Jump to content
 

D869

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,350

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by D869

  1. D869

    Pontefract 2020

    By D869,

    A quick report from our trip to Pontefract this weekend. An excellent show where the organisers made everyone feel really welcome throughout the weekend and with a bit of a 'do' after the show on Saturday evening. St Ruth also won a pot for the best scenic layout . Our congratulations also to the layouts that won the other cups including Mills Bridge which was awarded best layout. I must confess that I completely failed to take any photos whatsoever so there are no piccies to accompany this post... Sorry!
     
    EDIT: Andrew Hyatt kindly sent me some photos so here are a couple showing the layout 'in context'... but one of those was when we were packing away.


  2. D869

    Tolworth 2019

    By D869,

    Some photos from Tolworth. A good show, well attended and with plenty of quality layouts.
     


     
    This IoW layout, or rather three linked layouts was just across the road from us. Always a nice subject and nicely done.

     
    Harlyn Pier was our next door neighbour. A lovely layout with a T9 - one of my favourite locos. It moved off before I got a pic but the pannier was nice too.
     


  3. D869

    Leeds 2019

    By D869,

    Some photos from our trip to Leeds this weekend. A nice show with some good content and the food was good too so our thanks to the organising team and also the catering folks.
     
    It was perhaps inevitable that we were next to John Aldrick's lovely 2mm scale 'Ivybridge'. Couldn't see much ivy on it myself though.

     
    Looks like my flash triggered so this photo is hopeless - sorry...

     
    I rather liked this model of Outwell Village on the Wisbech and Upwell. I liked lots of other things too but didn't take many photos.

     
    Finally of course we had to drag Ivybridge into the 1960s...
     

     
    EDIT... another pic of Outwell. For some reason I thought this had come out badly when I looked at it last night but it looks OK to me today...

     
  4. D869

    The Flat Earth Theory

    By D869,

    As we all know, the Earth is anything but flat but a flat earth is quite a common sight on our models. Now it's pretty obvious that Hayle North Quay has some high ground at the back and a quay edge at the front, but is that the whole story? Well, no...
     
    A couple of examples from my visit in 2010 (the place has been completely rebuilt since then to provide flood defences).
     
    I'm not sure what this building used to be, possibly stables for the Steam Packet hotel or possibly something else. In theory this is on the flat part of the quay, but look at the ground line.

     
    The wagon weighbridge (in its original position) - pretty flat here but look in the distance - the road (and inset rail track) are climbing up to enter the former Octel bromine works site. In the 1950s this gradient was used for gravity shunting.

     
    The problem (for me) is knowing how much level change is enough. While puzzling over this I looked again at my many photos and found a little corner of a photo of one of the other quays which showed North Quay in a helpful way...

    So roughly speaking, the rear of the 'flat' part of the quay is higher than the quay edge by about the height of a car (A40?). I guesstimate about 5 feet.
     
    The bigger conundrum for me was to figure out how a small patch of ground in front of the Octel works 'fits together' from a height perspective. These level changes are less subtle but I found them quite difficult to figure out. A couple of snippets from 'Britain From Above'...

     
    Towards the rear of this little scene we have the rail line up to the Octel works... which is uphill but only up a railway kind of hill plus a non-too-steep ramp from the road back down to quay level at the end of the detached cottage. All quite subtle but on the other hand the two semi detached cottages have a retaining wall at one end which is is almost a full storey high and has earth to the top of it on one side and the ground level is similarly high where it meets the inclined front wall of the detached cottage.
     
    Now maybe it's just me but I couldn't make all of this fit together in my head... and also factor in some selective compression. In the end I decided that building a scenic mockup of the patch of ground and the incline to the Octel works was the only way to figure it all out. The mockup sits on an old piece of laminate flooring and is all done with cheap card, cerial boxes and Templot printouts. I didn't have any suitable 'ground' material to hand so I took a trip down to my local Hobbycraft and a bag of air drying clay was about the cheapest thing that seemed like it would do the job. It was quite fun to do - sticking extra bits on here and there or carving bits off and easily smoothed over with a dampened finger, screwdriver blade or an old butter knife. Have I got it right? I don't know but it doesn't look too far from what I see in the Aerofilms photos.

     
    What still puzzles me a bit is why they didn't just dig more of this ground out instead of building retaining walls and leaving it piled up against their back walls to cause damp. I have a theory but will leave this as an exercise for the reader.
     
