The Chronicles of Canary Sidings - Eastern Eccentricity in EM

[Herb Garden]

So precious little had been done this week as I've been away in Hannover for the Messe.


An intriguing city and a visit I very much enjoyed.

I also got my first chance to travel on Germany's rail system. Very different to our own in many ways most importantly it works superbly, almost effortlessly.


Anyway since getting home I've laid some more track.

At the front of the station board is the coal yard. And now the siding that will serve it is in place.


Also following on from the last post on this subject I've taken the decision to shorten this far end of the track plan by a wagon length. The run rounds and sidings were quite capable of holding far more stock than the time table or fiddle yard can handle. So shortening the track plan has no operational implications but it means there can be more space for scenery on the far side of the lane than originally was provided for

The morals of the story... Design your track plan around the timetable and always leave enough room for the landscape

 

[Herb Garden]

In an attempt to keep readers of this thread entertained and not bored senseless by track laying we travel back to the work bench to find out how work on the next buckjumper is going...


So now the cab and tanks have been made up as a sub assembly but are still loose in relation to the boiler barrel and foot plate

@Suffolk Dave was asking how the kit goes together. Well the chassis and footplate dropped together but this was hard work. No tabs or slots or alignment aids just flat plates and the fit isn't perfect. That said what more can you expect of a kit whose design is a year older than me! Back in 1989 this was cutting edge etched kit design and still holds it's own but doesn't have the modern features of a high level kit or similar.

That said it only took me an hour or so to do (length of podcast on the ottoman empire) once I had got into the swing... And there's still some tweaking to do.


I've added spectacle rims from my spares as the ones in the kit didn't etch properly.


And here she is with sister 151 you can see the difference in tank height. Nice that you can get different variants from the same kit

 

[Herb Garden]

Well never thought I would get sick of loco building that I would prefer going back to trackwork but here we are....


So work on the mill board has started. The land form here is a double layer of polystyrene to accommodate the depth of the river/mill race.


The locomotive shed in the pictures is the one designed for skeetsmere MK1, built for skeetsmere MK2 and will finally get used on MK3. In the design is positioned here for a couple of reasons: Firstly to hide the double slip (seen behind it), the MSLR didn't have trackwork of this complexity but to get the design to work in the space here it was required so the compromise is to hide it behind the loco shed so at least it's not obvious.


It also helps to hide or at least distract from the baseboard join.
So all I've done really is cug some polystyrene and fitted it to the frame but you get the idea with the bits of available track etc what it might look like

 

[Herb Garden]

Not another loco project!

Yes and I make no apologies for it.

Here at Canary Sidings we have a large locomotive collection or rather a large collection of bits that may one day become locomotives. Although my focus is on the layout, after a day wiring control panels at work I was reluctant to spend the evening wiring control panels. Anyhoo here's how the story goes...

Worsdell's M15 class (LNER F4) need little introduction. Robbie Sinclair has pioneered the 2-4-2T on GE metals back in the early 1860s but TWs design of 1884 started the trend that made the F wheel arrangement a staple of the GER loco shed.



Our subject is #663 built as part of the second E16 batch of locomotives, built in 1885. This batch had a few modifications from the first 10 that were built. Namely moving the tank fillers back to the tank tops and tidying up the front end. But all intents and purposes an as designed locomotive with the joy valve gear, that when used without care created a fuel consumption that gave then the nickname gobblers. For a full history of these interesting and numerous locomotives see the material produced by the GERS or the excellent Basilica Fields blog Here.


And to the model. 663 has allready graced these pages as she was used for track testing on Skeetsmere. A Stephen Poole/nucast kit built locomotive that came into my collection a couple of years ago, one of those models that needed a home, some tlc and lots of horrible black paint removed.

Unfortunately underneath the glue that had need used to hold the body together has rotted so all that was holding the loco together was the thick paint. So at that point I resolved to fully rebuild it. A new chassis was developed for this loco by my friend Peter at 52F models see Nigel's @James Spooner thread for his very fine build of this chassis under an F6. The one here is the prototype and has some flaws but has been made very workable. But after the chassis test build that's where the project stopped as I got distracted by a certain single wheeler ....

So to last night...


I was at the workbench looking through the parts for 253 and came across the spectacle plates that were incorrect in that kit and Iain Rice had to include and extra etched sheet with the correct ones on which I've used in that build. But these leftover parts turned out to be a perfect fit for 663.

So I queued the music and got cracking...




I'm pleased with the fact she now has a proper cab and is starting to look like a loco. How much more will I do given the B32 is a higher priority and the layout ever more so.... Who knows but hopefully she will tick a long in the background.

 

[Herb Garden]

So this is going to be a laborious task.

