July 2021 FCAG Meeting

A different author this month. Our Press Officer, Graham, has done a sterling job over the past five years, setting up and maintaining this blog. It's time to give the willing horse a rest, so from now on, expect different authors each month, although, just to be nasty, the Press Officer will be pressed back into service now and again, if only to show the rest of us up. Thanks, Graham! Your dedication to the cause has been (and will be) much appreciated.

 

This month's FCAG jamboree was once again held at ESME Almondell. Unfortunately, due to the unexpected weather conditions, (a strange yellow thing in the sky was scaring the bejabers out of many of us who have the good fortune to live in Scotland) only three of us turned up for the jollifications in West Lothian. Alastair, Chris and Alisdair braved the extreme temperatures (which had reached double figures Centigrade - jings!) and talked 2mm matters for a short while then told each other tremendous lies about those not present. Certainly I hope they were lies; I really don't think that can be done without stripping the copper off sleepers, even between consenting adults.

"Enough of this twaddle!" I hear you say. "Never had any of this nonsense when there was a professional in charge!" OK, I'll get on with it.

As our tame representative of ESME, Alastair took Chris for a tour of the works going on at the site to build the various circuits for 7", 5" and 3" gauges. It's extremely impressive with a turntable being built outside the meeting room. It will be hand operated. I suspect they don't fancy the challenge of getting a stepper motor adjusted.

Alastair had brought us some photos of his current locomotive construction; a 5" gauge LMSR 2P 4-4-0 tender locomotive. It looks like it will be a very impressive beast. No problem with counting rivets there.

 

It must take some time out of the progress he is making on making his 2mm layout baseboards using foamboard and his own 3D printed components. He is also involved in the construction of an ESME N Gauge layout in the same room as we were meeting. We forgave him for his heretical behaviour, because we're nice and aren't as bigoted as some make out. Still, he was sent out to the corridor for an hour to consider his errant ways.

Chris showed us his highly impressive Fowler 4F constructed from a Raithby kit. This is his first locomotive build in any scale (I think) and he is making a superb job of it. He showed us a video of it operating under DC (it will be a DCC model) and it is running extremely smoothly. Here's a non-moving image of the beastie with chimney and dome precariously balanced on top of the boiler and smokebox.:

 And one with Chris' piece of fluff:

 Lovely stuff. And now he is working on handwheels for the cab. Such joyous madness!

Alisdair had been playing with his Silhouette cutter to ease the pain of making Highland Railway timber building with their planks with cover strips, using plastikard with sticky paper on top. The sticky paper was cut through after sticking on to the plastic and then removing the unwanted bits. Reasonably successful and much easier than individual strips stuck down. Here is his experimental mens' lavvy

 

He also showed his N Brass hand crane and Buchanan Kits horse lorry:

 

In the afternoon, five of those poor folk who had been so comprehensively denigrated earlier in the day, joined us by means of the magic of Zoom for the discussion subject of the day: Servos. Andy, Graham, James, Mick and Roy joined in what we hope will become a regular feature every second month.

James led the servo discussion with an excellent presentation on the differences between analogue and digital servos. He talked with clarity on the subject, using words of one syllable for the benefit of the luddites among us i.e, me. Some elementary explanations were provided

Leading to James' conclusions. He was of the opinion that analogue is fine for turnout operations, but digital suits signal operation much more effectively due to its finer control.

 

There was some discussion as to whether low noise is necessary or not. Depends whether you are in an exhibition (remember them?) setting.

A couple of the members use servos with their electronics ripped out to operate points and signals, effectively just geared motors operated by centre-off switches under manual control. Mick showed us how to remove the electronics and a demonstration set-up for operating a signal using such a beast:

 Alisdair showed his decidedly low-tech approach to turnout operation using a similarly stripped-out servo. It uses a laser-cut support produced by former Group member, Martin.

 Moving off the subject of servos, but still with electronics, Nigel briefly showed us some comments he is using in development of wagon recognition for a friend's 4mm layout using RFID technology. (For others like me, I just had to look it up; it means Radio Frequency Identification.)

Nigel had also been working towards the fateful day when FCAG will be producing copper-clad sleepers for the Association. Using Fonly technology, he has produced a sleeper gapping machine to replace the existing one, which apparently is fairly non-portable, needing hire of a 20t mobile crane. (I may have exaggerated the weight somewhat, but that's my prerogative. So there.) Simple, but ingenious.

