Rain stops mowing.

Todays trip to the Rocks By Rail Museum was supposed to see me get the mower out for another session of grass cultivation. However, the weather had other ideas with rain making the grass too wet to cut so I had to find another activity. I had noted that the recent wet and warm weather had encouraged the growth of weeds in the track bed. Now whilst weed control would normally be taken care of with a spray of weed killer from a suitably equipped train this is Rocks by Rail so I hand weeded the area around the station. I don't think anyone will say, wow someone has been doing a lot of weeding! However, hopefully subconsciously guests may feel that the place is cared for. We will have to wait and see what reaction we get on the operating day this Friday but I think it looks good!

 

 I did have some supervision from Riley the dog who probably knows more about the Museum than I do!

In between the rain I did have time to have a look at the display models in the Sundew cafe. Phil Parker's model railway layout (see it on his blog by clicking here or watch the first of Hornby's videos on this project here.) always attracts and entertains younger guests and we are fortunate in having it. It does get 'played' with so on occasions the little details do require some maintenance and I see I will need to bring some glue in when I go back again.

At the other end of the spectrum of models are these detailed scenes of quarrying including a massive model of Sundew the World's largest walking drag line.

There are also some informative displays on the history of iron ore mining and I really must find time to reacquaint myself with the contents sometime!

I can't escape Riley's supervision!

I will be back Bank Holiday Friday when the Museum will have a full on operating day - great!

More wire bending!

A odd half hour in amongst other jobs has seen the T34 Egyptian tank progress a little further. The remainder of the external fuel tank cradles have been fitted together with some more brass wire substituting for the plastic kit part which broke into pieces as I tried to cut it free from the sprue. I have also replaced one of the already fitted grab handles with a bent wire version which looks better. No doubt I will be bending even more wire as I get onto the other side. Not much progress today but the construction moves on which is the main thing!

The perils of detailed plastic kits!

After a hard day gardening I thought I would have a relaxing hour or so with the MiniArt Egyptian T34 tank kit. Nothing would be nicer to wind down after a day of toil under the watchful eye of Mrs. Woody then this! Look at plans. Decide that next part to fit are grab handles to the hull. Locate parts on the sprue. Look delicate so gently begin to cut off and snap! One of the perils of highly detailed kits is that the parts become so delicate that it is impossible to get them off the sprue without damage let alone clean up the joint where the part was attached to the sprue. Now at this point the swear jar could well have taken several donations from me but surprisingly I sat back and actually thought about the problem. I could try to glue the part together or use the spare one on the sprue. However the inevitable would be that I would face exactly the same problems again and that swear jar would actually become fuller!

In my late in life developed skill of working smarter and not harder I decided that the only sensible way to deal with the problem was to ignore the kit parts and make my own handles out of brass wire which, handily, I had in stock. A bit of careful bending using some small pliers and comparing with the intact kit part soon had some handles bent up and fitted. I used a piece of scrap plastic to hold the handles off the hull by the required amount whilst the super glue set. 

I think it was actually quicker doing this then having to deal with the kit parts. It certainly is a lot more robust then the plastic part. After an hour I had three handles in place and the beginnings of the external fuel drum mountings attached and I was still calm!

Sundew.

I won't be at the Rocks by Rail Museum tomorrow but there is an operational day so visitors will be treated to the sight and smell of locomotives and rolling stock in action as well as being able to enjoy the various exhibits around the site. They may also enjoy some refreshments in the Sundew cafe and think that it is a strange name to give it but there is logic in its naming.

In my wanderings around the site, now usually with the mower keeping the grass down, I have, as already explained in a previous post, had the opportunity to get close to the exhibits. One of the more unusual exhibits, that visitors tomorrow can see, is one of the driving cabs of the walking excavator Sundew. In its time, Sundew was the largest walking drag line excavator in the World. It even 'walked' the 13 miles to Corby when mining operations in its home quarry Exton Park in Rutland ended. Unfortunately in 1987 following the ending of iron ore mining at Corby, Sundew was cut up for scrap. There are more details about Sundew on the Rocks by Rail website which you can see by clicking here. 

Despite being scrapped one of the cabs survived and was donated to the Museum in its then guise as the Rutland Railway Museum. The cab is big but when you look at the size of Sundew in photographs it pales into insignificance! During its time at the Museum it has been restored and now lives on as the only part of Sundew that remains apart from peoples memories of this monster and the name of the cafe!

The interpretive board giving details of the 13 mile walk to Corby.

The cab is big - I am betting there are apartments in London with less space!

Could do with a wash but still not too bad for being over 70 years old! That grass looks nice and trimmed too!

The cab fittingly now overlooks the Museum's quarry face.

Fulfilling a childhood ambition!

