Mind the gap! Sharing success with a lunar landing!

After nearly a year since I built the baseboards for my 00 gauge Last Great Project Layout I was able to lift out the removable section of baseboard creating that gap which I need to mind - especially with all that junk valuable materials revealed and visible!

The ability to lift the baseboard out came after I had soldered the rails to copper clad sleepers at the other end of the baseboard and cut through them. I must have separated it at about the same time that the Indian moon mission successfully landed on the south pole of the moon. I think that the lunar landing probably was more technically challenging then my baseboard separation but still I was pleased!

With the baseboard separated it was an ideal opportunity to do the wiring - certainly this mass of wires needed sorting so that it actually does the job it is supposed to! Not having to lie under a baseboard and peer up into darkness trying to get wires into small holes in the connector certainly made the job a more relaxing one!

Using a multiwire connector the wiring was connected up to this and just needs two feeds back to the controller. This is probably some of the neatest wiring I have done!

I just need to add some wires to the other end of the board which I have started.

Those wires will be joined to a similar connector as at the other end of the board and yes I will be lifting the board out again to make that job easier! Fitting the point motors which is still to be done will also bea lot easier with the board lifted out. Working smarter not harder as I get older!

Skeleton staff do a lot of talking!

A day at Rocks By Rail Museum but with just three of us volunteers in today not a lot of physical things got done. We had quite a few visitors all very nice and inquisitive about things so we did a lot of talking! Now for me talking is something I do naturally so give me an audience and I can talk about almost anything that comes to mind so I was in my element! At least no one made excuses to walk away so the chat must have been interesting to all parties involved.

Despite the skeleton staff situation I did get a bit of grass cutting done.

The clam bucket planters have done well in the wet weather and as I said to Mrs. Woody, every garden should have one of these planters in it. I am still awaiting her response!

In the restoration shed work on Ketton No1 has slowed as the small parts are now dealt with - just like model making!

The four gaps on each side of the bonnet have covers like the two in the photo below.

Alex is dismantling the handles for painting which does take time especially when these parts have been in place for nearly 70 years!

Back at WMD HQ I have had a chance to cut through the rails that I soldered yesterday so that is one side of the board separated.

Just the other side to do now!

Very lucky!

I have to say that although I some times doubt it, I am actually very lucky. Out on a bike ride this morning I stopped to take this photo as a reminder of the countryside I am so lucky to have around WMD HQ in which to cycle. Perhaps I was not so lucky in having to cycle uphill into a head wind to get to this view point but it was worth it!

Talking of cycling it is not going well! Last year at this point I had over 4000 miles done but this year with the bad weather I have only reached 2880 which means this years target of 5200 is looking doubtful. Never mind, at least I am lucky enough to be able to get out sometimes!

Back at WMD HQ the top side of the Panzer Ferry pontoon has been primed in black.

The deck of the pontoon is supposed to be grey painted wood planks. However the paint would in real life wear away where it was trafficked so it will be sprayed with some Tamiya deck paint and then hairspray will be applied before applying the same grey as the amphibious tank has been painted in. Once painted the hairspray should allow parts of the grey paint to be abraded off leaving the deck colour showing.

On my 00 gauge Last Great Project layout progress amazingly continues. My job at the moment is to prepare the track at the baseboard joints so that it can be cut through to allow the removable board to be, well, removed!

First job was to retrieve from WMD HQ Stores my stock of copper clad strip. Bough many years ago it is sold as a sleeper strip for modeller who build their own track. It is roughly sleeper width and just needs cutting to lenght.

Using some side cutters and a plastic sleeper as a templet I cut a number of sleeper length parts. 

To make life easier when soldering these strips to the rail I pre-tinned them with solder.

A bit of a production line means I had enough to do one end of the board.

I then superglued them to the plywood strips I had glued in place some weeks ago ready for this moment! I love it when a plan comes together and it is also amazing if it is one of my plans!

Once in place they were soldered to the rail.

I had to file through the copper cladding to prevent a short circuit between the rails. It may look a bit messy at the moment but once cleaned up, painted and ballasted the track should look OK. I will cut through the rails once I have soldered all the tracks so that may be later this week. Once cut, that saw width gap between the baseboards should disappear - if I am lucky!!!!

Mrs. Woody gets a day out!

Somewhere that Mrs. Woody has wanted to go for some time now is Grimsthorpe Castle near Bourne in Lincolnshire. After a few abortive attempts today was the day we actually finally got there and it was open too! From that you can probably deduce that we have tried to go on a closed day before now!

Whilst not a castle in the traditional sense with a moat and battlements it still is impressive.

You can tell its going to be impressive when you see the driveway which is nearly a mile long!

Inside this is the entrance hall.

Certainly impressive for any visitors!

The castle is lived in and the present occupier and owner is Lady Jane Willoughby. Going upstairs there are rooms just oozing with history. This is where the throne and footstoll for George IV have ended up.

The throne is that big because he weighed between 28 and 30 stone - over 400lbs !

These are the thrones for Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and one of their sons. Apparently in this upstairs room Henry VIII held court but was so unfit he could not walk up the stairs so rode his horse!

We spent about two and a half hours wandering round and chatting with the knowledgeable and very friendly guides. Getting outside we did not really have time to fully explore all the gardens and grounds - there are about 10 miles of walks to do! - but we saw enough to decide on a return trip in the not too distant future.

A nice croquet lawn if you fancied trying the game out. I decided not too as it looked far too strenuous!

Mrs. W and me sat outside overlooking the croquet lawn and ate our packed lunch which I had carried about in a plastic carrier bag! We then headed for the gift shop where this ultimate picnic hamper made my plastic bag look somewhat inadequate but at £149 for the hamper, the plastic bag won't be thrown out just yet!

