Airfix Mineral 2

With the new non-door pieces fitted and polished it was on to welds.

There's at least one person I know who should close their eyes at this point. Welds are a problem; good welds are invisible, bad welds can be seen from 50' away. To make it work I needed the later, but this would be a 'bad weld'.  Lines were drawn, in pencil. A study of the excellent Peter Bartlett wagon site suggested that a common placement for the line was level with the door hinge, so that's where I aimed at. The thinnest strip I had in my pocket was 20 x10  so that would have to do. Lashings of solvent were used and hey presto! Bad welds.

 

Not a Spitfire

 

I mentioned that there would be three 16 ton minerals running with COND lettering for Rhiw 2. This sprung me into thinking that I should get the third done as well. To this end the Airfix box was pulled from the cupboard and a start made. Then I thought why not run it as a short series. Not that the highly experienced readers here need any tutorials, but with half and eye on how well the Spitfire series went down a few years back.

The idea was to make this a modified version with evidence of new welded plates on the sides and a plated top door. All this is straight forward in wagon bashing terms and the start was to chop out the top doors with a saw and knife as above.

Removing this made the side a little waggly so the doors were added to firm things up, but not before taking the dangly Airfix hinges off leaving a short stub. I noted from photos the the central bar on the top door-less versions is thinner, so these were reduced with a file down to about 50%.

Some 20 thou scrap made the plate section and the new top rail was cut from 40 thou sheet (ex recent platform building). So far, so good.

More 15

 

 

When I was flicking through some of the stuff for the last mention of the 15 years passing, I started counting layouts... then I realised that I not only had missed a couple, but had completely forgotten some. These are purely built during the 15 year life of the blog and throw up some questions.

Unnycoome N

Talcoed 009

Rhiw 1 OO

Rhiw 2 OO

Morton Stanley O-16.5

Garn 009

Edge 009

Orne 009

AotC OO

Dury's Gap OO

Svanda HO

Seething 009

Froxington OO

For RM: Hopwood OO, Oake O, Half Acre N, Trefach 009

I make that 17, not counting the current build. Some would say quantity over quality and I would tend to agree. However if I stand back and look inward it's not a bad innings over the period averaging more than one a year. The questions are I suppose, why did I not just build one layout properly (or a home beast)? The answer here is that the interests are too wide. Which would I return to? This sort of answers itself as it's just been done with Rhiw. The most popular with the public is undoubtably Svanda. Simply because of the number of invites over the period. Though the 009s are always better received than the standard gauge amongst co-conspirators. The bigger question is why do I keep doing this? Dunno.

Saturday Ramble

 

I rather like doing these. None of your soft Welsh plastic - proper Airfix is the only way for 108s; they still stand up half a century after they were designed. This is the second of a trio of condemned 16Ts for Rhiw 2 with the white hand scrawled COND lettering to do. If I remember, the third will have a welded top door and side plate weld marks.

The remarkably successful Uckfield show, which unusually didn't not have me saying never again at the close. Remarkable also it being a two day show. Technically that be it. There is nothing in the book now save a couple of unfirmed enquiries, which ties nicely up with me mooting that that would be it. I may be softening a little after last weekend, but I'm reminded that this did not involve a long drive, a super early rise and was a relatively easy get-in.  Now what? 

As predicted, there are less shows post Covid and those that are still strong are subtly changed with many of the familiar faces quietly absent. This throws up all sorts of questions of the what if and why bother variety. There is also the every present age question. I've basically called it a day with 4mm narrow gauge; the reasons for this are two-fold: the first is the age/size/reliability aspect, the second is the steady rise of quality RTR in 009. I note that even some of the previously pure high-quality exhibition layouts have fallen into the 'easy RTR' trap with the equivalent of a Cornish branch running J15s. Yes I am old school and a bit wedded to the whitemetal kit or build it yourself mentality, not build a FR layout and run L&B coaches on it (see last month's RM piece on forcing the loading gauge down so this couldn't happen). The direction is for the minute, standard gauge and 4mm, with 7mm on the horizon for me. With three initial projects and more to follow. This is very much a tight budget way of thinking, hell-bent of only using what is in the cupboard and only purchasing to fill critical gaps in material. The 7mm may take a couple of unexpected turns, but that is the way it's headed, and this all comes under the Project 70 banner; something I had to explain the other day (!). There are two layouts on the circuit, I can take my time.

Platform

 

There is a slightly different headspace with Drovers Brook that other recent efforts in that not being an exhibition beast it doesn't need acres of backscene height to create a box for travelling. To that end I need to work out just how low I could get away with.  There are/were two factors in play: the undecided bridge/exit height and the buildings on the platform. I could have worked this out, but sometimes a physical thing is better allowing it to 'sit' and be viewed for a while. I concluded that the platform needed to go in first before anything else happened.

I will probably repeat this again, but the overriding thrust of this project was to factor in a lot of left-over bits and pieces that 'might come in useful'. To this end I have again used the Peco Setrack platform fronts as there were just enough scraps from Hopwood and Rhiw 2. These were trimmed by about 3mm to lose the over-height feature which is a simple run with a saw. The internal bracing is all the other bits from the kits cut to size and with the addition of more plastic sheet which is again left-over material, this time N gauge brick sheet remaining from Half Acre. For the top I splashed out £3.98 for a couple of sheets of 40thou. This is thus far the only cost involved.

