Ahoy Matey

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The barge is done… almost. The only remaining bits are bollards and tiller, those aren’t made from card and I just haven’t taken the time to sort out materials to make or detail pieces to complete that part. The eagle eyed reader may have noticed a similar bit with the coal office chimney.

The curved pieces were trickier than I anticipated so I’m not super pleased with how it turned out but it’s good enough for now. I found the printed paper would separate from the light card on bending so if I do it again I’ll attach the print after applying the card or print directly to card stock if possible.

Next up is sorting the pieces from the ChrisInDen kit and starting to glue the print faces on them until I can get in the shop and figure out the baseboard and sector plate plan

Floating away

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No I haven’t switched this to a model boat blog, but I decided to start the barge for the wharf layout since it’s a separate instruction set. I’m enjoying building the look of the boat, Scalescenes say their narrowboats fit in so there is a good chance someday I’ll make them to be able to swap out the boat in the scene.

After I finish the barge my next step will probably be to experiment with the sector plate. I know this is a fairly common thing on micro layouts but I’ve never done it and want to do some practice work before I start building the box/platform for the layout.

Coal Office Complete

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When I started on this project I told myself I was going to take pictures as I went for detailed posts like I used to. In the end I didn’t and just had fun building it. At some point I need to build a display diorama for this little building but as it was primarily a test/practice project that can wait for another day.

This is the Scalescenes R024 Weighbridge/Coal Office, they at least currently offer it free as a way to introduce yourself to their models. Your purchase gets you PDFs, instructions plus parts to print and then you glue the printed models to varying thicknesses of card stock depending on where the part is used. One note for modelers in the US like me (I’m genuinely curious, does Canada use US paper sizes or metric?) A3 paper is apparently very difficult to come by but US Legal size paper is a little bit bigger so that will work. You just need to make sure your printer doesn’t scale to fit the page otherwise everything will be off slightly.

Part of my experiment with this was to try ChrisInDen Models laser cut card kits. The difference here being instead of gluing your whole printed sheet to card stock you get laser cut parts and you cut the individual sections of the print and apply them to their card analog. This makes more sense if you are looking at the PDF you get, go grab the Weighbridge/Coal Office kit for free to see for yourself. I have to say I really do like ChrisInDen kits, it makes it easier to make sure every piece is to proper size and cutting paper is easier than cutting through potentially multiple layers of card stock (past projects I’ve struggled to get thick enough card stock for a base and had to double up layers). The only downside for me with these kits is the shipping costs to the US is a little painful so I can’t just impulse buy them.

What’s next for me? Next up I’m going to do the Scalesenses LY02 Canal Wharf Boxfile layout. I don’t think I’m going to do it as a box file per-se but just a small layout (so it can’t close to put on the shelf). I’m currently working on a wooden baseboard/platform/sort of box to build it on.

Is This Thing Still On?

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To answer the title… obviously yes if you are reading this.

A recent operation session at my friend Mike’s prompted/inspired me to find some way to do some modeling at home. I don’t have room for a layout anymore and haven’t for a couple years. I’ve been busy with other types of projects such as a furniture woodworking hobby, slowly renovating a 1930s house etc etc so I wanted something small and I remembered I had started a Scalescenes boxfile layout a couple years ago. The only problem is I had lost the instruction file and while searching for it and revisiting their website I found that another UK model company (ChrisInDen Models) was making laser cut backing board kits for Scalescenes kits and I decided to restart my boxfile layout and use one of these kits to make it easier.

It has, however, been a bit since I’ve done any modeling especially card stock modeling so I decided to use the Weighbridge/Coal office kit as a way to easy myself back in and to try out the ChrisInDen card base layers kits so that’s what I’m working on tonight. Given it’s been four years since my last post probably don’t hold your breath too long waiting for my next post but I’ll try to post again more frequently than every half decade.

Resurrected Projects

Trains

Last week I was invited to to an operating session at my friend Mike’s and while operating a job at one part of the section I got to thinking this would be a good area to have a dedicated industry switcher. This part of the layout is the second level so with a pretty good grade to get to it so you generally need two engines but once up the hill you a long consist is a hindrance.

