jukebox

Keep your head up, Shaun.

I can sympathise 100% with the ebb and flow of mojo.

My less-than-revelatory advice is that sometimes there is not a great deal you can do to kick start it, and trying to force yourself to re-start before you are ready is not always useful.

A change in modelling focus works for me - switch tasks for a month or so - or break up the life sapping activities into small bites.

Try browsing RMWeb for inspiration - there's some pretty special stuff out there on here.

We will be here waiting when you get back in the saddle.

Regards

Scott

On 27/01/2020 at 00:35, gordon s said:

My wife said the red pointwork looked attractive....

You have to be careful when they drop comments like that.  Next you know, she'll be wanting a red locomotive...

***

Looking very nice, Gordon.  The eyeball does see lots - but a photograph after the event will always inevitably highlight the ugly stuff your eyes miss! (and so is well worth doing)

If it wasn't a short week here (public holiday yesterday, hence my burst of productivity), I'd offer to race you to see who gets a circuit of the room with a train first - I'm a little behind you, but agree, the friendly competition is an incentive to see it done sooner rather than later.

Cheers

Scott

In the meantime, spotted on the avoiding lines...

Cheers

Scott

After the timber was sorted, I unrolled a 5m roll of chicken wire...

...and started by stapling the hard edge of the roll to the front (straight) edge of the layout.

Working my way from the centre, I pinned it reasonably taught...

I then stapled the wire to the toe of the embankment, before trimming it up

It was not *quite* wide enough, so I had to cut a 40cm long x 20 cm high flap, and stitch that in just past the pliers in the next shot.  It will work just as well as a contiguous piece of mesh, especially there where there are no building loads.

The timber work needs to be bullet proof, as I'll need to lean and lie on in as I build.  With no hard shell (yet), I use an old pillow, and stand on a chair.  That gave me enough reach to get down into the cutting 

Leaning on the wire does stretch it and push it out of shape.  I'll "fluff" up the contours before I add the plaster shell.

In the meantime, I can check the angles of the cutting and some of the sighlines of the lowered hillside

The end on view is the litmus test.  Near enough to symmetric for me.

The reverse angle is looking good, too.. (you can see the "collapsed" ridge line in this next shot - It'll be easy to right before I plaster)

I didn't take a photo of it, but the front view has the hill with a very - to me - subtle profile, not exaggerated like the corner hill had to be to disguise the curve and tunnel.

It's going to work out okay, I think.

Cheers

Scott

Productive weekend.

Plans altered, risers shortened... and added to the hillside

Which also looks like this

Then add in the cross bracing...

Which locks things up one one axis.

And then the long bracing, locking it all up in three dimensions:

And I'm left with something like this:

It's not quite as tidy as I wanted, and there was a bit of playing around on the way, but that frame now transfers loads down those front six risers into the main L-girders.  The bracing makes sure it gets spread around, and is plenty rigid.

Time for the next step....

Cheers

Scott

Awesome vertical curves!

Are those old water columns trackside in the first scene?

Cheers

Scott

7 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

 

 

And, anyway, who's going to want what I've got after I've popped off? Blokes of my age - already past their Biblical three score years and ten, and counting. A rapidly diminishing potential purchasing pool!  

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

I'd wager Jesse is going to chime in on that in 3.. 2.. 1... 

I'm sure your stock will have a long and well appreciated after-life, Tony.

Cheers

Scott

Last night I broke out the thinners and cotton rag, and cleaned the mainline along the east wall. before I started construction  That's (hopefully) the last time elbow grease will be used there - the CMX needs to earn it's keep moving forward.

I slipped upstairs this evening, with a view to hooking in to forming up the hill frame shell.

The progress looked a lot like this...

(I see in a number of these recent photos areas where there is a green tinge to the ballast where I've not properly vacuumed the static grass off the 4ft.  I will rectify that)

Start with the risers furthest in and work out toward the layout edge...

But when I clamped the ones by the layout edge in place, I was served a hefty dose of reality.

