One small step but one giant leap for Woody

The Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier is almost finished! The masked up windscreen was unmasked having had a coat of dirt airbrushed on it yesterday.

It was fitted with some PVA glue to avoid  any damage or smears on the clear parts. In addition the tool rack for the rear tailgate of the truck was painted and fitted. The two remaining figures were also glued into the back of the truck and a few items of cargo were placed in the trailer. Small steps but leaping forward!

A few jobs to do on the base and then it will be fully finished! 

On Chalkdon my 009 narrow gauge layout, the walkway onto the platform I made and painted yesterday have been fitted making it safer for the 4mm passengers to get to the platform with their small steps rather than leaping!

On the step project the blocks are in and the slabs have been placed on the brickwork awaiting setting into a cement bed. However they are at least in place as they are not the easiest things to move and lift! 

Mrs. woody seems impressed which is a major plus point! 

'One small step but one giant leap for Woody' to badly misquote Buzz Aldrin! However it does at least look a lot better then 3 months ago! Hopefully that grass seed will grow soon - how can it not with all the rain!

A mixed bag!

A mixed bag of things done today including an incredible bike ride of two halves. Firstly heading into the brick wall of a wind and then, secondly, on the way home feeling as though I am about to take off! The weather appears to be so unpredictable that even the weather forecast seems to be a best guess at what might happen! Today started sunny but cold. At least it was dry and that was enough for me to mix up some concrete for inside the brickwork of my step into the rebuilt conservatory. I had already put a base of hardcore inside the brick base.

The idea is that seven of the concrete blocks just by the lump hammer in the picture above will be cemented in the base and provide support for the slabs that will span the bricks and form the top of the step. The blocks need a base to sit on hence the concrete base inside the brick work. I do try to think these things out - not always logically though as Mrs. Woody would say!

Mid way through above and the finished job below - just as the temperature really dropped, the wind blew even harder and the rain started!

Luckily although the rain bothered me as I got wet, the concrete was nice and snug under cover from the wooden temporary step. Hopefully I can get the blocks cemented in place tomorrow and then the slabs for the step installed on Friday - weather permitting!

In the dry of the Man Cave I had a mixed bag of small but important things to get on with. First off I need to finish the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier. One of the few parts to fit is the windscreen which is a one piece moulding including the windscreen wipers. As the truck is fairly heavily weathered a clean windscreen was not going to look right. Therefore I used my compass cutting on some masking tape to cut out a mask for the sweep of the two windscreen wipers. I will spray some 'dirt' coloured paint to simulate the grime thrown up on the glass and then remove the masks which will reveal clear glass where the wipers wipe. That's the theory!

For my 009 narrow gauge layout Chalkdon, I need to have a walkway across the tracks to the platform. I also need some packing cases, sacks, cable drums and oil drums to place around the canal wharf. These have been made up and have been sprayed with an initial coat of paint so should be in place soon.

Back at the Museum and back to the routine work!

It is Tuesday so I was back at the Rocks By Rail Museum. I was last there on Easter Sunday, the first open day of the 2023 season and it was a great day. Yesterday with the rain I did think it might not be a good day for attendance but apparently it was! So all in all a good start to the year but the routine work to keep the site going continues and I was out with the mower again. Although I cut he grass only a week ago it had grown about two inches - it must be all that rain!

Strangely, the drag line was operating today. Not for the delight of visitors, although they would no doubt have been interested to see it in action on an otherwise non-operational day, but as part of a YouTube production. Stay tuned for details about that once it is released!

The YouTube creator getting his filming equipment ready!

Meanwhile steam loco 1391 needed its tubes and fire box cleared out so it was out in the open with Jean and Betty the Sentinels. 

George, who will need a good clean up before being allowed in back home, clearing some of the ash that came out of the loco - it fills potholes well!

Meanwhile in the restoration shed work to smarten up the Shark brake van continues. As you can see it is really showing the ravages of living outside.

One of the bonuses of being a volunteer is that you can see things most people never get to see like the brake gear on the chassis. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea but it interests me! 

Easter wash out!

Well it may have been sunny yesterday but today was one of the rainiest Easter Mondays I can recall. Not sure how the Rocks By Rail Museum got on today but I guess there were not as many visitors as yesterday. There was a break in the rain for an hour or so  and Mrs. Woody and myself took advantage to get a couple of things shopping wise but we did end up having to park during a heavy thunderstorm.

