Playing Norfolk Trains

[grendel]

I have assisted a colleague with his swiss railway layout, by 3d printing parts for a particular luggage carriage for his train, he can get the standard carriages, but this one is shorter with a different window spacing than the standard carriages, he has the bogies off of a spare carriage, but essentially i made the kit for the rest of the carriage from the scale drawings he had obtained.

[webntweb]

When my sons were young I had one of my brilliant ideas: I would build them a layout. I decided that OO gauge was too big to allow for much track so N gauge it was.

i am not the most hands on person so i`was really pleased when I built a baseboard on a frame and hinged it along a wall so, with pulleys and counterweights at each end It would fold up against the wall when not using it.

Everything was going fine: a double track oval plus a loop past the station and three sidings in the centre all wired up to the controller and even one lighted working signal

 Then I started on the landscape and the buildings. 

In my youth my attempts at Airfix kits had always ended up with glue everywhere, so I new scratch building was definitely out of the question. I bought a station, an engine shed, foot bridge, level crossing etc

It soon became obvious that age hadn't improved my modelling skills, so I thought perhaps I can paint over the glue to give the buildings an aged look - you can probably imagine the results.

I had a go at papier mache hills and a tunnel; oh dear, if I had asked a kindergarten to make them they would definitely have been better - how the hell I got a GCE in art I'll never know.

Number one son had not been interested from the start and by now number two had lost interest as well.

So it was just me and the cat. The diesel engines had little headlights so when I turned the room lights off, if the cat was around it would leap on the board and swipe the train off the track, and a £100(at todays prices) locomotive would end up on the floor.

Vaughan, I'm not jealous really . . . please keep posting the pictures.

[wombat nee blownup]

This is embossed plastic sheet, in A4 size. It is sold for modelling cobblestones, in 4mm scale. You can also buy brickwork, in the same material. You can see by the price that I bought it several years ago. It is now over £5 a sheet!
A little bit of trickery, with what they call "dry brushing" in enamel paint, and you arrive at a fair representation of Norfolk knapped flint.
 

 

I think I'm quite pleased with that. It may be slightly too dark, but once I have made a farm cottage out of it, with brick surrounds to the windows and corners ; a Norfolk pantile roof and some climbing roses around the doorway, I don't think it will look too bad.
Or I may go the whole hog and build the "Railway Tavern" out of it!
 

The brick surrounds to windows doors and corners are known as Quoins. Some modern build houses that have that detail are also fake. Shop bought and adhered with a bobby silicone. I’m in the process of manufacturing some faux sandstone ones for a new build near Norwich. We’ve made a few moulds and a vibrating table. Will continue as soon as.


Sent from my iPhone using Norfolk Broads Network

[Vaughan]

 

I dare not think how many hours this has taken, but I have finally got this laid down in place.

 

 

The track at the far end is temporary, so that I can make sure the wagons run without falling off! There will later be another point there, to give access to the station yard.

It is by no means perfect yet but I am happy so far!

 

I seem to be a long way behind The Q at the moment. I shall have to try to keep up!

 

[HEM]

If any of you make a visit to Hamburg in the post-Virus future you must visit Miniatur Wunderland.

Claiming to be the World's largest model railway (HO scale) it keeps expanding and includes an amazing airport.

Terrible narration (the voice)!

Many videos on YouTube...

[Vaughan]

Here is an update from the "lockdown" workshop.

I have finally got the pointwork laid down and although I can see a lot of my own mistakes, I don't think it is too bad.

 

 

 

I can now stand the baseboard on end (screwed to a roof beam) to do the wiring loom underneath.

 

The switch blades of the points have to be held closed against a spring and then held open by tension on a lever. Electric point motors won't do this, so I made up a mechanism from brass strip, brass rod and bearing bushes that are normally for making model locomotives.

 

I have a lot of old "train set" type track left over from a previous layout, and it is very handy to use as a wiring bus, for tag soldering all the track connections.

I wire up each section of track separately so as to allow for expansion of the rails in extremes of temperature. When you are working in a garage or a loft, this is very important!

The points are worked by twine, on manual levers and in front of them are the double throw switches for changing the polarity of the point crossings - or "frogs".  Getting this right drives you crazy and if you have ever tried it, it is just as difficult as wiring one-way light switches on your stairs!

I have a feeling I may have to use stronger and stiffer twine to make the points reliable but they work for the moment. Next job is to wire up the base-boards on either side, which will be much easier, and then I can actually run some trains to see if works.  I have had a good poke about with an Ohm-meter and it looks as though it should be all right!

Next time I report I might actually be "playing trains"!

[grendel]

Vaughan, in my experience the modeller can always see every minor flaw, yet others coming at it with no knowledge of the flaws do not see them.

