photo shows them before separating: Then it was a case of tinning the underside edges of the footplate top, and soldering them on. I wanted to achieve the effect of a slight lip where the footplate sticks out. The inside faces of the buffer beams and valances will need to be insulated, probably by glueing on Rizla paper. The final photo shows the footplate sitting loose on the chassis. In fact I need to remove some more material from the chassis to get it to sit at the right height, as well as from the footplate itself so that the coupling rod bosses clear the underside. The cab, tanks and boiler will be soldered to the footplate, and I want to get these in place before removing the final material from the footplate. I still need to drill the hole for the fixing screw at the front (right in the photo). Current thoughts are that I might make the smokebox saddle from solid brass and tap this to take the fixing screw, but we will see if this works out.

Today I made the cylinders. Rummaging through my brass stock I found two concentric tubes, one whose inside diameter was a nice sliding fit on the 0.5mm piston rods, and another that fitted around it and had 2mm outside diameter. These two tubes will allow me to make a (coarse) representation of the housing/bearing where the piston rod enters. I had calculated that the whole thing needed to be about 4mm diameter, allowing 0.25mm for an outer wrapper (looking at prototype photos, it look like this is not cylindrical underneath, hence my choice of a separate wrapper). So I used the lathe to face and turn down a length of 5mm brass rod to 4mm, and to drill a 2mm hole through the centre. The two tubes were cut to length appropriately and soldered in, with a cocktail stick masking the hole in the end of the inner tube. The photo below shows me filing a slot in the top of one of the cylinders to take the slidebar. I started the slot with the piercing saw and then cut the rest with a thin file. This was a case of trying the slidebar in place along with the valve gear, filing more and more until it was nice and straight at the correct height. I then soldered in the slidebars to arrive here: And finally, with the valve gear in place: I'm hoping that there is sufficient motion in the piston rod, but if not I may need to carefully file down the bearings in the end of the cylinders. I still need to cut the piston rods to length so that they don't stick out of the front of the cylinders, as you can see. Next I have to attach the cylinders to the frames, and holding them in place shows that they need to be set out quite a long way from the frame. I think I will do this with pieces of brass - watch this space!

This is the first time I've attempted outside motion, so apologies to the experts. I've concluded that it's rather small and fiddly, but no more so than other fine details. First off, I drilled, sawed and filed up the connecting rods in the same way as the coupling rods, from two sheets of 15-thou nickel silver sweated together. Here you see them once the paper pattern has been removed. They're shape is supposed to be a simple approximation of the real thing. As you can see in this enlargement, one of the crank-pin holes is a bit bigger than necessary (I don't remember how that happened now). But hopefully it will still work ok. Next, the slide bars were filed up from pieces of code 40 plain rail. The left-hand ends (as seen here) will be attached somehow to the cylinders. The drawing here shows how the crosshead hangs from a single slide bar on each side. I omitted the piston rod itself from this print (must have been on a different layer!). There then followed some experimentation with how on Earth to make the crossheads. In the end I settled on a variant of a design described on Henk Oversloot's website (http://www.fs160.eu/fiNeweb/Lconstruction/walschaerts/walschaerts.php). In my case the main body of the crosshead is made from a front piece of 10 thou nickel silver, and a rear piece of thicker brass (I didn't have any thicker nickel silver). The rear piece has a channel milled into it for the slide bar, and another channel milled part of the way along for the little end of the connecting rod. The photo below shows me after milling the first two channels: This is the resulting piece of brass (containing both crosshead backs as mirror-images of one another). The other two slots (top and bottom here) are just to give me a guide for cutting out. The holes will take the pivot pin for the connecting rod. Here you see one of the crosshead backs cut oversize, with the slide bar and connecting rod in to give an idea. The little end of the connecting rod still needs thinning down here: I then soldered on (temporarily) some 10 thou brass for the front layer, drilled the hole through this, and shaped both pieces. The photo below shows these and the 0.5mm diameter crank pin that forms the pivot. I had to thin down the head to make a better representation of the real thing (from photos). Next, I drilled a hole in the side for locating the piston rod, before separating the two layers and soldering the piston rod onto the rear layer. It is just 0.5mm nickel silver rod with a collar of brass tube (again just for cosmetic detailing). In fact, I originally tried to solder on the piston rod after soldering up all of the other bits, but this was a bad idea as the connecting rod jammed up solid and I had to heat it all up and separate all the bits again. In this picture you can also see that I soldered the crankpin to the front layer. (Again, this was the result of experience showing that it was better to attach it without the con rod being in sight. No need to actually solder the pin to both front and back.) The next photo shows my "lash up" for soldering the two layers together with the connecting rod in between (sorry about the focus). I just stuck the rear layer to my work board with double-sided tape, and held the piston rod firmly in place with masking tape. There is a layer of Rizla paper on each side of the con rod, and these are soaked in oil. As a final precaution, the con rod and the insides of the front and back layers are coated with black marker pen where they are not supposed to be soldered. Although in practice this seems to have little effect at stopping the solder. This lash up worked, however, and allowed me to solder front and back together without gumming up the rod or unsoldering the piston. Of course, working this all out took much longer for the first one than the second! And the final result:

