October 2022 Forth and Clyde area group meeting

This month's meeting at ESME's Almondell premises saw Nigel, Jim, James, Alisdair, Alistair, Alasdair, Graham, Andy and Simon gather for a blether and a show-and-tell session. In the morning we settled down to progress personal projects. Andy was building a Finetrax point:

James had an etched kit on the go. Alasdair was creating a Fusion360 3D CAD design for a North British van.

Nigel and Jim discussed matters of technical importance.

After lunch it was time for show and tell. Jim has finished his Caledonian Railway Lambie period Jumbo:

He bought along his "other Jumbo", built by Jim nearly 50 years ago to represent an earlier Drummond period locomotive with its Stroudley style tender, and now on its second chassis. The comparison was interesting. 

The handrail knobs are simply made from a strand from an electrical cable, wrapped twice around a No 80 drill, twisted, soldered, then passed into a drilled boiler hole and soldered in place. Neat and effective.

Another current project is a Caley twelve-wheeled 65' first-class saloon, of the type built for Glasgow-Edinburgh and Glasgow-Gourock services and similar to the stock built for the "Grampian Corridor" dining-car express which represented the apogee of Caledonian passenger service before the first World War. The model is from a shot-down 4mm etch of Jim Smellie's Caley Coaches range, through the good offices of Angus Higgins. The underframes are, I think, Jim (Watt)'s own etches, and the bogie etches are from Nigel Hunt's artwork, modified by Jim to remove tie bars and add brake blocks.

Simon had a Gresley coach etch from Worsley Works to show us. It seems to be coming along nicely.

He's also working on a BR Type 2 Class 21 diesel-electric, again from the Worsley stable. This should make a nice model when complete.

Alisdair has been repairing his Highland "Yankee" 4-4-0 tank, which had a frustratingly brief appearance at the recent Bournmoor 2mm expo due to problems with shorting. An internal coating of nail varnish has helped, as well as some attention to tight spots in the mechanism where the motion did not quite clear the bodywork. This gave us the chance to have a close look inside the locomotive:

A Cleminson chassis from Worsley is also on his workbench. He has installed 7mm wheels for his Great North of Scotland prototype, which required new W-irons and much awkwardness as a result.

James showed us some recent experiments with model aircraft servos adapted for point control on the Mick Simpson principle of bypassing the control electronics. James' contribution is to use a pivoted bar to lose excess motion so that it is more applicable to 2mm tiebar throws.

These are 7g servos. James also had a recently-acquired 2g servo, still in its packaging, which is significantly smaller:

Another application for these servos is to move an uncoupling magnet:

He'd also bought along the most recent version of the 2mmSA 3D-printed tiebar (available to members from the Association's Shop 1, part 1-100), so we could see its ingenious design. It comes as a single print which must be split into three parts - the frame and the two operating bars, each of which has a hole to take a stiff wire passing through the baseboard from a point blade. The cunning part is that, once installed, the distance between the blades can be adjusted using the supplied self-tapping screw. Quite an elegant design.

Andy showed us how he'd solved a problem which many of us identified with - how to stop snagging sleeves, tools etc on a length of Easitrac as the sleeper sections are threaded onto the rails. He acquired a length of oval-section tube which originated as the weight bar which is sewn in to the bottom of a Roman-style cloth blind so it hangs evenly- they are apparently available at Dunelm and similar establishments. The tube is just the roght width to receive the Easitrac. It is placed vertically (Andy supports his in a bench vice) and the completed rail section is dropped progressively down into the tube as it is completed. A large paperclip or other object through the sleepers is used to stop the whole thing falling down the tube while it is being worked on. So simple, but it gave us all a "why didn't I think of that" moment.

And that was all for this month. We had a brief look at the area group layout then hurried off into the chilly late afternoon. Winter's on its way.