Seeing some friends and a gift for me!

Today was a day about not doing too much. A bike ride this morning brought my total for the year up to 4909 miles. Then this lunchtime I met up with some friends and it was great to catch up with them after in some cases not seeing them since before the pandemic.

I was very fortunate when one of them, knowing my interests in model railways, presented me with two boxes of model railway rollingstock and controllers! I need to have a closer look but there looks to be some really interesting stuff in those boxes. Something to do later on today! As with anything coming in the house the two kittens had to investigate!

More good timber gets the chop!

My continued cutting of good timber into what I hope will be a god set of baseboards for My Last Great Project continues. I now have nearly three frames complete.

You can see how they fit together in this picture below. The gap will be filled with the fourth baseboard which I said would be a simple build but I forgot I want to incorporate a viaduct which will need some interesting woodworking. The overall dimensions will be 11 feet by 6 feet which makes the layout a foot wider than at present but as I will now have a central operating well I need the additional width - or I could go on a diet!

This photo shows how the base board will be supported by the framework I built some weeks ago before I got Covid. Note to self - make sure you pose the baseboards the right way around before taking photo!

I still need to add the legs to the supporting frames but hopefully by the end of next week things should be about ready to install in the Man Cave - famous last words!

A more productive day!

After yesterdays bug that left me somewhat less then engerised today I woke up ready to take on the World! Well not quite but I was ready for a 30 mile bike ride and then a bit more wood butchery on My Last Great Project. I am rebuilding the baseboards and hopefully these will do the job. There has been much head scratching with measurements and how to get the most out of the lengths of wood I have but I have one frame complete and the second one started. This is easier to do as it is identical to the first so all I have to do is take the measurements from the first. What could go wrong????? These are the two more complex boards so the other two I need to make should hopefully be even less taxing on my arithmetic!  

Another day of achieving little!

In yesterdays post I said I hoped I was more energised today. However I woke up feeling a bi sick and before too long I knew I had a bug and migraine. So much for being energised! Most of the day I was in bed feeling sorry for myself but I did manage to spray the cab and tipper body for the Foden Haulmaster. The tipper body needs another coat of paint but it is looking much more like a real truck now.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be as energised as the new kittens who I caught taking a rare relaxing moment from causing chaos!

A day of achieving little!

It was one of those days when despite doing things I did not have a lot to physically show for it! I think I am still somewhat lethargic from my mild dose of Covid I had a week ago when strangely enough I felt better during the Covid then I do after it! 

I did do a bit more wood butchery for My Last Great Project model railway baseboards but nothing really to photograph. I also moved the Foden Haulmaster kit build on a little more with the chassis painted and the wheels just about painted. The chassis was airbrushed with a home brewed mix of Vallejo Red and Earth to produce a sort of dark red colour. The exhaust pipe was picked out in silver and will need rusting up later. The repairs to the tipper body have been completed and the areas that broke seem to be all glued back successfully (strange saying successfully in relation to one of my projects!) and sanded smooth. The cab body is also nearly ready to be painted with the various joins filled and sanded. However it is a day at the Rocks by Rail Museum tomorrow so unfortunately not a lot of model related activities will take place but then there is Wednesday when I am hopefully feeling a bit more energised!

More cats and one step forward and two back with the Foden Haulmaster!

Firstly the WMD HQ is now slightly larger in population with the addition of these two kittens who needed a home - Mrs. Woody is as much a sucker for cats needing a good home as I am for model railway stuff!

Marty and Monty join the other WMD cats which makes my life as Chief Litter Box Cleaner even more interesting!

Talking of interesting, once I had managed to get out to Man Cave having cleaned out the litter boxes, I carried out further work on the Foden Haulmaster kit. I was hoping to finish it ready for painting but that idea was a step too far not that you would guess from this photo which shows an almost complete model.

