Cold morning for cycling but I break a record!

It was cold this morning - very cold as my kneecaps can testify as I cycled this morning. However I was warmed by the fact that my total mileage for this year so far has ended up at 5556 miles which is a record for me in my later years of life. Not done that kind of mileage since the times I could get out of bed without creaking! Last years grand total was 5544 so with eight weeks of the year left I may, health and weather allowing, get to 6000 miles which would be a record I would like to get to.

Back in the relative warmth of the WMD HQ I had an hour or so doing some more on the viaducts for my 00 gauge Last Great Project. I have now managed to finish the various parapet wall sections that go either side of the main structure. A bit of a boring and repetitive job but it is now at least done.

I also had a look at the track bases for the viaduct. The track will be ballasted once I get to that stage so there will be diluted PVA glue used. This is great for gluing ballast down but not so good for cardboard which can turn a rather soggy mess. Trying to think ahead, which is alien to me in most cases, I need to seal the surface of the track base. I used the sanding sealer that I used for the balsa canal boats that I built for my 009 narrow gauge layout (which is still undergoing construction). This should at least act as a waterproof coating keeping the viaduct from  ending up as a water infested collapsed cardboard hulk! That is the theory at least.

The various parts awaiting the next stage of construction. I will however have to paint the other side of the track base to ensure they are fully sealed and waterproof.

A day out for Mrs. Woody!

Today I took Mrs. Woody for a day out to the Spalding Model Railway Exhibition! Not sure if she knew she was going but she went and as I highlighted to her she could not only enjoy my company and the show but also see first hand how little I would spend there!

The exhibition was brilliant. Some really good layouts, good selection of traders all well laid out and lots of people talking and chatting, including me. I had not realised until I thanked a member of the club on the way out that this was the Spalding's club first exhibition since the pandemic. 

Layout wise I will highlight a few from the many there - they were all great but some had those little things that make you think WOW!

Firstly is this layout called Kozel and based on a cement works in Czechoslovakia. I really showed my skills of observation when I asked the operator on which country the layout was based. He said Czechoslovakia and then highlighted the large Czech flag on the front of the layout which you can see in the photo below. Oh well sometimes you just don't see these things!

What I did observe though was the inside of this office building. Superbly modelled with office staff at desks and filing cabinets and although I thought I had seen it all in the model railway world I was about to be further educated. In this building even the computer monitors were illuminated! You can just about make them out in the photo below on the top floor left hand office. A brilliant touch and one I have never seen before.  . 

Copper Wort is an 00 gauge layout based upon the brewing industry in the early 1900s. A superb model with loads of detail all scatchbuilt by its owner. The layout featured recently on the TV series about Hornby.

The owner even sculpts and casts his own figures of which there are many on the layout. back in those days labour was cheap and the work hard.

Modelling of this type really captures the atmosphere of the time being portrayed. It takes skill to make and compose all the elements in scenes such as this.

Moving forward in time to the 1970s this rather large but equally atmospheric layout 0 gauge layout called Netherwood played on the griminess of that period on the railways. It was a time when the Country was going through economic problems and there was no money to modernise or maintain the railways. 

All that detail is possible in 0 gauge and the layout looks fantastic.

However there is a price to pay - the space needed. This photo of the fiddle yard shows just how much space is needed for a layout depicting longish trains. It has to be at least 30 foot long by 15 across. Nice if you have the space.

Talking of space no model railway exhibition is complete without a Darlek or two. Mrs. Woody found this one hiding in a station building.

I could go on about the layouts and fill this blog with lots of pictures but I will leave it there and conclude by saying that Mrs. Woody did admit to being impressed! As to my spending? Well lets just say that my wallet is somewhat thinner than I intended it to be which didn't really impress Mrs. W but as I said to her my company for her today is priceless although deep down I know it is going to cost me!

Profile update!

After cutting my profile boards yesterday they got a coat of grey paint - much of my life is grey as Mrs. Woody says! I attached them to the baseboard frame with some self tapping zinc screws which contrasted well with the grey paint. Even model railways can be fashionable unlike my wardrobe.

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Getting the baseboard back into place and putting the track and viaducts back it looks like this.

Those screws look good but I am really pleased with how this whole has turned out so far.

Both viaducts have all their main structure completed now so they are just awaiting their embellishments such as the parapets which are coming along on the work bench. I do love that low down view looking through the arches - just need to run some trains over it now.

The only thing about this is that it makes the rest of the layout standout as needing more work! Oh well plenty to keep me going then!

Profiles!

Not the sort of profile you have on-line - mine no doubt does not figure highly on most peoples social media - but the profile boards that neaten the edge of layout. Before I go much further with my dropped section baseboard I need to have some profile boards in place. Having got hold of a suitable piece of 3.5mm ply and amassed my tools of wood butchery - hand saw, electric sander and jig-saw (I prefer the type with 500 pieces and a nice picture of a train but that was not going to be much use today!). After a couple of hours I actually ended up uninjured and with two profile boards that seem to fit!

Next step is to get them attached and painted. I can already hear Mrs. Woody saying 'If you have a paint brush out this could do with painting and that and that and then there is the.......'! Think I will keep a low profile! 

Groundwork!

Not the type of groundwork that is in gardening but getting my baseboards for my 00 gauge Last Great Project Layout into a more or less complete form. It was far too windy to do any outside work as I will tell Mrs. Woody - wish me luck with that one! So today I was undercover filling in the missing parts of the baseboard tops and lining everything up so the ground is all level and lines up. Still more to do - as always - but at least the track is not spanning open air apart from the one part awaiting the second viaduct! Most disconcerting if you are an 00 gauge loco driver!

Best Kept Secret!

After yesterdays major tree and hedge pruning operation I found myself at the Rocks By Rail Museum today where I was greeted by this proclaiming - Best Kept Secret!. 

Well even with my limited imaginative skills I could tell this Best Kept Secret was a steam locomotive! My investigations into this so called secret revealed that this little 0-4-0 steam shunter is off to Kent where its present owner lives. It will be restored and operational next year - well that is the plan but the owner has a team ready to go so it may well happen. If you see 'Vigilant' as it is known on the rails in steam next year it will no doubt look a lot different to how it looks now!

Having discovered what I needed I ended up doing - well more tree and hedge pruning! No escaping it whether at home or at the Museum. I certainly had a bigger job then at home. It started out looking like this.

Some big stuff came out including a 20foot self seeded Ash tree that was in conflict with the established tree.

After about 5 hours it looked a bit tidier and had widened the access path and given space for what remains to fill out next year.

One of the main differences to being at home with this type of job is I didn't need to be quiet as neat - no Mrs. Woody to answer to if there is a bit of a mess! Nice!

It may not look like much came out but here is the pile of stuff I had to stack round the corner. It is about 7 feet tall! Glad I don't have to bag that lot up and take it to the recycling center!

Back at WMD HQ I even managed, after a another tiring day of physical work, to get one of the viaduct kits glued together. It is no secret that it is progressing! How quickly more progress will be will depend on how much more gardening I need or Mrs. W thinks I need to do at home!

End of the month so lots of things need to be done.

I had my Covid booster on Saturday and yesterday I felt terrible. Mrs. Woody was unaffected but that seems to be the way it goes with these things. If I am bad she is OK and vice versa. Anyway I woke up today feeling relatively well which was good as this week I need to get on top of preparing the garden for its Winter hibernation. However a 20 mile bike ride first brought my total for this year up to 5461 miles. 

Back at WMD HQ there are some things which should have been done earlier in the year like hedge cutting and tree pruning but with the drought affecting them during the summer I have left them to recover until now. Well with the amount of rain and warmish weather we have had over the last few weeks they have certainly recovered. I should have taken a 'before' picture of this tree but in my haste to get jobs done (please note that Mrs. W) I just went straight in but you get some idea of the fact that about 6 inches of growth all round was cut back from the various bags full of the debris now awaiting to go to the recycling center.

The tree certainly looks more manicured then it did before .

Having done that job I felt I ought to reward myself with a bit of model making. The two Metcalfe viaducts still need finishing - like a lot of things I do! As an aside Metcalfe have sent me the missing part which is great service from them. However because as I have discovered my kit, although bought this year, dates from 2006 the parts references have changed so the sheet sent is the wrong one. However an email to Metcalfe was answered within 30 minutes and the right part is on its way. Apparantly sheet references were changed when the kit was updated a few years ago. Again I have to say great service from this company.

I am building the parapets at the moment and although small parts there is a fair amount of preparation work to do on them. This is the sheet with one of the parapets which is made up of two main parts.

The core of the parts requires bending in half and although the part is partly cut through at the factory to get a neat fold requires scoring the back of the bend.

The core is then overlaid with another part that provides some relief  with inset brick work. All those cut outs required crayoning in to hide the card edge and that took some time but is worth it.

I have been using UHU glue for the substructure but I have bought some DeLuxe Materials card glue which most of the modelling magazines have recommended. Although a little costly I have to admit it is good! It has an instant grip which holds parts together and means I can move the build on quickly - well as quick as I go!

In my usual manner I have temporarily put the two parts I have semi completed so far in place on the main viaduct to see how they look.

Certainly adds to the structure and I only have another 14 sections to make!

Going back in time.