[TheQ]

On 22/05/2020 at 11:38, grendel said:

Vaughan, in my experience the modeller can always see every minor flaw, yet others coming at it with no knowledge of the flaws do not see them.

This entirely correct,   but also remember the distance, I've been building a model of a Type 84 radar, like the listed one still at RAF Neatishead.  When working on it I see all sorts of errors and imperfections. However the other day I realised the viewers at an exhibition would be looking at a scale 600ft away and not see the detail. 

Here's a picture of the building and partly built support frame work taken from a scale 200ft away. 

[TheQ]

On 22/05/2020 at 10:28, Vaughan said:

Here is an update from the "lockdown" workshop.

I have finally got the pointwork laid down and although I can see a lot of my own mistakes, I don't think it is too bad.

 

 

 

I can now stand the baseboard on end (screwed to a roof beam) to do the wiring loom underneath.

 

The switch blades of the points have to be held closed against a spring and then held open by tension on a lever. Electric point motors won't do this, so I made up a mechanism from brass strip, brass rod and bearing bushes that are normally for making model locomotives.

 

I have a lot of old "train set" type track left over from a previous layout, and it is very handy to use as a wiring bus, for tag soldering all the track connections.

I wire up each section of track separately so as to allow for expansion of the rails in extremes of temperature. When you are working in a garage or a loft, this is very important!

The points are worked by twine, on manual levers and in front of them are the double throw switches for changing the polarity of the point crossings - or "frogs".  Getting this right drives you crazy and if you have ever tried it, it is just as difficult as wiring one-way light switches on your stairs!

I have a feeling I may have to use stronger and stiffer twine to make the points reliable but they work for the moment. Next job is to wire up the base-boards on either side, which will be much easier, and then I can actually run some trains to see if works.  I have had a good poke about with an Ohm-meter and it looks as though it should be all right!

Next time I report I might actually be "playing trains"!

Many people use piano wire running in ptfe tube for manual. Point switching. 

[Vaughan]

6 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Many people use piano wire running in ptfe tube for manual. Point switching. 

That is always another option but I had some Ratio point levers from a previous layout, where I used them very successfully for working signals, so I thought I'd try this! It seems to work for the moment, but we shall see!

The camera can be very cruel to small-scale modellers - you spend ages making something and when you are finished you think "that looks great". Then you take a close up photo and you see it "warts and all"!

[SteveO]

Love this thread. It is nice to see loco models not looking pristine and shiny, but you would have to go some to get them looking as dirty, rusty and neglected as the real thing did in the 1960s. Nowadays we only see shiny, much-loved preserved and polished museum-pieces chuffing up and down the preserved railways and doing the occasional "heritage" trip on the national network.

[TheQ]

7 hours ago, SteveO said:

Love this thread. It is nice to see loco models not looking pristine and shiny, but you would have to go some to get them looking as dirty, rusty and neglected as the real thing did in the 1960s. Nowadays we only see shiny, much-loved preserved and polished museum-pieces chuffing up and down the preserved railways and doing the occasional "heritage" trip on the national network.

It depends on the period you model,  pre WW2 the progression from locomotive cleaner to fireman to locomotive driver was long and involved.  Passenger locos were well looked after.  During and Post WW2, there were great shortages of manpower.  Progression was comparatively quick, so in general only the mainline the passenger locos got well looked after, the odd loco in the 1960s was still running around with pre 1948 company lettering on them under the dirt, sometimes cleaned off by those who had realised nationalization had not provided the utopia they thought BR would bring.  Once the dieselisation programme was up and running steam really  got ignored. 

[Vaughan]

I have only recently finished this model, so it is freshly painted but will need a lot of weathering before it looks typical.  This is modelled on a real engine which was based at March shed and later moved to Norwich, where the famous shed master, Bill Harvey, used to keep them in good condition, hence the polished steel straps on the smokebox door and around the cab windows.  Some of them were picked out with red coupling rods. They were a lot dirtier than this though and this one will be as well, as soon as I can summon up the courage to attack my work with an airbrush!

I think in a lot of ways, the 1950s were the heyday of steam railways but it was just after the War, all the rolling stock was tired and a railway was a filthy dirty place!

[grendel]

i still remember from when i was small if you stuck your head out of the window, or left it open through tunnels, you ended the journey with smuts of dirt all over you

[JennyMorgan]

Many years ago I had a good friend (Alan) who was a professional model maker and ardent amateur railway engineer. He was off the grim reality school of modelling and stuck firmly to his guns. He exhibited at numerous exhibitions during the sixties and seventies. There was one particular locomotive working in Lowestoft at the time that he was working on. I photographed it in detail and my friend's brother, a professional artist/illustrator, sketched much of the detail. Believe me, the model was precise reality in miniature. It was exhibited a number of times and heavily criticized by the judges,  the accurately portrayed bent and distorted forward buffer coming in for much attention. Alan's model finally gained a gold medal, the judge knew the engine well, it was he who had smacked the buffer in a siding at Peterborough. Having had a series of rejections Alan was as proud as punch with that particular medal! 

