A strapping time!

As I highlighted in yesterdays post I suspected I would be in for more eye testing times with mounting the external fuel tanks to the cradles on the hull of the Egyptian T34 tank. I was right with that! Not often I am right according to Mrs. Woody but in this case I was. I had to construct the straps from two parts of etched brass parts.

The small rectangle is bent around the triangular part giving a reinforcing part to the strap. Once this was done the strap has to be glued to the cradle and then the external fuel tank put in place.

Once everything is set in place the straps are then bent around the fuel tank and glued to the top of the cradle. Simple if it all goes well and to be fair it went reasonably well for me - most unusual!

It all looks very impressive and there is one more tank to do on the other side so that will probably be my next job. In the meantime I will rest my eyes!

Eye sight test!

What a wet, cold and miserable day despite the Jubilee! A day for curling up and watching TV under a blanket. However I did find enough get up and go to extract myself from the comfort of the sofa and made a little more progress on the Egyptian T34 tank. The rest of the main wheels are finished and the eye sight test job of more photo etched parts on the external fuel tanks complete. This involved bending up carrying handles. Talk about eye sigh strain! 

Well I must be getting better at this sort of thing as all six handles for the three tanks were done in under an hour with no swear jar contributions having to be made and using just some tweezers to hold and fold the parts. 

I guess the next stage will be to mount them to the cradles which I know involves more photo etched parts - nice! I will look forward to further eye sight testing capers in the near future but in the meantime a little more progress.

Flaming June!

Well one of the worst weather wise starts to the supposed warm period - that is Flaming June for you! Very cold on this mornings bike ride and looking at the forecast for tomorrow looks like a somewhat cold and wet day that will preclude any bike ride! In fact it was that cold today Mrs. Woody even put the heating on for a while and we both ended up watching a few films on TV. 

I did however manage to extract myself from the sofa long enough to put together a few wheels for the Egyptian T34 tank. I really like the detail on these and they do look good - although I need to clean off the plastic dust created when I sanded the parts smooth. That is the problem of digital photography - it shows all the detail including that which you do not want to see!

Bonds at the Rocks By Rail Museum!

A slight play on words there in case anyone thinks that the latest James Bond film is featuring a scene at the Rocks By Rail Museum. We did however have an operating day today and a good show was put on for those who visited. Our guests included the Bond Owners Club. The Club is centered around the Bond Minicars of the 1950s and 60s and I can do no better than direct anyone to their website if he pictures below make you curious about these wonderfully characterful cars. Click here to go to the Bond Owners Club.

We did have steam running for the brake van rides complete with what the suppliers claimed was smokeless coal!

With the Jubilee celebrations going on even the Museum was decked out.

OK it may not have been elaborate but we tried!

This mornings bike ride and this afternoons drive home revealed these gems of creativity for the Jubilee.

Maybe he is saluting because he thinks I am James Bond...........

  

Jubilee!

Well today is the day we celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of the Queen. 70 years on the throne and for most of the Country we have known no one else as the Head of State. Lots of celebrations around the Country with things like this being done in a local village.

Even the crows at the back of WMD HQ seemed to be getting into the spirit with this gathering and lots of crow type chatter.

Model making wise not much done but I did think it appropriate to dig out my Hornby Royal Train Pack bought back in 2004 and I am sorry to say never run yet. That will change soon but I will either have to DCC chip the loco which was never designed for DCC or find by DC controller and see if that will work. The pack was released by Hornby in 2004 after the the Queen and Prince Philip carried out a train tour of the UK in the summer of 2002 with the loco in the pack being the one that hauled the train.

The loco is a Coronation Class LMS 4-6-2 named Duchess of Sutherland and despite being nearly 20 years old is nicely detailed..

Carriages are models of those in the actual train and I do have the extension pack with another three carriages somewhere which will make it a great looking train. Just hope I get to actually run this before the next jubilee!

Hedging my bets!

A cool start to June but the bike ride this morning saw me put another 20 miles on top of the 2390 that I have managed up to the end of May without getting too hot. However as the day warmed up I thought I would hedge my bets by getting the hedge cutting on Mrs. Woody's list of jobs to be done before doing anything else. Good job I did as with all these things in my life the time I estimated the job would take doubled in reality! So not as much model making time but in good books (I hope!) with Mrs. W. The garden does look better with a set of trimmed hedges.

Despite limited model making time I did manage to get some more done on the MiniArt Egyptian T34 tank. Both sides are now grab handled up in brass wire and the external fuel tank cradles are in place as well as the towing cables. You can see the difference the wire grab handles make with this photo where the last of the plastic handles is yet to be replaced.

This kit is certainly not a weekend special! Hopefully I have hedged my bets with the other kit of the artillery version of this tank that I have yet to build which is a simpler build and should come as a relief after this one and hopefully started before the hedges need cutting again!

