Reports and Blog

Fourteen made it to our return to Moorfield Hall in September for our first ‘real’ meeting since March 2020.

Tim Williams brought along his HOf layout, now christened “Malcolm & Forsythe’s Erratic Timber Supply Company and Forest Adventure Park”. During the course of the evening Tim demonstrated the Radio Control, and a charging system using dedicated track sections he hopes to incorporate into the layout. Tim also had some 3D printed models of the new Bala Lake Railway coaches.

Julien Webb brought along Xavier’s Creek and his 3D printed Avonside tank loco (David Malton via Shapeways), now with added electric lights and turbo generator.

Hugh Freeman brought along some 12 mm gauge stock to show. For 4 mm scale some Branchlines Clogher Valley stock and an old Tramalan Beyer Peacock tram loco, and a selection of French HOm wagons from REE Modeles. Hugh had also brought along a selection of surplus items that sold on for donations to group funds. This included a small French themed HOe layout snapped up by Dick Johnson.  This may well be seen at future group meetings after a move to Wales. This layout also saw a few things running on it during the meeting, including:

Some of Ben Powell’s locos, including his 0-4-0ST ‘Oakhill’ and 0-6-0 Sena Estates Peckett and a Kerr Stuart ‘Skylark’ – a Five79 kit on a Farish 08 with RT models conversion parts. These hauled trains of Ben’s industrial stock (009 Society 4 wheel wagons and Ben’s scratch built bogie flat wagons).

Steve Mann’s latest loco, a Farish 04 which he had fitted with a new 4mm scale cab, also had a run hauling Ben’s wagons.

John Davies had made a few purchases during lockdown. These included some rare American HO brass models, 5.5 mm scale stock and in OOn3 some vintage items from the Dai Bach Valley Railway. He had also built a 7 mm scale town hall, based on the Kibri HO kit, for a friend, constructed of salvaged materials (plywood , rocket sticks, cereal packets) and finished off with some polyfilla render and a finial turned on John’s new lathe.

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Five made it to our online August meeting.

Julien Webb had been working on a harbour office building for Xavier’s Creek, using the Wills Crossing Keepers Cottage as a start for his kit bashing. He had also been working on the Sierra Leone 2-6-2T.

Mac Strong had been working on his layout Beacon Point, re-wiring it for DCC operation in preparation for the Bournville Exhibition on the 28th August.

Tim Williams had converted one of his Busch diesel locos to radio control with an onboard battery for ‘Insulation Lumber’. The run time for the loco was about 25 minutes and Tim was working on a charging point that could be incorporated within the track plan to mitigate this. He had also been 3D printing some low resolution figures.

Charlie Forbes had been adding finishing touches to some of the things shown in previous months, painting the 3 car railcar set, Campbelltown & Macrihanish coaches and bogie diesel locos, and fitting interiors into the railcar units.

Seven made it to our online meeting in July, including Peter Ashby from Kent, and Lee Allen who has been absent for far too long!

It seems to have been a period where people have been away, as Julien Webb had just got back from a week in South Devon with a few days in Weymouth, and Peter had just got back from Wales. Despite this some modelling had been completed!

Peter Ashby showed us a new facing for the viaduct on his Dolgoch inspired layout that he’d been working on since getting back from holiday.

Charlie Forbes had been making further modifications to his Campbelltown & Macrihanish style 2-6-2T to enable it to sit lower on the chassis, and had also built one of the Society’s RNAD van kits to use as a luggage trailer for his railcars and finished it in a maroon livery. He had also put into service some ex- Brian Guilmant bogie tanker wagons bought from 009 Soc. Sales.

Tim Williams had been busy working on his HOf / OO6.5 layout ‘Insulation Lumber’, making good progress with the timber trestle bridge made from balsa wood, with steel tape under the track to provide extra adhesion for the Busch locomotives that seemed to be fine with hauling the 3D printed log carriers over the gradients. He was also working on building a servo controller for the point servos using a BBC Micro bit.

Tim had also recently rescued a large (12′ by 2′ 6″) 4 mm scale model of Port Penrhyn built by the late Peter Midwinter, part of a long term plan to restore it to running condition and exhibit it to promote the Bala railway or have it on display in the museum space at the Bala Railway.

Julien had managed to do a bit of model making whilst on holiday, and showed a Sierra Leone 2-6-2T built from the Dundas kit he had (mostly) soldered together to go on an outside frame, Farish 08 based 2-6-2 chassis he had commissioned from Ben Powell. Like Charlie, he had also bought some of Brian Guilmant’s Imperial Western Railway stock from 009 Sales, in this case 2 large bogie hopper wagons based on East Broad Top prototypes.

Work on Mac Strong’s second plank had progressed, being in the final stages of wiring. It will then be tested (in other words he will play trains for a while !) before being passed onto Paul Towers who he has built it for. Mac had also put a first coat of paint on his Merseyside & Southwest Lancs Group 3d printed Upnor Castle, and it’s Kato 109 chassis has been disassembled for a DCC chip to be fitted.

Ben Powell had unfortunately been in isolation as one of his daughters’ classmates tested positive for Covid-19. Whilst this meant he had to miss the Quarry Hunslet event at Statfold the extra modelling time gained resulted in building a small smithy and some much taller warehouses for his layout, and designing and building a magnetic coupling system using 2mm diameter Neodymium magnets glued onto a brass arm pivoted off the bogie pivot on his bogie flat wagons. This allowed him to propel the semi-fixed rakes through a crossover, 2 sets of facing points, and a 9″ reverse curve with no derailments, and shows that every cloud has a silver lining.

Ben was also investigating fitting an IRDot system to the layout to help him find trains amongst all the architecture, and how to combat the high temperatures in his attic workshop.

Whilst Lee Allen had been doing little model making he had managed visits to the Talyllyn and Welshpool lines, with Angela Baker, to make up for it. There was also a bit of discussion on a possible future dog bone layout built on 2 guitars joined at the neck.

That lead on to discussions of wearing kilts to aid ventilation in order to keep cool, and then on to miniature sets of bagpipes mounted on a Kata chassis along with a sound chip, and with the meeting rapidly heading down a surrealist rabbit hole it was (thankfully?) time to call a halt to proceedings.

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Seven of us made it to the May online meeting, including Hugh Norwood joining us from ‘up North’.

Mac Strong had been fitting some MTB point motors to his layout. These MP1 type consist of a non-stalling servo device running on 12 volt and comes with frog polarity switching and adjustable throw.

Tim Williams had been continuing is 1:1 scale activities involving the laying of 2′ and 7 1/4″ gauges at Bala for the Bala ReRailed event to publicise the extension project. He was also able to show us some photos and video taken over the weekend (12/13th June0, available at  https://youtu.be/ELHiX-ng5aE and https://bala-lake-railway.co.uk/2021/06/15/bala-rerailed/

Hugh Norwood showed us a few of his recent projects, including a 3D printed Avonside 0-4-0T from Dave Malton’s railway bits on Shapeways, a 3D printed Shay, a Victorian horse bus from Langley and some additional figures for his ‘Angst-Lesspork’ layout.

Julien Webb had been busy, but had managed to do a little more to his Dave Malton Avonside 0-4-0T and was working on replacing the plastic railings on a bridge he had built for fellow West Mids member John Walker in brass.

Charlie Forbes had progressed well with his Campbelltown & Macrihanish based 2-6-2T, and a model of an Australian Baldwin bogie diesel in plasticard on a Lifelike bo-bo chassis was looking largely complete apart from detailing.

Ben Powell had recovered from firing Alpha at Statfold the previous day and gave us an update on progress on his brewery layout – a new loop on the layout and work on the fiddle yard boards – but work was being hampered by the oft space workshop getting a bit warm.

With a weekend of full size steam there was also some discussion of how parts from similar locos were swapped, about particularly quarry Hunslets, and what constituted a loco’s ‘identity’. Certainly with some preserved locos having parts for 3 or 4 other locos we wondered if there was a case for calling them ‘Franken-Hunslets’!

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9 made it to the April online meeting.

Tim Williams showed us progress on Insulation Lumber with his 3D printed mounts allowing the HOf points to be operated via Servos connecting with wire-in -tube. The use of the wires allowed the servos and their mounts to be hidden within the scenery rather than needing to be adjacent to the point tie bar, with some wire runs being 12-15″ in length to achieve this.

Blair Hobson had been working on his new HOe layout and demonstrated progress with one of his TU 47 diesels running around the layout.

Ben showed us progress on his industrial layout, where the loco shed had been glued together with its ventilated clerestory made using corrugated sections to represent the louvered vents and the bracing on the doors corrected. This and the other buildings had been joined by another that looked remarkably like a classic tower brew house and Ben declared that his layout was now ‘officially’ a brewery! On the motive power front Ben had fitted short lengths of wire to the loco buffer beams to act as delay latches for the Greenwich couplings based on a method from Paul Windle.

