Tullygrainey

A shame about your rogue shuttle unit David. That’s v frustrating but all being well the replacement will do the job. All looking good on NPQ. That’s a nice compact little control panel.

STOP! I’m developing an allergic reaction to puns

Ok truce! I’m sorry I asked about the gulls

And hens again- those chooks you mentioned (I’ll see myself out)

Very fine. I liked the way A30 just snuck up there! Amazing how the addition of one building makes it begin to feel like a place. Coming together nicely Patrick. Have the seagulls been delivered yet?

Pecketttanks

Do you ever sleep Darius? Or have you got a time machine that lets you do each day a couple of times? Very fine work. Alan

Music to the ears of any diesel fan. And maybe a few steam buffs too? Any plans for a quartet piece Patrick?

Boat building! Now that would be a new challenge. Could be ok though. No outside cylinders...

More dodgy weather so more Peckettry. The running plate is made from 0.015" brass with double thicknesses for the buffer beams. The valances are 1.5mm brass angle. A small plate locates the front of the chassis and a 10BA bolt secures it at the back. The boiler is rolled from 0.010" brass with extra layers overlaid at each end for smokebox and firebox. Made the saddles too tall on the first pass, making the boiler sit too high, (where have I heard this story before ) requiring some messy hacking to lower it and get the captive nuts back into their allotted places. All a bit of a fudge but it came out ok in the end. Boiler bottom cut away to clear the motor and gearbox. Now, rain or no rain, there's an overgrown lawn needing my attention. Temporarily exchanging soldering iron for scythe, Alan

Yes, took me a while to suss that. Slow learner Thanks again. I think we've now got most of the dead chinchillas out of Patrick's pride and joy. At least the crunching noises have disappeared. And none of the little critters got as far as the drive train so big relief all round.

Thanks Ken. I like the sound of your Peckett. Have you posted anything on it? Regarding the wheels, I'm assuming the Gibson crankpin bushes don't have a large enough outside diameter to fill the holes in the rods? Alan PS Found your Peckett. Lovely, lovely stuff!

Many thanks for this. Found the 4 clips but there seems to be a clip at each end of the baseplate as well. and I can’t for the life of me see how they unclip. Fearful of doing damage here postscript: Ah, got it! Perseverance and verbal blandishments in equal measure

Weather has been exceedingly wet all week so some progress on the narrow gauge Peckett chassis with a few fiddly bits made after a struggle or two. Cylinders cut from 12mm o.d. brass tube and slide bars from 1x1mm square brass bar. The 10BA bolts are for attaching the cylinders to the chassis frames. Usual practice would be to mount the cylinders on a saddle that straddles the chassis. I wasn't confident I could calculate how far apart the cylinders would need to be to get clearance behind the crossheads so I did it this way to allow me to adjust each one individually. Bit of a fiddle. I made crossheads following a method described by Guy Williams ("The 4mm Engine, A Scratchbuilder's Guide", Wild Swan, 1988). He made it sound easy. Ha! (Image courtesy Wild Swan Publications Ltd) It took me two+ attempts and a number of disasters to get something that worked... .. but eventually there emerged a kit of parts... ... and the bones of a working chassis. The rubber band is by way of a temporary restraining order on the motor. IMG_8041.MOV Well, that was more fun than gardening in the rain Alan

Looking good. That's a significant amount of re-working David but undoubtedly worth it. The solidity of everything is very impressive. Your Block Signalling SS2A shuttle unit should work well with the crane. I used one on my narrow gauge layout to control the passenger line along the back. Easy to set up and very reliable in use. It just takes care of itself once it's powered up.