As I mentioned before the landform of skeetsmere is made from layers namely, and in order:

Track
Templot print out
Lining paper
Foamboard
Polystyrene
Plywood

As a combination it works but isn't perfect.

What's happening around the layout is the tension in the track, wiring and control wires is lifting the top Layers. Basically the lesson is.,.. don't use prit stick.... Please can no one remind me I wrote my dissertation on stresses in adhesive joints!



So what I'm doing is very carefully flooding the trackwork and paper layers beneath with a dilute PVA glue with a sprinkling of IPA to allow it to percolate better

it takes about 48hrs to go off and I'm only bald to do a small section at a time as I have limited cable reels to hold everything down with

 

[Herb Garden]

I'm back and taking the opportunity to get modelling again.

This is a simple little warm up job, nothing too taxing but fun.

This little marshal is from the Rowland miniatures kit. A lovely offering and very relaxing to put together.


I will probably add a few extra details but the model is coming together nicely. This does have a purpose though. The aim is for it to be placed in front of the rear cottages on Skeetsmere hauling a log or something like that

 

[Herb Garden]

A wet Sunday afternoon in Newcastle has driven me out of the garden and back to the railway....
A few more track tweaks later and I was sick of what I was doing so I thought it worth doing something different

Now let me let you all into a little secret.... I've not got a layout past the track and wiring stage since 2010.... And that probably aligns with why I've had very little fun in my futile attempts since then to build something.

So today I thought I would have a go at turning a bit of my track into a scenic element.... And what fun I have had!

I've taken inspiration from Chris Nevard and @NHY 581 and had a go at using DAS clay to start transforming the landform into something a bit more landline. And it was great fun doing it. I used a stiff brush to create a stippled effect hopefully it will simulate ash ballast.

I've done it on the rear sidings so if it was horrendous it could be easily covered

Should I have painted the track first....? Possibly
Should I have added track details first? Maybe
Should I have used white das rather than brown ? Dunno....

I really like the effect but Would welcome thoughts and guidance from the assembled readership as I'm out of my depth here and flying blind....

 

[Herb Garden]

Greetings from Scotland!



As is our routine we have packed up and gone on a couple of weeks break exploring the hills, woods and waterways of Argyll.

This means that normal modelling has stopped but drawing board in hand I'm able to take some time designing the buildings of skeetsmere.

Now this is just my opinion so feel free to disagree with me, but buildings are a thing you have to scratch build if you want to capture the essence of a place. Railway buildings and some modern ones which are a lot more standard are exempt from this rule but certainly in my home county of Norfolk the vernacular architecture is so specific to a certain part of the county that there is a significant difference between west Norfolk, breckland, broad land, the waveny valley and north Norfolk (not counting other styles in the towns and in-between) that ready to plant buildings or kits ain't going to cut it. Also the trains come and go. But the buildings and scenery is there all the time so even more important to get right. As I said tis my opinion only so ignore me.

All of the non railway structures are taking inspiration from real structures but have been adapted to suit the scene.


The farmhouse is the first one. Based on the house I grew up in, located in the actual hamlet of Skeetsmere. It has been toned down. The grandeur reduced and later extensions removed. The drawing dates from 2021 and was intended for Skeetsmere MK2. In fact parts have allready been made for the main walls so I'm just resurrecting for MK3


Next week have the gabled cottages. Based on a booking.com listing of all things but tweaked to suit the waveny valley red brick and knapped flint.

If you travel round Norfolk you will see properties that have been rebuilt in an obviously different material due to damage or expansion and this one typifies that with a LH end very different to the other. To quote the vicar of Dibley series:

"You know what they say: red sky at night, thatched cottage on fire at the other end of the village"

I have minimal draftsmanship training but the pencil and watercolour drawings look lovely and do help me visualise the building and work out the details before I start cutting card.

 

[Herb Garden]

Ok so the busman's holiday has begun.....

Some of you may be aware that I n my day job as a manufacturing engineer I do a lot of panel wiring and I mean a lot.... So wiring a layout isn't fun it's work! But given that I don't enjoy it as a hobby I can't rush it and have to do it right.... Otherwise I can just hear the tut of disapproval that my colleagues would make if I cut corners....

I find myself bewildered at how we approach electronics in the model railway world.... We buy or make some very delicate equipment then screw it to the underside of the baseboard and hope and pray that it doesn't get damaged.... Also many of us spend time lying under the baseboard wiring above our heads.... If find that hard and I'm 33.... How the matured modeller feels I do not know?

So on Skeetsmere I'm trying an experiment....


All electronics including the point actuation will be contained in a single enclosure on each board. These will be linked but a bus cable handling power and coms.


