Progress. Its alive!

Hello all, just a few more photos of the layout.
Its progressing ok(ish) and moving in the right direction. Havn't thought of a name yet so its still the layout

Just an overhead of the break into the fiddle yard. The structure is meant to be a grotty rundown pit head and loading point. All the points are handbuilt with copper strip al la the old skool. I did try some new plastic ones but I cant see the the small components too well so its soldering all the way. They have come up ok and Ive tinkered with them so that the wagons and loco run through pretty well.

The track nearest the camera is just for show and will include the wagon seen as a scrap wagon being slowly filled. Im looking to make the building on the left a small wagon repair shed hence the need for  scrap wagon.

 The limit of my photography skills on this one.

The background kit is supposed to be 4mil but I think it looks ok in relation to the pit head which I have just built using card and brick wall paper. The whole lot will be weathered to look like a dirty pit yard. (I used to work for the NCB and can tell you that pits were not clean or very tidy!!!)

Never mind onwards and upwards.

As Mr S knows I'm not good at electrics so its all basic wiring, and I mean basic. The eletrics work and my little shunter is quite at home up and down the track. I still think DCC stands for Durham County Council.

Geoff H

NBR Waverley 4

Just thought you may like to see progress on my layout 'Copshawholm' which has been a godsend during the lockdown.

Apologies this picture is a bit wonky but it's looking north towards the station and it attempts to show the mainline atmosphere which I am trying to achieve.

The above shows the level crossing and signal box at the south end.

This shows the yard exit and the houses behind the station which also act as a backdrop. The actual backscene is simply grey painted wood panels hung behind the layout. One day I may attempt a more sophisticated backscene showing those wonderful hills of the Scottish borders.

Moving along, this shows the north end of the station and part of the yard area.

This the extreme north end of the layout showing (at top) where the main line exits into the north end cassette yard. The wagon at the end of the coal siding is a permanent fixture.

You will see there is still much detailing and fettling to do - a layout is never finished!

I will later include a set of pictures showing NBR era traffic moving through the station (the above must have been a Sunday!).

A main line through station gives you much more freedom to run large engines and most kinds of rolling stock as opposed to a branch line terminus. However, the station yard is restricted to cattle, logging, agricultural and coal traffic serviced by the regular pick-up goods. I have to admit that the layout is full of compromises - I do not have the space to run proper length mainline trains - these are limited by the size of my loft and the size of the train cassettes at each end.

I console myself with the thought that, had the Waverley route survived, it would probably have been operated as a secondary main line with shorter trains. Some 'Modellers Licence' here.

Hope this is of interest.

Geoff Hodson

 

New Ground

Apart from one or two loco related chassis rebuild projects, of which more later, I have also been forging ahead with my original plan to motorise the explosives siding gate on Callaton. I'd thought about a hand cranked system involving wheels, gears and very manual handle, which would have been quaint, but because I had not been able to devise what I really wanted a chance encounter with a MERG Pocket Money kit started me off on a different route. Through the good offices of a friend I bought a couple of these and found the kit relatively simple to put together - alright, I need to improve my electronics soldering technique but I do have a result. This little board allows control of a servo throughout 180 degrees and also has two controllable end stops. At around £1.50 the cost of the kit is negligible but it does do exactly what I want it to do. If MERG offered taster kits like our 2mm Scale Association sells wagon starter kits, this would attract many more new members to their ranks; as it is I don't think they do. Anyway, as a direct result of putting this together I may very well re-join some time soon.

The first two pictures below show the completed MERG board front and back. You now see why I say I have to improve my soldering of 'stripboard' as it's called.

The second shot shows the components on the other side of the board and at this stage on the left of the board is a servo and a switch. This is a SPDT acting as an on/off switch. On the right is an adapter that enable attachment of an AA battery pack loaded with 8 x 1.5volt batteries; for test purposes a 9 volt PP3 type would be just as good but not last for very long. In use I notice that even a stack of 8 x 1.5 AAs doesn't last too long either but if a separate switch is included, once the unit has done its bit it can be switched off until needed next time with no drain on the batteries.

Below is the result. I could take a picture of the below baseboard level gubbins but it really is quite simple. A gear wheel is fitted to the servo shaft instead of an arm and it meshes with a gear wheel on the gate post which is running in a long brass tube. There will be many more ways of doing this but this is what I have at present. I've ordered some pulley wheels and drive belts from Nigel Lawton's website so I'll be doing some more experiments to see which I prefer. 

See what you think,

Mick S.

Flush Glazing and improving the old Farish suburban coach

 This is my first “Blog” and the subject isn’t particularly fine-scale, however Mick assured me that my experiments with flush glazing might be of interest to some, so here goes!

