Dipping a toe in the NG pond

Those with long memories [ or a total lack of interest in what really matters in life may] remember that I burst upon the YMR scene like a damp hessian sack with my OO 1/76th GWR BLT called Bear's End. A putative house move meant it had to be dis-assembled to return a railway room to bedroom status but a lack of buyers for our 1/2 acre site, a four bedroom house with huge [27 x 15ft] cellar workshop means we are still here.

 I began to build an eight foot by two foot portable layout based on an Inglenook puzzle but halfway though thought I should try something new and have chosen to continue in OO9 NG, largely because I could not get Bear's End in eight foot by two foot

OO9 means rails 9mm apart, and all else at 1/76th scale, so, OO buildings, figures and infrastructure with narrow gauge railway. It's very roughly two feet between the rails instead of four foot, eight and one half inches, and a visit this year to the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway convinced me that a new challenge, a whole new beginning, was the way forward.

A lot of OO9 involves quarry and industrial railways with small locomotives capable of negotiating temporary track and a minimum of investment in the accompanying equipment. That was not what I wanted.

Isle of Man, Lynton and Barnstaple and Leek and Manifold Railways to name but three were 'proper' railways, built to high standards as common carriers, that is, railways that transport passengers and goods on scheduled services. It was largely the terrain on which they were built that decided the gauge as narrow gauge railways cost considerably less to build than standard gauge systems. They were able to negotiate sharper radii bends, used less land, and smaller rolling stock and carriages needed proportionally smaller stations, sheds and yards.

I have joined the OO9 Society, and the Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling on-line forum, and following an 'all-clear' after a recent recurrence of an eye-sight problem have begun to learn a little about the NG scene. To say they have entrenched views and a multiplicity of disciplines is an understatement. They have their own language, abbreviations, obfuscations and opaqueness, after all doesn't everyone know that a Wardling 0-4-0 Scrimbler has two sandboxes on the boiler whereas the Barcleset Pootler has but one?

The layouts variously displayed range from garish green 2ft by 1ft ovals with one station building made from Packeto-Cornoflako to superbly weathered and reasoned tours-de-forces with realistic cameos in every direction. Locomotives range from the frankly 'rough' finish [which is where I am sure my first efforts will lie…] to masterpieces of miniature engineering, for there lies the difference 'tween OO and OO9.  With few exceptions, locomotives are hand built, on donor chassis gleaned from the the N gauge market. Whilst Graham Farish mechanisms feature strongly, the cognoscenti think nothing of buying a £90 German or Italian locomotive off the shelf and tearing it apart to graft an OO scale body onto the chassis. Numerous 'cottage industries' provide support, but unless you know that 'Twaddlings Models' were taken over by 'Thrupple Castings' when the last proprietor went mad and bit the bank manager, the materials regularly referred to as 'Twaddlings' are in facto provided by a web presence called 'Thrupples'.

For my first foray into the field, I have chosen a 'Gem' Model Railways 0-6-0 tank locomotive 'Dennis' from the Snailbeach Railway. [No, I'm not making it up, you couldn't, could you…?] Did I say that the Gem Model Railway kit is supplied by Lytchett Manor Models…I didn't? Sorry! I thought you'd know that. In this era of economic stringencies, manufacturers carry little stock, my model was cast to order, and it shows. [below] The mouldings carry virtually no discernible flash, are square and finished to a very high standard and arrived in just under a  month after the order, well packed, here in France for signed-for service charge of only £3.00p.

I shall try and assemble it with a mixture of low-temp soldering [Carrs Lo-temp and Red flux] and super glue gel. Once settled into the NGRM forum I have had no shortage of offers of helpful advice, and I shall make a start as soon as I get a replacement 25Watt Antex iron. I have spread out the kit below.



In the meantime, thinking I had grasped the main tenets of the OO9 game, I ordered and received the chassis below. I thought I could try and build a freelance design around it. Clearly I had got my milly-meeters and my inches muddled up. Build something around it??? I shall have to find it first, I dropped it into the fluff under the workbench and now can't find it….



