Time to play trains!

 Making and building models is all well and good but sometimes you need to realise that part of the fun is actually 'playing' with them! Tonight its cold with stormy weather over the UK, there is not much on TV and the news suggests that Covid may be having a fight back with us all. Now with all that doom and gloom what better therapy than to step into my man cave, ironically AKA The Room of Gloom, to run a few trains and simply enjoy watching them go round. Its therapeutic and takes your mind off the troubles of the World. In your own small World you control what goes on and how its done - Perfect!!!! Well that is until Mr.s W starts asking questions about where I am with her list of ''Must Do' jobs!

Anyway, on the tracks tonight, a selection of trains that you would never find sharing the tracks in real life but this is my railway where that well establish railway modeler's Rule One is in force! That is, 'Its my railway and I will run what I like!'. 

Looking left to right, A Bachman 6 car Western Pullman set, a ViTrains Class 37 in very early EW&S livery before it became plain EWS hauling a rake of 5 Seacows and a Shark brake van (you have to love the way that the track maintenance wagons are name - there are also such things as Trouts and Mermaids) and Tornado the new build Peppercorn A1 class hauling 5 Hornby Teak coaches.

On the outer tracks we have a Hornby 9F hauling a mixed rake of 18 various goods wagons including vans, cement wagons and mineral wagons. There is also a Hornby Class 40 hauling 6 Oxford Rail Mk 3 BR coaches.

There is a Bachmann Class 20 in Rail Freight livery hiding on the right in what will be a goods /maintenance yard as the layout build progresses. That large gap between tracks 2 and 3 will eventually be a platform unless I decide on a different track plan and with my track (no pun intended) record that is a strong possibility.

I am lucky in having three running lines with various loops so trains can be changed and alternated. On the other side of the layout in one of the loops a Bachmann Windhoff maintenance train in the old Railtrack livery awaits a turn. A very odd piece of kit but something about it that makes it almost cute!

So having had a good couple of hours just playing trains, enjoying them as they circle the layout with no purpose other than to amuse and entertain me, I am a happy bunny with a clear mind, vacant of the weather and bad news stories although that Mrs. W list of jobs is bound to come back at some point! On that note maybe I will just let the trains run for a few more minutes!

On the level!

Another day of volunteering at the Rocks by Rail Museum yesterday. On entering the site I noted that the two gunpowder wagons that I talked about in a post at the start of November - click here to see it - had been split from each other and moved. One is to be a store for wood and the other a store for one of the loco preservation groups that use the site to store and work on their locomotives. 

The weather was bright but cold so some physical work was just the ticket to keep warm! That work turned out to be some track maintenance work involving ballast. Not digging it out this time but using it to level the track itself. On model railways the secret to reliable running is to ensure that your track is laid flat and level. That applies to real railways too. It is just that the physical effort to get the real track level is somewhat greater than that needed on a model railway as my back can testify!

The process is fairly simple in that there is a sighting board set up at two points and you then use a third sighting board to see whether the track needs to be raised or lowered. No high tech laser sights or theodolites - this is all done with the Mark 1 Eyeball! The picture shows one of the fixed sighting boards and there is another about 200 yards down the track. You look across the top of the cross piece of this fixed board and the cross piece of the third board should line up between the two fixed boards. If it doesn't then the track needs raising or lowering accordingly.

We knew that the track bed had settled over the years and that is no surprise when you have 20 to 30 tons of train trundling over it on a regular basis, so it was just a question of raising the track to the right level. It was at this point I was introduced to the delights of man handling 15 ton jacks which my back was delighted about! These are placed under each rail.

At 15 ton capacity these jacks are powerful and it doesn't take much effort to get the rail to lift. Further work with the sighting boards and spirit level gets the track to the point it needs to be. At this point it is then about getting ballast under the sleepers to pack them into their new position. Network Rail probably have a £15M track maintenance train just for that purpose. At the Museum we have a £150 Kango hammer! It does the job though and although hard work it is not too long before you can tell that the packing of the ballast has worked as the jacks become loose as the weight of the track is taken off them.

No day at the Museum would be complete without Riley the dog being on hand!

Whilst we were at it a bit of work on one of the track joints was carried out replacing a fishplate and bolts as the old one was showing signs of aging - just like my back!.

As with all such work it is very necessary but when there are only a few of you it takes time so I will level up with you and say that I am probably going to be doing this for a while yet!

Did I get it right?

