2mmMark

Don't feel too bad about the progress of your loco. I bought a Langley 14xx & Autocoach kit back in 1983. I still haven't finished it. Most of the intervening period was spent doing step 8. Mark

I'm intrigued by the use of RGB LED strips. I hadn't thought of that but it's logical as combining red, green & blue does give white. So far, I've exclusively used warm white LEDs and lots of them. I did try cool white and also allegedly "pure" daylight LED strips but found them to have a very blue colour cast. Very nice layout. I looked at the photos and thought "that reminds me of Wingham". Mark

Letterkenney & Burtonport Andrew Barclay. One of these http://mikemorant.smugmug.com/keyword/LLSR/i-q3cdrBH/A Mark

I've resumed work on the N-Brass Peckett and there'll be a blog update in due course but here's a taster of it looking a bit more like a locomotive. A few fittings added make all the difference. Mark

The little known GER "Octopod"?

15thou, Chris, noticeably thinner than the regular strip rail. Seems like the rolling process results in a 2:1 profile for the strip. It is somewhat rounded on the 15 thou axis (i.e. top & bottom when used as rail) Mark

I was once assigned to do some work at Ronaldsway in the Isle of Man with some colleagues from Manx Airways. We went for lunch to The Viking pub in Castletown. There was some discussion about the wisdom of heading north to Ramsey for some shopping. I got the impression that in my colleagues mental map of the island, "Here Be Dragons" was written north of Douglas.

And the answer is, a turnout for use in the Copenhagen Fields fiddle yard. As people will know, we use solid nickel & brass strip track behind the scenes. Fabricating a turnout from this would be quite labourious. Tim sent me a couple of turnout plans, so I decided to lay plain code 40 strip rail straight onto a single sheet of PCB. This should give us a robust turnout for the fiddle yard. It still needs gapping but that's a simple job. Assembly proved much quicker than a conventionally sleepered turnout. I used the 2mm Assocation templates intended for the turnout soldering jig and simply screwed them down to the PCB on a length of wood. The tiebar is very chunky, again for robustness. I've also gone for extended check & wing rails in a quest for reliable running. Mark

Tonight's mystery object from my workbench Tim will know what this is but it might puzzle others. Details will be revealed in due course. Mark

Should be going in the post tomorrow. You may not have to cut right through. If you score an appropriate diameter circle on the centreline of the track, you should be able to peel off the top ply lamination. Mark

I spent a lot of time cutting & shutting Peco N gauge chassis to make correct looking wagon underframes to go under Parkwood kits. The end result still wasn't very satisfactory, so I sold the whole lot and started again with 2mm chassis components which looked much better. The new Farish van pictured above is streets ahead of where the N gauge market was when I was making my wagons but I would still be strongly tempted to replace the whole underframe with an Association etch. The width over the W-irons will be more prototypical. there won't be such a large gap between the W-iron & wheel, the springs/axleboxes won't look so shallow and you'll lose the axle end slop inherent in the Farish chassis. Are the buffers seperate parts? I would be tempted to re-use those, they are excellent. Likewise the vacuum hose. But I really am being picky now. For N gauge RTR, it's an excellent product and it's good to see a recognition that freight stock doesn't just have a "standard" underframe. Perhaps there just isn't a accurate Chinese translation for "the brake shoes must be in line with the wheels" Mark

I would keep it dead simple. Manual lever activation of a 90 degree rotation. Pivot on telescoping K&S brass tube. Turntable deck made from a 24mm disc of PCB. In fact, if you want one, I have one already made. PM me your postal address. Mark

I think they probably could. From practical experience with the uncouplers on British Oak (featured in the Beginners Guide), all you need to do to avoid upsetting DG couplings is displace the magnets away from the track by about 1/2", assuming they are under a 1/4" thick track bed. Displacing theTOU activation in the same way should do the trick. Mark

You'd better make some progress on BQS otherwise you'll end up (like a lot of us, I suspect!) with more wagons that your layouts can accomodate. A while back I averaged 1 wagon per week for about a year, which seriously chokes up Burwell Fen, which really only needs no more than a dozen. Wagons are definitely an obsessive thing. I've got about 10-15 vans to finish off. Much nicer than making passenger stock. Mark

