Rolling Along

How you're going to get your layout in and out of a show venue is not always high on the list of considerations when its designed.

In our experience it's one of those thing you adapt and improvise as you go along.

Over the years we've progressed from purely manual handing, deploying a squad of operators to lift and carry boards over long distances, and even up and down flights of stairs, to investing in a heavy-duty barrow to wheel sections of layout into the venue.

But with Minffordd being transported by car, instead of a hired van, we've found it's a struggle to find space for the barrow in a situation where every square inch is prisoner.

As so often a potential solution emerged out of a chance conversation at the weekend.

Chewing over the logistics of getting the layout into the venue at Porthmadog next weekend we wondered whether it would be worth investing in a small skate trolley, which would be easier to fit in one of the cars.

Which is when Himself had another of his brainwaves.

About ten years ago he made a small folding 'train set' board for my son.

In typical Himself fashion it was built on a robust 2x1 frame and he had fitted casters so it could be easily slid into the space beneath his bed when it wasn't being played with.

What if - he wondered - we removed those casters and attached them directly to one of the boards which hold the two main sections of Minffordd together for transport?

It rolls around well enough in the garage at home, I'm told.

Now there are two big tests.

How well will it work to push it in and out of a venue, across a tarmac car pack and whatever steps and bumps there are in the way.

And with the whole package now being another 7cm longer will it still fit in the back of my car?

Too Posh To Shunt

Himself has been continuing to search for more sneaky ways to improve the performance of the Bachmann 'Dukedog', searching for every last place we can hide a precious few grammes of extra weight.

He's fixed a very thin piece of lead sheet in the cab roof, although it's not visible unless you look for it.

It hasn't made a dramatic difference but every little helps.....

We've also removed the weights from all the standard gauge carriages.  

The Mk1s were already done, and it can just about haul three of them in the Down (Pwllheli) direction only - the tight curve into the fiddle yard going the other way gives too much friction.

We've also discovered why it struggles to push anything up the slope into the yard.

It's not the the steepness of the gradient so much as the effect of the change of gradient.

The Dukedog has a relatively long frame and when it reaches the point where the slope kicks in it tips the smokebox end down onto the front bogie, which in turn lifts the rear driving wheels just enough that they begin to lose traction.

So as far as our Cambrian fleet in concerned 'the Earl' is the loco which is 'too posh to shunt', which all sounds like something the Rev. Awdry could have made a story out of.

Packing For Porthmadog

We still have the best part of a fortnight to go but today the plan is to break down Minffordd  and get it all packed away ready for the trip to the show in Porthmadog.

Over the weekend we did a last bit of test running to check a few of the adjustments which have been made since Glasgow, one of which was an overdue reset of the decoder on the green 24 to cure its tendency to unpredictable rates of acceleration, which made attempting to shunt wagons into the yard a challenge.

The show, at Y Ganolfan, just across the harbour from the FR station, looks like it will be a terrific event.  Link here.

The organisers look to have pulled together a remarkable collection of layouts of locations along the FR, or ones which have been inspired by it.

There's a few I'm particularly looking forward to seeing, and I hope the owners won't mind that I've lifted some photos from their social media.

Tan y Bwlch by Nigel Smith has captured the feel of everyone's favourite FR station perfectly.

In a larger scale, Rhiw Goch, from James and Peter Hoyle, is another exquisitely faithful representation of a real life location on the line.

And Charles Insely's Bangor looks like it oozes atmosphere, and I've been watching his Bachmann Fairlie kit bashes with interest as he documented the project, so it will be fascinating to see them close up.

Proceeds from the show will be split between the fundraising appeals to overhaul Blanche and to build a replica of the Spooner bogie ballast wagon, so that's an extra incentive to come along to the show if you are able to.

Battered Bagnal

I've not hung around getting Kidbrooke ready to be permanently abandoned on a length of track in Minffordd Yard.

I don't have enough tiny alphabet transfers in stock to attempt to replicate all the graffiti which was painted onto the hulk of the loco during its time in the yard, but I've had a go at representing some of the other whitewash embelishments.

The 3d print was given a spray with red oxide primer before applying a succession of diluted acrylic washes of various shades of brown and then dry brushing with some orange hues and darker colours to get what I hope looks like a suitably rusty effect.

