Getting closer to nature on Route 66?

I always enjoy Summer with the general growth of things, the bright colours that plants and flowers provide and the activity of wildlife as they bring their off spring up. The older I have become seemingly the more Summer means to me. I guess it is a getting old thing! So, today, when Mrs. Woody announced she wanted to go to a local country house to have a look around the house and gardens I was not going to argue - I never disagree with what Mrs. W says anyway! We arrived at the country house to find that it was holding a car show. Now some decades ago I would have thought that this sheer coincidence must make it my lucky day and have driven straight in. However Mrs. W and myself agreed (now that is an unusual occurrence) that it just looked too crowded and we drove off. We did end up back at the tranquility of Easton Walled Gardens where we visited a few weeks ago.

One of the nice things about the garden is that it is always changing as nature goes through the seasons and that you always find something new to look at. The other thing is that the gardens are large enough to leave some areas uncultivated so that nature can take over and the results can be stunning with grasses and wild flowers providing an oasis.

There were a lot of bees, butterflies and wasps and I stretched the capabilities of my camera phone to try to catch a bee and wasp as they hunted for nectar.

 It just hits you that this simple activity by these insects, repeated trillions of times around the World, is the basis of how we all keep alive. Amazing!

There are of course the more cultivated areas where form and order are displayed such as the universe garden where the galaxy and planets are represented in a mix of plant and sculpture form .

Further down the flower beds are dominated by large plants to an amazing effect.

At the moment sweet peas are one of the highlights of the gardens where they are grown for display and then the seeds are taken for the next years plants as well as for selling on through the on site shop.

It is strange how sometimes there can be the most unusual connection but having driven away from a car show to come to the gardens instead I find one of the varieties of sweet pea called Route 66 which from having driven some of it is probably the biggest car show ever!

Anyway a great afternoon and time spent sitting lazily in the sun for me and Mrs. W as well as this robotic lawn mower which had decided to call it a day and had parked up!

There is another reason I like to get close to nature at the walled gardens - they sell amazing cakes some of which came back to WMD HQ!

Back at WMD HQ work on my Last Great Project 00 gauge layout is progressing but would easily be taken over by nature if allowed! I have now finished the track work to extend the loop over the viaduct.

I am now in a position where I can start to fasten track down permanently as well as wiring it up and ballasting it. Or should I just let nature do it?

Doing things twice!

Having got back to trying to make some progress on my Last Great Project 00 gauge layout I was somewhat frustrated with myself that I have ended up doing some things twice. Now whilst Mrs. Woody will confirm that I do some things twice, like a visit to a place where the second visit is to apologise for the first visit, I try to avoid this where unnecessary. So it was a bit concerning to find I had to rebuild parts of the viaducts because they had warped. This was a major issue at either end of the viaducts but some carefully inserted foam board and card has both dealt with the warping issue and brought the railbed level of the viaduct to inline with that on the baseboard. 

Hopefully once I find the missing capping stones to the piers I can say that the viaducts are finished - both of them!

Sometimes I should try and remember!

A busy day at WMD HQ today with a trip to the scrap yard to cash in my collection of scrap metal that I have gathered. £8.50 just for a scrap car battery! That will buy some lemon drizzle cakes! Anyway with an empty car it was back to WMD HQ to pack it again for a trip to the waste recycling center. Never one to miss an opportunity Mrs. W had given me a small list of things to pick up whilst I was out. Small list??? £121 later I returned to HQ to unpack that small list!

Whilst exhausted from the effort of typing my pass code in to pay for the 'small list' of items (I am waiting for the machine to one day tell the assistant to retain the card and destroy the customer) I did have some time in the Man Cave. In yesterdays post I did say I needed to next do some work to the second viaduct. Well there was a reason for that which for reasons of exhaustion I forgot! However it relates to the fact that I am lengthening the loop of track that runs over that viaduct. Sense would say do the viaduct first then the track. I have done the track first! Not a major issue but I will need to lift the track again to work on the viaduct.

This is the end of the loop that I want to extend.

The photo below shows the point has been moved back which will extend the loop by about a foot or 30cm depending on your preferred measurement system!

As there was a need to form some curves using flexi track I used an old trick of stripping the sleepers off the rail. I then bent the rail to the curve I needed and rethreaded the rail onto the sleepers. If you just try to bend the track with the rail attached to the sleepers it will fight back and try to straighten itself so this is a good way to avoid that problem.

I have got further with the track laying but forgot to take photos so more tomorrow when I may have actually done the necessary work on the viaduct - if I remember!

Don't do this at home!

