MK2 Station Building

Before setting out to build Church Lane almost all of the structures were complete. The one exception to the rule was the Chris Ford inspired station building.

The one I'd originally built wouldn't quite work for the layout, the entrance being on the (viewers) right hand side whereas here a left handed entrance works better visually with the 'lane' suggested beyond the buffer stop. 

Purely by chance, even though I'd planned to have another go at this particular kitbash again, everything worked out in a way that sort of pushed me into building it. A Will's tin chapel kit was picked up cheaply second hand (Complete, but marked as 'broken' - This turned out to be a simple crack in one of the side pieces), a set of Peco doors and windows was also found at the same time, most importantly though a copy of C.C.Green's 'Vale of Rheidol' book was picked up at Railex Taunton last year featuring some fantastic profile shots of the station building at Devil's Bridge during the 1950s as a reference.

A couple of quick snaps before painting shows how all the parts immediately alter the look of the building. 

For a more in depth how to, consult the book.

Side by side, it's quite nice to see a comparison of how my modelling has improved!

A coat of primer helps tie everything together nicely.

And finally, sat at the end of the line with the matching goods store and signal box in the distance. Even without ground scatters and scenics, it's already starting to look really nice.

I know I'd mentioned previously about wanting to attempt a 'Cameo' style box presentation for this layout, but just looking at the above view has me thinking otherwise. I really like it, but I have to remember that both the walling and station building will be sitting a little higher when groundwork is finished.

Carry On Tracking

It's been a bit of a mixed weekend. What should have been a nice, relaxing a day out on the Saturday proved proved to be a very testing day to say the least, so yesterday I was forcing myself to slow down and spend a leisurely day laying as much track as I felt I could comfortably manage on the new layout...

Suffice to say, I surprised myself by not only laying all the required track, but also installing isolating/point switches and wiring them all along with the power feeds! Granted, I seemed to have miscalculated somewhere and I'm two isolating switches short on the layout section meaning the the 'front' line of the run round loop and the far reaches of the front siding are currently out of bounds, but I have the parts in stock so it's a very quick next weekend job.

Most importantly though, even in this state, it meant I could spend a little bit of time playing trains.

The prefect tonic to what has been a very stressful week.

Employing three (Then eventually four!) train operation, the scratchbuilt brake van, Talyllyn Coach No.4 and the Egger Bahn balcony coach were assembled into the first train and then each of the four engines took turns pulling them into the station before swapping out with another stationed in what will become the bay platform.

I actually had more fun than I thought just shuffling the same coaching stock back and forth like this for a good thirty minutes. Dare I say it, I think I'm getting some potential ideas for the annual Micro Railway Cartel Christmas Challenge. We'll see what becomes of those...

And finally, some more of the scenic elements just placed on the board to see how it's all coming together. I'm liking this. I'm liking it a lot.

Toby

I didn't particularly set out to build another engine, but here we are.

Late last year I found myself with the itch to scratch-build something. Something with planking as I find it oddly relaxing. A quick look in the parts collection revealed the complete chassis from a Vale of Rheidol brake van (The body was of course liberated for the bogie coach bash!) so the first instinct was to build either a brake or box van, but then I stumbled upon a Kato-103 chassis. It didn't take too long for my brain to put two and two together and go hunting for the July 1961 copy of Railway Modeller...

The result was No.7 (or 'Toby') unmistakably based on the standard gauge Y6/J70 locomotives of the Wisbech & Upwell tramway, a line I've always had a soft spot for. The drawing's supplied by the Rev. Awdry for the Railway Modeller article were scaled down by roughy 1/3rd, the result being an engine suitably sized to a 2'3"-2'6" narrow gauge line, certainly on the mid - larger end of the narrow gauge loading gauges.

