January 2025 Forth and Clyde Area Group Meeting

Some thirteen members - Alisdair, Alastair, Alistair, Chris, Jim, James, Nigel, Graham, Simon, Stuart, Andy, Steve, and Martin - braved the snow filled carpark and sub-zero temperatures to assemble at the premises of the Edinburgh Society of Model Engineers this weekend past. The occasion was the first Forth and Clyde Area Group meeting of 2025. Each of the attendees was buoyed with new spirits and resolutions that this year more modelling would take place. Projects old and new were discussed, and in amongst it all, some modelling was partaken.

Mearns shed was in attendance. The performance at Perth last year was still under discussion, with various changes to the scenic and operation under discussion. Much of the discussion this month surrounded means of disguising a "bulge" in the backscene where the wiring and other do-dahs for the lighting runs from beneath the boards to on top.

After much deliberation, a cardboard mock-up, some sawing and a second mock-up, a three-story tenement back was chosen.  This will be at an angle to the shed, with a passageway between the buildings. The backs will face into the yard - one can imagine the faces of children and adults alike, pressed to the glass and watching the goings on in the shed, the locos arriving, coaling up, taking on water and departing again. What adventure awaits beyond the portal of the road bridge?  Where do those magnificant locomotives go to? What strange visitors will come to the depot next...?

(Enough of that McIntosh...)

As well as the central attraction, there were several individual projects going on around the room. Alastair was working on trackwork. He is making turnouts from PCB sleeper and rail (forgoing chair plates), using the associations jigs. He has printed scale drawings from which he cuts his timbers to length then inserts them into the jig, clamping it in place ready for soldering.

At the next table along, Martin was also working on turnouts. He has been experimenting with different means of construction, bringing along some Work in Progress. He built his first PCB soldered turnout last year but fell afoul of the 10thou height difference between PCB sleepers and easitrac sleepers on that attempt. He then encountered issues with the etched chairs and put everything away, only returning to turnout construction this last week.

He has two experiments on the go - the first is a repeat of the previous PCB construction, well, a mirror image, which will be chaired in some form to keep the rail at a consistent height. The second. inspired by an article in the magazine from November/December 2023, is made from the ABS strip and unpegged easitrac chairs available in Shop 1. The purpose of both is to experiment and see what's possible, Martin expressing a desire to make more progress in 2025 than he managed in 2024.

Stuart was working on his next set of buildings.  These have progressed somewhat since last pictured on this very blog. He continued work and was discussing weathering - opting for using a physical brush rather than an airbrush.

Graham was working on his laptop, continuing his foray into 3d CAD, whilst Chris discussed methods of painting for his Midland 4F - made from the Mike Raithby "kit" previously available through the Association. Chris had tried painting the loco previously but had encountered two disasters. First was a fall from height, causing some of the delicate parts to ping off (fortunately, the drop and pinging all happened within a handily placed bucket, but one can imagine the heart stopping feeling!), and secondly, when applying a topcoat of spray paint, it had bubbled and gone "horrible", requiring stripping to start again.  Some words of advice were passed on from the Chairman with respect to the "right" paint to use.

Jim was in the process of re-motoring his venerable CR439 class. This scratch built locomotive, from before at least one member was born, was one of Jim's first locos built in 2FS, and is mechanically sound - the change in motor being its only flaw. Jim spoke about the construction techniques he had used 50 years ago, including a compensated chassis made from phosphor bronze that came apart around the wheels.

The loco has lost some detail over its life (but haven't we all), and Jim spoke about a need to potentially repaint it at some stage, but it was heartening to see the innards look comfortingly like the author's own attempt at the loco class.

Jim is using "cheap Chinese Motors, 12 for £10" that he had found online. He had previously re-motored another venerable loco in his fleet, a small 0-6-0 Dock Tank, and had brought that along to show. The reduced size of the motor, just a 6mm diameter one, and the chiselling out of some of the lead in the side tanks of this loco, has allowed the fitting of stay alive circuitry and two tantalum capacitors, seen below, all wrapped in cigarette paper to prevent shorting.

Alistair was working on a track plan for a small layout - taking measurements from the track book handily brought along by Martin, and the table of key measurements from the Association Website.

Andy was working on an old N Gauge Society kit he had found sequestered from a time before he had seen the light of 2FS.  Whilst they are overscale compared to true 2FS, the NGS kits do help fill up a wagon roster and provide the base for some interesting prototypes not available in our own extensive kit range, or in RTR form.

The Chairman himself had brought along some supplies of Plastikard - though had apparently forgotten his glue and spoke about making bridges, but seemed to spend most of the meeting circulating, practising the royal wave and deigning to speak to us mere mortals.

Simon was working on some MERG goodies - particularly setting himself up to build their DCC base station and not one, but two handsets. Mearns Shed was mostly operated using James' MERG DCC system at Perth, and several of the operators from that show have since joined MERG and purchased the system for their own layouts. At this meeting, Simon was working on the connector module - this allows multiple connection points for handsets into the DCC Control module.

Nigel was hard at work, with vice and solder - but I forgot to ask him what exactly he was working on. Even zooming in on the original image doesn't give a huge clue...

Talk over the course of the meeting turned to 2025 and beyond, Model Rail Scotland just over a month away, the Derby expo in May and whisperings of a Scottish Mega Meet sometime in the latter half of the year. (Though this might have been an attempt to light the proverbial rocket under some of those with layouts that haven't really made much progress since the last in 2023...)

It is worth noting that Peter Kirmond's excellent "York" - a 2FS scale model of York Station in the heyday of the LNER, and Railway Modeller Cup Winner for 2023, will be present at the show and is a must see for viewers interested in any scale!

But before then, our next meeting shall be at the usual time, in the usual place on Saturday 8th Feb. I write this at the end of every blog, but, with sincerity, we are a friendly bunch of mostly like-minded modellers, and we welcome any visitors, new members or people interested in 2FS but haven't quite taken the plunge.