The Panzer Ferry back on the workbench!

It is back on the work bench and it has been some time since I last worked on the Panzer Ferry kits so it took me some time to re-establish in my mind and with the instructions and the models in front of me exactly where I am with them. As always it is the small items I need to finish. There are a few small parts that need to be painted and fitted as well as the transfers needing to be applied. 

With that in mind it was time to go through the sprues and find the parts I need. Not so easy as you may think as there are so many surplus parts to the kits that what I actually needed has taken some finding! I have located what I need, there are others but I will return later for those. 4 boat hooks, 4 hull rubbing strips, an anchor and a pully were prepared for painting.

Being cold in the Man Cave is not the best for paint application or drying but hopefully these parts will be ready tomorrow.

I also applied some gloss varnish to the vehicle hulls where the decals need to apply. This will make them easier to apply and they should also set better.

Just hoping it warms up tomorrow!

Signal box progress.

Whilst Mrs. Woody basked in the warmth of inside I spent some time in the Man Cave where I manly put up with the cold! Its not that I don't have a heater in there but if I am only in there for an hour it makes little sense in turning it on as it would be getting warm as I left. If I am in there for several hours it makes sense to turn on the heat. However my argument that I should spend more time in the Man cave will probably not work on Mrs. W! 

However today did see the glazing finished on the Peco signal box kit and most of the parts are together. I still need to finish the interior with the control desk, seat and signaler so the roof is still loose and the balcony railings need to be glued to match the stairs but otherwise it is looking good.

It certainly does not look like a conventional signal box!

No model making today!

Just one of those days when the opportunity to get some model making just did not arise! 

A combination of things such as a garage door that got stuck open and took two hours to get closed, a shopping trip for a few small items that turned a two hour trek with two trolley loads and it being one of those cold days when you just want to stay in the warm, meant that I have stayed close to this rather than go in the Man Cave!

However staying warm by this does give me the opportunity to take a look at the latest WMD YouTube video - just in case I forgot what it was about and it should inspire me to get back out into the Man Cave soon!!!

Free wood!

Don't say I don't take Mrs. Woody out on some unique trips. Today it was a trip down a local road where I had seen on a bike ride that the council had felled some trees and left the wood for locals to collect. Well I am local so once back home I announced to Mrs. W we were going out. I think she though it was retail therapy time but soon realised it was her muscles I was after! We came back home with a car load that given a couple of years will be ready for the wood stove much to Mrs. W's delight. I wonder if she will now cut them up and spilt them to save me the bother?

Back at WMD HQ and away from the logs I managed to progress the Peco signal box. The base to the upper cabin was glued, filled and masked before being airbrushed white.

The windows have now been glued to the rest of the wooden cabin structure and the central control desk, which looks more like it belongs in NASA the in a signal box has been airbrushed grey. There is also a signal man figure and a seat for him to sit in which need further painting. I also started gluing the glazing into the window frames which will at least mean the 00 scale signal man won't be in a draught especially as this modern day type signal box doesn't have a log burner!

Another success - Amazingly!

Another success and I say amazingly because something normally goes wrong but the Hornby Class 86 in Virgin livery now is DCC chipped and works! I had it running on the layout hauling four coaches. It tends to wheel spin with more but these are old Hornby coaches which are not the best at free running.

I do like the livery and it was one of those iconic liveries that came about at initial privatisation of the UK rail industry. You never know there may be some more come and join it but don't tell Mrs. Woody!

With that project finished it is time to return to other half finished projects of which I have many! First off though is the Peco Manyways Signal Box kit. I had posed the various parts together to give the impression of a finished building but they need gluing together and some more painting is required. I have at least made a start!

And this is it!

More chips?

Well Mrs. Woody will be getting chips with her dinner tonight but there has also been more DCC chip work. This time on the Virgin livery Class 86 locomotive. Some interesting wiring but more space then the Britannia class loco I did yesterday.

All wired in. 

Not had time to test my installation yet as I have had to make the chips for Mrs. W's dinner! However, in the meantime there is a YouTube video of my work yesterday.

Do you want chips with that?

'Do you want chips with that?' is something that is usually heard in the type of eating establishments that I take Mrs. Woody to. You can tell I take her to classy places! However in this case the chips I am talking about are DCC chips for model railway locomotives. Having gone to the Spalding Model Railway Exhibition last weekend it was inevitable that something would come back with me and it did although it also cost me a handbag for Mrs. W in the nearby retail center!

These two are old Hornby locomotives. The Britannia steam loco is a model probably over 30 years old and was made in the UK, whilst the Class 86 Virgin loco is about 20 years old. They cost just £38.50 and £31.50 respectively. Both come from an era prior to DCC. So the question is - Do you want chips with that? - to which the answer is Yes! However I am going to have to wire in the chips myself.

First job was to remove the body of the tender as this is where the motor is. With that off the wires to the motor were removed and desoldered.

Having decided where the chip was going, bearing in mind there is not much room, I applied two sided tape to the ballast weight to fasten the chip to.

Next up the decoded wires from the harness were wired to the pickups and motor and sealed with heat shrink.

With the wiring done the job of convoluting the wiring into a form that fitted inside the body was undertaken., It may ot look neat but it is functional!

The body fitted back on and the chip was programmed.

Then the moment of truth - will it run? Yes it did and very nicely too! For an all in cost of just over £50 its not breaking the bank either especially as the newest Hornby Britannia, which although much more detailed, comes in at around £250!

I did video all this so that will be on YouTube soon! Right better go off and cook Mrs. W's dinner - will she want chips with that?

Having recovered from the Spalding Model railway Exhibition yesterday I have had time to look through the photos that I took. The quality of the layouts and the trade support were the best yet. Not sure whether attendance was down on my last visit but it never seemed crowded which was nice.

Layout wise I will just deal with two at the moment which caught my eye.

You could not help but be impressed by this 009 gauge layout that had come up from Dorset with the Wimborne Railway Society’s ‘OO9’ Tarrant Valley Railway.  I have never seen an 009 layout this long - 43feet! Packed with all sorts of details, its building spans several decades - almost makes me hopeful of completing my layouts!

Always good to see some humour on a layout and this submarine conning tower sticking out of a river made me smile!

The other layout was this 0n30 layout. Pergatory Peak, which is 0 gauge running on 00 gauge track giving a narrow gauge - if that makes sense! An extraordinary layout which captured the Colorado setting so well. There are some photos below but a video clip might just illustrate this 24 foot long layout better.

 

Woody takes Mrs. Woody out for the day to a model railway show!

Yes, it is that time of year when the Spalding Model Railway Exhibition takes place. I have been going, accompanied by Mrs. W, for well over two decades and have seen it grow in stature. This year was no different. Even better than last time with some great layouts on show and I will talk about that tomorrow once I have recovered! In the meantime there is a new video up on my YouTube channel which brings together the recent work I have been carrying out on My Last Great Project 00 gauge layout as well as having some trains running. If you have a need to fill 1 minutes or so then this is for you!!!!

Coping well!

Given the ever growing Mrs. Woody task list for me I am pleased to report that I am coping well! However if Mrs. W is reading this then I am not! However, as well as I may be coping with the task list I have also been coping on the various walls of the bridge abutments. In this case the coping is the coping stones that grace the top of most external brick walls to provide some protection from adverse weather to the otherwise exposed top surfaces of bricks. 

I have used strips of balsa to make mine. To highlight the gaps between stones I have used a triangular file, pointy side down, to 'cut' the gaps in the stones.

I will run some dilute black paint over them later which will highlight the gaps.

Once stuck to the brick work they look good.

Well that is another job I have coped with!