New / Old - Little Weldon

[Dublo]

I was proposing to use the kit chassis for the Schools, but if they are as free rolling as a Brick as you suggest. Then I shall have to have a rethink, if I use a proprietary chassis I may be able to power that therefore eliminating the powered carriage. Hmmm! Thanks for the heads up there Bufferstop.

[Bigmet]

The RTR OO 4-4-0 chassis from Hornby's D49, Midalnd compound or Schools! will do the job, but there's a lot of carving to do inside the mouldings, as they weren't designed with any thought of fitting a mechanism. Getting additional weight in, balanced above the coupled wheels to deliver decent traction is another matter.

[Dublo]

Hello all
Its been quite a while since I have been active on this forum, I did suffer from a loss of mojo for a while. But now it has returned I have been investigating buying a rolling chassis or indeed a powered one for my proposed schools project. The cost of these however doesn't seem to be much different than buying a second hand model itself. I have therefore put this project on the shelf for the moment. I have however been building Peco Wonderful Wagon and Airfix kits. I have been running Little Weldons first completely Kit built Freight train.

[aleopardstail]

There is a very definite itch which kit building scratches

nicely done

[Phred]

The two blokes inspecting the hole in the ground is a nice touch.

[joshv8]

Hello all
Its been quite a while since I have been active on this forum, I did suffer from a loss of mojo for a while. But now it has returned I have been investigating buying a rolling chassis or indeed a powered one for my proposed schools project. The cost of these however doesn't seem to be much different than buying a second hand model itself. I have therefore put this project on the shelf for the moment. I have however been building Peco Wonderful Wagon and Airfix kits. I have been running Little Weldons first completely Kit built Freight train.IMG_20240428_105746.jpgIMG_20240428_105741.jpg

Nice to see Little Weldon still going.
I know what you mean about losing Mojo, the covid fiasco and cost of living here in Aus has been rather soul destroying. But this year its been coming back!
My younger daughter has really been harassing me to play trains on Lemmington so may be time for a revival.

How hard is it to find those Peco Wonderful Wagons these days? I have a couple here and think they're really cool. They actually have a pride of place on the train shelf in my display cabinet.
Looks like a perfect job on them. What did you do for couplings?

Cheers,
Josh

[Dublo]

Hi Josh great to hear from you again. A revival of Lemmington sound's good to me.
All of the Peco Wonderful Wagon kits I have built have all been second-hand either from eBay or Car Boot Sales. I believe there are still some bits available on the Peco website. The couplings story is a good one, Sydney Pritchard designed the coupling and sold the idea to Meccano Ltd for use in the Toy market and retained the rights to use it in the model market. With the money he made from Meccano he was able to set up Peco. So the couplings are the same.

[joshv8]

It's nice some of the kits are still floating around. What's amazed me is the rise in cost of everything model railway related in the last 2 years. You need to be on the hunt for bargains it seems. The sharp price rise in new products has caused sharp rises in the second-hand market too unfortunately.

Cheers,
Josh

[Dublo]

Hello all
This has been a crazy year with very little time for modelling. I did manage to spend a few hours on Sunday painting some figures so that was quite pleasant. However I seem to have discovered a new interest.

[Phred]

An impressive collection.

[Mountain]

Your layout is complete which is why you are natrually finding new avenues.

I found I reached this point two or three times though it didn't come through completing a layout, as by nature, I kept changing things on my layouts as I had more ideas. For me, my modelling would take a plummit every 15 years or so and would be re-invented with a new idea. Example. I used to love 00 gauge GWR. Yes, I did have a bit of BR green and BR blue era mixed in... Reached around 16 to 17 years old and needed a new bicycle back in the late 1980's and saw one that I liked which was not cheap! £400 in those days! So I sold my moped (Lost faith in it after coil gave out which was repaired but I was scared incase it broke down again (It didn't as my Dad bought it off me and then brother had it, and he was doing around 150 miles a day with it, and that little thing (Yamaha QT50) was cruising at 50mph after the police mechanics tuned it for him while he was wiring up their new headquarters. (They got it to do 68mph on their rollers). So he needed it to cruise as his place of work was a good 70 miles away).
But I sold 3 other bicycles, thr moped and also put all my 2-rail 00 for sale to get this new bicycoe. I did get it and I still have it to thie day!
Now the trains... Nearly all my GWR sold and anything BR green went like crazy! BUT hardly any BR blue era shifted, so as I grew up in that era, I modelled in that!
Then years later 00 prices doubled when I had to quit my job (Didn't realize it was either severe autism burnout or breakdown. All I knew is I had to leave for the chance to recover). So without an income and with 00 models doubling in price, I questioned how I could carry on.
The answer came in a change to 0-16.5 by taking a freelance approach. This big change felt to me like the days when I first started browsing through those Hornby catalogues in 1978 and 1979! The thrill of the hobby returned to me in force!
What I am saying is.... One tries a few things when one reaches the rare dry seasons... After I bought that bicycle in the late 1980's where I was cycling around 4-6k a year, I did try very briefly 0-16.5, SM32 and N, though sold them on or gave them away (The 00 loco converted to 0-16.5 was converted back to 00 and not used much, and for a while my brother had it, and then it came back to me and eventually ended up back into 0-16.5 form with the chassis which for a while was on my loco numner 1 but I experimented with a new chassis for it, so the chassis became used on a loco that has a new home in the USA (We did a swap. It has a Smallbrook Studios body kit on it and the wheels on the chassis were an ideal colour for it. This loco is the red saddle tank somewhere on my thread), and the body with another chassis (I have plenty of spares) is my loco number 3 (I think number 3) "Marmite" which is a little black loco.
I did become a little dissolusioned with 00 about a year or two before I made the change to 0-16.5 and to take a small break, I bought a yacht and had a few adventures with that but I made thr mistake in buying a racing yacht and there was no relaxing with that! That thing went flat out wherever it went! My idea of relaxing on a bank of a large pond or lake went out the window! Would do a quarter of a mile in seconds with the wind in its sails! Decided to go back to my trains!
What I am saying is that though right throughout my life I have always been into trains, I have had two major changes in that time and tried many other thinbs within the hobby. (I have always kept my Dads HD 3-rail and expanded it a bit. Never had it on a layout). Also made the change big style to DCC for several years and back again to DC when I changed to 0-16.5.

