UMWB (Under my Widnes Board...)

Having a bit more spare time to indulge in railway modelling over the Christmas break has given me the opportunity to get round to one of those tasks that is often dreaded by in the long run very worthwhile; a rationalisation and comprehensive rewiring of the original layout boards from Widnes Road.

After a few years on the exhibition circuit, and with various ad-hoc additions and alterations the wiring had started to get slightly temperamental; culminating in an annoying (albeit brief) point failure at a show recently.

As can be seen in the photo below, I thought this through and didn't fancy a couple of days under the layout dripping hot solder on myself. Hence I knocked together a stand from a couple of old shelf brackets which holds the layout at a convenient angle for accessing the underside.

I also made a few wiring alterations; including making all sidings live at all times, to enable stabled DCC locos to show lights / make engine sounds etc. something I had been meaning to do almost from the first outing. I'm pleased with the outcome, but I'm now being driven by perfectionism to rewire the second board, which I only built last spring; that way madness lies...

OMWB (On my work-bench) December 08

I have been taking the opportunity of a break in the exhibition schedule to do some small improve-
ments to the regular rolling stock from Widnes Road. This has included finally getting around to replacing the last of the old hook-style couplings with Kadee's. The wagons that were left to do were all in the 'too-difficult' box from last time and required varying levels of surgery from the Dremel.

Whilst I had the various wagons on the workbench I added other details such as air and vacuum pipes, lamps and replacing broken buffers. This particular brake-van received the full works.
All that remains to be done is a light to medium weathering.
Amongst the trickier items to fit kadee's to were some of the kit-built ones such as this Nuclear Flask wagon; eventually an adapted No. 20 did the job.

Singen Hbf Update

Most of the work on Singen Hbf lately has been the kind you can't really see; wiring, relaying and expanding the fiddle yard, however I felt this picture of a variety of DBAG electrics grouped around the turntable came out fairly well. I've spent most of the day fixing a sound-fitted pair of 218's which was down to corroded contacts and a loose wire; and fitting a DCC decoder in an old Roco 143; which was surprisingly easy if you don't mind the lights not working. Frankly the only space for the chip is in the cab which precludes refitting the lighting parts on at least one end.

Cheap and easy z-gauge wagons

Given the often fairly high price for modern Marklin Z rolling stock, and the need to get a few rakes of relatively inexpensive rakes of wagons together I though I would try my hand at refinishing some of the early container wagons that can be picked up for a couple of pounds from eBay. The wagon on the far right is an example of an unboxed early container many of which are listed on both the UK and German eBay site at less than £5.

There is a comprehensive range of ISO container transfers available in 2mm, many of which are suitable for z; as demonstrated by the two wagons at the left of the above photo.In fact you would be very hard pushed to tell that they weren't actual 1:220 decals as they fit the containers sides and ends perfectly.

The enlarged picture shows that for the next attempt I will have to trim closely around the carrier film as the textured sides show this up; however for a wagon that cost around £4, plus £5 for enough decals to do about 6 wagons I think a rake of these will not look at all bad.

The transfers are available from http://www.c-rail-intermodal.co.uk/ and represent excellent value for money.

New Z-gauge arrival

The postman brought a delivery of z-gauge turnouts this morning. While I've been keen to build a layout in z-gauge for a few years (I'm really fond of the latest Marklin mini-club stock) the appalling visual appearance of z-gauge track has always put me off.

Whilst intrigued by the components available from 'Fast Tracks' http://handlaidtrack.com/
hand building z-gauge turnouts as a first step into Z did seem to tempt fate a little. When idly flicking through the inter-web I came across references to Peter Wright; http://www.wrightturnouts.com/

A quick e-mail later, and four turnouts were ordered. Quite surprisingly these only took about week to arrive, and I have to confess I'm really rather impressed, and the price is also pretty decent as well; around £80 for four, delivered.

So; this Christmas will see me planning a small German / Swiss layout in one of the last spare spaces in the railway room; the 5 foot by 18 inch shelf above my modelling desk, which was going to have a small HO fuelling point / depot layout built on it. Hey ho, I'll just have to find somewhere else to build that.

Meanwhile I've been making some changes to Singen Hbf, my German N-gauge exhibition layout; adding a branch fiddle yard feeding platform 7; this can be seen as the two tracks nearest to the control panel, which disappear through the small hole in the backscene.

I've also taken the opportunity to change the track layout in the main fiddle yard to give an extra full length siding, hence the missing turnout in the foreground. Plenty to be getting along with over Christmas then.

New Blog for Widnes Road, Singen Hbf, and Z-gauge experiments etc.

As I've become frustrated with the restrictions on text on fotopic (well it was never intended to be a blog site) I've decided to set up a separate blog for Widnes Road and Singen Hbf, my two main model railway layouts. So here it is. I will be updating regularly with progress photos on both projects, as well as my newest project, a Z-gauge bookshelf layout; feel free to get in touch.