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Amblethorpe


chris
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Reconstruction of my station started today. The platform surfaces have stuck well, so the furniture could return. Here's a shot of the columns going back in.

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Yesterday I built a small baseboard to hold the station building. I decided to build up the ground level around the station building so it is closer to the platform level. I've removed the flight of stairs in from the front of the station and the building will now sit in the well in the baseboard. Construction was from off cuts of correx, so it is very lightweight. This is handy because the station baseboard is heavy enough already. I glued paper on the correx and sprayed with grey and black primer to get an asphalt colour.

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Hopefully I'll get the roof back on tomorrow and see how it looks with all  the modifications in place.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Had a bit of a disaster on Saturday. while moving one of the barrels of Colwick roof I dropped it. It broke into two large pieces and lots of small ones. There was swearing involved.

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10 years of modelling has taught me that anything is fixable. Fortunately I had spares of everything that broke into small pieces and after a suitable length of time, once I had calmed down, I set about putting it back together again. I left it over night to let the glues fully harden and added some extra strengthening where required on Sunday morning. 

Time was pressing because Colwick was part of a show I had organised on Sunday. 

It gave me a tale to tell the visitors.

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I've just realised that putting the image of the moving sign might be against forum policy. If that is the case Mick, I do apologise and would not be offended if you removed it. Chris has a dummy monitor at the end of Platform 4 (and possibly elsewhere) and I thought a working display could add something extra. Perhaps I should confirm that I have no connection with Train-Tech although I do admire their products, They are also very nice people!

Like Mick, I was sorry to learn about Saturday's disaster and congratulate you on repairing the damage so quickly.

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Hi Chris, WOW that covering is pure awesome, had to read m=back to find  scratch build the floor, What I want to do with my station cover to be clear roof sheeting to see the figures and lots of them..

Keep the good work up is the station complex finished now, love the buses in front  of the station and cab.

 

Tony from down under

 

 

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Hello Chris

The station hall is very impressive.
I particularly like the view into the interior of all the details.
Somehow this has a very convincing effect on me of "very British", it has the flair of English stations in my memory.
Apart from the fact that every detail is placed correctly.

 

Regards

Thomas 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Had a bit of a play time over the weekend. There were a few maintenance tasks which needed attending to. The main thrust was to sort out electrical connections that had failed over the winter. One point motor was brought back into service and a couple of sections of track.

Trains wise, things were running well. Helped by the servicing of much of my fleet got over the winter ready for last months show. I was pleased that a couple of old Lima Class 66's ran without the need for attention.

One longstanding issue I managed to resolve was a coach that kept riding up and derailing. It is part of a permanently coupled set, so it was a pain to un couple to work on, so I had been ignoring it for a year or 3. On close inspection I noticed that busy wasn't siting snug to the under frame. I pulled it all apart and the metal weight was not sitting right. Careful alignment of everything and it all went back together snuggly and the derailing is no longer and issue.

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On 23/04/2019 at 11:38, chris said:

Had a bit of a play time over the weekend. There were a few maintenance tasks which needed attending to. The main thrust was to sort out electrical connections that had failed over the winter. One point motor was brought back into service and a couple of sections of track.

Trains wise, things were running well. Helped by the servicing of much of my fleet got over the winter ready for last months show. I was pleased that a couple of old Lima Class 66's ran without the need for attention.

One longstanding issue I managed to resolve was a coach that kept riding up and derailing. It is part of a permanently coupled set, so it was a pain to un couple to work on, so I had been ignoring it for a year or 3. On close inspection I noticed that busy wasn't siting snug to the under frame. I pulled it all apart and the metal weight was not sitting right. Careful alignment of everything and it all went back together snuggly and the derailing is no longer and issue.

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Hello Chris!

Please tell me how you did the grass on the slopes?

 

Regards 

Thomas 

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A quick reminder to you all that most of my scenery is built on moveable baseboards which only come outside when I'm playing trains. So they aren't weatherproof.

The grass on the slopes is just different shades of scatter material dropped on to a surface I'd covered with PVA.

Modelling the current railway I realised that I could save myself a lot of trees if I they had all just been chopped down. There is a lot of line side clearance going on these days as they try and reduced the number of leaves getting on the line. A few cocktail sticks and some brown scatter created the right effect.

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Spent a bit of time yesterday adding feeds to the frogs of my electro frog points. I tend to use insufrog points outside because they need a lot less wiring. But for historical reasons I have 4 for 5 electros outside. I've used a mixture of mechanical switches and frog juicers depending on the location of the point. If there is room to fit a mechanical switch I take that option, otherwise a Gaugemaster DCC80 Autofrog goes in. Yesterday I installed one of each.

These points had been in for years and nearly all of my stock could pass over the dead section of frog without a problem. But not this year. After close inspection I could that bridging wires I have soldered inplace for DCC operation had failed and this meant that most of the point was dead. The solution was to power the frogs and things are now running through smoothly again.

This reminds me that a belt and braces approach always pays off in garden railways. Knowing how often bonding wires fail I think that in future I will add a pair of connections between rails in points as this significantly improves the odds of them not failing.

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On 30/04/2019 at 08:35, chris said:

...This reminds me that a belt and braces approach always pays off in garden railways....

You're not kidding - I couldn't stress that enough. For anyone contemplating starting out with an OO garden railway it's got to be the belt and braces approach otherwise it's pants round ankles I'm afraid.

I can understand people using insulfrog points but in my opinion nothing beats electrofrog and really, once you've soldered a link between the rails the only additional wiring needed is to the frog and doing that is becoming easier than ever with a range of 'autofrog' type options. It's worth the additional effort but may not suit everyone.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Needed to do some repairs and spring cleaning on a few of my scenes today. 4 of my baseboards live outside, but under cover. The local cats like to walk and sit on them. Yesterday and today I repaired the damage and removed the cat hair form 3 of the boards. The 4th, a campsite, will need to be completely stripped and started form scratch.

Anyway, after rebuilding all the fencing the building site looked the part in the afternoon sunshine.

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You've got that one absolutely spot on Chris! 

The background fence looks just like a warehouse. It's amazing what you can create outdoors with minimal scenic items and little effort. If only that blue sky would stay with us a bit longer.

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Thanks Mick.

Just spent another hour sorting out track power to all the rails in all the points. It never ceases to amaze me that every single type electrical connection I use on my railway will fail. Had to replace a crimp-on connector to allow power to flow to a frog.

Also got my JMRI software working again ever since one feature had started crashing it after I had upgraded to the latest version. One day I'll do this kind of snagging before my mates come round for a running session, rather than the day after...

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Cheers Andrew.

 

I've become too reliant on having my scenic bits on boards that live in the shed and are only plonked by the railway when I'm running. I'm going to have to face the challenge of weatherproof modelling and create a few more areas that are permanently out there. With that in mind I've spent the afternoon making planters to go on station platforms out of pan scrubs and off-cut correx. I'm going to hot glue gun them in place. They will be up against the fence which should stop the fence falling over!

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