It has been a busy and tiring couple of weeks what with Mrs. Woody's new wardrobe, desk and room painting tasks together with the inevitable sort out that such things lead to - four large bags and three boxes of things to go out! This together with several labour intensive but very satisfying days at the Rocks by Rail Museum mean that model making time has been limited. 

I did manage to put together two jerry cans for the Egyptian T34 tank. Whilst other manufactures would have limited this to two kit parts, MiniArt managed to break them down to five parts! Not that exciting to look at but for a half hour it was just enough for me to walk out of my Man Cave afterwards with a sense of having at least done some modelling. 

However I was thinking about model railways this morning whilst doing some of Mrs. W's jobs on her never ending list - just don't tell her my mind wandered from the task in hand! My mind was actually taken back to my childhood by a post of Phil Parkers blog this morning about the Triang Dock Shunter - click here. to see it. 

I guess for those of a certain age there were certain things that as a child we really wanted but pocket money didn't extend that far and birthdays and Christmas brought other things. One of those things I really wanted was the Triang Dock Shunter. No idea why it figured so highly on my 'want' list but it did. Maybe it was the shape which was unlike real locomotives or maybe it was the working headlight. Whatever it was passing time put the desire to the back of my mind until about ten years ago when looking round the second hand model shop in Sheringham, Norfolk (anyone who has visited the town with an interest in models will know the shop) I saw one on the shelf at the back of the counter. Suddenly I was child again and the £20 price tag was affordable and seemed reasonanle to my adult wallet. A quick decision was made whilst Mrs. W was busy perusing the nearby handbag shop, that the shunter should come home with me and finally fulfill that reawakened childhood ambition.

Here it is on my terminus layout. It fully functions although it sounds as though it is chewing up the track when it runs but that headlight works! Still makes me so happy when I look at it and more so when it has a run. As Mrs. W reminds me, I am still a child at heart. You know what? She is probably right!

The delights of volunteering

'You volunteer at a railway museum - do you drive the trains?' is a question I often get asked when people find out I am a volunteer at the Rocks by Rail Museum. Whilst I have ridden on some of the locomotives apart from being a Driver for a Fiver when I visited before becoming a volunteer I have never driven a locomotive whilst actually volunteering. In fact when I joined I made it clear I had no pretentions of being a train driver but I was there to put something into the museum with whatever skills I have. That is what I have done getting involved in all sorts of things with a group of like minded guys who are great to be with. At the moment I seem to be chief grass cutter. We don't have a huge volunteer base so we all have to be able to turn our hands to whatever needs doing. Grass cutting may not be glamorous but it makes a big difference especially at a site as large as Rocks by Rail. Our guests may not notice the cut grass as they wander about but they certainly would notice uncut grass if they had to wade through knee high wet grass. So today, despite having already been in on Tuesday I was back for half a day to do some more urgently needed cutting.

It does give me a lot of satisfaction to see what was an overgrown area turned into an area that looks groomed! It also gives me a chance to see things at close hand that our guests can not. Me and the mower go places where no mower has ventured which brings me close to things I would never see so close up anywhere else. It may all look like a lot of rusty machinery and rolling stock but it is what the museum is all about - keeping the history of the iron stone industry in the locality alive for guests to appreciate and learn from. Without the volunteers none of this would be possible and to get some of this rusty stuff looking even better we need more volunteers. 

So here are some photos of what I was mowing around and if you are a fan of railways nothing could be more delightful! By the way you may appreciate the cut grass!

Open the hatch!

As I said before this MiniArt kit of the Egyptian T34 tank is parts heavy. An example is the drivers hatch.

The hatch is made up of 12 parts including a metal etched handle which are mostly on the underside which is inside the tank hull. The effort in putting all of this together is somewhat dashed when the instructions then suggest that the hatch should be in the closed position. Given the effort and detail I will be hopefully be leaving the hatch in an open position. This was a common thing to do in real life on these tanks when not in battle as it allowed the driver a better view and also acted as a ventilator in what, in Egypt, would be a hot interior for the crew. So in this case my order is 'Open the hatch!'.

More mowng!

My weekly trip to Rocks by Rail and my skills (?!?!?!) with the mower appear to have created my present role as Mowing Operative! It is a fact that as with many museums that rely upon volunteers you need to be flexible and turn your hands to whatever needs doing. Grass cutting may not seem glamorous but having a site that looks tidy and cared for is important in giving our guests a good initial impression. Not everyone can be a train driver and driving a mower can be very satisfying when the cut grass just adds that bit more to the overall scene so I did more mowing today.

Meanwhile in the 'junk yard' some of the volunteers are clearing and sorting all those things that have been dumped there over the years just in case they are of use in the future - just like I do! There are a lot of things they are finding all of which will be of use in the future or maybe to some other museum.

