Wednesday at Rocks by Rail Museum?

 

It is Wednesday so I should not have been at the Rocks By Rail Museum today - but I was for various reasons that I won't go into! Despite the weather forecast showing rain all day apart from a few drops in the morning it was dry. So I was out mowing! All the front grass done and about a ten mile walk to do it. However I still had the legs to do my usual tour of the workshop where I did find Harriot the JCB slowly becoming a technicolour JCB as she gains all sorts of paint coverings. I am sure she will look good once finished but at the moment she looks somewhat like something out of Scrapheap Challenge!.

In the Exhibition Center the three Sentinels that the Museum relies on are getting continual maintenance. This time Graham is being looked at with regard to a charging problem for the battery.

The control console is in bits which means this is serious work.

Steve, Dan and Derek are working their magic in getting the alternator back in probably for the 96th time! Whether the problem will be fixed is still awaiting a proving test!

Meanwhile this Yorkshire loco had to be moved and shows just how attractive an industrial loco can look when looked after. A real credit to Paul the owner who has spent a great deal of time painting buffer beams, buffers, couplings and polishing the bodywork. The engine noise is just stunning too. Almost makes me want to own one! Now that would be something that would need some careful explaining to Mrs. Woody!

Waterproofing.

As I get closer to the point of ballasting the track on the removable section of baseboard on my 00 gauge Last Great Project I need to take account that the two viaducts are made of cardboard. Whilst I did paint the track-bed with some sealant I thought it would be best to take a few more precautions or I could end up with a mass of soggy cardboard when I glue the ballast down with watered down PVA glue.

Step one was to cut some very thin plastic card to size. As usual, WMD HQ Stores had the required item in stock so that was found and cut to size. Unfortunately the sheet was just 4cm too short so I had to glue a small extensions on to the main parts.

As the plastic card was bright white it was painted grey to avoid any bright patches if the ballast did not cover it all.

To try to further reduce the amount of diluted PVA that I would need to use I pre-ballasted the edges and middle of the track-bed.

Putting the two pre-ballasted track beds in place on the viaducts it looked like this.

 I thinking its looking good but whether it will still be that way after all the track is ballasted and glued down with dilute PVA remains a question to be answered!

Flat Earth!

Not that I have joined the Flat Earth Society but flat earth is the Vallejo colour that I am painting the sleepers and rails on my Last Great Project 00 gauge layout. This tones the sleepers down from their plastic dark brown and gives the sides of the rail a rusty look just as in real life. The photos below hopefully demonstrates the difference between unpainted and painted track.

I am airbrushing the track which uses a fair amount of paint but is certainly quicker then using a paint brush! All I have to do is use a track cleaning rubber to clean the top of the rail head so that locomotives can make electrical contact and run. As a lot of paint still needs to be used I had to get three more bottles of flat earth paint today just to make sure stocks at WMD HJQ are maintained!

Driver for a Fiver!

Driver for a fiver must be one of the best value activities in the railway museum World! Not sure how many museums offer such a thing but at the Rocks by Rail Museum a £5 drive gets visitors behind the controls of one of the Rolls Royce powered Sentinel diesel locomotives and under supervision allows them the experience of driving it to the end of the line and back. The whole experience takes about 10 leisurely minutes or so which means that participants do actually feel as though they are being focused on and not just being pushed through as quickly as possible.

From the feedback we get, the vast majority of visitors think that it is fantastic value. Even with the less then summery weather today about 30 of our many visitors today experienced the driving opportunity so that is hopefully a number of Bucket List items ticked off for many of them! I am sure most of their other Bucket List items will cost a lot more than £5 to fulfill!

Visitors awaiting their turn for Driver for a Fiver during a sunnier part of the day! Not even the rain could put them off!

A short video about Driver for a Fiver is on my YouTube channel.

Waiting for glue to dry!

Yes, it is that time when I have to wait for the glue to dry. The underlay to the track on the removable section on my Last Great Project 00 gauge layout has now been glued in place complete with the plywood pieces at the baseboard joins.

Ordinary PVA glue is just the job and spread over the whole surface to be glued should make a secure join.

I have poked the holes through the glued underlay where the wiring feeds through to the underside of the baseboard from the crossing complex.

 

All the underlay on the removable baseboard and the plywood sections at the joins have been glued in place. I need to think about weathering the track next. I will have plenty of time to think about that as I wait for the glue to dry!

Drilling times!

Today Mr. Drill came out today! 

Many holes were drilled to feed the various wires through and for the point motors. Amazingly, having fed the wires through and tested that the point motor holes were in the right place, the track actually fitted to the baseboard. Next step is to take it all up again and glue the underlay in place! Sometimes you have to do things many times to do the job properly - that is what I keep drilling into my mind anyway!

24 wires from crossing!

24 wires from crossing is perhaps a bad variation of that hit Gene Pitney song 24 hours from Tulsa! However that is what I have - 24 wires from the crossing. Following several hours of head scratching as to where wires would go and getting the right colour to the correct joint I finally finished the soldering without any swear jar contributions!

Next step is to place it on the baseboard and drill holes for the wires to go through and also holes for the point motors to be fitted. That will be a further testing time!

Once I have got to the stage when the crossing is permanently in place I will be using a mix of these connectors that arrived today.