In trying to get the cab pieces to fit together as the parts are so poorly moulded and don't fit properly I decided to use the wonders of an elastic band to pull the part stogether to where they should be. The theory is relatively simple. However in my execution I obviously over tightened the elastic band. It was like some episode of the Road Runner Cartoon where Wylie Coyote stretches an oversized Acme elastic band across the road and then ends up flattened as the band pulls the two rocks together that it is fastened to together. The four parts of the cab went flat and the swear jar ended up a bit fuller then before I started! That was the first step back. However, as with Wylie, I started over again but unlike Wylie my second attempt did work. However the fit of the panels still needs work with filler and files and the arrow on the photo below shows the area that this is needed in. The other side is the same.

The other step back was with the tipper body. the sides splay out too far so that the rear tailgate did not fit properly. I could soon remedy that with a little gentle persuasion on the body sides to bend inwards. There was that snapping noise and a sudden loss of grip that indicated the persuasion had been too much and part of the side of the tipper had snapped off. I had to glue that back together and it will need further filling and sanding to make the repair invisible as the picture below shows. That swear jar did well tonight!

Hopefully tomorrow will see the glue hardened and work can recommence!

Bargain!

Mrs. Woody and myself went out today for a bit of a drive and a sandwich. We stopped off at a barn which had been converted in a village to a large antiques type establishment. I am not particularly into antiques and to be honest I believe Mrs. W thinks I am enough of an antique for her without adding any more! However you never know what you might find. My instinct was right as in a corner was a small cabinet with some old model railway stuff. I spied five Triang Mk1 Western Region coaches dating back to some time in the 1960's complete with their boxes. They are not the most detailed of models and by todays standards they are said to be crude by most modellers. However for me, with trains running around a layout, I am not going to be sitting two inches from the track trying to see if the third rivet from the left of the toilet compartment window is moulded in the correct place. I leave that to people who possibly need to re-evaluate their life! Even as 'crude' models they would go great with my maroon Class 52 Western diesel which was very much a Western Region of British Rail locomotive of the same era as the coaches. 

£10 each was the price. A quick examination showed me they were in great condition and an offer of £45 was accepted. Bargain! However while I was negotiating that deal Mrs. W had found a small cat decorated musical box which she liked (I thought that she didn't like antiques - so much for knowing my wife!) which also came home with us after my wallet was further depleted. 

Back at WMD HQ the coaches were unboxed from those wonderfully evocative red Triang boxes which I recall the excitement of receiving at Christmas or a birthday. Strange how a box can bring back memories!

The coaches were put on the track and the Western Class 52 diesel coupled up. Just before setting off on an inaugural trip around the layout I suddenly recalled that whilst having my sort out and tidy up a few days ago I had come across an old Traing coach which someone had given me decades ago. I dug it out again and it was another matching Western Region coach! Added to the others I now have a rake of six coaches for £45. Even more of a bargain especially as new coaches are between £30 and £60 each. Anyway, on the track they run well and the whole train looks very much like the photos of the real Western Region back in the 60's. I am to use a pun, really 'chuffed' with the coaches!

The Foden Haulmaster kit has moved on although not as quickly as I would have liked. The kit has 13 wheels (one is the spare just in case you wondered about the odd number) and they all had distinct moulding lines around them. Whilst this is not the greatest detailed kit and there is no tread pattern to the tyres I could not leave such a prominent mould line in sight on thirteen wheels. To sort them out took about an hour of filing but to me that was worth the time spent as I hope the picture shows.

Adding the wheels to the chassis brings that alive. I have also started the cab but the fit of the parts is so bad that I am having to glue the parts in stages to try to pull them eventually into line. However there will be a need for some filler once the parts are all glued fully. Filler has also been needed in the tipper body and tailgate. One of the unusual things about this kit is that whilst a simple kit it does lack a drivers and passenger seat the absence of which seems a bit obvious with all those windows in the cab. I have remedied this with my crude but hopefully acceptable scratch built seats. I don't think anyone using them would find any comfort in my design so I will do the World a favour and steer clear of any real life furniture design or construction!

Connections.

I talked about the Leaning Tower of Dry Doddington a couple of days ago and then about the Hornby Train pack released in 2012 to commemorate the 2012 Olympics yesterday and then today I went cycling back through Dry Doddington to find this.