Out with Mrs W near a place called Culverthorpe in Lincolnshire we stopped for a walk just before dusk. Not often I take a picture that either looks nice or sums up the atmosphere of the season but I am quite proud of this one.....seems right to me!

A great day out at the Sleaford Model Makers Show

Today Mrs Woody and myself found ourselves in the Lincolnshire village of Ruskington where the Sleaford Model Railway Club were holding their Model Makers Show. Mow the last time that we went to any type of model show was back in January 2020 so it was both with some trepidation and keenness we entered the venue at the village hall. It certainly was not the biggest show we have ever been to but it had that local feel with a wide variety of items on show from matchstick creations, military and aircraft modelling, farm and showground equipment as well as model railways. I think the highlight of the show was the raffle. The club obviously had someone with good persuasive power as it took about 30 minutes to draw all the prizes and there were some great prizes. Two Graham Farish train sets, two family tickets to Newark Air Museum, a lot of model railway accessories, gift vouchers galour and more bottles of wines and tins of chocolates and biscuits than the local CoOp probably had in stock!

There were some great exhibits and the first one in my line of vision was this 0 gauge model depicting part of RAF Shoreham specifically on the 3rd September 1943. The gent who built it was ex RAF and had known my dad which was extraordinary in itself but the model also is unusual. He started the model at the commencement of the first lockdown and this is now its second showing. If I recall this correctly a B19 bomber had crash landed in the channel. The RAF rescue services located the crew who had survived and three Supermarine Walrus air sea rescue craft which were amphibious landed on the sea to rescue the downed crew. The capacity of the Walrus meant that each could rescue three airmen. Two Walrus took three downed crew and the third Walrus took the remaining four. That fourth crew meant that the Walrus could not take off and despite the issues of being in the English Channel with the possibility of enemy fire the pilot of the Walrus taxied the plane back towards the English coast. Eventually a RAF Rescue launch found them and took the crew and rescued crew on board and towed the by now fuel-less Walrus back to RAF Shoreham. There are all sorts of cameos and details on the models including figures of the builders father and father in law. A great model and a piece of history recorded and retold in model for - wonderful!

Having learnt all about the air sea rescue I then learnt something about tiger tanks that I never knew. A modeler had a 1/72 scale tiger on a German railway wagon. The Tiger is the new Airfix kit and the wagon from a small manufacturer. The bit that I learnt about was that because of the sheer size of the Tiger it was too wide for the loading gauge of most European railways. If it had travelled without some form of modification it would have smashed into platforms, signals and other trains. That bit took Mrs W's interest as she would secretly like to see my model trains have some form of catastrophic accident! The modification to the Tigers was that the outer set of wheels were removed and the tracks swapped for narrower ones. Very time consuming no doubt and not what you need to quickly move armour about in a war situation. 

As if by magic Mrs W's ideal layout was in the form of an American switching setup with this scence incorporated and aptly titled 'The Great Wall Street Crash!'.

The model maker who built the wonderful dioramas below only started modelling in February of this year! Makes me want to cry!

All in all a great afternoon and well worth the travel and a useful induction back to model shows! Here are a few more pictures to finish off with.

A mild time and a glazing time.

One of the problems with this very mild weather in November is that you feel you should be taking advantage of it and doing activities and jobs outside rather than sitting inside in the warmth doing model making. One of the activities that has benefitted is my cycling. I completed 5201 miles this year last Saturday the 13th November, some 6 weeks ahead of my target! Hopefully I can add a few hundred more before the years end. Job wise the garden is confused with bedding plants still in full flower and needing pruning and I am looking at my patch of grass that is laughingly referred to as a lawn and thinking that could do with a cut. Hmmmm. Maybe tomorrow! 

In the meantime modelling has been an evening activity and so progress is slow. However I have carried on with work on the K5350 Mustang truck - amazingly given my usual butterfly approach to projects! It is so near being finished I really need to focus myself on finishing this build instead of it becoming another of my shelf queens!

The cab has already had a wash of dilute grey paint following a similar pattern to that I did on the chassis and cargo bed. The pictures show this straight after being applied so it does look a little stark but dills and fades as it dries.

Tonight I fitted the glazing. This was fixed in place with Deluxe Materials Glue 'n' Glaze which is similar to PVA but specifically formulated to glue transparencies in models without damaging them or showing once dry. I have already masked the area that the windscreen wipers would clear and given that the door windows would be cleaned as they were wound down and up they too have been masked. This should mean that once all the weathering is complete the masking can be removed leaving clean glazing in the areas that should be clean. The mirrors have also been attached and the cab is almost finished!