Charlie Forbes took us through how he had built his Campbelltown & Macrihanish coaches from the Worsley Works etch, including forming the tumblehome in the sides using 15 mm copper pipe and the ingenious jig made from a bit of wood and a couple of dressmaking pins that he had used to fit the balcony floors and steps at each end of the coach.

Mac Strong showed us a couple of Minitrains locos, a Gmeinder and a Plymouth, that he had fitted with Zimo DCC chips. There was also some discussion about chipping other locos in his 009 fleet.

David Churchill had been working on a Chemins de Fer du Calvados (60cm gauge) semi open coach using the Worsley Works ‘scratch-aid’ kit and talked a little about how he puts them together (essentially soldering one side to one end to form two L shapes then soldering these together to form a box and adjusting that to make it square).

Julien Webb had been making slow progress with his pair of large Baldwin 2-8-0 locos, but was able to show ‘Victoria’ running on Xavier’s Creek.

Peter Ashby joining us from Kent showed us some photos of his old 009 layout with a Langley double fairlie handling trains that could be up to 8 feet long.

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Ten made it to the March online meeting, with thanks to Tim Williams for the electronic arrangements he apparently made from a hole in the bottom of Llangower signal box if his background photo was to be believed. We also welcomed Peter Ashby, visiting virtually all the way from Kent!

Ben Powell kicked us off for the ‘show-n-tell’ having been working on a few things for his uncle Ian. These were an A1 models diesel on a Bachmann MDT chassis with a Kerr Stuart Wren and small Bagnall saddle tank, the latter 2 running on Tsugawa Koppel chassis that needed resistors fitting (Ben had used tiny ‘surface mount’ types) and the chassis for the Wren needed a new cross head making. Ben had also been working on the the store building and its loading dock for his industrial layout, including a canopy over the dock.

Peter Ashby then gave us a tour via photos he had posted on the NGRM-Online forum of his Talyllyn inspired layout, a 10’6″ by 3′ oval including a version of the Dolgoch viaduct, and showed us his Narrow Planet Dolgoch conversion of the Bachmann Rheneas.

Tim Williams showed us developments on his snow scene diorama, where the area to the sides of the ‘cut’ now show evidence of chaps working to clear the snow with shovels. I got the impression that progress on this had been a bit slower than Tim would like, as he commented he may well get it finished in time for the next summer heatwave! He had also been working on making changed to the yard area on his HOf layout ‘Insulation Lumber’ to avoid having to shunt the 6.5mm gauge stock and run three fixed-rake trains.

Mac Strong had been continuing the work of a HOe shunting layout with the wiring side of things, a somewhat herculean task as it involved a total of 14 sections along with 5 point motors that left Mac wondering if he shouldn’t have gone DCC with it!

Julien Webb had been making slow progress with his pair of 2-8-0 tender locos Victoria & Matilda. He had hoped to have had the latter running on Xavier’s Creek for the meeting, but an annoying bind that was traced to a moving motion bracket put paid to that. Julien also showed his latest Shapeways purchases of an Avonside 0-4-0T body to fit his Bachmann Percy chassis (from Dave’s railway bits) and a dozen turbo generators (from Myner Models), 2 of which have had wire exhaust pipes fitted ready to go on the 2-8-0s.

Charlie Forbes showed us the start of an E.M. Baldwin (Australia) bogie diesel on a lifelike SW1500 chassis, a railbus based on Modelscene Leyland bus bodies and a 3 car set made from Dapol kits based on Bernard Taylor’s Armstrong Whitworth inspired ‘Skye’ proposals with a central buffet car.

David Churchill showed us his latest purchase, which was an unbuilt Model Loco (DJH) Saxon IVK 0-4-4-0 Meyer, and also showed us a built but unpainted N-Drive Bagnall “Central” 0-4-0T, supplied with its chassis.

To round the meeting off Andy Foster showed us the latest addition to his book collection, a copy of “Irish Narrow Gauge Album” by Michael Whitehouse using photos from the collection of his late father P.B. ‘Pat’ Whitehouse.

Six made it along to the February online meeting thanks to Tim Williams, though some concerns were raised as it appeared that the efforts in arranging things had made Tim’s brain overheat with steam appearing to issue from his head! This was, however,  put down to the video background he had chosen (filmed taken whilst he was signalling at Llangower on the Bala Lake Railway).

