Woody's Christmas Day!

 

Well this was the scene on my pre Christmas lunch bike ride - you need to build up an apatite or so Mrs. Woody told me as she encouraged me out of the house! Certainly not seasonal but what a great day to go for a bike ride even in shorts!

Prior to that Woody had been recipient to a couple of very nice presents. First off was this unusual, for me, 1/25 scale kit of a Fergie tractor by Heller. Going to enjoy the new challenge of building that and there are no brass etched parts!!!!

Second was this 00 gauge model of an Andrew Barclay 0-4-0 tank engine by Accurascale. Very much like the one being re-tubed at the Rocks By rail Museum at the moment. The box is certainly large for such a small loco.

It certainly should not have been damaged in transit with that protection round it!

It looks fantastic - really do like that.

I will need to take it the Museum and photo it on the footplate of the real loco but that is something for next year!

Hope that you all had a great time over the past couple of days even if you ended up in front of the TV where I did for some of the time but well worth the time to watch Wallace and Gromit! 

Merry Christmas!

 

And if you want to see the video of this, here it is......

3D colour printed figures and cat hoovering!

Its been a busy day here at WMD HQ as I complete the pre Christmas Mrs. Woody chore list with some cleaning and hoovering including some cats. On to that in a minute but first lets take a look at some 3D printed figures. I have some that need painting but these two from Accurascale are designed as the crew for their Class 37. 

The difference between these and the 3D printed figures that I already have is that these are actually printed in colour! Now that is another leap forward for 3D printing. These figures are small in 4mm scale and they don't have legs as they are designed to be sat in the seats in the model loco which doesn't have room for their legs - Ouch! You can se the small size as they are posed next to a 1 pence coin which I had to remuage about for as the WMD coin pot is somewhat empty after buying Mrs. Woody's Christmas presents - hope she reads that!

Whilst the colours are sort of fragmented with white it is still impressive that they can be printed in colour. 

This figure even has his beard!

I think I will let the technology come on a bit so that the colours are a bit more solid in nature before I buy any more of these but it is never the less impressive to see where 3D printing has got to already. Who knows where it will be this time next year?

One thing I am fairly certain of this time next year is that I will still be getting on with Mrs. Woody's chore list! However today I did score a bonus point by hoovering the cats! Now I should say at this point the cats in question are not the real ones that form the WMD cat fleet, but are Mrs. Woody's collection of cloth cats as well as a couple of mice! They sit on the floor near the log burner so do get rather dusty from that as well as from the attention they get from the real cat fleet but today saw them hoovered and dust free! 

Here they are, out of their dusty area with hoover nozzle attachment providing a gentle dusting.

Back in place, dust free much like the rest of the lounge once I finished! That should earn me a good set of Christmas presents!

A quick Man Cave job in between Mrs. Woody's never ending Christmas preparation chores for me!

 This truck has featured in the blog before but today it is in for repairs! The door mirror and the ballast weight mirror had both come off. As I was just after a quick Man Cave job in between Mrs. Woody's never ending Christmas preparation chores for me this seemed just the job!

The arrows indicate where the mirrors should be.

Some superglue had them back in place and a bit of dusting followed - perhaps a new years resolution for me to dust my models on a regular basis!

It is an impressive looking truck and I do like these wreckers - they look tough unlike me!

So with that small job done its back to the chores! Just hope that Santa recognises my hard work on Wednesday morning!

Deciduous decisions!

Turning back to my 00 gauge Last Great Project layout, I need to think about making the scenic sub-bases look a bit more like the natural countryside. Not as easy as it sounds as you need to make it actually look natural rather than put together in a garden centre! Knowing that this would be happening, a number of items have been purchased over the last few years and put into the WMD Stores ready for this moment Included in those items are four deciduous trees made by Woodlands Scenics. Bought as secondhand saved some money and they are trees with a presence rather than a 2 inch twigs which is something you can end up buying if you are not careful.

Now to achieve 'natural' is quite a hard process and sometimes it just comes as you work along and on other occasions you have to work at it. Working at it usually means taking your time and putting things temporarily in place to see how they look and feel over some time. That is what I am doing with making a decision on where these deciduous trees will end up on the sub-base. At the moment this is the initial positioning with an old bard in the centre. I quite like it but there is just a little nag in the back of my mind that says leave it for a few days and see how oit looks then.

Something that could not wait a few days though was my work bench which got yet another tidy! That is probably the fifth or sixth this year which is somewhat incredible knowing my usual habits of working in chaos! However, I have to admit that it is nice to look at a clean workbench - almost makes me want to build some models!

Bar, bar, bar!

Bar, bar bar is not a misspelling of my sheep impression (and believe me spell check has been a fantastic development for my limited literary skills) but relates to the three coupling bars I have made to connect the three 09 gauge skip wagons to the loco.

First off I had to find some suitable brass strip to form the bars which handily came in the form of some left over etched brass fret from the Italeri T34 tank build a couple of years ago. It has been hanging on my workbench since then but I knew it would come in handy! Please note Mrs. Woody!