    Wot, no tractor?
     
    Actually the tractor is part of this story because it will hopefully drive along the road and negotiate that ramp in order to get to the other end of its train. Using the info from the scenery mockup, I worked out how much extra 'padding' the ramp would need and added a functional but rather less scenic balsa wood ramp to the tractor test bed...
     

     
    I'm not sure how long the clay will take to air dry - it's had several hours so far and isn't showing any signs.
  5. D869

    Tutbury Tractoring

    By D869,

    As you might have seen on one of 2mm threads, the tractor and its test bed put in an appearance at the Tutbury gathering yesterday.
     
    Several folks had a try at tractor driving and several politely declined. Apart from hopefully being entertaining for the budding driver it was interesting for me to see what happens with someone else at the wheel.
     

    Full marks to Laurie Adams for being the only person to attempt and complete the full tractor shunting challenge (swap an incoming full tank with an outgoing empty one).
     
    So apart from having a good day out and a deadline to actually make me get things done, what did we learn about using the tractor under the gaze of the public ?
     
    People unfamiliar with the tractor seem to start off by driving very slowly. This is understandable but I'm not sure it's a good strategy because as well as the tractor moving forward more slowly the response to the steering also takes longer and the driver has time to over correct. People have different 'muscle memory' of what a rotary control should do. It is a bit confusing for a long time model railwayist to be presented with a handset on which the rotary control is a 'steering wheel'. Figuring out which is left and right can also be a challenge when the tractor is pointing in different directions (not surprisingly, radio control modellers tend to be better at this). Things get more fun when you then hand them the other controller so that they can do some shunting with a loco. I don't think there is anything to do here other than to watch knowingly while they get used to it although using a Powercab DCC controller for the trains might be easier on the brain. The test bed was kitted out with more dummy scenery and buildings than last time so there were more opportunities to collide with the landscape. Not unexpected but if the driver keeps the throttle open then the tractor will part company with the magnets underneath. After this happens it is tricky to 'find' the magnets again... the extra stuff on top acting as a disincentive to lifting the lid to figure out where the magnets are. This is a good lesson because it won't be possible to lift the lid when the tractor is installed on the layout proper. I have some ideas about how to make it easier to get out of this pickle. Sometimes the control system's centre position drifts over time. This is probably because friction or collisions up top are creating more resistance than the steppers can handle and they 'lose steps'. This is a job for some more Arduino programming - at the moment it only 'finds' the centre when it starts up but with some work it can also correct for lost steps while it is running. I did managed to get the tractor stuck 'in a corner' once between the limit of lengthways and widthways travel so need to give a bit more thought to the way that the limits work to prevent that embarrassing situation. Luckily nobody was looking. More visual feedback (probably some LEDs) is needed when the magnets are moving without anything visible 'up top' before and after the gravity shunt.  
    On the whole it kept running for the whole day with very few unscheduled stops to lift the lid and sort things out manually. As far as I know it only went completely pear shaped once when the carriage swing arm somehow managed to swing a long way past what should be its 60 degree limit. I thnk I was watching Parkend when it happened so I'm not sure how it got into that state but the bigger concern is that even with a 'standard IT fix' (turn it off and on again) the thing couldn't sort itself out without extra manual help, so some more work needed there.
  6. D869

    More Tractoring

    By D869,

    I've volunteered to take the tractor test bed to the Tutbury gathering next month so I've been doing some more work on it ahead of that. All of the work so far is 'below stairs' so visitors may not see much visible difference from it's state last year at Chelford but in fact quite a lot has changed.
     
    The first big change is that the curtain track has now been relaid to run dead straight instead of following the line of the Esso siding. This makes manual steering more predictable - previously it was a bit tricky to drive when the carriage was on the curve, so trying to steer the tractor along the straight road of the Esso siding turnout was not easy.
     
    Old...

     
    New...

     
     
    Second I've made the swing arm about 20mm longer and added a new gear into the train. This means that the magnet can reach 20mm further out on either side of the centre line. Several of the el cheapo moulded chinese gears have been replaced with machined ones from HPC. A couple of cheapo ones remain where I still need thin gears.

