jukebox

Corona...? Corona Nation? Coronation! I do have a soft spot for Princess Coronations - esp. in LMS lined black. I've held onto Duchess of Sutherland for quite some time, but she's headed for eBay now, as part of the big 2020 rationalisation; LMS Pacifics don't make the cut even as random interlopers in the North East. I gave the big black beast one final fling around Stockrington tonight; with 11 on, she just romped away (no slipping, and never notched more than 70/128) - a really delightful locomotive to have owned. I won't normally run trains this long - 6-7 makes more sense visually - but it was good seeing a long train run. Cheers Scott

So what's really been going on? Am I about to covert Stockrington into a GWR BLT...? No. I'd started a "rationalisation" of my stock about a month ago. I had old Airfix and Mainline coaches in my downstairs display cabinet that I'd scrounged over the last 30 years, and now I'm more educated, and modelling standards have moved on, they needed to be disposed of. I had already cleared out my US outline diesels and streamliners four or so years back (or so I thought, till a BN GP38 peeked out from the bottom of a box on Saturday... ), and finding the quintuple B1's gave me the push I needed to really prune. There's logic in my madness. Besides needing to test run different types of locos on that dodgy piece of track, the time it takes to sell on eBay gives me breathing space to be sure I am making the right call about the remedy, and to recharge my mojo to get stuck into tree making. So I've spend a lot of time testing, photographing, and listing stuff on eBay. 5 years ago I'd have struggled to part with most of it. There's nothing tatty, and things like a tender drive Mallard, the first "new" loco I bought when getting back into modelling as an adult, do have some sentimental value. But these things just don't cut it amongst the wonderful output from manufacturers lately, so pragmatism rules the day. The other conundrum I have been thinking about is whether to keep an 8-road loco shed for Stockrington MPD. I can see some down sides in having ~24 locos hidden in storage, and trying to see the cabside number to call up a DCC address... so have been thinking of reducing the shed to 4 roads, and having 4 more open tracks alongside. There's precedent for both: my current shed layout is based on Stockton (8 roads) but Haverton Hill nearby is almost identical, with just a 4 road shed. For what it's worth, I'm leaning toward the latter now. In the mean time, enjoy the visiting locos. There's another guest appearance due before the week is out. Nothing like this critter... Regards Scott

V4 for me

Thanks very much, Brian. Running a short train, rather than just a light engine, quite tickled my fancy. As you say, there was a sense of journey. I just let it orbit around the room, and shifted around with my phone, catching snippets to stitch together afterward. By editing them into "up" and "down" directions, it flowed quite well. Funnily enough, when I get back to the scenics, I'll lose that panning shot above the cutting - but am hoping the "glimpsed between trees" views make up for it. Cheers Scott

Some strange goings-on at Stockrington this weekend... It's got a chimney. And a cab. And a late BR emblem. But it's rather boxy. Yet it's not a Volvo. (remember to tweak the settings to HD for the best picture quality) Perhaps I am just having a fever dream... Cheers Scott

Hi Gilbert - I would have loved to arrange a swap of something with you, but our postal service has gone postal as it were, and the charge to ship even a 1kg parcel by air to the UK is ridiculous. About £25 to airmail a loco to the UK would just kill it. It's a shame because there's enough folk here that in times pre-Covid were shuttling back and forth between the UK and Aus, that it could probably have hitched a lift in someone's suitcase. I do appreciate the thought, though. The upside is with everyone stuck at home, there seems to be a few more buyers around, which helps push the price back a bit closer to what I paid. Cheers Scott

