Hunslet

Week ending 16th February

Monday saw five of us at at the club.

Continuing the etched brass tank engine meme from last week, Rhobat, with the helpful Wizard’s eye, is also essaying his first loco, in this case a Hunslet Jazzer kit in OO from the CSP range.

Meanwhile LBH converted a B&MR PBV to S7. Now it needs some serious weathering!

Tuesday evening we largely concentrated on runs-through of the ABB table honing a few items here and there. Wagonman continued to work on his ex-CM&DP pannier tank, the Wizard on a diesel (a Peak perhaps), and LBH on a gearbox for a 2-4-0T.

Friday and the next job to do on Cwm Carno was to cut the plywood for the track- and river beds. The initial idea was to extract the positions of the edges on the trackbed at 150 mm intervals from the drawing below.

That approach wasn’t welcomed by the club carpenter, Paul S!

Instead, we had already obtained a full-size print of the layout drawing for planning purposes, so we drilled small holes through it to plywood below marking the borders of the beds. Then by ‘joining up the dots’ we were able to use a jigsaw to the correct outline. Here we see the river bed in place, but not yet fixed.

And here’s the trackbed placed on the frame. The top of the picture is the top of the valley with, from the left, ‘mainline’, headshunt and colliery screens.

There are adjustments to make at the entry and exit points.

Meanwhile in the workroom a small parade of locos was assembled.; two pannier tanks and two 56xx’s. From left to right we have the Ditton Priors tank that’s featured before, two 4mm scale tanks from Mike E’s stable (which ran much better after the wheels had been thoroughly cleaned) and a brand new Minerva Models 7mm 56xx. This last belongs to Ed who in true Newport fashion has his feet in both the 4mm and 7mm camps.

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Week ending 8th December

Monday saw us welcome a prospective new member, Dennis, who enlivened the afternoon with a sick 00 engine and memories of Mountain Ash NCB. Amongst other activities Rhobat was working on his etched brass Hunslet; Mr Chairman the short wheelbase wagons and LBH fettling Llanastr track work. No pics to show though, sorry.

Tuesday was a Zoom session and time for the Christmas Quiz. Steve Bell entertained us first with a short video of a preserved line in Japan, complete with shunters wearing white gloves. The quiz tested us on railways of all sorts in Wales, e.g. name five current stations in Wales that contain the letter J? Steve finished off the session with history and pics of the Knoxville to Sevierville short line in Tennessee.

Two of us snuck in on Friday evening before Storm Darragh could do its worst.

LBH tested the fettled trackwork on Llanastr with his three B&MR locos with (ahem) acceptable results.

Luke added motor and pick ups to the chassis for the Model T based railbus.

And LBH tested out his newly-converted-to-S7 Peckett E class and fitted it with a DCC decoder. It will be named Alma and operate at the works shunter on the Tŷ’n-y-Coedcae Tar Works. Its DCC code is naturally 1854. Conversion to S7 was undertaken by Colin Dowling.

Later its dome-safety valve was fitted and now it needs weathering.

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Week ending 14 July 2024

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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