 

 

Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea!

Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea! The final line of that fantastic film, the original 1972 and in my view best, Italian Job and if you want to reacquaint yourself with that final line in the final scene, you can see it here.. 

What that line has to do with this blog may appear somewhat strange but let me explain. Tuesday saw me at the Rocks by Rail Museum where the task for the day was a continuation of digging ballast out from between the track so that it could be cleaned. The work that day would see the end to that section of line. Having pick axed and shovelled my way through several tons of the stuff over the past few visits I was pleased that this would be the last day for a while anyway! Preparing my back for a session with the pick axe it was suddenly that Michael Caine moment when someone said - Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea! Unlike Mr. Caine who had no idea what to do, this idea was actually a good one but unfortunately somewhat late in the overall job. Instead of using the pick axe, why didn't we use the Kango? A Kango is a sort of electric pneumatic drill and makes jobs a lot less back breaking! Great idea and it worked well and would have saved so much effort on all the other days when we did not use it! Doh and even double Doh! Anyway by lunchtime we had finished. Unfortunately I had to go home to take delivery of Mrs W's Christmas present (if she is reading this I trust that has bought me some bonus points!) so I missed out on the afternoons work of putting some clean ballast back which involved moving locomotives and ballast wagons. Oh well! There will be other times!

The Kango arrives!

Nearly done.

Back at WMD HQ the Man Cave AKA The Room of Gloom had a bit of a clean and tidy up today as it was getting somewhat reminiscent of a waste receiving depot. I tend to work in a mess on my things and much as I try to change it just does not work for me to be tidy model making. Strangely, and much to Mrs W's annoyance, if I am cooking, things get put away as soon as finished with and dirty utensils washed as soon as used, usually whilst Mrs. W still actually has a need for them hence her annoyance! Whilst tidying I came across the K5350 Mustang truck and I thought I really do need to finish it. So this evening it has reappeared on the workbench. All that remains is for the cab to be weathered and a few parts including the glazing attached. The first thing I did was to find the windscreen and mask out the area that the windscreen wipers would clean. In general you don't see even the most dirty vehicle with a windscreen that at least shows evidence of the wipers having been used. A piece of masking tape, a compass cutter and a bit of measuring saw the mask cut and in place.

Here the winscreen has been covered with a piece of masking tape.

The compass cutters are simply a compass with the pencil replaced with a cutting blade - very handy for cutting circles! The mask is in place and I had to amend the bottom as it is that long since I did one of these I forgot that the bottom off the wiper arc would be flat and not curved as I first cut it - Doh!

 Next up was to commence the weathering of the cab. Just like the cargo body and chassis the weathering starts with washed of dilute greys and brown paints. As I said in a previous post it is like watching paint dry waiting for the washed to do their thing. However given the way I do models it may be weeks before I come back to this again! 

 

You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs!

A phrase I have heard many times over the years describing the chaotic path you sometimes have to follow to get to your desired destination. In this case on my 009 narrow gauge layout I have had to weather the track and start on getting some of the main landscape features in place. The best way to weather the track was to airbrush it and I was not doing that in the man cave AKA The Room of Gloom! So the two boards were separated which meant moving anything loose on the boards off and then getting underneath to undo the joining bolts and wing nuts and separate the wiring. Once out of the room it was outside for an airbrushing with various browns for the rail sides and sleepers. However before I did that I was wise enough to mask the points where the blades contact the main rails. This avoids paint getting onto the contact surface and preventing electrical continuity. I will be brush painting these parts later. Although a lot slower than airbrushing the use of a brush allows a much more controlled and accurate application of the paint even with my shaky hands! If you have ever had issues with electrical contact on points you will understand the frustration that can be caused in trying to rectify it so anything that can be done to avoid issues gets a big thumbs up from me. .Working smarter, not harder as I get older! Once the paint was dry the tops of the track were cleaned with a Peco track rubber. The boards and wiring were rejoined and amazingly the loco used to test the track had no issues! Result! Yes I am still reeling from that success!

