Oh god not again....

Happy birthday to us.

'Oh gawd, when will it end.....'

That's right, you favorite blog has turned 3. No, this one...the one you are reading now.

Well, I was going to write something philosophical like but I cant be stuffed really. I've been having a series of groundhog days at work, but have finally beaten my problem, so will have to face the next one. I suppose I could point out that we average 300 posts a year, and there might even be some good ones in there.

I have however been out in the shed doing a few wee bits here and there. Just to ease myself back into things. Strapping applied to a couple of J wagons, underframe bracing on the R1. I also spent 5 minutes wondering where the fish plates I applied the other night had gone. Paint them and they vanish. I'm now divided about putting the rest on.

All things being equal I'm going along to a local modelers group tonight. Will be interesting to see how the do things up here.

Wagon time

From the dandruff wagon workshops this past weekend.

Quite a while ago (ie I can't remember at all) I received a casting for an R1 from Christchurch which i had never seen before. I had some old crappy Atlas bogies attached to it and was planning to put it in the coaling track in the loco depot on the layout. However I was sitting at the workbench looking at the 2mm etched bogies I had assembled and suddenly though, "I wonder if they will fit under that?'

The answer is obvious. Now all it needs is the underframe details and its done. I just have to come up with a wagon load for it.


I also tried some bogies that I've recently come into under the Yd. While not quite correct, they are free rolling and have NMRA standard wheelsets.

A package from the mother country

The package from the 2mm chaps turned up at the end of the week.
first up the sleepers. they seem to be cut from 0.8mm material but are the correct size. Well, good enough. 1000 for 10 quid.


Next up a couple of etches. The one on the left is various adjusters and links for point roding from signal boxes. the one on the right is fish plates.

'I must be mad....'

Weekend report

Well, not much happening modeling wise here, but all that seems set to change.
I've just had the Paypal notification that the first of my orders from the 2mm association has been processed, so a stack of PCB sleepers and other bits are currently winging their way here, and track making can again start in earnest.

I've also been doing some more thinking about point actuation, with my spiraling circle between servos, memory wire and just plain old manual throws. manual throws would be nice, but if i want to operate from both sides of the layout, I'd have to come up with something that I think is a bit beyond my meagre woodworking skills.

Your wish is our command

Further to Wee Duggies comments on Opua wharf, here is the track plan as I can't remember if it has featured here before (Oh, it sort of has).
However heres the actual track plan. Not only the wharf, but also the station is incredibly neat.

(We must restart the layout ideas section here, or maybe a design a station section)

Un coupling

Something that has been rattling round my brain for several years now has been a method of remote uncoupling with DCC. My neurons have looked at and discarded several ideas, and asked 'where is the beer?' Last weekend something gelled when I was thinking about something else, and so I wandered out to the Man-sion to knock up a prototype.

My previous tests had revolved around electro magnets behind the buffer beams. However there was always the problem of fitting a large electromagent....well....anywhere really. This then sort of evolved to several neurons mooting an actuating rod through an electromagnet that fortunately died a death in a second bottle of red wine late one night.

The latest idea has turned back to something that my inner geek has always looked at and thought 'that would just be cool'. Memory wire has been mentioned before here but more in the 'cool toy in search of an application'. Here is one that I think might fit. Memory wire shrinks about 3.5% as it is heated ie when a current is applied across it due to some weird chemistry stuff which I should be able to explain but can't as I was asleep that morning in class (it was warmer than the flat).

So, not actually having any memory wire I made do with the bits I had. The main hurdle was to design a linkage of some sort to modify the motion for the microtrains coupler. 2 Minutes with a bit of plastic and some copper wire and the first prototype was born.
(the wagon is being used as it was available, not because I'm planning to put them in wagons...)


This was designed to pull the coupler sideways while keeping the linear motion of the wire. The required pull distance is only 2mm so a length of memory wire of about 60mm should do the job.

'Must buy a tripod'

The prototype seems to work, so the next step is to actually build a real one.

One problem that has occurred to me is that when going round corners the couple has to move to the other side which should be limited by the solid wire linkage. There might have to be a spring in it somewhere to allow some extra movement.

While I was Sleeping...

Am_Fet writes:

Back in yon old days, our models were all English with large dollops of Hornby and Lima. Running was hesitant at best and was quickly consigned to large boxes when other "pursuits" took over. Hornby suffered from huge gaps in the running gear and those couplers! Lima was powered by "Pancake" motors, so named as they had trouble pulling the cream off one...

And so these English monstrosities were pushed aside for the American ideal of central motors and all-driven wheels and quietly forgotten....Sure, I kept up with what Iain Rice was up to, and I love Chris Nevards blog, but I still thought of English off-the-shelf models as...well, toy like.

So imagine my surprise this week when I purloined a copy of "ModelRail" magazine from the Train Control Lending Library (Swipe Access needed) to find it had all changed! The Chinese (via Bachmann and others) were flooding the market with superb 4mm locomotives....just look at this 7F for example (from Chris Nevard):



That is just superb....and I dont think that many "finescalers" would be able to do better with an etched kit. I think from memory the first RTR that really made me sit up and take notice was the (now quite) old Peppercorn A1 form Bachmann....one of my faves...



In our sphere, one doesn't have to look further than Dapol, now under the Bachmann stable as well. The recently released B1's in N are really just exquisite; Gone are the pizza-cutter wheels, and in fact the whole scale in England is experiencing a bit of a renaissance:



Even the layouts are improving. This is Glenuig by Gary Hinson in 4mm...just love the grunge on those Mk1 carriages:



(Actually, I look at Glenuig and wonder why we dont see more NZR layouts like this...)



I think that the biggest "tick of approval" for this new surge in high fidelity RTR English trains is the fact that Tim Shackleton, one time editor of the erstwhile Model Railway Journal (The Brit one), is now writing articles showing how to weather up the new crop of models, and not a P4 wheel in sight. In fact, after looking at all of these new toys now on the market, I'm starting to find MRJ a bit..."sniffy"...

Anyway, I suppose the point I'm trying to make is....its all about the technology. Brit modellers now have access to the best that CAD/CAM can deliver; They now have sound and DCC. Hell, they even have Nochmaster style grass on their layouts. No longer are they playing second fiddle to their North American cousins, they are almost themselves getting ahead of the curve....and for someone who has a dull hankering for the days of youth and 4mm English locomotives, that's great.

BTW, if anyone has an old Lima J50 top lying around, I'd love to take it off their hands...