It was agreed that incorporation of the Zoom meeting, for FCAG members and loons of the Grampian Area Group, had been a success, so worth repeating every second month.

Our next meeting will be back at Almondell on Saturday 14th August. Hopefully, more than three of us next time.

June 2021 FCAG meeting

Nigel, Alisdair, Alastair, Andy, Jim, Simon, Graham, and James attended our June meeting on a sunny summer day at the Almondell premises of the Edinburgh Society of Model Engineers, thanks to the good offices of Alastair, who likes his live steam. It was nice to see everyone face-to-face again and to be able to inspect each others' models close up rather than rely on Zoom. A quick round-up:

Jim had brought along a row of buildings from Kirkallanmuir. It was quite a surprise to realise that they are in semi-low relief. I should have made more of an effort to photo the very finely detailed shop windows ... next time ...)

 Alasdair had his Yankee Tank and Highland Railway Director's saloon:

 Simon had rakes of fish vans, insulated and otherwise:

Nigel was working on a brick workshop with northlight roofs:

 

All in all a hive of industry, with social distancing and open doors and windows (not always very practical in Scotland, but no problem with today's fine weather). Several group members worked on turnouts, trying to master Laurie Adams chairplates without going cross-eyed.

Meanwhile, outside, the ESME permanent way engineers were working in a somewhat larger scale. Presumably they lost all their chairplates in the carpet and were obliged to solder the rails directly to the sleepers. However they get extra marks for doing mixed-gauge turnouts.

It’s a strange feeling, coming out of the lockdown period and back to physical meetings. I was in two minds whether to turn up, having done so little modelling during the long winter ... but after an afternoon’s chatting and wielding a hot soldering iron, motivation returns. Good old area groups! Or maybe it was just the sunshine? Does it matter?

We hope, health rules permitting, to meet at Almondell again next month.

May 2021 FCAG meeting

Our May virtual meeting had the theme of "scenery". Alistair, Alisdair, Alasdair, Simon, Jim, Roy, Tony, Richard, Graham, Nigel, Mick and Andy attended.

First up was Andy, who for historical interest showed us how he'd created the hillside for a viaduct on his previous layout with layers of expanded polystyrene in the traditional way.

More recently he hit on a good technique to represent birch trees: trunks from a wire armature, coated with PVA glue which is then dried with a heat gun. Foliage from commercial sources is then added with a spray of glue:

The end result looks very convincing. Ignore the pins, the glue was still drying! The wall in this diorama is simply made from a photo of a neighbour's garden wall stuck down on card, and looks fine at normal viewing distance.

Simon showed us progress with Glenfinnan. The substructure for scenery is built up with high-density foam which can then be carved away as required.

The backscene will be painted onto a continuous roll of vinyl salvaged from a discarded pop-up marketing banner (no, not the one from the 2mmSA roadshow!) and will be supported on uprights which will slot into the gap of the beam (two skins of ply with softwood separators) at the baseboard edge.

Simon uses thin neoprene rubber sheet as a track base, aiming to get some sound insulation. This led to some discussion ... the consensus was that good running is far more important than a noisy baseboard, and that a soft track base material is likely to lead to trouble which can only be remedied by ripping up the track.

Mick showed us how scenery for "Callaton" had been built up from scribed board for retaining walls:

and strips of Weetabix packet (now we know where he gets his muscles from) glued into a grid with PVA as a landscape former.

This is then covered with a single layer of paper towels, glued down with more PVA:

which is then painted.

To replicate sidings where the ballast is covered with a layer of earth, oil and general muck, he used slivers of cardboard between the Easitrac sleepers, trimmed off neatly then edged with a larger piece of card:

This works nicely when coloured and the gaps filled (adding weeds as you go). However it's best planned before tracklaying commences; it's somewhat awkward to retrofit.

Mick also showed some pointwork for the "kip" on his latest project, "Pitt Hill".

He also showed us a video of it working ... but it has not yet been approved for general release by the British Board of Film Censors, so for now you will have to wait.

