The end is nigh

After many trials and tribulations, the end is nigh for the garden railway. An impending house move will mean the deconstruction of the railway, which I suspect will take considerably less time that the 4 or 5 years it took to build. At some point I'll have to sit back and review the whole experience, which I would say has been a generally pleasurable one! A nice sunny summer day today has meant I've finally had chance to get all the stock out and record some video, now uploaded to YouTube - see the link on the right.

Back In Action

After a good hour of track cleaning the first proper weekend running of 2013 has been achieved. Alas some of the soldered joints between the bus wires and the track have failed over the winter. I've resoldered some but this appears to be a Garden Railway hazard. A little adjusting of fishplates has resulted in a complete circuit being possible once more. The full fleet was out, possibly for the first time, including linking up the indoor section of the railway so it was finally possible to run trains in and out of the garage. The capacity of the indoor section is limited, which means a 12 wagon train of 16 ton mineral wagons will only fit in the sidings after some fairly complex shunting, but at least that gives the 03 something to do! I've read that the release of the Dapol 7mm 08 shunter has been put back to 2014 so I don't anticipate any more imminent purchases, however if I see a cheap Lima 4F...

Winter BR Blues

Not much has happened over the last couple of months with the winter all but putting a stop to the progress of the garden railway. On recent addition is the Hornby / Bassett Lowke Great Northern station building - not particularly suitable for the region which I am modelling but as it's made in resin and already painted it'll hopefully stand up to the vagaries of the outside weather.

121 Bubblecar

A flurry of activity over the last week or so, partly inspired by a visit to the Blyth and Tyne Model Railway exhibition, has seen rapid progress with the 121 DMU. Windows are now fitted, transfers applied, BR Blue livery finished off. In addition, a Lenz Gold DCC decoder has been added along with a Power1 capacitor 'stay alive' unit. Also fitted is an Uhlenbrock SUSI sound module with generic DMU sounds. Still to do is adding additional pickups to the trailing bogie and fitting of a bigger speaker, but it's pretty much done.

Things and Stuff

A bit of a gap since the last post, but some progress made. A Skytrex "Boffy" hut has been purchased, built and painted and is almost ready to be used as the station building either outside or inside. The resin construction should mean it's weatherproof if I choose to leave it outside. Peco concrete fencing has been erected on the inside station also, and pictures will follow. I was also looking in to background atmospheric sound, possibly by fitting a speaker into the station building driven by a small mp3 player, but this is in the design stages at present.

Power Cut

Mention was previously made, prematurely, of a brilliant idea that I had to power the Class 121 Bubblecar either from DCC or from on board batteries. To this end I purchased a 9v battery holder, several DPDT switches, and drew a ridiculously complicated wiring diagram to allow me to switch from DCC to battery and then switch direction at will. After drilling many holes in the floor to thread wires through, and fixing most of the components to the underneath of the body, I finally got round to testing what I should have checked in the first place - namely, that a 9v battery would actually be powerful enough to run the Bubblecar. It isn't. So all that has now been stripped out again, and I'm going to install my standard setup of Lenz Gold DCC chip, Power 1 USP device and Uhlenbrock SUSI sound chip. I also managed to fit in another day of running in the garden, and found that the braking distances on all four locos are still set far too high and it's rather difficult to judge when to back off the throttle to actually stop anywhere without overshooting. CV tweaking time, I think...

Platform Painting

I've decided to construct the platforms for the inside section of the railway out of foamboard due to the need to keep the sections light. This is for when they are stored up on the ceiling of the garage so wooden or even the new resin platforms from Hornby / Bassett Lowke would be too heavy. It's the first time I've used foamboard but it's pretty easy to work with. I found some textured spray paint at Homebase that has been used to cover the main platform surface, and then a strip of masking tape along the edges has been painted in Phoenix Precision 'Weathered Concrete' with a white edge along the platform face that will be next to the track. I've also purchased a flickering brazier which will go next to the small permanent way hut and a figure has been painted up in an orange high vis jacket to go alongside.

Bubblecars, Benches and Braziers

After a good deal of searching on Google Images and Flickr I finally decided on a number for my Class 121 Bubblecar. Because of the longevity of these units there are a load of recent photos so finding a decent picture of one in BR Blue from around 1980 has been tricky. Eventually I gave up and decided to model the same number as the new Dapol N Gauge 121 on the basis that presumably they did some research before settling on 55024! Also in a flurry of post-Christmas ebay-ing
I've picked up some Woodland Scenics 7mm Benches for the station and a glowing Brazier to put beside the Bachmann hut on the indoor section of the railway. Images to follow at some point, and possibly video if I ever get round to setting up a Youtube account.

Winter Distractions

It has to be said, winter is not a good time for garden railways. Whilst the outside section of my garden railway is mainly covered in decomposing leaves I've retreated to the warmth of the office. My Heljan 47 now has a number 47105, and to be honest, I'm amazed at what a difference it has made. It almost seems to have given it an actual identity! The Heljan 7mm Duff (like most of their 7mm range) comes with logos and overhead warning flashes already applied but no numbers. I've picked 47105 partly because it's still around at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, and partly because it survived in BR Blue with a black headcode for most of the 80's. Progress has also been made on the Westdale Bubblecar which has had the ends smoothed and painted. I've decided to try and wire it up with a 9v battery as an alternative power source as well as the DCC option so it's possible to run it outside when setting up the full DCC system is too time consuming! Having something that can be blasted round without needing to clean all the track is very appealing...

Rain

With the typical British Summertime in full effect there hasn't been much opportunity to venture outside recently. I haven't yet tried operating in the rain, and I guess I'm a bit reluctant to subject an expensive model to the perils of the weather. However, progress has been made with the purchase of the final item of rolling stock (until the next one), a Class 121/122 Bubblecar DMU. I was on the lookout for the Bachmann brass one, but with prices starting around £350 they proved too dear for my pocket. So a trawl through ebay uncovered a kit built Bubblecar (possibly Westdale?) and this was duely purchased for half what the Bachmann one would go for. It's a little rough around the edges, but a runner, so will be taken apart, repainted and fitted with DCC. Uhlenbrock do a generic DMU sound chip so I'll see if I can get hold of one of those. Pictures to follow.