I was also thinking “hey, I think I’ve got a switcher that’s currently sitting in a box I should dig that out for future ops sessions”. And I was pretty sure it had a decoder installed as well because I found some really tiny decoders. Well it turns out I have two SW1s (And I think at least one SW1500 but that’s another story) but this was how I found them:

Oh dear.

Well it turns out I’d converted one to DCC and found a significantly smaller decoder for the second one. But why were both disassembled? Well according to my blog the first one had a broken drive shaft (evidently common on this particular version of the SW1) and I had fixed it and then DCC converted it. I switched to the DZ126 decoder for the second because it was so much smaller and worked really well so I started converting the second one to the same decoder. So one was apart because it was mid-DCC install. But why was the other one apart? Well it turns out it now has the same fault the original did. Fortunately I have leftover parts from the first one to fix the second.

In my searching of boxes I also found I have some decals to letter Soo 320 (the black one) so maybe I’ll finally finish it.

Motive Power on the box file layout

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I had previously mentioned my attempts to order a Peckett from Hornby US with no success. Technically I guess I still have one on pre-order, who knows if anything will come of it. In the mean time I found one on an internet auction site so now I have this:

The cement hopper is provided for size reference, as it’s one of the smaller cars you’d find on an US themed modern layout. That is to say a Peckett is small, though very highly detailed. I was surprised how intricate the details are and even more surprised with how heavy it is.

It should come as no surprise a decoder for this little thing is even smaller. This isn’t the official Hornby decoder, it’s a TCS M1 which is actually smaller. The reason I went with it is because it’s much easier to get ahold of. Surprisingly this was probably one of the easiest decoder installs other than the drop in type. This is likely because there is no lighting to worry about.

I took a video of it on a test run under DCC power… unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of track to test it on but what I did it was working like a champ.

Getting Some Track Down Part 3

Trains

The very observant on my last post may have noticed a problem in my track work.

It’s not easy to spot, but I’ve introduced a short in two of the sidings, though not at the same time. Basically whatever route is not selected has a dead short between the rails. In theory the way I intend to operate this that shouldn’t be a problem but I’d rather not wait for it to be a problem when it’s finished (I know it’s optimistic for me to use the word done on this project).

Way back in the before Covid times (well at least in the US) February 2020 I pre-ordered a Hornby Peckett. I think I first saw the Peckett on the OTCM blog and knew I had to get one at some point… that was a few years ago. When I started this boxfile project I also knew I wanted to use a Peckett to operate it but I never got around to actually trying to track one down. Through Hornby USA I pre-ordered one (Port of London Authority) that was at the time marked Winter 2020 delivery (to be fair it’s still marked as Winter 2020 delivery) but the weird thing is I can’t get any response from their customer support so I kind of wonder if they are still operating or if the US arm has shut down. It looks as though I will have to look elsewhere for motive power.

Getting Some Track Down Part 2

Trains

It’s kind of hard to believe this is a sub-project I started February 29th 2020. Of course I could use the chaos that is 2020 as an excuse for taking a break from the hobby… and I might still do that, we’ll see where this train of thought takes me. The downfall probably more goes back to 2017ish when I changed jobs which made me a lot busier, then at the end of 2018 the room that was my home office and train room became a bedroom and my new office didn’t have the space for my existing layout and not really space for any layout. Then in 2019 I started this boxfile layout… which is fun but I’ve not been very good at making progress.

When last I blogged about this project, 11 months ago, I’d worked out where I needed to fasten down the track and where I needed to tunnel in a way to actuate the switch from the front. I got some small brass tubing that I could run piano wire for the actuation, and that was super back ordered and that’s why it’s been 11 months… or it arrived two days later and I just never got around to it. With that in place it was only a matter of fastening the track in place.

My plan for wiring is to run it inside the building in the upper right corner and have a plug to the outside world on the side or back to power it up.

Friday Night Ops

Trains

Last night I was fortunate enough to attend an operating session at my friend Mike’s. I took along my ScaleTrains EMD Leasing SD40-2 (Ex MILW Bandit) along to run. Now the history of this locomotive is it arrived broken (just an minor issue) just before I had to tear down my shelf layout. So all I’d done to it is get a decoder in it and program it’s address before it spent over a year in the box never having a shake down. Of course the first switch it ran over it derailed but after that it ran flawlessly.

Thanks again Mike for having me over to operate your wonderful layout!