October 2023 Forth and Clyde Area Group Meeting

 Jings! Not to mention Crivvens!! And even Help Ma Boab!!!

Anither Forth and Clyde Area Group meeting. Can the world cope? 

Yes, folks, another earth shattering event was held at a secret location in the woods of ESME, Almondell, when six stalwart 'ssociation members gathered to yatter and blether about 2mm finescale modelling (after the appropriate secret handshakes and codewords had been exchanged - one can never be too careful, can one?) It felt like the first day of winter, with a sudden plummet of external temperature which was not much tempered inside the clubrooms. However, the hot air being spouted by the half dozen on Jim, James, Al (just one), Graham, Stuart and Chris soon melted the thinner glaciers in the room. 

The immortal (or does it just feel like that, seeming to have been on the go forever?) Group layout, Mearns Shed, was there. It was having the trackwork further put through its paces by Jim and James, using a number of wildly varying models of kettles: 

That's a Russell Hobbs 5MT in the foreground with a Kenwood Jumbo in the background. Other steamy ephemera included an exNB 4-4-42T and, a Caley 2-2-WT. (When the latter was running, a moratorium on sneezing was declared to avoid an inadvertent long distance trip being taken by the wee beastie...) It was decided the track is as good as prototype locomotive shed i.e. just about acceptable.

Unfortunately, due to the absence of the Assistant Press Officer and some adroit and nifty footwork by the Senior PO, it was left to this shambling wreck of a scribe to try and reach the heights of literary description involved in the essays produced by said gentlemen. Said shambling wreck forgot his duties to such an extent that he omitted to probe the further works of Jim and James, which looked quite technical (so wouldn't have been understood by the scribe, anyway). Apologies to those fine gentlemen.

Coming back to the subject of the everlasting layout, later in the day, some butchery was carried out forming ashpits in what will become the apron in front of the shed entrance, involving the wielding of a very sharp Stanley knife in a rather concerning manner. Nevertheless the job was done without loss of fingers or any other appendages.

In other parts of the room, members were busy beavering away. 

Chris, returning to the fold after a spring and summer of yo-ho-hoing and running up the ratlines on his clipper in the mountainous seas off Tibbie Shiel's Inn, showed us the lovely little vacuum ejector on his 4F. A very neat job indeed, particularly considering it was done in his hammock during time off from yo-ho-hoing etc. (presumably).

Over on the left was Stuart, the master mill builder who was mastering mill buildings to an impressive extent. He had brought along his current progress. Looking absolutely the part, you can't but agree. 

And still he maintains his enthusiasm even after cutting all those windows by hand. He claims he retains his sanity...

Speaking about enthusiasm, Graham still retained his, after the recent Loco Chassis workshop and was beavering away on his Class 08 chassis, meeting and overcoming the inevitable niggles on the way. He did manage to use some surprising words which aren't in my school dictionary, though. I must ask him what they meant at the next meeting.

Alisdair was brave enough to show his face after spending the last couple of months, not railway modelling but straying from the One True Way, by making a wee puffer.

To make matters worse, it's not to 1/152 scale, nor even to the much-mocked 1/148, but to 1/144!  Somebody will have to have a word with him. He did try to recover some of his dignity by showing a couple of  railway ED wagons he had been working on. Still don't know if he can be trusted though...

Now for a bit of Forth and Clyde Area Group history. Way back in the 1970s, when the group was formed, Fergus was a keen member. Although he has long forsaken 2mm modelling (he now makes very fine stuff in 4mm), he had kept the 2mm models he had made. He has donated them to the Group and James brought them along. Here's some of the scratchbuilt stuff. Showing it's age, and a wee bit knocked about, it is a reminder that 2mm was not always as easy as it is now.

Ah, the Good Old Days! And many thanks to Fergus for his kind donation.

Finally, what a nice pleasant surprise! We were treated to a wee trip behind a steam engine on ESME's big layout in the woods outside.

The smell of coal burning was highly evocative and the wee machine fairly hurtled through the forest with some impressive acceleration. Thanks very much to Peter of ESME who owns the loco and was the driver. Great fun!

Next month, we will be convening on Saturday 11th November, when we will be being treated to a talk by the Dunallander team on their progress to date.

Beginner Locomotive Chassis Workshop

Those who follow this blog regularly will have seen some discussion of an upcoming Beginners Locomotive Chassis Workshop.  There had been a great deal of discussion within the area group of locomitive building, it was seen by some as a barrier for entry - the soldering together of the chassis block itself is relatively simple on the face of it, however, knowing how to bring the rest of the components together to form a functioning chassis was eluding many of us.