A quick snap from before the painting stage shows the main construction off nicely. The majority of this is scribed 40thou plastic sheet with 20x40thou strip for the framing. Once again, as with the Sentinel, an off-cut of sprue was turned into a funnel with a small section of 2mm brass rod for the visible condensing gear on the roof. The 'bell' i simply a handrail knob with the locating pip removed and some handrail wire! Some might question the inclusion of dumb buffers. In all honesty, they were added to stop the ends looking too flat.

From there it was onto the painting stage, initially taking some inspiration from the Kenney/Spong Toby illustrations, whilst wanting to add some green in to match the other steam engines in the fleet...

Suffice to say, as soon as I'd finished the base colours with the brush I realised I was heading in the wrong direction! Even after a wash with Tamiya 'Tank Grey' everything was still a bit too bold and clashing. 

Leaving it a couple of weeks before coming back to it, the framing was given a quick go over with the same Revell Brown as the main bodywork and the side-plates redone in Tank Grey. Essentially, I was painting the engine using just the colour palette I use for coaching stock. The eagle eyed may also notice that I remade the side-plate covers at this point to, making them from artists card with 10x20thou strip for the hinges as on the Sentinel.

Already it was looking MUCH better.

Then, the tricky task of making up some sliding window panes from 20x40 strip and clear plastic sheet. I think they're turned out ok for a first attempt, but I'm certainly not in a hurry to try again. I tip my hat to the modellers who make droplight windows for coaches!

And finally, the one photograph that certain corners of the internet would get somewhat angry about if I didn't pose.

This was meant to be a very silly project, the slightly unfortunate outcome is I've made an engine that I actually really like!

The Baseboard Commeth...

Well, this isn't quite what I expected to be writing about this week...

Having seemingly completed nearly all of the projects in Chris Ford's 'Modelling Narrow Gauge Railways in Small Scales' book I've been thinking to myself over the last year and a bit as to why I'm actually holding back from going the whole hog and building the layout. I've even had a sketched out plan and the 6mm MDF sheet waiting and ready to go for the longest time.

Last week though I gave myself the metaphorical kicking to get this layout started, spurred on by the fact that the big table saw at work was available for cutting the baseboard parts to size - No way was I planning on doing a 4ft long cut with the trusty tenon saw, even with this softer wood!

As with everything I've done out of the book, there is a slight twist. The original shows how to make a 4x1ft board and gives suggestions as to how to go about attaching a fiddle yard. Shrinking down the original baseboard measurements roughy by a third I found I could accommodate the scenic section and a three road fiddle yard in the same size area as the original board. The parts were assembled at a leisurely pace over the last weekend. There was a slight inaccuracy in my measurements for the cross beams, but at 2mm too long I thought that was pretty good going! Took the extra belt and braces precautions advised to make the board more suitable for exhibition use (Albeit, just waiting on picking up some screws) It isn't planned to be such a layout, but you never know.

Assembled, the full layout and fiddle yard measures 4ft x 9inches, splitting it into sections the scenic part is 74cm/29inch in length with 46cm/18inches for the fiddle. Just as a little proof of concept the other projects from the book were posed on top just to check again that I had got my clearances and track lengths right. It's only just occurred to me that I've unintentionally made a mirror image version of Chris's 'Seething' layout, sans overbridge.

In theory this shouldn't be that long of a project. The only major things to do after the baseboard are lay track, get the back-scene fitted (Very tempted to try a 'Cameo' style box for this), plonk the ready made structures in place and then ballast and add green stuff. 

And finally, just as a bit of fun, it occurred to me that the same sized baseboard could accommodate a variation of James Hilton's Seahouses inspired micro layout. I have the odd little beginnings of a GWR branch layout, and whilst it's probably too small for the much admired Collett Goods, things did look promising for the 48XX. With one engine in steam operation and a loco lift style fiddle yard it's certainly a possibility.

All things to ponder over for another time...

Replanning

I've been thinking about a potential remake for The Garden Railway for some time now, but only recently have I found the time to sit down and make a serious attempt at looking into it.

"But why rebuild it?" I can hear some readers asking.

