big jim

Not done a thing to it, mainly been working or modelling time has been doing my yellow trains Got a few bits and bobs ready to crack on when I get a chance, scale model scenery depot hard standing packs and a Hornby footbridge I hope to adapt for the station area, first job is to get those cardboard bases on the inclines glued down and corked so I can properly secure the track

At a push I'd have gone to nuneaton, run round in 7 and could have had me back up the wcml from there, problem is other than Rugeley and Stafford there are no north facing junctions heading out of the Birmingham area

Yeah thanks for that, would have been nice to have had a message via the gsm so I could have kept going full chat instead of slowing down to question the route!! Was a bit marked off about it but once I passed rycroft and hoofed the grids open up to bloxwich all was forgotten, sounded awesome, I think I work up most of Cannock and hendesford too! Anyway some from today, over to Hereford to conduct/work the stone train back to shrewsbury and then back into lodge in Hereford for tomorrow's Baglan train Left my van in Ludlow as I needed to do something there in the evening prior to going to the hotel and caught a passenger train to Hereford And into Hereford with its new lift towers A GWR hst was waiting in the rear platform too LM 170 Freightliner 66 Then the Gloucester RHTT set rolled in and changed ends Filthy after less than a week! HST shunting down the platform ready to return to the up side and head off to london Then my train came in and away we went to shrewsbury Then discovered my train was cancelled tomorrow which meant I had to get a train back to Ludlow for my van and head home onto to find the A49 wa shut north of Ludlow so I ha d to come back via clee hill (in thick fog), cleobury mortimer, Bridgnorth, Telford and market Drayton!

Only one phone pic tonight, Wrexham general waiting for the section to chirk, stopped back from the signal a bit as there were a few fotters on the opposite platform and had I pulled right up to the signal I would have been in the dark on that side! (See I can be nice!) Was running an hour late at that point so was an hour late leaving chirk too then when I got to oxley I got a green where I should have had a double yellow to take oxley curve, phoned the signaller who advised me I was going via Wolverhampton, Walsall and Cannock to get to Stafford, network rail had called up colas to see about being diverted then using my central digital route card they could see it was all in date so I was ok to take it, added another 30 mins to the trip so I finally rolled into crewe 100 minutes late! Short conducting job later today then into lodge in Hereford (I think a trip to the model centre might be in order on Thursday while I'm there!)

I had no issues with it the few times I've driven it other than there was an air leak from the compressor end of the loco, almost as if the safety valve was blowing off but the compressor wasn't running continually and was kicking in and out fine, persevered with it for the start of the evening as I couldn't see anything abvious and once I changed ends early in the job I was DBSO leading the rest of the night Turned out it was just the small air pipe to the rear of the wiper on the 2nd mans side had blown off so was venting to atmosphere, small enough not to lose a significant amount of air but enough to be bl**dy annoying for the short time I was in the cab!

my mind is boggled now! im thinking of going down the decoder route instead as ive done with another coach i have on the go, ive got a function only decoder that has 4 functions (2 for head/tail lights) and 2 stand alone functions, i can map the head/tail light finctions to stay on in both directions according to the instructions but i only really need 2 functions per coach, one for the interior lights and another for 'ditch lights' or other various recording equipment lights depending on the coach in question i know this is going off on a bit of a tangent but what sort of voltage's are decoder function outputs? the coach ive already done has a Hornby light bar fitted via the lais dcc decoder and that seems to work alright (if not a bit too bright but ive not adjusted the output yet) so im assuming the maplin strips should just wire straight to the decoder too

Me and my bright ideas!! Let's do the interior of the NMT he says........ bits arrived today to make a start, took the roof off the first coach to have a look only to realise that with the laser glaze fitted I can't get the standard Lima interior out of the coach Ended up having to push the glazing out from the inside which of course meant the PH designs etched window frames came with them too, luckily only attached using glue and glaze so a simple removal but leaving the bodyshell looking rough, was going to be a pain to patch paint so I though what the hell lets start again I've ended up dunking the coach and separated etches In the IPA to strip it back to bare plastic/metal to start again from scratch, will have to fit the laserglaze to it before I repaint it though, mask it off both sides with low tack masking tape Regards the interior(s) I'm going to make it narrow enough to refit with the glazing in situ As I say other bits arrived today as well, I've got a set of DCC concepts wiper pickups so i can get power to the interior lighting, some surface mount LEDs on a tiny pcb which will mount in the underframe of 993 and 994 to act as 'milepost lights' (similarly I'll add some to the UTU when I get round to that) Unfortunaly work is getting in the way of modelling at the moment, having to drive the real NMT instead of playing with the model one, still lots of chances of prototype interior pics to be had!