     
    Thirdly there is a little sensor (called a slotted optical switch) part way along. The carriage has a rectangle of black plastikard that passes through the slot, breaking the light beam. This allows the Arduino to 'know' how far along the track the carriage is.

     
    So why bother when it was working OK anyway? Well the other big item on the 'to do' list for the mockup was to deal with the gravity shunting that was used in the 1950s to gravitate oil tanks from the bromine works gate back onto the road outside the Esso depot. My original plan was to build a separate contraption with an electromagnet moving along another track. I did some experiments with small electromagnets and found that anything small enough to fit just wasn't strong enough to do the job. Plan B was to have a rare earth magnet mounted on a servo so that it could be either engaged or not with the tank to be moved.
     
    After sketching several ideas which all looked like a lot of work I started wondering if I could avoid the job entirely and do the gravity shunt using the tractor drive. To cut a long story short I found that I could... but the tractor drive would need more 'reach' and the Arduino (the brains of the operation) would need to know exactly where the magnets were instead of just knowing the general direction in which they were pointing. The Arduino software naturally needed a whole lot of work to make it do new things.
     
    The final piece of work has been to replace all of the curtain track mountings. They had been done fairly quickly (i.e. badly) by just screwing down into bits of strip wood glued to the cross members along with Blu Tack and bits of wood or card to pack things to vaguely the right height. This was OK to get things working but on the real layout they wont be accessible from above so I needed to design some new mountings that can be adjusted and removed from below. The new ones use Tufnol blocks drilled and tapped to take machine screws and an aluminium angle cross member that is removeable from below.
     


     
    Finally while the thing was turned over I took a picture of the carriage from underneath from where you can see the two stepper motors and the bits that keep it on the curtain track.

     
  7. D869

    Maryport 2019

    By D869,

    Quite a long journey back from Cumbria last night so the blog posting had to wait until today. Some photos from our trip to Maryport - a general model show spread across two decent sized sports halls and with some very good layout content. It definitely deserved to be better attended than it was but we still had some very knowledgable punters come and talk to us.
     
    Our train set

     
    Whithorn - apparently Maryport (across the Solway Firth) is the backscene for this.



     
    Calderwood - nice pre-group modelling but a tricky one to photograph

     
    Maidenhaiste - made quite big too!

     
    This class 37 on Crimson Road has seen better days

     
    'Bobbin Mill Halt'

    'Bobbin Mill' has a nice D800 - a bit big for our needs though.

  8. D869

    Southampton 2019

    By D869,

    A nice weekend down south for the gang at the Southampton show and a good chance to catch up with Jerry and Paula. A good show all around and nice accommodation too. We were also happy to be awarded the Founders Cup for the best layout by the organisers. No major issues with the layout but no show would be complete without a few niggles to put on the fault list and give us something to do when we get back to base. The black surroundings of the drama studio worked pretty well with our night scene too. Our thanks to the organising team for an enjoyable weekend.
     
    Some photos...
     

    Marie Celeste?
     

    That's better
     

     

    Someone brought along some St Ruth appropriate reading material.
  9. D869

    Tractor Progress

    By D869,

    I promised myself that I would spend some time turning the various bits I've cut out for the shunting tractor into something more tractor shaped.
     
    In the previous installment I'd cut out the main chassis frames on the milling machine. In fact the chassis has been together for some time but lacking any sort of superstructure.
     
    The body parts are cut from 5 thou K&S brass sheet using good old fashioned scratchbuilding techniques like a coping saw and Swiss files - the only concession to modernity being sticking a CAD printout to the sheet with Pritt instead of marking out by hand.
     
    All of the parts were made in pairs with two pieces of 5 thou sweated together. As well as making two identical parts, 10 thou of brass is a bit more stable than 5 thou on its own. Even though I only need one of each front part, I still made two.
     
    I'm pleased with the way it's coming along. In particular it is starting to look like a Weatherill L61 loader, which is nice because apart from a very small side elevation from a sales brochure, it's all done from photos.
     
    There is still a lot more to do though - putting pre-made parts together gives the appearance of progress but I've used up most of the bits that I've made so I need to go back and make some more.
     
    Some photos. No coins though! It's just under an inch long if you want to have some scale.
     

     

  10. D869

    Exmoor Rail 2018

    By D869,

    Some photos from our trip to Minehead today
     

    The venue is an indoor skateboard park - note the rampy things against the wall.
     