The blue ones are the same as I used on Chalkdon and allow a number of wires to be joined to one feed. The white chocolate block connectors are a plug and socket type which will allow the power across board joints to be separated when needed. That is the plan at the moment but Woody's plans have a habit of changing as Mrs. Woody can testify!

Fine tuning!

Fine tuning might be taken that I have some form of musical instrument that I have spent some time tuning to optimum musical performance. Well there is a drum kit or two or WMD HQ much to the concern of Mrs. Woody. One is an acoustic kit that never sees the light of day these days due to noise considerations and whilst the other is a neighbour and wife friendly electric kit that only I can hear through headphones when I play it, neither has ever had me fine tune them. Instead the fine tuning I am currently involved in is related to my last great project 00 gauge layout.

As outlined back on Monday I am currently working on track joints at the baseboard joints and I had cut some plywood pieces that would be located at the baseboard joins to which copper clad sleepers would be attached to which the rail would be soldered. Well the plywood has been cut and painted. Giving it a coat of grey paint seals it against any moisture from the glue when I eventually ballast the track and will also ensure any parts not fully covered by ballast will not stand out as they would if I left the plywood in its natural state. 

Luckily Mrs. W had a recent Amazon delivery (not an unusual situation!) and I diverted the discarded packaging from the recycling bin in order to attach the plywood ready for painting.

It certainly made painting easier.

Now back to the fine tuning. To get the best from a model railway the track needs to be level and well laid. Whilst I have a general layout of track, non of it is fine tuned and it shows at some of the joints and the general alignment. Trains run but there are occasional issues which I want to avoid once the track is secured and ballasted. Using Set Track pieces to build a layout at least means that with the set sized pieces and the geometry used it should fit together reasonably well. Mix Set Track and flexitrack and you really have a bit of a nightmare in getting it all to fit properly. Now with my skills, or lack of them, getting track to fit is a challenge! However that fine tuning has to be so I have started.

First off is this crossing with four points and a diamond crossing. I have, for ease of doing things, taken it off the layout. Looks reasonable from a distance.

However, take a closer look at this joint. Whilst it is always useful to have some room for expansion that gap is just to big to give reliable and smooth running.

Taking a close look, I determined I needed to shorten the lower piece of track to close the gap so out came the rail cutters.

Having done that the situation was much improved.

The best way to check how straight the track is is to look down its length at a low level. Looks good to me.

Next job is to solder some power feed wires to the underside. Now that will be an interesting job. For this crossing there will be 24 wires! That should test my soldering skills and possibly fine tune my skills at adding to the swear jar!

WWW - Warm Wet Weather!

 Tuesday and a day at the Rocks by Rail Museum and with the www - warm wet weather - yet more grass cutting and a bit of weeding for added variety!

Weeding consisted of picking out the weeds from the display of narrow gauge equipment. There is a layer of terrane under the woodchips which is supposed to suppress weeds but is that old now it has broken up.

It may not be perfect but it looks better. Up in the top right hand corner you can see a red and cream wagon that Thomas had just got out of the shed to paint. Remember that - we will come back to that in a minute.

A few minutes later the mower and myself were at the far end of the site - furthest point from the buildings - just as a thunderstorm came in. Luckily a tree offered me some shelter until the rain passed over.

Meanwhile that red and cream wagon had to be hastily returned back inside but it is progressing.

In the restoration shed Ketton No1 has progressed. The new bonnet is on and it is beginning to look smart in its Racing Green livery.

Meanwhile the brake van has come out of the shed to be replaced with this wagon chassis which will be a wooden sided wagon.

Although the chassis is generally in good condition, John is using his experience and knowledge to get rd of the last bits of rust such as between the leaves of the springs. A chisel and saw blade may be unconventional but in true John fashion it works!

This bit of chassis may require a bit more then a hammer and chisel but John will sort it!

I will see how far things have moved on next week!

Slow ahead!

As the captain of a ship or indeed the Star Ship Enterprise would say when entering unchartered waters - Slow ahead! That is exactly what I am having to do with my Last Great Project 00 gauge layout. When I started building the layout over two years ago I decided to make it movable. The idea was that the baseboards could be separated and the layout moved out of the Man Cave. Now this involves having breaks in the scenery - relatively simple to do - and breaks in the track - not so easy. I have built layouts before with breaks in the track. Chalkdon, my 009 narrow gauge layout is one of them, so I know the basics. However with Chalkdon there were just two breaks in the track. With the 00 gauge layout there are about 26! So the method I use to make the joints has to be robust and easy to replicate.

At the baseboard joints I will be replacing two of the plastic track sleepers either side of the join with some copper clad fiber sleepers. The rail can be soldered to the copper clad sleepers making a strong joint - certainly stronger than the plastic sleepers. I am laying the track on a 6mm foam underlay and the track will be glued to that. However the foam underlay will not be suitable to fasten the copper clad sleepers to so I will need to substitute the underlay with some 6mm plywood cut to size. The photo below shows the basic principal.

Having cut a sample piece of plywood to further test this uncharted idea it seemed fine.

Putting the plywood either side of the baseboard joint and I can see that I have space for two copper clad sleepers to be glued to the plywood either side of the join.

Looks good - to me anyway!

Just need to cut more plywood now but that will only be the start with wiring weathering and ballasting still to come! Still lets just proceed with slow ahead at the moment! At least I don't have Klingons on the starboard bow!