Back at WMD HQ the Panzer Ferry pontoon is being primed. It takes alot of paint with all those large flat surfaces!

I have also started to assemble the tracks which come as individual links and handily they are already off the sprue which saves some time.

According to the instructions I need to glue 105 links for each set of tracks - that's an awful lot of eye strain and carful gluing! I can see the swear jar getting a contribution at some point!

Pontoon built and if I can predict this well I should buy a lottery ticket!

Having cleaned my car and predicted that Mrs. Woody, would as a result of this, want her car cleaned I can claim a 100% success rate in my predictive abilities! So this morning her car was cleaned and a lottery ticket bought! 

Back to the Dragon Panzer Ferry kit and the 14 parts which make up this part of the kit are now assembled. That was quick for me!

The outriggers are where the attachment chains from the accompanying amphibious tank are attached to prevent the pontoon floating off.

Putting it next to the amphibious tank illustrates the size of this model and there is still another amphibious tank to add!

I also did some more ballasting which means I am over half way through doing this first baseboard - Nice! It will be even nicer when I finish it!

Boring ballasting so lets have some pontoon fun!

A trip to the recycling center saw the garden waste accumulated after several hard days of gardening activity (hope you read that bit Mrs. Woody) sent off on its journey to become compost for next year. However, no matter how careful I am the inside of the car always looks as though it is part of the recycling center after one of these trips so that needed hoovering out and then it seemed only right that if the inside was clean the outside should be so out came bucket and sponge. 

Feeling good about having a clean car I suddenly realised that it will mean only one, well actually two things. One is that it will get dirty again this weekend and the secondly Mrs. W will want the same cleaning treatment for her car! 

With those thoughts in my mind I did the only sensible thing and head off to my Man Cave where I pushed forward with a couple of things. Firstly a bit of ballasting on my 00 gauge Last Great Project layout.

Ballasting for me means doing shortish lengths at a time. To get a reasonable and realistic look to it does mean you have to spend time brushing and prodding the ballast into place and after 30 minutes or so of that I just get bored and can not face anymore!

So deciding I needed something a bit more light hearted I moved onto the Dragon Panzer Ferry kit and decided to have some fun with the pontoon part of the kit. Not much to it but some very big parts and some small parts all contained on two identical sprues.

Strangely, Mr Beecham had popped round earlier and to cut a long story short I gave him a bottle of Plastic Weld liquid glue from the WMD Stores so that he could get on with his model building until he gets to a model shop to replenish his own stocks. I have several bottles in stock and I suddenly realised I had not used any of this solvent for several years having moved onto Tamiya cement. The Tamiya product is a gentler solvent and if you over apply it to a joint you don't end up with melted moulded details. The Plastic Weld is a much more aggressive solvent which if you are using to join large, substantial parts is ideal as it really provides a strong joint and dries much more quickly then the Tamiya product. Looking at the parts for the pontoon it suddenly occured to me that Plastic Weld would be the best product to use and so another bottle came out of WMD Stores!

I glued the two parts of the hull to one of the side pieces and then the other side piece was added. 

The Plastic Weld did a great job but even its strength was not going to strengthen the rather weak joint between the two parts of the hull. So out came a scrap of plastic card and suitable pieces were cut out to add a strengthening part to both the hull and the deck..

Those joints should be fully hardened by tomorrow so hopefully the pontoon fun will continue although I suspect that there will be some boring ballasting too!

More of the same 2!

Yes it was another day of more of the same for me! More hedge/shrub/tree cutting at WMD HQ. In particular there is a conifer tree which is about 15 foot high and I normally trim it twice a year. However this was its first cut this year and it had certainly bushed out. Not the easiest of trees to trim either given I have to climb on a shed roof to get to the back of it and then use a ladder to get to the top of it at the front. I have always been cautious with ladders but the older I get the more cautious I become!

The before!

The after!

Tomorrow will see this lot go to the recycling center where it will begin its journey to become the compost for next year. As I said yesterday it is amazing just how much stuff is generated when you start cutting things back.

Having satisfied myself that Mrs. Woody must see the work  have done (yesterday she did not notice that her drive onto the driveway was tree branch free following my work until I told her!) I ventured off into the Man Cave where the Dragon Panzer Ferry kit awaited more painting. The deck and everything apart from the cabin needed to be painted light grey so some masking was done.

The cabin was masked by using a piece of card held against it as I sprayed. There was a little overspray but that was touched in with a brush and some of the dark grey paint that I had sprayed.

It is beginning to look interesting.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit different to the last few days as I am shattered and need a rest but try telling Mrs. W that!

More of the same!

You would think that after a day of vegetational butchery at the Rocks by Rail Museum yesterday that the last thing I would do would be to carry on with more of the same but back at WMD HQ! However that is exactly what I have been doing! Hedge, shrub and tree cutting has been carried out and there is more to do but Mrs. Woody should be happy as the tree that overhung the drive and blocked her view as she drove on to the drive is now cut back. Once you start hacking away at a tree it is amazing just how much space the cuttings take up as they are packed in sacks to go to the recycling center.

Continuing on the theme of more of the same the Dragon Panzer Ferry kit got some more paint treatment. This time a darkish grey for the hull and cabin. According to what I can find on the internet there is conflicting information as to what it was painted in real life so I have relied upon the instructions. Whilst the hull and cabin are a darkish grey the rest of the hull will be a light grey. Given that none of these vehicles survive as far as I know and there are no colour photos of it I don't think anyone can prove my choice as wrong.

I will leave the dark grey to dry overnight and then after tomorrows further adventures in vegetational butchery at WMD HQ I will be painting the other parts light grey. So it will be another day of more of the same! Oh joy!