Being a print it is absolutely featherweight so we'll have no problem permanently gluing it onto the length of track in front of the slate sheds.

It should make an interesting conversation piece in Porthmadog in a two week's time.

I wonder what the ratio will be between those who give a knowing smile and those who point and say 'What's that doing there?'

Surgical Violence

There's nothing so strange as receiving a new model in the post and then immediately starting to hack it to bits, but that was how I spend one afternoon this week.

The model in question is a Fourdees 3D print of a Bagnall 0-4-0 which is being heavily distressed to be version of Kidbrooke, a small tank which spent most of the 1960s looking very sorry for itself in Minffordd Yard.

The kit is very cleverly designed so you can sit the body on a static chassis with very nicely represented valve gear, or install a Bachmann Percy chassis.

No other adaptation is required, it is simple swap.  Nicely done Fourdees!

The fidelity of these prints is most impressive these days, although it's fortunate that I needed to chop a lot of bits off because in my experience it is incredibly easy to break off the small details on models such as this.

Whilst I admire that it is possible to render such fine items such as handrails, regulators and really small pipework I do wonder whether it wouldn't be better to leave it for modellers who desire this kind of detail to add it themselves in a more robust material?

The other aspect which always makes check and check again with prints like this differentiating what is a production support sprue which needs to be removed, and what is the part of the model which must remain?  

The spider's web of supports in the cab opening on this print are a case in point.

As you can see by comparing the photos I've posted there was a lot which needed to be chopped off and filed away, such as the cab back sheet, the chimney, smokebox door and the dumb buffers.

The most intricate job was to remove the cab support frame so the cab roof can be resting partly on top of the saddle tank, which is how the loco looked when it was at Minffordd.

With the destruction done the next task is to paint and weather it to look supremely rusted and neglected....

Space Saver

There's one finishing touch to be added before we pack up Minffordd to take it it Porthamdog next month.

Having recently become aware that during the 1960s the hulk of the Bagnall 0-4-0 Kidbrooke was hanging around the yard we had to do something to represent that.

You can read more about it here.

A 3D print of a very similar Bagnall tank should be arriving any time soon, and shall set to work distressing it appropriately.

In the meantime, Himself has prepared a isolated length of weed-strewn track for it to rest on.

This is not strictly prototypical because in reality Kidbrooke was placed on the long siding which runs in front of the Maenofferen sheds, but that's a useful bit of yard for shunting wagons around so we're going to reposition it slightly.

The model in the picture is an old white metal body we somehow acquired - or were gifted - long ago and is sitting there to give an impression of how it's going to appear.

Stayin' Alive

We're still learners when it comes to this DCC malarkey, and every day is a school day.

Take my favourite loco in the Minffordd fleet, the Simplex Mary Ann for example.

When it was re-motored and chipped for its new digital life we managed to squeeze in a stay alive capacitor which was so effective the loco would continue to run for around 10 seconds after it was picked up off the track.

When he was giving the stock a once-over ready for the trip to Porthmadog last week Himself noticed the stay alive didn't appear to be functioning.

We hadn't noticed any particular problem with the loco at the show in Glasgow.

As usual it was superbly reliable and most problems seemed to be caused by route-setting errors resulting in short circuits. 

We did notice some of the other operators giving it a prod every now and then, but assumed that was just operator error.

It was after a while of puzzling that Himself discovered there is a CV setting on these chips which controls how long the stay alive supplies juice for, and adjusting that restored the function.

It was then that the penny dropped.

Towards the end of the first day at the Falkirk show last year Mary Ann developed a strange fault where all the DCC sounds played but there was no drive.

The solution was to reset the decoder - but we made a bit of a beginner's error!

We thought we had moved every other DCC loco to safety by taking them all to the upper fiddle yard and disconnecting the power supply.

We punched the buttons on the handset to reset Mary Ann and it sprung back to life!

And shortly after, every other one of our 009 steam engines began hissing in unison. 

They had all been reset, too!!

But how? We had disconnected the power supply to the fiddle yard!

It transpired that the joints between the scenic board and the yard were close enough that the rails in the yard were still getting some power.

So that was a fun 15 minutes resetting the numbers on every loco in turn....

It's only now we think back to this incident that we realise the CV to control the stay alive must have been reset to 0 in this process.

So much to learn...