Thanks Gordon. I had seen that object in the 4ft, and assumed it was some landscaping flock... but on closer examination, it turns out to be a shouldered screw. I will need to check just who the culprit is. And now, a mea culpa. I had a embarrassing moment of gluttony this week. I have been culling a load of older and inappropriate coaches via eBay this last three weeks, and shifted to locos last weekend. I have been collecting locos since around 1993, and with 25 years of advancement, and hindsight, can see that some are just not needed/wanted any more. I'm culling region inappropriate locos, that don't have a reasonable excuse to be shedded in North East England - such as an N2, a J52, and a 57XX pannier... I also have a few older Bachmann split chassis locos that, even if I did modify them for DCC (and I have done one or two, but it is a big effort - involving grinding chassis blocks, drilling holes into mazak to take screws - about 3 hrs work per loco...), there is the real risk the axle muffs will split, rendering them useless. So I have been making some hard decisions, and culling numbers. In my delving - of various packing boxes accumulated over 20 years - I realised I had two identical black Hornby B1's. Not too much of a crime, as I am willing and able to renumber one and have a pair of stable mates. I also have an old Bachmann one, that I did the DCC conversion on, and also did the split axle repair. But knowing it's lineage, and predisposition to eventually fail, I figure it's better disposed of. Here's a short video of it on test that I made for eBay - it still runs beautifully, especially at low speed (tho the eccentricity in the centre driver as a result of the split axle repair is rather more obvious here than when it is running on track ): Well that made three B1's. As I dug further, I found a near new black Bachmann B1 with DCC ready chassis that I forgot I have. Four. Then, to my utter horror, I opened a box of Gresley suburban coaches I bought from a deceased estate sale in Perth.... a third black Hornby B1 with the same running number that I'd bought for a very competitive price at the time! I just shrank with embarrassment. Five B1s. Three identical. I honestly had no idea. I thought I'd started to get sensible with my buying around 2010, by holding myself back from acquiring and NRM City of Truro... The clean-out continues. Cheers, Scott

Hi Lez - I've actually never played a round of golf in my life*! It's all just my fertile imagination, a dose of solid research looking at real life golf courses in NE England, and helpful input from some of the actual golfers who visit me here. I hope it does them justice. Happy to hear your views on the proto-tree; it's not done yet, and I agree there needs to be some more tweaking. I haven't actually covered it in anything, yet - the green is the plastic coating of the florists wire I use. The plan form here is to form up 3 or 4 more (I won't fit 7), and get them all looking "similar but not identical" and try and apply foliage. I needed a break from that, so it's ironing out some track issues first. *well, not my adult life; did once or twice for school sports... I agree about the derailments - and yes, there should always be logic to something mechanical. My running trials this week have been... illuminating. Let's just say the D/E crowd have it quite easy, as the all wheel pick up on a Co-Co is worlds away from some steam locos. I'll cover off on that next week. But for now, I have been bringing previously unseen motive power to Stockrington. Remarkably, I had never run an A1/3 on the layout before this week. Flying Fox was available, and so I fitted her with a DCC decoder, and let her loose. Useless trivia. A Hornby A1/3 has a wider loading gauge than any other loco I own. How do I know this? Well after I set 4474 going, she merrily ambled along the tracks, seamlessly through crossovers and turnouts, across lift sections, over bridges, and got to the tunnel portal and went THWACK! and stopped all forward motion, wheels turning merrily away. The combination of prominent front steps and a long body throw meant said steps just fouled the bottom of the portal. Rather than cut the steps - I have at least one more A1/3 in the roster - I got a scalpel and shaved a few mm off the face of the portal. I'll touch it up with soot and muck, and it will be fine. It did amuse me at the time, and it's good to know which loco I now need to use when I set up my station platforms. In the meantime, a short video of the run, after I'd solved the portal issue. Not overly exciting, but always nice to show something moving. Stay safe everyone. Cheers Scott

K4... just perfect.

That's quite a blow for us modellers Down Under, as the range was very useful considering the difficulties of getting Railmatch/Phoenix UK based colours over the years...

Don't forget the grille in the roof for the Rheostatic Brake ventilation (l/h side #1 end only):

Sometimes, a reason is not required...

