What's on your workbench?

[Twintop]

A couple of Tri-ang buffet cars, a blue grey and a maroon.

I knew the maroon had a damaged underframe so bought the blue/grey so I could make one decent one out of the two as I wanted a maroon one.

They cost £8 and £7 so I cannot complain, but the maroon one, whilst having two excellent sides, both are the same handed !!

So - not very good really - and this was not mentioned in the description, and I would not have been savvy enough to spot the difference on the pictures. It has no interior and has an incorrect roof.

My question is, was this perhaps how the coach was originally - i.e. two of the same body sides and no interior ? Plus was the roof originally the same as other coaches, i.e. not specific to the buffet ?

It does have metal wheels, so I will put the maroon sides and the wheels on to the blue/grey and have to live with one side not being correct. The blue/grey body can be a grounded coach in the loco depot.

[Going Spare]

Apologies if it turns out to be a wild goose chase, but it might be worth making contact with Peters Spares as they had a number of Mk1 body side and roof mouldings a while back.

[The son of Triangman]

A Margate made pocket rocket. Bought from a stall on Ely market, £4 well spent. A thorough clean, a bit of work on a brush carbon, lubrication and a new capacitor. Good as new.

[Tony57]

Hi 96RAF

My electrical connection on one Class 92 loco is based more on SS146 with out the switch between the pantograph and motor.

My other Class 92 loco I converted, I made a v connection with 1 female and 2 male spade connectors so the directional light could plugged into work. When I plugged it in, I found that the loco could be run from both the track and the pantograph (Tried on a Rolling Road). I tied to reverse the rear bogie wheels but found I had a major short across the motor with the V connector fitted, I returned then back to the right way the short vanished. That's when I found if I connected a wire to the pantograph the motor worked when I plugged the wire back in to the track connector on the rolling road the motor worked so the best of both worlds

I must explain the all 4 Hornby Class 92 have the X942 Ringfield motors and all are non DCC ready.

[Jim-R855]

Probably quicker to list what isn't on my workbench just now smile

Actively working on:

• Hornby R018 GWR Brake van. Years ago this was a zero 1 chip carrier for an 0-6-0 but my dad had broken one of the rear posts and 2 of the roof beams getting the roof off to put the chip in, and obviously there was a hole in the end where the wires went across to the loco. So far I have cut out the step/recess which I assume was for fitting a bulb in for the built in rear lamp and filled the floor flush with milliput. Shaved off the way over-sized built in rear lamp and filled the hole and the wiring hole at the other end with milliput. Built new post and beams for the verandah from plastikard. Given it several coats of Railmatch GWR stock grey acrylic, plus stock roof white on the roof, and picked out the rails in white. Made a rear lamp iron from flattened brass rod and drilled 0.5mm holes below the rear and both side lamp irons ready to fit DCC concepts brake lamps eaither side and a red loco lamp to the rear. Fitted Peterspares 8-spoke live wheels with DCC concepts pickup springs, drilled holes through from the chassis to the van and wired up the wheels to a DCC concepts installation PCB. Wired a digitrax 1fn decoder to the opposite side of the PCB and linked an extra hole on blue and 2 extra holes on white, and soldered resistors on whits ready to accept the lamp wires. For some reason I don't have enough lamps left so it will need to wait, although I do have transfers to apply lettering and numbers in the mean time.
• Coopercraft kit W5 cattle wagon, replaced broken tie bars with brass wire, same for the bars in the top part (but thinner wire), changed wheels for PS 8-spoke (although currently off for painting), removed old transfers (which weren't all straight) and started repainting with same paints as the brake van. Need to refit the vacuum pipes and vacuum lever, and when they arrive a set of buffers because one has broken off.
• Ratio kit Ex-LNWR 50' arc roof composite coach. I broke the bogies on this years go and never got round to do anything about them, it was also originally painted in enamels which refused to cure for weeks and ended up with finger prints and just a mess, and the glazing was fogged on almost evey pane. Got a bogie kit and have built up replacement bogies which I have fitted DCC concepts disk wheels to ready to wire up for lighting, they run smothly without the rest of the coach which is a good start. I found the coach roof and sides were ready to pop apart so I have partly dismantled the coach, carefully sanded the rough areas of old paint (taking care not to sand off details) Re-painted the sides with crimson lake, roof in grey (slate, looks close enough although doesn't actually match any of my other LMS coaches) with black outboard of rain strips. I've also repainted the interior with a couple of shades of brown (light in 3rd and corridor, darker in 1st because I understand these compartments would have been finished in walnut). Notched the tops of the partitions to fit an ESU DCC lighting strip in. Cut the main strip to length and de-soldered the red LEDs which I don't need. This left me with 3 LEDs on the offcut, so I cut them into single lengths. The strip managed to get an LED into all compartments except one of the toilets, so I soldered wires to the smallest offcut using the solder pads for it and what I call zone D (LEDs 8-9) so it would fit in the toilet. I then took the other offcuts and wired one to zone B and one to zone C placing them over the corridor at about 1/3 and 2/3 positions. I have run the strip power cables to a piece of one of those installation PCBs which will fit in a toilet where it won't be seen. Once I've finished painting etc I will wire up the bogies to the other side of the PCB. I have ordered some coach interior details which will hopefully let me add some seats to the compartments, and when thats done I need to fit new glazing and handrail and glue the sides back on and fit the lighting strip and finish the wiring. Hmm, and line and number it.

