Rocks by Rail Museum opens to a great start for 2023.

Well the 2023 season for the Rocks By Rail Museum got off to a great start! With the current squeeze on peoples budgets we were unsure how that might affect the visitor numbers. However the entrance fee remains the same as last year and cafe prices are up only slightly which may make a visit for a family as attractive as last year compared to other venues where prices are up considerably. The true answer to the strategy will only reveal itself at the end of the season. However it seems today that we attracted more visitors then on Easter Sunday last year so certainly a great start! Talking to our guests it seems they had a great time and would be coming back so we are hopefully doing the right things.

Today was a steam day with brake van rides.

A rare view of all four brake vans together. The nearest one is the one just restored and fresh out of the workshop. The last two are the ones that need restoration at the end of the season.

Meanwhile the cafe has been brightened up. Shortly after these pictures the gates opened and at one stage it looked as though we were going to run out of food! This was particularly worrying as the food was supposed o be sufficient for today and tomorrow. More supplies are on order!

Talking of tomorrow, it will be a quarry day with the excavators working including the drag line.

Although there will be more going on tomorrow there was still a lot of action today with a birthday tractor run coming to the museum with a host of vintage tractors and one more modern one! They certainly attracted a lot of attention when we parked them up next to the entrance.

Good to know there is a sense of humour in the World of tractors!

DRS coaches arrive at last!

During the pandemic I was fortunate enough to get hold of two Bachmann Class 47s in DRS livery with DCC Sound at a very good price. It was around the time that Hornby released their DRS livery coaches. Unfortunately by the time I got round to seeking some out they were sold out or on eBay at ridiculous prices of around £70. I was not paying that amount and put the idea to the back of my mind. Then for their 2022 range Hornby announced some more DRS coaches and getting my act together I pre-ordered some. Wind forward about 18 months and they arrived! I had almost forgotten about them until I got an email saying they were on the way. I was expecting a single box with the five coaches in it. Instead fives boxes arrived! 

I think Mrs. Woody thought I had ordered a shop worth of things. It did make me wonder why Hornby could not have just put them in one box instead of five boxes which each had room for at least three coaches. Anyway I am sure there is a logical reason for Hornby doing it this way. It was fascinating for Monty the cat who thought it all very interesting with five empty boxes to play with!

Having had a busy day and with friends visiting I have not had time to get them all out on the layout but I could not resist at least seeing one on the track with one of the Class 47s.

They do look good together. I am looking forward to getting the rest out but that will have to wait a day or so as I am working at the Rocks By Rail Museum tomorrow on the first day of the 2023 season. Apparently there is a 20 strong tractor convoy coming to visit! That should be a sight!

Fun size????

A shopping trip today with Mrs. Woody as the cupboards and fridge at WMD HQ were bare! Not my idea of fun but we have to eat! Whilst reining in Mrs. Woody's desire for a wide variety, of in my mind, unnecessarily frivolous products at a cost that makes model making seem a bargain I noticed this.

Whilst Fun Size sweets I can just about understand as a means of selling ever smaller bars of chocolate I have to admit I was taken aback by what can be fun about a small cucumber? Then I noticed the spelling of cucumber and a Google found this - 

The Cucumbears are vegetarian bears who attempt to convert passerbys to vegetarians. The average hero has a violent reaction to being ordered around by bears and starts combat. The Cucumbear gets it's name for using the vegetables it has gathered, including Cucumbers, as weapons. If you want to find out more about this and the game they are from here is the link - https://wiki.godvillegame.com/Cucumbear

I still come back to my point  - what is fun about tiny cucumbers regardless of how you try and sell them! I must be getting old!

Back at the sanity of WMD HQ with the shopping put away in the now somewhat fuller cupboards and fridge I did venture out to the Man Cave for an hour of fun! After some fairly intensive model making sessions over the last couple of weeks I just played, I mean operated, some trains on my Last Great Project layout. It has been neglected over the past few months whilst other projects have taken precedence so it was really nice just to bring it back to life and be able to run some trains round. 