    The nextdoor neighbours seem to to be even more into their hydraulics than we are.
     

    They had a layout to put them on too (Seven Ash)
     

    The Gravetts were there too. Very nice!
     

    There was a 305mm layout on the doorstep too. They do seem to have some implausible stuff though. Maybe this was the silly last half hour?
     

    And a Weatherill wheel loader too - not the right kind for my shunting tractor but the right manufacturer
     
    Thanks to Dave and his team for an enjoyable show and for the Belgian buns. Yum!
     
    ... and thanks to Jim Allwood for being guest op this afternoon.
  11. D869

    Gresley BG

    By D869,

    A former member of the Midland area group recently donated his box of unfinished projects and other bits and bobs so that the group members could make use of them. I picked out a part built Gresley BG which looked like a nice model which was crying out for someone to finish it. I have a bit of a soft spot for parcels stock.
     
    Some photos and words about progress to date...
     

    The coach as retrieved - basically two sides, two ends and a floor
     

    I don't know much about its origin - this is the only clue. I assume it's a shot down 4mm etch but I'm really not sure. The scale seems to be about 1:150, so half way between 2mm and 'N'. A rather unusual choice... which made finding a roof a bit tricky.
     

    I cut the ducket and gangway ends from plain brass - a change from all that computer stuff... although I did draw the gangway ends in CAD and then stuck a print of the drawing to the brass.
     

    A gangway being assembled. No real plan here - more a case of 'make it up as you go along'.
     

    Seemed to work OK though.
     

    My original plan was to use an Ultima roof that had been in my gloat box since the 1980s. I think I bought it at IMREX if anyone can remember that far back. Unfortunately when I measured it I found it was pretty much right for 2mm scale and about 2mm too short for this kit. Instead I decided it was time to get to grips with 3d curves and then got Mr Shapeways to produce the goods.
     

    Still needs some sanding though - admittedly the 3d printing artefacts run in the same direction as the planking beneath the covering of the real roof but I think the finish is too rough.
     

    A somewhat ropey shot of the coach so far. The underframe fittings are a combination of 2mm Association and Ultima stuff. The guards footsteps still need to be done from scratch.
     
    The roof fits width and length-wise but I didn't try to fit it to the top profile of the etched coach end. Instead I used the prototype profile so I need to modify the etched end to fit the roof profile... which would have been easier if I had left the gangways off until later. Makes a change from my usual over planning.
     
    Oh, and it will be a 'BGP' - or pigeon van if you prefer because these lasted longer than the 'pure' BGs.
  12. D869

    Chelford 2018

    By D869,

    Yesterday I took all of my various Hayle related bits and pieces to the Supermeet/Skills day at Chelford. It was a great day but it's fair to say that I was ready for some sleep by the time I got home again.
     

     
    I got a bunch of my research photos printed by one of the online companies. I hadn't actually realised just how many I'd managed to hoover up while researching Hayle. The ones that fitted into the display hangers were probably less than half of the ones printed... and there were still a good few that I did not print.
     
    Apart from being an opportunity to have an enjoyable day rabbiting on about my own interests to anyone willing to listen it was also a good chance to see how the shunting tractor performed over the course of a full day's operation. It was still working at packing up time so there were no major breakages although it did exhibit some rather odd behaviour late in the afternoon that will probably be tricky to pin down because I predict that it will perform perfectly when I try to make it do the same thing back at base. I wired up the 'main line' for locomotive operation on the day before the show but lots of people were asking questions about how it works so the lid was being lifted frequently and the loco didn't spend much time actually being used.
     
    Laurie Adams spent a good while chatting about shunting tractors so it was great to compare notes. Laurie and a few other people had a go at driving and quite a few people declined to have a go when offered.
     
    I also picked up another Worsley Works class 22 kit from Mr Doherty... and found a third for a very reasonable sum on the bring and buy stand.
  13. D869

    Tractor Frames

    By D869,

    I've been making bits for the shunting tractor for a while now (the one in the video in the previous post is just for testing). For the most part it will be scratchbuilt and it's a bit of a case of making up the plan as I go along... never having built a model of a wheel loader before.
     
    The cab sides and engine cover sides have been cut out from two bits of 5 thou brass soldered together... actually they are not yet fully cut out. Somehow I hope to assemble these into a three dimensional thing resembling the real thing.
     
