You never know what a day will bring!

Whilst at the Rocks By Rail Museum I had to take delivery of some further dirty ballast delivered by this rather nice looking rig.

Just goes to show that you don't need fancy paintwork and acres of polished chrome to have a good looking combination.

Before he tipped the load I got talking to the driver. I am good at talking! He was a fascinating guy who back in the 1980's used to do runs with trucks down to Italy, Spain and Morocco as well as several other European countries. If you follow this blog you will realise I am a bit of a truck modeller as well as having had professional involvement in haulage so we also had some interesting chat about some of the older trucks such as the Volvo F88 and F12s that he had driven along with Scania 111s and Fodens as well as some USA trucks! It was a great 30 minutes or so and I was really pleased to have been able to spend some time with this guy. Just goes to show that you never know what a day will bring - especially at the Rocks By Rail Museum!

It all points well!

I was pleasantly surprised when arriving at the Rocks By Rail Museum today to find that things on the trackwork front have moved on well from last week with the point now back in place which all points well for the track to all be relaid before the Easter reopening.

There is always a need to think about and discuss th next move with jobs like this!

Also preparing for the Easter opening my work on grass cutting continues with vengeance. I did recut some areas done two weeks ago as there gas been a fair amount of growth despite the lack of rain but I also ventured down the Nature Trail where if I do any further mowing it will no longer be a nature trail but become a well maintained garden! Well that was my excuse for calling it a day! 

What better than to have a five minute break in the sun with no one around!

The only problem with going down the Nature Trail was that I could look back up the line which reveled rather pointedly that there is some work require to level it back up after the Winter!

Oh well! Means there is always a point to being a volunteer!

Formulating a plan!

Back to model railway layout building and in particular My Last Great Project which needs to move on a bit faster than it has. To that end I am looking at the station baseboard where there is a small urban station in front of the hidden sidings for the two main lines. Unfortunately the hidden sidings are just not hidden yet! So, work has started!

The plan, always good to have one of those even if I don't always do that, is to have a wall behind the station area hiding the hidden sidings with something on top. I do have a plan for that as well but as yet it is still in formulation! However to further formulate I need to at least start on the wall.

Starting with my favorite brick paper from Metcalfe, some measurements indicate that I can make full use of each sheet.

Having cut some mounting card to size I cut some brick paper sheets to suit.

I used Spray Mount to stick it to the card. Great glue but it needs to be used in a well ventilated environment like outside! So, outside I went and I used a clothes peg to hold the brick paper as I sprayed it - just hope Mrs. Woody doesn't notice!

Back inside the sheets were attached to the card.

Just to see how things looked on the layout it was temporarily place in position.

It looks a bit basic but in my mind I can further formulate that plan now!

Failure!

Fresh from the success of repairing the Hornby Class 156 DMU and fitting a DCC chip into the Lima Class 117 DMU I thought that I would grab another loco that required a chip. Should have been a simple job but this one has, at the moment, ended in failure!

I bought this las year at the Bingham Model Railway Show for a bargain £25.

It is a great looking little shunter, ideal for my USA switching layout.

With the body off it should have been an easy job to solder in a DCC chip to the circuit board.

I had never run this model as the original owner had removed part of the circuit board so that the motor was disconnected from the pickups. I decided just to check all was well before going any further. 

A 9 volt battery is enough to power a model loco. The motor turned over but jammed after a second. reversing the polarity did the same thing. 

I had an inkling as to what was wrong so one of the bogies was dismantled revealing this.

This is a problem that besets locos of a certain vintage when the use of plastic gear wheels instead of metal became popular. The plastic eventually fails resulting in the part splitting which causes the issue of the motor jamming or a rough running loco if it still moves.

Replacements are both rare and expensive if you can find them (£48 for four gears on eBay!) so repair is the initial option. Superglue can work so that was my first step.

Unfortunately, my trial on one of the gears failed! The next option is to sleeve the shaft of the gear with some brass tubing. The WMD Stores strangely did not have any of the right diameter!

So, for the moment, the model is back in its box awaiting me finding some brass tube of the right diameter. Failure for now but maybe not in the long run! 

Chipping the Lima Class 117 DMU

I talked about the Lima Class 117 DMU a few days ago and said that I wanted to fit a DCC chip to it and amazingly this is a project that has now been completed rather than sat on a bench for days/weeks/months/years/decades!

With the body off the motor was once again revealed and a suitable DCC chip by Lais brought out of the WMD Stores..

The actual fitting of the chip went quickly with no complications.

Once the wiring had been soldered it was time to wrap the wire up and locate the chip in a discrete place within the body. It was at this point that I could very easily been drawn into a rabbit hole of a project as I could add additional electrical pickups, lighting both external and internal and detail the interior with a repaint and driver and passengers. However, I have resisted leaving that for another day/week/month/year/decade!

With the body back on it was time to test on the layout and given that I had cleaned the wheels a few days ago there were no issues. It will never run as well as the current Bachmann models but it runs fine for what I want and given that the motor growls there is no need to add a sound DCC chip!

Missing the obvious!

