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.
