A bike ride to the closed cafe!

I started yesterdays post by saying I was shattered but feeling good and ended by saying I might not be so good after my bike ride with Mr. Beecham today. Well we had our ride, about 26 miles on probably the windiest day this summer. Mr. B had promised the delights of a cycling cafe at the half way point which sounded good to me. A snack and drink would be good. Doing the sensible thing of cycling into the wind on the way out so that we would in effect get blown home we did get to the cafe having seen this interesting ex telephone box put to a new use...

...and after a slight detour to find a monument to an air crash involving a Lancaster and an Oxford aircraft. 

The monument was certainly interesting and was a poignant reminder of the lives lost during WW2. 

In the field behind the monument were some interesting creations.  Made of a wire framework covered in something that looked like camouflage netting these really stood out.

Returning to the cafe for that snack and drink......it was Monday and closed! Brilliant! There was another cyclist there who we had an interesting chat with and he told us he was 73. We said goodbye to head off to a nearby (about 7 miles away!) shop for a drink and after two miles that cyclist we had met overtook us and left us for dust! 

Anyway having got back to WMD HQ via the shop Mr. B had to shot off due to other commitments but I did get a chance to see some of his latest model creations. He certainly has been busy!

I was particularly taken by this Sd/Kfz222 which was an amazingly detailed model.

There was also this Chinese gun that caught my eye. Mr. B has a Chinese tank transporter for this to go on.

So to conclude, just like yesterday, I am shattered but feeling good!

Shattered but feeling good!

I am shattered but feeling good! Sunday, the day of rest, was far from restful for me and the other volunteers at the Rocks By Rail Museum today as we hosted and entertained a continuous stream of visitors. In fact I had to go out late morning and get more supplies for the cafe as we were selling out such were the numbers of visitors wanting refreshments! 

As I went out I took this picture of the car park and to see so many cars is a great sight!

It might be tiring but it is what all volunteers love to see and makes us all feel good. Visitors, lots of them, enjoying what we work to display and having a great time. What is even more fulfilling are the number of families who are coming to visit. 

Being so busy I did not get a chance to do my usual tour and get many photographs although I did manage to catch a ride on the last train of the day.

As a Museum we are extremely lucky to have so many younger members and todays steam engine crew was a prime example with Thomas, Ross and George providing rides all day.

Even when the Museum is open there is still work going on as Mick carries on his amazing job of repainting this Janus diesel.

Once the painting is finished the coupling rods need to be reattached to the wheels and the loco will be good to go back into service which will be a great feeling!

I may not be feeling quite so good tomorrow as I am going out on a bike ride with Mr. Beecham, he of model making skills and cycling prowess who has featured in this blog before. I am hoping he has had a weekend of intense gardening or DIY which may slow him down!

Success?

On Wednesday I finished my post regarding the Hornby Swallow Livery HST with the question as to whether it would run with the DCC chips in it. Well it did! The success of this project was something I wondered about given my track record of unsuccessful projects! However it was reassuring to see the train run with the headlights on at the right end of the train. 

I was extra pleased with the success as I had a further plan for this train. DCC sound!

I managed to find a pair of the Hornby TTS DCC sound chips for the HST train - one for each power car. Theoretically this should, given my work already on installing the 8 pin sockets in each car, be a simple plug and play job. Hmmmmm! As Mrs. Woody can vouch, the jobs which I think are going to be quick and simple have a habit of turning into something a bit bigger! Without giving too much away Mrs. W can add another example to her evidence list for jobs that grow bigger after my assurances of a speedy finish! More of that in a day or two! Stay tuned!

More vegetational butchery at the Museum!

A rocks By Rail Museum day for me with, more mowing and hedge trimming! Or, as I like to refer to my work - vegetational butchery! With all the recent hot weather you would think that the grass would not be growing much but no! In addition the mole population of the County appear to have moved into the area leaving trip hazards and creating dust storms as the mower passes over their excavations. Not nice when you get a mouthful blown up at you!

It is only when you take the mower from one end of the grass in the car park to the other and look back that you realise just how far you have to walk. Certainly gives me an apatite for lunch!

We did have quite a few visitors today including some motorcyclists out for the day and happened to drop in. They had some nice and interesting bikes.

Meanwhile in the restoration shed Thomas and Alex have finished the welding on the front of Ketton No1 and it is now in undercoat awaiting its Racing Green top coat!

Somehow we have managed to get a spare bonnet which will save repairing the original and Alex is applying the Racing Green top coat.

Rob in the meantime is applying his welding skills to the pivot points of the front loader on Harriot the JCB. Rob has skills that mean he can almost weld anything to anything including fresh air!

