Newport Model Railway Society: What do you do?

Been a good week this, one way and another. TFC showed off his finished - but unpainted - Beattie well tank. The dip in the adjoining baseboards has been over come and tested...successfully.

The rubber bands on the boiler are particularly fetching. In fairness, it runs very sweetly and looks the part.

So having tested the 'dip' as being cured, we put the baseboard that we took out last week back in...so we looked for fit bodies to help....yeah, right! Else where on the scenic board things were moving on. Dave has started the ballasting and Ray continued to develop the scenery.

Having got things back together - so to speak - a few things got 'moved', so a hunting expedition task force was put together, led by the fearless TFC.

In the building room, things were progressing at a more sedate pace. Alistair had slipped across to the fourmil side for the evening. And yes he was putting more wagons together. But...this weeks photo doesn't make him appear to have escaped from an asylum!

I got to use my 'red box' for the first time and put together the chassis for the Std class 5. Of course this would have been a far quicker process if I had realised that the coupling rods that I'd put together were in fact for another engine altogether! So, 2 hours later and I'd put together the correct sized rods. A few more hours later and in the immortal words...'here's one I created earlier'.

Chassis now needs to be cleaned off and taken to the paint shop. Also need to make up the motor and gearbox...which arrived this week.

Alistair had taken some of the club wagons home and given them a right good seeing to...if you see what I mean...

We also moved out one of the sections to allow alignment problems to be solved, leading from what was the test track onto the first board. This seems to have developed a 'Step' in the joint, so we need to get to grips so the little 7mm engines can lift their skirts over the joint, without blushing and making fools of themselves.

We, more or less, have a confirmed configuration for LMJ - for further information on this project please go to the NAGNAG website. Heres' a brief snap of the beast. Measuring 40 feet by 18 feet at the widest point.

I've moved the Std class 5 further on, the springy bits are all ready, the chassis has been raped with a piercing saw and had the round holes sawn out ready for the springy bits. Next comes the chassis jig!!! Que the red box!! Oh and as a testimony to customer service, I had a problem with the Avonside jig, sent an email, had a phone call back in 20 minutes of the email being sent and the following day I got a parcel with all new parts in...now that's what I call service!

The youth section spoiled Wales's chances of beating the frogs...he went to watch them. So Rod, you can blame Steve for losing to the French!

Not much to report on this week, banging of hammers, sawing of wood, explosions of the nailing gun, frantic wiring discussions being held. So...pretty much the norm for us. Saturday, however, was a different kettle of fish and another can of worms altogether!

Saturday saw the NMRS put the layout of Hazelhurst up as a roundy layout connected and running. This is the story that unfolded. Be prepared for shocks, surprises and a few tears as well....First a few words of thanks. Top of the list has to be Steve Neill, without whom this project would have died a long time ago. Steve, I can't thank you enough for all the effort you put in, your enthusiasm and level headed approach to problems is a lesson to us all...to Uncle Don for providing the bacon butties and teas that kept us all going during the dark times on Saturday...to Alistair, Paul (Widger the younger), Dave and TFC for all the track repairs and laying...to Rod for helping put the beast up and then down without actually getting to see anything moving and finally to the club relic, who cleaned the clubrooms up while all this was going on and in doing so saved me a massive job on Wednesday evening when the NAGNAG meet!

First thing after the Newport Harridans had left, we put as much of the layout up as possible and levelled it off, so as in the morning all we had to do was erect the other pieces - corners and fiddle yard.

And so to Saturday morning at 08:30 hours, we had to have this up and running and being packed away by 16:00 hours, the pressure was on! So to the first problem...we put the layout up in the wrong place, we needed to move it another foot to the right so that the end curves would pass the piano against the wall, so down came all the baseboards - having been connected together and levelled - everyone grabbed a leg and off we marched one foot to the right! There was a second problem with all of this movement...there was only one and five eights of us fit enough to move anything. Uncle Don has a broken left collar bone - thanks to a skiing accident - the youth section had ripped tendons and muscle in his left shoulder, TFC suffers from arthritis, Alistair broke some ribs whilst crossing the road, presumably to see what the chicken was doing? Dave was on late wife duties as his dear lady has broken her foot whilst out walking...by a canal! So those amongst us who were ably bodied were few and far between.