Yes, I think you're both right...

Having drilled the rods (15 thou nickel silver) at an earlier stage, I then shaped them while still soldered together. For this I stuck on the template with double-sided tape, cut roughly to shape with the piercing saw, then began a reasonably laborious process of filing to shape. Always being very careful not to remove too much material! I find the most useful files for this are a triangular one (to get into sharp corners) and a flat one with one "blind" edge. I held them in the vice for doing this (sorry, no photos of the work in progress). This shows the finished rods separated. If I'm brave enough, I might thin them down a little bit more at a later date. Then came the process of trying them on the wheels, and opening out the holes a tiny bit at a time (I used a smoothing broach). In fact one of the rods was inexplicably binding, and eventually I tracked the problem down to one of the wheels being wonky on its stub axle. I probably damaged it at some points when putting it in or out of a chassis (I did use this set of wheels previously in some experiments with a Barney 0-6-0 chassis). I managed to straighten it a bit by holding it in the lathe chuck and pressing a tube up against it with the tailstock, avoiding the crankpin. After that, the chassis will roll up and down under gravity with both rods held temporarily in place, although the wobbly wheel means I can't put the (temporary) retaining washer on too tightly. The sensible solution would be to purchase a new non-wonky wheel, but I'm loath to do this as wheels are not cheap... Below you see me trying out the motor. It goes along, although the dodgy wire connection to the motor is not helping. I still need to experiment a bit to get the optimum positioning of the motor, I think.

Thanks. One problem that has now occurred is that one of the motor leads is getting loose where it connects into the motor, and making an intermittent connection. It looks like I will have to replace the motor with another one, unfortunately. (Unless anyone can suggest how to repair the connection.)

Having said that the next post would be about the coupling rods, this will have to wait as I have been working instead on mounting the motor. I'm using a 7mm diameter coreless one from eBay, which has no built-in way of fixing it in place. So after some pondering I decided to make a collar that can be tightened around the motor to hold it. This started as a length of scrap 0.25mm nickel silver from the sprue of an etched kit. It was easily formed into a circle using a brass bar in the vice with the jaws open: I bent out two "legs", and drilled a hole to 14BA clearance through them, as in the next photo. This will allow the collar to be tightened on to the motor with a nut and bolt: I also soldered a 12BA nut onto the collar at 90-degrees to the tightening screw (which will go in the coal bunker). This 12BA nut allows the collar to be screwed onto the chassis block, through a hole drilled for the purpose. In the photo below, you can see the collar in place. I've fitted a washer under the 12BA nut in an (ongoing) attempt to find the best height for meshing the worm. It would probably have been better to hold the motor at the business end (in part to avoid having it in the rear of the cab), but there wasn't space to attach it there owing to the hole for the chassis fixing screw. Here is an underneath view, showing the 12BA screw - I recessed the head in the chassis block. Note that the 14BA nut is soldered onto one side of the collar leg, so that you can adjust the screw holding the motor in place without having to hold the nut in position. Here the plastic 30:1 worm has been fitted. Since it has a wider bore than the motor shaft I used one of the Association shaft adapters, on to which the worm is a tight push fit. The adaptor was a loose sliding fit on the shaft of this particular motor, so I secured it with Araldite. There was a danger of gumming up the works in this operation, so I used a temporary barrier of cigarette paper and additionally kept the motor turning while the glue dried. Trials now indicated that the worm needed to be supported at the other end in order to remain properly engaged with its wheel, so I cut a piece of brass angle and attached a frame bush: This simply screws into a tapped 12BA hole in the chassis block: The nice things about this arrangement are that (1) all of the screws can be tweaked to get it to run just right, and (2) the motor could be replaced if need be. It and the worm can just be slid out backward. Getting it to run is not as easy as it appears - in fact, I find it works best currently with at least one screw slackened off, which probably indicates that something is not lined up somewhere, but I haven't been able to find exactly where yet. Below you see me running in the gears with the motor temporarily powered up. As you can see, I didn't end up attaching the worm to either of the side frames, for which I provided the tall extensions. The current plan is to leave these in place as extra weight, unless I find that the space is needed for something else!