Tim had been working on a working diorama based on some photos of snow clearance at Cwm Croesor on the (standard gauge) Ffestiniog to Bala branch. Built on some foam core boards the design incorporates a tray to catch the ‘snow’ as his 009 quarry hunslet Alice cuts through a snowdrift with a snowplough that Tim had 3D printed. Initial snow clearance trials using polystyrene balls had shown the concept worked, but Tim was looking into other snow substitutes, and how he might add snow to a model of Ivo Peter’s Bentley to add to the scene.

With Tim’s Diorama and the day’s fall of snow discussion turned to other snow moving equipment, and Julien Webb showed an article on the Jull Snow Excavator – essentially a big, rail-mounted screw that was turned to throw the snow off the tracks. Julien then showed the continuing work on the loading gauge busting loco collection, having cut new sets of connecting and coupling rods from nickel silver for the pair of 2-8-0 tender locos and pair of 8-coupled saddle tanks being built from converted HOn3 kits.

Ben Powell had added a custom turned chimney to the Sena Peckett to finish off the body, but the chassis had been sidelined by a bearing issue and Ben wasn’t sure it could be fixed without obtaining a new 3D printed chassis block, which might take a bit of time as its printing would have to fit in with Narrow Planet’s own production. In the mean time Ben had built another batch of flat wagons from Dundas Vale of Rheidol coach chassis and plastic U channel and had been fitting brick cladding, windows (laser cut wood and a nice hand-made round one for a gable end) and hand-cut header arches to the buildings on his industrial layout that is now dedicated to making beer. Ben also showed us some photos of a rather nice Peckett 0-6-0 tender loco and large 0-4-2 ST he had come across that might become future projects.

Mac Strong showed us his corrugated iron engine shed that had recently been glazed using liquid “Glu’n’Glaze” but he wasn’t happy at the results, so there was a little discussion as to how best to remove this so he could replace it with clear plastic sheet to get a more plate glass effect. He was also working on a 5′ long HOe shunting plank for his son-in-law, and had recently acquired a 3D print to make a Whickham armoured railcar similar to those he vaguely recalled from his childhood in Malaya.

Charlie Forbes joined us again to show us a few more projects. These included a Polish kit for the LxD2 bogie diesel, an Indian ZDM4a diesel from a Shapeways 3D print, a bogie snowplough made from a card kit and mounted on some cast white metal war Department bogies and a weed killing train made up of a pair of water tank wagons (TT tanks on Peco 15′ n-gauge chassis) and a concentrate tanks wagon with hutch at one end for the operator, all being linked with pipes made from black elastic and 2 mm magnetic couplings.

Ten made it along to the first online meeting of 2021, including Mike Allen (attending his first online meeting and second group meeting) and Charlie Forbes from the East Mids group.

Blair Hobson had been working on a new HOe layout, a Central European fantasy based on a plan by Giles Barnabe published in Model Railways magazine 30 to 40 years ago. The track runs over 2 baseboards with an overall size of 6′ by 3′ 6″ and is a bit or a rabbit warren (whatever that is in the local dialect!). Most of the lower level tracks had been laid, but things had stalled as Blair was contemplating the best way to make reliable electrical connections between the 2 boards and demountable control panel(s).

Mac Strong had been modifying some Auhagen engine sheds to something more UK in outline with Slaters corrugated iron sheets, and had also finished painting his Hudswell Hunslet diesel featured last month.

Charlie Forbes showed us some coaches he was building using Worsley Works etches for Campbelltown & Macrihanish stock with some modifications (essentially arc roofs instead of the domes ends of the prototype) and a freelance 3-part railcar set using Hornby Pacer bodies with new home-cast resin ends and other parts.

Tim Williams had been working on his sheave incline on Bryn Tegid and some 3D printed Dinorwic wagons, with the Thomas train set he won at the virtual Warley show still packed and up in the loft!

Ben Powell’s latest loco, the Sena Estates Peckett 0-6-0ST was looking pretty much finished running on a rolling road, though ben said it needed a little fettling to get back to smooth running after he had replaced the pick up wires for thinner material.

Ben had also been cutting 5 mm foam board to make building shells for his new layout to be clad in Slaters English bond brickwork. He had began cutting holes for the windows and doors, but was still looking at options for these.