Wish me luck,

Doug

[user=312]Chubber[/user] wrote:

………..Wish me luck,

Doug

I certainly do Doug: entrenched views etc., a but worrying that!  :shock:    Sounds an interesting project though and knowing your skills I have no doubt that you'll make light work of it.   ;-)

Ken

 

[user=312]Chubber[/user] wrote:

Wish me luck,

Doug

Absolutely  :thumbs………..I do hope you are going to provide regular updates………..a combination of your modelling skill (not sure many of us will believe the "rough finish forecast") and inimitable humour is too good to miss.

So glad the eye sight issue got resolved

Best wishes from Vancouver

John

[user=312]Chubber[/user] wrote:

Wish me luck,

Doug

Good luck Doug and so I'm pleased that you no longer have any worries about seeing what you're doing . . . just don't drop anything!

I will also be watching with interest, as I have a dream, well, a plan really for a later phase  . . .

Bill :) 

(just up the road)

Hi Doug,

OO9 NG, nice. I like the look of the kit. Nice castings. Was the Farrish (?) chassis included? Not sure about that chassis with the pizza cutters for wheels, given that you'll be running on code 55 or thereabouts…..could be a bit bouncy.

You're right about tearing perfectly good N-scale engines apart. Apart from Dapol and Farrish I found that Bachmann (America) Moguls and Pacifics are great resources for X-6-X chassis, and the pistons and valve gear are already there. Hornby-Minitrix N-scale chassis are also good if you can get them. Lilliput (Bachmann) are also superb engines, and their fire-less models look right at home in an industrial UK setting. The Tomytec chassis range are also good for railcars, diesel critters, etc, as are the Kato ones.

Nigel

Sounds like this is going to be another one of your threads that we "must watch."

Good Luck with it, Doug.  Not that you'll need it. 

Good luck Doug ,

We're all watching. Do your best.

Thank you all for your encouragement, my recent expenditure of SLW  [Scottish Laughing Water] tokens has been prodigious!

Nigel, thanks for the advice, no, the Farrish chassis wasn't included. Ishall try and get my brother-in-law in the U.S.A. to send me some locos. The little chassis, is that the one you are referring to as 'Pizza Cutters'?  It is very new and 'modern' or so I thought.The Kato chassis are amazing value, £16, plus £4 delivery from Japan in 5 days. I have plans to build a skirted loco on one.

Ah well, grass cutting and domestic chores first and where is that postman with my new soddering iron [not a mis-spelling]

Doug

Hi Doug, I had a little foray into 009 a few years ago but I didn,t get very far, I built a Gem Baldwin body onto a Farish 08 chassis but could I heck as like get it to run properly, I stripped the chassis down completely cleaned and polished every moving part and pickups, lightly oiled the bearings and joints, cleaned the track to within an inch of its life, and it still ran like a stuttering drunken sailor, I still have it and every now and then take it out and look at it, remember what it was like and put it away again, todays donor locos are far and away better than the old Farish gear but I don,t think I will be going down that route again, too many projects on the go already ;-).


Good luck, Pete.

That was the problem I had back in the day. N gauge chassis were rubbish. I did persevere however by building my own split framed chassis to 8 mm gauge. Couple of years of that then sanity returned. I still prefer split frames though,but OO gauge doesn't really have the room so I tend to use the American system. One side live, t'other with pick ups.

I like the look of 009, I assume you know of County Gate? I get very tempted when I look at it.

009 Lynton and Barnstaple Railway County Gate

Well, grass-cutting done, including a pre-cut search for Norman and Norma Natterjack who hole up under the overhanging thyme plants during the day. Despite being regularly re-housed in the front drive drain soakaway they are usually back the same evening, unless one of them takes an evening  detour and has a swim in Bisto's water bowl.

Pete, Henry, seems lots of people have tried and discovered it's not for them, and then there's the smart ar%es like Andy who parade County Gate for all to see, just to rub it in. I'll get you at playtime, Andy.