My original plan was to have the terra rise from 200mm at the top of the cutting, to 400mm at the layout edge.  When I had the four tallest edge risers clamped, I took a bit of a breath.  They were high.  Very high.  I mean stupidly high.  To the point where I doubted I could reach in to apply scenic details to the cutting , let alone see any trains afterward...  As I had a number of different riser lengths pre-cut, I had a play, and figured a 100mm reduction was in order.  So I shuffled those carefully planned and cut lengths around, using the ones that I could, and that got me to here:

I stopped the timberwork, and grabbed some drop cloths I had in the room, to get a feel for the bulk I was about to create.

It's only rough, because the chicken wire will form more rigid / gentle contours, but it went a long way to modelling what the end result will feel like.

The views from the top of the cutting look promising

And down the long straight, too:

The reverse view from the junction shows how that hill mass will hide the rest of the room from that angle:

And my favourite angle, where the hill blocks Stockrington station site, and creates a reverse curve for the trains to appear from, and lean in to:

I'll need to wait till the weekend to dock 100mm off five risers to their new shorter lengths, but I'm hopeful I can get the chicken wire attached in good time after that, and check that the cutting looks symmetrical before I start to plaster.

Cheers

Scott

1 hour ago, gordon s said:

*snip*

 

One thing that has come to light was the inability of the outer slow line to access the platforms without moving onto the third line. This isn't really a problem, other than it prevents having four trains running at once on the whole layout.

 

*snip*

Don't be too rash about remedying that issue, Gordon.

Stockrington Mk1 was going to have a 66m circuit, and I had disillusions that I could control two trains on each track, separated by a good 30m each.

But even as I started building, and played with two trains "orbiting" on a basic 22m run, and bringing one up from the stabling sidings, I found it *very* challenging, and not enjoyable, so was not disappointed when I scaled my track plan back.

The mental gymnastics to keep 4 trains going, when something goes wrong, would be quite significant.

Cheers

Scott

And to close the weekend out, just some shots of the terrace house corner, now substantially complete, except for populating with some residents.

Cheers,

Scott

Not a lot of visual progress, but I thought people might like to see what the duck's legs look like, paddling like crazy under the water.

There area of the layout in question is this:

That has always meant to be a cutting, which is reminiscent of the ECML near Peascliffe Tunnel (at one point I had contemplated modelling this here, but felt it was too cramped).

Here's a look from the reverse angle:

In order to proceed, it involved a bit of science, mixed with a bit of art.

I took a tape measure, and measured the length of those exposed bearers from layout edge to edge of track-bed support, as well as the spacing between them.  That's the science. 

The art was then to imagine the mirror image hillside, and the contours I want to create, use the tape measure to simulate some heights, and then assign those heights to the layout edge, centre of the bearer, and near track side locations.

I came up with this contour plan:

I'd gotten 3/4 way through when I realised the elevation of each riser needed an additional 40mm to be attached to the cross bearer underneath - that's what the black ends represent - and why the numbers that follow do not match that Master Plan.  I call it the Master Plan, because this is the document I will need to refer back to as I attach each riser.

I also had to allow from bracing between the uprights, and a pair of longitudinal braces, to create a rigid space frame.

In the end, I came up with a bill of quantities:

Then the maths part of the problem kicked in.  I had x4 off 1.2m lengths of 19mmx42mm pine (my timber of choice) lying around as leftover from the previous terra-forming, and knew I needed more.  Off to Bunnings, I discovered that perversely, the per/m rate for 1.2m lengths was *more expensive* than for 1.8m lengths.  2.4m lengths were priced between the two, and would be pushing to fit in my hatchback.  So the Scotsman in me told me to work with 1.8's... 

I hadn't made the Master Plan when I went to Bunnings (!!!!!!) so I just guesstimated I'd need x4 off 1.8m lengths, and I grabbed those and a 5m roll of chicken wire, and loaded up the car.

Then the fun began.

I needed to work out the best way to use the timber - the one with the least waste.   I set up a spreadsheet, with the lengths of material I had, and a cell that subtracted each length as I assigned it to a long timber.  I also need two long pieces - or equivalent - to form the lengthway bracing.  Rather amusingly, by pure fluke I came very close to getting exactly the right amount of timber I needed:

So I have 12 linear metres of timber, and needed 12.015m in theory.