    I'd assumed all along that I would do the main frames on the milling machine - the first time I've used the miller to do make a set of frames. I've had the thing drawn in CAD for a long time and decided it was time to bite the bullet and actually see if the theory would work in reality.
     
    I didn't really know how this was going to go but I bunged in a 1mm cutter, cranked the spindle speed up to near the max and set to work on two bits of 22 thou brass soldered together. I was half expecting broken cutters but it all went very well. It took me four 'laps', each taking around an hour to get through the thickness, leaving three 'tabs' to make sure the frames stayed put while I was making the last cut.
     

    Two 'laps' complete
     

    All done. There is just the thinnest film of metal in the bottom of the cut.
     
    Of course this would be an ideal job for a CNC machine but mine is of the handraulic variety. Instead I drew the cutter path in CAD , printed it out and then wrote up the coordinates of all of the places where I needed to change direction. I didn't attempt to do the diagonals - they will be finished off with a file.
     

    My cutting plan complete with idiot guide to help me remember which way to turn the wheels. The cab sides and engine cover sides are also in shot.
  14. D869

    York 2018

    By D869,

    So the much advertised snow didn't materialise (or rather it materialised mostly as rain) and we made it back in pretty good time from York. Maybe the promise of snow put off the usual Easter bank holiday trippers because the roads were fairly clear... of traffic if not water.
     
    The show was an enjoyable one with us parked next to the 2mm roadshow and also the Jerry and Kim roadshow. We had a selection of guest operators on each day so thanks to all of them.
     
    We were next to Mike and Judith Edge and I was betting that someone in the 2mm party would buy a shot down kit but as far as I know things only progressed as far as looking at a catalogue. We also had plenty of time in the evenings to check out a few local hostelries.
     
    On the whole the layout managed to keep going for three days. We had a stuck point blade on the branch junction today but managed to work around it using the east crossover for main line departures. It was nice that the east crossover decided to cooperate because this one was sticking the previous day. Ho hum.
     
    The Easter Special

     
    A decent crowd

     
    A dodgy crowd

     
    I also managed to spend some quality time on Friday with a certain resident of the National Railway Museum - didn't you know that every Cornish layout needs an EM1?

  15. D869

    The Contraption

    By D869,

    Thought it might be time to say a few word on here about the thing that's been taking up most of my modelling time since last June.
     
    The Esso depot at Hayle North Quay was laid with a kicked back siding. As the quay had no run-round, it could only be worked using a shunting tractor... so my layout needs one of those.
     
    It might have been nice to just get on with building the layout and worry about this later but that's really not going to work - the tractor is too small to have an on-board drive so it needs to be driven from below ground and the drive system needs to be designed and tested before the baseboard can be built... so building and testing a mockup is what I've been doing.
     
    I need to thank Laurie Adams, John Greenwood and Pixie of this parish, all of whom have provided some of the inspiration for this and in Laurie's case a lot of in-depth info about how his tractor works... but my drive system is not the same as any of theirs.
     
    The drive uses an old curtain rail which is curved to follow the line of the Esso siding. A stepper motor and toothed belt moves a carriage to and fro. The carriage has a swing arm to allow the tractor to move about 40mm either side of the siding and a swivelling magnet carrier which allows the tractor to point in any direction. An Arduino Mega and a bunch of stepper motor drive electronics control the whole thing and attempts to make it move in a realistic manner.
     
    I won't bore you with the details, let's just say that it's complicated and it's taken a long time to get it this far. It's not yet moving perfectly but it's doing well enough that I'm sufficiently confident that it will work that I can move on to other things. It will need more tweaking when it's installed under the real layout.
     
    The tractor... or the mockup tractor anyway

     
    The inevitable video with me at the wheel... if you can stand watching 2 minutes of it.

     
    An overview of the contraption with the lid off... this is NOT the real baseboard.

     
    The carriage

     
    The carriage a few months back when you could still see the gear train on the swing arm (it's still there)

     
    The real Esso Tractor (copyright John Lloyd from http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/hayle-wharf-branches.html).
     
    I'm going to be modelling a 4WD vehicle from the same manufacturer. Rule 1 and all that.

  16. D869

    Syston 2018

    By D869,

    Our first show of 2018 has come and gone. Not too far from base - organised by the Syston club but actually in Sileby, not far from Rothley.
     
