The Garden Railway: A Frog With Wings

Since my last post, I've been Soldering on with the with the DIY G Scale LH R3 turnout. "Illiterate idiot" I here you say! Almost but not quite, that's exactly what I've been doing and have completed the frog and wing rails/closure rails.

 The frog wing and closure rails finally become one piece.

Prior to cutting back and cleaning up.

Now I consider soldering a black magic art. In the early 1980's and for a short period, I worked for what was Fidelity Radio/Pye in North Acton, London, where I rectified faulty circuit boards. The problem was I could diagnose and fix the circuits but when it came to soldering them up, I destroyed more boards than I fixed. As I said, "for a short period"! Still, at least I made it into an episode of the BBC's Play School.

Now my soldering talents have not matured over the years and it still terrifies me, so from the off I considered this whole project doomed but what the hell, the worst I could do is give it a try. My first hurdle was to solder the crossing V together and I must say, to my surprise, that went pretty well considering.

The crossing V soldered and prior to cutting, shaping and clean up.

That is, until I needed to solder it to a baseplate. Rather than bring the rails together symmetrically, I used the old fashioned method of just slapping it on the side, which leaves a big void to fill with solder, between the top and bottom of the rails. Now to solder this V onto the baseplate, it would mean re heating the whole assembly, which ultimately led to the separation of the V on at least 3 occasions but I got there in the end.

                            

The crossing V finally soldered to the baseplate, the lower rail would be cut back later.

But there was more to come, I now needed to solder the wing/ closeure rails too and once again, my work was coming unstuck upon reheating. I finally managed to get one wing rail done and spent quite a while with a 30W iron patching up the affected area's. Cue a year's worth of disillusion and procrastination!

Giving up the ghost.

At this point, someone will be reading this and thinking "That's because you used to much heat". True in a sense but the rail is heavy gauge brass and the heat dissipates along the length's quite quickly, so a 30W iron is useless in this scale and the 80W is about the minimum you can get away with.

So a year on, it's time to have another go and with major apprehension, solder up the second wing rail. Enter Bob Symes, aka Bob Symes-Shutzmann or Robert Symes. "WHO?" Some of you will be shouting. 

At 46 I begin to wonder if "Ignorance is bliss" or is it age and memorized junk interfering with the good memory? Whilst scrolling through YouTube, I came across a long unremembered BBC TV series from the 1970's or my childhood, called Model World. "Ah ha" I thought, haven't seen that in year's and watched the lot, followed by The Model World of Bob Symes and Model Railways With Bob Symes.

Now the first two programmes encompass virtually all genre's of modelling, exactly my kind of thing and it was whilst revisiting my childhood, I discovered the use of solder paint. Previously I had been using standard solder in a tube and the tinning method. For people of less expertise like me, solder paint is a liquid mix of solder, flux and etch paint, you simply brush on and heat up the metal but don't confuse it with Solder Paste, two totally different things!

The secret weapon!

The prices of a 30ml pot of this stuff is expensive (there are smaller bottles) and prices vary greatly, so it pays to shop around. Always check the P&P, you will be amazed at how many retailer's advertise stuff cheap but add the extra on to the postage! I got mine on the internet from Railroom Electronics, £13.00 all in.

Ooh I love this stuff and lesson learnt!

Soldered in minutes, not hours and no separation elsewhere!

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice the gold of the brass has turned to a bronze colour on the wing rail. This has nothing to do with the solder paint and is good sign that the brass has heated well and that should(!) mean a good bond. All that needs doing now, is to trim the baseplate back, clean up the area with some wet and dry, and yes that will bring the brass back to it's normal colour. So onwards and upwards, I now have a frog with wings, next stop the turnout blades.

The Garden Railway: A horticultural Interlude.

This idiot's knowledge of plant's could easily be summed up on the head of a pin, i.e. two letters spelling uh!


So far at Diss-Arster station, which includes a small flower bed as a compromise of course. I have only planted what looks right, a couple of small conifers and what looks like heather but I have some elevated baseboards and the uprights need hiding.

