D869

I usually use a half round needle file for gapping. I find it less obtrusive than a saw cut or whatever and a wider gap provides less opportunities for copper 'hairs' to create short circuits. I expect that a burr would achieve a similar result. I'm also a fan of Pritt but this happened more by accident - I wanted to use double sided tape but I didn't have any. One disadvantage is that it does tend to dampen the paper a little but this is not too severe. Regards, Andy

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.

Looking good Pete but I'm going to be a bit of a contrarian on the gangways. The gangways that you see on the end of a loose Mark 2 coach are fully extended. When two coaches are coupled together, the gangways are compressed slightly. Have a look at the spacing between the Celedonian Sleeper coaches on the Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Railways_Mark_2 So if possible, I'd look at getting the coaches to couple more closely. I gather there are ways to do it with the Dapol couplers but I do it a different way myself. We also need to deal with non-scale friction so my coaches are coupled so that the gangways just about don't touch - that way we can propel them through a reverse curve without one chucking its neighbour sideways off the track. Same applies to Mark 1s, Bulleids and Gresleys - anything with Pullman gangways. BTW, are you planning anything suitably orange for your trip to Essex? Regards, Andy

Looks good. I need to keep an eye out for it. It does ring a bell now but it's not a part of RMWeb that I follow... other than certain individual threads. Somewhat ironically we went down to Toddington on Saturday to try out the new extension to Broadway... so I was briefly at Cheltenham Racecourse. Regards, Andy

Looks like a nice layout I dont think it's one that I've heard of before. What layout is it? Regards, Andy

You should be getting a PM from Mr 2mm Shop 2 soon. Hopefully he will be able to help you out. Regards, Andy

Thanks Jerry. How about... 'You should have seen how many of Pauline's flapjacks I've had - I reckon it's about this much'

It needs quite a leap of faith to paint something with a high gloss finish before applying transfers. I can vouch that Dullcote does do the job though but I do find it quite tricky to get a controlled amount onto the model - the spray can tends to be very enthusiastic. Mostly things have still worked out OK in spite of this but I think it is cellulose based and on one occasion I have had it soften the underlying (acrylic) paint which then moved resulting in some unsightly effects around the edges of the transfers. Some heavier than originally intended weathering was needed to hide the mess. Regards, Andy

Not sure... the progress of this club seems to have evaded Google somehow. I was at the 2mm do at Bilton social club (just outside Rugby) which I think was the first outing of the layout in its square format, without the all-round glass if memory serves. Previously it had just been 'Haddon' which had been in existence for some considerable time before I joined the group. After that I had a few years away at Uni, returning to the group around 87. Happily I can report that the blue Western and most of the same wagons were in action again at York last weekend but I missed the obvious opportunity to stage a repeat photo. The two opens did manage to sneak into the Easter egg photo on the St Ruth blog though. Regards, Andy

I think your options for curve radii are about right. My main thought is that you have a lot of space to play with but it's a good idea to plan your build so that you tackle a smaller part of the whole thing first - something that you can finish in a reasonable space of time. You will make mistakes and you will learn as you go along. You don't say whether your layout is intended to be permanent in the basement or portable or perhaps a combination of the two. A roundy roundy of that size is certainly an option but it is not the only option. John Greenwood's North Cornwall empire will be on show at RailWells in August and might give you some different ideas about how to play with a good sized space. This normally lives in John's loft but John takes individual elements like Wenford, Wadebridge or St Blazey out to shows. Wells will be a very rare opportunity to see the whole thing in one place. Regards, Andy

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?

All being well, St Ruth will be appearing at York this coming weekend. I thought it might be an appropriate moment to dig out a few pictures of the Midland Area Group's previous outing to York. Some of you may remember our previous layout 'Helsby Tumill and Haddon' and the operators of that era. It was a big square thing with viewing on all four sides, It had glass panels at the viewing side and strip lighting above. Keith Robbins - a local wag of the 'N' gauge persuasion used to delight in walking up to the layout and asking for a cod and chips. I can't for the life of me remember the year so maybe some kind soul can enlighten me. If memory serves, we all went on a coach trip one evening to the North York Moors railway with dinner at a pub on the moors where Old Peculier could be had. I have no idea how all of that fitted into one evening after a day's operating. I also have a photo from the same trip of 'Duke of Gloucester' in the NRM yard attached to the Hawksworth dynamometer car. A general view of the layout from the Helsby side with the much missed Neil Ballantine along with David and Glyn at the controls David at the fiddle yard panel A not very brilliant photo of the Tumill side with a freight in one of the loops. Regards, Andy

Glad they came out well Ian. Regards, Andy

I'm glad you got the full two days - I was pretty worried for you when the BBC TV weather said 'Nottingham 150mm of snow' this morning. I'm sure the Leamington club took a bigger hit two weeks ago - they had no choice but to cancel (which in that case proved a prudent choice - the roads on that Friday evening were pretty dire) Tricky decisions all round I think. Thanks again for a great show. Regards, Andy

Thanks. That's one for the shopping list at York then.