The one piece I am short is a 435mm long brace.  Luckily I have an off-cut left over from earlier that  I'd not included in my stocktake, and I can use for that.

The last thing I did was make up a cutting list, so I could mark up the 8 long timbers, and cut them out in the shed...

15 mins with a jig saw this morning and I've now got ~25 pieces of timber, ready to stick-build my cutting.

So now back to the duck on top of the lake.

Cheers

Scott

On 10/01/2020 at 17:49, Flood said:

Congratulations Scott on trawling through the thread to the end.

 

Yet another one of those "it would be interesting to complete sometime" projects I'm afraid. Basically I found out that by 1987 the TCVs only worked on the Edinburgh overnight service and not to Aberdeen so I had no need to make one.

 

My model is still sitting, unfinished, alongside my mantelpiece where it has been for the last six (!) years. Where has that time gone?

Sorry, Flood, a quick follow up.

You mention removing some of the height from the car well.

1/. How did you do this?

2/. Without trawling back again, there's also mention 2.5mm was too much - can you remember how you came to that conclusion?

I have four of those kits to build, and the well depth has always concerned me - so it was good to read your post.

Did you notice that the kit artwork - and most / many / all the ones I have seen completed - have the well painted black, but it was actually maroon on the Eastern Region Car Transporter liveried versions (ref embedded link)?  It certainly makes a difference as to how they appear.

Cheers

Scott  

I think it looks lovely, Gilbert....   but there's a part of me that knows that even if she'd just come from a repaint, and running in turn, that there'd be a haze across the boiler top.   It was one of the things that struck me as a lad riding behind preserved steam - how dirty they got by the end of just one day, with soot, oil, and hot water drips.

Take a look at Bittern, here - you can just see that dusting of soot on the green boiler top, and the front of the wedge is a satin/matt.

Having said all that, you know I think Tim does a masterful job on your East Coast fleet, and of course he's allowed to have one loco bulled up like it's on Royal Duties.

Cheers

Scott

3 hours ago, MJI said:

I think I may have found a good primer.

 

Tamiya fine surface primer, the car ones are too lumpy, I had a HobbyCraft voucher so primer and No11 knife blades.

 

Sprayed 4 aircons in it and it appears to cover plastic, brass and whatever the frames are (stainless steel?) pretty well.

 

Will have to wait until spring for blue and grey

If you are searching for a fine primer, I can also recommend trying the Gunze brand "Mr.Surfacer" range.  It comes in grades of 500, 1000 and 1200 that emulate wet and dry paper, and is sold in both grey, and white I believe.

I'm not a fan of aerosol cans for hobby work, but I make an exception for this product - it really does create a great base to paint on top of. 

There's even a Mr.Resin if you're dealing with that base material.

Cheers

Scott

On 13/01/2020 at 00:38, Hilux5972 said:

Looking online, I found this image of the cigarette card livery. Will see how the models turn out. 

There's also a version of that cigarette card with black smokebox and grey.

It'd have been nicknamed a Black Headed Python if it ever got that livery in real life...

That's a *very* glossy A4, Gilbert.

Gordon touched on that a month or so ago, John...  yep, t'would be nice.

I've not actually run a train since I airbrushed the rails - hence the need to grab the cellulose thinners, some elbow grease, and a cotton rag, and hop to it.  Not a small task, but like ballasting, one I can nibble away at.

Once I get the worst of it off, I will set the CMX orbiting in front of one of the Heljan diesels and that will sort itself.

In the meantime, here's one I prepared earlier...   3 years ago, in fact

Cheers

Scott

Hmmmm.

Time does not stop for anyone.  And all of us have just a (relatively) small, finite amount of time to fulfill our dreams and leave our legacy.

I'm thinking these rather profound thoughts , inspired by the musings of one of my musical heroes, Bruce Springsteen, as I look at my calendar and I see it is almost halfway through January, and I'm *still* not done with the Terrace House corner...

However I am closer to being finished -  I've now added a pair of trees I felt where needed, finished the  details for the fence, and am working on the allotment veggies and weeds...  

But am I procrastinating because I do not see a clear way forward - too many choices at to "what's next"?  Possibly.  I'm frustrated that I am 1/26th of the way through the year, and don't have a plan.  If I have a plan, I can have a schedule, which will motivate me to get on with whatever is next...

