Bonus points earnt but still the stairs to do!

More landscaping in the Man Cave as I tackle one of the large scenery sub-bases. First thing was to carve the final shape into the foam and polystyrene - the bread knife was used again!

Then it was onto the plaster impregnated bandage .

It is going to take several days to do this sub-base but at least this is progress!

As you would expect with my multi-tasking the 09 Caravan project is still in my mind and it does now run on the oval of compact Kato track I got some weeks ago. All that was needed was a 9 volt battery and away it went as this short clip shows.

Of course it needs something to haul and todays post saw this kit of three tipper wagons arrive from the same source as Caravan and they look really good 3D prints. Just need time to build them and paint Caravan!

Finding the time is difficult at the moment. For the last month in a bid to earn even more bonus points with Mrs. Woody I have been painting the hall, stairs and landing. The hall is just about finished and today saw the last of the landing done. This was the situation this morning.

By the afternoon normality returned and bonus points earnt!

Just the stairs to do now - oh joy, ladders on stairs with a paint pot in one hand!

Woody gets plaster and makes some good goo!

Time to put my impromptu 09 project to one side and get back to some work on My Last Great Project 00 gauge layout. With the wiring and point motors done it is now time to move back to the topside of the baseboard and get on with progressing the landscape.

I had already built the scenery sub-bases to a rough shape and these will need to be carved to their final shape before the next stage of construction starts. I have started off with the smallest sub-base first and risking my well being have used Mrs. Woody' bread knife to carve the landscape to shape. Must remember to put it back and I just hope she doesn't read this!

With that done it was time to get the plaster impregnated bandage out of the WMD Stores. If you have been unfortunate enough to have had a broken limb this is what they use to put a cast around it so that the healing process can happen.

Now plaster impregnated bandage can be messy to use as you need to wet the plaster. I was not going to end up looking like some form of mummy from the tomb or in this case Man Cave with bandage and plaster hanging from me so my plan was to cut small pieces from the roll and wet it in situ by brushing water onto it. Cunning but would it work? Time to find out so the first part of the bandage was cut and placed on the sub-base.

By gently brushing water onto it the plaster liquified and could be brushed out over the bandage just as I hoped!

Things progressed as more bandage was added and I stayed clean!

Finally all the sub-base was covered in bandage and being a quick setting plaster it was just about dry!

This was fine but it looks a bit anemic! Time to add some colour and texture. Out came some ordinary plaster and some brown acrylic paint.

Mixing that lot up and I ended up with this goo - it was not like the Goo desert that had been in the pot before the jar was requisition for this job but nevertheless this was a good goo! Having a brownish colour means that should the scenery get chipped it will show a brown instead of a glaring white colour.

With the mix applied using a stiff brush I could get some texture to the supposed rock face of the cutting side.

I just need to let it all fully dry and then move onto the next sub-base! However I have remained clean and that's the main thing!

Caravan needs a chassis to sit on its own wheels!

Caravan, or to be factually correct, the model of it, runs on a Kato 11-009 chassis of which have I already have several under the 3D printed 009 gauge locos that I have built over the past years or so.

Therefore, getting the couplings and top off the main chassis which is mentioned in the product description as necessary to make the chassis fit was a fairly quick job.

With that done, the supplied special motor keeper loop was added to the chassis.

With that done I just needed to cut off the two pieces on the underside joining the axle boxes together as a strengthener for the print whilst it was shipped to me.

The chassis then slid into its home nicely.

Once that was done I have a loco that can sit on its own wheels! Just needs painting and I need to find a driver figure for it. This could be an interesting project!

Woody buys a caravan but not the holiday kind!

This arrived in the post the day, whilst Mrs. Woody was out. I could not have planned it better!

It is a 3D print, a form of model production that I am becoming increasingly impressed with the more I see how it is developing and the reasonable prices that are generally charged. 

Now this one is a caravan, just not the sort you go on holiday with. It is in fact another narrow gauge loco. Not to my usual 4mm to the foot running on n gauge 9mm track, but this one is 7mm 0 gauge, i.e. nearly twice the size of 009. However it does still run on n gauge 9mm track. This photo illustrates the difference with 7mm or 09 gauge on the left and 4mm or 009 gauge on the right.

The kit itself is based on a real loco and to quote Google - 'The Simplex Caravan is a small, unusual variant of the Motor Rail Simplex class of locomotive with an overall cab. The prototype was built in 1938 and is the only example to have been supplied to a UK company. It is currently preserved on the Leighton Buzzard Narrow Gauge Railway.' There is an interesting picture of it here in a very bright yellow paintjob. Not sure what colour mine will end up in but probably it wont be as bright!

Theses are the kit parts - all three of them so it is not a problem that there are no illustrated instructions to assist the model maker!

The level of detail achieved is remarkable with all the hand controls, foot pedals and other small parts all included in the print.

It should be fun getting this going and painted up and where am I going to run it? Well the answer to the last question is still in floating around in my mind but a plan from my initial idea when I bought this is beginning to come together and will involve what I talked about in a previous post here.! Stay tuned for further updates!

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!