So far, so good. Cylinders will be a whole other story! IMG_8029.MOV

And I thought my project list was long! Suggest you do the weeding whilst you think about arranging the rest in order of priority

Thank you John. Poor weather and nothing much on TV helps Though I suspect designing a kit suitable for others to build is a lengthy business. I would imagine that requires a whole extra level of work compared with a one-off. As mentioned elsewhere, I started on a narrow gauge O:16.5 Peckett for my narrow gauge stone yard layout at the same time as BCDR No.29, getting as far as some rods and chassis frames. However, it got parked when the latter claimed all the bandwidth. Now that 29 is simmering in a siding at Loughan Quay, the little Peckett is calling to me. I used the one at Cultra as my starting point and was able to do a bit of measuring. I'm not aspiring to an accurate copy but something reasonably close which will look at home on the NG layout. The chassis was built in the conventional manner. Rods (2 layers of 15 thou nickel silver) made first, to dimensions taken from the Cultra engine. Chassis frames (15 thou nickel silver) cut as a pair and the rods used to mark and drill the axle holes. Chassis erected with brass Alan Gibson OO spacers. Fixed rear axle and rocking front axle on MJT horn blocks. Drive to the rear axle through the excellent High Level Loadhauler gearbox. 90:1 ratio.The wheels are 4mm scale L&Y Pug wheels from Alan Gibson, just about the right size for this tiny vehicle. We'll see how this goes. Travelling the narrow path Alan

Yay!! (Breathes sigh of relief) Great stuff Patrick. Enjoy!

No.2 IS a chunky beast isn't it. All the way through the build I couldn't shake the notion that I was building it over-scale but I used the published wheelbase as my benchmark and scaled the drawing accordingly. It may have ended up a bit larger that it ought to be but not by much. Mind you all the photos of the original show a tall solid looking engine. The DCC chips I use are shrink-wrapped in plastic (fairly common practice I think) to reduce the risk of components shorting inside the bodywork. There's still a risk from the ends of cut wires but a dab of nail varnish sorts that. I find the main challenge is finding places to stuff the chips, stay-alives and wires and then re-assembling the loco without trapping wires or dislodging carefully soldered connections. These two weren't too bad - everything went inside the boiler on No.29 and the diesel would have room for a sound chip and speaker, and probably a packed lunch for the driver. Loughan Quay was conceived as a DCC layout hence the desire to chip the BCDR locos. However, I still have a number of kit-built shunters which would be challenging to chip, given their size. At present they chunter back and forward happily on a little auto-shuttle layout on a shelf above LQ.

Thank you very much J-Mo. I have to say I'm very pleased with how No.29 turned out. There were a few moments when it felt like a failed project but I'm glad we got there in the end. Both locos have the same DCC gubbins but of the two, No. 2 seems to run better - smoother start and stop mainly. A bit of tweaking needed maybe.

Thanks for this Noel. However, 1. With the blanking plate in, the loco doesn't run on DC. (We tried it on Patrick's other layout Brookhall Mill which is DC) 2. With the decoder in, the NCE system can't make contact with the decoder. I think this is a electronic problem with the loco's own circuitry rather than a burnt out motor. We know the decoder is ok because it's now installed and working in another loco.

BCDR diesel electric No.2 is now DCC chipped and making friends with its new stablemate at Loughan Quay - DCC Concepts DCD-ZN8H.2 decoder - DCC Concepts DCD-SA3-SM-1 control board and 3 wire stay-alive The job was not without incident. The decoder needs to be hard-wired and I only used 4 of the wires - red & black to the pickups, grey and orange to the motor. I usually trim back the unused wires for tidiness' sake. Pity I can't tell the difference between grey and white isn't it. Cut the wrong one didn't I. Bit of splicing required to get it sorted. All ok now. Until the next episode of brain fade. Wire cutters locked away for now Alan

I need to step in here and take joint responsibility. I was present at the scene of the crime and party to it. I let him do it. Neither of us was concentrating properly - kids in a toyshop syndrome, I'm afraid. As Patrick says, it was on the DCC powered track for 3 or 4 seconds. It still had its blanking plate in. When we subsequently inserted the chip and tried to initialise it and give it an address, the NCE system couldn't make contact with the chip and generated an error message.That suggests to me that something in the loco's circuitry has been damaged. No obvious visible damage and no smoke or burning smell. Alan

6mm x 4mm. A recipe for eyestrain. There were a number of failed attempts