As an aside, the gap between the platform rails and the loop line is 32mm. Ask me how I know this.

Another Jolly Jinty

 

Reaching back to a time to when I used to post a lot of small workbench projects on this page, here is a simple totally non-useful project from last week. 

Firstly it was surprising that people were caught out by the TT Jinty from a few days ago thinking it was OO, so here for real is a 4mm one inspired by watching OO Bill videos (which get slightly addictive) and to see if I could polish one up. 

There are more than a few on ebay of  varying conditions. This looked OK and was 20 quid. It ran, which was puzzling as the wire to the pick ups was broken - see the brown wire below. I took everything apart aside from the wheels and soaked everything in switch cleaner to get rid of the grease.  

The commutator was polished with T-cut and every electrical connection was cleaned with this and/or emery paper.  The wire re-soldered and the mech put back together. The result is interesting: It obviously doesn't like Code 75 track, but runs OK on plain Bullhead. What is does like is Code 100 to the point where on testing on Svanda's ballasted track it ran way beyond expectation, down to a crawl and  easily equalling any modern loco. This is a 60 year old mech. Really? 

What did I get out of this? At a basic level, a couple of hours of fun tinkering, which is a very CF thing. It does throw up all sorts of questions. As Phil pointed out a while back, this sort of stuff is cheap as chips. Is it worth further serious exploration?

Uckfield show

Excellent weekend.
 

Quiet 15

 Without me noticing we seemed to have quietly passed the 15 year mark of the blog. I ask myself if it is still relevant to me or anyone reading it; though the numbers have dropped only a bit since there is less going on. Only there isn't. In fact if you take the last five years there has been nothing but activity on this front, with me going professional for a bit and still in part, with the ongoing arrangements with RM; four layouts and counting on that front. 

Although there is less going on here now, it has to be said that the movement is firmly ongoing and there is still much to do. It is interesting how things have subtly changed since 2009, though the same supporting cast has stayed in place, notably the ever present Mr. Hill who features here more than he would like. Here are a few highlights from the early years.

Svanda at Uckfield

 Slightly surprisingly Svanda makes an appearance at the Uckfield show this weekend. Not surprising in its locality being only minutes away, but because it has become a mini Scaleforum of late. This suggests that a foreign layout built using Peco code 100 may not be a perfect fit. However...

Always worth a visit even with the weather that is forecast for the area.

For some reason Blogger is being awkward with photos so a couple from the layout's development that I can retrieve. 

Drovers Brook track and plotting

With the track down, wired and tested; time for a little painting. In days of yore I would do this with a brush and it took an age. Now I wait for a reasonable day, take things outside and use the Nevard-lifted method of two or three colours of Halfords finest which takes a matter of minutes. Some cleaning up and a polish of the rail tops and it's done.

Retesting and fitting onto the existing support system recently vacated by Rhiw 2, which is now stacked underneath, could take place. Some plotting of buildings which are largely done is the current state of play with the platform next on the table. The backscene and facia may well follow. This is a slightly different approach to normal as this is not a show bird, though others may follow as part of the Project 70 process. This is constantly moving and I am endlessly changing my mind on the direction that this might take though I have forced the channel of travel buy selling bits off via Ebay; the Wood End/009 stock box being the next to hit the exit.

 

Drovers Brook track and power

Where we're at: Drovers Brook in the intermediate stage of being on the short trestles while the basic track and wiring went in. This meant I was back to having a layout in the middle of the room again, something that is not in the slightest bit convenient. In some ways there is nothing to see here, and any description could just refer to c2017 when the AoTC was under construction, as the methods and thinking are all but identical excepting the 75/Bullhead combo.

I managed to get about 85% on the plain track done with the BH the remaining bits at the far left (van siding and H/S) were done with 75 with the sleepers rejigged to match the spacing, i.e. exactly what I did with Dury's Gap. Usual simple three feeds with the points doing the isolating - the one engine in steam operation requires little else. The DPDT switches at the front (as per the AoTC) will be scenic-ed around to make them less obvious. This is very much a home beast, although it it nominally requested for the WRG show in March displayed very much in 'home operation' setting, and not on the usual high trestles with the lighting tubes.

 

Trefach in Railway Modeller

For obvious reasons the 009 layout build has only had glances here and now is revealed in a series of articles in RM beginning this month. The first on the reasoning behind the design and the baseboard. Most of this is not new for regulars here, but the expert carpentry will probably blow the minds of the general RM buying public.

Anyway, for part one, rush out and get the mag; but be quick as it seems to be popular and has already gone from the local WHS hereabouts. Just shows the excitement that one of my baseboard builds can trigger.

Moving forward, the layout is sitting stacked behind the Editor's desk in the RM office now, and as I understand is not destined to see the light of day until the SEC show in Glasgow in March although the whole thing was timed for the NEC next month, and we all know what happened to that.