Hole-in-the-Wall

No I'm not setting my railway in Herefordshire, it just seemed the most apt post title.

At the right hand side of my layout the road runs right along the backscene and I needed something to breakup the join between land and sky. I had thought about a row of hedges but I don't think I've left enough room, so I decided to use a drystone wall instead.

On the way home from work on Thursday I had a look through the options in my local model shop. While they had a number of options in the end I settled for the Hornby granite wall pack. Having moved to modelling in N gauge I didn't think I'd be buying anything from Hornby again, but this item comes from their 9mm scale Lyddle End range. I believe that this small range was a "toe in the water" to test the marker which obviously wasn't very successful as they have now discontinued the range. In the pack you get 8 identical straight wall pieces and four corner pieces. Unfortunately, having got the pack home, there are a number of problems, fortunately none of them are insurmountable.

Firstly the colour is not right. Remember I'm modelling an area with a dark satanic mill so walls will be covered in soot etc. When I bought them I assumed that they were actually unpainted, but on closer inspection it appears that they are lightly painted (a dark wash in some of the joins, and green highlighting for moss). This isn't a problem as I'll simply repaint them when I paint other rocks on the layout so that it looks as if local stone was used to build the wall.

The more troublesome issue is that the sections of wall don't fit together very well. I only need a short section of wall (less than 2 pieces in length), and so I've chosen the two pieces that fit the best but that still leaves a rather large hole in the wall (you can see daylight through it even in the photo). Fortunately a little bit of milliput worked into the gap with a cocktail stick fixes this problem, and once the wall is repainted it should be fine.

As you can see I've already cut the left hand connecting piece of so that it will match up against the bridge parapet, but I'll wait to cut the other end until the scenery is finished to make sure it goes all the way to the edge of the board.

Frank Hornby's 150th Birthday

I didn't know until this morning, but today would have been Frank Hornby's 150th birthday. Not only was Hornby the founder of Britain's largest model railway company, but he also invented Mecanno. And here is the reason I found out.... a Google doodle.

Plan 4/5

While I still haven't settled on a layout to build I thought I'd show you the original layout my Dad built. Amazingly, given the number of hours I spent playing with this layout and the number of photos my Dad took while I was growing up we can't seem to find any photos of the layout in use so you'll have to settle for just the track plan.

The plan came from the 5th edition of Hornby's track plan book, which was originally published in 1979, and is described as being a Triple Track Layout with Sidings. Three trains can run continuously or each can run into the siding area for shunting. The train on the black circuit, running clockwise, must stop at the signal A to allow either of the others to reach the sidings. The R.047 switch and isolating rail in the engine shed allow an engine to be isolated so that the remainder of that siding may be used by another engine.

We didn't use the isolating rail, but three sidings were plenty for supplying trains to and from the three separate loops. We also didn't have the same buildings and signals as in the diagram but at the time (and now) I didn't care about that as running the trains was the best bit! Also the more buildings there were the longer it took to set everything up as the layout was stored behind the wardrobe in my bedroom so everything taller than the track had to be removed before it was put away.

It was an excellent layout that gave me hours of pleasure, thanks Dad!

Fixtures and Fittings

While I'm not going to pre-empt the wagon model I'm currently having printed, I thought I'd show you the fixtures and fittings that will be needed once the model arrives.

While there is no real need to model the track, wheels and couplings when designing the model, I found it helps give a better sense of scale. It might even have helped me realise that the axle holes were too small in the first test print as I would have been able to see that the wheels intersected the model rather than sitting freely in the axle hole.

These models aren't entirely accurate representations (for example the coupling is slightly more rounded) but their bounding boxes are correct which means that if the modelled part fits the real one will. For reference all three are Hornby parts; an R600 single straight track section, narrow NEM style couplings (part number R8219), and 12.5mm spoked wheels (part number R8098).

In Good Company

I've recently spent some time (figuratively) crawling around under coal wagons inspecting their braking systems, in order to try and design a simple, but accurate, representation that I can add to my 3D printed underframe. One of the things I've discovered (two excellent resources are here and here) is that while the brakes on my model coal wagon worked so well that the wheels wouldn't turn, in real life they wouldn't have worked at all, as I fitted them the wrong way around.

By the late 19th century most wagons were fitted with a simple lever brake on one side only. The diagram shows the break lever (in red) in the off position. To apply the brake the lever was pushed down. This turns the shaft (blue) and connecting arm (green) clockwise, which in turn moves the two push rods and attached brake shoes (black) outwards and onto the wheels. As you can see this is a really simple, but effective, braking system. The one downside being that if you had to apply a brake to a run away wagon you might have to cross the track to get to it, which may well be bad for your health and well being!

The easiest way to solve this problem is to simply fit a completely independent brake system to the other side of the wagon, but with the brake lever always at the right hand end of the wagon (so it appears to always be in the same place no matter which side you view the wagon from). This means that when you view the connecting arms from one side of the wagon, the nearest turns clockwise while the one on the other side turns anti-clockwise as the brake is applied. This means of course that you can't simply connect the two brake systems together by extending the shaft (blue) the full width of the wagon.

To overcome this problem, and to allow either brake lever to be used to apply both sets of brakes requires a clutch mechanism (shown in yellow) and for the push rods and connecting arms to now be mirror images of each other. This works, because if you push down the far lever (which is the same as previously) then it now turns both connecting arms such that the push rods are forced outwards applying the breaks, but because of the clutch it has no effect on the other break lever. If, however, you push down on the near side lever then, via the clutch, it turns the shaft anti-clockwise applying the brakes on both sides.

Not only did I manage to fit the brake system wrong on the Parkside Dundas kits I built, but it appears that I'm in good company as neither Dapol or Hornby seem to model fully correct brake gear either.

Firstly, on the left, we have what I accidentally ended up modelling. Two independent brake systems, but with the connecting arms and push rods on the near side fitted the wrong way around. This means that instead of applying the brake when the near side lever is lowered, the brake shoes will actually move further away from the wheels, which clearly is wrong. Mind you, on the right, you can see how both Hornby and Dapol model the braking system. They go to the trouble of modelling the clutch to allow either brake lever to be used to operate both brakes, but then don't bother to model the wagon wide connecting shaft, completely negating the point of fitting the clutch mechanism. I'm assuming they don't bother modelling the connecting shaft because a) it is out of sight under the wagon and b) would possibly be quite fragile, but either way they clearly weren't aiming for accuracy.

So which version am I going to add to my 3D model? Well given that there will be no difference in cost, if I can work out a sensible way of modelling the clutch, then I'll probably model all three correct versions. This way I can print which ever I want depending on what time period I want them to represent. This is one of the main advantages of 3D printing over traditional manufacturing; there are no upfront cost to create expensive moulds, which allow us to print variations at no extra cost.

Working In The Wild West

In my previous post I showed you one modification that had been made to the L&YR 0-4-0ST, aka the "Pug", in order for it to work under the Liverpool Overhead Railway. Well today I'm going to cover the other modification, one which was needed to allow the pug to work in the Wild West Aintree.

In 1916 one of the places the pugs were being used was the munitions factory in Aintree. Now the last thing you want in a munitions factory would be rogue sparks from the chimney of a steam engine. The solution was to fit wild west style spark arrestors. Given that I have a model of a pug with a smoke deflector I thought I'd try and produce one with a spark arrestor as well.

I found two photos of the engines with spark arrestors fitted and used these to build a model version in 4mm to the foot scale to match the Hornby model I already owned. Here you can see the photos I used for inspiration as well as similar shots of the completed model.

It's not a perfect model but as a first attempt I'm happy with how it turned out especially as it involved something I've never tried before: 3D printing. I used Blender (a free, open-source 3D modelling application) to create a 3D model based upon the two photos. I then uploaded the model to Shapeways, and ordered a printed copy which I then painted. Here you can see the step-by-step photos: a computer rendering, the printed object, primed ready for painting, and the final painted item.

While I'm happy with the shape, there are a number of things wrong with the final model. Firstly as you can probably tell from the second and third images the sides of the model are very rough. This is an unfortunate side effect of the printing process. Because of the fine detail (remember the whole model is just 15mm tall and 12mm at it's widest) I had to print it using the Frosted Ultra Detail material. The printing process essentially creates the object in layers by depositing small amounts of material which are then hardened before the next layer is printed. Where there is an overhang, a wax substance is deposited to provide support. This is then melted away after printing has finished to leave the final model. The problem is that this can cause slight pitting to the surface of the model. If you look closely enough you can see that the top of the model is smoother (it's almost see through in the second image) because it didn't require support material. So as the top covers a smaller area what I'll do when I print it again is flip the 3D model upside down so that the large sides don't require any support material.

The main problem though is that I badly messed up painting it and actually broke off some of the finer detail. Everything was going well to start with. I'd washed it in some strong washing up water to remove the last traces of the wax and then primed it using an aerosol (the same as I did the wagon I built recently). This worked well and allowed me to see the finer detail better than on the plain model. Unfortunately i then made the mistake of trying to spray paint it black and ended up with way too much paint, so much so that I obscured all the detail. I stripped the paint back (neat detol works well for this even if it does stink), but in the process the clasps on either side broke of. Now given how tiny they are I'm not really surprised. I then re-painted the model by hand but then compounded the problem by trying to spray on some satin varnish only for lots of white dots to appear (this happened with the black wagon as well, although not the red one so I'm wondering if it's the black paint that's the problem not the varnish). So in the end I've repainted it by hand and forgone the varnish, which means it's gloss instead of matt. So I will at some point have another copy printed and will try again to paint it properly.

Even with the painting disaster I'm happy with how it turned out. I'm sure I'll show you it again when I've had it re-printed but as the postage costs mean you really need to order multiple items (or much larger items) it will have to wait until I have something else I want to print -- I have some other models that I'm working on but some of them are proving a little tricky to finish.

Pugs: Small Yet Perfectly Formed

Now clearly if I can refer to a pug as perfectly formed I'm not talking about the weird looking breed of dog! In Scotland the term pug was used to refer to any small shunting locomotive, but in England when used to describe a steam engine it usually refers to a class of 0-4-0ST originally built by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR).

These small shunting locomotives were designed by John Aspinall to work in confined areas, such as docks, where larger engines were unable to cope with the tight curves etc. The first of the class appeared in 1891 and 57 were eventually built with the last batch entering service in 1910. The last Pug was withdrawn from service in 1964. This time range runs right through the period I'd been thinking about modelling (see this previous post) and so seemed like an ideal engine to acquire.

So I hunted around and managed to pick up Hornby's most recent model (R3024) from eBay (new, boxed and at a significantly reduced price). This model has appeared in both LMS and BR liveries over the years with numerous cab numbers (the model itself has a weird history in that the tooling for it was originally developed by Airfix, was then sold to Dapol and is now produced by Hornby). This specific model represents BR number 51240 which was one of 20 built in 1910 and originally ran as L&YR number 8. It was numbered 11240 under LMS ownership and was eventually withdrawn in April of 1957 (all this information comes from the brilliant book Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Locomotives by Barry C. Lane).

It's a wonderful model, that really is small compared to anything else I own -- it's just 8.5cm long, about the same length as the 12 ton coal waggon I'm building. In fact it's so small that unfortunately the motor can be seen in the cab as Hornby were unable to fit it within the boiler like they do with most of their models. Still, I really like it and I can imagine building a goods yard or dock side area into a layout just to have a good reason to run it frequently.

Sweeping Up Before A Royal Visit

In the last post I mentioned that I already owned one OO gauge LNER locomotive and one LMS locomotive. You've already seen the LNER locomotive, Flying Scotsman, but I thought I'd show you the LMS locomotive. There are two reasons for showing you this model next; it's one of the few models, other than Flying Scotsman, that I know is actually mine, and it's the only one that required replacement parts to get running again.

When I asked my Dad to lift the trains out of their loft I wasn't sure if he would simply hand everything off to me but I did ask if he could at least find Flying Scotsman and the Duchess. Strangely I could have sworn that the model was of the Duchess of Hamilton, but it turned out that it's actually the Duchess of Abercorn (this just shows how long since I last had them running that I can't remember their names). This model has been well used for two reasons. Firstly it was the only model I had with working head lamps -- there is a bulb in the front and the light is carried to the lamps through clear plastic, and secondly as I also own a working mail train in LMS livery (it collects and delivers mail bags and will I'm sure be the subject of a future post).

The Duchesses (officially known as Coronation Class locomotives) were the most powerful passenger steam locomotives ever built for the UK rail network; according to Wikipedia The Duchess of Abercorn holds the record at 3333hp. Interestingly they were more powerful than the diesel locomotives that replaced them when steam was removed from the rail network in 1968. Unfortunately, even after lubrication and a little grease, my model of Duchess of Abercorn could hardly move herself along the track, and couldn't pull a single coach.