First off though, I had to drill some holes in the skip chasses for the pin that would hold the coupling bar. My pin vice drill came in handy to do the hole drilling.

With some etched brass strip also cut to suitable length and width, the pin vice drill was also rather useful to drill a hole at each end of the bars. Some suitable brass wire also allowed me to bend up a suitable pin to hold the coupling bar to the skip chassis.

They are a bit fiddly to connect but given that once painted the wagons are unlikely to be uncoupled that fiddly coupling should not be a problem!

I added all the coupling bars to the skipswhich shows the are the right distance apart. I now need to sort the loco coupling arrangement out as it is similar to the skips but just slightly enough different to require a bit more thinking about it - never my strong skill!

In the meantime, Mrs. Woody wants me to wrap some Christmas Presents so its a different sort of bar now - Bah humbug!

Letting lunch settle!

Woody got to go to a Christmas lunch which was a fantastic opportunity to catch up with old friends over some good food and drinks. What I thought would be a couple of hours turned out to be more like 6! However there was still an opportunity to do a bit in the Man Cave as well as let lunch settle and the 09 gauge skip wagons that I have got to go with the 3D print loco came out of their box to see what needed doing.

First off there was a small amount of  smoothing to do to the bottom of the skips.

With that done the three skip bodies were looking good.

The skip chassis have been deigned to accept standard n gauge wheelsets. Whilst I want to paint the parts before adding wheels I thought it best just to see how it worked out before I got too far. An old wagon from my n gauge stock supplied some wheels on a temporary basis and they fitted a treat. As the n gauge wagon needs its wheels back I will see if the WMD Stores have any spares in stock and if not then they are something that can be bought in.

The skip itself is made up of three 3D printed parts, the skip itself, a cradle to hold it and the chassis to which the cradle is fastened.

The cradle just sits on the chassis and needs no work to clean it up or get it to fit.

At this point I could not resist putting he three wagons temporarily together and standing them on a piece of track with the loco.

I'm impressed with how well the wagons and loco look together. Apparently the real Caravan loco can only haul three skip wagons so this is an authentic train! I need to now figure out a way of coupling the wagons and loco together. There is provision in the 3D prints to fit Peco 009 couplings but I am thinking something more authentic such as a bar and pin coupling made out of something like brass strip and rod. However I will ponder over that as I let ;unch settle!

Relaxed!

Another day at the Rocks by Rail Museum where out of season without guests things can be a little more relaxed. 

No one about in the workshops so where are they? Well I should have known -in the snap cabin with tea on the go and relaxing!

Even once out of the snap cabin it was one of those days when relaxing was the order of the day and I cannot blame anyone for that! The Museum is also about friendships and camaraderie.

 

Much as I also had a relaxing day I did get some work done. In the absence of anyone else involved in the gabion baskets/cages project I just used my time to source more rock/hardcore to fill the next set of baskets that are due to be delivered shortly. 

Having quarried out the source of dried out cement bags to the side of the plant shed it was time to discover new sources.

Now there is a way up the side of the plant shed....

Which leads to the back...

Where in all that undergrowth there is a veritable treasure trove of hardcore ready to be quarried!

 

I got about 10 wheel barrow loads out of there so there is plenty of infill material ready to go once the gabions arrive and the rest of the team are about, obviously relaxed from not being here whilst I am about! I was certainly relaxed as I left after another great day at the Museum!

Batteries not included!

This has arrived at WMD HQ.

So, what's in the bag Woody I hear you ask! Well it is this.

£5.15 off Amazon bought me a DC speed controller with direction switch. Bargain! You may be wondering what it is for. Well it can be used in conjunction with a suitable power source, in this case a PP3 battery which was not included, to power a small model railway loco which in this case is the Kato chassis under the 3D print Caravan loco that I posted about a few weeks ago.  As batteries were not included, (where have I read that before?) I did have to use a PP3 battery connector which the WMD Stores had in stock - they need to have a good range of stock as I tell Mrs. Woody when she wonders why I buy random things at railway shows, but I could have bought another one for no more than about 75 pence if needed. The battery was also in stock but could be bought for about £2,50. Connected all together temporarily and this is what it looks.

 

Having initially thought I had a bought a dud as it did not seem to work, I found my simple error of having connected the battery supply wires the wrong way round. After that was sorted it powered up Caravan and, well its is probably the best controller that I haver had! The loco simply crawls along at a very realistic speed and the speed control knob is very smooth to operate. So for a total cost, including the battery, of £8.37 I have a controller for this small project. Fantastic! Just need to build it now so that will be one of next years projects or possibly the year after or even the year after that!!!!

 

Red sky in the morning!

It was early rising at WMD HQ this morning which enabled me to take in this amazing morning sky! 

As the old saying goes, 'Red sky at night, shepherds delight, red sky in the morning, shepherds warning'! However, not being a shepherd nor intending to be one, and I think most in the farming World would wish that to remain the case, I ignored the warning! However it was a cold day which is why I moved into my Man Cave to do a bit more scenery work which sees the last sub-base nearly finished.

This work features in the latest WMD YouTube production which is guaranteed to cure insomnia! Hopefully it will uploaded before the morning!