Round the back of the restoration shed Heather and Roger have been busy cutting back the vegetation  - yet more vegetational butchery!

I think I will have a quite day tomorrow and forget about my own vegetational butchery jobs around WMD HQ. They won't run away!

Relaxing?

It has been a busy few weeks at WMD HQ and it is catching up with me. I need to relax a bit I said To Mrs. Woody as she inspected the latest work I have done on finishing off the conservatory rebuild. Marty the cat certainly knows how to relax - maybe I should take some lessons from him?

Anyway I think Mrs. W didn't hear me but is pleased with progress! Todays work was supposed to see the slabs at the side of the conservatory cleaned up and re-bedded in fresh cement. However they were that coated in mortar the builders let drop on them whilst bricklaying they took several hours of working with a hammer and chisel to clean them up. However they are much neater and lighter in weight and the bits of mortar that remain will weather off over winter.

With the surfaces cleaned off the slabs were lifted and all the muck under them cleaned out so that there is space for cement to re-bed them  Looks a bit neater already.

Those two bags on the left contain the stuff removed from on top and under the slabs!

Back with the Hornby Swallow Livery HST I dealt with the spaghetti wiring. Getting the body off the driven power car revealed this. There are wires to the motor and the headlight from the pickups on both bogies..

This is the motor end. For some reason there is black paint on most of the wiring around the motor. In amongst the wiring is a capacitor that needs to come off. 

Disassembly saw the keeper plates for the motors removed and cleaned up and the capacitor removed.

Cutting the various wires allowed me to solder in the 8 pin socket. Basically the socket fits between the pickups taking power from the track and the wires to the motor enabling the DCC chip to take its power from the track and then run the motor in accordance with the instructions it gets from the DCC controller which in this case is controlled by me!

The 8 pin socket is wired in to the motor and headlight. The 9 volt battery is a handy way of testing things. There is enough power in it to run the motor. In this case I plugged a blanking plate into the socket which allows the motor to run on DC power and used the battery to test that the motor still ran. It did!

The wiring was tidied up and with that done it was time to plug a DCC chip in.

Meanwhile the rear un-motored power car needed a DCC chip in it to control the headlight. It was a simpler job then the motored power car as there was no motor to wire in.

There is certainly enough room for the wiring.

With all that done will it run? I feel fairly relaxed(in my mind but not body!) that it will but stay tuned to find out!

Dealing with Spaghetti!

Much as I enjoy spaghetti, especially when the meal is spaghetti bolognaise (which Mrs. Woody does so well!), I do sometimes get that nervous twitch when looking at it as to me most wiring is like spaghetti especially in most model trains these days. I recall my old Traing locomotives which had a live chassis directly feeding one part of the motor and just one wire leading from the isolated wheels to the other side of the motor. Easy to work out and easy to work on - just like me! Well that is what I tell Mrs. Woody!

Modern day locos are slightly more complex in the wiring department and opening up the latest models will reveal wires, circuit boards and possibly DCC chips which looks more like the internals of a computer. However if you want DCC that is what you need, Luckily you buy the loco ready wired and in many cases chipped. In the case of my Hornby Swallow Livery HST whilst not being an old model it is however not a modern model so does not have a circuit board to plug a DCC chip in. Wanting to convert it to DCC meant that I had to get involved in some wiring work. Basically I needed to install a harness for the DCC chip and wire that to the models pickups on the wheels and then to the motor. I also needed to wire in the headlights on the model in such a way that they only came on whilst the model travelled forward. 

First stage was to assemble what I needed and luckily, as ever, WMD stores had the necessary parts in stock - almost like I planned it!

There are two power cars for the train and whilst only one has a motor the other one does have headlights and therefore I need to install a chip in both cars. How will it go? Will I get spaghetti bolognaise for dinner? Will it all blow up? I will let you know in a day or so!

In the meantime I have been enjoying the slightly cooler weather to finish my block work as started yesterday. 

I just need to let it dry then put some gravel between the blocks and the main wall and level up the grass with some soil and grass seed. It is not over however as round the corner I need to reset these slabs which were lifted by the builders! It never ends - just like a piece of spaghetti seems to be when I try to wind it round my eating utensil!

Small jobs and bigger jobs!

A nice small model railway job today, changing the coupling on one of the coaches for the HST set. The coach for some reason had couplings that look more like 009 couplings. The problem was that it did not couple up with the other coaches. The solution was to change the couplings for conventional Hornby type ones. Luckily the coach is a modern one fitted with NEM coupling pockets that mean standard compatible couplings can just be slid into the NEM slot. Equally luckily was that within WMD stores suitable spare couplings were in stock!