Not actively working on at the moment:

• Broke a wire in the smoke generator I was fitting to R855 Flying Scotsman so waiting for a new one to arrive to finish getting it DCC ready. I have already fitted an 8-pin socket and DCC concepts loco lamps in class A express passenger locations and an amber LED in the firebox which are all wired on white yellow and green ready to go. Smoke generator will go on purple.
• R311 Duke of Sutherland is all wired up and tested with a decoder (except for smoke, my testing decoder only puts 100mA out on the functions), but the right hand valve gear repair isn't working and keeps jamming up, so that's currently in pieces whilst I figure out a solution, which may be to see if I can fit Comet models Patriot valve gear to the Hornby motion bracket and cylinders, or if I would need to replace the motion bracket and cylinders, or maybe even the entire chassis. It is tender driven so actually a chassis replacement might not be a bad idea... never built a metal kit before though, so all of these options are going to push my skills!
• R353 E2 Pannier tank, I have started filling/rebuilding 30 year old soldering iron damage to the body, that's about it. Needs sanding/modelling some more, then a full re-paint, DCC conversion, loco lamps, firebox glow, and I reckon I can shoe-horn a Seuthe 27 in there as well, the chimney is wide enough, I've already drilled it out and tried a 22 for size, it is going to be cramped though.
• Dapol Terrier D69 - have already converted this and had it running with a very small lokpilot nano decoder, but it wasn't very clever and I managed to pull the wires off the decoder so have been looking at alternatives. Current idea is to fit a N18 adaptor board in the smokebox, with a M659N18 decoder and tiny speaker, I'll find out soon, when the decoder and speaker arrive and I can check if the subassembly really does fit as calculated.

And not even on the bench, I have a load of coaches still to fit ESU DCC lighting strips to (and metal wheels with pickups), a kit for an Ex-LNWR 50' arc roof 3rd coach to build up, an LNER brake van kit to build (both will need pickups and lights/lamps). I should probably open up the LMS and LBSC brake vans and fit extra resistors to dim the lamps a bit as they are way brighter than any of my locos at present which just looks wrong. I also have some old Hornby tank wagons which I was thinking of repainting to more appropriate colours - silver tanks, red sole bars.

Unfortunately this is my winter distraction, I will soon need to pack everything away and tackle some work on my house, and then will be far too busy to get it all out again until next winter, so some of these items are not going to get tackled at all before next winter, and I reckon some are going to have to go away half done. It's keeping me busy for now!

[ellocoloco]

The Electrotren 321 Santa brought me has been prepared for transformation. I must say this has been the most difficult loco so far in terms of paint removal - nearly three weeks in an out of IPA and there is still paint present. The last Electrotren model I stripped took three days! Even with the body stripped, there are still 30 separately applied parts inc 19 metal lift rings.

[Will Hay]

I'm currently nearing the end of creating around sixty feet of brick walling, made from cardboard and printed sheet.

I'll then move on to the coping to finish off the wall.

[RB51]

Hi Will, please let us know if you need any help correcting the orientation of your image. R-

[Bulleidboy]

Not quite on my workbench, but I have been applying the Hattons Oil Spill kit around the tracks in the shed area - I will also use in at the station buffer-stops and at the other end of the platforms. You just brush the powder (dirt) into place - it sort of smooths out your ballast, pour (in my case) a 50/50 pva/water and a dash of washing -up liquid over the powder and let it dry. Then you brush on the oil spill. The picures show one end of the shed where the spill is drying and yet to be painted and the other end with the powder in place awaiting the PVA.

[Bulleidboy]

The end of my layout ended up against a "wood-chipped" wall, so armed with a sheet of 2mm card, some Metcalfe Retaining Wall, a Ratio Plate Girder Bridge,some Woodland Scenics bushes and a length of ID Backscenes "Trees" - I no longer have a wood-chipped backstopyum

[RB51]

Looks very convincing. Brilliant work. R-

[Bulleidboy]

Thanks Roger - I'm steadily beavering away at different aspects of the layout. B

[DarkRedCape]

Don’t want to go too far off topic, but those back boards that have the trees on that go behind layouts, I know you can buy those in all different scenes, open fields, forests, farmland, but how does the scaling vs distance work?

