Great Chesterford Junction Part Two

Yes, I was starting to think along those lines Steve,

The roadways determine the placement of everything else and the station front is a no brainer I suppose.?

I am currently in the process of bracing the baseboard for this area. Pete`s comment hit home and I thought I best do something about it now before we get too far advanced.

By tomorrow the glue will be dry and we can take another step forward.

http://www.clickGormo

 

G`day Model Railroaders,

The town baseboard is braced and ready to go.



The bracing is a combination of 3 ply and MDF......whatever was handy and fitted the purpose.

I downloaded dimensions this afternoon from Metcalfe and Superquick. I have a mixture of kits from those two suppliers. I started drawing out a rough plan based on the dimensions of said kits but it`s not set in concrete yet. The levels and slopes are throwing me out a bit at this stage plus the town plan is just boxes drawn on the baseboard. However, that said, it`s slowly coming together. I just need a starting point, yet to be determined, and I`m away. The obvious place to start is the back of the station. The level has to come up to 20mm upon which will sit a carpark / station forecourt / arrival / departure area.....or one of the above.???. So I guess once I determine the size of that area, everything else will move back away from it.?

I have also been putting a new motor into my Hornby 9F Evening Star. The Ringfield packed it in so I`ve replaced it with a motor out of a tape player or cd player....can`t remember which it came from.???....but I think I`ll cover this in a separate topic.

Dinner time !!!!

http://www.clickGormo

 

G`day Ticket Holders,

I`ve got a little distracted from my scenery adventures and got into some loco repairs as you may have noticed from recent postings here on the forum.

The 9F was by far the most successful out of the lot of them and it is currently running sweet as a nut.



Full of enthusiasm I moved onto an old Hornby diesel that had literally been killed with kindness. That also is running quite well but has moments where it hesitates, and I think it will have a new pick up system installed when the need arises.



So I thought to myself...?????....Well that worked, I`ve got all the tools out on the bench, I might as well carry on.!!!!

One of my old Mainline Jubilees had a split front cylinder. It literally was in two halves along it`s length. It happened one day when Gary was over and it was double heading with another Jubilee and then " Whacko !!"....off it came.......so now it`s restored and running well.



Then I moved onto The Lancashire Fusilier......another Mailine diesel which has been giving me grief for years. It has two eight wheel bogies. The leading and trailing wheels on each bogie have a crude suspension system designed to keep the wheels in contact with the rail. The system doesn`t work very well at all and I`ve tried countless adjustments and methods to get it to work properly over points etc. and every time I failed to get it right.

Today a little light went on in the old bean and I came up with another simple solution, which at this stage is still working over double slips, points, rail joins etc.....If this thing will run over your track without derailing, your track is perfect. !!!!!....so fingers crossed on this one...



And finally a simple fix to end the day. This old Lima J52 which has had a very stressful life. It was dropped on the floor years ago and the body split in half and a piece of the coal bunker broke off. It was repaired and restored and resprayed black and came up a treat. It was and still is a good runner.

Well I dropped it some time back and broke off a corner of the front buffer beam. So that got glued back on today as well and the loco has rejoined the operational fleet.



So folks that gets me down to one left for repair. It`s an old Airfix GWR Prairie. Hasn`t run for years. I`m not sure if I`ve got all the bits and it was a noisy runner when it did run. It`s the old open frame motor system like the Hornby X04 and it used to sound like a set of Maraccas inside a metal garbage bin. But it was a nice looking loco and it deserves another chance at life on the rails. This one will test me out.!!!!

http://www.clickGormo

 

Yes Chris,

Things have changed........however I think the new locos especially, are reaching a tipping point where the quality of the item is starting to drop off, yet the price remains high. It`s not unusual to hear of quality control issues with some of the new locos.

Most of us I think expect perfect out of the box these days, as it should be, but it`s not always the case I`m afraid.

The old Mainline locos were cheap and nasty, however that said, the bodies were good and the painting and lining was good, even if they sounded like chaff cutters, but they were very affordable. A young lad like yourself could get into model railways without having to sell his cricket bat, bicycle and surfboard.

I`m glad I brought back some memories for you....

http://www.clickGormo

 

Good one Steve,

I look forward to seeing that Black 5 up and running.

And thanks Toto...

http://www.clickGormo

 

No sorry Gary,

I beat you to it.....the blessed thing now has gear problems. It`s jumping one tooth per revolution and I can`t fix it.....AAAaaaaaahhhhh!!!!.....so close. Trouble is when you look at the parts, nothing appears to be amiss..?????....weird !!!...and there is no possible adjustment.

However!!!!.....I do have a plan .....I`m trying to get a a tender drive on Ebay and convert it over. It would be fairly easy if I can drop the original tender top over the tender drive. Pull the motor out of the loco and clean up the loco chassis and make sure it will roll freely. Attach a couple of wires to the split chassis and run them through to the tender and we`re away.....simples.

http://www.clickGormo

 

G`day Gary,

I`ve currently got a bid in on Ebay for a Lima model at $31.00

We`ll see how that goes..???

http://www.clickGormo

 

G`day Tony,

Thanks for the tip.......yes that`s the one.!!!

I won`t be getting into a bidding war because if it goes too far I`d be better off just replacing the whole loco......we`ll see what happens....

http://www.clickGormo

 

G`day Folks,

Well the tender arrived but I`m covering that in a separate thread.

http://www.platform1mrc.com/view_topic.php?id=2161&forum_id=13

Getting back to scenery, I have been pondering the town scene behind the station. I think the one thing that has cracked it for me is the release of the new Scalescenes castle / folly.

http://scalescenes.com/

I thought it would look good in the corner and create a focal point. So I did a concept scribble just to picture it in my head.



My wife was quite taken by the drawing and said she liked the perspective, so being the sneaky little wifey that she is, she secretly scanned it while I was out in the shed, and then went to work on it with her water colours and inks. She presented it to me this morning as part of my Fathers Day gift.



What a pleasant surprise !!!!!

And Happy Fathers Day to all the Aussie dads on the forum...

http://www.clickGormo

 

Thanks Guys,

I will be passing on your comments to the little lady

http://www.clickGormo

 

Thanks Pete....

http://www.clickGormo