I'd wholeheartedly second this. The DG electromagnets are high current devices and require a fairly meaty transformer. Rare earth magnets are powerful enough to operate through a fair depth of baseboard. I posted my method of using them here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/52042-tucking-mill/page-8&do=findComment&comment=1725281, as used on British Oak. Getting rid of the uncoupling magnet transformer means that British Oak just needs a simple lightweight wall-wart to power the controller. Be careful, you might end up making the steel bolt permanently magnetised. I've never wound my own coils but I believe people who have used thick nails which have a greater iron content. Mark

My BR wagons have wrong numbers. As Eric Morecambe might once have said, they have "the right amount of numbers but not necessarily in the right order". It was whatever came off the sheets of Modelmeaster and/or Woodhead transfers most conveniently. I'm happy that there's something on the wagon that is tidy and looks right. Previous attempts at hand lettering were miserable failures. Good wagon transfers are a lifesaver. Being waterslide transfers, they are floated on and then sealed with Polly-S acrylic matt varnish. I have been wondering what a "chemical pan" wagon was so it's instructive to see the photos and Phil's explanation. My first thought was that it's something to collect Elsans en-masse. Mark

I would encourage you to end the headshunt with a wagon turntable in front of a building, like at Snape. It'll really capture the atmosphere of the area. It wouldn't be too hard to make the turntable work, it only has to rotate through 90 degrees, which you could easily achieve with a lever & pushrod mechanism. You could then move wagons independently using a neodymium magnet under the baseboard acting on the steel wheel axles of Association wheelsets. Mark

This is how I did the "TOUs" on Burwell Fen. A brass plate with some K&K square brass tube soldered onto it and then the slider is the next smaller size slidiing in the plate. The tiebar is sprung one way by the microswitch and held the other way by the pushrod, the operating knob is simply pushed and held in a small hook. In practice, you can operate the points by twisting the knob. The pushrod is 3/6" brass rod, running in sections of K&S tube soldered to mounting plates. Massively overengineered to operate a 2mm turnout but it's lasted over 20 years without a single failure. Microswitch not under compression Microswitch under compression Operating knob showing the bent wire catch Hope the photos make it clear. The tiebar is a 4mm PCB sleeper which entirely fills the space between 2 point sleepers. Painted track colour, it's not too obvious. A pin from the TOU goes up through the baseboard to the tiebar. You can see it in this picture. The rails are held to the tiebar by bent-over Peco track pins, these are a bit obvious in this picture but less so in reality. Mark

The real Snape was operated by the loco propelling all trains from the junction and then once in the yard, there was the assistance of a shunting tractor, presumably a horse in earlier years. I've worked up a design for an L-shaped layout of Snape, taking in the yard and the maltings, with a small adjustment to the track plan to make it feasible to operate on loco haulage. The plan is to have BR locos bringing the freight stock in and then transferred across to the Maltings, where an industrial loco randomly bumps them around logically distributes them around the facility. I've got a good set of photos of the area taken in 2006 if they are of any help. I'll stick them on my tablet and you can have a look at them at Tim's. Very promising project! Pleasing to see another BR(GE) project appearing. My preference for turnout operation is to make the tiebar and operating mechanism as rigid and robust as possible, so the blades are held snugly against the stock rails. Then I allow for lost/excess motion in the movement mechanism. Mark

This thread should be compulsory reading for the "diesels are boxes on wheels" merchants. Mark

Amazing work! Where does one find a spare underframe for something like that? Is it a 2mm one etched upwards? Mark

An incredibly complex dum-dum bullet. But what else could we expect from a man of your calibre.

I've remodelled & repaired faulty white metal castings with ordinary 60/40 tin/lead solder but the margin between success and disaster is narrow. I think the low-melt was a wise choice in this instance as the area to be "reflowed" was quite large. Lots of subtleties with Mr. Gresley's engines! Mark