Tullygrainey

Great work. Love to see step by step pictures of a build. Keep posting!

It can be challenging for sure but very satisfying when it goes well. Even when it doesn't, it can be an incentive to try harder and the satisfaction comes from solving the problems (or taking a hammer to the insoluble ones - just joking, there's always a solution). In actual fact, it's likely that visitors often don't notice that you're having a bad time because many don't spend long observing any one exhibit. And if nothing is moving on the layout they just pass on to the next exhibit, leaving you to have your nervous breakdown unnoticed

Pickups!!! Founder members of the Little Things Sent To Try Us Club. Nothing like an exhibition to expose the things you didn't know were wrong However it sounds like you've banished most of the gremlins now David. Onward and upward.

Some progress with the Judith Edge Hunslett 14" kit. The saddle tank was tricky to keep square and took ages to do. Annealing the metal made it easier to roll. A number of goes to get those little steps - one each side - to solder securely. Trial fitting of the tank. It's just wedged in place. The instructions suggest weighting it so I'll put some lead in there though it might be somewhere to stow a decoder. There's precious little space elsewhere. Wheels are tiny - 13mm diameter this scale. The usual struggle to get the crankpins in straight seemed even harder with these for some reason. Having fitted running plate supports and brake hanger cross shafts to the chassis (not to mention painting everything), I realised they'd prevent my GW Models wheel press from being used. I find that more reliable than trying to quarter the wheels by eye so all that stuff had to come off again. In the process, 3 of the four guard irons let me know they weren't firmly attached either Once wheeled up the rolling chassis moved freely under finger power which is always an encouraging sign. A High Level Iron Core motor fits better than the coreless one but it's still a squeeze. The gearbox has to be tilted backwards, as in the photo and fed into the boiler. First runs on the rolling road weren't great. A tight spot and weird things happening with the middle axle. But after pickups were fitted on the front and middle axles, things improved. First tryout on the shuttle plank. IMG_5447.MOV Seems to run ok without pickups on the rear axle so I might not bother with those. We'll see. Brakes next - I decided it would be easier to fit the brakes round the pickups than vice versa. Alan Two more from the shunter roster - a pair of Hibbert Planet diesels of very different construction. On the left a whitemetal body kit from Roxey Mouldings on a High Level 4wd bogie. Weighs a ton! On the right a Planet Industrials kit - 3D printed body shell with nickel silver overlays and a 3D printed chassis.

Now that is looking great. Really coming alive.

There are some minor amendments and 3 extra chapters. The first concerns the Cameo Competition that arose on the back of the original book with photos and descriptions of the competition entries. Two further chapters describe projects Iain was involved with at the time of his death - Longwood Edge and Pitt Hill.

Lovely book. I’ve been pouring over my copy for the last couple of weeks. Essential reading. Inspirational.

Glad to hear you managed a fairly trouble free second day David but appreciate your concerns about the future. In my experience DCC sometimes seems less tolerant than DC and like John, I've built locos which ran ok on DC but less well when the DCC chip was installed. Having said that, the problems have usually been ironed out after a bit of messing around with the Control variables (CVs) This needn't be as complicated as some descriptions imply. A loco that seems reluctant to get going just needs its starting voltage increased and one that seems to take a lifetime to get up speed needs another adjustment to the acceleration curve. Changing the values of two or three CVs can usually sort this and there's always the option of a factory reset if it all goes belly up. To be honest, despite all the elaborate settings offered in some chips, I've rarely gone beyond these basics and haven't felt the need to. Going DCC does of course involve adding decoders to all the locos and given our propensity for building our own, it can be a tricky job - no nice socket to plug the chip into unless we fit one ourselves but either way, there's soldering involved and the challenge of finding somewhere to stow the things. One weakness of DCC equipped locos is that they are susceptible to any break in supply. A DC loco can often plough on over a bit of dodgy track where a DDC one will stop dead. Adding 'Stay-Alive' modules to the wiring is the standard solution. More space needed. Have to say, I envy the room you 7mm folk have at your disposal Whilst it seems that these things are an extra level of hassle, the advantage is that they do give you more control over how locos perform and each one can have its own optimum settings - getting round the problem of using a DC controller which works ok with some locos but not with others. I might be mistaken but I don't think your exhibition layouts make much use of section switches so the oft quoted simplification of wiring may not be of any great advantage. You mentioned the Gaugemaster Infinity system above. I don't know what the DC version is like but I bought the DCC version to use with Kilmore. The main advantage is the Bluetooth wireless feature which allows us to roam around at exhibitions. So far it's worked well but setting it up in the first instance wasn't particularly intuitive - installing locos into the system's library was a pain. Could be that this is a DCC problem and the DC version may be more straightforward. I'd recommend getting hold of Gaugemaster's instruction leaflet to see how it feels to you. And yes, I thought it was expensive too! Decisions, decisions! If you can find a reliable DC controller that meets your needs I would stick with DC, if only because it's less hassle and considerably cheaper. Good luck, whatever you decide to do. Alan

Oh dear, what a day. Demoralising to put it mildly. Hope tomorrow brings some improvement. Hang in there.

That is beyond bad luck David. That’s a malignant force at work! All the best for the show

Nice one Patrick

Gibson wheels have arrived. The Hunslett is a pretty diminutive loco and the boiler diameter is only 16mm in model form. The High Level coreless motor I was intending to use fits inside ok but would require hacking lumps out of the bottom of the boiler at the back to get it in there when mounted in the chassis. To minimise the amount of surgery needed (I hope), I've ordered a smaller motor. So job parked for now. Here are a couple of the locos already on the grubby shunter roster - a Sentinel 0-4-0 Vertical Boiler steam engine and a Thomas Hill rebuild of the Sentinel into a Vanguard 0-4-0 diesel. Both built from RT Models kits. High Level 4wd bogies and Mashima motors.

More Hunslett. The cab is well on the way now. Trial fit of the usual High Level gearbox, a RoadRunner + for this one. Gibson wheels on order. Boiler next. Laminating layers for the smokebox is always a challenge - four layers in this case if you count the boiler. Getting enough heat into the thing and keeping it neat and tidy takes time and patience. There's always work for the fibreglass pencil when the soldering is done. Thanks to the smokebox front plate not seated properly and the difficulty of wrapping each layer tightly, the final wrapper came up short. Rather than dismantle the whole thing and start again, I've added small strips either side to bridge the gap. Not ideal but better than a space. The sand boxes will hide this to some extent anyway. I might have another go at it tomorrow.

Sometimes when soldering, no clamp does the job better than your fingers. There is a small price to pay for this though

Thanks for this John. Very interesting. It's like looking at a little bit of the history of etched kits. I came to kit-building late in the day with the advantage that most of the truly grim stuff had already bitten the dust leaving only the better kits. Some pretty high spec bits in your locos - Sharman wheels, Portescap gearbox/motors and so on. Cutting edge when you built them I'd say.