The Hornby model (number R305) is unfortunately one of a number of tender driven locomotives I own. For some reason they never seem to be as reliable as those with the engine mounted inside the boiler. As the head lamps were lighting up I knew power was being collected but she stubbornly refused to move properly. After comparing the motor to another tender drive locomotive I noticed that the copper disk was actually black. It turns out that the carbon brushes had worn almost completely down, and while the springs which hold them in place were ensuring an electrical connection the build of carbon on the motor was such that not enough power was available to drive the motor. Fortunately this was relatively easy to fix. I ordered replacement brushes (from the New Moddellers) at a total cost of £2.50 and cleaned the motor using a little bit of nail polish remover on a cotton wool bud. I don't think she is running as well as she used to (once I'd cleaned the motor disk I could see that it is badly scratched and probably needs replacing) but she can now pull a rake of coaches around the track without too many problems.

If you want to know more about the Duchesses then I can recommend reading The Duchesses by Andrew Roden.

Caledonian Belle

When I made the decision to retrieve the train set from my parents loft (I should note that not every locomotive or piece of rolling stock is mine, although I'm currently giving them a home) I knew that I'd need at least some new track. Our old layout is still nailed to the board behind the wardrobe and I while I could convince/persuade my Dad to lift a few boxes down from the loft I didn't think he'd really want to spend hours unpinning track. Also after 15 or so years of not being used I have a feeling that the old track will need a really good clean before it's used.

As I don't yet have a permanent home for my layout, and I'm not sure what shape it will eventually take, the obvious solution seemed to be to buy the cheapest Hornby train set I could as this would give me some track, a controller, a new loco, and some rolling stock.

Having had a hunt around I settled on the Caledonian Belle set which I bought from Amazon at a ridiculously reduced price (the price on Amazon varies but I saved over £20 compared with Hornby's RRP). As the set only contains a very basic oval and I really wanted a siding as well I bought Track Pack A (again from Amazon, and with their crazy discounts I actually got both the set and track pack for less than the full price of the set alone).

So on the afternoon of Wednesday the 20th of June 2012 I took over the dinning table (actually a fake top we place on the dinning table so we can seat more than four people -- this gives me a working area of exactly 6 foot by four foot) and got ready to run my first model train in over 15 years. It was great! I'd forgotten just how relaxing watching a small model train go round and round a simple oval could be.

Interestingly when I eventually got around to unpacking the old locomotives I found that we already had a Caledonian 0-4-0ST locomotive (Hornby R.057) and carriage (Hornby R.219). Here you can see both the old and new models.

As you can see both the locomotive and carriage are painted in very different liveries. Having had a look at photos from the Caledonian Railway Association, I'd say that the older models (on the right) are a better representation. Not only is the locomotive more detailed (e.g. wire handrails and the coat of arms) and painted in the early light blue colour scheme, but the coach uses colours also seen in original photos and paintings. The newer coach, painted in blue, might better match the painting of the new locomotive in the darker blue livery (which also seems accurate) but it doesn't seem to match with any carriages used on the old Caledonian Railway. I'm guessing that, with a starter set aimed more at children getting into the hobby than adults with a historical interest, Hornby went for aesthetics over accuracy - I'm not very good at picking complimentary colours but even I find the old coach and locomotive combination a little jarring.

Cautionary Tale No. 4472 [Part V]

Given that my interest in steam trains started with the Flying Scotsman, I thought it was only right to have the first interesting post on this blog be a continuation of Cautionary Tale No. 4472 (you can read parts I-IV here, here, here, and here).

So having finally retrieved my trains from my parents loft I can now show you the model that started it all. I received this model as a Christmas present from my parents way back in 1982. Unfortunately, as you will know if you've read the previous parts of this tale, I was too ill (a bout of childhood asthma) to actually move off the chair and play with it.

Given that it's at least 15 years since I last ran any of my model trains I was amazed that after a few drops of oil and a little light greasing Flying Scotsman pulled away from the station. I'm not sure if it's able to go quite as fast as it once did, but that might be down to the controller I'm using (I'm not overly impressed by Hornby's new starter controller but I'll leave that for a future post). The important thing is that it's running well enough to be enjoyed.

Having now taken it apart to give it a long over due clean (something I don't think it's ever had) I can tell you that it's a Hornby R.855 model. According to Hornby Railways Collector Guide this model was last included in the catalogue in 1977, so I'm guessing that either it had been sat around in a model shop for a while or it was bought second-hand. The second-hand option is more likely as I know that's how we obtained a number of the other locomotives and also I can't ever remember there being a box with it. Either way it was a wonderful present. I can't imagine that many people have a childhood Christmas present that they still really enjoy playing with 30 years later!