The changes refreshed my enthusiasm and the change to 0-16.5 made me like a kid again as I went from draw to draw and raided the bins to find suitable things to scratchbuild with! (Also started using up the things in my 00 parts box which was filled with 00 rejects. Old Triang metal chassis... Ooh! A few old Triang metal bogies! Things like that!) I found a sense of freedom in coming up with new ideas! So many new ideas that I kept finding more before I finished the last ones and had to try the new ideas before I forgot about them! (Why I have several unfinished projects to finish when I am ready!)

Was the best fun I ever had!

What I am saying is that change is good! Refreshes the mind and regains the enthusiasm for life!

Happy people are happy modellers!

[Phred]

Mountain wrote:
I bought a yacht

I almost choked on my coffee before I realised you were talking about a model boat!

[Dublo]

Hello all
I have now found these, I'm looking forward to incorporating them into my Carriage builds.

[Mountain]

Mountain wrote:
I bought a yacht

I almost choked on my coffee before I realised you were talking about a model boat!

Ah! Funny you mention that! While I was working on the railway, I bought the yacht from a model shop in Cardiff. (Antics). I had to take it back on the train with me, so my driver saw it (I was a guard) as I took it back. Now word got round the depot that Inhad bought a yacht, and the guard who mentored me (Route learning etc after I had been trained before finally being passed out) came up to me and said "I heard you bought a yacht... How could you afford it on your wage?"
I said it is a kit so is cheaper.
He asked where I was going to build it and I told him "At home..." and he asked where I planned to sail it so I told him I was going to try it in a certain area (There were large newly made ponds one side of the railway in a public area) and on the other was the estuary... He asked how big it was, so I said it is 90 long and from keel to top of the sail it is 100 high.
He seemed impressed and I dien't think much of it. But later I realized he thought I meant a real yacht as the estuary at high tide can easily take yachts... And it was in cm I was describing the measurements... He must have been thinking in feet!

I had a similar confusing situation when I bought three Hornby pylon kits where someone in work started asking me about them thinking I meant the real thing asking where I had them!

The yacht! Oh! I did try it in one of those ponds...

The maiden voyage! An elderly guy (Early retirement age) came with me as he lived near one of the new ponds. Well, we carried the yacht down there and I assembled the sales and tested the radio gear and the pond has an island. Well, the wind blew it straight towards the island...
Uhmm. How to get it? I took my shoes, socks and trousers off but left my tee-shirt on. There was no one around, so I waded in. I could feel tree roots as the ponds were new... Reclaiming old lands for leasure use.
But it did start getting deeper so I had to go slow, as though my pants were wet, I wanted to keep my tee shirt dry, and the water level was just below my teeshirt by about an inch! Well I reached the island and started back. Now there was this new footpath behind me and I was slowly edging back towards the bank on this large expanse of pond. I looked back towards the low island and in the distance along this path was a lady pushing a pram. By this time the water was slightly shallower so I was standing there with my pants out the water wondering what to do! It was way too far to run, and I was very visible, so I turned towards the railway but a train was coming and that is a long stretch of railway line where passenger trains are slowing down for the station half a mile to a mile ahead...(So it would take time for the train to pass).
All I could do was to turn my back to the train and hold the yacht to hide myself while I just stood there in this pond and wait, hoping that no one else would come! It took several minutes for this lady to pass with me holding the yacht! (Good job the yacht was a big one or I would have been seen!)

After that I wore shorts and brought a towel, and never sailed the yacht in water with an island!

[Mountain]

Hello all
I have now found these, I'm looking forward to incorporating them into my Carriage builds. 453998354_3788258921496888_5490755075414806487_n.jpg

Photocopy them before you cut them up for use!

Better still, use the photocopies and keep the origionals intact!