Southampton Exhibition 25-26 January 2020

Lightermans Yard was invited to show at the Southampton Model Railway Exhibition at Eastleigh. This two day event was well patronised with good layouts and some trade stands. The exhibition was set in several large spaces in the 6th form college, including the theatre and sports hall.

Gauges from 0 to N were represented with a good showing of fine scale layouts; P4, EM, 009, 3mm and 2mm FS.

The 2mm Association Roadshow and Jerry Clifford's demonstration of modeling in 2mm FS, were busy for most of the two days.

Pete, Keith and Alan Smith ferried the layout down to Eastleigh on Friday and setup Lightermans Yard and checked that everything was running and functioning properly. Of course, the next morning one or two niggling faults appeared, one of which sent Keith underneath the track to re-attach a drifting wire! Apart from that, a point blade on the back road lost contact with loco wheels causing a stall in one direction. Later we encountered uncoupling problems on the reception road, not always the magnet's fault.

Otherwise the operating crews experienced an enjoyable and fulfilling two days, particularly overhearing the complimentary comments from 'out the front'. On Saturday the operators, working mainly in pairs, were Pete, Keith. Alan and Richard. We found we had too few locos to be able to assemble trains in the fiddle yard - added more locos on Sunday. Howard joined us on Sunday. Important 'driver experience' for Richard and Howard.

Always pleasing to see a large crowd around the front of the layout!

Pete and Keith on the operating side, and Keith's very occasional intervention to help the annoying uncoupling snag.

We ran a mixture of steam and diesel traction placing this almost in the final days of steam.

Moments from the rest of the show;

January 2020 Meeting

The first meeting of the new decade! Apart from the annual membership fee collection, our meeting consisted of ongoing business and preparing to take Lightermans Yard to the Southampton Exhibition at the end of the month.

Howard showed a servo mounting kit that he had recently bought and suggested a servo selection that he (and MERG) were considering.

DINGO SERVO MOUNT 'low profile' (www.dingoservo.co.uk) parts and built kit.

Howard has provided some information from MERG about servos (see note at the end of this blog entry).

Alan Smith showed the progress on the brass split chassis for the Peckett 0-4-0 that he is manufacturing for the 3D printed body. Richard hopes to use the completed loco on a 'Challenge' layout he is constructing.

The two parts of the chassis and the gear set and the axle buffs in place. Below; Matching the chassis to the body, the weight should help the running performance of such a small locomotive.

Lightermans Yard is stored in the loft of the church hall. We have perfected the method of getting the layout down for either working on it or running the layout at meetings. In this case we are readying it for travel the next exhibition. This involves loading the components into two cars for transportation.

Luckily most of the layout travels well in boxes and cases.

Having loaded  the cars we spent some time just talking about the past year and looking forward to the next decade!

The Lightermans Yard team. Standing from left to right; Alan Smith, Richard Doust, Howard Watkins, Gordon Reed, Alan Brasier, Pete King; Sitting David Smith - absent is Keith Gloster

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MERG's notes on Servo Selection;
Good quality servos are now available at prices that could only be dreamt of a few years ago Based upon the experience of many members, we now recommend the HobbyKing servos for model railway applications.

•    For semaphore signals, we recommend the HobbyKin9 HKSCM9-5V digital servo. This completely eliminates any tendency to twitch at power up and is completely quiet when the drive pulses cease.
•    For turnouts, we recommend the HobbyKing HK15178 analogue servo. Although this can suffer from a power-up twitch, ii is ideal where, small amount of pressure is desired to hold the switch blade against its stock rail, Again, it is completely quiet and draws no current when the drive pulses cease. If you have a stock of TowerPro SG90 or similar servos, then they will be equally suitable for turnouts.

At the time of writing, there is only a small difference in price between the two HobbyKing servos recommended above, so it makes sense to chose the most appropriate servo for the job.
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Next blog report will be from the Southampton Model Railway Exhibition 25th/26th January2020