The clearances when shunting are too tight, the head shunt is also a bit too short, the engine shed door frame is too low for a good amount of the current loco fleet, the wiring connections aren't great (Despite soldering on more pickups last year) In summary: all this results from this layout initially being built in 2020 with what was to hand, including the lack of rolling stock for clearance checks. For the last two and a half years it's probably spent more time as a glorified photo plank, and even that's difficult given the full height of the garden wall at the front. At the time though, it was a very fun sanity saving build.

It's not all doom and gloom though. The majority of the buildings can be salvaged and reused on a MK2 version, in fact the only one that is destined for the bin is the house and garden walls. Being a Scalescenes card/paper kit the printing had started to fade probably due to a lack of varnish in certain areas. The nice aspect of this is that I can have a go at bashing one of the Peco laser cut terrace house backs. I've been wanting to try one of their laser cut kits for a while, but had no context to do so!

The track plan is still going to be the same: The classic inglenook. Looking for a different way to present it I stumbled upon an article by Paul Lunn in the December 2008 edition of Railway Modeller, showing how a 3x1 inglenook could be built in a bookcase using Peco Setrack, with a more curved approach to the track plan. Trying this out in a space 6x18" resulted in the above photo. So far it seems to be looking quite nice. The main thing now is to play around with potential building sizes/placement. From there it'll be a case of looking through the off-cut pile for suitable baseboard materials.

Watch this space...

Cut N' Shut Coaches - Finished.

This new rule of posting fortnightly is already proving its worth. Due to the lack of proper modelling time over my Christmas shutdown it meant I've been able to steadily plod along and get the cut n' shut Vale of Rheidol coach set finished without feeling rushed by personal deadlines.

And speaking of the set, here it is:

They are very nicely proportioned. I think i might have gone a tad overboard with the wash of Tamiya 'German Grey' on the coach sides, but I think I can just about get away with them looking unclean rather than decrepit. The seated figures all came from the Noch advent calendar from December last, I was very thankful they made up roughly 1/3rd of the contents!

In an attempt to backdate the look of them though, besides repainting all but one of the figures into slightly duller colours, one of the figures gained a piece of headgear made simply from one of the gas lighting roof pieces from the coach kit! In the semi darkness it really does look like a convincing wide rimmed hat.

And just to have a quick preview of how they look in a scenic context, here they are on the station curve on Corrillyn.

There is a slightly amusing snag after finishing the set though. Some of you may remember that before embarking on this set I had a try at making a 5 compartment VoR coach. Taking some rough measurements at the time I'd calculated that this new three set would be shorter in length than creating another passenger brake to make the five compartment-er. I clearly got my numbers wrong somewhere, a pair of five door coaches would certainly be shorter than these linked together.

I guess the only thing for it is to get another coach body and brake.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind, better do some more modelling.

The 'Magic' Train

During Christmas 2023 I had a lot of fun putting together the Lego Orient Express set, so this year I thought I'd do something similar again and spend the days between Christmas and New Year assembling a brick based train. It turned out to be anything but simple.

Let me introduce you all to 'The Magic Train', produced by a company called Mould King.

Yes, I know, this is clearly sailing very close to the wind with the lawyers of a certain wizarding world...

Normally I wouldn't particularly care much for something that wasn't made by the official Danish Building Brick company, but even I'll admit that over the last few years the imitations have upped their game considerably, probably as a result of Lego gaining a massively popularity boost amongst the masses during the events of 2020.

Two things swayed me into this set: 1 - I thought it was actually quite a good representation of Olton Hall, certainly compared to some of the offical sets, and 2 - the only other train available from the same manufacturer was a rendition of 4468 Mallard that looked comically undersized compared to the MK1 coach that was the same build as the one seen here.

So how was it build wise?

Well... It was going fairly well as I assembled the chassis of the main locomotive. There were even a couple of ideas that were new to me and I quite liked, such as using a flexible rubber hose piece to join the bogie to the front of the chassis giving it a slightly self centring effect. Then came the start of the electronic section, and this is where the complications and frustrations started.