Julien Webb had been going through the box of lost projects and unearthed his second large 2-8-0 “Matilda” as a sibling to Victoria, and had also taken the opportunity to update and partly rework Victoria with a cast brass chimney and a North West Short Line re-gear set to match the modifications to the new loco. He also discussed his plans for a new Bachmann N-scale Percy (recently purchased from Ben Powell), with the front runners being the Oakhill Brewery’s Bagnall Mendip or the Fletcher Jennings 0-4-0 ‘Townsend Hook’.

David Churchill had not been doing any physical modelling but had been working on a set of drawings for some Howra-Amta 4 wheel coaches to go with his Fourdees loco. These were of the early 13′ long stock with under-hung springs, but David was unsure whether to make them to scale width (being narrow vehicles even for for 2′ gauge) or to make them wider and based on some similar 2′ 6″ gauge stock supplied to India which would make a better match to the Fourdees model that was wider than scale to accommodate its Kato chassis. Once the drawings were finished his plan is to build at least six, probably in either etched brass or laser cut plastic.

Mike Allen had been stocking up on Dundas GVT-style coaches but was in need of a Round Tuit (like many of us!) to get things started.

Seven of us (8 if you include Diego the dog!) made it to the pre-Christmas get together online, with apologies from Tim Williams for the late start, as without his logging on to start the meeting nobody else could get in either!

Mac Strong had fitted an N-Drive chassis into the Hudswell diesel body shown last time, and was surprised to have learnt something after a suggestion on NGRM-Online about using a permanent marker pen to blacken the wheels.

Ben Powell’s workshops had been busy, with work on the Sena Estates 0-6-0 Peckett progressing well though a little delayed awaiting delivery of handrail knobs, alongside a Kerr Stuart Tattoo using a mix of Meridian and RT Models parts to fit working Hackworth valve gear to an N-Drive chassis. This had been laid aside until Ben’s acquisition of the latest “Wheels of Industry” bookazine inspired work to resume. 

Ben had also been working on his industrial layout with the development of card buildings.

Tim Williams had been working on the incline section of Bryn Tegid, with replacement carrier trucks (3d printed with better detail, finer supports and blackened wheel sets) and a new arrangement at the base of the incline involving a sheave incline to take trucks up from the layout level to the main incline loading dock (similar to the set up with inclines V1 and V2 at Dinorwic).

Tim had also been working on his 3D prints of the new Bala coaches with the addition of LED lighting powered by coin cells, and he had also been giving some thoughts to a revised track plan for Insulation Lumber (Tim’s HOf layout).

Julien Webb had not been up to much actual building, but recent purchases included a Bachmann WHR Baldwin with factory-fitted sound (due to donate it’s chip to one of his War Department locos) and a Triang “Dock Authority” OO gauge 4-wheel shunter for nostalgic reasons that he plans to fit up with a 9 mm gauge chassis made up from some Worsley Works chassis etches for a 3 mm scale 03/04.

David Churchill had managed to obtain one of the new Bachmann N-scale ‘Percy’ locos. David reported that it ran very well and seemed to be smaller than the Tomix version, but his plans to use the chassis to make an 0-4-0 Bagnall saddle tank have ben somewhat scuppered until David can obtain a second one after his young grandson caught sight of Percy during a Zoom birthday party !

Seasonal best wishes from theWest Midlands 009 Group, and here’s hoping that the New Year sees us being able to get back to meeting as normal.

Thanks again to Tim Williams for setting up out online meeting via Teams, where five of us were able to see the following:

Tim Williams had unearthed Bryn Tegid from it’s long term lockdown slumber and we were able to see it running with a variety of stock, including Tim’s new 3D printed models of the (also) new Bala Lake coaching stock, somewhat in advance of the prototypes!

Mac Strong had been sorting out some Hudson Hudswell diesel locomotives, including one built as a cab less version by Paul Towers that lost its overall roof in a mishap and another (with cab) built by Mac that was awaiting a suitable chassis from Neville Kent at N-Drive.

Ben had been continuing work on his new layout with wiring up the track power so for this meeting we were able to see things move. Ben is still undecided as to whether the site is a brewery or foundry, but perhaps the suggestion of somewhere making Iron Bru (girders go in, containers of bright orange liquid go out) would combine both themes… Ben had also been busy with rolling stock, with a pair of heavy-duty bogie flat wagons made from Dundas VofR coach chassis needing completion and the final touches (nameplates) being fixed to his model of Oakhill (Peckett 1021/1904). Ben also mentioned that plans for a model of an 0-6-0ST Peckett based on the locos supplied to Sena sugar estates.