DCC Triumph!

Having almost recovered from the shock of ordering a new kitchen last week I can reveal that having not only ordered it but afterwards having also gone grocery shopping with Mrs. Woody and whilst still in reeling from the shock I did, through a set of naturally occurring and easily explainable to Mrs. W circumstances, find myself at a model railway shop! Strange that but also very convenient as I needed some Lais 21 pin DCC decoders and they happened to have them in stock. Pure coincidence of course Mrs. W!

There are no doubt reasons as to why there are various pin configurations for DCC decoders with 8 and 21 pin being the most common but there are also 6, 18, 20 and 22 pin varieties. Anyway, I knew that this Hornby Class 50, named Triumph, needed a 21 pin decoder and I have been after running it for some while so this is the first to receive a chip.

Getting into the insides was not too bad with two cables to unattached and four clips to pull apart. Once inside the complexity of the circuity is evident! Note, I even had the instructions to hand!

To the right of the chassis in the picture and on top of the main circuit board is the blanking plate. This allows the loco to run on a DC operated layout but need sto be removed to enable the DCC chip to be fitted.

 

Blanking plug removed and on the workbench whilst to its left the DCC awaits fitting.

Decoder fitted and as it allows the loco to run both under DCC and DC power a 9 volt battery was used to test that the chip was working before programming it.

Once programmed and now run in, 50042 Triumph takes on a few coaches on my layout.

  I do like it - and the DCC chip fitting was a triumph too!

Why would you build this?

Mrs. Woody and me went for a drive out today Nothing planned and as I said to Mrs. W when asked our destination I said its a bit like the Toyah song from the 80s, Its a Mystery (see Toyah here)! Eventually we ended up on the back roads of a village called Burton Le Coggles in Lincolnshire. Not a great deal there apart from a pub and Jades farm shop which has a great selection of traditionally vegetable and  meat products as well as a range of specialist foods and gifts. You don't find many places with such a nice looking set of fruit and veg!

Apart from highlighting that I will be enjoying some of Jades burgers next week lets move back to the appropriately named Back Lane.

Nothing unusual about the lane but looking down what is a dirt track there is a massive bridge carrying the East Coast Main Line over it. 

Coming in closer the scale and no doubt the high cost of this bridge over nothing more than a dirt track become clearer. It has to be nearly 40 feet high and the arches are wide enough to build a wide two lane road through them with ease.

Why would you build such a costly structure over a dirt track when a simple culvert type construction would have accommodated the local farm needs? I have tried to find out if there is some historic significance to the track which might explain the bridge but to no avail, so its a mystery! However you have to admit that that whole scene in the picture would make a great model if you had the space!

Perseverance 2 and a broken wallet!

The broken wallet is down to Mrs. Woody winning the discussion about replacing the kitchen. My view was that it was a great kitchen when I put it in back 30 years ago and is still good today - just with a few scratches, dents and worn parts - just like me! Anyway a trip down to a well known kitchen specialist resulted in a kitchen being ordered and my wallet broken as it was emptied! Never mind - the plan does look good and hopefully will last 30 years too!!!!

Perseverance is due to continuing with the Heller Scania 141 LB. Having got the doors fitted I have now managed to refit the parts I knocked off whilst fitting the doors and also fitting the windscreen wipers.

Just the mirrors, gear lever and number plates to fit although I must admit my heart is no longer in this build which has become hard work and a test of perseverance! At least the kit is cheaper than a new kitchen!

Its a blue day!

It may not have been a blue sky outside, but inside WMD HQ it was a blue day on my 00 gauge terminus layout. Whilst my railway interests are broad and I will run old steam next to current day locomotives and anything in-between on my Last Great Project layout, I was struck by just how focused I actually am on the so called 'Corporate Blue' era of British Railways back in the 1970s and 60s. Whilst filming a YouTube video yesterday of the layout, I noted whilst editing it that everything rollingstock wise dated to the 70s/80s in era. Most strange and something I had not really noticed myself until that editing! Thinking about it, I guess those where my early years of being interested in real railways, so there is probably some sub-conscious thinking going on! Anyway at the moment I cannot get too much blue so this photo from today shows just some of the 'Corporate Blue' rolling stock that I have on this layout. There is just something about it all that blue......

Gailston - My 00 gauge terminus layout.

A bit of a dreary start to the day with mist and general gloom so I brighten things up for myself by doing a YouTube video of Gailston my 00 gauge terminus layout. A six month project that is still not finished after 25 years! Story of my life! Anyway, here are a few pics and the link to the video is below them and live once it has fully uploaded later tonight!

 

Peraverance!

Well instead of putting it back on the shelf I have persevered with getting the doors onto the Heller Scania 141 LB. They do not fit very well and would probably make a proper body shop cry with the gaps and alignment that I have managed. I have to say in my defence that all the other body panels are, as previously explained in this blog, warped and twisted meaning even the best modeller is going to be hard pressed to get a decent fit. Anyway they are on!  

I just need perseverance now to finish it which I am getting low on!!!

Soapy times at the Museum.

Strange for me to be at the Museum on a Monday unless there is an event but Rob had persuaded me to go in and help him wash the face shovel! Now a face shovel is not the type of thing that you sponge water on  and rinse off dirt before waxing the paint. After years of outside living the face shovel was as much a habitat for fauna and flora as it was a working machine! Cleaning it was going to take some serious work!

