Norfolk and Suffolk 009 group member's day

In the rush to do other things, I'd not done a little report on this one held back in June. The N&S group member's day is annual and well established in a small hall in Beccles smack in the middle of the town with parking available and a rail service. The standard was high, Graham Watling's layouts are always a joy and push the twee, and the 16mm was a fascinating surprise. Much to several people's horror the 009 Society sales stand could not attend, but the slot was ably filled by Great Eastern Models.

The hall is worth noting; possibly not ideal in many ways as it consists of a near warren of rooms and stairs. The catering was moved to a separate room outside facing the street (which may have had some passing trade benefit) and was fully stocked with stuff and some outside seating in the sun. The date for next year: June 1st.

Show 9

Parking 6

Rucksacks 0

Catering 9

 

Saturday Ramble - Oh

There's been a small amount of email response following my comment a couple of days back about 7mm being the future. This was aimed specifically at one or two writers based in Lincolnshire, but nevertheless it is a truth to behold. To some extent it is where we are all going.

There are several reasons for this; some personal, some commercial. The commercial reasons are that 1) the makers of toy trains have now well and truly breached the hundred quid barrier and unbelievably in 009 (!) have breached the £200 mark  - and for a model that largely fails. I had two more conversations about this particular item  on Saturday. Don't tell me about it; send it back!
My current RM states that a 4mm Bachmann Cl 37 with chug-chug noises will set me back £220.95. Sorry, but this is nuts. It's the same model as I paid £44 for (for Rhiw) a few years back with ten quid's worth of chip and speakers. That in itself is not my point, but flipping on a couple of pages I can buy an 08 for five quid less.... in 7mm scale; four times the mass/presence/weight; and that's not the cheapest RTR item available. Therein lies issue one. We now have rough parity in price in a similar physical space. The same applies to wagons, but less so with coaching stock.
2) The 4mm market is largely flooded There are a hundred possible steam locos to produce that have still not been done, but that ain't where the money is... look at the RRPs. The profit is in diesels. Where can your friendly manufacturer go? 7mm. CAD production makes the upscale easy and in the main the motors and gearing are much the same. The plastic and metal increase is negligible and for the short term (but who knows at the moment) we still have jolly cheap Chinese labour.

The personal reasons are predictable. It has been said that 009 is my natural default home, but this is no longer true. 1) Interests have changed slightly and 2) I'm now in my mid 50s and into varifocals. On Saturday I found myself pondering about new layouts as you do. I've stuck with some sort of 009 layout for years, almost because of social reasons - do these exist now? It used to be a cheap game and although I've got a mountain of suitable bits that would last me a few years I've pretty much exhausted the logical layout ideas. Orne is easy to carry and pack, but not much of an operating animal (it wasn't designed as such) and I drift into railcar operation fairly quickly.

Yes dear movers and shakers, 7mm may well be the future.

Expong

Saturday saw the 2015 ExpoNG at Swanley. Always a highlight of the year, not just because it's narrow gauge, but more of a social event as you tend to spend the whole day talking and catching up with people. Mr. Hill and I were attending with Morton Stanley so less time to walk around. Consequently I missed things, though there are photo galleries available via Mike Campbell's blog to your right. What did catch my eye and was a personal highlight was Tom Dauben's Isle Ornsay which after going to a few shows during its build is now finished and looks fantastic (above with Ted Polet's Atlantic perched on the turntable). What is a worry is the state of the venue which appears to be literally crumbling with huge cracks in the walls and broken floor sections among other things. Are the council letting it fall down deliberately?
Morton Stanley behaved more than adequately and there are questions around it. It was only really intended as a bit of fun to use some bits up and to tick a box. There were though several future unconfirmed invites on the day, so there are the questions of what do we want to do with it and why?

Narrow Planet works plate

Desperately trying to get all the little jobs off the workbench. Here the excellent Narrow Planet plates are superglued to the Morton Stanley locos.
Expect little else but standard gauge 4mm here for a while.

Works Plates

Works plates for the two 7mm Barclays on Morton Stanley have turned up. Stunning job from Narrow Planet as usual. Here cruelly enlarged to about 12x the size. I've just dropped a little red paint on and polished it off the top of the etch. A final clean up need once they are off the surround plate.

Up the workers!