Well I think I can just about say, after seven months, that the conservatory rebuild exterior work is now complete! Mrs. Woody will be pleased to cross that off her list of jobs for me to do. It is indeed a rare occasion that she can tick a job off so it may be time to have a slice of lemon drizzle cake to celebrate!

The job that brought it all to a completion was the setting of the step slabs on a bed of cement and then the final gravel surround. The slabs weigh a lot. I used to be able, many years ago, to lift and carry these but these days I am more limited to lifting a slice of lemon drizzle cake and carrying it to the lounge to eat! I really did not fancy trying to give myself a bad back by lifting the slabs on and off the bricks so my ingenious if somewhat safety challenged solution was to raise one end of the slab and hold it up with a stout piece of timber whilst I put the mortar on the bricks. With careful and consistent application of the mortar the slab should, when lowered be level. It was whilst putting the mortar to the back of the slab that my mind kept worrying about the slab falling on my arms and whether this ingenious idea was indeed as ingenious as I thought.

Well the fact that I am writing this post is confirmation that no accidents happened but my advice is, don't do this at home!

With the slabs bedded on mortar and the surrounds graveled up it is finished!

To celebrate I cut the grass and then had an hour in my Man Cave where I did some more work on finishing one of the viaducts. The job required the end brick piers to be fitted which I left off when I first built the viaducts as I needed to adjust the height of the viaduct in relation to the track level. Now this is where another don't do this at home warning comes in. When I built the viaduct back in November last year I made up the stone capping stones to go on top of the piers. I put them somewhere safe awaiting the moment that I would need them. Where that place is is beyond me! So, if you do stop building something to come back to it later make sure you put the remaining parts somewhere safe but leave a note of where that is with whatever you are building! 

However I have replaced the first viaduct which is now level with the track following the addition of some card to the foundations and has the end piers are fitted. I will find the capping stones sometime!

Next up is the second viaduct.

Woody's mad cap idea actually works!

Back on Saturday I was talking about the issue with the Hornby DCC Sound chip and the Ringfield powered Hornby HST train. Basically, put the sound chip in and it is not capable of providing enough power to run the Ringfield motor so the HST (high Speed Train) becomes a SST - Slow Speed Train! I am no expert on electronics with two wires being about my limit of understanding! However I knew the train ran fine with a standard DCC chip. Substitute it with the sound DCC chip and it ran slow. So in my mind the obvious answer was not to re-motor it or sell it and buy a more expensive modern model. In true Woody style, which will probably make anyone who has expertise in electronics roll their eyes or shout at their screen if they read this, my mad cap idea and solution was to run the motor and light from the standard DCC chip and add a second DCC socket in parallel to plug the DCC sound DCC chip into. There was certainly room in the body of the power car even with the Ringfield motor and I had a socket in stock at the WMD HQ Stores.

Handily, on the reverse of the socket it was conveniently labeled up as to what each pin connected to making soldering the two wires from the pickups simple to the point that even I could not go too far wrong!

Having unsoldered my previous connection to the first DCC socket that I installed I then added two more wires and soon the additional socket was soldered in parallel. The standard and sound DCC chips were then plugged in.

Putting it all back into the chassis I just left it loose for the moment just in case I needed to carry out further work on this as yet untested solution.

With trepidation it was put back on the track along with the other power car and the controller was turned on. 'Guess what', as I usually say to Mrs. Woody when I have broken something! It worked just as it should do! The Ringfield motor controlled by the standard DCC chip ran the train at HST speeds whilst the DCC sound decoders in each of the power cars provided the noise. Brilliant! I will do a video of it running in a day or so just to prove it does actually work! However that will have to wait until I get the viaduct back in place which I am finishing off from when I first built it last November! More on that later in the week.

Having mentioned Mrs. W, I better add, just in case she reads this, that today I did finish cementing in the slabs that I cleaned up last week ready for the moment when, as I informed Mrs. W, the conditions were right for cement work. I never actually told her what those conditions were just so I could keep my options open! However that job is now done tidying up the slabs but highlighting I need to clear up the rubbish at the side of the house. Another job on the list!

Mr. D and the torque converter - much more interesting then my vegetational butchery!

A day at the Rocks By Rail Museum where Mr. D has had his reconditioned torque converter fitted! Now to put things into context Mr. D is not someone like the muscular Mr. T from the A Team TV series but is a small 0-4-0 loco. A torque converter is a little like an automatic gearbox in a car, just that it has one gear. 

The clean grey looking part on the left of the photo is the torque converter which is fastened to the end of the engine. You can see inside through the inspection panel that still needs to be fitted.

