Rail-ex Taunton: The adventure

"B****y hell, we are exhibiting at Hogwarts !" was my reaction as we pulled up to the school that Rail-ex is held in. Taunton school is apparently one of the best in the country and it's products will doubtless be running the country for years to come. It's certainly one of the most impressive halls we've exhibited in.

The show is held in the sports hall at the side of the building and takes place in two large rooms. We were in the bigger one and found it had been carpeted and nicely marked with the layout name on some masking tape. The allotted space looked a bit small as the end of our plot appeared to be against the back of the layout around the corner. Once set up, and with no sign of our neighbours, I left a business card with my phone number on our control panel in case there was a problem. My worry was that the space allowed was sufficient for the layout but not enough for a bunch of corpulent operators to wander about behind.

Another worry was a lack of barriers. Maybe I'm going all prima donna but I like something between the crowds and the layout. As it turned out, this would have been a good thing, but more of this later. Finally, we hadn't tested the model since the last show and so it was out with the soldering iron to deal with a couple of dry joints and a lose switch rail. Arriving before 5 gave plenty of uninterrupted time to handle these niggles.

Accommodation was on site. The boarding students had been turfed out for half term and we were each issued with a key and swipe car to stop in their rooms. On the plus side, everyone got a single room (I was Max Kroppen) but this was at a price of shared bathroom and worse, communal showers. The rooms were clean but basic. I wish I'd taken a small radio to provide a bit of background noise, and several other operators said the same. We had access to a common room with billiards table and coffee making facilities which a few people sat around in for a chat.

Saturday started with an excellent breakfast in the school canteen. Full English and plenty of it. I'll forgive accommodation a lot for decent morning grub. We didn't have far to stroll to the show either, in fact we could have arrived on Friday and not left the site until Sunday night if we'd wanted to.

Arriving behind the layout, after a quick track clean we wandered around to see what had arrived since the previous evening. Most people were comfortably in place. and there was plenty to see. We caught up with a few old friends including, just after opening, by the man I'm named after, an old friend of my Father. Guess who got to do an extended operating session while they chatted ?

About the middle of the morning we had our one duff moment - a scruffy bloke decided to push past a lady watching the layout. She was about 2 inches away from the board and there was plenty of space behind her but he shoved by anyway. As he passed he managed to give the end leg an almighty boot - enough to move the entire layout slightly. Certainly enough to shake up the track and dislodge a lump of lead from inside a locomotive. Of course he didn't apologise, just looked around grumpily and scuttled off. If by any chance you recognise yourself from that description site, please sod off my blog and don't come back.

Lunchtime arrived but the quality of the food had drawn an audience. There was no seating left in the canteen and a queue of people outside waiting with trays of cooling food for a seat. Luckily that breakfast meant we weren't hungry so settled for tea and a delicious (and cheap) cake. Chocolate brownie or muffin, both yummy and enough to sustain us until the evening.

A stroll around town on Friday evening had shown that the delights of Taunton were limited, and sitting around the accommodation didn't appeal, but a trip to the seaside was an option. Thus, we took the quick and well signposted trip tot he station and hopped on one of the regular trains to Western-super-Mare.

Western station is about ten minutes walk from the sea by which time we'd worked up nearly enough appetite for the enormous fish and chips we bought. The sea was out (is it ever in ?) and out of season, the town was pretty shut up but as we say on the station heading back, listening to an Elvis tribute act in the platform pub, this was definitely a worthwhile trip. I've spent Saturday night at shows in the pub with other modellers but if I have the chance to do something different, it's taken. After all, we spend all day in the show with them !



Sunday, the layout worked a lot better than the previous day. Both days had seen a lot of chatty punters in the door and only two smelly ones - one of whom probably wondered quite how long the train was going to stay in the platform, the answer being "Until you go away" ! Apart from the grumpy bloke the day before, the crowds were really well behaved as well with very few finger marks on the water in the quayside.

