Ho Ho Ho Santa's little surprise!...
Look closely, SER 0-6-0T's all round this Christmas.
What a year 2020 has been. We haven't met face-to-face for at least three quarters of the year but, like many others, we have maintained contact and discussion about our modeling projects thanks to Zoom.
Pete King: Above shows the station and yard area for Brixham. This has 4 turnouts and 1 catchpoint plus 2 inspection pits. As all of my crossings are full depth milled items, the first job was to flip each one upside down and mill 0.3mm off the bottom but leaving a small full depth pad around each fixing screw hole which leaves the crossing about the same depth as the rails and with a gap underneath (pic 2).
The following pics are just closer views. In the first of these you will see an Association wagon that I built ages ago but never painted. This wagon is so light that without the wheels in I’m sure it would levitate! I have run this up and down each road with the board on a slight incline and it showed up any irregularities by dancing off the rails. There is a little bit of tweaking still to do but it is nearly there. In the last pic the 2 pits are featured. These had to be made before laying the track over. I also cut through the sleepers before laying because I couldn’t think of a way of cutting through them in situ. This short section of track was the most troublesome of all because of trying to keep the rails to gauge as the glue was setting. Now for board 2.
I think it will be a little while before locos are running. Underneath that board is a forest of dropper wires as I’ve fixed 2 on each length of rail and 2 on each crossing. The light coloured half sleepers are brass sleepers for the droppers which are soldered into the hole underneath. By using liquid flux (I have always used paste before) It got through to the rail so the wire is soldered to the sleeper and the rail.
David Smith: No excuses this month I had to self isolate thanks to the NHS COVID app although I felt fine, with time off work and unable to leave the house I put time to good use building the remaining tank wagons from my stash as well as the attached photos (below) was taken at Tutbury to show the finished wagons, when nobody was looking the layout came over all 1970’s!) Also the shed/ workshop got a makeover with some old cupboards that replaced the open shelves.
Tank wagons ready for the paint and weathering shop. A discussion followed about the merits of enamel and acrylic colours for airbrushing. David prefers enamel, finding acrylic sometimes difficult as it dries too fast clogging the airbrush. Also adhesion is poor and can peel or flake. Alan suggested using Etchweld an aerosol primer that makes a very strong adhesion for paint.
Richard Doust: PeteTownsend had mentioned some 2mm scale 3D printed kits of industrial line side buildings and vehicles, some buildings are motorised - www.dapr3d.com
Richard bought kit mainly to see how finely detailed they are; verdict - very good for scale.
Pete Townsend; Trains are running on 'Leigham Road'. To see the movie of click on the link here.