At my age I can do a lot of going back in time posts but for this one I am only going back to around 2012. On holiday with Mrs. Woody in Norfolk that year a trip to Sherringham was undertaken. A walk down the main street towards the sea front saw us pass a model shop which at that time was called AutoLoco. Despite the name implying otherwise the shop had a lot of second hand radio controlled boats of various degrees of quality. However there was model railway stuff in there as well although you sometimes had to search through other stuff to get to it. Over the years I have had several things from that shop searched out amongst the boats but in this particular year something caught my eye in the shop window.  A Bachmann Class 108 2 car DMU in early British rail green. Its price of £79.50 sounds like a real bargain given at the time it was retailed new at £95.15 and at todays prices even more of a bargain with similar models well over £200. Given that it already had had a DCC chip fitted as well made me reach for my wallet. 

I am ashamed to say that apart from having a look at the time at the model it sat in its box for the next 10 years. This weekend however it came out of its box and despite its overlong hibernation it ran superbly at the first application of power. Good job I guess as it would be a bit late to take it back and the shop has changed ownership as well! It is a wonderful model and I recall just why I was captivated when I saw it. Hopefully it will be seeing more of the tracks on my layout where it belongs.

I am not a fan of the so called 'unboxing' posts and videos but I did include a couple of pictures of the box here to remind me of what the model was and its price! You can see my skills at doing a 'unboxing' item are somewhat limited as I have a picture of an empty box. I forgot to take the photo with the model still in the box and I really could not be bothered to pack it away again, take the photo and to then put it back in the box only to get it out again, if that makes sense? So here is the empty box!

You just have to love the description ' With Speed Whiskers"! Wonder if my cats have those?

So without any further delay here are some photos of this beautiful DMU.

It has illuminated destination blinds with Bedford at one end and Hitchin at the other. This was a branch of the Midland Railway where this DMU would have run in the 1960's at which time it would have been a cutting edge train. 60 years later and similar DMUs are now running on Heritage railways. 

 

So that concludes this trip back in time but there are lots more things in the WMD HQ collection yet to be unearthed from back in time so stay tuned - my blog is the ultimate cure for insomnia!

Am I the Paparazzi?

Out on a bike ride this afternoon and going towards a high class wedding venue there was a wedding car stopped at the side of the road with the happy (I presume) couple having their photos taken with the venue in the background. It was certainly a good afternoon for it although I suspect that with all the rain the Bride was probably sinking rapidly into the grass verge if she was wearing high heels. I shouted congratulations as I passed which was acknowledged by the couple and thought nothing more about it apart from wondering if the Groom will have a list of jobs to do after the honeymoon similar to my list from Mrs. Woody. 

However going further up the road I got stopped by one of the staff from the aforementioned wedding venue. Had I seen a white van, was his question. I answered no, but I had seen a newly wed couple having their photo taken further down the road. The response I got was that's OK then - its a Society Wedding but we had reports of some Papparazzi in a white van. I did point out that in my lycra cycling clothes the possibility of successfully hiding a telephoto camera was remote so he should discount me from his concerns. However I had to ask - who were the couple? Apparently that was information too secret, until its probably in the papers tomorrow, to divulge! Apparently they were expecting helicopters later in the day so it must be some famous couple. Having completed conversation I rode but as I headed back the wedding couple were still there having more pictures taken. I did think the Bride looked a little shorter then before - probably was wearing high heels then! Passing by I thought why not. So Pretend Papparazzi Woody took this distance shot with his phone which shows - well it shows very little! Certainly nothing a paper or magazine would pay for and I didn't want it for that. One day though, I may actually find out who the couple were although I am that uninterested in celebrities, their names will probably mean nothing to me but Mrs. W may well know. In the meantime I can say my career as a Paparazzi has been short lived and unsuccessful so Mrs. W can rest easy!

The happy couple - who ever they are.

The zoomed in low resolution shot that shows - well not a lot and that my career as a possible Paparazzi was doomed from the start!

Testing.

With the track laid and fettled on my Last Great Project 00 gauge layout it was time to test it by having an operating play session! Just really a time to run some trains round and through the various point formations to see if there were any issues. A great way to pass an hour after cleaning the house and doing some gardening just in case Mrs. Woody is reading this. If she isn't reading this then the cleaning house and gardening came afterwards! 

Anyway, the result was that it all seems to work as it should - amazing! No doubt some problems will come about as time goes by but I was particularly impressed that the crossovers seemed to work without derailing any stock.

Even in its less than finished state my favorite part of the layout is fast becoming the viaduct section. I think it is because I can look up to the trains or maybe I just have an obsession for viaducts! Either way I do enjoy watching trains cross like this Freightliner Class 66 meeting a Central Trains Class 156 coming the other way. Something that in real life has not happened for nearly 20 years but I can recreate in miniture just as I used to see when I was out and about - oh dear I am showing my age!

Even though it is far from finished I can visualise how this section of the layout will finally look. Just need to make that vision a reality - now that will be a further test for me!