Clay Mills Junction

The APT has had a run in the garden. I shoved a 2 minute video together very quickly, I didn't have the time to edit it properly with intro.

Looks good, the addition of little details like signs and stuff laying about outside adds a lot.

Neither the decking nor the main blocks along the side with track on have moved, but the two blocks nearest the decking which support the end of the board have risen. Knocking them out, everything sits perfectly again. Last year my Mum and Dad had to resettle an area of decorative stones in their garden. Toads had buried underneath and undermined the whole lot. I'm not sure what I'll find, hoping it's not animals. It doesn't look a big job to re-spread the sand and sort it out thankfully.

So between last night and tonight I cleaned up the track hoping to get the APT a little run along the track and a little video. I did manage that but not everything has gone exactly to plan. An approximate 5mm height difference has developed between the board going over the decking and the aerated blocks going up the side of the garden. I need to investigate why this has occured, the blocks are still dead level along their length up to the tunnel so I'm not understanding where this has come from unless the whole decking has risen 5mm over the winter which I'd doubt. I'll get a proper look at the weekend.

I like your thinking on a lot of this. Realism is one thing but just playing and enjoying is what it is all about sometimes. I'm also with you on the details. Being in the garden is about having the scenery natural rather than having to make everything. Hope it all goes well and looking forward to seeing it grow.

Just found this, six years before Hunt couplings made a commercial version.

The Class 91 on a low speed pull out of the station. Not as smooth as the flywheel drive models but still reasonable low speed control for a Hornby 5-pole ringfield motor. There isn't too much of a problem with stalling on points, no worse than any other loco to be honest so the pickups on all wheels must be doing their jobs. Reasonable top speed, maybe not able to do a scale 140mph but plenty fast enough. Excuse the unfinished corner of the layout. That is all of the Mk4s we have, I did add a few Mk2s into the train as a load test and it had no problem taking off smoothly, I'm quite happy with this for such an old model. (Ref: x9890 for future reference, Hornby spare snow plough for class 156)

How do you get the wildlife to stay still long enough for you to take a picture? I was trying to take the dipper that lives near my Mum and Dad's last week. Usually, it sits at the side for a while bobbing before it goes on another dive. This time it just wouldn't stop. I gave up and took a video instead.

The APT issue is resolved, I went back to the retailer and they swapped it. He said another of the pre-orders had been cancelled so he had one to replace it with now. I'm a cynic about what people tell me, probably due to my line of work. Anyway, no point litigating all of the what could have happened, I have the model now. If I get time tomorrow I will sort the track outside enough to get it to at least have a little run up and down. The other thing to mention is the LaisDCC decoder that I got for a tenner on ebay. I've tried it in the old Hornby class 91 I was doing up. Seems pretty good so far, good fine control considering it is running a 5-pole Hornby ringfield. Details in the Doing up old locos thread. I will certainly be using more of these.

One the APT, I have a reply from Hornby saying take it back to the retailer. I rather think the retailer was fobbing me off to go to Hornby and I have one of those forboding feelings about the retailer, but we will see when I go back on Saturday.

Not everything scales down so well. I suppose you could scale down everything if all track conditions were scaled. But no layout I saw yesterday or anywhere has realistic points or curves. Even in a large garden there are compromises here. A 1mm flaw in OO track would be a 3" flaw on the real railway, that would probably cause some trouble. There are places on the network where there is a reverse cant, Carstairs is one example, the speed limit there I think is 5mph.

The changes to the trailing bogie on the Class 91 were a success. It now runs quite well for a ringfield on dcc. It's fine hauling or pushing 5+DVT, no slipping from the motor bogie, which is as long a train as we can fit on the layout. I was disappointed in the red light brightness, checked the 1k resistor I put in with a multimeter, it read 100k ohms. Oops! Must have slipped in with my 1k resistor pack. I'll need to resolder that and the marker light resistor as that is on the dim side too.

I went with my Dad to Model Rail Scotland yesterday. I bought my first ever kettle, a Bachmann 4MT 2-6-4 tank. One of the early Dcc ready ones so quite old but is decent. £65 so not breaking the bank. Only reason being I spotted it and I'd wanted one for a while. Dad has a 3-rail Hornby one that hasn't been used in 30 years at least, they were used on the South Glasgow suburban services when he was growing up. Something a little different for the garden.

I'm sceptical about why this is coming about. Seems to be a competition in Whitehall for who can stand infront of the most and biggest union flags. This is some kind of distraction probably.

Ah, I should have said, the second tray should have a motor car instead of two driving cars. I also noticed an imperfection on one end of a carriage (3rd down left edge). I haven't had them out yet, I put them straight back in the box after the photo. Disillusioned right now probably sums up my feelings most of all.

Well, today I went to pick up the Hornby APT set I pre-ordered. Came home to unbox and... The retailer only has what they had pre-ordered and all are allocated. If I return it, it is returned and I get my money back but have no train. I'm going to contact Hornby and see what they say. If they have the NDM and other TBF that can be sent out and they get one of these back in return then that would suit me.

There have been some quite good videos where people have used real recordings overlaid on the model video. There have been some awful ones too where the sound doesn't match up, usually because the real train is far longer than the model or going at a completely different speed. You'd have to choose your sound recording first and then match the speed of your train for the video, it might be too much of a faff. I've said before that I don't think little speakers do justice to the noise of a loco. One of my thoughts was whether a decoder could be outputted to a proper amplifier. Since I have a pair of Tannoy Mercury V4 floorstanders that will do anything justice. Or I could stick them under the baseboard and play a recording from YouTube.