And basically done - just a couple of tidy-ups to do. Oddly when put alongside the existing Morton Stanley coaching stock it looks OK; better than expected. Smaller of course, but then they are supposedly 3'6" gauge prototypes from Minicraft, whereas this is a dinky little quarryman's coach for 1'11" so there is a 5mm height and a 10mm width difference.
So the run down from the top: roof 40thou plastic covered with my usual bog paper canvas, Wills Taximan's Rest Hut kit used more or less as per with the additions of end curves from 60thou and a door window cut out and framed, door handles from 7mm NGA sales, 60thou bufferbeams, solebars and steps, rummage-box wagon chassis from Dapol. Oh and the glazing which is so clean you can't see it is a left-over from the LBSCR coach build from a while back.
I pondered about grab rails, but decided against. Reading the account in Boyd on how these fully enclosed vehicles came about meant that they were bare-bones construcion and built only under order to prevent workers travelling in semi, or completely open coaches or on slate wagons.

Rainy days and mondays

For some reason I'm not getting much done at the moment - well indoors anyway. there's been some progress on the something 3 piece, and the above, which in all honesty is a bit of a giggle, turning a 4mm Wills kit into a FR style 7mm quarryman's coach. This is primarily to give us another coach option for Morton Stanley at the Sussex Downs Members Day in a couple of weeks. Dimensionally it's spot on. Aesthetically; I'm not so sure. I'll press on.

Outside things are moving. I've got about 40' of trackbed down using concrete blocks and whatever else is lying around. This is very new territory for me and I'm still not convinced of its likely success. The target is to get about a third of it down this summer. In this respect I'm on the game with only about 10' to go with the  substructure.

Morton Stanley

 All done now. Just awaiting a couple of buckets from Scandinavia and a Roxey bike. It's been quite a fun build - more than I had anticipated and very low cost which to an extent was part of the brief. M. Stanley was/is very much a test piece and although it is exhibitable and was designed as such, I think a two day-er would be a little too far. Cosy one day-ers and members days are more it's style.
And now? Well there are tidy up bits on the bench; in fact I could spend the rest of the year just doing tidy up bits. Without leaning in any direction I can reach an 009 coach (actually plural) an EM Y6, a 16mm diesel, some fencing for Tal-coed, Langley cow-catchers to go on an 009 railcar and something in 3mm. That's just what's on the bench; lean  6" to either direction and the whole world opens up into a modelling vista.
Just send me paint, glue and commissions.

Saturday Ramble

Firing on lots of fronts. On one hand there is the steady finishing of Morton Stanley. It's at a point where it could go out, but there is odd bits of detailing to do: I'm not happy with the station area yet, the building needs diddling with and there needs to be a little signage, benches, etc. The LH end is basically done, mainly though Nigel's sterling work with the warehouse. I'd been looking for a duck or two, just to accentuate that the shiny bit at the front was actually still water. I found a pack of suitable pieces on Duncan Models stand and although there are way too many they seemed like a bargain, and in some useful poses; all except the standing one with it's wings outstretched which would not look out of place over the door of a 1938 German government building. I've often pointed out that this game takes you to unexpected places and these had me reaching for the top shelf and British Birds you missed with your air rifle to get the colour right. The floaty one, a male mallard, took ages, the female with her arse in the air (settle down 5C...) was a bit quicker. I'm not 100% sure about this one as it looks as though someone has dropped a frozen chicken. Still it's stuck now.

I was having a bit of a downer about exhibitions, but the weekend at Southampton went very well. So much can depend on whether you are left alone to get on with it and not overly managed (just point me toward the stand space and I'll do the rest please) and whether the day long trek to the cup of tea place is friendly and flexible. This scored well on both counts. Kudos to David Barker and his team for getting it right.

Which takes me to moving forward: so far Morton Stanley is working well - better than I'd expected. I'd struggled with 7mm NG in the past, but this has a certain charm. Whether that will extend to standing behind it at an exhibition is another thing. It's first trip out is to the Sussex Downs Group's member's day in March; five o'clock on that day will be a better time to assess things. In addition to that I walked away from the weekend not wanting to bin all the 009 and burn the layout. This is unusual. Forward thinking and various discussions revived my liking of the '5 year plan' (not that it's five years any more). This would mean that the GWR 'Art of the Compromise' plan (being item four on the list) could be the next one out of the traps...

Wales 3

 Blaenau. This was a little weird. I'd only ever been here via the FR, not by car. We came in from the north, parked up, and looked for the town - there isn't one, unless they fold it up during the day; just housing. I found the geography of the place very confusing. It's so familiar through B/W photos and yet so much has gone from these historical views that I really couldn't get my bearings at all. We walked around and had a coffee still looking for signs of life, but the place seemed only inhabited by three mums pushing prams. I think the above view is the ex-GWR line from Bala which save for the weeds looked as though it could suddenly produce a train. below is Merddin Emrys running round in the low afternoon sun.
Well at least it wasn't raining.

 Fence for the end of Morton Stanley just resting in place - yesterday's project.