I got my EWS Class 37 out which has a great sound chip in it that really gives the right sounds for what is known by train spotters as a tractor. 

It might only be a small model but it is what I can actually relate to as being fun sized!

Video making day!

Today was a YouTube video making day. Strange how my unscripted 20 minute rambling about Chalkdon, my 009 narrow gauge layout, takes about 5 hours of time to produce. I guess those better at these things can get the whole process done in less than an hour but for me I end have to record it several times over because things tend to go wrong. Then there is the editing, the processing to convert it into a suitable video format and then the time to upload, which given I am not on the end of a fast connection, takes some time. However I enjoy it, it is something different for me and does give me a different view of my layout which can be enlightening as to what remains to be done and equally whether it all looks as I intended. Photographs are great but video just gives that little bit of a different perspective.

I just use the camera on my phone and there is no script so what comes out is fairly amateurish but I am a model maker not Spielberg! Anyway todays video is Part 3 on Chalkdon and there is a fair amount about the Bachmann EZ Command controller that I use to run it. 

 It is about 20 years old and one of the first DCC controllers that was produced so it doesn't have all the features that modern day DCC controllers have but it is great for a small layout such as Chalkdon. If you would like to find out more the video is below for you viewing delight!

Hairspray - and its not the movie!

On with further work on Chalkdon my 009 narrow gauge layout. I had several jobs in mind but as with the best laid plans, especially mine, things did not go according to plan! In fact I could have pulled my hair out but luckily I had hairspray in stock!

First item was to 'plant' the tree by the canal wharf. I have decided I like it in its position where it had been temporarily plonked for a few days. Before I did that though I needed to add a bit of the leaf foliage that had dropped off the foliage mat when I first applied it to the tree. Surprisingly my chosen adhesive was the aforementioned hairspray. I have had this spray for possibly nearly 20 years now and being cheap it is nice and sticky!

With the existing foliage sprayed I just scattered the loose leaf material over it and it stuck to the tree.

That looks better! Who would have thought that hairspray would be a good model making adhesive!

With tree now leafed up it was glued to the layout. Moving onto the next job which was that locos were hesitant on the wharf siding.  They would stall which I thought was a simple two minute track cleaning job. Wrong! After an hour or so I managed to figure out that in placed the plastic cobble stones either side of the track was loose and higher than the track. The result was that the loco wheels were being lifted clear of the track and loosing power. I addition the cobbles in the center of the track was tight in places and binding on the loco wheels. No choice but to lift the cobbles, adjust and re-glue. Of course the freshly 'planted' and glued tree did not make this job simple!

It does not look pretty but you sometimes have to be destructive to be constructive! 

With the adjustments made it has been re-glued and tested and works! Unfortunately I knocked the chimney off the narrow boat having only recently re-glued it! Luckily I still have most of my hair  - even if it is stuck back on with the hairspray!

 

Time to cut some grass - a lot of grass!

First time for ages that a day at the Rocks By Rail Museum was warm and dry. So warm and dry that I was put in charge of the new lawn mower and set on the task of getting as much grass cut as possible! There is a lot to cut and it had been growing so was not the easiest to cut but I got a fair amount done ready for our Sunday opening. I was even entrusted with the new mower!

A couple of guys passed me whilst cutting the roadside grass out on their tractors for a run out!

Looking back on the sea of cut grass!

In the workshop the completed restored brake van has been moved out and the Shark brake van moved in for some emergency repair works to see it through the 2023 season and then into a full blown restoration over next Winter.

It is hard to believe this was restored some ten years ago - it has a hard life!

In the cafe the floor has been partly painted although the paint is not drying as it should! Could mean an interesting time on Sunday! Maybe it is a cunning plan to keep customers at the counter.

Standing on time and Chalkden Station becomes alive!

