esngblog

After a momentous week in the UK, I wondered how to respond to the passing of Queen Elizabeth.  I came across this little cameo by John Whitehouse on a Tramway Modelling Facebook group.  No doubt Philip is saying, “I’m not going on that b****y tram!”

Meanwhile in deepest Earlswood, the new ESNG fiddle yard is actually approaching completion.  We finished wiring up the point motors, and all are working.  The cables between boards and control box are complete, and need to be wired into the boards themselves.  Then just a control box to complete.  This is for DC operation.  Once this is all working, we’ll get the option for DCC in place.

On my own workbench, the transition board is progressing well.

The track is all in place, with some careful packing of the track to achieve the 0.8mm or so difference in thickness between Peco code 55 and code 80 track.

Underneath, I’ve used a couple of ‘Blue’ manual turnout actuators to change the points.  These were in ‘stock’ and are excellent, if expensive, as they are easy to fit and have built in switches for the frogs.  The second picture shows the simple dowel operating links.  I think this wood once operated the points on the original Kuritu.  Waste not, want not?  I’ve still to complete the wiring for the plugs at each end.

I have some ideas for the scenery to fill the board.  More on this another time.

I came across this picture of the track on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway.  Yes it’s a preserved railway, and also newly ballasted, but I thought that the colouring and the encroaching vegetation were useful references for modelling.

And finally, a poster from the days of romantic train travel…

Next post will probably get around to TINGS!

Moving onto my next project, I decided to spend a little time maintaining and building a new N-club module.  I wanted to make a conversion board from 2-track N-club to 4-track N-mod.  I had a module in stock, that was once 1200mm long, and I’d cut it back to 900mm (for a project that never happened.)

I then had the bright idea to cut the end of the module at 10 degrees, as shown below.  This is about the angle of the Peco large-radius fine scale points, and by cutting the end at an angle, one avoids any reverse curves and all tracks flow through the points.  It also adds a small change of direction to the boards, that adds interest when exhibited.

Progress is looking good, and I’m about to start track laying and wiring, although most of the required N-club track is already in place and can be reused.  One tweak needed is the transition from Code 55 to Code 80 track.  A little work with my micrometer shows a 0.8mm difference in depth between the two types of Peco track.  A little careful packing will be needed to avoid any bumps in the wrong place.  Note too, the problem with working with a small N-club board 800 x 400mm, as opposed to a 4′ x 2′ N-mod board – it fills up too quickly with tools!

I also wanted to rewire my N-club modules, after some problems with getting the plugs right the last time we took the boards to Stuttgart.  You shouldn’t need to use a multimeter to plug your modules together.  So the obvious answer was to rewire them according to the N-club standard.  But can you spot the difference between the English and the German manuals?

There seems to be a bit of the problem with the compass!  A couple of emails to Stefan (who was touring the UK on the way to TINGS) gave me the definitive answer.

Allan was helping the N-club crew at TINGS, and I gather that I was the first person to notice this deliberate mistake.  It pre-dates Brexit, so we can’t blame the politicians for this one…..

On show with the N-club layout at TINGS is this fantastic model of Bodiam (Kent) Castle as the centre piece of a return loop.  I’m sure I’ll have some other TINGS photos in due course, but these three came from Allan’s Facebook post.

I didn’t get to the show this weekend.  A busy weekend elsewhere, including this garden party with Maxine on Saturday – a thank you for involvement (very minor for us) with development work in Burundi.  The weather was kind to us after the past week’s rain, and the spread was even better than a TINGS full English breakfast.

Finally, another lurch to the dark side.  How could I resist this 1/48 scale 3′ 6″ gauge plastic kit of an early Japanese loco and coaches.  Non-working, of course – but S gauge track is about right….

Many moons ago, in the early days of ESNG, Martin Micklewright built a little layout on a 4′ x 2′ module called St Chant, and later extended it by another 4′ with a largely scenic section.  It appeared at a number of our shows, and I remember operating it at the Merstham Narrow Gauge show. 

After Martin’s death in 2016, the layout was stored in several locations, before ending up in my loft.  The station section, shown above, was showing its age and the effect of storage – the signals were all broken, there was damage to buildings and its electrics were a bit of a mystery.  I reluctantly decided to scrap this section, but put a new surface on the very well built baseboard frame and legs underneath.

The scenic section was in much better condition, and I wanted to salvage this, as an example of Martin’s excellent modelling.  This board had a single track line running along the front of the 4′ x 2′ board, and two nicely detailed farms in the foreground.  The land rose behind – a familiar Somerset landscape, with a church at the back of the board.  My aim was to modify this scenic board to be a single scenic module, with the usual four N-mod running tracks at the front.

To my relief, I was able to prise the old ply surface and scenery off the baseboard frame with minimal damage.  A new 6″ section of plywood was fitted at the front of the frame to carry the running tracks.  I then cut off the single line section off the front of the old surface, leaving the loop into the tunnel as a disused line, and fitted this board back onto the frame, as below.

The scenic section was now too deep and overlapped the rear of the frame by four inches or so.  With heart in mouth I bravely took up my rip-saw and cut off the back of the scenery, losing the church, but keeping all of the rest of the scenery intact.  It now looked as below – note that I have bricked up the tunnel on the disused line.

Track laying followed, plus a new ply back to the scenery and repairs to the damaged scenic bits.  I then built a full cover for the layout from ply and odd bits of hardboard that were lying around.  The damage to the layout had mainly been due to original layout only being covered for part of its width.

Having built this cover, this allowed me to safely flip the layout over and fit the standard N-mod plugs.

And having ballasted the track and added a little more greenery and bushes, that’s about that.  The paint on a few of the farm buildings is peeling a little, as below, but this actually looks quite realistic.  I may spend a day at some point to tidy this up.  The cows are heading for milking…

And after the cows, Martin’s manure heap is very well modelled!

Finally, two views of the finished module.  I think that the disused and overgrown branch line has come out well (though I say so myself.)

This scrapping and renovation of layouts is getting a bit of a habit.  Any other suggestions?