The ever skillful John has had a major part in refitting this part. Here though he is searching for that inspection panel referenced in the photo above. It is about somewhere - someone put it in a safe place so that it would not get lost!

Missing inspection panel apart, it should not be too long before that 'Not to be moved' sign can be taken off and the loco moved under its own power.

Meanwhile back in the Restoration shed things on Ketton No1 have moved on with Thomas and Alex making great progress on the welding and body repaint.

An interesting artifact came to the Museum today in the form of this old plan of Stewarts and Lloyds Tube Works at Corby. It dates from 1967 and shows both the enormity of the site and the complexity of the site railway system. There are plans to copy and restore the copy to a pristine condition. 

So what was I up to? Well the usual vegetational butchery on hedges and grass! I cut back so much vegetation that I discovered there is a wire fence in the overgrowth!

The mower makes a great mulcher!

Looking more like a cultivated area then a wilderness!

Like the end of most of the past days I am shattered!

A bike ride to the closed cafe!

I started yesterdays post by saying I was shattered but feeling good and ended by saying I might not be so good after my bike ride with Mr. Beecham today. Well we had our ride, about 26 miles on probably the windiest day this summer. Mr. B had promised the delights of a cycling cafe at the half way point which sounded good to me. A snack and drink would be good. Doing the sensible thing of cycling into the wind on the way out so that we would in effect get blown home we did get to the cafe having seen this interesting ex telephone box put to a new use...

...and after a slight detour to find a monument to an air crash involving a Lancaster and an Oxford aircraft. 

The monument was certainly interesting and was a poignant reminder of the lives lost during WW2. 

In the field behind the monument were some interesting creations.  Made of a wire framework covered in something that looked like camouflage netting these really stood out.

Returning to the cafe for that snack and drink......it was Monday and closed! Brilliant! There was another cyclist there who we had an interesting chat with and he told us he was 73. We said goodbye to head off to a nearby (about 7 miles away!) shop for a drink and after two miles that cyclist we had met overtook us and left us for dust! 

Anyway having got back to WMD HQ via the shop Mr. B had to shot off due to other commitments but I did get a chance to see some of his latest model creations. He certainly has been busy!

I was particularly taken by this Sd/Kfz222 which was an amazingly detailed model.

There was also this Chinese gun that caught my eye. Mr. B has a Chinese tank transporter for this to go on.

So to conclude, just like yesterday, I am shattered but feeling good!

Shattered but feeling good!

I am shattered but feeling good! Sunday, the day of rest, was far from restful for me and the other volunteers at the Rocks By Rail Museum today as we hosted and entertained a continuous stream of visitors. In fact I had to go out late morning and get more supplies for the cafe as we were selling out such were the numbers of visitors wanting refreshments! 

As I went out I took this picture of the car park and to see so many cars is a great sight!

It might be tiring but it is what all volunteers love to see and makes us all feel good. Visitors, lots of them, enjoying what we work to display and having a great time. What is even more fulfilling are the number of families who are coming to visit. 

Being so busy I did not get a chance to do my usual tour and get many photographs although I did manage to catch a ride on the last train of the day.

As a Museum we are extremely lucky to have so many younger members and todays steam engine crew was a prime example with Thomas, Ross and George providing rides all day.

Even when the Museum is open there is still work going on as Mick carries on his amazing job of repainting this Janus diesel.

Once the painting is finished the coupling rods need to be reattached to the wheels and the loco will be good to go back into service which will be a great feeling!

I may not be feeling quite so good tomorrow as I am going out on a bike ride with Mr. Beecham, he of model making skills and cycling prowess who has featured in this blog before. I am hoping he has had a weekend of intense gardening or DIY which may slow him down!

Success?

On Wednesday I finished my post regarding the Hornby Swallow Livery HST with the question as to whether it would run with the DCC chips in it. Well it did! The success of this project was something I wondered about given my track record of unsuccessful projects! However it was reassuring to see the train run with the headlights on at the right end of the train. 

I was extra pleased with the success as I had a further plan for this train. DCC sound!

I managed to find a pair of the Hornby TTS DCC sound chips for the HST train - one for each power car. Theoretically this should, given my work already on installing the 8 pin sockets in each car, be a simple plug and play job. Hmmmmm! As Mrs. Woody can vouch, the jobs which I think are going to be quick and simple have a habit of turning into something a bit bigger! Without giving too much away Mrs. W can add another example to her evidence list for jobs that grow bigger after my assurances of a speedy finish! More of that in a day or two! Stay tuned!