The old Farish Poole era Suburban coaches are fairly generic, although the bodies appear to be based on LMS Period 2/3 designs.  Unfortunately the roofs are the wrong shape and the glazing is recessed so far that it looks like the coach sides are made from concrete blocks!  In an effort to improve this, I considered using a society LMS roof, but found them to be too narrow for the Farish body.  I then managed to acquire one of the old “Ultima” conversion roofs on Ebay.  These are actually Bullied roofs of the correct shape, however they have additional rain strips that need to be filed off before the torpedo vents can be added.

On the body, I filed 0.75mm off the sides and reshaped the ends to match the new roof, followed by a small amount of filling at the ends. I then used T-cut on the paint work, to make it look old and worn.  

On the under-frame I removed the surplus V hangers and battery box, then added a voltage regulator and foot boards. I still need to add Society buffers, dynamo and vacuum cylinders.

The glazing proved to be the most tricky aspect.  The window rebates on the coach are about 0.45-0.5mm deep, however they are also bevelled slightly. Consequently, if you use 0.4mm thick glazing material, you get an unsightly gap at the edge of the windows.  If you use a thinner glazing material and position it up against the rebate, the appearance is improved slightly but it is still far from flush.  I therefore decided to use Society 0.2mm cobex sheet but ignore the rebate and fit the glazing as close to flush as I could get it.  For the side windows I cut the sheet to: 5.35mm x 2.75mm and for the drop lights: 4.3mm x 2.4mm.  Cutting the cobex to size, within the required tolerance, was a challenge! I initially cut a 5.3-5.35mm wide strip with a scalpel then set a NWSL styrene “chopper” to cut at 2.75mm and cut up as many windows as needed, before doing the same for the droplights. I also found that the window opening have a slight curve at the corners so, to get a good fit, it is necessary to cut the tiniest bit of each corner of the glazing.  I then used model aircraft canopy adhesive applied by brush to the inside of the window opening and a cocktail stick with a tiny blob of blue tack on the end to position the glazing.  When the windows were all fitted and the glue had dried, I masked up the model and airbrushed the roof and ends.  At this point I should confess that the windows are actually double glazed - by which I mean I glazed them, accidentally ripped them out removing masking tape, then had to glaze them again! Doh!!  This time, after fitting the glazing, I painted “Klear” around the edges to make them more secure.

This is probably a good point to mention that I have been in contact with Brian Hanson at Shaw Plan / LaserGlaze. He has kindly agreed to look into the feasibility of producing some LaserGlaze flush glazed windows for these old Farish Suburban coaches. Whilst I appreciate that these coaches may be a bit coarse for most 2mm scale Modellers, knowing what an ingenious bunch you are, I thought you might find alternative uses for the flush glazing? And of course, if they are well received, there is nothing to say that Brian wouldn’t also produce them for us in different sizes too.

Finally, I added a bit of Dark Wash around the door frames and used some weathering powders on the foot boards and under frame. It isn’t quite finished yet, I still need to add a dynamo and vacuum cylinders as well as replacing the awful plastic buffers with some brass ones.

I have attached a few photos, including one  taken during construction that shows the difference in roof profile compared to an unmodified coach.

All together now...

This week I have been mostly devising uncoupling systems..... I like Microtrains knuckle couplers which I use on the outer ends of cuts of wagons (or even complete trains). In between I use whatever suits best which includes Kato non-automatic knuckles which are very small and unobtrusive and, on one set of 16T mineral wagons, DG because it's difficult to make anything else fit.
Microtrains use permanent magnets for coupling and uncoupling, but the magnets they sell are huge and can only be installed on straight track. I need to shunt trip workings in and out of a siding and colliery branch which are on a curve. So I began mucking around with small rare earth magnets. I found that 2mm diameter ones with a pull of 0.9kg (1lb in old money) work well. I used cyano to stick them in a row to a piece of microstrip. The sleepers were cut through and a section removed to take each strip and the strip fixed with two-part rapid epoxy. The picture shows the result. It all still needs painting and ballasting but I think that when complete it should be virtually unnoticeable. The Mictrotrains magnet is shown for comparison.

Two set of magnets will uncouple a pair of Microtrains couplers. But I have also begun experimenting with fitting locos with a 'post' of 30 gauge phosphor bronze wire. The wire projects from the bogie of a diesel of electric loco and bends up through 90 degrees so the upright is a couple of millimetres clear of the buffer faces. The Microtrains knuckle can then 'grab' the upright wire. One set of magnets will allow uncoupling. Thus system isn't foolproof and needs a bit more work to get it to be 100 percent reliable on curves and when propelling, but it does mean that you can fit all the bufferbeam details - including vac bags, hoses and m.u. connections and still have a working coupling.