Andy, Alistair, Alisdair, Gordon, Jim, Stephen and Graham met at Simon's house for another session aimed at adjusting the fiddle yard cassettes for Sauchenford. The first job was to fit adjusters to the support structure legs. The adjusters come with pronged T-nuts.
Drill the legs ...
Place a T-nut in each hole ...
Tap in firmly ... if you are of a nervous disposition or if the leg is slender or its material anything other than ironwood, you may wish to tap in cautiously, or to apply G-cramps to the sides to protect the leg from splitting if the fit is tight. Of course, as experienced modellers, this did not happen to us, because we would have foreseen the possibility and taken exactly these precautions. And if it did happen, it is very hard to see.
Screw in the feet, turn the supports the right way up again, and job done. We now had a non-rocking layout support. It was time for soup and bacon rolls, and a long discussion on whether we want to do another group layout and why. The consensus was that a pair of (non-cassette!) fiddle yards should be built to go on one or both ends of a 3' to 4' scenic section with well-lit sidings at the public side, controllable from front or back. The idea is to create a series of such scenic units mainly as learning exercises for skills development, rather than aiming at exhibition-standard finished layouts, and to dispose of them without fuss once they have served their purpose. The fiddle yards will be re-used.
This meeting was also intended to have a "show and tell" session and there were a few things to look at. Alisdair had progressed some buildings: a Highland Railway goods shed (the smaller standard design) based on Lairg. I recall the shed at Forsinard was very similar. It's built with a base designed to locate in to a socket in the layout scenery. The roof is from Evergreen styrene corrugated iron.
Also a platelayer's sleeper-built hut:
Grandtully station appeared in a blog entry a few months back, but it has now been painted:
Complementing it is a standard Highland Railway signalbox, completed some time ago:
Jim had his Jubilee Tank with him to let us see the latest state of play: brake gear has been added. The 3D-printed wheels are expected to be delivered from a small but well-connected firm of wheelwrights in Kelso before Christmas, with luck. It’s a turning into a bit of a Cliffe-hanger.
Finally, Sauchenford had an unusual visitor in the shape of Simon's Californian Zephyr which he recently put together from a kit.
Many thanks to Simon for once again hosting the meeting. The December session is planned to be in Edinburgh.