Bedding in

Buildings on the left now all stuck down and bedded in.

Morton Stanley

Although it's been quiet here things are moving on apace on Morton Stanley. The point where there is no bits of bare baseboard has been reached and we both agreed yesterday that it's looking quite good. The buildings to the left are now fitted and bedded in. the warehouse has a bit of weight to it being built from 80 thou plastic and cassette boxes so as well as the glue a couple of pilot holes were drilled through the baseboard and the floor and a couple of 1/2 inch wood screws wound in to add a degree of belt and braces.

Testing

Yesterday was the day when things got tested. The almost built water tower was trial fitted and then taken away by Nigel to finish. All the stock was run around the layout in various combinations and a few likely operative moves tried out. Once the track had been cleaned and a bit of snagging undergrowth had been trimmed back all went fairly smoothly. There was one major fail: the Gnomy tram conversion that I built in the 1990s is simply too un-grunty to manage the heavy Tri-ang based wagons with it's Tenshodo drive. On its own it's fine. Adding more weight would not be a problem, but I'm not sure that the unit would take too kindly to it. It's therefore be put on the reserve list.
There's still a fair way to go before March, but nothing impossible.

Scratch, scratch

A concentrated hour or two with a scriber got the whole area done. The largest commercially available granite setts come out at 7mm by 3mm in 7mm scale, and there are a few rows of these, but they looked a bit small for some reason. So I quickly elected to take a more loose approach and go for a more random slab effect. If I'd wanted neat it would have been easier to go for one of the plastic sheet options.
The wash of grey paint was a smart move as it made it a whole lot easier to see what I was doing as the red of the Das bled through the scribe marks. The buildings are just plonked on for the moment to check clearances and to make sure I've got the setts/slabs right. A buffer post needs to go in and then the painting.

Pre-setts

The Das'd area now sanded as flat as I can get it. I thought a base coat of grey might be a good idea, just to kill the red before the great scribing begins.

Das

The whole are to the left needed to be covered in Das. I'd consulted the Oracle to ask what would be the best way of doing it. I'd done a small are on Edge with some left overs from Nigel's storeroom, but this was a larger proposition. The answer to my question was that as long as I stuck with the branded stuff all would be fine. So during a trip to Wales a while ago I picked up a large pack in a discount art shop in Llandudno, between working our way around Mr Robinson's coffee shop recommendations.
The Das was simply ripped of the block and thumbed into the surface after it had been given a coat of PVA which should help bond it all together. There is no difference marked on the packets other than colours (red or white) but this is definitely more clay-like than the white that I used before which has more of a papery weave feel about it.
From this point the track was in-filled and a Lima coach bogie with deep flanges run up and down followed by a Tri-ang wagon with wide ones. In theory there will be no powered vehicles down the far end of the siding so I could be sloppy with it, but ...

7mm scale warehouse

With the big shed and small shed done I spent some time this morning positioning and cutting a thick piece of card. As can be seen this lifts the buildings up to a smidge below the rail height. The area in front will be Das'd and scribed. I said that very quickly to make it sound like a fast job - you better believe that it won't be.

7mm warehouse for Morton Stanley

Determined today to get the big shed painting finished. More or less done now just the adjacent hut to tidy up and that's all the buildings done. I'd lulled myself into the frame of mind that this was an 'off' day, and of course it is nothing of the sort. Still a little bit done is better than nothing.
Now to tidy the bench and get the top bleached in time for the new year.

Salutations of the season to all the regulars.

7mm scale painting

For regular readers (and I note that this page has been up and running for over five years and 800 posts, where did that go?) there's no need to explain that everything slows down around now as the workload trebles while I watch gay middle-aged men handing out sweets to under tens after they have done as they have been asked with full encouragement of the parents. The irony is not wasted on me that if this assignation happened on the street or in a park the police would be called, such is the paranoia surrounding such things these days and the double standards being dished out. But I digress.

What I am doing is a spot of painting. To be precise the two remaining buildings for Morton Stanley, built over the year by Mr. Hill and passed to me a week or so ago. It's slow going with multiple washes, but I'm getting there. The above base on a building on Gold St. Saffron Walden.

The yard

It's been a tracky sort of week. The last 24 hours saw the quite basic fiddle yard roads go down for Morton Stanley.Short? Well yes, but with only a 16" clear run round space on the loop trains are noticeably short: probably two coaches and a wagon or a loco a two or three wagons and a brake so there's not a lot of point in creating 4' long FY roads.
Again low cost. Not only did the MDF come out of the council tip, but the point on the left was a gift and the trackage was from a bundle of eight lengths of 'concrete' PECO bought at the Bognor show for four quid.