    The organisers were very welcoming and we were awarded two prizes for best layout including a trophy and some bottles of wine. We will now need to organise a function to provide an opportunity to consume said wine.
     
    We also had a play with one of those rail mounted cameras but we will need to wait for the owner to let us have the results.
     
    Some photos...
     

     

     

  17. D869

    Railwells 2017

    By D869,

    Just finished our run back up the Fosse Way from Wells where an enjoyable weekend was had in spite of an annoying points failure that affected our ability to get stuff in and out of the goods yard for most of the weekend. We had the station board off after the show closed on Saturday evening (to many amusing comments of 'it's a two day show you know') and changed the point motor but after a few tests this morning the motor of the new one was found to be red hot and promptly disconnected.
     
    The temperature was pretty comfortable too for those of us who chose to turn up in shorts. Thanks to Chris and his team for organizing the show (in its 40th year now) and for being very patient with us being the last to leave yesterday evening. Thanks also to Jim Allwood for being guest operator for the day today.
  18. D869

    Spot the Difference?

    By D869,

    A little puzzle for you...
     
    On the left is a new tank which has just escaped from the paint shop. ICI supplied chlorine to Hayle in the early years before Ethyl/Octel had their own chlorine works at Ellesmere Port and there was a period during which both Octel and ICI tanks were seen together.
     
    The tanks were made by different companies for different customers but both to the same RCH design, so they look similar but there are plenty of detail variations. No credit will be given for saying that the logos are different
     


     
    And now for a slightly different puzzle. Spot the similarities!
     

  19. D869

    Helston 2017

    By D869,

    Greetings from Kernow!
     
    The St Ruth team has just enjoyed a great weekend at the Helston show. The layout's first trip to its native country.
     
    I really enjoyed the experience - a chance to chinwag with lots of fellow Cornwall railway geeks with a special mention to the folks on the Cornwall Railway Society stand. There was also a stand selling genuine west country ballast. The proprietor was identified as a mining geek so Chris was entertained for some time there.
     
    We had plenty of folks recognising buildings and streets on St Ruth and passing on stories about Penzance. The organisers made us very welcome and kept everyone well plied with tea and coffee throughout the setup evening and the show. A certain amount of Cornish ale was also consumed at yesterday's evening gathering.
     
    Some photos...
     

     

     
    There was a nice 7mm layout of Bodmin North right behind us.Unfortunately several of my photos came out overexposed but this one gives you a flavour...
     

     
    And the Helston club's 7mm narrow gauge Gweek North Quay - some lovely structure modelling that really conveys the feel of Gweek. I think I've had a pint or two of Tribute in that pub...
     

     

     

     
    Edit: Just for Pete...
     

  20. D869

    Spring has Sprung

    By D869,

    A little break from the 2mm stuff indoors... The weather has been pretty decent this weekend so a certain amount of effort in the garden was felt to be in order. Naturally apart from pulling out the many weeds, I took the opportunity to make sure that the railway was clear of obstructions.
     
    This afternoon the odd train or two had to be run just to make sure things were working properly. Today's main performer was my little IP Engineering 'Jane' - a meths fired pot boiler - similar in principle to a Mamod but rather better put together. This is always a regular favourite - strictly manual so no radio control batteries to remember (err... forget) to charge and pretty easy to keep going. I much prefer meths to gas firing but such an attitude seems out of step with most of what's on the market these days.
     
    The PW department were also much in evidence, armed with their precision adjusting tool (a big hammer) to deal with any rough spots where Jane and train were seen to be disturbed in their progress.
     
    Some photos...
     
    I think this is just about the only daffodil on the shady side of the garden with a flower on it. The track here was reinstated late last year and it's fair to say that it's still looking a little stark.

     
    The south west curve is one of the final bits still (re)laid with wooden sleepers. A very attractive way to lay track but very high maintenance. Originally most of the line was done like this but it did not stand the test of time. These deep wooden sleepers can no longer be had and I've pretty much reached the end of my stock so this may be the final fling for this way of doing things. Pity though.

  21. D869

    Leamington 2017

    By D869,

    This weekend we blew the cobwebs off St Ruth after 6 months of exhibition inactivity by taking it to one of the bigger of our local shows run by Leamington & Warwick MRC.
     
