D869

I might just stick with the Blu Tack for now (geddit?)... but yes, Milliput might be a longer term answer. I did have a good lock to try to figure out a more engineered form of fixing but there is not much room for such refinements. The Pannier is now smooth in both directions. I didn't do much to it - just found that one of the wires from the chassis to the DCC plug was rubbing on the rear driving wheel. Not 100% sure this was the problem but it wasn't helping. I've managed to squeeze a good deal of lead into the space around the Lawton motor - not far short of the weight of the Dapol ballast lump (which is still in the rear of the boiler/tanks). There is probably room for a bit more lead in the cab too. Pickup is... well... to rigid 0-6-0T standards so although the loco is lovely and smooth when going, it is not yet a reliable shunting machine. There is plenty of slop in the bearings so I might try to rig some Simpson springs if I can find room for them. It still has N gauge wheels. Given the current unavailability of 9.5mm Association wheels I think I might just send mine off to Mr Solloway in the interests of getting this thing to do some useful work in the forseeable future. It does now look like a viable machine so worth the effort fo getting the wheels done. Regards, Andy

An envelope containing some Lawton 8mm motors popped onto my doormat this lunchtime - very speedy service! Size-wise the Lawton motor is perhaps 0.5-1mm longer than the Dapol original (depending which bit you measure) but I think there is enough margin to fit it into the Pannier. The motor will push up inside the tank/boiler moulding just fine - the blanking pieces between the front splasher just springs out very slightly as it goes in. I whipped the worm off the Dapol motor using my GW Models puller plus a 'press tool accessory' from NWSL in the States (the GW Models Puller has a pin that's too big four our needs). I think that Dapol have taper reamed the worm because it was an easy fit onto the Lawton shaft one way around and would not go on the other way around. As luck would have it, a firm push with finger pressure leaves the worm gripping the shaft with maybe 0.5mm to spare between it and the motor nose bearing. I wasn't expecting to get that lucky. So I soldered up the feed wires and made a quick motor mount using engineering grade Blu Tack. It seems to be possible to achieve a reasonably convincing mesh. Then I Blu Tacked the Dapol weight on top and gave her a test run. The result is a vast improvement over the (admittedly suspect) Dapol motor. There is still some hesitation in forward gear that I need to investigate but reverse gear is as smooth as you like. Another win for the Lawton 8mm motor Next I need to figure out a more permanent way to mount the motor to the chassis (ideas anyone?). It will get a 'tug' each time the body moulding is removed so it needs to be able to withstand a small amount of force. Regards, Andy

I acquired one of these myself last weekend. It was bought as a sub-standard item and it lives up to that billing, being very jittery when running. Thanks to the various contributors here, I have stripped the thing down. The motor came out without any real fight - partly because I think someone had been there before me (possibly even replacing the motor) and partly because there didn't seem to be much evidence of huge amounts of glue thereabouts anyway. With the rods removed the gear train seems smooth enough but some burrs on the wheel faces seem to have been catching the rods so that will need to be sorted if the original wheels stay. The jittery behaviour remains even with the rods off so the wheel burrs are not the whole problem. Pushing the thing down harder onto a rolling road seems to make the jitters go away so I wonder if it's a vicious circle where the lack of smoothness causes intermittent pickup and the whole jittery thing just builds up. The running reminds me of the way that my 45xx behaved when fitted with the Association can motor. Its running was transformed by a strip down, deburring the brass gears, fitting Simpson springs and fitting a Nigel Lawton 8mm motor. Exactly how much improvement was down to each of those three things individually I'm not sure but I do think that the motor was definitely a problem. I'm not familiar with the '7mm Farish-like coreless motor'... how does one get hold of such a thing? In the meantime I have put an order in for some more Lawton motors because they are very good and will get used one way or another anyway. Regards, Andy

You are very welcome Natalie. Thanks for your kind remarks.

I think I was aware although it's a looong time since I saw one. I'm sure that we have green paint too but I suspect the result would be too unsubtle.

Nice job on the 24 Pete. Looking very neat... just needs to look a bit less clean now Thurso, definitely! I'm sure that your usual audience will be just as unbiased as I am. Regards, Andy

Thanks Ian and Andy. The LEDs are series wired with suitable resistors after some experimenting to try to achieve sensible levels of lighting. The other issue is colour - most (all?) of the tiny surface mount white LEDs only come in cool white which looks pretty nasty to my eye in a model context. We've coloured these with yellow glass paint where they are supposed to represent tungsten bulbs... but not where they represent mercury street lamps. Regards, Andy

The black sheet stays put all the time so the layout's own lights provide all of the illumination for the daytime scenes. We have added some wire frames over the halogen spots to keep the cloth well clear and this seems to work fine with no worrying build-up of heat. Lighting in the trains is still to be done. Fortunately only a subset of the stock runs at night. Unfortunately all of those coaches belong to me. Thanks Nigel. I think you are assuming a much more mathematical process than was actually the case - I think the job was done rather more freehand with some trial and error and then the info panels were done by tracing the curve from the ply and (I assume) scanning it in. I still think we could use some way to keep the finger (or frequently, big camera lens) pokers back a bit from the goods yard. Regards, Andy