The old couplings on the left easily came out.

The replacement Hornby type couplings now attached.

With the replacement couplings in place the coach could be put into the train and coupled to the ther coaches. I just need to convert the power car to DCC but more about that another time.

Bigger jobs see me returning to the conservatory rebuild that happened at the end of last year. The garden was devastated by the building work and I am only just getting grass to grow back where mud was spread by the digger. Having at last got a surface where I can walk without sliding or sinking I now need to reinstate the edging blocks that got dug up when the foundations were dug. They disappeared with the spoil dug out so I have bought replacements and today started the job of replacing them. 

About half way through so hopefully tomorrow will see the blocks in place. 

 I also need to finish the step and reset some slabs on the far side of the conservatory so still much to do! As long as Mrs. Woody doesn't make this job any bigger I should be OK though!

HST and that is not short for Hot and Sunny Today!

Although it is hot and sunny today the HST I am talking about is the train type. Introduced way back in 1976 and only just being withdrawn the High Speed Trains or Class 43 to use their official designation were so advanced when they came into service back in the 70's and still, in my view, look modern today. Having ridden on so many other the years I am not quite sure why I did not have an 00 gauge model of one before now but last year I started to look about for a second hand example as I was not paying out the £300 to £400 just for the two power cars that the new Hornby models are selling for. Instead I managed to find a Hornby Train Pack from about 2007 with the revised body modelling which is much better then the ones from before the Millennium. It still has the old Ringfield and non DCC ready motor in it and only one of the power cars has the motor but I was happy!

The pack not only contained models of the two power cars but also two coaches. Whilst the contents of the box does not make up the 8 plus car trains that the HSTs ran in it certainly starts you off.

I do like the Intercity Swallow livery that these trains wore - I think it just looked so right even now.

Over the past few months I have kept an eye out for the right coaches second hand to extend the initial set. Learning about the various marks and production runs of coaches has certainly been an education and but I have ended up with one coach that is completely wrong as it is the old style 7 window coach from the 80s Hornby HST model. That is staying in its box for the moment. Two coaches are actually designed for a Class 91 and DVT and have two small windows side by side at one end of the coach body instead of one at each end - it just gets complicated - but I am going to run them in this set anyway on the basis that unless you know you will never spot this! Two further coaches are actually the right ones being the buffet car and the guards end coach. The end result is that I have an eight car unit which is big enough for my needs.

Looks impressive - to me anyway!

I need to change the couplings on one coach and put a DCC chip into the power cars so that I can run it but for an outlay of roughly half the price of two new Hornby HST power cars I have an eight car formation that looks the business. 

Mrs. Woody would be proud of my budgetary skills and savings but probably not pleased that I bought it in thye first place - I cannot win!

The Peco 6ft Way Gauge.

It may actually look more like a gardeners plant pot label that you stick into the soil of your newly planted item so you know what it is or in my case what it might have been if it had not deceased due to my poor gardening sills! It is however probably not an item on most modellers 'want' list but is actually a very handy tool. Turn it over and the wording begins to reveal its use.

The two sticking out rectangles on each side fit between the rails of standard 00gauge track. The gap between them sets what is termed as 'the six foot'. This is the gap on real railways between two tracks on a real railway. Any closer and there are dangers of impact when two trains pass each other. 

The question you may have is why do the rectangles on each side have a different gap between them. As the wording says the wider gap is for Setrack which are the pre-shaped pieces of track. Because of the sharp radius of the curves in set track, there needs to be a gigger than scale six foot gap between the tracks to avoid long wagons and coaches catching each other as they pass each other going round the curves. The smaller gap is for Steamline track. This is the flexible track which allows you to create any shape of track that it will physically bend to. Obviously the intention is that the curves are a lot gentler then Setrack  and therefore the scale six foot gap can be created without rolling stock hitting each other as they travel through these gentler curves. The interesting thing to note is that Setrack points when joined as a crossing will already put the two tracks apart at the Setrack six foot gauge whilst Streamline points will join together at the scale six foot gauge.

Whilst this is a Peco product most of the main manufacturers of track use the same geometry and dimensions so it is equally useful with these as it is on Peco track.

On my layout I have a mix of Setrack curves as they are curved better than I can achieve with flexible track but I do use the flexible track for the straight parts and small curves in sidings usually. Therefore on the straight parts I set the six foot to the Streamline dimensions

Whilst on the curves the Setrack six foot gauge is used.

Hopefully over the next few weeks I can move what I term as My Last Great Project, on a bit more so these gauges will come in very useful.