With the boards back together I have started work on putting the road in which carries on from the first board, goes over the river ( I did think of using lazy way of crossing the river and avoid a bridge by just creating a ford but then I came back to reality as the slopes down to the river would be far to steep) and through the village before crossing the track and exiting into a reality that is not modelled. Like the first board, the road surface is 2mm mounting card and I have sprayed it with some Halfords grey primer just to give it some colour. It will need to eventually be matched in shade to the road on the first board which will no doubt lead to some contributions to the swear jar as I fail to get that exact match. I think I need a cunning plan to try to deal with that. I also need to work on some pavement areas and put the bridge in so that the road can be fully fixed in place. At least I have tidied up a bit and it doesn't look to much like an omelet making franchise anymore but I guess I will be breaking a few more eggs yet as this project progresses. For some reason now, I have a desire for an omelet for dinner! Better get some eggs in.

A moving find.

Out on a driver through some back roads with Mrs Woody, we came across this remarkable old phone box. Being Remembrance Sunday it seems fitting to post this today and for once I will stay quiet as the pictures do the talking and pay tribute to all those lost lives in times of conflict.

More wood butchery - but on a much smaller scale!

Anyone who may have had the mis-pleasure to read this blog will know my modelling activities are a bit butterfly like! I do one thing one day and then suddenly spring onto something else. A trait that Mrs. W has pointed out on occasions. In my defence I do usually come back and finish things - eventually and I will at some stage finish the floor in the lounge but that is another story! 

Today saw me put the bridge deck on the road bridge for the narrow gauge layout as started back here. In that post I said the bridge deck would be unusual and would you know it - its a wooden deck. Not the most often used material in this country for bridge decks on public roads but not unheard of and that is as good an excuse as I need to validate my choice!. In my usual manner of wood butcher, I cut a sheet of 3mm balsa into approximately 4mm wide strips and having measured the width of the bridge proceeded to cut these to length and attached the planks to two stringers that run under the bridge. UHU general purpose glue was used as I have only just realised I have some balsa glue in stock as used to make the narrow boats - which still need finishing! Anyway, following a dilute wash of acrylic brown/grey this is what it looks like. 

As to what I will be getting up to in the next few days is anyone's guess but I suspect lounge floors may not be on the agenda!

Take Five - Part 2

Back in September I introduced the MiniArt Russian Tank Crew. At that stage I had assembled them and had primed them. Over the last couple of evenings I have painted them. At this stage I should say that there are certain things in life that people just have a natural ability at or learn through practice. Painting figures is something that certain modelers excel on. Unfortunately I am not one of those. I have read books, watched videos and practiced on figures but I still struggle and my efforts don't stand close scrutiny so excuse the somewhat poor picture. Hopefully if you look from a distance (several yards probably) and squint they may look just about passable! Anyway, still some more to do to them but they should hopefully be finished and off my workbench in the next few days. I am hoping that they may be good enough to pose with the T34 Tank diorama (picture below) that I built earlier this year but I will wait and see how they finally look once finished.

I also did a bit on the Dapol Service Station so the windows and doors (the workshop door even opens and closes) are now in and some weathering of the roof has taken place but still more to do. It is surprising just how involved these kits can get.

Gunpowder Plot?

Those reading this from the UK will know this Friday is Fireworks Night which celebrates, if that us the right term, the failure of Guy Fawkes and his 12 conspirators to carry out The Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament along with King James the First in 1604. He was caught before he could carry out the destruction of Parliament on the 5th November 1604, then tried where he and his conspirators were found guilty and sentenced to death in a particularly cruel manner - more details by clicking here. The sentence was carried out on the 31st January 1606. However back in 1605, Londoners were encouraged to light bonfires to celebrate the King's escape from assassination. An Act of Parliament declared the 5th November as a 'day of thanksgiving' and remained in place until 1859. Well enough of the history but don't say this blog isn't, at times, educational!

So what has this to do with my blog? Well it was my day to volunteer at the Rocks by Rail Museum where I noticed these two new arrivals when I got there.

I understand that they have been acquired from another museum and are gunpowder wagons and that is about all I know. Lets just hope that they are empty and the both the wagons and museum will still be there next week after Fireworks Night unless of course there is a museum member called Guy Fawkes Jnr!

Getting back to the work for the day, it was back on the chain gang of digging out ballast for cleaning. A hard task when its been contaminated with mud and sand and compacted by vehicles running over it but as I said before - its a dirty job but someone has to do it! That is very true actually and until I started volunteering I had no full appreciation for just what goes it to keeping a museum such as this going - much of it unseen by the public. Anyway three of us managed a fair amount today and Richard's dog Riley was on hand to keep us in line and working!

Start of the day.....

Finish of the day with Richard and Riley the dog admiring the days work which resulted in about three and a half tons of ballast pick axed and shoveled out ....I will sleep well tonight!