had a quick flick through earlier, looks interesting so far page 51, "31418 at an unrecorded location" rycroft jn, walsall, locos coming off the sutton park line towards bescot

some from yesterday first up went to banbury to collect my van after saturdays job over ran under yesterdays weird sky then got asked to pick up a pair of locos for tonights log train, first one was in coleham where the previous nights "strategic shunting" got in our way as we had to move all the locos around again! freightliner passing by finally got the 56 out and away to washwood heath to collect 56105 which i took to crewe, they went onward to warrington where (hopefully) they were collected this morning to carlisle and on to the logs (which i will be picking up later in warrington to take to chirk!!) busy busy busy

Quite eerie in banbury earlier

Be quick, only one available Topp trains Stafford have a Dapol class 68, 2nd hand but unused, chiltern rail livery 68014 £70. SOLD NOW (one of my managers in work grabbed it!)

Not quite, had a desiro first!

Just one from me today, on my way to banbury to collect my van after saturdays job overran, popped over to moor at to find this shoving my train

And the rest of the pics Ready to roll Newtown A quick run round in Machynlleth and back to coleham to replace the 97 with 2 56s Then we realised as there was an extra 56 in the yard the 97 would have Ben blocked in so once the train was ready to go, brake tested etc we had to move it out of the yard, restart the 97 and shift it over to the other road! Then bring the train back in to wait departure time (away from the local residents) I then saw the train out and that was it

And for my 10000 post on rmweb, a quick pic of tonight's job, off down the cambrian 2nd manning the RHTT to macc and back

It's a really simple job, I did it in about 20 minutes (apart from the repaint obviously) I seem to remember I had to glue the cab inferior/lighting unit to the chassis as there are no screw holes, there is no metal work needed It does depend on what era (and TOC) you are modelling regards the windows but if like me your not too bothered you can just leave the mounded window bars in situ if it's an air con fitted unit or add them with a pen/brush if you want hopper windows

Well I've got to agree with the article, when I speak to people (both enthusiasts and normals) about having done the west highland line last year when I say "I drove over the Harry Potter viaduct" they know exactly where I mean and normally say, "the one where the car flew underneath" Had I said in my best nerdy voice "the first mass concrete structure in the uk" I'd probably have been looked at blankly

today was banbury to derby with 37611 and away to derby NMT heading into the station and after changing ends it headed back towards spondon then i took the 67s to toton where i positioned them on a railvac gbrf 66 F231 (aka 66775) and from there i headed home, should have gone to banbury to collect my van but the day would have been too long so ill go and collect it monday!

Nice little job today crewe Toton with 60087 Basford hall The desolate corner of Staffordshire known as wichnor jn RHTT passing by Creeping into Toton And parked up for fuel And home I went

I concur with SM42 I remember locos parked up at the north end too, those sidings are long gone now though, always seemed to be class 60s in the early 90s

Yeah that was me

Some from today, NMT again, a bit different today as it was running as a 4 car formation due to the 'conference coach' being removed, this meant I had to go at 10mph below line speed at speeds over 45mph (I erred on the side of caution and used 30 as my lower limit) and also had a maximum speed of 110mph due to there being a lower brake force available Started in derby Then away to Stockport via Lichfield, colwich, stoke, Macclesfield And back south to Northampton, this time via stoke, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, rugby Waiting at coventy Ready to leave Northampton And back north to stoke via the same route Rugby New st Then from stoke, back south to Derby via stone, colwich, Lichfield, burton on Trent Derby Where it went off round chaddesden and away to Bristol with another driver

https://www.maplin.co.uk/p/white-12v-5cm-led-strip-n87cz

Whereas none of the chiltern ones do, couldn't be bothered adapting the glazing units when I did that repaint about 6 years ago I suppose It's not a hardship to paint the droplight bar on to the glazing unit though

Don't take it for granted from me it's on a certain type of bogie, as far as I'm concerned as long as it's got 12 round wheels and a sticker telling me how fast it can go that's all I need to know, I wouldn't know the difference between a cp7 a cp9 or a c3p0 I do know that the bogies under 099 aren't the ones it had when it went into barrow hill with the knackered engine but yes 099 was an 80 mph machine before it went pop