Man on a mission!

This is a man on a mission! 

In the continued quest to complete the plant shed roof the last remaining major part is to fit the ridges to seal the centre of the roof. As I wrote last week the preformed ridges are angled too sharply so they need to be made shallower. The man on a mission is Andy who innovatively uses a large metal gas bottle to roll down the pre-formed ridge to flatten it!

This level of innovativeness is viewed with some amazement by some including Richard and Riley!

However it works and two thirds of the roof is now complete. Harriot the JCB will be pleased especially as she is also due to get a new alternator to cure her ever flat battery problem!

Meanwhile I continue my quarrying quest for more rock to fill the gabion baskets/cages that are part of a new viewing platform that is being built. The easy stuff has gone so I am having to dig down and under things to find more of the hardened cement bags to break up.

This is about a ton of material on the platelayers trolley.

I was joined by Alex and we pushed the loaded trolley up the line to the site where the third and last of the first level baskets/cages needed filling.

That ton or so of rocks took the level up to about two thirds so another load was needed.

After lunch and a rest another trolley load of material was quarried, loaded, pushed up the line and then deposited into the awaiting basket/cage bringing it to just about full! Alex poses inn celebration of the fact!

So there it is. The first layer is done - just about. A little bit of fine material is needed to top off all three baskets/cages and then the area behind them needs backfilling and then we can move onto level two with more gabion baskets/cages to fill! Given that they will be three feet higher it will be more difficult to fill them. That will see yet another man on a mission! A mission to try to make it easier to fill them!

Up on a shelf!

Up n a shelf stands this....

It is a 1/25th scale Renault Magnum truck I built from an Italeri kit about 20 years ago. I was and continue to be a big fan of the Magnum, both in truck and ice-cream form! When it was introduced in 1990, it was the first European cabover truck to have a flat floor making the cab easy to move around in. It had some USA influences with the access steps behind the front wheel rather than in front and in fact 6 of them went to the USA on tour - the so called 'La Route 66 en Renault Magnum'! There is a series of YouTube videos starting with episode one here. I don't think USA drivers were impressed given their condo sleeper cabs!

Meanwhile, back to my model.

It was the first truck model that I weathered and I was and still am pleased with the way it came out.

The dust grom being sat on the shelf adds to the realism - so I tell myself!

Anyway, I brought it off the shelf, admired it, had some good memories, thought about building another one and now it is back up on a shelf!

New YouTube video!

The WMD film crew have finalised and uploaded a video updating progress on my 00 gauge Last Great Project Layout. If nothing else it will cure your insomnia!

Changing!

The line up of trains on the My Last Great Project layout changes with time as I add a few new wagons or a loco and take some off. Nothing like a change of scenery to keep things interesting. However I have just spent a day changing most of the trains as there is a video for YouTube in the offing. So this changed.....

.....changed to this!

I also found my other class 58 so there is now a trio of them!

All this may not look like much but by the time you find the boxes and repack or unpack rolling stock a few hours go by - but so much fun!

Strike whilst the iron is hot!

Strike whilst the iron is hot, so they say. However, whilst my soldering iron was not initially hot I did decide that having uncovered the Hornby duo of Class 58's I might as well DCC chip the motored one otherwise it would be several months before it got done. 

First off was to get at the insides. Unusually the body does not separate from the chassis, you have to take the bogies out to get to the motor and wiring.

First bogie out.

Second one out. I used the 9v battery to test that the motor still worked! It did!

Next job was to unsolder the wires from the motor and dispose of the anti TV interference capacitor which was fitted back in the days of analogue television.

Wiring in a DCC socket I had to use a bull dog clip to hold two of the models existing cables together before soldering the harness wire to it.

The rest of the wires were connected up and heat shrinked at the joins to avoid any short circuits.

I tested the wiring with the battery which proved all was well. Most DCC chips will run on DC so the battery is a good way of testing without full DCC voltage which could blow the chip if the wiring was not correctly done! With that done the wires were coiled up and taped before being pushed into the body shell and the bogies refitted. Then the chip was programmed and the motored loco, with its dummy, was tested on the layout. 

It runs well, just stutters on a couple of  points as not all the wheels pick up current. I may look at adding some more pickups in the future, but for now I am enjoying this pair running on the layout where they do look rather good - to me anyway!

A duo of Class 58s!

In my continued efforts, as Christmas approaches (and now it is the 1 December that word can be uttered!), to earn bonus points with Mrs. Woody for actually getting jobs crossed off her 'For me to do' list i have been doing flooring in the understairs cupboards. Whilst in there I came across this that I bought at the Spalding Model Railway Show last month.