The above is an straight up photograph of the instruction book, and the eagle eyed amongst you will notice that not only does the wiring suddenly disappear from view, but that when compared to the photos of the finished model there is literally no space for the wiring!

I tried every conceivable trick I could to try and make it all fit in as delivered, but this is a very dense build with little to no internal cavity space. The wire looping back onto the footplate also has an added problem in that the firebox back head is shown to sit flush up against the boiler in the instructions. I have a very strong suspicion that the actual model and the electrics were designed by two separate teams with no collaboration. It's simply impossible to build as show.

There was nothing for it. If I wanted to finish the build I had to get out the wire cutters and soldering iron.

I'll admit I was very nervous about trying to cut and shut these electrical connections, and even more so about having a hot iron near highly meltable bricks, but it all went surprisingly well and worked again first time. It did highlight just how much excess wiring there was though - In total I cut out over 13" of wire, and even then the remaining cables were still a tight fit.

The wiring for the headlights though was almost impossible to cut down, though being of a thinner gauge compared to that used for the motor and smoke generator (And also being coloured black and red!) it didn't look too bad. It is squashed between the boiler and the frames though, resulting a an every so slight hump where the bricks can't butt up against each other properly.

From here the rest of the build for the locomotive went along with no problems -  

Bar the handrails being FAR too long. Again, I had to take the model railway tools to these and cut them down to boiler length.

I did quite like the hidden feature of the tender, a space to conceal a speaker unit.

It's has a rechargeable battery so it's totally independent from the electronics upfront (Which run on their own battery pack, though this does require part disassembly of the boiler to recharge) Unfortunately though turning it on it blares out that stock steam train sound effects compilation so beloved of very cheap train sets.

Assembled and tested, another couple of issues reared their heads: Firstly, the piston/connecting rods.

Again, I think this is possibly the result of the model being designed digitally rather than physically. Unfortunately when power is applied the motion is very stiff, until more power is applied at which point the coupling/piston rods ping off in quite dramatic style! Think it might be a simple case of the technic style pins used to hold the assembly together not having much clutch power.

Secondly, the case of the traction tyres. Those supplied to put on the front bogie foul the pistons when trying to round the bends of the 'not quite Lego' track. Removed it goes round almost perfectly. More tyres were supplied for the tender, but they're another size that's physically too big for the wheels! 

For comparison, here the Magic Castle compared to the Orient Express's Sapphire Star! It makes a really interesting comparison between the semi-accurate and the caricatured, and honestly I think I prefer the latter. I think I also prefer just how much more solid the Star feels, despite the Castle being a denser build with more bricks.

The MK1-esque coach went together nicely, 

The roof does come off, with a little difficulty revealing a trio of compartment literally squeezed in to the interior, though they are just about big enough to accommodate a minifigure. Apologies, the Muppet Show's Beaker was the first one to hand! You'll also notice the somewhat over-engineered doors.

I'm still not sure about these, though they do allow the door assembly to sit totally flush against the body work.

Like the locomotive though, the coach has one unfortunate flaw in it's design...

The bogies physically can't connect with the carriage body!

The cause of this is the connecting pins on the bogies. Unlike the official Lego piece these are very clearly inspired by these copies don't have the important 'lip' at the top that allows them to clutch a technic style hole.

So after all that it's time for the million dollar question. Would I recommend this set?

No.

No I wouldn't.

I will elaborate a bit though. If you're looking for something nice and relaxing that you can spend the course of a few evenings putting together, then this IS NOT the set for you. If you haven't already, go pick up the Lego Orient Express, that's not just a really nice build but if you're like me and fondly remember the Orient Expedition line it's also a great nostalgia trip!

IF however, you're up for doing some extra head scratching and soldering this MIGHT be the additional challenge you're looking for...

I think the thing that truly sums this up though is the fact that the set is no longer listed on Amazon. Make of that what you will.

Next time, back to the 009!