Jim showed a few photos to illustrate his approach to scenery. In his first layout "Connerburn", developed in the 1980s, he paid careful attention to distracting the viewer as a train left the layout for the fiddle yard, placing distractions such as trees, signals, road vehicles and shrubs to catch the eye:

Scenery on Connerburn was built up with papier-mâché made from old egg cartons over card formers:

Paint and tree-planting completed the scene.

On his current project "Kirkallanmuir", some areas have been built up with expanded polystyrene rather than paper over card formers, to give solid material into which tree-trunks can be inserted. This is covered with a thin slurry (aim for the consistency of double cream) of DAS modelling clay, coloured with powdered poster paint. The advantage of using DAS is that it can be reworked once dry - when moistened it becomes pliable again, and can be re-sculpted with fresh material blended in if required.

Jim's approach to modelling sidings with sleeper-level muck is to use a sand-plaster-Cascamite glue dry mix, spread into place, then moistened with water with a drop of washing-up liquid added to destroy its surface tension. The best way to apply the water is using an eye-dropper drawn along the railhead - this soaks into the ballast mix and hardens after a couple of days.

We had a short digression about track, which led Tony to mention the advantages of buying rather than building pointwork in order to put a trouble-free result in place quickly. As ever it's a question of saving time by spending money, but if trackwork is not your favourite task, it's worth considering seriously. Tony shared an image of some pointwork he commissioned from Keith Armes and very nice it looked too.

Now that most of us have had a second vaccination, after 15 months of Zooming we plan to have a Covid-compliant physical meeting on 12 June, as long as it remains permissible. Thanks to the generous hospitality of the Edinburgh Society of Model Engineers, this will be at their newly-completed Almondell Model Engineering Centre near Livingston in central Scotland.

To ensure we stay in touch with some of the further-flung group members, however, we won't abandon the virtual part entirely. It will be interesting to see how this new format evolves. Each member must remember to bring their all their own modelling kit, facemasks, lunch, crockery and utensils ... everything except the kitchen sink, which is already available at ESME.

April 2021 FCAG meeting

Our virtual meeting this month had the snappy theme "Uses, Misuses, Advantages, Disadvantages and Frustrations in the use of DCC". Nigel, Jim, James, Stephen, Chris G, all three Al(i/a)s(d/t)airs, Graham, Simon and visitor Andrew participated. Most are already using DCC, or planning to use it, so there was plenty experience on tap and the discussion was wide-ranging. Some noteworthy points: 

• retrofitting DCC to small prototypes is difficult, it's much easier to plan it in the design phase.
  
• DCC doesn't eliminate the need to clean track! (and Roco track rubbers are much preferable to Peco, since they don't crumble)
• it's important to try a few controllers to discover your personal preference before deciding which to buy, because there is no consensus on whether rotary, push-button, or variations on these themes are best for speed and direction control.
  
• Although a home-brew DCC controller based on an Arduino or similar board can cost as little as £30, the best starting point for many is a capable but extendable main unit from Zephyr or Digitrax in the £170-£200 bracket.
• The Railcom system (allowing controlled entities to talk back to the controller) comes into its own on club layouts since it allows locos to inform the controller of their details, reducing confusion when other peoples' models are being operated
• a SPROG (dedicated hardware allowing programming via a graphical user interface on a PC/laptop/tablet) is much more convenient than programming via a DCC controller
• for locos which do a lot of shunting as well as hauling trains, it can be helpful to set up a "yard mode" with finer control and firmer braking as well as the normal traffic settings
• "power districts" (subdivision of the layout into sections, with individual switched  power feeds which can be isolated) are recommended to ease fault-finding, since they allow a short-circuit to be localised much more quickly
• coupling designs requiring a "shuffle" to uncouple can have the shuffle action programmed into a single key, where the DCC chip supports it (typically European designs)

We spent a couple of hours talking through all that. There were a couple of progress reports from individual layouts. Chris G showed us how trackwork, earthworks and structures are progressing on Bosalek:

Simon is at a similar stage with Glenfinnan:

He is less happy with the running gear for his observation saloon: the 3D-printed body does not make sufficient allowance for the wheels and rides too high: some excavation will be required. However, it's progressing.

Although we expect to have at least one more virtual meeting (on 8 May), we are daring to hope that a physical meeting may be possible, no doubt with masks, distancing and so on, in June.