Soapy times at the Museum.

Strange for me to be at the Museum on a Monday unless there is an event but Rob had persuaded me to go in and help him wash the face shovel! Now a face shovel is not the type of thing that you sponge water on  and rinse off dirt before waxing the paint. After years of outside living the face shovel was as much a habitat for fauna and flora as it was a working machine! Cleaning it was going to take some serious work!

The main pieces of kit were the pressure washer (fed from a water container raised off the ground by the CAT to give the necessary pressure), scouring pads and brushes! In fact Rob managed to run over my brush with the CAT! Well at least he didn't run me over!

You can see what we started with - grime and dirt!

The pressure washer does its magic following a scrubbing with brushes and scouring pads!

Stages in cleaning the rear of the face shovel. Firstly dirt!

Secondly slightly less dirt!

Thirdly, a lot less dirt!

Rob, now happy with the job!

And from a side not often seen.

All in all a great job and the face shovel looks so much better for it unlike me!

Not satisfied with the face shovel Rob moved us onto cleaning the cab of Sundew which was once the World's largest walking excavator. More soapy times!

Pressure washer, brushes and scouring pads out again!

Getting cleaner but the paint does peel off so it will need a repaint! Another job to be done!

Rob perhaps was a bit too clean as he pressure washed the interior!!!

There is no doubt it does look cleaner now. Thinking that was it for the day there was one other job. A welding job!

Being a big welder and the job being outside it would have been easier if we had put it on the pallet to start with but we did learn our lesson!

I did some of the welds and Rob made them actually strong afterwards!

It should hold!

Man with the best job today? Derek! He rode the platelayers wagon down the line as it freewheeled down the 1 in 60 gradient - nice and no soap!!!!! That looks the job for me!

  

'I will think about it!'

Sometimes you get to the stage where you think this model is actually fighting me! That is the case with the Heller Scania 141 LB, where, for what ever reasons I really haven't made that much progress with it. It seems like one step forward and several back. Take the recent incident of gluing the front cab panel to the rest of the cab body. I managed to knock off one of the grab handles glued below the windscreen and three of the indicator lenses also came off. All are safely stored awaiting reattachment but that will need to await getting the doors in place. 

Tee model has not been the best and looking back over its build I did highlight the warped nature of some of the cab parts such as this.....

which required some hefty clamping when glued in place to get it to sit something like it should.

I'm sure this has something to do with the ill fitting doors! One side fits reasonably whilst the other refuses to line up with anything or fit the aperture until I started filing bits off! It does eat up time and dampens my model making spirit so I will consider if I now just put it to one side again and do something else to reinvigorate myself before coming back to it or do I just plod on! I will think about it, which is normally what I tell Mrs. Woody when she has presented an idea!

Something which did lift my spirits was whilst out on a bike ride today I came across all these Nissan Figaro's parked up in a village hall car park. Not a soul around but obviously an owners club get together and I have never seen so many of these cars in one group before now.

These cars were never marketed in the UK and what is here is through so called 'grey imports'. They are based on the Nissan Micra and I think they look 'cute' and a lot more interesting then the Micra! If you want to know more about them there is info on the Wiki website located here. Maybe I should get one of these cars - I will think about it!

Running out of steam - I need a Pacer!

Having been quite busy over the last few weeks I do find myself running out of steam at the moment to get on with projects! The weather has been all that encouraging either to get out to the Man Cave so I am running behind on things. Now if I were an athlete undertaking some record attempt I might have a pacer to help me along. Well in the model making World there are no Pacers - or are there????

Well let me introduce you to my Hornby Pacer! Actually it is my other Hornby Pacer as I wrote about the other back in November 2021 (click here to read that post) (Wow! That long ago!). However, I bought this one about 25 years ago second hand for the princely sum of about £10! They were never considered good models by many and the real Pacers were like Marmite - you either loved them or hated them! Personally I do like the Pacer and at the time of its introduction in the 1980s it provided a cheap (being based on a Leyland National bus body) way of keeping some previously loss making passenger services going.

The model by Hornby is unusual in that it is powered by a Scalextric slot car motor in each car. Unfortunately this makes them underpowered and the electrical pickup arrangement for the motors was not good with both running and also not running on many occasions independent of each other. I did add additional pickups and wired the two motors together which improved the running a bit. When compared to some of the newer models of the Pacer my one leaves a lot to be desired but for £10 I will stick with it! Now if only it would give me a push to finish my outstanding projects!

One of those days!

It has been one of those days when things have not gone quite as expected. We all have days like that and you just have to get through them. First off Mrs. Woody's car needed a new battery. Now the last time I bought a battery it cost me just over £20! I was expecting some inflation but the £200 cost took me aback but I was rebounded by the fact that it could have been £300! Then the 'small shop ' for just a few bits turned into £130! My wallet has taken a dramatic slimming today! My planned bike ride was abandoned due to the rain which probably rounded off the days unexpected events!

There has been some progress with the Heller Scania 141 LB with the two parts of each door glued together. 

It may not be much progress but it is at least another step forward to completion!

Looking at something that will surely be subject to slow progress is the model greenhouse that I bought Mrs. W. 

Having opened up the kit I was really impressed by it. 

A box full of parts bagged together with a really well presented set of instructions.

The actual contents of the bags look really high quality.

The instructions give a hint of the depth of detail which means progress will be slow! I look forward to seeing Mrs. W's progress! Maybe she will embarrass me by finishing it in a day!

Welder Woody

 At the Rocks By Rail Museum it is getting close to the opening of the  2024 season. It is advertised far and wide but one of the most effective forms of advertising are the banners that are put up on the nearby roads. For reasons that I cannot even remember I got this job when someone else could no longer do it. 

