Author name: David Hagger

Week ending 25 August 2024

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Monday, and after wheel cleaning and track cleaning last Friday it was time to get the stock onto ABB. The fiddle yard is looking quite full.

Tuesday evening was enlivened by this delicious home made orange and almond cake from Luke, which, as you can see was very well received.

Friday morning saw the latest Scalefour News flop onto the front doormat with a view of ABB on the cover. Only four weeks to go now until we take ABB to Scaleforum.

In the evening Luke was preparing his Pos Siyntio for the forthcoming Open Day, Fred and LBH were grappling with a misbehaving 0-6-0 tank mechanism and Mr Chairman was readying stock for ABB.

On ABB in the train seen above the long parcels van is not well suited to the formation. It is tail traffic which moves to the shortish bay behind and it’s a bit too long for that, its colour is too different to the other coaches, but worst the corridor connections make uncoupling with a Dingham loop unreliable. The replacement is shorter without corridor connections, though we might opt for an even dirtier version.

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Week ending 11 August 2024

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Monday and the wall and fence in front of the semis has been tried in place. It looks best at this level so there will be a bit of filling in of the ground to do. I should have made the walls deeper.

Freshly returned from a Missenden Modellers week, LBH has actually cleared space on his workbench so that his work tray can fit in. How long will it remain this tidy??

Tuesday we were meeting on Zoom. We started with discussions on the new test track and entries for next year’s exhibitions.

Later Steve Bell described the George Bennie Railway in Milngarvie outside Glasgow. It was a prototype, powered by electricity and though abandoned pre-war was not removed until the 1950’s. A kind of halfway towards a guided aeroplane, or maybe HS 0.5?

Friday was a quiet evening in the clubrooms, Andrew and Luke working on their respective layouts and Fred preparing to kick off a build of an A4.

LBH did a little on his ADR 14 with is getting close to needing a coat of paint.

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Week ending 04 August 2024

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Monday and the quest for a Barry Class G continues with a Midland 0-4-4T as another possible candidate. You can make a comparison between the two in the picture.

In case you’re wondering what the Barry Class G looks like, to save you googling it here’s a pic.

For more info on Barry stock look here.

Work has resumed on some fencing for in front of the semis on ABB. The view in the pic is from the back. The fencing has been attached to the front brickwork and brass wire glued in to help locate the assembly in position.

Tuesday and the inner face of brickwork now has been trimmed to match the step down in the fence and then stuck on. Some primer next, then attempt to install it.

Luke has had the privilege of wielding Thor’s hammer to persuade the T nuts into these wooden blocks. They are to take the adjustable feet for a set of legs. Then he used it again to get the blocks into the ends of the legs themselves. The modified legs are the further set. With a little adjustment the baseboard was level.

With ABB set to go to Scaleforum as soon as next month, it was time to get it erected in the layout room. Of course we chose the bit where the floor is not completely level so some packing was required.

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Week ending 28 July 2024

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Destined to be a Barry Class G

Another model to be added to the Barry Railway roster. This is destined to be modified into a class G.

LBH’s TVR Iron Van in S7 has at last sprouted buffers and will soon find its way to the paintshop.

Friday

The legs for Luke’s shunting layout are too wide for the baseboards so eventually we came up with this solution – insert two new lengths of aluminium inside the existing legs, screw them in place retaining the structure, then cut away the excess. We’ll see next week how successful it is.

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Week ending 21 July 2024

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Monday and a select few at the club. Rhobat continues with the Barry class J fitting a replacement cab and bunker. The first version was rather flimsy and a poor fit but the new one is a bit better. It’s not yet glued in place.

Tuesday was a quiet evening. Away from the clubroom I have been painting the doors and windows for the terrace, adding variation in colours. Some of them need toning down.

TAFKATYS’s latest offering is an ex-NER J23 in 0 gauge based on a Gladiator kit.

Also on display this week we had a lovely Black 5 that The Welsh wizard has for sale and a Saint belonging to Don. Yes, we know the tender is wrong.

Week ending 21 July 2024 Read More »

Week ending 14 July 2024

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Monday at the club had the usual tidying up theme. Inevitably lots of bits were thrown in my workbox at the end.

The only major problem with Pavilion End at the show was the failure of a point mechanism. Its position was too difficult for an immediate fix so the drive has been positioned to come from the rear of the layout instead from under the platform. The next steps are to connect a servo onto the other end, connect the drive, disguise the tube and reposition the ground signal.

On Tuesday Luke came with some lovely NG stock from Bachmann. The loco represents the Alice class from Dinorwic Quarry and the wagons are very good too.

We took the cliched opportunity to contrast two locos, both to 7mm scale – Dave’s 42xx and Luke’s Quarry Hunslet

Friday and a much better attendance than the usual four. There were 8 of us plus one visitor.

On Pavilion End the wire-in-tube drive has been connected up and hot glued in place. It curves around so that the servo can be close to its controlling circuit board to make plugging in easier. The turnout has been tested and all is satisfactory.

When he wasn’t installing point servos TAFKASTYS spent some time grinding away on the goods shed for T’yn y Coedcae blending in some new stonework. With 9 bodies present space was at a premium, so the corridor is being used to work out how to recycle ex-LMJ legs into supports for Luke’s shunting layout, advised by Wagonman.

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Week ending 19th May

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It has been a quiet week with little of photographic interest. So it’s thanks to Wagonman for providing the pictures this week. The BLS railway electric loco is in HO scale, produced by Roco. Built in the late 50s by Brown Bovery the prototype lasted in service until relatively recently. And not content with the one Hawksworth push-pull coach that runs on Pavilion End, Al is now starting a second one. This one will be in a slightly different livery.

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Week ending 12th May

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Some people just can’t resist a purchase. The Wickham trolley and trailer from Ellis Clark in 7mm scale certainly looks tempting and Wagonman did succumb. Its finely detailed and surprisingly, very fast. Its definitely not DCC controlled – where would you put the chip?

Well, there really is a version sold that does have DCC and sound!

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Thornbury Two Trips

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Taking Bwthyn y Rhosod (TLFKAByR) to the Thornbury Show went well, though the start was a bit eventful. After assembly we couldn’t find the cassettes for the fiddle yard – and yes, we’d left them behind. So LBH volunteered to go back to get them. Preparations continued until we found that there were more items we didn’t have. By this time we calculated that LBH would be on his way back with few chance to turn around so SteveN set of on another trip to collect items.

With nothing else missing Bwthyn y Rhosod was ready to go and was soon attracting plenty of attention.

The view the visitors don’t get to see is the one from the fiddle yard through onto the layout. We didn’t have any major problems, though Paul W had to tie the hook back onto the crane.

We were over-staffed on Saturday with about 10 of us present. Could it have been because no show is complete without a meal on at least one evening? We patronized the Wheatsheaf on the town.

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Preparations

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Modern technology has played a part in railway modelling at the Newport club for quite some time, going back to things like diode matrixes to control movements. The trend continues with Templot being used for layout design and resin parts being used to provide the required result. Here Rhobat is converting a L&Y 2-4-2 tank into a Barry Railway class J, which was very similar. There is also a different cab needed, to come later.

Preparations for moving Bwthyn y Rhosod over to Thornbury for the show were largely completed on Tuesday. Here the gang are separating the boards and packing them together ready to transport.

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