The main question asked was about the scale. Loads of people were interested as it's unusual and they wondered how we managed to build everything. The nice man from Bachmann was nearly persuaded that they should start some RTR in it !

At the end of the weekend we packed up and were on our way after about half an hour. The trip home was uneventful apart from the least competent Little Chef ever and we got the stuff back ready to put away. I have a lit of jobs to do before Warley in a month so watch this space...

Mineral Engine Questions

Mike writes:
I've recently bought a High Level kit of the Neilson 0-4-0 and have come to the conclusion that you are the only modeller on the entire planet who's published his experiences of building the kit on the internet! I have, therefore, devoured every word of your write-up and approach you for a little advice before commencing construction of my own version.


My first and more mundane question concerns the wheels. High Level simply offer a Sharman Wheels reference number which, with Sharman Wheels having ceased trading, is obviously now meaningless. I think the wheels should be 14mm/3'6" diameter. Am I right?


My second question is about the cylinder assembly. You comment on the need to anneal the cylinder wrappers and say that if you were doing it again you'd do it a different way. So how would you do it?


I am in the final stages of not-quite-abandoning/having-a-break-from a particularly nasty Peter K kit of a 'K' Class Manning Wardle that, amongst many shortcomings, was etched from brass that was far too hard to dimple out the rivets in the usual way. The only reason I've got as far with it as I have is because I was given a crash-course in annealing (By Chris Gibbon of High Level, ironically enough) so total avoidance of annealing with the Neilson's cylinder wrappers will (hopefully) not be necessary.

Well it was a long while ago (2006 I was amazed to spot) when I built the loco but he goes:

Wheels - I used Romfords rather than Sharman. 14mm sounds about right to me (the loco isn't handy to measure) but a quick call to Mr Gibbons would probably get the answer. I recall that there is a plan in the instructions so perhaps you could measure this ? If you are working in OO I can't see any reason to use anything other than Romfords unless you need a weird wheel. As someone who is hopeless at making chassis, I like to be able to put them on and take them off again a few times in the process.

Cylinders - Reading the entry I didn't bother to anneal the wrappers which made them difficult to bend around the formers. Either anneal them or replace with thinner metal. Proper advice is the former but sometimes it is tempting to do the later when a trip down to the gas hob in the kitchen seems like too much effort...

Hope this helps. Don't be put off by the Peter K kit. His models are notoriously for the more advanced modeller, but fill a gap in the market. I have a Furness engine from him tucked away in the "oneday" box. It looks a bit scary but I reckon I could manage it, but then it will have been a long while from purchase to building !

Winner !

It was the DOGA AGT (Annual Get-together, we aren't dull enough for an AGM) yesterday and for a change I actually won class in the modelling competition !

Samuel won the Kitbuilt & Scratchbuilt class beating several large locomotives.

Go to: http://www.doubleogauge.com/AGMComp/competition2007.htm to take a look.

Another one for the stockbox

Samuel
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

The Neilson mineral engine is finished. Possibly the longest gestation period for any model locomotive I have ever built is over.

With the chassis finished I reattached the body and started weathering. Since reading “The Art of Weathering” I have airbrushed a gentle weak mix of browns & greys over locos to take the edge off all the colours and provide the look of general grime that covers everything railway – at least in the bits I model anyway.

The trick from the book is to dirty the model and then clean it using a cotton bud dipped in turps. This simulates the efforts of the driver to keep his locomotive presentable. I had given quite a good coat so the cleaning really stood out. This was helped by painting the green bits in satin varnish so they stood out against the matt dirt.

Of course nothing stays clean forever and so another light coat of grime is applied. This means the “uncleaned” areas get even muckier and those that were wiped down don’t shine quite so much. Dirt clings in hard to reach crevasses exactly as it does on the real thing.

Whatever the science, the results look good, to me anyway. A little dry brushing on step edges and at the front where ash would be pulled out of the firebox finished the job.