Here.

Here, no that post is not cock eyed it's the camera.

Here, on the incline from Diss-Arster.

And here, at the currently not so good looking main station!

Now let's go back a couple of year's and compare the photos of the main station above. It's the light green plant were interested in. 

The dark green plant is in a pot and separate to the what I know to be Baggeson's Gold or Lonicera Natilda to give it it's correct name, yes I looked that up. It's a fast growing Honeysuckle and was already here when we moved in. As can be seen by comparing the above photos, it has grown and extended very quickly but the downside is, it needs to be kept in check.

Online Information on this plant is somewhat erratic, as in taking cuttings (never done before by me) and when to plant and when not to plant so this is a bit of an experiment. To learn a little more about it, try here: http://www.findmeplants.co.uk/plant-lonicera-nitida-0145.aspx 


About 10 years ago Mark Found made a TV programme for Discovery Channel, called The Garden Railway. It covered building a garden railway from start to finish and he has recently put the whole series on YouTube for all to see, thanks Mark. Episode 13 covers plants, specially this one and can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5WQbcTT3Bg 


You only need the one plant to get going  From this one bush (if you can call it that!), I took three cuttings as a test. Two in mid summer, one of which died and one in November.

The one I took mid summer last year, I have planted today.

Fingers crossed it survives and now it's in the ground, flourishes. The late November one is growing well in a small pot in the shed and I intend to try at least another 5 - 7 cuttings this year.


So this is how I intend to hide most of the elevated trackbed but this plant is not just only good for that. It's also great for creating small trees for the outdoor railway, by simply keeping it trimmed and stunting it in bonzai fashion.

The Garden Railway: Missing The Point.

Time management remains one of my least greatest skill's but with the new garden railway season here, the most important item to sort on my list is the missing point at so called Diss-Arster Station. The foundations of the railway cannot proceed further and I cant backtrack (no pun intended) to the upper station, until this is done.

The station cat has been busy with her claws and the Seagull's and Pigeon's have maximised their time when she's not around!

I also need to get this done as already there is an eager and impatient passenger waiting at the station for a train!

As already established, a vast amount of LGB track had set the standard for any future build, this was even after having lost an amount of 1 metre lengths during the move back to the UK from Portugal. The removal company answered in true Arsen Wenger style "I dont know, I didn't see it" so I needed to buy more. Prices of LGB were already high and still rising rapidly in the UK so it was time to look at alternative's and weighing foot for foot prices, Tenmille G Scale track came out best. Although of a slightly different profile, I have stuck with them but do have the odd interloper from Bachmann and GRS.

Rounding The Curve

About 2 years ago I bought an Aristocraft class 66, this does not use the flexible measurements of LGB so the turnouts I had were redundant and needed to be replaced with R3's minimum. At the time, stocks of these were dry here, LGB having gone bust so it was wait for Marklin and production to start in Poland.

The Class 66 as new.

As soon as new stocks arrived, I duly ordered a righthand R3 (I forget the price now), fitted it at the main station and within a week it was falling apart. The main issue was frog failure (moving rails) and the built in electrical jumpers coming away one by one. It was to late to return it because it had been drilled and screwed down so it was make do and mend, just re fitting the jumpers was a nightmare to say the least.

Clearly with LGB under new management and relocation, quality control had taken a dive worthy of a Stuka and I was not about to go down the brand new road again. Next stop, a well known garden railway supplier that also deals in secondhand products. I phoned them, I was assured the in stock LGB RH R3 point was in exceptional good order so I paid three quarters of the price of a new one and waited.

The Next day it arrived and I eagerly opened it up like a child at Christmas, only to find a heavily worn point with more holes in it than a secondhand dartboard and a well, sort of motor. Now at this point (no pun intended) I should have returned it but I was desperate to move on and put it on the to fix list.