 

I have been that busy I just have not got round to playing operating it and I do need to put a DCC chip in as well. However it is, unusually, a duo of locos, in this case Class 58's in EWS livery. These locos were very much the mainstay in hauling coal trains to the power stations when coal was king and much of the UK's power was generated by coal powered stations. In fact both these locos are numbered and labeled up as being based at Worksop depot in the middle of the East Midlands mining area back at the turn of this century.

Opening the box revels the two locos. One is motored and the other is a dummy (a bit like me then!) as the Class 58's often ran in pairs such was the load that they were hauling. These two date from 2004 when Hornby released them and were discontinued in 2005. Again, unusually, they are both factory weathered and the mid 2000's is when Hornby and Bachman started to offer such models. To be honest I have never been a big fan of the factory weathered locos as they usually look to my eyes as though they have just been blasted with some dirt coloured paint. However, on these two it does seem to work. 

Interestingly, loco 58024 carried the earlier EWS wording of EW&S which was quickly shortened to EWS as worn by 58037.

I do like these two and given my weakness for the EWS livery, these two should be a useful addition to the fleet.

Right! Back to the understairs cupboard flooring and more bonus points with Mrs. W!

Cutting through!

Well the wait is over as the glue has dried on my scenery sub-base and, just as I predicted, it has enough integral strength to be lifted and moved about. Phew!!!!

Moving it into its place the form of the landscape begins to take shape.

I then constructed the small sub-base for the front of the baseboard. Using off cuts of material from the previous two sub-bases, it was glued together and then left to dry before cutting to shape.

The final piece of the scenery was the central pillar, theoretically left when the cutting through the hill was made to route the railway - well that is what would have happened in real life.

With all that done the whole scene of a cutting comes into clarity - well to me anyway! I need to do some carving now to geth the final contours and then start the long process of making it actually look like a piece of UK countryside rather than part of the Artic!

Rocks by rail - living up to its name and 'Trust me, I am a mechanic"!

Rocks By Rail is a museum recording the history of ironstone quarrying. What it has not done for years is actually transport any rocks by rail! However that changed on my last visit and this is the reason - a platelayers trolley.

Taking a step back, the source of the rocks for filling the gabion baskets/cages that I posted about last week, at the moment is old cement bags that have set. These are on top of the loading dock and require breaking up into rocks. Half an hour saw me turn this pile into ..... 

this.....

Then they were wheel barrowed over to the edge of the loading dock and dropped over the side before being put onto the platelayers trolley. There are ten wheelbarrow loads on the trolley which despite John and David indicating that it was hard work to push was actually a lot easier then wheeling ten barrow loads up and down to the site.

Once pushed up to the quarry the trolley was unloaded into the gabion baskets/cages.

Three trolley loads saw one and a bit gabions filled.

Alex and David looked very happy with the days work. Just the last one to fill and then two more go on top which will need more rocks by rail!

Meanwhile, this years prize for innovation goes to Andy who needs to lessen the angle of the ridges to go on the plant shed roof. Rather than struggle with bending bars and hammers he just uses a gas bottle to roll over the ridge slightly flattening it!

Meanwhile, all was quite in the restoration shed where the re-tubing work has temporarily stopped.

However it did give me a chance to take a close up look at the existing tubes, all of which you should see daylight through! I can see why they need replacing!

As I left I noted this hanging up on one of the tool racks. A mechanics stethoscope! Brings a whole new meaning to, 'Trust me, I am a mechanic!'.

Cat art, canals and a boat called Earwig!

In repainting the hall I noted that a lot of the pictures that I took down and then rehung are related to cats which given the number who have lived their lives at WMD HQ over the years is perhaps not too surprising! I go have some personal favorites - the art that is , all cats are treated equally!

This first one is one that my Mum bought from a car boot sale about 40 years ago. She had it framed and I always loved it. Why? I don't really know but I just do! When I inherited it I wondered where to put it so it has leant up against a bedroom wall for some time but with the opportunity to re-arrange pictures during the repaint process it now hangs in the hall

This hangs by the front door and is another of those that just captures my heart!

Finally for today this one probably says it all. Any cat owners will more than likely understand the words!

Apart from admiring cat art I have also managed several bike rides over the past few days. You may recall from an earlier post that I had see the Marie Celeste of the local canal following its disappearance after being stranded when the canal water level subsided to trickle level! It was riding high in a lock but the glare of the sun made it difficult to see. Well another bike ride has found it hiding in the bottom of the lock but I ventured a different way to avoid the glare of the sun.

My venturing also allowed me to observe that its name is not Marie Celeste but Earwig! Now it takes some imagination to conjure up why it is called earwig. Any thoughts, please tell me!