Arundel show

Seeing as the numbskull forgot to get it in the RM listings for this month...

Wealden Railway Group Annual Exhibition

Scout Hall, Canada Rd,

Arundel Sussex

Saturday 8th March 2014

10 am-5pm

(Meet all the stars of the blog including Nigel ,Stig Svanda, care-in the community corner, the world famous scrapbox and Mrs F.)

I'll keep plugging until next week; there is no escape.

The joy of setts

No I haven't grown a beard...

I wanted a small unloading area on Edge and gradually that morphed into having it laid with setts. Firstly a little research opens up the usual minefield of sizes etc. Then there is the how. I went for the DAS and scribe game. I hadn't played this one since the hut on Pinchingfield, but thought I'd give it a go. Thumbed on DAS over a coat of PVA scribed with a leather-working needle, individual stones painted and then a wash of black and grey. I had a bit of a cracking problem while the DAS was drying which I don't remember from before, so a bit of spit and rubbing down with the finger was required.

A Nigel thought from the weekend. If Scotland get independence does this mean that Ian Futers' layouts will have to appear in Continental Modeller?

Eurotrack model railway exhibition

A quite exhausting weekend at what used to be called Eurotrack (but this year wasn't). Compounded by having to toddle off to work afterwards. Svanda behaved impeccably with only mainly self not changing points or flicking switches causing any problems. I'm continually surprised by the amount of interest it gains for what I considered to be the quite minority subject of Norwegian State Railways in the 1980s. Two invites were gained which surprises me further.

The above is the workstation of the New Forest club. I'd seen this before when they were next to us at Salisbury, and here they were again. It's 3' long and 2'6" high and is effectively a short fat paste table with fold-up legs triangulated on the other side. Note the permanent test track at the back, the two gang power socket on the right and the din connector for the controller RH end. Great idea,no more scrabbling around for a flat surface to clean wheels and do minor repairs as well as a handy mug stand. I suspect that at some point it may have been destined for use as a baseboard and that again may be worth considering - no stands, no trestles, no fuss.

The world famous scrapbox

I don't think there are too many projects that are stuffed and mounted here that don't mention the 'scrapbox' and there have been a couple of people who doubt its existence and suggest that the material has come from elsewhere. Well, it was time to clear it out so it was upended onto the bench and sorted removing all the unlikely stuff and anything less than 10mm square. Of course now I will have a need for all this stuff, but you have to draw lines. The biggest disappointment was the discovery that the Colonel Stephens type railcar that I had been planning to build for a long, long time is dead in the water as there are only 3 sides from Kiel Kraft London buses - one seems to have vanished along the way which left me royally pissed off. Have to think again on that one.

009 scale scenics

Time to yet the fluffy stuff out. Peco 'Mainline' 009 points, diddled with Wills ground frame hut, s/h Wills stone sheet and also s/h green stuff.
This is the bit I like.

Roco diesel conversion

 Basically done, and for here today a little compare and contrast. Above the original model that has has a couple of alterations done before I got it, namely the chimney and bufferbeams filed flat. All that I've really done is wrap a new cab around the bottom half of the old one and re-do the grill so that both aren't quite so Germanic. Cab from 20 thou black plastic, grill from an A1 kit courtesy of Stig,some .8mm wire handrails and and a length of Mercontrol tube rammed into the bonnet top in an unlikely, but balancing position.
It's had two paintings: the fist in green didn't look right so a return to safe mode and lightly weathered black with Humbrol acrylics. Just nameplatery, driver and a Greenwich coupling to go on.
Quite a fun project, and I'd definitely do another if a good s/h one came up.

Rain, rain go away.

I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing this depressing weather would go away. Living in a flood prone area I made a point of moving well above the water line so I'm not in the position that some poor bastards are, but it is just so miserable and as far as this subject goes it's the bad light that drives me down. I can't see to do anything. The old house has a big window and a big view which let in a lot of light for modelling. I knew I would lose that, but this non- daylight is driving me into a pit of doom.

Yesterday, off to Crawley  - the home of the suicide bomber -  well if you want cheering up where better than Nigel's. I took along the small stock of 4mm GW stock to run on Svanda to see how it coped with the pointwork. The results were good and we soon had a few BR wagons hooked up and a little basic shunting was carried out. This is all good news as although a little way down the line opens up the possibilities for the Art of Compromise plan build. Regulars will know the back story and if you don't, click on the AotC tag to learn more.

Platform Edge

Platform edges are an absolute bitch. OK if you have a nice straight Superquick attitude , but with the usual curly variety - nightmare. The edge on Edge is no exception with the rail forming a gentle reverse curve. Add to that the lack of big bits of card in stock and needing a smooth top surface, I ended up using an A4 sheet of advertising board out of Mrs F's special clothes shop which is made from a plastic substance which is like plasticard , but not. I seem to remember one of the Scandinavians that Nigel speaks to raving about the material at Eurotrack last year. After much swearing I got it roughly right with the use of three bits and some left over. It's only about 80 thou so even with a low-ish narrow gauge platform, needs jacking up a little and facing with brick or stone.
It's at this point in a build that I start to lose heart as it just looks like a pile of shite.... press on.

Roco HOe diesel

A few days ago I put a cheeky request on here for some brass grill. I've always believed that if you do't ask you don't get. What I also know for certain is that there are some very kind people out there and lo and behold the above turns up on the doormat a day or two later from a certain bearded biker who is easy to spot from his helmet (don't go there...).

 A bit of trimming and super glue.... plus handrails and a drilled-out length of point control tube. This is a bit suspect on positioning being a little close to the radiator, but aesthetically it balances. In the background the chassis unit and the world famous scrap box.

Dodging the showers outside ( Mrs F. grumbles if I spray paint around near her car in the garage) it was given a light coat of Halfords's primer which as usual shows how bad the workmanship is, and here perched drunkenly on the chassis unit.

Going Roco 3

Cab and roof on and just all the tidy up and sanding to sort out. There'll be some strapping to go around the back end to sort of match with the Roco and an exhaust pipe - probably from a little scrap of Gem point tubing and some random works plates from Uncle Steve at Narrow Planet.

http://unnycoombelala.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/124.html
On a different tack is there an explanation why this post from two years ago is suddenly getting hundreds of hits? Is there a sudden interest in 1:24 scale again?

Going Roco 2

It's at it again. a non- cropped photo gets twisted by blogger. I thought it was the fact that it didn't like portrait aspect, but this was landscape. Grrr...
Lots done over the last few days: baseboards striped and trimmed, landscaping moved on quite a bit on Edge and as below (twist your heads boys) new parts for the Roco loco. 30 thou plastic drilled in four increments up from .8 mm to 3mm and then reamed out to 4mm using a flat or half round needle file which opens it up and throws up the ridge. Crude, but effective.