Despite living on the other side of the planet, and having never met, @gordon s of Eastwood Town is a good friend to me here, and there are times I wonder if there's not some sort of wormhole in the fabric of space/time between Eastwood Town and Stockrington. This week has been one of those times. Gordon has been having some problems with trains misbehaving on a section of track over at Eastwood Town... and suddenly so have I. Unbeknownst to anyone, as I hadn't announced it here, I took a big step with Stockrington last week, removing the plastic drop cloths that have covered the low level storage tracks for the last 4(!) years. With the scenery above all but complete, there was no risk of glue/water/plaster/sawdust fouling those tracks, and with them vacuumed up, I could think about assembling some trains and keeping them on the layout - so I could create some videos to post here. Now because the track down there is Peco NS, and I'd not run any trains on it, I had the delusion that it would be clean... uh-uh. It needs the CMX to be propelled around. So I dug out my Heljan diesels that are the anointed power for the job. Happy with how Kestrel was behaving, I thought I'd run Falcon, too. That was when the drama started... Seems I have a spot on the mainline that Falcon doesn't like, on the inside curve around near the terrace houses. The leading wheelset derails there the same way on each pass, regardless of speed, or direction. I thought it might be the NEM sockets dragging the inside of the buffer beam, so carved the ridge off that. No joy. Then I removed the body shell and bogie side frames. It seems it is a freedom-of-movement issue where there is a section on that curve that must just have a little too much twist for the wheelbase that Falcon has. Maybe it's the cant (super-elevation) maybe it's too sharp a transition from tangent to curve. There's no obvious kinks or twists - even when viewed with a camera... (the pens are on the down track - the issue is directly opposite each, on the up) Now I can't hand-on-heart say I ran Falcon around the circuit before I ballasted - I've searched this topic and see no evidence - but I am sure I did a lot of running trials before I started ballasting. I took a video of the WD propelling 20 4-wheel wagons through the curve without issue... and I have run a number locos since. Kestrel is fine. As is Lion. My 9F passes through okay, as does the P2. It's just Falcon that misbehaves. Perhaps there was some inherent flexibility in the unballasted track that was eliminated when I glued the ballast down, and without that suspension, the track holds a shape Falcon is not able to negotiate. Perversely, I have a large variety of eight-coupled steam locos (P2, Q6, O1, O4, WD...), so my job this week is to type-test: dig out each, fit a DCC chip if I haven't already, and run these through the problem curve. The good news is that means you'll see some variety in the shots/vids in the coming week, of types I've not shown in action before; A1, A3, and O1. If it turns out it's just Falcon that is an issue, I will leave the curve as is, and either banish Falcon to trip workings hauling trains up from storage, or sell her. To be honest, I'd rather not re-lay if I can avoid it, but if I have to, now is the time to do it. *** And as one last little poke in the eye, it seems I've got one more turnout I forgot to cut the bridging droppers on: when I threw the blind turnout to the future MPD, it tripped the circuit breakers. Cheers Scott

I've been wrestling one of my tree armatures these last few days. Sitting downstairs, I was convinced it is too big, and will look silly. Annoyed I've batch-prepared seven (!) of them, I stopped, walked away, did something else, but eventually got back to it today and finished twisting wires. My inspiration? Well when I was done, before trimming it up, I thought I should take it upstairs and see if I'd wasted my time. It's branch spread is wider than I planned, but actually not as tall. Here's a few more views... It needs some of the thin Woodlands Scenic poly fibre strung around the tips... and some careful application of foliage material... I also need to thicken out the main trunks with some construction glue, and also prune the upper limbs to give it a better shape, but I think it might be salvageable... ..although I see from this angle there's some more bending to do. Consider it a work in progress. I'll wrestle a few more into tree shapes and see how they look as a group. Cheers Scott

Sometimes you see thing in photos that don't catch your eye in real life. As I have been tell the story of grassing the golf course, in the background of some of the photos I have been posting here, I noticed a line in the steep grassed area I completed many many months ago: This line: Not quite sure what happened, but I suspect it's the PVA join line where I stopped grassing one day and restarted the next. Doesn't matter how it got here, really: The bottom line is you don't see many straight lines in nature, especially with grass. And when you see it once, you look at it every. single. time. So last week, I slapped some PVA in a suitably random pattern on the existing ground cover, and lent across and fired some 2mm greenery at it... When I vacuumed it off, the result was: Much better! Cheers Scott

