Saturday, November 26, 2011

Nice little evening project

Earlier on, I decided to have a go at a Wills Signal Cabin kit I bought at the FRs shop a few weeks back.
It is a pretty simple construction, 4 walls, 3 windows, a door, floor (with base of lever frame) and the levers. It was all put together in a matter of 40 minutes. Since I want to be able to run (and photograph) the layout in darkness, lights are going to be placed in some of the buildings, this signal cabin was the first to be built.
It has two grain of wheat bulb lights, a white one is glued 'hanging' from the roof and another is a outdoor light on the door end of the building. When a light is lit inside a building, all of the bare walls and empty floors are shown. so I cut a few pieces of plasticard and made a stove (which it's chimney hides the wires for the lights) a instrument shelf and a large token machine (similar to the Ffestiniog Railway's Minffordd-Rhiw Goch or Rhiw Goch-Tan Y Bwlch token machines).
This was all glued together, painted, and a garden added on a cardboard base, which will be glued on to the baseboard before scenic work. The body shell is removable from the base for now; it will be glued down once the base is secured to the baseboard.
These are the photos of the finished Signal cabin and garden.
Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Warley 2011

This year’s show, in my opinion was great. It had good quality layouts in various gauges and sizes. After all of the trouble I went to go, it was well worth it.
I think there where some good layout there this year. Two of these are;
1) Crumley and Little Wickhill - Hull MRC
2) Q Dump - Nigel Tansley
A few items were bought for the layout, a few scenic things and tree making materials. I also ordered a 'Static Grass' system, which after seeing a demo of the product; the results where quite impressive.
Also, just out of curiosity, has anyone used a Kato N gauge chassis under any of they're 009 models? At Warley, I noticed that Gaugemaster had a 0-4-0 steam 'starter set' on sale, made by Kato and after a look on they're website, I found that they make various types of steam chassis, including a 2-4-2 (ALCo), 2-4-4 (Baldwin), 0-4-0 (George Englands, Hunslets, Fairlies etc)
So has anyone used these? Are they any good? Please comment.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

More Progress!

Over the weekend, a few things were crossed off the 'To Do' list for the Works board. Mainly, 90% of the wiring has been done, the control panel for that board is done, and all it needs is the power feeds to be wired up.
On the other side of the board, the track was painted, ballast weathered, and construction on an engine shed was started, pictures will follow shortly.