I did a run up to Perth and grabbed some extra hobby supplies - foliage and scatter for those trees, some square plastic tube sections to make up the frames of a coaling stage, and some brass sections to solder the Braithwaite panels of the water tanks to...

But then I looked at the layout room, and realised that if I shift to the MPD next, I lose the best layout level storage space I have left.  I still have a station, and half a large hill to build.  That space is gold.  Great for having all my tools laid out, and having plaster buckets at hand, paint, flock, glue...  all the messy stuff I need to terraform.

I think my fear is that by building the other side of the cutting, I need to have finished the open farmland on the far side.  I haven't - it's too homogeneous, and needs some details to break it up, but I haven't got my head around what that means - weeds, patchy grass, animals....

But if I build the hill, I *can* make it Kirkby Luneside-Jeff battleship grade sturdy, with enough strength I can lean on and over it, to reach the far side if needs be.  And that then means I will have completed the plastering above the low level storage tracks, and can clean out that space.  And one long side of the layout will be finished.  So I can attached the fascias I have been making...

So unless I have a change of heart, that's the plan: Build the cutting.  And clean the rail heads across the whole of the layout in the mid-week gaps when I am waiting for glue or plaster to dry, or at night when I can't use the power tools.

Okay, so let's have a best-guess what that means:

• End of Feb:        Have the wooden framework for the hillside cut, screwed and glued in place on the layout.
• End of March:   Complete the plastering and terraforming
• End of May:       Complete ground cover - flocking, static grass
• End of June:       Complete details - fencing,  trees,  hedges   
• End of July:        Build and fit fascias to Eastern side

So that's a six month plan.  With some contingency.   I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect - which may be why I have put it off in the first place.  But I'm sure once I get going, and can see the finish line, my mojo will be stronger.

I'm hoping that with the rail heads clean, I can run some simple trains, which should also help motivate me.

Strap yourselves in, and let's see how the story pans out....

Cheers

Scott

On 16/02/2013 at 07:42, Flood said:

Well one week to go until the first exhibition of the year.

 

I haven't been over to Glenn's for a month so I haven't any photos of the Mk2e TSO stock but they have all been finished apart from a bit of weathering. The BCK in SLOA Pullman livery is coming on, Glenn has certainly finished one side and the other will probably be finished early next week.

 

 

Following on from an earlier thread on RMweb (http://rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1509) I have spent the last week and a half making a Two Tier Car Van. Two of them managed to survive until they were withdrawn in April 1988 but when they last ran as part of the East Coast Sleeper rakes I cannot be sure.

 

Before I started the model I had noted the fact that the well in the centre was too deep as supplied in the kit so 2.5mm was removed from the well height all round. Looking at the model now it should only have been 2mm removed but the effect is noticably better than some of the other models I have seen photos of.

 

All was going well until today when I compared the model (which was just about to have its roof added) to an Airfix Mk2d First. The kit model was way, way higher than the other coach - measurement with a ruler showed it to be 2.5 mm too high. Off came the sides and ends, the step on the inside of the ends (used to mount the body to the chassis) was raised 2 mm and the sides were reglued to the ends 2mm higher. Not a perfect arrangement as the sides are actually 2mm too high but glueing the rainstrip to the sides instead of the roof will reduce them by about 1mm and a lot of filler around the ends seems to have hidden most of the glaring errors. Keeping the roof flat with the tops of the ends ensured the whole 2.5mm reduction in height was actually achieved.

 

Spending 5 hours rebuilding a kit was not in todays plan at the start of the day.

 

Here is the coach is it stands as of tonight:

 

Plus a view of the reduced depth for the well in the centre:

 

So I'll leave it now for a couple of days and then smooth off the roof and add the panel joins, roof windows ands vents, end steps and rebuild the broken end hinges (grrr). Finally a coat of primer will probably be the last thing managed before next weeks exhibition.

 

Try and say hello at Biggleswade if you can - thanks for tuning in.