    We haven't been completely idle during this period (almost... but not completely). The most noticeable additions being the ability for our 'sun' to gradually set allowing us to run the layout in darknes. Apart from a black cloth to keep out stray light from overhead this has entailed a lot of work putting lights (controlled by an Arduino under each board) into buildings and generally bringing into commission all sorts of lighting bits that had been built in over the years but so far hardly used. The signals had been built with working lamps from day one but this is the first time that we've wired them up other than for occasional photo sessions. One of our more recent members, Andrew Hyatt has also spent a lot of time painstakingly researching and then creating reproductions of the 1950s era street lighting that is evident in photos of Penzance up to the 1970s.
     
    The second major addition has been a shameless theft of Nigel Ashton's display board idea. We now have a board running most of the length of the scenic section containing details about various buildings and other stuff about how the layout works. For this show it was printed onto plain paper but eventually it will be done with something more resistant to sticky finger marks... because it does attract plenty of finger poking.
     
    Oh, and the show was fun and the food was very good.
     
    Some photos...
     
    The Leamington College provided a handy balcony just so that we could take some high angle photos...
     


     
    My attempt at photographing 'after dark'. In practice this is tricky because I didn't want to get in the punters' way. As you can see, overhead is not the only source of stray light - particularly when you set the layout up in an atrium.
     

     
    The roadshow crew doing their stuff
     

  22. D869

    Making a Mockery

    By D869,

    Planning for Hayle North Quay has progressed a bit. I have now sorted out a 2d plan by combining a transparent bitmap export of the plan from Templot with some colouring in done using Inkscape. The overall depth of the layout will be 22 inches at the ends and 24 inches in the middle.
     
    The Octel office block and the whole of the Esso depot have been subjected to quite a lot of fore and aft compression but hopefully I've still managed to keep the character of the place.
     

     
    I've also also pulled this together with the various 3d mockups of buildings that I've heen mucking about with for ages and added some expanded polystyrene hills to make a 1/4 size 3d mockup. The snow white hills have now been sprayed with various mixes of acrylic through my third best (5 quid) airbrush to make them a bit less stark. A hairdryer was deployed to persuade the paint to dry.
     
    I'll probably still do a few more bits and bobs to the mockup - like adding in some boundary walls and maybe adding a bit of colour to the buildings... and also make those chopped up orange biro oil tanks show up rather better against the rock face behind. Overall I'm reasonably happy with it although there are a few things that I want to adjust when I do the full size version. At the moment the only track gradient is up to the Octel works. I might add more on the real thing but also need to think about wagons rolling away. I still need to add some coal piles on the quay itself. At the moment the middle foreground looks pretty empty. I might also experiment to see how things look if I extend the dunes up as a painted backscene.
     
    I had some bits of LED strip left over from our new kitchen that was done last year so some of this was repurposed and fed from South Yard's lighting controller. It's a bit bright for such a small mockup but it does the job.
     
    Next job is to start thinking about baseboards... at the moment I'm thinking in terms of 6mm birch ply.
     
    Some photos - one overall and one of each of the main clusters of buildings.
     



  23. D869

    Back to the Drawing Board

    By D869,

    Regular readers may have observed a certain 'theme' to some of my wagon building over the past few years and perhaps even wondered about the reason behind my seemingly incessant fixation with tank wagons.
     
    It's not a huge secret that I've been intending to do something based on what most people in our community will know as 'Hayle Wharf', so here, finally is the start of it.
     
    There are actually several wharves at Hayle, so I've decided to use the more specific name 'Hayle North Quay' as the title for the layout - basically this is the part that is of most interest to the likes of us, being home to a number of rail connected industries including the power station, bromine works, an oil terminal and a domestic coal depot.
     
    For those unfamiliar with the place, there are several nice Aerofilms photos online. The one that best sums up the bit I'm intending to model is...
     
    http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw033731
     
    My plan is to use the old hotel and the limekiln as 'book ends' for the layout because they are (or rather, were) both interesting old buildings. The power station and the main (and very big) process buildings of the bromine works will be off stage to the left.
     
    To do this to scale would need about 6 feet but I'm squashing it down to 4'6. Actually that turns out to be surprisingly hard to do because it's a pretty busy place with lots of trackwork so when you chop some length out of one section it usually messes something else up.
     