The main pieces of kit were the pressure washer (fed from a water container raised off the ground by the CAT to give the necessary pressure), scouring pads and brushes! In fact Rob managed to run over my brush with the CAT! Well at least he didn't run me over!

You can see what we started with - grime and dirt!

The pressure washer does its magic following a scrubbing with brushes and scouring pads!

Stages in cleaning the rear of the face shovel. Firstly dirt!

Secondly slightly less dirt!

Thirdly, a lot less dirt!

Rob, now happy with the job!

And from a side not often seen.

All in all a great job and the face shovel looks so much better for it unlike me!

Not satisfied with the face shovel Rob moved us onto cleaning the cab of Sundew which was once the World's largest walking excavator. More soapy times!

Pressure washer, brushes and scouring pads out again!

Getting cleaner but the paint does peel off so it will need a repaint! Another job to be done!

Rob perhaps was a bit too clean as he pressure washed the interior!!!

There is no doubt it does look cleaner now. Thinking that was it for the day there was one other job. A welding job!

Being a big welder and the job being outside it would have been easier if we had put it on the pallet to start with but we did learn our lesson!

I did some of the welds and Rob made them actually strong afterwards!

It should hold!

Man with the best job today? Derek! He rode the platelayers wagon down the line as it freewheeled down the 1 in 60 gradient - nice and no soap!!!!! That looks the job for me!

  

'I will think about it!'

Sometimes you get to the stage where you think this model is actually fighting me! That is the case with the Heller Scania 141 LB, where, for what ever reasons I really haven't made that much progress with it. It seems like one step forward and several back. Take the recent incident of gluing the front cab panel to the rest of the cab body. I managed to knock off one of the grab handles glued below the windscreen and three of the indicator lenses also came off. All are safely stored awaiting reattachment but that will need to await getting the doors in place. 

Tee model has not been the best and looking back over its build I did highlight the warped nature of some of the cab parts such as this.....

which required some hefty clamping when glued in place to get it to sit something like it should.

I'm sure this has something to do with the ill fitting doors! One side fits reasonably whilst the other refuses to line up with anything or fit the aperture until I started filing bits off! It does eat up time and dampens my model making spirit so I will consider if I now just put it to one side again and do something else to reinvigorate myself before coming back to it or do I just plod on! I will think about it, which is normally what I tell Mrs. Woody when she has presented an idea!

Something which did lift my spirits was whilst out on a bike ride today I came across all these Nissan Figaro's parked up in a village hall car park. Not a soul around but obviously an owners club get together and I have never seen so many of these cars in one group before now.

These cars were never marketed in the UK and what is here is through so called 'grey imports'. They are based on the Nissan Micra and I think they look 'cute' and a lot more interesting then the Micra! If you want to know more about them there is info on the Wiki website located here. Maybe I should get one of these cars - I will think about it!

Running out of steam - I need a Pacer!

Having been quite busy over the last few weeks I do find myself running out of steam at the moment to get on with projects! The weather has been all that encouraging either to get out to the Man Cave so I am running behind on things. Now if I were an athlete undertaking some record attempt I might have a pacer to help me along. Well in the model making World there are no Pacers - or are there????

Well let me introduce you to my Hornby Pacer! Actually it is my other Hornby Pacer as I wrote about the other back in November 2021 (click here to read that post) (Wow! That long ago!). However, I bought this one about 25 years ago second hand for the princely sum of about £10! They were never considered good models by many and the real Pacers were like Marmite - you either loved them or hated them! Personally I do like the Pacer and at the time of its introduction in the 1980s it provided a cheap (being based on a Leyland National bus body) way of keeping some previously loss making passenger services going.

The model by Hornby is unusual in that it is powered by a Scalextric slot car motor in each car. Unfortunately this makes them underpowered and the electrical pickup arrangement for the motors was not good with both running and also not running on many occasions independent of each other. I did add additional pickups and wired the two motors together which improved the running a bit. When compared to some of the newer models of the Pacer my one leaves a lot to be desired but for £10 I will stick with it! Now if only it would give me a push to finish my outstanding projects!

One of those days!

It has been one of those days when things have not gone quite as expected. We all have days like that and you just have to get through them. First off Mrs. Woody's car needed a new battery. Now the last time I bought a battery it cost me just over £20! I was expecting some inflation but the £200 cost took me aback but I was rebounded by the fact that it could have been £300! Then the 'small shop ' for just a few bits turned into £130! My wallet has taken a dramatic slimming today! My planned bike ride was abandoned due to the rain which probably rounded off the days unexpected events!

There has been some progress with the Heller Scania 141 LB with the two parts of each door glued together. 

It may not be much progress but it is at least another step forward to completion!

Looking at something that will surely be subject to slow progress is the model greenhouse that I bought Mrs. W. 

Having opened up the kit I was really impressed by it. 

A box full of parts bagged together with a really well presented set of instructions.

The actual contents of the bags look really high quality.

The instructions give a hint of the depth of detail which means progress will be slow! I look forward to seeing Mrs. W's progress! Maybe she will embarrass me by finishing it in a day!