Hmmmm Chemist #1. Bottom line, this black gunk is mostly metal oxides formed from micro-arcing between the wheels and the rail. This contact point is quite small, as you can see in [1]. Essentially, the electricity flowing at this tiny contact point triggers a chemical reaction in the wheels and rails. The electrical current in effect “explodes off ”metal alloy molecules from the wheels and rails. It oxidises these metal molecules, forming a fine dark grey powder. So the key to slowing down the buildup of metal oxide is to inhibit the micro-arcing. The chemist told me that non-polar solvents work best to both clean electrical contacts and to protect them by inhibiting micro-arcing. Apparently, polar solvent molecules get trapped in micro pits of the metal surface, leaving an “electron charged” microscopic residue. This electron-charged polar residue encourages micro-arcing in the presence of an electrical current, quickly forming new metal oxides on the metal surfaces in electrical contact. (source: https://www.scalefour.org/forum/download/file.php?id=20572&sid=39351ad3545f6bcbaf0e5de943185eb0 ) 1 vote for Kerosene/Paraffin, with a dielectric constant of 1.8 Chemist #2. Organic chemical solvents are available in a bewildering assortment. Solvents vary in strength according to their chemical nature, characterized by a chemist’s term called “polarity”. Unfortunately, “stronger” is not always better, since it depends on what type of contamination we are attacking. A simple rule of thumb to remember when dissolving a solid is “like dissolves like”. This approach can be quite effective in a chemical laboratory, where we often know what material we are trying to dissolve. Two practical examples of solvent polarity effects come to mind: Sugar is freely soluble in water (water and sugar both being highly polarized chemicals) but totally insoluble in something like lighter fluid or mineral spirits. On the other hand, ordinary paraffin wax is fully soluble in relatively on-polar solvents like lighter fluid or mineral spirits, but virtually insoluble in water. Since we, as model railroaders, have no means of identifying the individual track contaminants, we may as well proceed in a “worst case” orientation. In doing so, we can simply assume that there could be some of all three categories of contamination present on our rails. Because we are usually dealing with such a “hodgepodge” of contaminants, we need something that covers a wide range of solvent strengths. The best we can hope for is to partially dissolve and loosen most of the foreign matter and have it transfer onto the cleaning pad. As one of my fellow model railroaders is quick to point out, if we soften the foreign matter on the rails without removing it, we are simply “making mud”, which will dry out and remain on the rails after the solvent evaporates. My recommendation for this broad utility cleaning agent is lacquer thinner. Lacquer thinner usually contains a mixture of petroleum distillates, methanol, toluene, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, propylene glycol monomethyl ether acetate, ethyl acetate and xylene. Some of these chemicals are not even available to the general public in their pure form. (Further reading will also inform you that this mixture “cannot be made non-poisonous” and that it is highly flammable. These properties of lacquer thinner mean that it must be used with utmost caution.) Because of the array of solvent strengths represented here, lacquer thinner is well suited for track cleaning, and is probably more effective than any single component solvent. (source: https://tonystrains.com/news/chemist-reviews-cmx-clean-machine/ ) 1 vote for Lacquer Thinner, with a dielectric constant of 33.6 As Mark Knopfler once sang: "Two men say they're Jesus - one of them must be wrong..." Now, I'm not a chemist. There could very well be logic that is true in both these learned gentleman's arguments. And I'm very much from the live-and-let-live school. As an engineer, I *do* subscribe to the theory that anything abrasive cannot be good for the rail head - creating micro abrasions that can only ultimately be filled with dirt - so I wasn't overly impressed with Old Mate in the OP's linked video suggesting wet and dry paper as the go to to clean rails. And I do know that using lacquer thinners in a CMX works for me; I accept the logic that using the strongest chemical agent possible is most likely to remove as much contamination as possible. Of course, Your Mileage May Vary, as they say. If what you do gives you clean rails and trouble free running, then more power to you. Literally! Cheers Scott

Agree. There's a nice DCC-ready Bachmann B1 in there for £60...

