Exhibition diary updated

Additional diary date added to the exhibition diary:

We will now be exhibiting the layout at Yeovil Railway Centre's model railway exhibition on the 9th & 10th May.

Duchess of Rutland

This one's been in the collection for a while and was bought as a repainted Duchess of Montrose. It's had a reasonable amount of use but tended to be a bit sticky at times, although I'd never actually taken this one apart.

There are some clues as to why this isn't a great performer, the first can be seen on the left of the first picture (the little plastic insulator under the rod pin) apart from the major reason why this one doesn't currently run!

Second clue, more evidence of insulation and a small strip of wire, yep it's been 2 railed at some point previously and then returned to 3 rail operation, although the resistance readings of the wheels on the modified side didn't yield particularly good continuity readings.

Yet more evidence of insulation, presumably the foam is to stop the insulated side touching the body.

I then found that two of the wheels slipped quite badly on their isolated axles. I already knew that removing the rod pins was going to be hard as they've been flattened on the rear face, so after trawling through the spares box I managed to find another Montrose chassis and enough wheels and connecting rods to assemble a replacement chassis.

After a final clean, lube and neo magnet, the loco is back in full working order with current return to all wheels as it should be.

It's not the tidiest or prettiest loco in my collection but it's something a bit different and I quite like it.

DIY

As stated previously, my skills lie in electrical / mechanical and NOT artwork.

However, this doesn't stop me from having a go, so after pondering whether it would be possible to construct my own loco transfers from scratch, using only the resources that I already have, I decided to have a go and with so many spare bodies now, I really had nothing to lose.

To start off with, I took these two, rather sorry looking bodies:

Once scrubbed, sanded and cleaned, they were primed - no particular reason for using white primer, just that I'd run out of grey...

A nice, satin black, blank canvas (with the buffer ends painted red)

After many hours of experimentation and tweaking, I managed to produced a full set of liners and numbers, which I constructed using Microsoft Publisher! I found the British Railways logos and re-coloured where needed. After several trial runs with cheap paper had the dimensions near enough right, so time to print the graphics onto self-adhesive vinyl (left over from the switch panel) a quick dusting of lacquer to fix the ink and then once dried, the graphics were cut out ready to apply:

All graphics in place, two more coats of satin lacquer and this is the result:

Now for the 2-6-4, slightly more difficult here due to the shape of the boiler graphics. I actually ended up scanning another 2-6-4 body to get a template to work to. Again same process as above and this is the loco after applying the number graphic first:

More graphics printed at the same time, rather than waste the vinyl:

I also had another body that I had  recently bought and although the paintwork was immaculate, the graphics weren't up to scratch, so I carefully peeled them off, applied my new transfers in the same way and finished with two coats of lacquer.

So I now have 80053 and 80104 ready to be fitted: 

 This is the 2-6-4 after being left to dry and then reassembled:

There is some fine-tuning required to the main transfers, they were difficult to line up with the number graphics and this has been tweaked on the computer ready for any further body upgrades. This one isn't perfect but it's perfectly usable in this condition and far, far better than how it looked previously.

I still prefer the mechanical stuff though.

Storage

Safe storage of my rolling stock has become a bit of an issue.

I find myself using a combination of the original boxes (where I have them) and storage foam.

This can mean that it takes a while to safely extract and refit locos back into their boxes, which can also cause wear to the boxes, also the storage foam isn't very secure and the self-adhesive sections of the foam have a nasty habit of actually sticking to the loco bodies. In some cases this has lifted some of the paint, so I need a better solution.

After trawling the internet, a number of forums users recommended these from Modellers Mecca...

There are two internal trays, which are formed from cardboard so require some minimal (but easy) assembly and the dividers can be arranged to suit the stock.

Here the Bachmann 4 CEP is safely stored away, along with a Co-Bo. The Bacmann stock was previously stored in its original plastic / cardboard packaging, which takes ages to remove and refit properly!

Safe storage for up to 30 trucks & wagons (15 per tray) I may add some tissue paper to provide some extra stability.

For added geekiness, I photographed the contents of each box and printed labels which I'll attach to each box to identify which stock belongs to which box.

Should make setting up and packing down much quicker.

Repair projects

After another unsuccessful attempt to three rail my 0-6-0 tank engine, I've sidelined it while I think of a better way to complete the project.

Meanwhile, after going through some of the stock that I'd removed from the storage boxes when I streamlined to two rather than three boxes, I realised that there was some work to be done.

When I ordered a reproduction pick up assembly for my E3002 conversion, I took the liberty of ordering two of them as I also had a second Co-Bo, which was also a two rail conversion. It had been running with a cut-down standard pick up system, and when this proved unreliable I fitted a Marklin skate. This also didn't run quite as smoothly as the other, genuine Co-Bo but it's now sporting a shiny new pick up (from Coopertrains)

Also in need of assistance is the Duchess of Rutland, this was a cheap Ebay purchase, sold as a poor repaint that actually (to me) looks ok. It lost its connecting rod during a run several months ago. Normally the problem is with the connecting pins, however on this one the pins are stuck firmly in position. After some research on the HRCA website it appears that HD did sometimes flatten these off from behind. The problem here appears to be with the rod itself and I should have sufficient spare bits up in the loft to restore this back to running operation...