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In a few moments to myself I managed to knock off the weathering on couple of oil tankers. Combination of a fade with much thinned Tamiya acrylics applied with an airbrush, rust pigments and AK Fuel Stains effect, again applied with an airbrush

The heritage coach fleet expanded a bit this morning

The spec for modules used at Freemo South (Epsom) and Christow (Devon) meets can be found via this link https://www.nmrabr.org.uk/ho-freemo-module-specs/ If you are a Facebookers then there is a v active group that is prob the main exchange of info on groups, meets and advice on design https://www.facebook.com/groups/modularamerican For next year's Freemo South the organising team of myself and Geoff Tiller have made the call to push the date back to the 3rd or 4th weekend of June 2021 to give some more time to see where we are with Covid esp relating to having a venue. Keep checking the Freemo South 2021 thread on RMWeb for details Cheers Dan

Hi All Due to the ongoing uncertainty over Covid Geoff and myself have decided to move the proposed date for next year's event to either the 3rd or 4th weekend in June. This will give us some breathing space for our venue to make a call as to whether they are still prepared to let us use it or to try to find an alternate one if needs be Cheers Dan

I'll be on the Painting and Weathering roundtable on Thursday as an "expert", 7pm GMT

Getting back into British outline recently I've got Railmatch acrylic to spray thinning with Vallejo airbrush thinners although I've found them a bit more temperamental that say Tamiya acrylic or Vallejo Air

Glosscote and Dullcote are lacquers but will work fine over acrylics (I've done it). They also come in jars for those who want to airbrush / brush paint. A small problem may be that Rustoleum who own the Modelmasters and Dullcote / Glosscote brands have recently announced that they are exiting the hobby market so they may be tricky to get. As an alternative Humbrol do acrylic rattle can vanishes as well as enamel version

What exactly are the problems you're getting?

Small croc clips crimpted onto length of BBQ bamboo squewers are good for holding small items Some sort of paint mixing aim is handy. If your choicen paint comes in plastic bottles then adding a M4 stainless steel nut as an aggitator is good. Other wise try the Badger or Trumpeter milk frother type mixers for wide mouth jars or for dropper type bottles a generic "nail varnish shaker" off ebay

The method to work out mast placements on curves are right at the beginning as its a central principle regardless of gauge or country

Tightest part of the curve is 18inch radius which will still allow rolling with all details installed to go round. Masts gaps are between 17cm and 20cm set as per the method in the red manual

I'm happy with Sommerfedt as its pretty easy to source, good to work with and not too expensive. The brass, absolute scale gear is lovely but I cant justify with Mrs S to remortgage the house for it. I just took my time with drawing out my mast spacing and where wires would go so I had something to follow when it came to drilling holes. And red cover manual is a real must for a first-timer. A wagon with a pantograph is a real asset for testing you wires. Also I had problems with the Sommerfedt flux rusting the metal on the cross spans even after cleaning them with 99% IPA as per the manual. Having used the gel flux sold by tools firms at shows it seems to work better

Combo of Mrs S managing to get a Tee Time for a round of golf and waking early has got the catenery restrung. Also started to paint the wires. I've aimed for a scale effect with a mix of Vallejo Black Grey with a touch of Black Green so it has a hint of oxidised copper

CANCELLED - Seaboard Southern American Train Show, Sat 19th Sept 2020 Having waited to see how the current Covid-19 situation might unfold the Seaboard Southern group have reluctantly decided that, given the current circumstances, holding their 2020 show would not be in the best interests of visitors, the venue, traders & exhibitors or the group membership alike. Thus, we are cancelling this year’s show but we are aiming to be back on Sat 18th Sept 2021

CANCELLED - Seaboard Southern American Train Show, Sat 19th Sept 2020 Having waited to see how the current Covid-19 situation might unfold the Seaboard Southern group have reluctantly decided that, given the current circumstances, holding their 2020 show would not be in the best interests of visitors, the venue, traders & exhibitors or the group membership alike. Thus we are cancelling this year’s show but we are aiming to be back on Sat 18th Sept 2021