All I had to do then was add coal in the bunkers, put the crew in place and clean the wheels.

Then I have another one for the stockbox.

Chassis done

Chassis done
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Chassis always need special weathering, The mechanical bits either need to be kept clean or be cleaned before you finish. Without the body access is always easier as we don’t want the footplate getting in the way and resulting in clean paint showing do we ? The motor gave me something to hold on to anyway.

I usually just dry-brush some tank grey (Humbrol 67) on anything black and then add in track colour and rust where required. The important thing is to hide any pure black and highlight any detail. If you put rivets on anything, they need highlighting or no one will see them.

Dry brush work also gives a bit of the texture that real dirt has. We don’t want to go mad with this as this is real dirt scaled down 76 times – for all intents and purposes this means smooth. A bit of grain bounces the light around though, which looks authentic.

The last job is to go for it with some weathering powders. I’m not a huge fan of these as they don’t stand up to handling. In the inaccessible areas this isn’t a problem, and there is little better for simulating really think rust as found on the bottom of fireboxes and fronts of cylinders.

Putting the brakes on

Neilson brakes
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

The mineral engine kit has, as is usual from High Level Model, superb brake gear. The prototype is unusual as all four shoes bear on the rear pair of wheels. This is possibly because it had to handle heavy stone trains or maybe just a foible of Neilson’s.

Construction is very cleverly planned with all parts being easy to assemble. The shoes are three layers of etch and slot into the hanger. A small piece of wire hooks into the chassis so you don’t even have those annoying wires running all the way through and getting in the way. There is certainly no chance of clobbering the coupling rods with this method. In theory you can build the brakes and paint them before attaching to the model. You shouldn’t even need to solder anything to the chassis – I wouldn’t fancy risking this but others might.

Needles to say I managed to screw things up. Making the last brake assembly it pinged off into the distance, never to be found again. I paused for a while (several days) while thinking about the solution. In the end I just used two shoes instead of four. Since the loco isn’t really supposed to appear on the Hellingly Hospital Railway anyway, I think a bit of modellers licence can be applied here.

The rest of the bits fitted well filling up the back of the chassis. That little bit of detail puts some much-needed life into this part of the model. I like to see a bit of complexity below the footplate or it all looks a bit plain. Once upon a time this was how model railway were but nowadays we expect better.

All of this coincided with me dropping the chassis and bending everything behind the gearbox quite a lot. A bit of desoldering the frame spacer and bending the sides cured this but I don’t advise try it !

Lines

linedloco
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Brian very kindly lent me a Bob Moore lining pen some time ago. I’ve tried painting think lines on rolling stock in the past with a bow pen but it seems like hard work. The Bob Moore pen looked easier but at 90 quid any experiment would be expensive. Fortunately Brian didn’t get on with his so I had a go.

As you can see the results aren’t half bad. The trick is to accept that the professionals don’t get it perfect first time and fill in corners or erase mistakes with a small brush.

I used the pen with Precision lining yellow and a bit of care. Only the straight lines were pen’d. I did the best I could to keep them straight and in line with the nearest edge on the bodywork. Once they were in I filled the corners with yellow to allow for the curve using my only pure sable brush. Finally the green was used to make the curves and fix my lining wobbles.

Last job was to spray the whole lot with satin varnish. Not to protect anything, just to bring the mat colours alive a bit. The result is too shinny and looks a bit toy-like but I hope that a good heavy weathering will calm everything down.

The lining pen was reasonably easy to use. It comes with only one size of nib but you can buy others. It’s not as flexible as a bow pen because you are very limited to the size of line. I know you can rule an extra line beside the first but that second one will be difficult to keep in line and neat. The secret is to make proper plasticard guides. For the IOM locos this will be on the “to do” list.

It's raining lead

Lead
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Everyone says that you have to put as much weight as possible into model railway locomotives. Many magazine descriptions say, “I filled the boiler with lead” as though a model that is heavier than your car is a good idea.