Thanks Nick. I'll pass on your request to Andrew (street lamps) and John (platform lamps). Both use surface mount LEDs as the light source but they are better placed to tell you about how the lamps are put together. Thanks Pete. Not sure whether you mean the whole show... in which case this is their second year at the college... which brings with it the usual likes and dislikes in terms of exhibits being spread around several rooms. If you mean the night time running on St Ruth, then yes it's something that we intend to continue. I think the reaction from the audience was positive but this is the first time that we've had a serious go at it so we have plenty of rough edges to sort out. Regards, Andy

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

Thanks Don. Is that a traditional toobeewan softwood frame that I see before me? Regards, Andy

Cheers Don. I agree that the cosmetic appearance is neither here nor there. It's the stability that I'm most concerned about. I'm by no means an expert on ply, nor do I know a good ply seller from a bad one but it seems to me that if I go to a timber merchant who sells a number of different kinds of ply and is up front about the different grades and the composition of the various options then I stand a better chance of getting something that will stand the test of time. I've already spoken to a local timber merchant (Avon Timber in Coventry). They told me that I probably didn't need birch ply but they also said that it would be less likely to splinter when cut than hardwood faced ply. It's about 37 quid for an 8 by 4 sheet of Grade BB/BB 6.5mm ply which doesn't seem hugely expensive to me. I haven't worked out how much I need yet though. Regards, Andy

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.

I had a quick shufty at the maps in the old OPC Kingsbridge branch book. The 'original' layout at Kingsbridge shows a 'garage' near the goods yard approach road. 'Garage' seems unlikely to be an original 1890s feature so this may have been a stable. It was swept away by the construction of a later siding. On the Gara Bridge map there is a unlabeled rectangle at the back of the goods yard but looking at photos this seems to be a rather ramshackle building with very low eaves which may have predated the railway. There doesn't seem to be anything else likely on the map.

An interesting study Mikkel. It's probably worth thinking about the way that stables work in general when trying to understand this stuff... which is probably not massively different today because the Mk1 horse is still with us although more nowadays for leisure purposes. Ventilation is important in stables, not just for the obvious reasons but also to reduce the risk of transmitting respiratory disease between the occupants. They also need somewhere to store feed, bedding and tack.. plus some place to put the manure which may or may not have been shipped out quickly. There needs to be space (probably outdoors) to get the horses ready for work and for the farrier to do his job. As you have observed, busy urban depots are very different from rural spots. Apart from fitting more into a smaller space I suspect that there was a lot more 'just in time' activity in terms of feed supply and waste removal. Regards, Andy

Glad you had a good time Pete. I'm sure you will get over any gremlins with a bit of testing and troubleshooting time. Regards, Andy

Good luck at the show Pete. Does your recent appointment of a chief operator free you up for additional nattering then? Watch out for the bad throat and jaw ache. Nattering all day can be quite taxing.

I'll wait until I get around to that horse worked tramway layout... for which I also need working 2mm scale horses so it may be a while yet.

Thanks David. I certainly have my work cut out! There was certainly some inlaid track where the lines coincided with the roadway along the back of the wharf. Much of the rest of it was buried by wind blown sand whenever I visited, so that will be another thing to replicate. Then there will be track buried under big piles of coal. There were also small sections of granite sleeper blocks (even in 2012) surrounded by what I can best describe as brickwork 'setts'. I guess that these date back to the Hayle Railway. The 1950s aerial photos show some of these blocks with rails still in place although the turnout geometry is err... primitive so I doubt whether they were in use. So plenty of variety for trackwork 'finishes'. I'm not too worried about the sleeper positions on the Templot plan because I reckon that most of them will be invisible for one reason or another. I can't seem to find the option in Templot for granite block sleepering Regards, Andy

Hopefully the difference between needing just a single baseboard and having a board joint half way along the quay

Hi Pete, It's not so much 'feel' but just a question of whether the trackwork 'flows' in a railwaylike manner and whether it looks kinda like the real thing in spite of my having chopped six inches out at various places (including the 'town' end of the loop). I think that other people seem to be able to get this sort of thing right without making quite such a meal of it. I will probably just have a fiddle yard at the 'town' end. The tracks carried on along the quay to the power station coal stockpile area but I suspect there was not too much interesting rail activity there - the coal came in by ship from Barry, was unloaded by four socking great travelling cranes and then reached the power station by conveyor belt. I doubt that milk tanks would have been on the quay branch (but the station, yes). Plenty of other tanks over the years though - Esso class A and B, chlorine, bromine, ethylene dibromide and sulphuric acid. The bromine works closed in 1973 so class 25s would have had only a year or two in Cornwall by then. There are plenty of photos of class 25s working to the Esso depot though - this was open until the early 1980s. Regards, Andy

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.

4 quids per channel? Seems a bit pricey to me but if you only plan to use 3 servos then it probably makes sense to stick with what you are used to. Presets will probably be less of a faff than plugging in a PC or other external box to set the limits of travel. Ideally you need to be able to twiddle the presets while you have visual contact with the signal arm... preferably with the whole thing upright so that gravity is working in the way that it will when you are operating. Regards, Andy

Hmm... maybe the Association should introduce an annual gloat box trophy? The Round Tuit Award? Regards, Andy

Where I live a batch is a bread roll. Best not to get the two confused. Regards, Andy