The enclosure will simply plug in to a few umbilical cables underneath each board so construction can happen off board and the enclosure removed at a later date for servicing.

The servos will be easily charged from the box if failures occur or I could if I so wished build a second box that could be swapped at a show if issues occur.... Maybe that is going too far.... Maybe if I standardised modules on multiple layouts.... Thought for another day


This is the enclosure for the station board. The servos at the top will link with the wire in tubes under the platform. The section on the right will handle the pulsed 16V AC power distribution (DCC) and frog switching.

The centre section houses the MERG Cbus module and one of the points controllers.

The remaining point controls and level crossing control are housed in the left hand side and are still to be fitted as I need slightly different fixings for these.
So heres progress so far. Most of the 16V AC (orange and blue) is in as is the 12VDC (red and black) supply to the controls. CBus (yellow and purple) is in as is an aux bus (grey and pink). Now it's the control wires to link the CBus module to the servo drivers and relays.

one of the 25 way track power connectors is visible in this view this one is for the +16Vac (or rather the one we think of possitve not that it's says like that for long but you know what I mean). All the connectors are different sizes and types so when installing the box it is impossible to wire it in wrong! Here's to poke one!

Admittedly I'd rather be doing anything but wiring.... But this is at least reasonably satisfying

 

[Herb Garden]

It's odd, I've been feeling rather deflated since yesterday's AG meeting. It has been planned for a while that Skeetsmere would pay a visit to this particular meeting as it was 2/3 of the way to the show deadline to have it working but now Ive done that I feel exhausted.

On reflection I'm much more of a sprinter than a marathon runner. I like jumping between projects and modelling activities. When something becomes a bore I simply move to something else until I feel refreshed to tackle the previous job anew. I'm sure some of you may resonate with that.

That said I now have 3 months to get the layout working to a state where I can at least run a goods train in and out and there is a lot still to do. But I'm taking a short break from Skeetsmere and doing something completely different to aid recharging.


That something is the starter kit from the 2mm scale association. I've never modelled in 2mm but have been a member of the association for a year or so, mainly to explore the possibilities of using the track standards for 4mm narrow gauge projects but have not done anything with that except attend the excellent NEAG meetings.


So I thought I would build my starter kit. So far I've put the track together and made a start on the wagon. But for the record, the 2mm people look after their membership superbly. The quality of products and the price is astounding but the design of this kit is something else. It's so simple and yet effective. We all have something to learn from this im sure

 

[Herb Garden]

So it's been a bad couple of days in terms of modelling confidence following the AG meeting and the 2mm debacle.

With the encouragement of @Liver & Fry I've got back at the workbench and am making again...

Even though I'm not really working on the layout yet.... At least this helps get some momentum again....

Back in the early days of this thread Post 8 featured a little 0-4-0DM chassis.


But at the time I didn't really explain what it was for. It's a branchlines chassis replacement kit for the Hornby 06 which I built just to practice chassis building in EM I'm not sure I even had a suitable body for it.

Initial inspiration came from the small 4 coupled drewery shunters. Now I know that the chassis I had built is longer in the wheelbase so the project was expected to be an inspired by rather than accurate representation of....

Although a bit more research revealed that drewery did specials as well as the standard catalogue items


So the project got a bit more of a credible inspiration


Like many of you I'm guessing my first loco kit I ever built was a dapol drewery shunters and I had the body hanging around from eons ago in a bit of a shabby state. So this I where I started working from.


The old cab was removed and work began in cleaning up the bonnet.




Plenty of work still to do but it's good to be back doing something.

 

[Herb Garden]

And the serious work has started again.

The final PCB (for Skeetsmere) is now being built


For those who get excited by these things this is a 8 input module for the control panel. I allready have one but now the lever frame has 9 levers rather than 7 I have to build a whole new board!

 

[Herb Garden]

So I'm starting to get the impression that apart from a few diehard control enthusiasts most of you don't enjoy the endless wiring posts.... Well for me it's a busman's holiday so today having to work off some TOIL I decided to do something a bit different than work/wiring

So you will have seen the current Skeetsmere wagon fleet in some of the earlier posts but as we are serious about our wagons here allow me to do some introductions

The finished 4 are as follows:


Bachman midland brake van (wrong region too modern a livery) and 1923 RCH 7 plank local livery just took modern a wagon


And two generic dapol wagons.... But at least 1 of them has a regionally correct livery. All four look nice and certainly will continue in service on the mere until further notice.

This will be bolstered by the following if I can get some couplings fitted before October.


Two Oxford vans.... One still needs finishing

A Herb Garden GER diag 17 open and Peter K GER 1881 van. Probably the most appropriate pair for the layout.


And some low sided opens. Two Hornby with refinements and a NER B15 from an unknown source.

