It certainly was a bargain - much more than I thought possible!

In yesterdays post I was rather intrigued to find that the 30 year old or so Lima train pack that I bought for what I though was a bargain price of £72 had what appeared to be a Hornby chassis under the loco body with the words 'DCC Fitted' printed on it. Now if it was a DCC fitted loco then the price I paid for it together with the three coaches would indeed be an even better bargain. The only way to tell if it was actually DCC fitted was to take the body off.

Taking the body off gave me quite a shock! I thought that I might be lucky to find a DCC chip fitted but I found this!

Yes - that is a fully DCC sound installation! And it works as this video clip shows! 

This has to be the best bargain that I have had for a long time and I am really happy for what was an impulse purchase of a 30 year old train pack turning into a modern day sound loco! 

Don't know if Mrs. Woody feels the same way but I can just turn the loco volume up if she complains!

Hope she doesn't read this!

Something a bit strange or is it more of a bargain than I thought!

Well it wasn't my fault! I was just idly surfing the internet when I came across this on the TMC website.

Now there are some railway modellers who will highlight that these models are probably now over 30 years old, not the most detailed and don't run as smoothly as modern locos and to a greater degree they are right. However Hornby, who now own the Lima brand still use the original mouldings on much of their RailRoad range of models and to be honest, when seen from a few feet away, it is difficult to tell the detail differences that these have with more modern models. Running wise, the old Lima pancake motors can be serviced and made to run reasonably well although they will never crawl silently like the modern can motor with dual flywheels. You may prefer the modern version of the loco and indeed the coaches in this train pack. The modern version of the loco will set you back about £175 to £225 depending on make or you can buy the current Hornby RailRoad version which is the same body moulding just with an updated chassis ready for DCC for about £90 to £120. Coaches are available at about £45 to £60. If you went for the cheapest buying option you could put a modern version of the this train pack together for about £225 but more likely it would cost more like £350. I paid £72.

Opening the box saw some very encouraging signs. You don't often find the original instructions and other paperwork with something like this. It does point to it having been loved by its previous owner.

All the coaches and the loco look immaculate with all their buffers in place.

I took the loco out to have a closer look and this suddenly caught my eye. 'DCC fitted'. Now that is a bit strange for a 30 plus years old loco!

It was not advertised as a DCC loco but clearly the original Lima chassis has been replaced with a more modern Hornby one. Whether it still has a DCC chip in it remains for me for find out when I have the time. If it has, and bearing in mind Hornby DCC chips are around £20 to buy, than this could really be  much more of a bargain then I had hoped for!

Thinking that I may have to service the chassis I had also bought in some specialist grease for this model. If I don't use it on this then I will on others!

Oil is well or maybe not!

One of my play on words titles but it refers to a day at the Rocks By Rail Museum where I volunteer. I get involved in anything and everything which is great as you learn so much about things you would never normally come across. Take my latest visit. Rob had decided that the oil store really needed a tidy out and I agreed with him!

Not a pretty sight! Rob had already cast out a load of empty containers before I arrived.

This is what greeted me when I looked in.

After an hour or so looking a bit more organised and at least we know what oil we have. I never knew just how many types of lubricants are produced which was something I learnt! Anyway oil is well!

Whilst that was going on Dan, on light duties as he is recovering from an operation, was washing down the point switch mechanisms which will require lubrication afterwards - now where do we keep the oil?

Meanwhile the ever talented John was demonstrating that you can indeed paint a floor with a sweeping brush!

It works too! Something else I learnt!

So after the oil store what else did I get up to? Well I was giving Rob a hand to do some welding but we had run out of gas! I therefore ended up giving Andy a hand to deal with the mysteries of the septic tank and why it was failing! I won't go into the details but I learnt a lot about the workings of septic tanks, aerators and pumps and unfortunately oil is not well as the pump appears to have failed! That is a job for the septic tank company though - thank goodness!

Getting to the point when you can actually see progress!

With the baseboards joined and baseboards screwed down I can start work on getting the track permanently laid. That means more wires and soldering! Never my most liked job but it has to be done so I started simple to get my brain back in the zone as it were. The inner most curve was wired up by taking it to the bench.

With it on the bench soldering is much easier! I did also get the wires round the right way to match what is on the layout already. Colour coding and knowing what those colours mean actually makes wiring a lot easier!

Ready to go back on the layout.

That went fairly well! Hope the rest do! Once the wiring is al done then I can think about ballasting which will move the layout on and actually looks like progress! Its just getting to that point that takes the time!

Working smarter not harder as I get older 2!

Further to yesterdays, working smarter as I get older, I have to admit to yet another failure to adhere to that phrase! I had been struggling with the drill bit which was slightly undersize for the bolt I was using. I used the drill itself as a sort of grinding tool and a round file to open out the hole. Then it struck me! Why wasn't I using the flat drill bit that was staring me in the face? I fitted it and found because the shank was longer the drill was easier to use and it opened the hole up in seconds! The other hole also took seconds to open up and the third and fourth holes less then five minutes to drill and fit the bolts! Dooh!

Anyway, lesson learnt - think harder!!!!

With the boards joined I also need to screw down the base board tops which were still loosed in places! Again, another job I put off! However at least it was not the struggle I had yesterday unbder the baseboards!

With the tops screwed down I could cut the slits for the point motor pins to plug into the point tie bars. A series of holes drilled, joined together by using a blade to cut the material between them and then opened out with a small flat file. 

