Well we're now nearly unpacked, so much so that we had an outing on Sunday to Ryton Pools country park - which has a miniature railway. £1 a go around a decent loop, great fun (especially when we derailed just before the bank, so the little engine [with Hackworth valve gear] had to struggle up the 1:100.
My study now has a modelling 'zone' including a new IKEA desk and other additions...
and there's even room for a small test (programming) track along the bookshelf...
Dad has made sterling progress with the double fairlie 'Merddin Emrys' (see below) and I have finally managed to ream out the coupling rod holes so that the crankpin nut fits back to front on Taliesin to help with clearances around the slidebars. However in doing so I lost a 16ba brass washer (so small there's no chance of finding it!).
and finally, I have ordered my DCC equipment - a whole load of ZTC decoders (diamond 255s) and the MRC prodigy advance2, these arrived today but I was in Burnley and my wife was at playgroup so they are sitting in some postal sorting office tonight! Hopefully I'll get to play tomorrow, which is why I did my first DCC conversion yesterday - a minitrix 0-6-0 (eventually for the Kerr Stuart diesel 4415, which as a prototype was tested on the WHR and FR and now resides at Minffordd awaiting restoration.) The chassis is live and insulated from the chassis are wiper pickups for the other wheels. So isolating the motor from the chassis was easy, except that in the very small space available the EMC suppression devices got in the way. I figured that no-one adds these to kits they build themselves anyway and they are of questionable use other than to allow a RTR loco to get the necessary EU certification, so they were chopped off. Apparently they can interfere with TVs and even pacemakers, but that seems to be pretty alarmist to me.
Then the decoder (an old style Hornby R8215 that didn't matter if I blew it) was attached - red and black to the track, orange and grey the other way (to the motor). But there was no room in the dock tank to house the decoder, so I chopped the cab off (obviously the loco body will get chucked anyway!)... so what to call it....? Shaun??
Colin
2 comments:
Looking at your (very nice) Backwoods ME, where would you rate that in terms of difficulty compared to Tal?
I'm mid-way through building Blanche, which hasn't been too bad so far, gearbox instalation/alignment apart! I'm considering Tal or ME as my next project, which a DHR B Class as an outside bet.
I am very lucky in having a multi talented Dad on this one. Tal (which I am building) is easier because the kit puts right some issues with the double fairlie - I would start there. Those issues are things like slidebar clearances and pickups, which are much better on Tal. Good luck with it.
Colin
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