Chris Ford Model Railways
Modeller, Writer.
Saturday, 27 February 2021
Saturday Ramble
Friday, 26 February 2021
Today's briefing
Despite them being the 'evil competition' - young Parker's words not mine. This does deserve a wider audience.
Thursday, 25 February 2021
N gauge water tower
It's bloody small.
Wednesday, 24 February 2021
Ratio ARP box
In some lights I like this and in others I don't.
Pluses: It's well designed and the fit is perfect throughout.
Minuses: I'm struggling with brickwork at the moment. This is not good bearing in mind what's coming up on the layout building front. The window bars are prototypical, but despite that look like 1958 Airfix. These are not separate units so would need hacking out from the body sides to replace. This isn't beyond the skill of most people - just saying.
The roof is a loose fit in case I decide to detail it up at some point.
What I may do is put it in the buildings box until it gets a proper home. Possibly on a wagon-fest design that I have in the back of my head.
Monday, 22 February 2021
Routemex signal
Saturday, 20 February 2021
N gauge in a box
A couple of boxes arrived from that nice Mr. Haynes. The N gauge was slightly dodged last year in favour of the O in the form of Oake. As I mentioned a couple of days back, it raised its head and most things will be back-burnered in favour of this for the next couple of months.
This is the plan B version. Plan A was something based around the Roy Link plan for Hampton Lode on the SVR - double track through station with storage loops at the back. For various technical reasons this wasn't possible so and urban through terminus is the new design.
As with all these things I don't tend to try an reinvent the wheel; why bother? and I'll use something that is proven, albeit in a different scale and gauge. In this case the often drooled over EM gauge Elm Park, which has sadly disappeared, but is available in a few youtube clips. The working shape is for an N gauge homage in 1,200mm length. The target again is Warley, however... The difference this time is that technically speaking I have to do this within the 9-5 window rather than a open-ended spread of working hours. This being curtly pointed out by Mrs. F. as I opened the box outside of this window.
I did say 'never again' with N gauge. We'll see how I get on.
Wednesday, 17 February 2021
ARP signal box
I'm in full signal box experimentation mode now.
I had my eye on this when it was first announced, then that sort of went sideways. I'd requested one one for Hopwood, but it was only in test stage at that point. The production photos looked good, but when it appeared at Warley in 3D print form... different box! The original is a five bay animal - this was smaller and the windows... well. The prototype is at Crewe, though Town Green is mentioned on RMweb. Though with the root of the design being the Peco drawing office, my money is on Dunham No2 which featured in a drawing page in RM in the 1990s. This looks to be a Plan B situation, possibly on final retail cost terms.
All that said I picked one up. This is a proper Saturday afternoon Spitfire job. It falls together and this first main part took about half an hour - others would take less. The parts are oddly shaped in places, but it does all make sense when it goes together, though I did rearrange a couple of the instruction orders. I also attempted to alter the rear window to a more SR four-pane shape as it's not a million miles from the box at Gomshall which I covered on the blog a while back. This didn't go well, but it's round the back. My aim now is to try and make this look a lot better than ummm... other builds of this which look like they have bright blue ribbons around them.
Saturday, 13 February 2021
Tri-ang signal box
Regulars will know my penchant for old kits and other items of vintage. This is the latest. There had been some discussion on signal boxes for Rhiw 2 and the modern timber clad structures such as Radyr were mooted.
While looking for photos for something else, this pinged up: Tri-ang but Hornby boxed and 40+ years old - what Kent used to produce before variants. Footprint wise it closely matches Mr. Hill's initial sizing, but is to my eye a wee bit short. This is not a problem as it could be jacked up easily enough. I've never seen one of these detailed up, though the mouldings are crisp and better than a lot of the resin things that they push out now.
The problem will be separating the two parts which are pretty tightly welded together. I'm thinking multiple light passes with a very sharp knife and a waggle. The brickwork would be treated as normal and closely matches the Slaters for size, but is plain bond. There looks to be a false floor on the red bit so an interior could be built up on this. The steps at the rear need a tubular handrail or similar. Even if it doesn't work I'll have succeeded in winding up all the collectors by chopping up a mint boxed vintage model.
This via James F. and Phil's blog from 2014: