Lisa

I've seen working wagon turntable used in conjuction with a non working walking horse on 2mm layouts.

The operation is very smooth, and I like the loading of real coal into the wagons. I don't have sound on my computer, but if you don't have sound it would complete the atmosphere.

Hi All Recently I have been suffering pain, but I have now started to make progress again. I have finished the modifications to the DCC bus wiring, following the modifications for the Dairy Stream bridge. I have also modified the cassette alignment to make the alignment more reliable. Lisa

Hi Maisy does get two walks a day from her owners family, namely my sister and brother in law, BUT once a week I and Maisy walk over 20 miles in a day! PS this week we only went 6 miles.

Hi All Havn't been around for a while. I've just come out of hospital, good old NHS, having just had some surgery to my left jaw. There is no pain for the first time in months. I hope to do some modeling tomorrow after i've walked Maisy. You probably guessed Masiy photograph is used as my icon. Lisa

Since when did HF Stephens follow usual practice! He used concrete pots to secure chairs on a passanger railway. Neither this or attatching sleepers to baulks is the usual accepted practice.

If you look at my previous posting, to fiddle or not to fiddle and look at the last picture, then you will see why the blocks are on the scenery side.

On the prototype the sleepers were mounted on top of the timber baulks! These timber baulks were mounted directly in concrete abutments, which were crudely moulded using wooden shuttering. The gravel to make the concrete come from the stream bed itself.

Hi All When designing and building a micro layout you have to make the most of every cm of layout frontage. That is the reason that Chagford has a curved instead of strait frontage, with the curve, your frontage is longer. The length of the frontage determines the number of discrete scenes which can be fitted it. The layout is designed to be viewed at eye level. The dairy stream ran between the dairy and the tramway depot. There were two bridges which crossed the stream, the tramway and the road access into the dairy. The latter was a stone arch bridge and the tramway one was a timber baulk type. I could not determine the exact position of the bridge until I knew how large my model of the boiler house was going to be. Once this was done the baseboard could be cut. I used a carpenters slitting saw to cut from the baseboard edge to the track, cutting at an angle of 80º to the vertical. I then cut across between the two cuts with the aid of a series of small drill holes. I then very carefully cut, the baseboard, under the track with the slitting saw being careful not to damage either the track or the DCC spine cable. Then cutting the other side of the track using small drill hole and finishing the cuts carefully using a Stanley knife. The baseboard material was carefully removed with the aid of a very sharp chisel and the edges cleaned up with a scalpel with a new blade. The remainder of the cutting was done with a coping saw and small holes to help cut the end. A cable retaining strap for the DCC spline had to be repositioned. A piece of ply wood was cut to size and screwed and glued into position so as to restore the strength of the baseboard. The baseboard side was then replaced temporally. I intend replacing the side because the MDF has proved to offer very little protection. Lisa

Hi All I have been building part of the boiler house for the Chagford Dairy of the Cooperative Wholesale Society. Or should I say a quarter of it as the rest is off scene. The model building is based on the boiler house kit from Kestrel. The basic shape is correct, but the windows and the door construction are wrong on this kit. This type of construction is called scratch bashing, as I am modifying a kit, but adding feature which are built from scratch. The end of the building was first cut in half using a raiser saw. The large door into the building where cut out and replaced with a plain sheet of plasticard fixed to the inside. The lapped door was then built up on this base. Next I turned my attention to the building side, the widow less side was cut in half. An aperture slightly too small for the window was then cut out, working from the back of the sheet. Then the sides were filled to size, at this point the bottom of the aperture was lined up with a course of bricks. Next a piece of clear plasticard was glued to the reverse of the sheet. Using very thin strips of plasticard the window frames were built up. Small amounts of glue on the clear plasticard will smear it, but window in industrial building were never kept as clean as house windows, so this doesn't matter. The building was then carefully assembled, making sure that the corner was square. After the glue dried the building was offered up to the corner of the layout to check that it fitted as required. The boiler house will of course need painting and weathering and the back corner of the roof will need to be radiused to allow the curve on the extension backscene. Lisa

Hi Missy I'm glad that you now sorted the baseboard joint. I've found that the best thing when this type of problem occurs, is to work on something else, and not to keep trying to solve the very difficult problem. Preferably something that there is a good chance that you will succeed in doing. Lisa

The Dexion came from a club I used to belonged to was closing down. The worktop came from my kitchen a few years ago when the units were replaced.

The track subsidence under the bridge is very prototypical for the location you model!

The secret is to choose your rolling stock carefully. All the vehicals and locomotives have a very short wheelbase. Also the sharpest part of the curves is gauge widened by 0.32mm. This together with careful track fettling acheives the result you seel

The goods trams were composed of mainly 9' and 10' wheelbase wagons and the passenger trams also used 10' wheelbase vehicles. The locomotives were all 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 with very small wheels. Lisa