Here the gears and driven axle are in place in the chassis. The muff is reamed out to be a fairly loose push fit so that I can test the assembly. The wheels will eventually be glued in after painting etc. Some time was spent filing more metal off the chassis block so that nothing was catching. I've also countersunk the heads of the fixing screws here to make them as flush as possible to the side frames, not least because they will be behind the front and rear wheels. The crankpins had been glued to the driving wheels with araldite on a previous occasion. I discovered that the muffs were just the right length as they come to fit for the driving wheels without shortening. The muff for the gear shaft did need shortening as you can see. In fact, this one also needed some attention because I didn't have a suitable stepped one in stock (the metric 14T gear has a different hole diameter than the worm wheel). I simply took a fatter 3.2mm (or is it 1/8"?) one and turned one end to 3mm on the lathe. I cut it down to the right length at the same time (much easier than filing by hand). This is much quicker than the operation of reaming out the hole which I did do by hand (is there a lesson there?). Here the other wheels are (temporarily) attached to check that the chassis rolls along my test track. All seems to be in order (famous last words). You can see the end of one of the two half stub-axles on the gear shaft. At this point the chassis block still hasn't been cut to length. Next job will be to shape the coupling rods...

No - I think that may be what I end up doing once it is finally cut to shape.

Having drilled the holes in the frames, I stuck on a template again and cut around it in time honoured fashion with a piercing saw: Files were then used to finish the shape. As you can see, these include crude representations of the springs (just shadows behind the wheels, really). Shaping (and thinning) of the guard irons will be left until later. The extra material at either end was to facilitate clamping during the drilling operations but shouldn't be needed any longer. The next task was to shape the chassis block from 6mm square brass stock. I took advantage of the Proxxon mill for this - here the slots are for the axles, and the holes will be for the screws that hold on the frames. At this stage, the slots are slightly undersized - I opened them out fully a bit later. The brass is shaped following another paper template (on the underside in this view). I tried to make it as large as I could get away with, without (hopefully) being too obvious in the finished model. In the next shot, I have plugged the fixing holes with 3mm acetal rod (from eBay). These were subsequently drilled and tapped for 12BA screws. Next it was back to the Proxxon to mill out slots for the various gears, while leaving as much brass in place as possible. I'm using a 1mm cutter here to get the corners quite sharp. Again, I opened this out to final size with a file once I had the gears to hand later. You can also see the drilled and tapped screw holes, for which I used one of the frames as a jig. Here are the results in component form. The bottom two layers are the 5 thou styrene insulating layers. In this view I've also soldered in the brass bushes for the gear shaft. And finally, this is what it looks like attached together. One one side I had to cut the plasticard layer into two separate pieces to clear the gears, so I will probably glue them in later to keep them in alignment. I don't want to do this yet as there will still be soldering to do (I'm thinking of the cylinders, for example).