Two points needed the slots cutting which was done fairly easily - it must be my lucky day! With that done I cut the foam underlay to size and split it over the baseboard joint. I have also cut away pieces to allow for plywood pieces to be glued to the baseboard at the board edge onto which copper clad sleepers will be glued. These will allow the rail to be soldered to them giving a rigid joint at the baseboard joints to the tracks. It worked before so hopefully again! Just need to work smarter not harder as I get older from now on! 

Working smarter not harder as I get older!

I often highlight thing n this blog with the phrase 'Working smarter not harder as I get older!,. And as you get older you learn by experience - usually! I say usually because what should have been a half hour job to bolt two baseboards together on my Last Great Project Layout ended up taking two hours just to do half the job! If I had been smarter I would have bolted the baseboards together when I built them. It would have been easy with nothing in the way. Instead, and for reasons I cannot recall, I left it at the time thinking that I would do it later. Well a year and a half later I am doing it and its hard! I had to clear stuff from under the baseboard just to get access. Even then with the way the boards are supported I had limited access. 

Eventually I got the first hole drilled.

Two hours later the first two bolts are in and my back is out! Ouch!

 Just the other two at the other end of the board to do and hopefully my back lasts!

Hush, hush 2!

Life is full of all sorts of non model making matters at the moment, many of them related to items on Mrs. Woody's list of chores for me! That list must be like the universe - ever expanding! Anyway, what time I have I am doing small, accomplishable in an hour or so type jobs. So another loco came out to be DCC fitted. I thought that I had this for about a year but looking back through the blog |I found that Woody's memory was not that good as it was 19th January 2021 that I blogged about getting this! Gosh! Where does time go when you have so many Mrs. W chores to do!

With box out of store it was onto the workbench.

There is a great deal of packaging but some useful instructions!

The DCC chip fits in the tender which makes life so simple - just remove the coupling and undo one screw and the tender top is off reveling the DCC socket.

With the blanking plug removed the LAIS 8 pin chip was fitted and a 9volt battery applied to the wheels just to see that I had it the right way round - amazingly I did!

Process reversed and loco ready to be programmed.

With it on the track and coupled up to some LNER teak coaches it looks wonderful and runs beautifully. In real life it must have been a striking loco to see which makes the fact that none survive all the more sad.

Back to the 90s with Central Trains!

I am slowly going through my collection of rolling stock. Some of it has unfortunately been boxed away for far too long so I am getting them out and enjoying them which is the whole reason for having them. This example is a Hornby Class 153 that I bought second hand about 15 or more years ago. It had been fitted with a DCC chip which was nice and saved me the trouble. 

Out of the box it is a single unit rail car that was very much a backstay of many lightly used services in real life. Central Trains, which was one of the first tranche private companies to take over from British Rail in the 1990s had several of these and very smart they looked in that two tone green livery 

In fact I have a bit of a soft spot for Central Trains as they did operate where I lived and worked in the 90s. I have a number of their passenger units including this Class 156 two car unit just coming into shot.

This is the unit which again is a Hornby model. I do have two of these so they can run as a four car multiple working if I want.

In that 90s period, whilst Central Trains were providing passenger services, EW&S, as they started out as, before becoming plain EWS, were hauling freight with a wide variety of locos such as this Class 58 behind the two Central Trains units in the picture below. The two companies did operate in the same geographical area so it was common to see the two companies trains pass each other and as I do have a few EWS liveried locos I have on my bucket list to get them all out with the Central Trains stock and go back to the 90s!

 

Homework!

It is a long time since Woody had to do homework and as with most school related matters that interfered with free time I was never that keen on it! However, there were always some subjects that you enjoyed and homework in these was sometimes quite enjoyable. For me that was technical drawing. I had a wooden drawing board, T square and the inevitable school geometry set, which I think I still have, with compass, dividers and the all important eraser! 

My current homework is also something that is enjoyable. Leaning to drive the drag line excavator at the Rocks By Rail Museum is not just practical experience in operating all those levers and pedals that I showed a few days ago. The theory is important as well with knowing how the machine works and the full maintenance procedures. That is why I have been sent home with this rather thick tome of reading!

And as you would expect at WMD HQ anything new brings about a feline investigator team with Marty and Monty, AKA The Destructo Twins, being todays nominated moggies!

Wonder if I will get a gold star for my homework????

The art of answering the right question and Crowd Funding!

Did you get what you needed? was the question from Mrs. Woody as I returned from a model railway shop that I had stopped off at to pick up some DCC harnesses and sockets. Yes, was my reply.

Had the question from Mrs. W been slightly differently phrased, such as, did you get what you wanted? I might have had to admit to also getting this!

It was just sitting there on a shelf in amongst the blue Bachmann and red Hornby models and to be frank it was the box that struck me as rather attractive! Having seen the rather reasonable price I was tempted to pick it up and have a closer look. 

What I did not know at the time is that this is an example of the first crowd funded model railway loco in the UK done by DJ Models as confirmed on the instruction leaflet. 

The crowd funding was started in 2014 and the Class 71 loco was finally released in mid 2017. I must admit that this is a model that passed me by at the time. I can recall Hornby issuing a Class 71 but not this one. However a test run on the shops track convinced me that this was s great model at a price that I later found out was significantly less than the 2017 price! Bargain!

I just think that it is a stunning looking loco and the various lights and that pantograph just highlight the beauty of it.

Unfortunately for DJ Models, despite their successes with several locos that they released, they went into receivership in mid 2019.

Now whether Mrs. W will see it as an item of beauty is an unknown factor at the moment but I guess I really ought to start some crowd funding of my own to ensure my future is safeguarded when she does find out!