I guess they must have looked at their market and determined that the modellers they are aiming at is the detailed end that would probably be likely to fit finescale wheels anyway and be using Code75 or finer track. We are used to the traditional manufacturers catering for the mass market and finescale modellers having to adapt. I guess RevolutioN have worked out the numbers to make a profit only out of high-detail modellers. I've got one bit of trackwork up at Dad's where the cork has expanded under 4th radius track causing it to tip to the outside, we've not had more than one coach take a dislike to it so far. I've offered to sort it but been declined.😂

On the 37, I've decided it should be renumbered to 37239, it would be closer to the model as it is at the moment if it is 239. It was a rare 37 without a high intensity light pre renumber. I've been doing the 91 today. I've soldered up the track and motor feeds to one of the Strathpeffer 8-pin plugs. Next to do will be lights on the front but I've not decided how to do that. I'll edit some photos in, but I think the "light bar on this old Hornby model is more narrow than the original making the front overly pointy. The result being it is too narrow for any of the LEDs I have. Any suggestions welcome. Edit: I've decided the pickup part on the trailing bogie is not sufficiently low, being for a later model than this. So I'm going to file down the top of the metal casting by 1mm and see if that helps. Also I've filed down the front of the body and started filling the gap with modelling filler. I'm going to sand that to shape, paint it black and drill through holes for the LEDs. My other option was short lengths of fibre optic sticking through but that would be a lot more complex and there isn't a huge amount of space.

It does look like it has a little bit of conical slant on the wheel, not as much as other wheels I've seen though. If you were to swap the wheels for a Hornby or Bachmann pack, I'd bet you could easily sell the finescale wheels for more.

That is surprise to see such fine scale wheels on a RTR model but I guess that is the way things are going. Those flanges look smaller than realistic to me though. Was your track always like that since you laid or ballasted it and the wagons have just shown it up or is it that the track has developed the slope over time? One of the things I've been considering is putting a deliberate cant on curves but this would be very gentle and limited to maybe 1mm rail height difference. I know that some modellers do put a cant on their curves to emulate the real railway and it can look quite good. I suppose that your slope is with the outside rail down which was putting the train off-balance? What does the wheel profile look like front on, Is it conical? As it is the conical shape of the wheels that guide rail wheels and the flange is really just a back up to prevent things going wrong.

So today's aquisition is a LAIS DCC decoder. It is 8-pin and 4 function so about £7 cheaper than anything mainstream. I've seen some stuff online saying they are not bad so I thought it would be worth a try. I'm still waiting on the solderable sockets for the Lima and Hornby ringfields so I can't fit it yet, but if it is good then I'll use them to convert the lot. I've also got a Bachmann 37/4, an old one in EWS livery (worst livery ever in my opinion) with 8-pin socket and drive only on 4-axles. I bought it years ago and was going to use the mechanisms in a Hornby class 58. I don't think I'll bother though. It always had a running problem I never sorted where it would just randomly stop. on DC or DCC and having been fully cleaned. I'll have to sort it, I don't know how likely it is that all of the contacts on both bogies simultaneously lose contact with the wheels but I'm not convinced it isn't a PCB issue. If I remember, the early models didn't have tail lights so might be as easy to do away with the PCB. I'm on the look out for a cheap 37/4 body that I can swap to but potentially it could be a respray if I can get it working, I'd quite like an Inverness based 37/4.

Wagon two, another of the 'VAT 69' ones didn't go so well. The plastic body had become very brittle, totally different feel to the first. I suppose over a 30 year life they could have been in very different environments. Fortunately I have spare yellow ones. The Yellow ones all have a blue chassis which is incredibly brittle and I wasn't going to use. So one of the bodies came off and the rest of it was thrown away. Fortunately the body isn't too brittle and as it will be painted later the colour doesn't matter.

The Class 37 is definitely a respray. 37332 - the depot symbol is a hammer above an anvil which would be Motherwell. Looking up https://www.class37.co.uk/fleet.aspx?strnumber=37332 (if you filter on status changes only) it was renumbered to 37 332 on the same day the name plates were removed. So it would never have been 332 with the name and the depot symbol. Though post 96 it was renamed until being scrapped in 2000. It looks as though it was always dirty and distressed after the renumber. The CD motor is installed but I've not yet tested it because I've ordered 5 solderable 8-pin plugs from Strathpeffer. Working on it I've discovered it already has additional pickups on the trailing bogie. I could add another on the middle wheel of the motor bogie (between the two with traction tyres but I'm not sure its worth it, I'll see how it runs as is. Next on the list for it is lighting. You can see the real one on flickr here. It has a central high intensity light which the model does not. I'll have to look at adding one. They can be sourced from TMC, but given the idea to remain cost effective on this, I'm wondering if there is a reasonable way to do it cheaper? I was thinking of sticking a lighthouse LED through in the correct place with a small square of thin plasticard for the plate and some square box profile plastic around the outside of the LED. The Strathpeffer DCC sockets have solder tabs for function 4 so tail lights could be individually switched making it possible to have no tail lights when hauling and tail lights both ends when sitting in a depot / sidings etc. Last additional mod will be to replace the massive couplings with modern narrow tension locks.

Maybe about 4mm in diameter, these are about 1.5mm diameter. I'll order some Hornby wheels and hope that I can make them fit with the bearings even if the bearings kind of stick out of the axle boxes on the outside. I've filed down the filler, I actually think that is quite a good surface now. I think with knowledge from this, the next 5 should be easier.