Rain stops mowing.

Todays trip to the Rocks By Rail Museum was supposed to see me get the mower out for another session of grass cultivation. However, the weather had other ideas with rain making the grass too wet to cut so I had to find another activity. I had noted that the recent wet and warm weather had encouraged the growth of weeds in the track bed. Now whilst weed control would normally be taken care of with a spray of weed killer from a suitably equipped train this is Rocks by Rail so I hand weeded the area around the station. I don't think anyone will say, wow someone has been doing a lot of weeding! However, hopefully subconsciously guests may feel that the place is cared for. We will have to wait and see what reaction we get on the operating day this Friday but I think it looks good!

 

 I did have some supervision from Riley the dog who probably knows more about the Museum than I do!

In between the rain I did have time to have a look at the display models in the Sundew cafe. Phil Parker's model railway layout (see it on his blog by clicking here or watch the first of Hornby's videos on this project here.) always attracts and entertains younger guests and we are fortunate in having it. It does get 'played' with so on occasions the little details do require some maintenance and I see I will need to bring some glue in when I go back again.

At the other end of the spectrum of models are these detailed scenes of quarrying including a massive model of Sundew the World's largest walking drag line.

There are also some informative displays on the history of iron ore mining and I really must find time to reacquaint myself with the contents sometime!

I can't escape Riley's supervision!

I will be back Bank Holiday Friday when the Museum will have a full on operating day - great!

More wire bending!

A odd half hour in amongst other jobs has seen the T34 Egyptian tank progress a little further. The remainder of the external fuel tank cradles have been fitted together with some more brass wire substituting for the plastic kit part which broke into pieces as I tried to cut it free from the sprue. I have also replaced one of the already fitted grab handles with a bent wire version which looks better. No doubt I will be bending even more wire as I get onto the other side. Not much progress today but the construction moves on which is the main thing!

The perils of detailed plastic kits!

After a hard day gardening I thought I would have a relaxing hour or so with the MiniArt Egyptian T34 tank kit. Nothing would be nicer to wind down after a day of toil under the watchful eye of Mrs. Woody then this! Look at plans. Decide that next part to fit are grab handles to the hull. Locate parts on the sprue. Look delicate so gently begin to cut off and snap! One of the perils of highly detailed kits is that the parts become so delicate that it is impossible to get them off the sprue without damage let alone clean up the joint where the part was attached to the sprue. Now at this point the swear jar could well have taken several donations from me but surprisingly I sat back and actually thought about the problem. I could try to glue the part together or use the spare one on the sprue. However the inevitable would be that I would face exactly the same problems again and that swear jar would actually become fuller!

In my late in life developed skill of working smarter and not harder I decided that the only sensible way to deal with the problem was to ignore the kit parts and make my own handles out of brass wire which, handily, I had in stock. A bit of careful bending using some small pliers and comparing with the intact kit part soon had some handles bent up and fitted. I used a piece of scrap plastic to hold the handles off the hull by the required amount whilst the super glue set. 

I think it was actually quicker doing this then having to deal with the kit parts. It certainly is a lot more robust then the plastic part. After an hour I had three handles in place and the beginnings of the external fuel drum mountings attached and I was still calm!

Sundew.

I won't be at the Rocks by Rail Museum tomorrow but there is an operational day so visitors will be treated to the sight and smell of locomotives and rolling stock in action as well as being able to enjoy the various exhibits around the site. They may also enjoy some refreshments in the Sundew cafe and think that it is a strange name to give it but there is logic in its naming.

In my wanderings around the site, now usually with the mower keeping the grass down, I have, as already explained in a previous post, had the opportunity to get close to the exhibits. One of the more unusual exhibits, that visitors tomorrow can see, is one of the driving cabs of the walking excavator Sundew. In its time, Sundew was the largest walking drag line excavator in the World. It even 'walked' the 13 miles to Corby when mining operations in its home quarry Exton Park in Rutland ended. Unfortunately in 1987 following the ending of iron ore mining at Corby, Sundew was cut up for scrap. There are more details about Sundew on the Rocks by Rail website which you can see by clicking here. 

Despite being scrapped one of the cabs survived and was donated to the Museum in its then guise as the Rutland Railway Museum. The cab is big but when you look at the size of Sundew in photographs it pales into insignificance! During its time at the Museum it has been restored and now lives on as the only part of Sundew that remains apart from peoples memories of this monster and the name of the cafe!

The interpretive board giving details of the 13 mile walk to Corby.

The cab is big - I am betting there are apartments in London with less space!

Could do with a wash but still not too bad for being over 70 years old! That grass looks nice and trimmed too!

The cab fittingly now overlooks the Museum's quarry face.