Expo NG

What a great show. Very high quality layouts and a day rammed with chat.

Tal-coed ran as well as could be expected and to my right I could watch COD's Shell Bay (top) still one of my favourite 009 layouts even though it's some 20 years old now.
My thanks as always to Nigel for riding shotgun all day.

Dirt absence

Among all the things that need doing is to weather the Svanda loco stud. Shiny buffers.

009 scale flat wagon

Some 40 thou sheet scribed, plus a few other bits saves the day. A bogie flat less couplers which I need to get on Saturday.

Post fail

After the transporter wagon cock-up I had to think slightly sideways for a moment. Several people emailed and suggested two things.
1. inside bearings for the bogies to reduce the amount of material outside the wheels.
2. fix the bogies solid and remove outside axles to run as a four wheeler.
Both these are useful ideas, and my thanks to the suggesters.
However I decided that the best thing to do was to start again with the transporter and turn the remains of the fail into a bogie flat wagon, of which more later.

A trip to Nigel's today and a look in his Wild Swan Ashover book threw up the following spec's for the transporters.

19.5' long
8' wide o/a
4'3" bogie w/b
9' bogie centres
Nigel's quick calculation showed that if No 2 above was followed the new fixed wheelbase would be 4'9". That ain't that long. And so therefore - bearing in mind that the wheels are largely hidden -  that a longer, say 6', chassis with 4 wheels could be used.

Fail!

This was always going to be an exercise. There is one critical set of measurements involved: 1. the gauge of the standard gauge wheelsets, 2. the swing of the naturally over scale 009 bogies. The picture tells all. Even with opening the wheels out to a generous +P4 18mm b2b and filing lumps off the corners of the bogie it ain't going to work. Grunt....

Back to the other project in hand at the moment.

009 transporter wagon

 Ah, some modelling. After getting some wormy lumps of malware sorted out, it's back to a bit of modelling. The approach at the moment is a little scattergun, but all aimed at the bigger project. Yesterday I though I take a crack at a representation of  the L&M transporters using a Parkside coach underframe. To enable the thing to remain reasonably rigid, I've assumed EM/P4 clearances and slimmed the floor down from 22mm wide to about 16mm, leaving the bracing largely intact. It may need to be shortened slightly as well; the originals were designed to take up to 12' w/b wagons.
Inspiration below.

Saturday Ramble

I got pulled up over the weekend about how little modelling there is on here now. Point taken. There are of course several aspects to the reasons:
1. I've been moving, and I defy anyone to continue any sort of modelling programme during the process. Everything I need is in one of the boxes - which box is anyone's guess. If some one can point me in the right direction for my soldering iron I'd be grateful.
2. The book project slightly restricts what I can put up here for a while.
3.It's my blog.

What will happen hopefully is the gradual completion of the 009 project which forms the publishing material. Buildings are done more than half of the rolling stock is also done. The baseboard is finished, but all the track and scenic have to be attended to. On top of that I need photos of other scales, people will happily give me these, but then we are into licencing paperwork which I'd just a soon avoid.
All this done it's back to the 0-16.5 and back on track for the 5 year plan.
Onward....

Croydon Model railway exhibition day 2

We were a little traffic delayed on the Sunday morning and for the first time ever missed the opening time. No need to worry, Messers Dodsworth and Clarke has taken the covers off and Steve Driscoll had already started running the layout. He seemed to be enjoying himself - 'I'm OK boys, go and get a cup of tea'.

Again the layout ran all day without fault and apart from a slower than usual break down scored 10. Two invites, lots of interest - which surprised both of us.
Thanks to the above and Croydon club for a great weekend.

Croydon model railway exhibition

Svanda's first outing earlier today and touch wood, all went well. A slight shift of venue for the Croydon club into a rather faceless gym. The exhibits though were top drawer including East Grinstead Town and the latest Felsham.
You have just today left to join in the excitement.

Great Central Warehouse

Swinging the camera to the left a little gets this.
If this doesn't switch the brain straight into Peter Denny mode, then you haven't been listening.

Lincoln Signal box

First shot is of the point at which the last shot/last post was taken. The box stands at the eastern end of Lincoln station an I assume is a Great Central structure. Without the new development in the background this could almost be a rural scene instead of smack bang in the middle of the city. The pathway behind the box now leads to the University campus.

Lincoln Class 66

A couple of gigs in the Lincoln area over the weekend gave me a few hours to waste in the city centre. What is always apparent to me living as I do in the south east corner, is that all the interesting stuff happens elsewhere. The line into the station crosses two main roads, and without standing there for hours with wearing shorts and drinking Tizer there were three Class 66 light engine runs and three freights. If this happened down here, there would be queues of dirty raincoats and cameras visible for miles.