    After winding up with some unexpectedly vicious radii in places on South Yard I was determined not to make the same mistake again so I opted for the pain of trying to learn Templot. It's a pretty strange beast but I think I have finally coaxed something out of it that I'm starting to be happy with.
     
    Step 1 was to load up some OS maps and an Aerofilms vertical photo as background images and use these to try to trace out the real track layout.
    Step 2 was to do some selective compression. I didn't find Templot was a particularly good fit for this job so instead I went low tech by printing the plan out and then taking a pair of scissors to it.
    Step 3 was to stick the plan back together and bung it on the scanner, import it back into Templot and then try to produce a track alignment that actually works in the reduced space.
     
    The third step has taken quite some time - a lot of nudging bits of track around a little, fiddling with crossing angles and curve radii but I think I'm finally getting there.
     
    The key bit seems to be the central 'loop' including the two turnouts and the diamond crossing that provide the connections to the bromine works and the oil depot. The word 'loop' suggests a run-round but in reality it was not used like that - all trains were propelled onto the quay. I might occasionally break that rule though.
     
    The latest step has been to print the loop section out at full size, stick the bits together and have a long hard look at them on the table. I'm now on the third version.
     
    There is still plenty more to do before the plan is finished - I haven't yet decided on the front to back dimension - I'm aiming for 22 inches but that might be too tight a squeeze. There is also the vertical dimension to take care of - in spite of appearances, the trackwork was not on a level playing field - it was definitely uphill to the bromine works.
     
    Some photos...
     
    Some tank wagons on the first version of the loop alignment. The bromine tank is on the connection to the Octel bromine works.

     
    Versions 2 (right) and 3 (left) from the 'rest of the world' end. The loop curve on V2 was 3 feet radius but it wasn't happy with the way it looked. Version 3 has a slightly bigger radius. The way that the left hand line rejoins the 'main' line at the far end looked pretty odd in version 1. Version 2 was an attempt to fix that but it still looked odd.

     
    Versions 2 (left) and 3 (right) from the 'power station' end. The loop has more 'breathing space' on V3 although the real thing had more room still. The odd track alignment on the loop end isn't too obvious in this photo but it was really bugging me.

  24. D869

    1907 Hurst Nelson 10T Tank

    By D869,

    Hmm.. July 2015... apparently that's when I started on this particular project
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/100931-riveted-oil-tanks-in-2mm-scale
     
    I've not said anything more about it on here since then... mainly because until a few days back I had no idea whether or not it was going to succeed or fail.
     
    Rather than theorising further about whether this would or would not work as a 3d print I decided to take a punt and had it printed when Shapeways had a free postage offer in the spring. The result looked OK but I still didn't know whether it would work as a model when painted with metallic siver - a finish notoriously unforgiving of surface defects.
     
    To cut a long story short it took 3 rounds of priming and sanding the tank I decided to go for the top coats. Although I'd given the tank a day in the summer sun to cure any uncured resin, I still chickened out of using Alclad on this one. Instead after perusing the Tamiya stocks at my local Hobbycraft I went for a coat of gloss black (X1) followed by metallic Titanium Aluminium (X32) which seemed to have a nice fine particle size, at least looking at the bottom of the pot. Tests on some scrap plastic tube for comparison with previous Alclad tests looked promising. The end result on the tank looked rather snazzy, although rather too loud to be left like that.
     
    After decals (from my own artwork to make sure they lined up between the riveted seams), varnish, weathering and a lot of 'knitting' to get the whole thing put together, it went on parade at the Association AGM along with the Air Ministry tank and a Stephen Harris 35T tank and won the John Barker trophy.
     
    A few photos from the build below. The last couple show the tank qith primer before any sanding and then with its gloss black coat. I didn't take any when it was in unweathered silver. Pity really.
     







  25. D869

    Branch Home

    By D869,

    Those of you who frequent the workbench thread in the 2mm forum may have seen some work in progress shots of this signal. It's now been planted on the layout and is ready for service at the Swindon show this weekend.
     

    Planted using finest grade scenic putty

     

    Connected up and ballasted

     
    Edit: Wigan
     
    We had been planning to be at Wigan next month but it seems that something went awry with the emails to or from the organisers. By the time we got through by phone it was too late so we won't be there this year. Sorry if anyone is disappointed.
×
×
  • Create New...