Back in the relative dryness of WMD HQ I took the chance of not being able to do anything outside (even Mrs. W agreed it was too wet to be out) with unpacking the rest of my Hornby DRS coaches to run with my two DRS Class 47 diesel locomotives. Because many rural terminal stations were simplified track wise to be only able to deal with Diesel Multiple Units which had cabs at each end, when the likes of DRS stepped in for whatever reason to run a service they had to in effect top and tail the coaches with a locomotive at each end to allow the train to be driven back to where ever it had come from. This I replicated with my two diesels and five coaches. It looked an impressive train-  to me anyway! 

Rocks by Rail Museum opens to a great start for 2023.

Well the 2023 season for the Rocks By Rail Museum got off to a great start! With the current squeeze on peoples budgets we were unsure how that might affect the visitor numbers. However the entrance fee remains the same as last year and cafe prices are up only slightly which may make a visit for a family as attractive as last year compared to other venues where prices are up considerably. The true answer to the strategy will only reveal itself at the end of the season. However it seems today that we attracted more visitors then on Easter Sunday last year so certainly a great start! Talking to our guests it seems they had a great time and would be coming back so we are hopefully doing the right things.

Today was a steam day with brake van rides.

A rare view of all four brake vans together. The nearest one is the one just restored and fresh out of the workshop. The last two are the ones that need restoration at the end of the season.

Meanwhile the cafe has been brightened up. Shortly after these pictures the gates opened and at one stage it looked as though we were going to run out of food! This was particularly worrying as the food was supposed o be sufficient for today and tomorrow. More supplies are on order!

Talking of tomorrow, it will be a quarry day with the excavators working including the drag line.

Although there will be more going on tomorrow there was still a lot of action today with a birthday tractor run coming to the museum with a host of vintage tractors and one more modern one! They certainly attracted a lot of attention when we parked them up next to the entrance.

Good to know there is a sense of humour in the World of tractors!

DRS coaches arrive at last!

During the pandemic I was fortunate enough to get hold of two Bachmann Class 47s in DRS livery with DCC Sound at a very good price. It was around the time that Hornby released their DRS livery coaches. Unfortunately by the time I got round to seeking some out they were sold out or on eBay at ridiculous prices of around £70. I was not paying that amount and put the idea to the back of my mind. Then for their 2022 range Hornby announced some more DRS coaches and getting my act together I pre-ordered some. Wind forward about 18 months and they arrived! I had almost forgotten about them until I got an email saying they were on the way. I was expecting a single box with the five coaches in it. Instead fives boxes arrived! 

I think Mrs. Woody thought I had ordered a shop worth of things. It did make me wonder why Hornby could not have just put them in one box instead of five boxes which each had room for at least three coaches. Anyway I am sure there is a logical reason for Hornby doing it this way. It was fascinating for Monty the cat who thought it all very interesting with five empty boxes to play with!

Having had a busy day and with friends visiting I have not had time to get them all out on the layout but I could not resist at least seeing one on the track with one of the Class 47s.

They do look good together. I am looking forward to getting the rest out but that will have to wait a day or so as I am working at the Rocks By Rail Museum tomorrow on the first day of the 2023 season. Apparently there is a 20 strong tractor convoy coming to visit! That should be a sight!

Fun size????

A shopping trip today with Mrs. Woody as the cupboards and fridge at WMD HQ were bare! Not my idea of fun but we have to eat! Whilst reining in Mrs. Woody's desire for a wide variety, of in my mind, unnecessarily frivolous products at a cost that makes model making seem a bargain I noticed this.

Whilst Fun Size sweets I can just about understand as a means of selling ever smaller bars of chocolate I have to admit I was taken aback by what can be fun about a small cucumber? Then I noticed the spelling of cucumber and a Google found this - 

The Cucumbears are vegetarian bears who attempt to convert passerbys to vegetarians. The average hero has a violent reaction to being ordered around by bears and starts combat. The Cucumbear gets it's name for using the vegetables it has gathered, including Cucumbers, as weapons. If you want to find out more about this and the game they are from here is the link - https://wiki.godvillegame.com/Cucumbear

I still come back to my point  - what is fun about tiny cucumbers regardless of how you try and sell them! I must be getting old!