Billy Bragg and Joe Henry's "Shine a Light" takes it to a new level. A collection of railroad related C&W / Bluegrass songs recorded at various Amtrak depots while they travelled between Chicago and LA by train. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mJnOX6fbvo

Looks like a really good job Jim. Now got me thinking of a print for Shapeways to do one for Santa Maria

Assuming you are not going to make your own catenary wire then you are going to be restricted to the max length wire sections that Sommerfedt do. I would really recommend that you invest on the Sommerfedt manual as what you spend on that you'll save on not buying excess masts and wire

During my lack of activity on the layout I have managed to knock off a couple more bits of rolling stock detailing and weathering. The service 4 wheeler had been in the stock roster for a while but has now got the full treatment of faded paintwork and roof, a bit of tinworm and related streaking and an attempt at distressing the blanked out windows with peeling paint esposing the metal sheet below

Well best laid plans and all that..... Got the track relaid, rails solders and cut across the board joint and masts respaced and then......nothing else. Having had another look at the scenery join just in front of the tree line it was never great and so I sucummed to temptation and started a bit remodelling....which still needs finishing. Hopefully with the long weekend I'll be able to make some progress. Dan

The RhB have taken advantage of the reduced traffic to relay the track and realign the wires at the western end of Santa Maria. Hopefully the majority of the work will be done by next week

Looking good - got my 2 yellow HOm hoppers to attack at some point. How about a bit of chipping using a lump of electronics packaging sponge? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNBeRdi_cf8 Dan

Having had the pleasure of operating Ian Lampkin's (Roundhouse) layouts over the years I was very impressed with the JMRI Panle Pro driven switch panels that he uses and the intension was to have the same arrangement for Santa Maria; in this case running off a cheap Windows tablet. An inital version was put together by Ian using the Anyrail plan I'd drawn up imported into Panel Pro. This worked fine on a laptop but when moved to a smaller screen have the layout diagram disappeared regardless of the zoom on the screen. While we ran without this facility at Warley it was tricky for the operators to see the direction points were set on the scenic section from the back of the layout so it was either solve the Panel Pro issue or build and wire up a LED track diagram. The issue forced itself after my laptop hard drive failed and I lost both the original Anyrail file plus the Panel Pro panel. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts at trying to create a new panel via the JMRI Help function another friend mentioned in a conversation that he's come across some helpful tutorials on YouTube and so, with my boys occupied on the Xbox yesterday afternoon, I managed to set up the points / switches and the panel on the laptop and copy it to the tablet where is displays perfectly. Next job is to clear enough space in the garage to set a couple of layout boards up and hook up the DCC and tablet to see if it works....

Follow on question..... I'm looking to doing a similar project and from my initial research it looks like depots got fuel deliveries in both Class A (grey) and Class B (black) TTA tanks. From what I understand the different classes represented different products depending in ignition point but what where the different products? Presumably a depot receiving multiple products would also have multiple storage tanks as well? Cheers Dan

Hi I'm in the same boat as you on Santa Maria with regards to running signalling. Firstly the Bemo signals are made by Schinder. I bought my Schinder ones off Ebay from a German dealer which came as kits (great fun soldering up those LEDs) but is was useful in being able to prepaint the masts and bases. The kit also came with resistors. One tip I got from PaulRhB was that the prebuilt Schnider signals are too high for RhB but can be corrected by gently breaking the glue seal between the mast and base and pushing the mast down through the base. From looking at proto pics I set mine so that the top of the signal head was level with top of the loco roof I also looked at Q decoders and worked out that they have both a German and a Swiss site with the latter having some English docs (at bottom of the below linked page). Didnt get any further as I ran out of time before last years Warley but must have another look. https://www.qdecoder.ch/downloads The other option if you are prepared to wait is the ESU signal control module but this seems to be in development hell as its been on the website for a good 2 years with the release date constantly being pushed back. Hope this helps Dan