A Point In The Making

Ok, Two bad buy's, one brand new, one secondhand, plus more price increases and I needed a LH R3. With the two bad buys, either way, it had seriously put me off buying more LGB and this is when I came across Paul Abrams in East Sussex.

Paul own's The Iden Coach House Bed & Breakfast in Iden near Rye, if your a Gauge one modeller, you are more than likely aware that he has a 375 foot Gauge One dog bone loop in his garden and holds regular meetings there. For those who are unaware or just want to see something so simple but just a great inspiration, Pauls Gauge One.Live Steam Railway

Apart from being most helpful when asked, tucked away on his website, under "Track Additions - W/Shop". Is a section called Making A Point. Its not a definitive guide (specially if you run electric from the rails) but shows you in sequential pictures with a short description of how he makes his own. Again, he runs 1/32 Gauge One live steam and battery operated locomotives but the information can be adapted and is applicable to most scales, which is exactly what I have done.

Ok, Paul quotes 15 hours approximately to build a turnout but for this idiot, it's been well over a year and a half and is still in construction.

Apart from the left hand check rail this is how it was left last year.

Dont let my timespan put you off considering making your own turnout's, it's just me in unknown territory, not sure of my ability and of course, the Spanish gene! If I actually sat down and worked out the time I have spent on making it, it would be something like about 9 - 10 hours so far and that includes cutting sleeper strips, then cutting them into individual sleepers and treating them before commencement of construction.

All the rail and chairs were bought from Tenmille under their G Scale range. Originally I was going to use their sleeper pack's but as this turnout is based on an R3, the curvature would not fit within the width, hence the use of wood.

With an LGB R3 sitting on the Tenmille sleepers the problem can be seen. This is the RH R3 from the main station, which I am using for continual reference and hence why I cant backtrack until I finish building mine!     

For the record, I do not have a workshop fitted out with all the tools to perform the witchcraft of an engineer, indeed, far from it. I hijack the kitchen work surfaces (Err indoors love's it, honestly!), I have a Dremel, pliers, a selection of files, a small vice, razor saws, a couple of square's, two track gauges, some small wire brushes and two cheap soldering irons, a 30W and an 80W.


So what magical ingredient's do you need?


2 three foot lengths of rail
1 pack of rail chairs
2 packs of point slide chairs
Sleepers of your choice
Some brass plate
Solder
Solder paint not paste
Fairy dust (Ok, I made that up)

Now the one thing Tenmille don't sell is bridge chairs, these are the chairs needed to hold the outer check rails in place. Why, I dont know and I have yet to find a source that will fit the profile of their rail. I am working on a solution and if it works you will be the first to know.


So that brings us up to date and I'm off to bodge (I think that is how you spell build!) a point. 

The Garden Railway: A Quick History.

Ok, I was going to move straight onto the missing turnout but I think a little history lesson of how the garden railway begun is needed. This is not my first attempt at building one but actually the third. Each one has been built at different rented properties and they have all differed in terms of design factor and construction.

The first (sorry no photos) was literally just laid on the ground, no fixings and a little garden redesign to make it all fit. The second was more of a serious undertaking due to the lay of the land and severe neglect over the years. It was a folded loop on an area that needed serious re construction and although far from ever being finished, trains did run on it. A move to Portugal saw the end of this one.

Railway number 2 with the track laid roughly where it would go.

What I meant by serious reconstruction. Apart from the concrete and cement, everything used was either scrounged or found buried in the ground.

This viaduct was to be the centre piece, a river would have run beneath it, onto a waterfall and into the pond below. Shortly after this picture was taken, the railway was dismantled.

How It All Began

When my children were of a less adult age and through a rather tragic event, I ended up in America and needed something to take the children's minds of the subject when I got back. I found a cheap G Scale remote control train set and brought it back with me, they loved it. Now any parent will tell you, if you ask a child not to do something, they will. In this case it was don't break the track, it's plastic and cant be replaced and so they did.