For me tomorrow is back to painting and sorting and I may cut my own grass. Just like being at the museum!

Central Trains Class 156 - I'm happy with that!

Today has been a continuation of the sorting out and painting of the spare bedroom. Some interesting discoveries tucked away in places but a lot of recycling and charity shop donations has thinned out the collection of junk!

I did have a small break to have a look at my two Hornby Class 156 DMUs in Central Trains livery. I do have a fascination with the Central Trains brand - probably because it was local and the first of the privatised liveries in my part of the Country. It also goes well with my collection of EWS locos as they operated in the same region with Central trains doing passenger work whilst EWS took care of freight. I do have a few Central Trains DMUs but I dug the two Class 156s out with the view of putting DCC chips in them. Here is one of them.

The process to fit the DCC chip is fairly simple as the body literally just unclips from the chassis and the socket for the chip is on top of the Powered bogie. Unplug the blanking plug, insert DCC chip and put body back on before programming the chip. I did actually look at the instructions before starting amazingly for me (instructions are for when you can't figure it out as I tell Mrs. woody!) and you can just see them in the photo below.

Although an old model they are reasonably detailed and the livery is nicely applied.

Coupling the two 2 car units up, which is what they did in real life for busy periods or heavily used lines, it looks an impressive train. I'm happy with that!

Today it is worth it!

In yesterdays post I highlighted the two arguments for using photo etched parts in plastic kits and pondered if it was really worth it. Today I had to do some more etched parts on the MiniArt Egyptian T34 tank kit but in my view this particular use is well worth the effort. The rear deck of the tank has the engine under it so there has to be some means of cooling it beyond the usual radiator and so most tanks do have some sort of grill above the engine compartment. Doing this part in plastic would mean, due to the limitations of the moulding process, a representation of the see through grill panel could only be provided with no ability to see through it.. The kit has some control flaps under the grill so there is something to see through the grill. To provide that visibility and overall finesse the grill is provided as a two part metal etch. Both are large, relatively easy to handle and to bend to shape - nice!

I used some Gorilla Superglue gel for the first time to glue the two eched parts together and it seems to work well. Tomorrow I will glue the grill in place and then add the rear and two side panels to the rear deck. May only be a few parts assembled today but it was worth it!

Is it really worth it?

There are many things in life when I ask myself 'is it really worth it?'. That is the question I asked today as I was having an hour or so with the MiniArt Egyptian T34 tank. There are some etched metal parts to it as I showed a few posts ago. Today I had to deal with two etched hooks that fasten external fuel tanks on the body of the tank to their carriers. This is the finished result.

It took me nearly an hour to fit the two! They are small - very small - and as a consequence difficult to hold and maneuver as well as see! On several occasions they disappeared onto my work bench and took some finding which is difficult to believe as they are shiny brass. However believe me they are better camouflaged then the tank will be once painted! However the swear jar is now a bit weightier and the two hooks are in place as you see above. However is that nearly an hour of frustration really worth it as you can hardly see the things and once painted no one will even know. 

There are two ways of looking at this and my own preference changes in line with how far the process has gone and how well! The first way is to say that the parts are so small and insignificant that they could really have been moulded in plastic and incorporated into the main part making the build a whole lot easier and quicker. So it is not really worth it. Countering that is the second way of looking at this in that the kit is a challenge to build and you increase your skills and abilities by doing such things. In addition whilst your partner may not notice your skillful build fellow modellers will and appreciate the skills required to get good results. Therefore it really is worth it!

As I said my views can alter depending on how well the job has gone but I do wish that where etched parts are offered manufacturers would also offer a plastic alternative for those whose swear jars are already full enough or who just want to build a reasonable looking kit! That way either way would really be worth it!

Having beaten the etched parts I did have enough time to start building the running gear so the suspension arms and axels are built and temporarily in place. I need to glue them in place when I have enough time to make sure they are all level with each other s that the tank stands level. Hopefully I will be able to do that tomorrow if I finish my list of other jobs to do.

Rubbish gone!

Yesterdays post showed the pile of recycling/rubbish that I needed to get rid of. Despite the rain two trips, with a full car including the front passenger seat, to the recycling center saw the pile gone. Luckily the recycling center had space in all the relevant bins so hopefully it will mostly be recycled into something new. Trouble is with an open view I can now see the hedge needs cutting, the logs cutting and stacking and the daffodils cleared from the floor bed! More work that no doubt features on Mrs. Woody's list of jobs!

Having then got that job done it was time to sort out some of my clothes so many of my ancient clothes are now gone! I did take a few minutes to seek sanctuary from this heart retching job and found that my fleet of EWS locomotives had ended up parked close to each other for this phot opportunity. Oh the delights of models! Far better than all this sorting out and recycling!