Hi Flood

Apologies for the severe case of thread deep diving, but I was doing some research on TCV's, saw your post from 2014, and wondered if you ever got around to completing yours?   I trawled your thread to the end, but didn't see any further reference to it being complete.

Cheers

Scott

I don't know about anyone else, but knowing there's *not* going to be any substantial news from Bachmann next month, the sole reason I'm still coming back to this thread is just to see how many times Andy has to bash his head against the brick wall that is other people. 

Unfortunately for him, it has not disappointed.

Thimble sized sheds...

Pea sticks?

Shot....

and chaser....

I'd add some twine when the glue dries on that lot.

Cheers

Scott

1 hour ago, MarkSG said:

The other thing to bear in mind about Rocket is that it was the APT-E of its day. It was designed and built as a proof of concept in order to win the trials and earn Stephenson the contract to build the production run. Which it did, very successfully. But even before the L&M had opened, Stephenson had improved on Rocket's design and the production versions differed from it.

 

All the contemporary drawings of early L&M trains in service, as opposed to the trials, show horizontal-cylindered locos, and many of them have more modern-looking tenders. This print, for example, is dated from 1831, just a year after the L&M opened, and the loco, while clearly a Rocket class, already has significant differences from Rocket. But here, too, we have to take account of possible liberties being taken by the artist.

That one's definitely P4.

10 hours ago, truffy said:

 

Or, for those of a more attention-challenged disposition, a still from the same film:

 

Cripes!  I didn't know video existed of Mike Sharman demonstrating flexi-chas that far back....

1 hour ago, Barry O said:

Gordon, you need to listen to

The right sort of music or..

Recordings of steam locomotives of your preference 

When ballasting...along with copiuos amounts of tea..it becomes more therapeutic..honest!

Keep up the good work!

Baz

This.  x100.

I figured out some time ago that I can spend hours working on the layout, doing the most repetitive, tedious tasks, so long as I have a soundtrack. 

I had acquired an el cheapo powered speaker system somewhere along my travels, and it now sits under one end of the layout, and a cable with a 3.5mm plug attached lies atop.  I come in, plug my iPod in, and hit shuffle...

The catch is, when you are doing ballasting, that you get a song with a faster beat, and you tend to want to eye-dropper the PVA in time to it, and it gets too fast for you to do the cribs.

Other than that, it works a treat.

Cheers

Scott

9 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Friends and colleagues in Australia (including families of firefighters) have sent me various versions of reports that nearly 200 people (so far) have been arrested for deliberately starting the fires.

 

Here are some samples from some of the reports:

 

 

 

Australian government research estimates (in 2010) that "about 85 percent of bushfires are caused by humans."

https://www.pc.gov.au/research/ongoing/report-on-government-services/2010/2010/33-chapter9-chapter.pdf

 

 

Please be very careful in propagating some of the "facts" being thrown around - of those 200 people, it's my understanding from more thorough commentary that the majority were more careless or brain dead, than malicious - people still lighting campfires, or tossing cigarette butts and the like.  The number 24 of actual deliberate lighters does ring a bell. And sadly, it's an occurrence we have every year - there have not been significantly more d*ckheads around this Christmas. In fact it seems most of them were holidaying in Hawaii, Europe, and Bali.... (local joke for the rest of the Aussies here...)

Our Firefighting Chief has been on the media today, trying to, if you'll pardon the pun, hose down some of the mis-information doing the rounds - such as the role of back burning, the size of the fuel load, and the sources of ignition. 

As many have pointed out, this is not a simple "blame x, y, or z" problem - it is a combination of many factors.  However it is a scientifically agreed position that the way Australia's climate has changed has created longer, hotter, drier, summers, and this has been the primary creator of the disastrous events this last three months.  Longer summers leave less opportunity for controlled burns in winter, create a drier, more combustible fuel load, and that generates intenser fires that spread faster - through ember attacks and even lightning strikes created by clouds generated by the firestorm.

The thing that shocked me was that this summer's fires (and we're not even halfway through it) are so bad, they are worse than the worst "worse case scenario" modelling the firefighting experts did last winter.  Just think about that: worse than the worst case model.  So moving forward, there will need to be new, more fiercer, and more destructive models to take into account the horrible possibilities...

Stay safe everyone.