I take it they fit all gauges, but can you buy them in varying degrees of zoom to imitate distances?

[Bulleidboy]

They usually come in both 00 and N gauge and can vary between 12" and 15" high. You can also buy several to give you a continuous run. Some come with "distant hills" even mountains. I have used both self-adhesive and normal (needs to be glued). Not the best picture, but this shows fields in the foreground with hills in the distance.

[81F]

An old but never run Mainline or Replica (I've lost the box!) class 03. I've just managed to isolate the motor and will be trying to fit a DCC chip to it.

[Bulleidboy]

It has just left the workbench, but R2898XS BR 4-4-0 Schools Class – 30909 - St Pauls today was fitted with a Fox Transfers etched name plate. This loco was the second loco produced by Hornby with sound fitted. I bought it new eleven years ago, from a well known suppliers "half-price sale" - a tremendous bargain. It has run perfectly ever since.

[The Doc]

I recently bought a batch of unmade and partially made Ian Kirk Gresley Teaks off ebay. The Hornby superdetail models are beautiful (a bit too beautiful for me to spoil the paintwork) so I'm having fun creating my own teak finish with several layers of Railmatch Teak and GWR brown to tone it down. These coaches won't be perfect but they compliment the Hornby coaches nicel, especially as Kirk offer many more varieties such as this corridor end vestibule third. I've also just completed a 3 car articulated 1st/3rd Restaurant set with the kitchen car in the middle.

[Tuliper79]

DCC controlled fire box light install in a Railroad Black 5!

[Twintop]

Ivatt 2-6-2 T. Reassembly of one side of the valve gear after previously glueing a swollen driving wheel insert. Needs running to check if the wobble has been cured. Found rear steps and vacuum pipes in the box, so glued them on.

Bman std 4 4-6-0 Plan B, cut into the swollen driving wheel insrts and tried glueing again. First attempt without the cuts did not work. Plan will be to just glue on the balance weights and paint the wheels black if Plan B fails.

Tri-ang buffet cars. Took the metal wheels and sides off the maroon one and added to the blue grey underframe and roof. However I have 2 of the same sides, so not ideal, as the seating does not marry up.

Triang brittania. Dug out a Romford conversion kit I bought myself 20 years ago. Stated the work, but the plan to replace just the non geared wheels will not work. I was trying to avoid the risk of transferring the main drive gear after having issues with a 3MT many years ago. However the old wheels are much thicker so the coupling rod does not fit correctly.

Triang 3MT, swapped the X04 motor out of the chassis

Reassembled the valve gear bench tested. Motor from the broken non runner is fine. Issue with the valve gear though, so have had to glue in the part the gear screws into, so I hope that works.

Dapol grain wagon. Glued on a coupling.

So busy day but no locos fully mended yet.

[Twintop]

Bmann std 4 4_6_0 is assembled and test run in the foam cradle. I hope I have cured the wobbly wheel issue as I really like the engine.

Also assembled the triang 2_6_2T 82004. The motor runs fine but the valve gear is an issue. The piece the valve gear screw fastens into moves and so jams the valve gear. I have glued it in so leaving it a few days before trying to run it. If it goes OK I will add the smoke unit back in. It has a Romford conversion I did years ago, but has never run well. The issue was the main gear wheel slipped on the shift. I dare not force in on so tried opening it out a little but it was then too loose. I would like to get it going again.

I did do a Tri-ang 3f 0-6-0 first a few years back and I did that OK and it runs well.

More progress on the BRITTANIA as have done the tender wheels and the front bogie ones. Rear pony seems a challenge though. Not dared to tackle the swapping of the main gear onto the main axle yet after the 2-6-2tank issues I had.

After that the body needs repairing as the front buffer beam and a bii more is snapped off. It fits together so I should be able to glue it. Then change the identity to 70004 as I bought nameplates for it years ago. Smoke unit wants putting back in.

I have another brittania and another Romford kit, so will do that as well if I succeed on the current project. Just wish I had SOTS ability!!!

[Will Hay]

This weekend I've been focusing on one small part of my scenery, now that the track layout is tweaked [for the last time].

Today was tarmac..

[RB51]

Nice work there Will. R-

[The son of Triangman]

More colour light signal conversions. Got 4 to convert for a start, fitting LED pcb's to them ready for my Christmas tree layout.

[The son of Triangman]

Last night's work. Modernised a Hornby colour light into a 2 aspect distant using an LED board.

[RB51]

Great stuff SoT. Let us know if you need any assistance to correct the orientation of your images. R-