According to Wikipedia, Shona McCallin was one of the members of the British Ladies Hockey Team who won a gold medal at the 2016 Olympics. A strange set of connections but that sort of thing does interest me! 

A bit further down the road I did get this shot of one of the LNER Hitachi 800 trains on the East Coast Mainline. They do look smart!

Back at WMD HQ I decided I needed a simple short project and had found this kit in yesterdays sort out and tidy up - yes it was one I had forgotten about!

It is based on an old kit dating back from the early 1980s before being taken over by Knightwing who re-released the kit a few years ago. It is to 00 gauge and it is very simple in detail but that suits me!

Just two spues of parts make up the kit.

The great thing about a simple kit like this is that an hours work saw the chassis more or less finished!

Hopefully the weekend will see most of the kit built unless Mrs. Woody has other ideas for my spare time!

Finding things I forgot about!

Things are getting desperate at the WMD HQ Man Cave with me falling over stuff left lying about so it is time for a tidy and sort out. For me and no doubt others this sort of activity reveals two things. Firstly you have too much stuff and secondly you find things you had forgotten you ever had.

A case in point for me was discovering a Hornby Train Pack. I have several of these but had forgotten about this one which I picked up for a bargain price some years back at the Bure Valley Model Railway Shop in Norfolk. This particular one was a licensed Olympic Celebration pack issued back in 2012 as a limited edition of 1948 sets of which this is 157. It contains an N2 0-6-2 locomotive and two teak carriages as would have been used at the time of the 1948 Olympics which were also held in London and the first since the Second World War had ended.

The detail is stunning, just look at the teak effect on the coaches and I know why I bought it in the first place. Just need to find the time to give it a run now!

There are more things I discovered that I had forgotten about in my tidying but I will leave those for another time when Mrs. Woody isn't reading this blog!

The Leaning Tower of err.... Dry Doddington!

I went on a bike ride with Mr. Beecham today - he of cycling and modelling prowess. It was a great day to cycle with little wind and a nice temperature and Mr. B is fantastic company. I led the way with a route taking in places he had not been before. We were a bit off the beaten track and luckily this ford had a footbridge at the side of it. Despite the drought the river was about a foot deep across the ford which is a bit much going through on a bike.

I am always amazed at what we as a country sign. I think it is pretty obvious that there is no depth to dive or jump without hitting the concrete but we seem to need to put a sign up just in case!

Moving on we arrived at a village called Dry Doddington. The village is famous for a few things as the sign highlights.

However the most obvious is the church tower which lens. Thye village is built on clay and the shrinkage with dryness has led to the tower leaning with a tilt greater than the leaning tower of Pisa!

Although there  ahs been work over recent years to stabilise the lean the drought of this year has seen further subsidence but this time in the main part of the building.

Sad as it is I suspect that the church will reamin standing - it has done so since 1654 as the carved stone states next to the door.

Moving on to a nearby village you can tell you are away from the night life of the towns and cities as the hand written sign shows! Despite having a road named Town Street the village is small and sleepy!

£2 seems like a bargain even if you have to bring your won food and drink! Unfortunately I have other plans that evening! 

Getting back to some normality.

Getting over Covid and living through the unusual last few weeks following the death of The Queen today saw some level of normality return to my life. After yesterday, when I went out for my early morning bike ride, when everywhere seemed deserted and quiet with little traffic on the roads todays, trip down to The Rocks by Rail Museum saw me travelling on roads which seemed more crowded then usual.

The Museum was also busy with not only visitors but with various activities going on.

Unusually for a Tuesday we had a loco on the move as its new owner got used to the controls.

I really like this loco - its got solid looks with am engine tone to match.

Steam wise, work continues with Elizabethan 0-4-0 saddle tank which looks at the moment much as she did a year ago but there has been a lot of work carried on to the point where she is nearly ready to run.

Its now at the stage where lathe work is required rather than just bashing things with large hammers!

We know things are getting close to running as the cab and saddle tank have turned up ready to be renovated and fitted.

Hopefully next year will see her finished and running on steam days.

Right, back to cooking dinner for Mrs. W - normality returns!