A thoroughly enjoyable day!

It was a  Bank Holiday Monday so in true UK tradition it rained but luckily not until after the days events at the Rocks By Rail Museum. Blueish skies for moat of the day made a brake van ride all the more pleasant - not that I had a chance to do that!

As has become the norm I was shunting along with Dan, John Martyn and Rob and I think we gave our guests a great day - they certainly seemed interested in what was going on and came up to the quarry no doubt informed of what was going on my loyal blog reader Mrs. B who was doing Front Of House and welcoming everyone

The two jokers - Rob and Dan!

John being serious as he is in charge of driving Mr. D!

Mr. D being serious in charge of driving the wagons!

Martyn hiding with the face shovel that loads the wagons that Mr. D drives as John is at the controls!

Rob leaving the drag line excavator having given a digging show to our guests!

As you can tell it was a thoroughly enjoyable day! And to top it off we even had a Miss England semi finalist visit. No idea of her name but she was a very nice lady and was looking round the Museum with her agent who is interested in railways. We all wished her well in the finals on the 3 October and maybe we will have a future Miss England winner visit us after that!

It just looks so right!

I and the current stage appears to be a go through stages with things and the current stage is adding DCC chips to my collection of 00 gauge locos but seemingly concentrating on steamers at the moment! 

The latest project is this  Hornby model of the 2-8-0 Class 8F which like the Robinson 04 that I posted about a few days ago was designed as a heavy haul freight loco. However, like many freight locos it has a really stunning and powerful look to it.

The information at the end of the box tells us that Hornby have helpfully designed this loco for a DCC chip to be installed which makes life easy!

The enclosed instructions showed that the DCC chip plug is located in the tender and there is only one screw to undo to get the tender body off!

With the trender body off the DCC blanking plug could be removed...

...and a DCC chip plugged in - easy!

With the tender body secured back in place I upturned the loco to fit the supplied but not fitted brake rigging.

It was a fiddly but easyish job to do and adds a bit of detail to the loco.

With that done and back on its wheels it was time to program the DCC chip.

Then it was onto the layout to have a play test!

It just looks so right!

The Bachmann Plasser OWB10 with crane,

Yesterday I was surprised at having found this model by Bachmann of the Plasser OWB10 with a crane added. Having had a bit of time to look into this, my memory was right that although Bachmann released this as an 00 gauge model it is actually H0 scale, originally produced by Lilliput who Bachmann bought out some years ago. Whatever, it is still a smart looking model and as it does not run on the track with any other rolling stock, any scale differences won't be noticeable.

The crane itself is nicely done.

And the crane rotates but the arms are solidly moulded in position.

The box declared that this model was DCC ready but helpfully there were no instructions included inside. However, there was only one place a chip could be located and that was under the moulded ballast load. Sure enough, that ballast load lifts off but it is moulded in metal to add weight to the model which means it adheres well to the model.

There is a DCC blanking plug inside and I can see that it should be easyish to do once I find time! In the meantime it can pose on the layout where it looks at home!

Surprises!

I was awoken at 1.30am by a sound that I had not heard for sometime - rain! It was good to see that everything in the garden had a good soaking this morning with plants recovering and looking greener. One thing that has not recovered despite the rain is the water level in the local canal. Those who have read this blog before may know that I am a regular visitor to the local canal whilst out on bike rides but to be truthful I have not seen the canal for some weeks so was a bit surprised to the water as low as it has got. It cant be leaks as those got fixed last year!

Another surprise on my ride was this.

You don't see peacocks out in the wild usually so this was a bit of a rare spot. Not sure how it got to where I spotted it but it looked at home!

Yet more surprises with a long over due sort out of a box in the Man Cave from which this emerged.

You may wonder what it is, but conveniently the box end carries the necessary information.

I had forgotten about this model but the price ticket gives away that it was bought some time ago which I think was about 13 years ago! Anyway, I will have to delay further investigating my surprise find until tomorrow - lots of things to do on Mrs. Woody's job list for me in the meantime! It will be a surprise for her if I ever complete the jobs on that list!

 looking a b=but one thing that 

Big hammer and other things at the Museum!

After the last few months of heavy civil engineering works at the Rocks By Rail Museum, things are turning back to normal. Work has recommenced on retubing 1931 and John is finding out where he left off a few months ago.

If in doubt a large hammer is a good way to get back into the swing of things! Rumours of a swear jar in case of mishits are unfounded so I am told - but that is a big hammer!

Meanwhile, Alex is back into the depths of Ketton No1, removing more decades old cement from the running gear! He does look happy to be back on that job!

And John is glad to be back in the workshop - I think he is anyway!

Maybe he is a bit apprehensive about the work he has to do to restore the Southern brake van that is now in the workshop!

John was also doing things to the oversized washing machine, or ballast washer as it should be known as! Either that or he is organsiing the wheel barrow race!

Back to more mundane matters and with a no to No Mow May at the museum, I repaired the mower that broke last week with a new starter.

That went well and I was soon out carrying out vegetational butchery on the grass.