Back at the sanity of WMD HQ with the shopping put away in the now somewhat fuller cupboards and fridge I did venture out to the Man Cave for an hour of fun! After some fairly intensive model making sessions over the last couple of weeks I just played, I mean operated, some trains on my Last Great Project layout. It has been neglected over the past few months whilst other projects have taken precedence so it was really nice just to bring it back to life and be able to run some trains round. 

I got my EWS Class 37 out which has a great sound chip in it that really gives the right sounds for what is known by train spotters as a tractor. 

It might only be a small model but it is what I can actually relate to as being fun sized!

Video making day!

Today was a YouTube video making day. Strange how my unscripted 20 minute rambling about Chalkdon, my 009 narrow gauge layout, takes about 5 hours of time to produce. I guess those better at these things can get the whole process done in less than an hour but for me I end have to record it several times over because things tend to go wrong. Then there is the editing, the processing to convert it into a suitable video format and then the time to upload, which given I am not on the end of a fast connection, takes some time. However I enjoy it, it is something different for me and does give me a different view of my layout which can be enlightening as to what remains to be done and equally whether it all looks as I intended. Photographs are great but video just gives that little bit of a different perspective.

I just use the camera on my phone and there is no script so what comes out is fairly amateurish but I am a model maker not Spielberg! Anyway todays video is Part 3 on Chalkdon and there is a fair amount about the Bachmann EZ Command controller that I use to run it. 

 It is about 20 years old and one of the first DCC controllers that was produced so it doesn't have all the features that modern day DCC controllers have but it is great for a small layout such as Chalkdon. If you would like to find out more the video is below for you viewing delight!

Hairspray - and its not the movie!

On with further work on Chalkdon my 009 narrow gauge layout. I had several jobs in mind but as with the best laid plans, especially mine, things did not go according to plan! In fact I could have pulled my hair out but luckily I had hairspray in stock!

First item was to 'plant' the tree by the canal wharf. I have decided I like it in its position where it had been temporarily plonked for a few days. Before I did that though I needed to add a bit of the leaf foliage that had dropped off the foliage mat when I first applied it to the tree. Surprisingly my chosen adhesive was the aforementioned hairspray. I have had this spray for possibly nearly 20 years now and being cheap it is nice and sticky!

With the existing foliage sprayed I just scattered the loose leaf material over it and it stuck to the tree.

That looks better! Who would have thought that hairspray would be a good model making adhesive!

With tree now leafed up it was glued to the layout. Moving onto the next job which was that locos were hesitant on the wharf siding.  They would stall which I thought was a simple two minute track cleaning job. Wrong! After an hour or so I managed to figure out that in placed the plastic cobble stones either side of the track was loose and higher than the track. The result was that the loco wheels were being lifted clear of the track and loosing power. I addition the cobbles in the center of the track was tight in places and binding on the loco wheels. No choice but to lift the cobbles, adjust and re-glue. Of course the freshly 'planted' and glued tree did not make this job simple!

It does not look pretty but you sometimes have to be destructive to be constructive! 

With the adjustments made it has been re-glued and tested and works! Unfortunately I knocked the chimney off the narrow boat having only recently re-glued it! Luckily I still have most of my hair  - even if it is stuck back on with the hairspray!

 

Time to cut some grass - a lot of grass!

First time for ages that a day at the Rocks By Rail Museum was warm and dry. So warm and dry that I was put in charge of the new lawn mower and set on the task of getting as much grass cut as possible! There is a lot to cut and it had been growing so was not the easiest to cut but I got a fair amount done ready for our Sunday opening. I was even entrusted with the new mower!

A couple of guys passed me whilst cutting the roadside grass out on their tractors for a run out!

Looking back on the sea of cut grass!

In the workshop the completed restored brake van has been moved out and the Shark brake van moved in for some emergency repair works to see it through the 2023 season and then into a full blown restoration over next Winter.

It is hard to believe this was restored some ten years ago - it has a hard life!

In the cafe the floor has been partly painted although the paint is not drying as it should! Could mean an interesting time on Sunday! Maybe it is a cunning plan to keep customers at the counter.