At the time, I was engaged in European truck driving and regularly ran overnight to the late Marks & Spencer store in Koln, Germany. Here I found the ultimate model and toyshop called Feldhaus. I quote "ultimate" for good reason, every floor was dedicated to a particular subject, starting in the basement with pre school toys and onward and upward until the mind explodes. I discovered LGB here and that the track was of the same dimension's as the now defunct plastic stuff.

Upon my return to the UK, I started to look at the price of track and was taken aback to say the least! Next trip out I crossed referenced the prices and realised I could buy it at half the price in Germany, so I did. I replaced all the plastic track and having placed it outdoors, it grew rapidly. The remote control train was replaced by an LGB Cargo Set and an early LCE (LGB's version of a German ICE) set.

Sadly The demise of M&S in Europe saw the end to further cheap track expansion but the stone was set and LGB track had become the norm. So did I learn anything from the previous two railways? Yes I did but sadly for this idiot and the current railway, virtually none of it applies! Here endeth the history lesson.

The Garden Railway: Pastures Revisited .

All stop on the indoor railway and time to move to the outdoors one.

The good weather is finally upon us, "Hooray" I hear you say but looking out the window, it's far from it, true April weather for a change! Not good for the outdoor model railway enthusiast come model maker, specially one that suffers from disaster followed by procrastination.

I have been in the process of building a G Scale come misty measured Gauge 1 line around the garden for the past 5 years. I kid ye not, 5 years and its far from complete.

As Kevin Bloody Wilson sung, "Two steps to the south and three to the north, doing the last lager waltz", only without the beer.

Not bad eh? Straight as a dye, the upper main station.

Even the cat likes it.

Ok, these two pictures were taken 5 years ago, so time and change can only be for the better, right!

Wrong.

No the line has not been abandoned, in fact none of the track was permanently laid here and the line has stretched itself a lot further round the garden, to a point that's now on the far side of the picture. It's just suffering from a lack of maintenance, a turnout making exercise (more on that later) and most of all, the shed sinking!

Let me elaborate a little. The property the good wife and I live in is rented, therefore everything has to be easily removable and without lasting damage. Plus there is no plan to this railway, other than watch it grow and as we already know, planning is not one of my strong points!

The garden is L shaped and off shot (in the above image) to the upper right, is the highest point or the datum point. The railway turns left at the end of these boards, smooths out, running sort of straight and level to the lowest part of the garden.

The lowest part of the garden lay's in the distant corner.

The top of the metal poll donates the of the highest point of the garden.

The line then bears right and starts a steady 1' in 4" (sorry, only James May style pre decimalisation measurements here, (Keep Calm and Convert It On Google) decent through reverse curves, to avoid a long established compost heap, to another station area, which as yet is unnamed (maybe Diss-Arster is a possible) and currently ends there. There is a small projection onward to and from the datum point and I intend to get that area finished and possibly a little more this season.

Diss-Arster in the making, other name suggestions are welcome.

Like British Rail "Were getting there".

I did and they didn't! The highest point of the garden is in the thorn bush, top right.

So what's taking so long? Apart from the rental factor, no serious groundwork, the not so earth is actually London Clay. Great for tunnelling through but a nightmare to temporarily build on, hence the shed sinking and taking the main station boards and a couple of others with it. By the way, I live in the Whitstable area, not London!

This was once level and straight but now suffers from a rise, a drop and bad alignment.

Once perfectly straight. The effects on London Clay of water logging in the rain and drying out and cracking in heat. The removable section is temporary pending an aluminium truss bridge to be made by me. Temporary that is, as in 4 years ago!

It does not help that last year I back tracked to the reverse curves, having not been satisfied their width, beefed them up by adding roofing felt and camber and I must say though, it was worth it.

Widening the track bed, the brown boards were the original width.

Widening completed, next the felt and camber.

All done at the end of last season, including soldered jumper wires and is just waiting for the addition of edging this year.

Also at the close of last season, roofing felt and track (minus a turnout) had been laid to the far end on the second station, cast concrete slabs were made and laid in place ready for this years track extension work.