Hi Ian, Thanks for your post. My plan is not to fit p/b bushes, and see how it works out without them. They're quite expensive and these frames are reasonably thick. I may try Simpson springs if pickup is an issue. Best regards, Anthony

Construction began by preparing two lengths of 15 thou nickel-silver for the coupling rods and two pieces of 0.64mm brass for the frames. In the photo below you see the latter stuck together with double-sided tape. It is critical to get the holes in the rods the same distance apart as the holes in the frames, so I temporarily soldered the two pieces of nickel-silver together and to one of the frames. (I didn't want to rely on two layers of double-sided tape). In this photo I scribed a straight line and marked the position of one of the holes: I don't have a vertical drill press but I do have a Proxxon MF70 mill, so I used this to drill the three holes (diameter 0.5mm), measuring the distances using the handwheel. These awkwardly turn out to be 15 2/3 and 12 2/3 mm, so it is an approximation! The result after separating the coupling rods: The coupling rods were now put (safely) aside for later, to concentrate on the frames. Before opening the axle holes out further, I decided to mark the other critical hole, which is for the stub axle holding the worm wheel and 14T gear. For this purpose, I used the 2mm Association gear meshing tool. Below you see the two M0.3 gears on the tool, 14T and 25T. I found that this meshing distance was too small for the tool as supplied, but I was able to attack the sliding portion with a file and bring it within the range. The gears are mounted on bits of plastic muff. To use the tool, you set it up so that the gears turn nicely, then put one point in the axle hole and use the other to scribe a circle (sorry for the blurriness): The other horizontal line was measured from the drawing to get the correct x-position of the hole. This was centre punched, then drilled in the Proxxon as before (0.5mm). I then stuck on the template and drilled the other holes (two body fixing screws and three for pins to locate the brakes). I then opened out the axle holes by hand up to 1.5mm, running up through 0.1mm increment drills and finally using a broach. I did this by hand to avoid the risk of drifting the holes by having to centre them again on the mill. Unfortunately I discovered that I had managed to drill the gear hole slightly outside the scribed circle, so I had to drift it sideways with a round file. This then made it larger than 1.5mm, so I opened it all the way out to 3mm and will fit a brass bush later at the correct centre. The photo below shows the frames with all of their holes:

During the enforced shutdown I've started work on a loco to shunt my 2mm Diamond Jubilee Challenge entry: a Drummond 0-6-0T "scrap" tank, so called because they were put together by Lochgorm works from leftover bits of earlier engines. I decided to "borrow" the wheels and gears that were earmarked for a Barney 0-6-0. That loco will have an etched body and chassis, for which I have nearly finished the artwork. For a change, I decided that this one would be completely scratchbuilt. My starting point was Peter Tatlow's drawing (https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Highland-Locomotives-Peter-Tatlow/dp/B000GTEMYU), which I scanned into AutoCAD and traced over to identify the key dimensions. The different layers in the drawing are a bit hard to see in the sketch below, but essentially they are (i) body and wheels [for guidance]; (ii) frames; (iii) chassis block [which will be milled from solid brass]; (iv) gears; (v) coupling rods; (vi) outside motion [my first attempt at this!]. To maximise the weight of the loco, I decided to mill the chassis from solid brass (6mm square section). Following a survey of the metal I had in stock, I decided to build the side frames from 0.64mm thick brass. Since this will be a standard split-frame loco, the side frames will screw into plastic "plugs" in the chassis block, and the frames will be separated from the block by thin layers of plasticard. Some experimenting with 2mm Association gear sizes on the drawing led me to opt for the 30:1 worm and then a 14:25 reduction with the M0.3 spur gears. My logic was to use the largest possible gear on the driven axle (constrained by the wheel diameter of 10mm), then to use the largest possible worm wheel that would clear the axle muff. I also wanted to restrict to gears that I already had in my bits box! The motor will be a cheap coreless one that came from eBay. With 7mm diameter and 16.5mm length, it will go in the cab and drive the middle axle, as shown in the drawing. Ultimately I will try to cram in a DCC decoder wherever it will fit. Another advantage of drawing out on the computer is that I can then print as many paper templates of different bits as I like, which saves a lot of measuring and marking out when it comes to cutting metal.