Anyway back up it went and levelled off again and now the pieces of the jigsaw could start to be put together. By now its 09:45 hours, tick, tock.

The youth section had grabbed the wiring by the scruff of the neck and was off and running...literally. Nobby 'No Keys' had come down with a cold and his mum would not let him out to play with the boys in the big yard. Oh and Rich message from the treasurer - SUBS ARE DUE. So all down to Steve then, bad shoulder and all!

As the tracks on the test track did not align with what had been laid on the end scenic board a new road had to be added and another realigned. Dave, Alistair, Paul and Uncle Don put all the track joining together. It was a close run thing, as at 12:30 hours we still had not finished this, tick, tock...

At 13:45 hours we had lift off, the first engine ran around and it was only fitting that it was one of Steve's engines, the beautiful Southern M7. What a moment, what bloody relief!

Certainly this has stirred us into greater action, a brilliant achievement for the club. So more stock came out and we started to find out what worked and what didn't. There were some surprising disappointments, but it was a success for the hour that we could run anything - before we had to pack it all away.

There you go, up and running after a fashion, still more finishing to be done to get it to work as we would like. Tony Thorn showed up, good to see our old friend up and about.

We start this week, more or less, where we left off last week. The youth section was still finding out how many anatomical differences he had to the rest of us and self harming all in one evening - nice one Steve!

As you can see Steve is in full flow and we are extremely grateful to him for taking this responsibility. The club spark...Nobby No Keys, hasn't been seen for weeks! On a more interesting note, the youth section is about to start his twenty first 7 mil engine, a truly stunning stat considering the small time he's been building these engines. At this rate we'll have every engine the Southern built by the end of the year!

Elsewhere things were equally as hectic. Dave had succumbed to the 'four mil' side for the evening, as I tempted him with my new jig to get a chassis up and running for his GWR Hall. As I have one of these to build as well, I joined in as well. With these Avonside works jigs it pays to give attention to the DVD in the red box...as we found out the hard way. At one point I thought Dave was going to do a 'Scale4um', anyway, he battled on and delivered a perfect example of what this jig can deliver - a perfectly square chassis!

In the layout room, Widger and Son were busy at it again...putting down the basis for the scenic board. I've also found a picture that I should have used last week, that of Paul's 'cut back building'.

We had a West Wales interloper this week, as our good friend Bernie Baker paid us a visit from Swansea. Bernie is not one to let the grass grow under his feet and got stuck into putting crossing V's together for our new P4 layout. This combined with some of the other lads from NAGNAG making half track we are already 1 year to the good in starting this new project.

As I said earlier in my 'editorial' I started the chassis for my Hall as well. Completed parts to date include the cylinders, coupling rods - already drilled as a pair, connecting rods and my favourite springing units from Gordon Ashton, all six of them. A busy week this, but it will only get busier as Bristol approaches.

Its good to get my fingers back at the keyboard, my thanks to Dave and Tony for covering for me, however the bad news is that they'll have to cover a lot more as I start a new job which calls for more of my time.

So to this weeks adventures at the NMRS. First we had to welcome Uncle Don, broken collar bone and all. Great to see Don who had some good news that his Mum was making slow but good progress...excellent stuff! And we may now get a donation to the drinks cabinet....

Progress was being made on several fronts, Dave had pushed on with the concrete over bridge and was getting to grips with the types of concrete supports used. Unfortunately these are not provided in the kit so a bit of scratch building will have to be done.

With us for the first time in a good few weeks was Widger the Younger. Good to see Paul and the club relic - his Dad - set about the scenery in the far corner of the new scenic board. Paul has been developing a large building that cuts back against the road...looks very imposing and impressive.

Steve - the youth section - was having a bit of a forgetful night...first he forgot that there was another board that required servos to activate the points in the fiddle yard. If that wasn't bad enough he had found out why his errant C class would not run. All boils down to the fact that the screw holding in the gear wheel was in fact a 12ba size fit and not a 14ba size fit that Steve had been trying to screw in for the last couple of weeks!

TFC had acquired a new DCC chip for the G6 and this was subsequently fitted and tested, with some promising results.