[SteveO]

6 hours ago, TheQ said:

It depends on the period you model,  pre WW2 the progression from locomotive cleaner to fireman to locomotive driver was long and involved.  Passenger locos were well looked after.  During and Post WW2, there were great shortages of manpower.  Progression was comparatively quick, so in general only the mainline the passenger locos got well looked after, the odd loco in the 1960s was still running around with pre 1948 company lettering on them under the dirt, sometimes cleaned off by those who had realised nationalization had not provided the utopia they thought BR would bring.  Once the dieselisation programme was up and running steam really  got ignored. 

This is how I remember them, from the 1960's. Neglected, but still proud, purposeful and magnificent. 

 

 

[SteveO]

4 hours ago, grendel said:

i still remember from when i was small if you stuck your head out of the window, or left it open through tunnels, you ended the journey with smuts of dirt all over you

Last time I did that was on the preserved line from Bodiam to Tenterden. We were pulling up the hill from Rolvenden into Tenterden station and the little Terrier loco was working very hard. For my pains I ended up with a piece of burning coal in my hair which I didn't notice until I suddenly smelled singed flesh and felt sharp pain, at which point I put it out with a judicious splash of bottled water. 

[grendel]

I remember it from being little and train trips from ashford to dover, maybe as late as 1970, but i cant be sure

 

[webntweb]

1 hour ago, SteveO said:

This is how I remember them, from the 1960's. Neglected, but still proud, purposeful and magnificent. 

Bachmann made a weathered model of the exact loco (43014) in your pic. I'm still trying to work out if yours is a photo or a painting.

[SteveO]

2 hours ago, webntweb said:

Bachmann made a weathered model of the exact loco (43014) in your pic. I'm still trying to work out if yours is a photo or a painting

It is a photo taken at Bradford Forster Square station in the last days of steam. The Fairburn in the first photo is in preservation at the Lakeside and Haverthwaite railway in Cumbria. The Ivatt  (43014) sadly, was not preserved.  I have seen the "weathered" Bachmann model and it looks pretty good, although not as ropey as the one in the photo. 

[webntweb]

Superb photo. Brings back memories of my transpotting days.

I remember leaving a train in Liverpool in about 1954 (nine years old) at about 10.30 pm, heading for dockside for the midnight boat to the Isle of Man. As I passed the engine it was leaking steam from just about everywhere it could leak steam from; that, combined with the glow from the firebox, the noises and the heat, I can remember thinking of a slumbering dragon.

At the opposite end of the scale: in August 1960, my family were holidaying in Brixham and my brother, my cousin and I had a visitors' permit for Exeter St Davids engine shed. We left Brixham early in the morning on the single coach push-pull train to the main line at Churston where we changed to a local to Newton Abbot, where we waited for an express using the costal route to Exeter rather than the inland route. Travelling between Teignmouth and Dawlish behind a Castle class with the morning sun reflecting off the sandstone cliffs on our left, with my head out of the window to get the number of a Hall class coming the other way, which usually came complete with a bit of grit in your eye if not a cinder - bliss.

Apologies for wandering off a bit Vaughan. Waiting for your next instalment.

[Vaughan]

Well I never!

I have now wired up all 4 baseboards, so yesterday I bolted them together again and blow me down, it works!  I chose a tender engine, which was the first white metal kit I ever made, with the thought that if that runs through the points, then everything else ought to as well.  And it did, very smoothly.  There is a bit of tweaking to do where one or two spots of solder are sticking out and I got the polarity of one of the point crossings wrong, but that seems to be all.  Well worth several weeks of patience.

I am sorry I can't show a video but I am not set up for that technology!

This morning I take it all apart again as I want the garage to get Susie's car ready for the MOT and then I have some window frames to mend in the house, now the weather is better.

Next job on the railway will be making the mechanism to work the level crossing gates. That should drive me cross eyed as well!

[TheQ]

On 26/05/2020 at 05:29, Vaughan said:

Well I never!

I have now wired up all 4 baseboards, so yesterday I bolted them together again and blow me down, it works!  I chose a tender engine, which was the first white metal kit I ever made,

K's? 

Tiny radar work continued with working on  the skinning of the aerial. 

 

[Vaughan]

7 minutes ago, TheQ said:

K's?

Yes, I think it was! An LNER K3.

[Vaughan]

 

Excuse me - pressed wrong button!