Manning Wardle

Week ending 1st December

Perhaps Storm Bert deterred a few this week, but we had four members present and two guests, Phil and Cory, good to see you.

Dave is still working on the short wheelbase coal wagons and we took the opportunity to pose some of them with LBH’s Manning Wardle Class I, the B&MR’s Lady Cornelia, which was built thirty years ago, on Llanastr.

Not entirely coincidently the image is not so different from this, taken at the Rhymney Iron Works probably in the 1880s

Operating Llanastr at the open day threw up some issues with the track alignment between the baseboards, so after 40 years we thought it might be timely fix some proper dowels. Here is Paul discharging the drill’s battery to this end.

Tuesday and numbers are up to 8 today. But despite the number of people there were periods of studious silence when we were just getting on with modelling. Perhaps that was due to the drill battery going flat so PaulS had less to do.

Luke continues work on his Loriot, now applying buffers and ABB was moved into the workroom for attention to the electrics by TAFKATYS. We are hopeful for some test running on Friday.

Friday and numbers were back to normal, with Fred, Paul 🏅🏅, Mr Chairman, Luke, Wagonman and LBH all making an appearance.

The operation of Tŷ’n-y-Coedcae’s fiddle yards at Statfold proved problematic, with the operators unable to view the front of the layout so see what was happening.

So we’ve decided to try operation from the front. This necessitated removal of the board on the front of the Fiddle Yard above approx 1″ the surface, which Paul did on Friday.

Having got the Loroit to the paintshop, Luke is now working on a model T railcar. Or more exactly a pair of them to work back to back. Here’s the result of the first 30 mins work.

The Southern U class progresses on Wagonman’s workbench. The smokebox, boiler and firebox are now joined as one piece.

Week ending 1st December Read More »

Back to DCC?

The space available for a battery in a Manning Wardle Class K has proven to be too limited so it is reverting to DCC and thus pickups will be required. Unfortunately the perfectly good OEM ones were removed and have gone astray so some new ones will need to be fabricated.

Fitted with a DCC decoder and reunited with its body, it ran but not well and LBH will need to give a bit more attention to the pickups.

Back to DCC? Read More »

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