Hi All I've been quite recently, i.e. no blog entries this has been because I had a problem with a painful molar! I've now seen the dentist and hopefully the problem is now sorted out. Either a micro 2mm layout has a fiddleyard or not is a matter of choice. I first considered Mark Fielder's Pizza Layout, Pictures and details can be found via the links page at www.2mm.org.uk This layout has a circle of track with a single siding with all the area covered with scenery. David Eveleigh's new layout, Framsden, takes a different approach of having the main board which is oval in shape, and has two detachable cassette type fiddleyard, which are attached externally to the layout. The approach which I have taken has a fiddleyard which is physically part of layout, using train cassettes. Which option is used on layout is a matter o choice. On Chagford the fixed backscene is only 57mm high, but the blocks holding this is place is on the scenic side, so that an flexible extension can be fixed to the fiddleyard side. The corners at the ends of the fixed backscene have been rounded so that there is no corner in the extension sky. The intention is to fix a background of fields, trees etc to the fixed backscene. Then to carve the top edge to follow a hedge line. When the buildings are placed in front the amount of this illustration will be restricted. By adding read depth in this way added to the feeling of distance between the mid ground and the sky. The sky will be able to be rolled up using a napkin type ring. The above design allow the layout to fit into it's carrying case for ease of transport, whilst having a decent height of backscene whilst the layout is being operated. The blocks which hold the fixed backscene in place will be hidden by buildings and other scenic features. 4th_Train.mov Lisa

Hi Missy To add a magnetic element to the coupling, my technique is to flatten some florists wire, this is made from soft iron. Then rap it around the brass wire, and then solder the two together. I find that the best flux for this is yellow plumbers flux. Hope this is helpful. Lisa

Hi All I have plenty of experience of using acrylic paints, but this is the first time I have used them to paint 2mm buildings. They have the advantage of being much cheaper than model paints, since you only need a small selection of colours and you can then mix them to obtain a full pallet. They also are water based, which means that if you make a complete mess, you can simply wash a plastic model in warm water, dry and then start again. When you are happy with your finished painting you will need to apply a mat varnish to prevent damage. I took the unpainted cottages, and first painted the slates the correct shade of grey for Welsh slate. This was initially undiluted acrylic paint, but this did not between the slates. I then added a little water to the paint, and repainted the roof,this time the paint went into the inter slate gaps. Next I painted the door area white, and let it dry and then over painted the door area, bright red as this was the door colour of the Chagford Gas Light and Coke Company. But the two layers of paint hide the door detail, and I then removed the paint using a wet cotton but and a cocktail stick. When the door had dried I then repainted the door red. I then painted the window sills windows and door frames. Next I dry brushed the brick colour over the walls. The colour only painted bricks and not the mortar. The Cottages still need detailing including weathering.The last photograph does not do the actual building justice! Lisa

Hi All Since building the circuit of track and starting running trains I have had problems with derailments. Upon careful examination of the track I discovered that the alighnment of track section joints was not as good as I thought. By running a train around, whist running in the locomotive I found that it derailed at a point, I then carefully examined the track near the site. I found that small blobs of solder on the inside of the rails, this is much more critical when the track radius is sub 600mm radius. These blobs were removed by applying the soldering iron to the outside of the rail, and then by using a solder sucker to the inside of the rail when the solder was molten. The process of finding small problems with track and the rectifying them is called fettling. I also had problems with electrical pickup on the aluminium allow runners of the removable cassette. When I closely examined the inside edge, I found that there was a bur. The locomotive wheel was only in contact with a strip less that 0,2mm wide. This problem was rectified by using a needle file to remove the bur and apply a small radius to the edge of the aluminium section. The above processes took several hours but the time was very well spent as I can run a train around the circuit for one hour without any derailments, even on the very tight curves into the cassette fiddletyard. This has allowed me to run in the new 04 locomotive prior to insulating the DDC decoder. This is essential as doing so will invalidate the Farish warranty as the installation required that the locomotive is modified. Lisa

Hi I use acrylic paint, because I can get all the colours that I need from six tubes and it dry's very quickly and you don't need special thinner etc. Lisa

Hi All There are several ways in which building can be constructed for a layout. I have decided that I am going to build them using embossed plastic sheet. Some of the building, like the workman's cottages for the dairy and the gas works can be built by modifying commercial kits, for Kestrel aka Gaugemaster. I could have built the cottages from scratch from sheets of embossed plasticard. This would have allowed the building to be more individual,but would have evolved much more work. Modifying kits is often referred to as 'kit bashing', this enables the finished building in this case to be made to suite the prototype and fit in the available space. This visual appearance can be achieved by painting the bricks the correct yellow/red colour and weathering them. The model will be fitted into the available space by building it in half relief, and at the same time we get four half relief cottages from a kit designed to produce two whole cottages. In order to make the completed cottages strong enough to withstand layout transport they were built on a plasticard plinth and have a blank back wall made from plasticard. The plinth was fitted on place, after the windows were fixed in place. There were six small holes drilled into the plinth to allow the fumes from the plastic weld adhesive to get out, if you don't do this the windows would go cloudy. Lisa

Hi All If you get the point construction right, the point should work without checkrails. I got this tip from a book on track construction by Ian Rice. They will be fitted eventually! Lisa

Hi I have a Maplin soldering station but I use an old Antex stand, because the one supplied with the station was crap! Lisa

Hi I thought I was the only one who has worked on a layout whilst travelling on a train, I was obviously wrong! Lisa

Hi All Having no car it is an important consideration that the layout should be convenient to transport by public transport. The packing system consist of two components, these are a plastic box, to keep it dry and a bag with a strap that goes over the shoulder to make the carrying easier. In doing the measurements to check the maximum height for the backscene, which is 55mm, I decided to redesign the positioning of the overcentre catches to fix the cassette board to the main board. This change simply makes the layout packing easier. Lisa