..and with the right hand rough vacuumed away, I was left with: which from above looks like: and when my German workers started shovelling... Here's that join area where I'd run out of grass for the afternoon: Which leads to be a short discussion/tutorial, if you're interested. I'm trying to replicate a relatively flat a uniform surface - a golf course. But totally flat and uniform, when scaled down, looks wrong to the eye. Even more so the camera. Static grasses come in a variety of brands, lengths, and blends. When I got my first few packs, I was surprised at the colours in the blend - some red and white strands in amongst the green in my long spring and autumn grasses. Some brands are just a single colour - the dark green Noch grass I bought a few weeks back. If you apply that on it's own, it looks flat. Here's the palette of 2mm grasses I am using for the golf course: The main colours are the large tubs. The accents or spot colours are in the small tubs. But even the large tubs have some accent in them. But here's the rub: with 2mm SG, if I miss a spot, it's very hard to go back and patch it - doing so creates visible ridges of PVA, or if you extend the glue to the existing area, it thickens the surface. Now this is a bad thing, sort of, but can be used to your advantage. I wanted to create a texture of linear mowing in the rough, so instead of just patching the bare spots, I ran the glue lightly in bands, and you can make that out at the bottom of the photo above. It patches the grass, and also breaks up the colour so it is not a single tone. I went back today and have tried to patch some areas on the fairway using the light shade of grass - will have to wait ans see how they come out. On this next shot, you can see the full gamut of green textures - fairway, rough, medium and long grass, some dead patches; The other thing about applying SG is that you need a fair bit more than you will actually stick down. My golf hole is probably more grassing than a lot of stand-alone layouts have. And to cover that area, I initially glued about 1m x 150mm at a time. That needed a whole bag of Peco SG. But only 10-15% stayed stuck - I recovered, and went again the next day. Happily, I'm at the stage now where I'm just spot grassing, so am using less each time. It's an iterative process - once I have done all the work with one shade, I stop and see if there's anywhere that looks flat or fake. If so, I look at the palette of colours, and work out what sort of highlight will lift it. The trick is to know when to stop. The down side is that I will also now have to be vary careful working in this area - especially the fairway. I can't really afford to spill any paint, water, or glue on it now. *** In other news, I'm giving serious thought to having a go at flocking the green directly on the plaster. I know exactly what I need to do to finish it off - flock the chequerboard, then when that is done, run a bead of darker flock around the perimeter to join up to the fairway. I am also wrestling with the sheer size of a very large tree armature... but more on that another day. Cheers Scott

Thanks for the kind words and likes, Gents - much appreciated. I shot that on my work iPhone - it's come out rather well, and wasn't too onerous to edit, so shall do some more videos as time permits. *** In the meantime, realising I needed to finish the static grassing before I could progress with fence-side shrubbery, I bit the bullet, and have started on the fairway.... I studied plenty of photos online, and figured I needed to depict the slightly different cuts of fairway and rough, and also, if possible, somehow show the mowing marks along the length of the fairway. I did the latter by apply the PVA generously to the plaster with a brush, leaving brush marks in the wet glue that would hopefully gather more flock. It was all a bit tense for the first session, so no action photos, just the end result of the centre fairway: Down near the hole, I realised I needed to mark out the different cuts of the fairway with a pencil line, to make it a bit easier see where to apply the glue for each coloured grass: Next up was the rough. This needs a darker static grass green, to represent a longer cut. As with the fairway, I used a sponge and wet the plaster first, so it didn't wick all the moisture out of the PVA. Then I applied a generous layer of glue... you can see the brush marks as described above: I stopped applying glue when I got to this point, because I was worried I didn't have enough of the darker static grass. Turns out I didn't - here's the view straight after I applied the medium green: Not an earth shattering problem. I was able to fully cover the area I had painted with glue by using some of the "accent" shades of grass that I have small tubs of to finish off. When it was all vacuumed up, it looked like this: There's a few naked areas where I didn't bring the glue hard up to the existing edges - in some spots, it's because I didn't like the shape of the transition edge, in others, it's just that the glue went on thinly, and skinned before I could apply the grass. I will need to patch-fill those areas. The good news was that when I vacuumed up all the left side rough, I had plenty of grass to reapply to the right side rough. Glue down: I have a transition from where I ran out of static grass yesterday. Here is how I have managed it: Time will tell if that treatment works. Here's a few of those other bald areas, up near the top of the hilll These will give me a chance to try some patching techniques before I have a go at the spots on the fairway proper. But right now, this is what the view looks like - the right hand side has a generous layer of static grass, the excess from which I will recover with the vacuum tomorrow: A bit of work on those GUR spots, and also perhaps the demarcations between cut lengths - although it does seem that the demarcation is quite hard on real world golf courses - and I shall move on to... the green. Cheers Scott