The cat love's her scratching boards, more maintenance for me!

So there you are, a new season is here and to make further progress, that missing point has to be laid, which leads us nicely in to the next post.

General Model Making: My Fathers Eyes, I Haven't!

My Fathers eyes as Eric Clapton once sung. Well I dont have them but boy I wish I did, model making would be so much easier and I could get things done a lot quicker and to a darn sight better standard.

So how come I never picked up this talent? I was 7 years old when ill health forced my father to retire from his employment as an architectural model maker for the GLC (or Greater London Council as it was) and he never recovered enough to regain the patients or the temperament needed.

A piece of my late fathers work, which piece I'm not sure but he was part of the team to construct this beautiful architectural model of the 1951 Festival of Britain.

I think patients and temperament are the keywords here and I'm no gene expert but I seem to lack either! I'm not sure if this is down to the passing on of the perfection gene or me just trying to hard to go by the standards set before me!

Something I have noticed though, through the wonders of the modern library, aka the internet. Professional model makers are adept at just about everything they put their hand to. In my fathers case mechanics, brick laying, carpentry, general construction, design and manufacture.

Design and manufacture are again keywords and these elements seem to elude me, no matter how much I plan and normally end up with everything going cock. Take one of my current projects, yes one. A new but not so (more on that later) OO gauge railway in the stages of the baseboard build. So far I have made 7 boards, all has been going well until one fatal measurement steps in.

A prime example of an idiot at work, Alignment and bolt holes for one of my OO gauge model railway baseboards.

My old woodwork teacher once said I have the woodworking skills of a monkey, he wasn't far wrong with that statement. Luckily it's not that bad as it's the dowel hole, so the cross member just needs filling and sanding but it's the kind of thing that would normally put me off, make me say bugger it and loose interest at warp speed. "Patients and temperament", I just dont seem to have it.

As I said, this is easily fixable and the time of year means that this particular project is now on hold until late Autumn anyway, as I move outside to my G Scale/Gauge 1 railway in the garden (more about that later too), so no hammer of frustration here!

So, my fathers eyes. Definitely not.

General Model Making: It Wasn't My Fault!

Hi all and welcome to my first blog of An Idiot Goes Model Making. "It's always good to have a hobby" they say and mine is making models, scratchbuilt, kits or otherwise but I have the disposition of Spanish heritage and according to er indoors, suffer from "Manana". Spanish for tomorrow or "why put off today, something that you can do tomorrow"!

On the other hand, I'm the son of a late professional model maker, of whom I can only say. Was a true expert in his field. Yes I know that sounds biased but I consider it to be true, specially given that he had a Phillip's radio stolen from his car because a thief liked it but alas for the thief, it was a prototype model (or shell) that he had built for Phillip's and I refer to the day's before rapid prototyping and cad!

His skills and scales knew no bounds. "So" your thinking, "An Idiot Goes Model Making", yea right!

Well I'm about as adept at it as Jeremy Clarkson is to motorbikes. The fact is, I just muddle along and lack a vital hotline to heaven.

So what are my interests? Being a mid 60's child, the computer game never existed and a mobile phone came in a suitcase. That left railways, Scalextric and Sci Fi TV programmes like Star Trek, UFO, Thunderbirds and Space 1999. Out of all of these railways stand out the most.

I grew up in the west of Greater London and for some reason mother thought continually pointing them out all the time would be a great idea. No doubt to bore me to death and tire me out but alas it had the opposite effect. So forgive me if I spend more time on this subject more than the others.

I still have my love of Sci Fi, specially Star Trek and the models to prove it but most of those come under the legend of "Manana" and are put away for future completion, that will be sometime before I pop off the mortal coil then. Scalextric still plays a part too, I have a large amount, nothing permanent but no one to play with, despite it being digital. Boo hoo and thanks kids!

So there you have it, a brief(!) introduction and a damn good reason for jumping from one project and subject to another.