Some weight is important and etched brass locomotives definitely need a bit of help. The mineral engine doesn’t offer much scope for lead though – the boiler is pretty much full of motor, gearbox & flywheel.

Fortunately the bulges in the saddle tank are hollow and have holes obviously intended to give access for weight addition. Just the job for some of that “liquid lead” I bought a long while ago and have hardly used I thought.

Pouring it in was out of the question but a small plastic spoon, the sort you get with ice creams in tubs, shovelled it in and some superglue poured on top should have solidified it.

I needed more glue as it turned out. Running in was interrupted by stopping to pull squashed lead balls out of the gearbox. I think I dismantled the model half a dozen times before giving in and pouring more glue into the hole. Even now the odd ball escapes but I’m hoping all the loose ones will soon fall out. I want the ratio of brass to superglue to stay about the same as it is now and not tip in favour of the adhesive.

Fiddly waggly bits

cylinders
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

As light relief from treating the fuel tank in my van, I’ve been working on the waggly bits for mineral engine. I still hope to have it available for test next weekend at Tolworth.

As I’ve found before, the design of this kit is superb. The cylinders fold up and are strengthen with some thin tube that the piston rods run in. The slide bars are etched and also fold. Holes are provided to line parts up. If there is a fault it’s that the cylinder wrappers are on the thick side and could do with annealing before you try and form them. I managed but would do things differently if I built another.

The crossheads are cast brass. Very clean too. You solder a brass piece to the back of each to finish them. This traps the rod so some tidy soldering is needed. I cheat a bit and coat anything I don’t want soldered with permanent pen. Solder hates dirt and this keeps it away from problem areas – mostly.

This whole arrangement is very fine. Although it is stronger than it appears I’ll still be glad once it’s firmly fixed to a locomotive.

Fiddly Bits

Fiddly Bits
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Grand Prix races are good for something. Being dull most of the time you can get things done while watching them. The Brazilian race gave me the chance to fit the fiddly bits in the cab of my mineral locomotive.

This was a challenge but a good one. Each lost wax cast brass part has to be removed from its sprue, doing my cutters no good at all, and then drilled for the bits of wire to be attached to it. The instructions give different wire sizes but as they vary by less than .3mm I just used the .5mm wire for them all. Well except for the .3 stuff, which I ignore entirely.

One drilled, tinned brass wire is inserted into the indentation (I can’t call it a hole as the brass is too hard to drill very far) and lightly soldered. Suprisingly this works very well as long as plenty of flux is used. I cleaned the joins up a bit with a file but not much. Far harder was getting the wire in at the correct angle – I had to remake several joins as the pipe exited the fitting at an odd angle.

The results are everything a Victorian railway locomotive should be. Overly ornate with too much pipework on display. Lovely.

Old Instructions

Old Instructions
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Although this blog might suggest otherwise, I’m not the most prodigious of modellers. Some of the models I build take years to come to fruition. Most railway locomotives go back in their box two or three times during the build as I lose interest or just fancy doing something else for a while. It is a hobby after all – so if you want to change tack, do it.

The current project has scared me. It is a High Level Models mineral locomotive. I bought the kit on the strength of the article on Hellingly Hospital appearing in British Railway Modelling. Most of the cheque was used to fund the kit, something I think is only fair. Since the layout earned the money I should spend it in the layout.

High Level kits are superb. The parts fit together nicely and the instructions are second to none. For such small models they are very complicated to assemble but the process has been thought through and as long as you do what you are told, all will be well.

To keep my place I have been jotting down dates and ticking off stages so I know where I am. This is at least the third time this model has been on the bench. I wasn’t prepared for the date found on the paper which indicated the last time I’d done any work – it’s over a year ago !

Well, progress has been made. The rear buffer beam and cab sheet have been attached. Perhaps I might get a working model before the box beckons again. My incentive is a show in a few weeks with the Hospital where I could run the loco. Maybe I can squeeze a bit of time out of this weekend…