A constructive observation, if I may, Gilbert? The unpainted wheel-sets - especially the backs - really stand out when in a rake with weathered/painted wheels alongside. A paintbrush charged with muck would sort all 12 axles out in about 3 mins flat, if you get the chance... Regards, Scott

N.B. This defaults to low rez... but if you click on the settings tab, the original was uploaded in hi-rez.

Very sad news. My thoughts go out to his family.

I've been doing micro sessions upstairs - adding detail or extra grass layers in five-to-six small areas at a time, twice a day. The end result is that I **think** I'm done with the North end of the cutting. The blackberry bushes are placed, not fixed for now... I want to see how I feel about the groupings over a few days. I'm done all the way to the bluff on the corner, and the first 500mm around the corner is sorted, too - just need to wait for the cinders to dry so I can weed up the boundary fence at that end... With the grass and weeds all down, I can get serious about the trees. Cheers Scott

Can anyone shed any light on the practice of landscaping ends of platforms and other lineside spaces that the LNER did in the latter years of their existence? There is a photo from around 1947 in "The Worlds Railways and How They Work" (Odham) that shows a very tidy grassing: I have noticed that plantings like those small bushes appear lineside in period photos taken outside of Kings Cross, as well as parts of the Tyne Dock-Consett route. I also recall a copy of BRill that detailed the visit of an inspector to a rural station in a special train, judging this sort of thing. Can anyone shed some light on the extent and longevity of this sort of thing - or did it, if you'll pardon the pun, die out as the railways ran down in the 1960's. Cheers Scott

Work, in progress. I might need to source some 6mm grass to transition that fence-line vege to the rough... I still have to apply some SG over those flock spots were trees will sprout. The sharp eyed will have noticed the goings on beyond the fence... This side of the fence, I've painted the bunkers, ready to be sanded. I'm hoping that brown lip will just be visible when I flock to the edge, to look like topsoil... The fence has had extra tufts of weeds stuck on. There's still vegetation, underbush, and shrubbery to go along the back there. Beyond the fence, the vee between the station tracks and the avoiding lines has been built up with plaster, and once it dried, given a first cover of cinders: I've plastered 85% of the length of it - stopping at a point where the station platform is likely to be close to ending... Miraculously, the plaster, despite being spread directly on untreated ply, did not crack. I took the liberty of cindering the cess on the four foot side, too. Spilled a bit, as well, I see. I will bring the cinders up to where I stepped the plaster down - and leave the final blending of the platform end until I install the platform. That water mark in the ballast is from the plaster when I formed the cutting. I plan to spoon fresh ballast over that area, and vacuum it up - Hopefully the fines and dust it leaves will disguise or at least tone that down. I have some other spots here and there, where plaster has splattered, or glue dripped. The small areas are inconspicuous or even like real life. The larger discolourations look wrong. Cheers for now Scott