I had a very quiet evening getting more of the Std class 5 ready. Folded up the cylinders and built the front bogie which has a nice compensation idea built into it. Dave has picked up my red box from Bristol O gauge show today, so I'll be busy with the chassis for the next couple of weeks. Sorry I forgot to take pictures of the progress to date.

Well. Once again it’s your peripathetic correspondent putting finger to keyboard this week because Mike was absent. He did pop in for a few minutes but his real concern was riding shotgun on a teenage party taking place in his home. Happy days! I remember when my children………… Enough of that!

Bill popped in and then popped out, too. Spent even less time with us than Mike.

Ray was carrying on getting to grips with the scenic end and making the backings for the walls and supports for the bridges. Yes, I know that it looks as if the support that he’s working on is vertical, but the front to it will have the correct 1:80 batter. It’s also untrue that he’s only happy when he’s got a flogging hammer in his hand and is belting the daylights out of something totally inoffensive. He’s equally happy doing mischief with a rip saw or an electric drill.

Richard finally made it from the now melted snowy wastes of New Inn. The tundra in which he lives is well above the tree line and the ground is only suitable for growing lichens and mosses but it does allow him a good excuse to stay indoors and get on with his DJH Cl. 37. And to prove it he brought it with him and carried on working on it.

There’s club history and pure nostalgia on the shelf in front of him. Back in the late 70’s our train set was “Over Wellmyn”, a 44’ x 12’, four track main line effort with diode matrix route setting (and a working slip coach). If you’ve ever went to the Bristol Show when it was a Cannon’s Marsh you may remember it. To cut a long story short amongst other things we bought a job lot of Ian Kirk wagon kits. Four of these are on the shelf. Compensated, fine scale 00 and part of the 100 wagon coal train that we ran. Most of these wagons were painted in authentic liveries, but a few, like these were not. Gavin and Claire were my own children and Bennett and Edmund bennetT were total guesses at the livery that my Grandfather had for the one or two wagons that he actually owned. Don’t ask me why he owned just a few wagons, but family tradition says it was so.

Dave was also busy converting the Kittle Hobby generic footbridge into something more concretey and Southernish. Not the most brilliant of photographs, but all of these were taken by flash, and I do so dislike flash.

This represents the earlier four panel design as opposed to the later three panel platform mounted design. The man himself is just off-shot working on the return galleries and footsteps.

Of interest, perhaps, is the sheet of paper with the wiring diagram on it. This is an integral part of the MERG bits which we use for the DCC control of servo operated turnouts. And this photo shows the result.

This photograph was taken early in the evening and so some of the wiring is missing. The Signal Input comes into the decoder A. This has the ability to switch eight “things” on or off. In our case the things are relays - B. There are servo driver modules C ( wiring diagram in previous photo). These can control 4 servos,

each “switched” by one of the relays. Another module is out of shot somewhere and together they take care of the eight switches possible on one side of the relays. The servo driver modules do the business (leads D) for the servos which throw the turnouts as fast as, and with whatever throw, you like because those are the bits that can be programmed. The contacts on the other side of the relay take care of frog polarity.

I brought my G6 to the club and took it home again as the chip had become weary and had given up the ghost in a very peculiar fashion. Lenz Standard+ replacements, I think, They should be ok for Mashima 1833 motors.

Much better attendance this week, though some of us were only there in body. Your usual correspondent, Mike, was on a night shift so had to leave early and contented himself in that noble occupation of watching others do the work.

So for fans of Terry Pratchett, which member of The Night Watch does he most resemble? Fred Colon? Surely not Corporal Carrot? Sam Vimes himself?

Meanwhile, out on the layout, The Widger Furniture Emporium was taking shape but avoiding the camera.

The bridge is a kit from Kittle Hobby. But it is originally a lattice girder, so has been clad in plasticard to represent the standard Southern concrete bridge. And its ground mounted so has to be reduced in heighht, which is being gauged here with the van. Quite a bit of butchery still to be done.

Saturday 17/11/2007
Off we toddled up to Watford ... what a great show - Stoke Summit and Maindee East, breathtaking trains and scenery, felt as though we were in the shed with the engines - great stuff - thanks Steffan for so much pleasure!

Photo, courtesy of the Chairman

Good news is, TFC's on the mend after his recent operation, bad news is he's got to have the other hip done in six months time! Still, he'll be able to hop about the place on one leg ...


	What do you do?