Hi Ian, Good luck with the etches. I do like that handrail bending jig. Can these still be had? Regards, Andy

I spent most of the day on the 2mm Association stand. A very friendly and enjoyable show which I try to get to every year. The cakes for exhibitors were particularly welcome. It did seem rather quieter than usual this afternoon so I wonder if the weather was putting the punters off. My car had a nice crust of frozen snow on the non-sunny side when it was time to leave and then the screenwash nozzles froze while I was driving back down the M1. Just the ticket when you reach a dry stretch and the collected salty spray dries to a white film all over your windscreen. Oh well, it all turned out OK in the end and like I said, it was a good day. Regards, Andy

Thank you both. Thanks David. Yes, some brakes are on the 'to do' list. I have them on some of my 16 tonners but so far none on the oil tanks. Cheers Pete. I tend not to go in for the whole coin shot thing. The layout ain't built yet - this is just a mockup to test out ideas but yes the infill is all done with 1/32 balsa - another idea borrowed from Laurie Adams. I found that there are some big variations from the nominal thickness of the balsa where the grain varies from soft to hard so will need to be more careful in choosing sheets in future. The deck is 1mm PCB - 3 sheets stitched together (with splints made from 16mm scale rail!) but I will order a big sheet for the real layout. Of course the whole contraption requires a completely clear run underneath the board surface so there must be no board cross members, wiring, point tiebars or uncouplers to get in the way. All these things must either be arranged above ground or else some means devised to keep them out of the way when the tractor is coming through. I haven't had that much practice. I only drew the building lines on just before I brought it to the meeting. It's pretty tricky to swing the tractor round through the other gate but on the final layout there will be a bit more space - the mockup is truncated at both ends because the bendy bits in the middle are the more important things in terms of proving whether the thing works or not. The result is that the oil depot outlines are rather more constricted than they will eventually be. I just re-checked the drawing and that building by the gate is in reality outside the area covered by the mockup. 22mph was the top speed of the tractor I'm modelling although I slowed mine down a bit because I think it was close to the limit in terms of how fast the Arduino can keep up with the trig to work out how to move the steppers. I'm sure you will get another go sooner or later Regards, Andy

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.

I looked on the ModelMaster site fairrly recently and some 'N' scale decals and etched name and number plates had appeared. IIRC they were not there when I looked a month or two back so hopefully things are going in the right direction. They were just loco and wagon decals but fingers crossed that the coach decals will reappear in due course. I was in the NGS for a while and have some ModelMaster coach decals from that time. My feeling was that they tended to stick to numbers for the available commercial vehicles (presumably from the time when the sheet was designed), so there were plenty of suitable numbers for Dapol RTR coaches but if you had a kit built Hawksworth then you were stuck with chopping up numbers to make something suitable. I've also had ALPS printed Decals done by John Peck (of Precision Decals) from my own artwork but if you go via that route you need to work with the available ribbon colours. The yellow is very much towards the lemon end of the spectrum. Registration between colour layers can be variable - you need to print white underneath most other colours and if the layers are slightly out of registration you will get a white fringe on one side. Don't get me wrong - I am very pleased with the results I've had and will use John's services in future but you do need to understand its limitations. I think CCT uses ALPS technology so if Mr Isherwood says that coach lining is too tricky then he is probably not wrong. Regards, Andy

Nice job. Actually that looks pretty clean compared to some of the steam era photos. In many photos you would struggle to tell that the tank was finished in silver at all. I scratchbuilt 8 of these tanks (with much variety of diagrams) many moons ago. The ones with this style of ladder had them assembled from bits of wire but nowadays some of them are looking very secondhand. Is the etch that you used available for other peeps to buy? Regards, Andy

Don't suppose you know anyone local who could take a few suitable photos for you do you? Might give you more options to choose from. The coming week might not be the best time though unless you are after a snow scene. It's not an area that I know very well - Devon is a very big place and there are lots of bits in the middle that don't get visited much. I did track down the former station called 'Hole' on the same line once - it took quite a bit of detective work because I couldn't find anywhere with that name on the map. Happily it was remarkably intact. It was a few years back so hopefully it still is. Regards, Andy

Yes it went very well thanks Pete. Not a massive show, nor a finescale specialist show but the quality was good throughout and our train set behaved itself. Putting us near the book stand might not have been the best thing for my wallet though. Regards, Andy

Glue-wise I use Formula 560 Canopy Glue for many jobs (not just glazing). In terms of gluing dissimilar materials it does a better all-round job than anything else I've tried. Gluing etched sides onto a body shell where the glazing material is structural (e.g. MTK/Fleetline/BHE style) is a tricky ask and I've had plenty of issues in the past with other glues coming undone. One problem may be the difference in thermal expansion rates of the metal and plastic so I think that having a glue that retains some flexibility is a good thing. I have used epoxy and I have no doubt that it provides a stronger bond but the downsides are the faff of mixing, the wait while it sets and the most serious one - I once had it ooze out of the joint after I'd got everything clamped in place and completely ruin an entire side of a BHE kit. I'd still go for 24 hour epoxy where absolute mechanical strength is the main consideration but for glazing I'd say that you need something that is strong enough but also allows you to clean up if any of the stuff strays where you did not intend. With canopy glue you can roll up and lift off any stray bits with a wooden cocktail stick once it has reached the stage of being (for want of a better phrase) tacky goo. I think the instructions suggest cleaning it up with a water dampened implement but I've had more success with the roll up and lift off method. Canopy glue is also ideal for sticking nameplates on - it gives enough time to adjust the position but sets quickly enough that you can do the other side after a pause for a cup of tea or something stronger to calm the nerves. Regards, Andy

It would seem that they are. I remember the name from way back too. I don't know whether the guy behind the stand was the original proprietor. There wasn't much of 2mm interest on that stand though so I did not enquire further. Regards, Andy