Alisdair, our Glorious Leader and an accomplished locomotive builder, was badgered by a number of us lowly new-starts at various Area Group meetings to an extent that the Area Group could host a specific workshop to focus on our problems and give the poor man some peace...

As such, on Saturday 30th September, a number of us gathered at the ESME premises at Almondale to focus on locomotive chassis building.  Alastair, Alistair, Graham, Simon, Andy, Martin and, visiting from the North East Area Group, Tony, gathered to hear from the experiences of Alisdair, Jim and James.

We had been set homework - to work on a 2FS chassis from the range of conversion kits available on the Association website (3-630 - 3-691).  Some of us paid closer heed to this than others, as I (Martin) had been working on the Association Class 08 kit.

I will apologise, photographs and descriptions are relatively sparse as I spent most of the meeting trying to sort my chassis out, but I will do my best...

Alastair was working on his Class 03/04 Chassis.  He had done a CAD Drawing and 3D printed a body to go over the association etched chassis.  By the end of the meeting the chassis was running under its own power (well, track power), with wheels quartered and coupling rods held on with the traditional wire insulation.

 

Simon and Alistair were working on 3F Jinty's.  Progress was steady through the meeting, however, no photos were found.

Andy was working on a chassis he had converted himself but wasn't running particularly smoothly (I'm sorry Andy, I think you said it was a J-something but I forget...).  It went through a phase of not working after Alisdair had fiddled, to working again and running under its own power by the end of the session.

Alisdair floated around the room pointing out tweaks and suggesting the root cause of problems.  We catch him here discussing Alastair's 3D printed body for his 03.

Graham was also working on a Class 08 - this one 3-681, the Graham Farish Conversion etch rather than the Association kit (3-711a and beyond).  He and James were discussing gearing here if my notes are correct - one of the learning points from the weekend was Visually Inspecting each of the gears and using either a very fine file or some 400 grit sandpaper/wet and dry to polish each of the teeth and remove any burrs etc.

Tony had brought along one of his myriad of Black 5's made from the Association "kit". I think he's got 7 or 9 of the kits to do - see 2020s Blog entries!  He had admitted work had stalled, and had brought along his kit to seek advice on bending/rolling some of the bodywork.  He and Jim also spent some time discussing valve gear - Jim loudly saying thanks to Messrs Sinclair, Connor, Brittain, Drumond, Smellie, Lambie, McIntosh and Pickersgill of the Caledonian Railway that they had seen such things as unnecessary in their locomotive design.

Tony had also brought along some converted stock, part of the fleet for the North East Scotland Area Group's Dunallander layout, being exhibited at the Aberdeen Model Railway show at the end of October.  He and Jim spend some time looking over these so they would be fit to run.

A final shot of Graham working on his Class 08 - the gears are in, the wheels are in and quartered by hand.  He'd used the association quartering jig to help insert the wheels, however, the jig is set up for more traditional wheels and struggles with the external cranks of the Class 08, meaning fine tuning was done by hand.

I, typically, forgot to take photos of my own work and am writing this from the common room of a hostel in Germany and was forbidden from bringing any modelling supplies so cannot take any photos...  

However, I had brought along my 08 and my J94.  The J94 issues appeared to be related to a stripped worm, and a new worm was fitted which improved running, however, necessitated removal of the motor, and will still require the gearbox to be fixed on the free side - some 0.4mm and 0.8mm PCB has been procured.

The 08 started as a bare chassis and by the end of the meeting was fitted with gears and wheels with quartering complete, and requiring the motor mount fixed in place.  There may be more of an update at the next Area Group meeting.

Overall this was an incredibly useful session which helped develop our skills.  There was discussion about holding a more advanced workshop at some point in the future, looking at things like rolling boilers and valve gear - for me, who has at least one Black 5 in my future, say nothing of some BR Standard and LMS large tanks in my future, this sounds incredibly useful.

It was suggested that we each keep a locomotive on the go to allow us to have these more focused sessions on a halfly or yearly basis to help us progress the various projects.

Our next meeting is the usual Area Group Meeting on the 14th October.  Visitors from other Area Groups and those of no fixed abode are always welcome.  We've mostly stopped biting.  Contact details are in the Association Newsletter which accompanies the Magazine