Friday Update: Twenty-nine Four Twenty-two…

Back to work this week and pleased to be able to share a few commission updates with you all. The varied natured of my workbench is again demonstrated by the mix of OO gauge brass kit with compensated chassis vs the scratchbuild custom designed 7/8ths Ruston LB in styrene...

I owned one of these kits myself for a while, but it never made it to the top of the pile and I sold it on. Now then, this commission is a chance to build an example of this distinctive prototype and enjoy working in metal again. The Yorkshire DE2 were largely utilised in the steel industry and I'm sure most of us industrial aficionados will recognise the prototype as that used extensively at Round Oak Steel Works, from which radiated the last remnants of the Pensnett Railway, the Earl of Dudley's own system. The kit is relatively straight forward, but not as much of a beginners kit as others in the Judith Edge range. I'd certainly now suggest to people they start elsewhere before looking at this - several tasks were fiddly, surprisingly it was getting the bonnet doors on that was probably the fiddliest of all!

The design uses a fixed front axle, in this case driven by a High-level hump shunter and iron core motor, with a compensated rear axle. Gibson wheels were relatively straight forward to use, and as usual one has a slight wobble! This seems to be the case whenever I use them, probably a product of them being pushed and pulled on and off during the chassis building process, however it seems to run nice and smoothly. Next up is a coat of primer and then thank goodness not a Round Oak livery but a custom job - orange with wasp striped ends only, phew!

The Ruston  LB project is on to phase two and the batch of 45mm gauge chassis. These were designed and proven in principle but this is the first working example and it worked first time. The joys of CAD, and careful design work. The principle is the same as the 32mm gauge models, although this time the drive chain is inside the wheels, which did mean I needed to trim the back of the sprockets down to clear the gearbox on the rear axle. One of these 45mm models will feature an exhaust conditioner and open cab which will provide a fresh challenge on packaging all the myriad of components within, as I have less space under the drivers seat behind the gearbox in this arrangement. I think the exhaust conditioner itself will need to be removable and hollow, so I can fit at least the DCC decoder in this space. We shall see, more on this next week.

I wandered down to the station this week to see what was happening on the railway. This is the first train of the day heading for Carrog on Thursday 28th. Strangely a quick chat with the signalman and fellow enthusiast at the crossing gates showed I seemed to know more of what was happening on the line then they did, a product of reading Heritage Railway in the library as well as keeping up on the Unofficial Llangollen Railway Facebook page. I've put the latest photos on my Flickr, this album is updated all year so is a good place to find if I've wandered about with my camera in the valley.

Finally, as project X and Y move forwards, one nearly to the finishing stages a casual reading of an old MRJ compendium and a discussion with fellow modeller and co-conspirator Paul Marshall-Potter had me lost in the late Bob Barlow's descriptions of nostalgia in the Inkerman Street article, reaching for my 1990 train spotting books and lost in memories of summer Saturdays at Chester station, wandering about hoping to see a train, or engineers train for a Sunday occupation stabled in the yard. Sometimes I'd strike gold and a Class 31/4 or 37/4 would come through from Manchester with some Mk2s heading for Holyhead, more often it was a Pacer or 150/1 in the bay platforms for Altincham that would be the sole interest, ticking away under their strange separate platform canopy... weed strewn yard beyond, oily greasy tracks between the two platform faces. On some joyous days Dad and I would head to Altrincham to visit Walton's model shop that had moved from Chester to Altincham in my early high school years... you'd hope and hope for the 150/1 with it's plush seats and push sliding plug doors, over the noisy, bouncy and bus like 142s that seemed to dominate the run in their early Provincial livery, later Regional Railways or the weird GMPTE dark grey, red, white and grey Regional Railways livery. I think my all time favourite were the 150/2s in their Sprinter livery which could also be found on the line... I've been taken back 30 odd years, the warm sunshine heating up the ground releasing the unmistakable smell of a BR station, old engine oil mixed with warm creosote, peeling paint, sticky tarmac... yes I'm there... anyhow all this nostalgia and no where to put it. For now...

I hope you all enjoy the long weekend, and make the most of any railways nearby. I will be out and about taking some more photos of our summer resident 56xx here in the valley. I hope to get some more work done on Beaverbrook as well, perhaps even primer on my GP20C-eco, but more on that tomorrow. Until then, more soon...