Well that was the status until today....

I've taken the chance to convert a couple more to EM. The rapido 1907 PO wagon, as simple a conversion as they come and the Chatham kits parry open I built years ago which I've even fitted couplings too this evening. Both need some aesthetic work.


These two need the most work. A D&S GER IMP wagon that I was given and have today converted from P4 to EM (sacrilege!). And a slaters MR brake van I built when I knew nothing better with a warped underframe. The plan is to get it to represent MSLR brake van No2 .... But first I need to get all four wheels touching the rails!


And I couldn't finish this post without posing the three musketeers with Thier wagon fleet....

Lots of photos precious little modelling normal service will be resumed shortly

 

[Herb Garden]

Well it's been a while.... I know you all dislike posts about wiring and prefer ones about actual railways but the progress here has been wiring


Namely a junction box for the fiddle yard


A junction box fir the lighting


Completion of the power box not yet the neatest thing in the universe


And wiring in of the lighting

 

[Herb Garden]

So it's been awhile family get togethers, my other half being ill and the band playing has meant progress has been very slow.

This is a problem as the layout needs to be in a presentable state at workshop wise which in 3 days time!!!

I've taken the next 3 days off work and @Liver & Fry arrives tomorrow to help but even then it is going to be a mad dash to the deadline..... Ahhhhhhh

So what has happened since the last post? Well I've been focused on the fiddle yard.


Underneath the junction box has been installed and feeds secured to the brackets that interface with the cassettes


Topside the brackets mount the banana plug sockets that connect to the cassette


Admittedly they are quite a tight fit and needs some encouragement to come out. But it works for now. Just need to connect those green wires up today.


The track alignment is now fixed but there is so so so much to do to have it in a working state please do keep me in your thoughts and pray to the electronic gods no problems arise!

 

[Herb Garden]

So another day of tweaks and repairs but some success.


The control links for the mill board are now in.

And thanks to @Liver & Fry we have tested most of the system, found a couple of faults but we are well on the way to having it ready for its trip to stannington on Saturday

 

[Herb Garden]

So I thought I would need to take a break from modelling after WW and was very prepared to have a long lie in this morning....but....

I woke up with a spring in my step determined to get into the workshop and get cracking

The operating department discovered yesterday that they were lacking suitable wagons so that's where I started.


So this is a rare beast and injection moulded kit for a GER diagram 55 17ft 7 plank open from Stelfox model engineering. You can tell by the plastic and the size of the sprue that this is a very old kit but I doubt many were made.


Saying that the mouldings are nice and it goes together well with a bit of fettling


Next my plan is to add some brass W irons instead if the plastic underframe supplied.


It's a nice product though and someone obviously spent a lot of time and money developing the tool so I wonder what happened to them and if they made anything more? Does anyone know any more background?

 

[Herb Garden]

And now for something completely different!

Ok so not railways but it's my workbench so my rules!

With workshop wise out of the way I'm now able to spend some time on other projects

Like this.....



These are the remains of my teenage bass guitar. The first instrument I ever owned and one that served me well in a series of heavy metal bands followed by the polar opposite of a church band. During its metal years it acquired a selection of genre appropriate graffiti which had to be hastily covered up by some to the cheesy engraving as seen here. A hard life however meant that bits of it started falling apart until it was replaced in front line service by the fretless bass seen in the background.


Fast forward to the present and I'm playing instruments and unusual guitars derived from the mandolin family in a world fusion jazz funk outfit. So having 2 bass guitars is excessive so I've taken the decision to convert this old friend into a five string instrument inspired by the cittern.


So a lot of standing pads later and the body has been transformed. I've kept the signature red around the outsides but returned the front and back to natural wood and I'm very happy with the outcome. Next job is a new neck.



Normal service may be resumed next time.... Or it may not....

 

[Herb Garden]

Hot on the heels of the diagram 55 is a conversion of the rapido RCH gunpowder van to a GER diagram 62 gunpowder van.


This is very much inspired by the one @Liver & Fry did but with some Herb Garden twists....


Oh goodness is good to be back and modeling after a slow month

 

[Herb Garden]

Another Oxford van joins the operational fleet today. This time a Diagram 72. What's the difference between that and the 47 you ask? Well in scale terms it's 1mm given that the Oxford van is technically 0.5mm too short for a 47 and 0.5mm too long for a 72 I use them to represent both types...


This one's an out of the box offering with the brake gear corrected and ratchet brake added. Converted to EM with inside compensation which is over kill

This one has been nicely weathered but I do seem to have dropped some water on it at some point.... Eeeek....


Sadly the livery on the OOTB variety isn't great. The ends are too light, the roof is too grey and the sole bar should not be black. All correctable however. Heres the comparison.