A useful source of etched gates etc is Scale Link (now produced by "Scale Link fretcetera"): https://www.scalelinkfretcetera.co.uk/product-category/frets/1152-160-n-gauge/ Anthony

Since no-one seems to have posted so far, I thought I would create a thread for this event next weekend (7th and 8th). In particular, I have a request: are any 2mm members around on the Sunday and able to assist me with the operation of Corrieshalloch in the main exhibition? Mrs Y. has offered to help if necessary but isn't overly keen, so some assistance, even for part of the day, would be welcome. Saturday is already covered. If you can help, please email me at the 2mm magazine editor address. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to my foray into GW territory, and hope to see you there! Anthony

Here are some photos of John Greenwood's Wadebridge, taken yesterday at the Farnham MRC exhibition in Aldershot. I was very happy to see this fantastic layout in the flesh. I believe that the T9 in these first two shots is something of an elder statesman of the fleet:

Next, the new Steve Sykes Award for pre-grouping prototypes. Here is a picture of the new trophy itself (the LB&SCR crest): The winner was Ian Smith for this trio of GWR cattle wagons (I took an elevated view to try and show the cattle inside): An assortment of Midland and SDJR wagons by Jerry Clifford: A trio of GNR 8 and 12 wheeled coaches. These were built by David Eveleigh and awarded the Members' Choice Cup: Next the Malcolm Stone Award is for non rolling stock models. Ian Smith won the award for a GWR station building based on Bovey Tracey in Devon: Freshwater station building by Ian Morgan (with random lighting via a MERG kit): On the forecourt - 3 horse-drawn vehicles by Nigel Ashton: An Essex cottage from the village of Steeple, by David Eveleigh: The Schooner Freya V was built by John Birkett-Smith, starting out originally from a 1:180 scale plastic kit for the Cutty Sark. This model was awarded the Chairman's Trophy. Finally, two entries for the Willis Cup. The winner was David Eveleigh for the following four tools to help wagon body building: A rivet press made by Julia Adams from modified parallel pliers: In addition to the model-making competitions, the 2mm Scale Association make some other annual awards. The Mike Bryant Cup was awarded to Pete Townsend and Ian Collins for their services as Membership Secretaries. The Geoff Balfour Memorial Award was given to Alan Whitehouse for staging "Finescale in 48 hours" at the Railex show and writing it up in MRJ (the layout is now Hallam Town). The Geoff Jones Layout Trophy was awarded to the Kent & Essex Area Group for their layout Lighterman's Yard. Incidentally, this was on show at the attached Farnham MRC exhibition. Here is a photo I took at a previous event:

Here are my photos of the competition entries at yesterday's 2mm AGM in Aldershot. As yet I don't know the identity of all of the builders, but I will update this post with that information when I get it. Apologies if I make any errors in the descriptions. We start the first batch of photos with the Groves Trophy: The winner was this 08 diesel shunter, built by Jerry Clifford from the 2mm Association kit: Scratchbuilt GWR 43xx mogul by Nigel Ashton: Midland 1F with etched body and scratchbuilt chassis by Jerry Clifford: Next, the Neil Ballantine Quaich: The winner was this pair of Jinties in SDJR and LMS liveries by Jerry Clifford (Farish conversions): GWR 7806 "Cockington Manor" by Andy Carlson (Ixion body with detailing + Nigel Ashton chassis kit): Dapol 14xx by Julia Adams with modified Chris Higgs chassis and scratchbuilt replacement boiler and smokebox: The John Barker Trophy: The winner was this trio of GWR coaches by John Aldrick: A GWR Collett C77 third by John Aldrick: An ex-LNWR W9 dining car by John Aldrick: An exceptional load (Flat ET and Girdwag WE) by David Smith - I had to photograph them separately: A collection of GWR pre-grouping wagons by Jerry Clifford (photographed in two batches): Eight "assorted vans" by David Eveleigh from the MR, GER, LNWR and E&MR:

2mm Association members might be interested to know that the February/March magazine will include an article by Pete King on converting the Dapol pannier... Best regards, Anthony

Funny you should mention that Don - the next issue features a detailed account from Jim about his bridges. It should be out within a week, hopefully. Anthony (your new 2mm magazine editor)