Back to some model making matters. On my bench for some weeks has been the Central Trains Class 156 DMU, a Hornby model that suddenly stopped running for no apparent reason. In true Woody style, I just put it to one side pending further investigation when I had time! That is never a good prospect for a model but it has only taken me four weeks to ge round to looking at this which is almost an unheard of short time for me!

My first thought was that the DCC chip had failed as I could not get any noise out of the motor in either DCC or DC mode. The body had yo come off and I replaced the chip with a blanking plug which should have allowed the motor to run on DC power. Nothing!

Taking the bogie out of the chassis I went as far as actually getting the motor out of its housing and testing it. It worked which was good but putting it back and applying power to the wheels was meet with silence.

Now it might be obvious in the photo below but for some reason it was not obvious to me at the time of looking at the actual bogie that the wires from the wheels and electrical pickups were no longer connected to the motor! It took me about 40 minutes to finally realise this rather fundamental issue was the cause of the problem!

With that fact finally in my head the soldering iron came out and the wires were soldered back in place. With the DCC chip refitted it was ready to put the body back on.

Back on the layout all was back to normal which was great!

Meanwhile as we now have lighter evenings although my body clock is still not aware of the hour lost, I did manage to get out in the greenhouse planting out some tomato, pepper and cucumber plants that I have germinated in the warmth of the house and I also planted some lettuce, spinach, onion and sunflower seeds. Hopefully their growth will be obvious so I don't miss it!

Ballast washing - YouTube video.

In yesterdays post I briefly mentioned ballast washing at the Rocks By Rail Museum. I have written about it in this blog before with a post nearly three and half years ago available by clicking here, but for an animated visual explanation of what goes on, the WMD film crew has been hard at work to produce this YouTube delight!

Progress, progress, progress!

It was a progress, progress, progress day at the Rocks by Rail Museum which was a great moral booster! First off, the viewing platform that I have been working on over the past five months is now finished! That is major progress! 

The day started with a workout as David and me unloaded another platelayers trolley worth of surplus material from the ballast washing process that has been also going on. It is a workout as we have to shovel it up over the six foot of gabion wall.

There is about a ton in each load!

To top that material off we found some pea gravel which was ideal to surface the top of the viewing platform. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the gravel was some distance from the platform. We hatched a cunning plan to use a builders ton bag and fill that up, get the CAT to pick it up and take it over to the platelayers trolley which would at least save some work. We hand filled the first bag and then Nigel turned up with his mini digger and filled two more bags for us.

We ended up only needing one bag of the gravel but that was another workout!

Whilst we were doing that Martin was testing the face shovel which reminded me that if only the track was not in the way we could have made good use of that machine in this project!

However, with the gravel unloaded and raked out, the final elements of the viewing platform came together.

We have had some signs made up to confirm the generous financial contribution made to the project by East Midlands Railway....

....and David added the finishing touch of these sink plugs to cap the tops of the Haras fencing tubes! 

All done! Not bad for the three of us doing this project as we moved somewhere in the region of about 18 tons of material all by hand.

With that project complete I was back on the never ending project of grass cutting but I am making progress!

I did have some wildlife to keep me company with the pheasants seemingly enjoying the better weather.

Pete and Pam were busy painting with the modesty fencing outside the ladies toilet benefitting from a good clean up and paint. Yet more progress!

Meanwhile, the major drainage and tracklaying project has also progressed considerably.

A great deal of ballast washing has been going on - I first wrote about that activity nearly three and a half years ago and that post is here - enabling the first elopements of track to be re-laid. 30 foot of track is back in the platform line and next up is getting the point back in place. a layer of ballast is now in place so hopefully progress will continue!

A bridge to a bargain!

Well, the bridge in question is that rather strange one in a place called Crowland on the edge of the Fens in England. Many years ago two rivers converged to become one in the centre of the town. The bridge therefore had a triangle of spans which makes it fairly unusual. However, more unusually is that there are no longer any rivers flowing under it!

The rivers were diverted several hundreds of years ago leaving the streets for this very old town somewhat wider than would be the norm as the old river channels have become roads.

You can tell this is an old structure just by how it is built - certainly not very accessible with those slopes.

So what has this interesting view of a bridge got to do with a bargain Woody you may well ask! Well, I took Mrs. Woody out for the day and we ended up at Crowland. After a walk and something to eat it was time to go home. Looking at where we were I realsied we were not that far from Peterborough and the model shop Trains4U. Not been there for a while and I needed some Metcalfe brickpaper, some Woodlands polyfibre and some balsa wood. Course set for home via Peterborough and the shop had all that I wanted. - Nice!

However in looking around, as you must if you visit a shop like this, I came across this in the second hand/pre owned/pre-loved cabinet....

Now I love the Union Pacific livery and the loco is a great looker which was tempting but when I looked at the end and saw this that meant this was coming home with me for my USA switching layout!

£45 and DCC fitted! Bargain! And all because we visited that bridge! Hence A bridge to a bargain!

Out of the box it is like new.

On the layout it really fits in and runs well!

I must take Mrs. W out more in the future if there are more bargains like this!