The banners themselves are normally attached to metal posts termed as lamp irons which are hammered into soft ground. One of the issues I had last year was that whilst the banners hooked over the bend in the post meant to hand a lamp from, the lower part of the banner could only be fastened loosely with a cable tie to the lower part of the post. In windy weather the banner would ride up the post making it difficult to read the banner. My solution, developed in my mind over the past year (Woody's ideas take time to ferment!) has always been to put a bracket onto the post so that the cable tie can be securely fastened and prevent the banner riding up the post. Today was the day that idea became reality - enter Welder Woody!

Starting with some scrap metal in the worm of some metal jointing strips.

Put it in the vice, take one large hammer and put a 90 degree bend in it.

Clean the surface to be welded with an angle grinder.

Take the lamp iron post and clean the rust where the bracket is to be welded to with an angle grinder.

Take a MIG welder, clamp the bracket to the right place on the post.

 

Allow one armature welder loose on the MIG and get a welded joint that will never win any beauty competitions but it is at least strong!

Take to bench and place in vice.

Use angle grinder to tidy up joint!

Test finished product! Well almost as I did not have a cable tie to hand but the bracket is in the right place and it should work making life easier this year too! Nice one Welder Woody! After congratulating myself I then went on to weld another 11 posts!

Meanwhile Alex continues work on the inside of Ketton No1 with rubbing down the control panel ready for a repaint. It reminded me of the pandemic seeing Alex in his mask but he is only being sensible with the dust that the sanding is creating.

Not an easy thing to sand!

Meanwhile John and Pete were trying to fight nature by resetting these concrete retaining slabs that had been pushed over by the vegetation roots that are in the bank behind them. Not a nice job but has to be done.

Whilst some of the wagons are out from a hidden siding I did spare a few minutes to take a closer look. These tipper wagons are fairly unique and still in a restorable condition.

I did not even know this bogie low loader was at the museum.

Restorable but that mobile compost heap needs to go!

And if there were ever any doubt as to the power of corrosion look at this!

Way beynd the skills of Welder Woody!

Being able to see the floor!

Of the many projects that I would like to complete this year and that Mrs. Woody has decreed will be completed is the clear out of the garage. Garages are very handy places to store items that you are of the view are no longer suitable to be in the house or garden but equally are of the view that they are too good to be got rid of or may well come in handy some day! The garage has also played host to the sorting of items left by my parents so has over the last few years seen a big turn over of items but has always looked like this picture of it in 2020.

 Moving on to now it looks like this. You can actually see some of the floor now!!!!

There is still a lot that needs to go but eBay sales and the recycling centre have seen a lot of items leave, leaving clear floor space! The sense of space is quite liberating and makes up for all the work that has gone into getting this far. Along with my clearing out of magazines from the Man Cave and several other decluttering operations there is now a lot less stuff in WMD HQ although Mrs. Woody maintains more needs to go! As long as she does not mean me too!

Scania coming together - but needs more glue!!

Yes it is coming together after 2 years on the shelf. The windscreen is in, well nearly as I noticed when I uploaded the photos that it has sprung out on one corner so more glue required! The indicator lenses are fitted and putting the front panel on the main cab together with the roof gives a good idea of the finished product. Just have to paint the chrome windscreen wipers black and fit the doors and the door mirrors and that should be it - hopefully! Now where is the glue.....

 

The Scania 141LB comes back on the bench and a surprising discovery!

 In my quest to finish off projects the Heller Scania 141 LB has come off the shelf after being placed on 2 years ago and onto the workbench. The biggest problem with getting back into a stalled project is finding out just where you got to so some time was taken to establish that. 

So far I have painted the windscreen surround black to represent the rubber holding it to the cab and painted silver the backing to the light lenses that need to be fitted.

I had a clear out of some rubbish and finished kit boxes one of them being the box for the Trumpeter Grille30 30.5cm(Grw) L/15 Mörser "Bär",

I always take a picture of the box cover for reasons I never really know! However in opening the box lid out to be flat I discovered these two odd pictures hidden by the folds in the box.

Quite what soft toys and fruit and veg have to do with printing the box art for a military vehicle I just cannot work out but it was a surprising discovery!

Almost there!

My famous last words but I can report that the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas truck kit is just about there! 

The shortened side underrun guard is fitted and looks much better than the original. 

The sun visor is fitted. 

The mirrors are fitted. 

The windscreen wipers are fitted. 

All I need to do is touch in some of the black parts on the mirrors and wipers and glue the cargo body to the chassis so almost there!!!! I know I can do it!

Well I never!

Mrs. Woody persuaded me to have a look at the new craft department that had been opened in a nearby garden centre. I didn't really need persuading so off we went. I'm not sure what I was expecting but given that both Hobbycraft and The Range here in the UK already have well stocked shelves full of a wide range of hobby items I thought that anyone competing with those types of retailer would at least have an extensive range of items. Not so though! However there were a few things that did catch my eye and give me that 'Well I never' moment. It is interesting to note the divergence of Hornby Hobbies into other spheres of products with these jigsaws! Well I never!

I must admit compared to other jigsaws the price for this rather large 3000 piece spitfire at £30 seems reasonable especially as you get the 1/72 kit included. The 1000 piece kits were a penny under £15 which again was reasonable. They may be reasonable but I need to reason with myself that I don't have a reason for buying one!

On another 'Well I never' matter my bike ride today was a bit strange with my right foot never feeling secure in the pedal. My cycling shoes have plastic plates that clip into the pedals meaning your shoe is securely fastened to the pedal. You release your shoe by twisting it to unclip the plate. It sounds complex but it isn't once you are used to it. I got home and had a look at the plate. As you can see compared to the new plate which is now fitted, the old has literally worn out - Well I never!