I was in Louth in Lincolnshire today with Mrs. Woody. A really historic Lincolnshire town nestled in the hills of the Lincolnshire Wolds which proves not all of the County is flat! I did come across some very interesting sights and facts whilst having a walk round but these two particularly fascinate me.

The first is that the Greenwich Meridian goes through the middle of the town as recorded by this in the pavement which I stood on making me stand on time!

The plaque on the wall above explains.

A bit further down the street was this plaque which showed the modest beginnings of Currys which is now one of the UKs largest electrical retailers. From small acorns....

Back at WMD HQ, Chalken Station has benefitted from the installation of the platform seats (with station nameplates added) and lamps I was working on and even a few people have made their way into the scene. They are only temporarily placed to see if their positioning looks OK before being glued down.

I am really pleased with how it has turned out. Just Need to put the Greenwich Meridian down the middle of the platform so the 4mm people can stand on time!

Lets sit in the light!

More rummaging in boxes at WMD HQ Stores found a few items for the platform on my 009 narrow gauge layout Chalkdon.

First off was a pack of 12 PECO platform benches.

i thought at first that they looked a bit low but with my nearly painted 00 gauge platform figures to hand I cut two seated poses from the sprue to try them out. Although their hats and shoes still need painting this did not affect them fitting on the benches looking comfy!

I also glued two pairs of seats back to back - the reason will become apparent later!

Light wise I found this kit by Ratio for swan necked lamps.

Once unpacked I could see that whilst the kit offered many options on how to assemble the lamps to get different configurations, the parts were tiny and likely to break whilst being cut off the sprue.

Despite my concerns the first lamp went together with no need to make a contribution to the swear box!

A couple of hours saw two double lamps and one single lamp constructed. In addition I have also put in some uprights between the benches to support the station name boards once I make them!

Next stage is to paint these and then get them on the platform which should make that a little more interesting to look t and somewhat more pleasant for the 4mm scale passengers and station staff!

Rummaging!

I am doing a lot of rummaging in boxes at the moment looking for certain things I know I have but can not remember where I put them! Strangely, the usual manner in which these rummages go is that you do not find what you are looking for but do find other things that you were looking for months ago or had indeed forgotten about! 

For me I found an 009 loco and some coaches that I can remember having but not where they were.

The loco is an old, I believe GEM, whitemetal kit now manufactured by PECO and represents a Glyn Valley Tramway loco. It rums on an old Graham Farish 0-6-0 chassis which dates probably from the 1980s/early 90's and is DCC unfriendly!

You can see in the photo below that it is a fairly substantial piece of metal with the parts glued together with epoxy - probably Araldite. I bought this second hand about 30 years ago when I first started dabbling in 009 gauge. 

In storage the chimney had broken off as the picture above shows but this was a straightforward glue job with a blob of superglue. 

The chassis was given a good clean, wheels taken out and pickups cleaned and bearing surfaces lightly lubricated.

The coaches are kit built Parkside Dundas products that now trade just as Dundas. They are based on the coaches used by the Festiniog and Blaenau railway in Wales. As is usual for me, I never finished them and they have sat waiting for those last jobs for the past three decades! Those jobs include glazing Which is why I never glued the roofs on at the time and the probably long lost roof vents want fitting as well as things like door handles painting. I did reattached the Greenwich couplers which are an etched metal coupler that you bend to shape and articulate with a bent track pin. 

Putting all this re-found rolling stock on the layout made an attractive train which has given me the desire to finish the coaches and convert the loco to DCC - not an easy task but if you know how it is possible. I can run it on the layout in its DC form as my Bachmann controller has a facility to allow one DC train to be run in conjunction with up to nine DCC locos. It is not good for the DC loco motor but it does at least prove that the chassis and motor work and that my servicing had not caused it any harm. 

I like this photo where the old rickety passenger train runs side by side with the new comfy bus - a sign of things tp come!