To cut a long story short!

To cut a long story short was, amongst other things, a hit for that new romantics group from the 80s Sopandau Ballet and you can view the video here. However in my case, rather that ramble on about how I put all the things wrong identified in yesterdays post about the ongoing rebuild of the Lima Class 117 DMU I will cut a long story short by posting this photo which shows it all corrected and everything wired up and a new DCC chip fitted.

I can even fit the already painted interior panels.

Now all I have to do is get it on the track to test it! Hopefully that will be a short story with a happy ending!

With all that done the powered car should be an easy win to finish!

Those famous last words from yesterdays post - With all that done the powered car should be an easy win to finish!

After the satisfaction of getting much of the unpowered car together I turned my attention to the Easy Win. It took a few seconds of looking at the parts and holding them together to realise I had done everything back to front! The coupling I added is on the bogie that goes to the front of the car where no coupling should be! The motor bogie should have had a substantial amount of the old coupling left in place to attach the new one t. Instead I cut the lot off! And finally, the buffer beam detail is at the wrong end! Brilliant, Woody! The WMD swear jar is now a bit better off but my level of satisfaction is not!

I these instances it is sometimes best to walk away and cool off before trying to rectify things which is just what I have done. It can all be fixed but will take a bit of time so no easy win finish - just yet!

Putting the Lima Class 117 DMU back together which is a satisfying process!

I am at the stage of putting the Lima Class 117 DMU back together which is a satisfying process given the carnage I have inflicted on it over the past week or so! 

First off, the pickup wires from the bogies on the unpowered car were soldered onto the phosphor bronze wipers. A piece of heat shrink tube was glued to the bogie and the wires fed through it before applying heat so that the wires were held securely in place.

To avoid the visual glare of red wires being seen I painted the exposed red wire black.

With the bogies refitted to the chassis and the wires from them and the plug carrying power to the power car, the wires were secured in place with a dab of superglue and then soldered together. The exposed joints were covered with heat shrink tube to stop any short circuits. I was amazed at myself for remembering to thread the tube in place before soldering the wires together! All in all it looks a neatish job which again amazed me!

With that done I could reinstate the interior moulding which looks good now it has been painted. Most satisfying!

With all that done the powered car should be an easy win to finish!

The rabbit hole of the Lima Class 117 DMU deepens! Originally I was just going to remove the somewhat oversized and toy like couplers from each front end of the unit and keep the central couplings. However I thought that I could close the gap between the two cars by replacing the Lima couplings. I had purchased some suitable couplings at the Spalding Model Railway Show so I had what I needed.

Some hacksawing and gluing saw the old couplings removed (old one bottom left of picture) and new couplings fitted (example bottom right of picture).

I think it looks a lot better - but I would!

Some jobs at the Rocks By Rail Museum are constructive and produce superb results!

Some jobs at the Rocks By Rail Museum are constructive and produce superb results such as the repainting of Elizabeth which Mick has been doing over the last few weeks.

Mick still has one side to paint but Elizabeth looks fantastic!

Other jobs, which usually involve me, are less constructive, even destructive in nature! Take for example my latest escapades in clearing the undergrowth in the. as I have termed it. 'Boneyard'.I did make a failed attempt at clearing out his jungle last Winter but hopefully this year will see more progress but it is all very destructive. Sammy Strimmer is my weapon of choice along with cutters.

In that lot there are some interesting artefacts to be discovered!

It is all very destructive at the moment but hopefully as the vegetation gets cleared I can begin to sort out just what lurks under it all and put it into some order. Well that is the plan!

Made by Woody!

 Fitted to he front of the Lima DMU, the additional details look a bit strange. Xxx

However, painted black it comes together.

Well, that's the ends sorted but I also had a missing buffer. I could buy one but a couple of scraps of plastic card and rod cut to size and shaped made a good replacement.

In place

In place it looks OK.

Painted black, you cannot really tell it's made by Woody !

This project is becoming a bit like a rabbit hole!