However by lunchtime the mower decided it had had enough and promptly dropped its exhaust cover!

Returning to the workshop I found some suitable nots and the ever resourceful John came up with one of those methods that only someone with years of experience has.

Because the bolts were recessed and the socket to fasten them deep, the nuts would not attach to the bolts. Johns answer - tissue paper! Stuff the socket with the tissue and then the nut is held in place in the socket and cant be pushed up inside it. Tow minutes later all was reattached and off I went!

This time it was down the nature walk where nature had more or less taken over the walk but not after my vegetational butchery!

I have no doubts I will have to go back as nature fights back!

Bachmann Robinson 04 - DCC chipping a steamer!

My interests in UK railways are somewhat eclectic and I have models from most eras ranging from Stephenson's Rocket through to some of the latest diesels and electrics. Whilst most of the pictures of my Last Great Project layout feature diesels I fancied running some steam. This came out of the storage box and is a Bachmann model of the Robinson 04 which was a freight loco with a 2-8-0 wheel configuration. A splendid model it is too and I have had it about 15 years but never DCC chipped it. However, that changed!

You can see it was designed for tractive effort rather then speed with the small driving wheels whereas express passenger locos had large driving wheels for speed.

Luckily, this model is wired to have a DCC chip fitted so all I had to do was remove the tender body held on with four screws.

With the body off, the blanking plug was taken off ready for the 21 pin decoder to be fitted.

With the chip fitted it was time to program it and then onto the layout to test!

It runs lovely! 

All I have to do now is to fit a crew into that fantastically detailed cab!

Tiny!

This is my smallest powered 00 gauge piece of rolling stock and it is tiny!

Produced by Bachmann, it is a model of the Wickham Trolley originally used by the mainline and now by many preserved railways for track maintenance purposes. The model is that small that the motor is in the towed wagon and there is no room for a conventional DCC decoder although there have been some innovative modellers who have managed to cram one in but that is not for me!

It is a fantastic model, full of character and you just cant help liking it even if it is tiny - well that is my view!

Every little bit helps!

 

It has been a busy few days of gardening duties here at WMD HQ with hedges being cut, flower beds cleared and grass cutting so crawling back into the Man Cave after that, especially being in the sun all day, has not been as productive as I had hoped. In the main I have just played operated trains which is relaxing. However, there has been some ballasting going on with a bit more done - not a lot but as the advert for that UK supermarket says, every little bit helps!

The good thing about doing this job during the warm weather is that the dilute PVA that is used to glue the ballast in place dries within hours rather than days during the Winter!

SOS or in other words a Shelf Of Shame.

Most modellers have an SOS, or in other words a Shelf Of Shame. This is a place where stalled, broken or just 'lost interest' projects reside until such time as they are restarted, fixed or interest is rekindled. I have such a shelf, well actually probably a shelf and several boxes, but lets just deal with the shelf for the moment! On this shelf, amongst other things, was this Hornby Class 86 in BR blue.

 Bought second hand or pre-loved depending on your preferred term, from Hattons some years ago it came, unusually for this era of model, with DCC fitted by its previous owner. It ran well and did so for some while until one day it just stopped. I had no idea why and at the time I did not have the time to investigate so onto the SOS it went! There it stayed until today when I thought I would like to run that and then remembered why it was on the SOS. However, with a little time available I took it down and put a 9v battery to the pickups just to make sure it was a non-runner. Nothing! No sign of the motor doing anything.

Time to open it up and deal with either the defunct DCC chip or a broken wire. Taking it apart reveled a bit of a mess of wires but nothing obviously broken or unattached. Interestingly it is also fitted with a stay alive module which supplied power to the motor for a few seconds if the loco looses electrical contact with the track. Anyway, just out of curiosity and a vein hope that the problem might have fixed itself, I applied the battery again. The motor ran! Moving the wires about to see if that would induce the fault again the motor still ran. It was my lucky day! A self fix electrical problem! 

Body back on and back on the track it runs perfectly!

If only all my SOS residents were this easy to fix or finish!

Get Out Of Jail card!

As it was a nice afternoon, Mrs. Woody and me went to Easton Walled Gardens to sit in the sun and have a picnic lunch. Very nice it was to. It is always interesting to walk round the gardens and see what the gardeners have been up to, or in this case not! As posted earlier this week I managed to put the Rocks By Rail trusted mower out of action. Whilst a solution is in the post to get the mower back on the grass and cutting it, I was taken by the fact that at Easton they have adopted the philosophy of No Mow May for much of their grass.

Now if the solution for the mower fails this could be my Get Out Of Jail card of adopting No Mow May at the Museum! Well at least for a couple of weeks until June comes!

Whilst escorting Mrs. W through the gift shop and avoiding items that she might wish to purchase, I did notice these which most hotels used to supply in guest's rooms before the age of instant messaging and all other electronic communications and when people wrote letters! These are actually based on fictional hotels from TV and the Fawlty Towers one brings back memories of the comic genius of the writers and actors. Must start going through my old collection of the two series on DVD which is something before the days of streaming!