Doug

Not a lot of progress so far, my 25W Antex arrived, so I have fixed the buffer beams to the ends of the footplate. I now have to file down the ends of the chassis extension blocks until they fit between the buffer beams, whilst keeping the two visible holes in alignment, as a bolt securing the footplate to the chassis passes through them.

I am considering putting any more white metal soldering on hold, as Antex have announced an intention to supply soldering irons for white metal user…

http://www.mremag.com/index.php/news/316-antexwm

It's so frustrating, I want to get on, but this WM soldering is a high risk occupation, conversely I could try a bodging along with a mains dimmer switch.

So, here is my first progress picture, I won't show you the underside, just say 'Thank God' for dental burrs and St Dremel.



I shall have to take it down to the workshop to do the filing, Shelagh says whilst she doesn't mind bits of paper on the floor, the same doesn't apply to 'nasty grey filings' and especially when they appear as grey fingerprints all over the 'fridge door….

Poop-poop!

Doug

Keep up the good work Doug, and ignore County Gate - it was built by a team of professionals and an unlimited budget…

Shaun.

Doug,
      Welcome to my form of madness, perhaps we might be able to swap ideas:hmm, still, good luck my friend………

                                              Best regards………………….Tom……:);-):cool:

Shaun, Tom, thanks for your messages, I'm  having to discipline myself to get on and complete a NG engine shed I started befor my  new  toy  arrived!

Doug

It looks really good Doug!

Well, one or two things since the last post, I lost my footplate assembly, thinking I had swept it off the workshop bench with wood shavings and binned it only to find it again the day after the replacement footplate and buffer beams arrived…

I have built the temperature controller below, and though I have tried it out on scrap bits haven't plucked up courage to do any real work with it, continuing with super glue.






Being a smart-ar$e I decided to pre=paint the inside of the cab, firebox and back-head prior to assembly only to find I needed to file good deal of it off again to get the blessed things to fit neatly together, rubbing off some paint with my fingers too.





Then………..I discovered a very unpalatable truth i.e. if you drop a super glued WM model on a tiled floor it falls to pieces! So, now that the cab interior is accessible again, I'll repaint it, use superglue once more and try and make more progress.

Poop-poop!

Doug

Time for a long overdue update!  Things have gone very slowly lately due to a trapped nerve in my right shoulder and a flare-up of joint pains in my hands, but compared with what some poor souls in Cumbria etc. are putting up with, I've little to moan about.

Having re-assembled the cab after dropping and breaking it off, I've added the boiler and smoke-box, fettled it a little and primed it with car body primer.




I've made a start on the motion, the piston rod and outer cross head are soldered together using ordinary solder, then a fine brass pin inserted and the connecting rod soldered to the pin with low-temp solder and the pin trimmed off.

Shown below resting on the steam chest with the cylinder casting, awaiting fettling, lying on top. I put a slip of paper between the crank rod and the back of the slide bars to stop it all sticking together, and then pulled it out. The N.S. etch seems so fragile.




I have had a go at kit-bashing one of John Wiffens small engine sheds [RO21a] to make a NG workshop, mainly by cutting off about 3/4" and substituting Plain Clapboard TX35 for the stone walls, with an RSJ running over them. I chose to free-lance my ventilators, taking an idea from John Ahern.


Copyright CV Russell and E Fells. Reproduced with their kind permissions.

Doors are as per my GWR Bear's End Shed, hung and hinged on 0.6mm pins from florists wire and brass shim strips blacked with permanent marker and then scratched with brown oil pastel to make 'rust'.



Just noticed the door handle has fallen off….
















Windows have the glazing bars stuck on both the inside and outside faces. The freelance smoke hoods are folded up from thin card to reflect the change in the ventilator size and position.



The building currently only rests on the base, as detailing will have to take place onto the floor because the construction of the roof [with overhanging gable capping stones] makes it impossible to lift off the roof.




Well, that's about it for now,

Poop-poop!

Doug

Excellent, Doug.    :thumbs

I don't know which to admire more - the loco or the shed.