Wednesday 22nd November

Worklist:

Generator room detailing
Cassette construction

A full house again and with relatively straight-forward tasks for S&L, there was a lot of idle chattering going on.

Geoff continued with the generator room, but he'd been busy in the week fitting cables/conduits and assembling the control panel elements. This week he created a brass balustrade from brass posts made for the boat-modelling fraternity, together with brass wire rails.

He then set about designing the handrail access ladder. This element has long been a subject for discussion between Geoff and Stephen. Both have experience of access ladders, but in different fields,  and the choice between a vertical, wall mounted ladder and an inclined ladder have never reached a conclusion. The principle consideration centred on how the heavy batteries might have been replaced - something both agreed would need a hoist. Geoff's preference for a raking ladder had to give way in the end, purely because the room and equipment didn't allow for its physical installation. The vertical ladder, whilst not providing ideal climbing conditions, did provide a space for the batteries to be lowered. 

Geoff in ladder-making mode.

The handrail will have a curved section added to protect workers at the top and 'contain' the delivery area. Stephen thought the final solution was perfect!

Laurence and Stephen pressed on with storage cassettes. Stephen completed two short cassettes (400mm and 420mm) using up left-over angle, whilst Laurence made a 'standard' 770mm unit. Components for several more are ready for assembly, but in order to determine a practical range of lengths, a full running session is planned for the next meeting.

He does make a meal of things sometimes...

Wednesday 15th November

Worklist:
Generator room details
Fiddleyard cassettes

There was no meeting last week, but we all met at 'Showtrain' - the Tolworth Model Railway Show. The first highlight was meeting up with Dave Phillips, an old friend from T&DMRC days. Dave also helped out on Cottesmore and is pictured on the CLR page. You can't miss him - his nickname is 'Furry D'!

The second highlight was peering over a back-scene at a fiddleyard that employed cassettes exactly like ours. Instead of the multi-angle location system we had decided on, they simply had a folded piece of brass (see below). This provided location and electrical connectivity - Simples!

In the workshop, Stephen and Laurence were right in the middle of making some more cassettes, this so revelation couldn't have come at a better time. A brief group discussion to assess the idea, strip-off the angles from one cassette and then a bit of playing around with a bulldog clip proved it was a great solution. However, taking the angles off the cassette was all that was needed, as the angles on the fiddle end offered a perfect locator, so we only needed something on the open side. We decided on a strip of shaped metal bolted on the the end angles. A strip of nickel silver was cropped, bent into shape and fitted. It worked beautifully.

That sorted, Geoff went back to making racking for the batteries in the generator room and Stephen & Laurence started to make two more cassettes.

At the start of the session, Stephen had presented a solution to a problem with his new BO-BO diesel. The Bachmann GE44 has a recognised problem with 1st & 2nd generation chassis - the gears on the axles can crack, which causes a problem with the drive. Stephen's model has a 2nd gen chassis and the cracking is just beginning. However, a severe problem with another 1st gen chassis has made it unusable. Geoff & Stephen had discussed repair options, but Stephen had finally decided to try and make new ones. He read-up on gear specifications, their constituent dimensions, went through copious YouTube tutorials on drawing involute gears and finally sent a 3D drawing off to Shapeways in Holland. (The gears are 6mm dia. so four had to be joined to make the minimum print size). The new gears had arrived last week and were tentatively fitted to the old loco - they worked perfectly!

The final drawing above and the new gears below, still on their sprue beside the cracked gear.

Wednesday 1st November

Worklist:
Generator room details
Fiddleyard cassettes

Geoff progressed the generator room interior, assembling the gantry and battery racks. It looks like the corner reinforcing triangles will have to be removed.

All three were involved in deciding what size cassettes were required and how best to use the 1200 x 600 sheet of 12mm MDF that had been purchased. Once decided (a mix of standard '770/800mm' and some shorter units) the MDF was cut down on the bandsaw using a a length of heavy steel angle as a replacement guide. Red plastic strips for the re-railers and some 1.5mm packing strips were also cut.

Laurence continued to work on the cassette he had started to make, while Stephen got comfortable and cleaned-up all of the newly cut materials.

Unfortunately, Geoff couldn't make ExpoNG, so the South Eastern Finecast stone walling sheets S&L had purchased at the show were reviewed and approved for use as cladding for the final/main building on the layout.