This project is becoming a bit like a rabbit hole! I was just going to do a quickish (remember this is Woody) update on the Lima Class 117 DMU and I find myself drawn into adding more details. Still, so far the cost has been minimal so Mrs. woody cannot complain! 

The latest thing to do is to add so front end detail to the buffer beam. Having cut the couplings off the front end will look a bit bare and in real life there are some additional details that Lima did not add. These are the vacuum pipes for the braking system when these units worked in multiple setups as well as the electrical couplings. Fiddly to replicate but worth the couple of hours it took.

As always, WMD Stores had some suitable materials in stock, so a piece of square strip was a starting point into which some suitably bent brass rod was attached through some holes drilled in the strip. These represent the vacuum brake pipes. The electrical connections were represented by some 5amp fuse wire. The connectors were just slivers of plastic card and rod.

This was almost like dealing with miniature engineering!  

The lens is a bit cruel as to my workmanship but once mounted on the chassis and painted it should all look OK!

And now it gets dirty!

Having painted up those details on the chassis of the Lima Class 117 DMU, I have now dirtied them up! A bit of dirty brown paint by Ammo was airbrushed and the chassis does actually look a lot more realistic - well I think so anyway! I need to add some more detail to the front end so hopefully I will be able to post abou that tomorrow.

In the meantime I am pleased with my dirt!

Being all moulded in black plastic means that the detail just disappears.

Time to think about doing some detailing on the chassis of the Lima Class 117 DMU. I am not doing anything too fancy, just making the best of what is already there. To be fair, there is a fair amount of detail with various air tanks, lockers, pipework and so on but being all moulded in black plastic means that the detail just disappears. 

Having looked at some photos on line of the real Class 117, the paints and brsuhes came out and I got busy!

It already looks a bit more interesting and whilst the colours are all very bright, I am going to weather the whole chassis so that will all tone down. That is a job for once the paint dries though.

Spalding Model Railway Exhibition 2025

Looking back through my blog I see this is the fourth Spalding Model Railway Exhibition since the pandemic. In some ways that period seems so long ago and in others just as though it were last year! I can recall thinking at that time there would never be any more such exhibitions but we move on and luckily we overcame and now the model railway diary of shows seems as busy as it used to be. Certainly the Spalding Show has always been a great exhibition and each year it seems to grow in quality with this year being one of the best I can recall even going back before the pandemic. 

So lets look at a few of the layouts that Mrs. Woody and me liked.

First off, Welby Lane RTC, am 00gauge layout, which is based on the British Rail test centre at Old Dalby. All the RTC (Research Technology Centre) stock was painted in a distinctive blue and red livery and there were some unusual conversions of standard rolling stock into RTC versions including the Laborotory 25 Decapod which no doubt had a far more interesting life than the Mk1 coach it was converted from!

Interesting as the rolling stock was, there was also some interesting scenic modelling such as the old station with its delapitaded building.

Amd here it is in closer detail - nice!

I was also taken by this scrpa yard scene.

Ambergate was interesting in that it was a large layout but the railway was only a passing loop station with a three siding goods yard. The space was mainly taken up by some fine scenic work.

This is the atation end.

And this is the other end showing just how little trackwork there is but this was a real example of a railway through the scenery model.

The allotments must have taken many hours of work to complete.

Mauch Chunk PA is an H0 scale layout based on an actual location in Pennsylvania, USA.

Superb modelling makes this almost look like the real place.

Staying in the Pennsylvania, but moving down to n gauge, there was this fantastic layout Mackenzieville Yard.

The layout was for sale but I resisted asking how much - I just don't need another layout at the momeent - really!

Moving onto Switzerland, this fully automted and computer controlled layout called Kaninchenbau allowed its owner amd operator to wander about the hall leaving the trains to run themselves! Now that is a clever layout build!

There were 30 layouts covering all the popular gauges and various parts of the World as well as traders and demonstrations so something for most visitors to find of interest..