Thomas Visits Bride Bay

[Dad-1]

New stock for the 2016 season !!



Last evening the club decided they wanted 'Thomas' at the open day on Sunday.
A chance to run Edward and replace the old short Hornby Annie & Clarabel with
these longer Bachmann USA versions.
Rather than doing landscape & building demonstrations as I had intended I'll
be trying to keep the youngsters under control !!

No wonder everything takes me years longer than expected ....... At least I
never have to ponder on finding something to do, just a choice of which layout ?

Geoff T.

[Dad-1]

Phew,

I only had one spell when I could take a photo, even then
I cut the head off the lad who was driving.
The new stock including my 'Triang Fix' of filing off Douglas'
central wheel set flanges worked fine.
Next outing planned 16th July.

Geoff T.

[Dad-1]

Another outing, a Fete in a gazebo.
Always nice to do an non-railway exhibition event, you get a different audience
and who knows how many children may get into the hobby in the future !!

https://youtu.be/X-DZuCPkZ8s

A second very short video, once it started there was little time for photography
of any sort.

https://youtu.be/cKG8Z-TsCzU

A great day out.

Next planned outing the Bridport Hospital Fete on 1st October.

Dad-1

[Dad-1]

What are the things you don't do, just never quite get around to sorting out ?
One of my blind spots is platform station name signs. Easy enough to make up
unless you want lighting over them, or extended change here texts. I'll do it later
is the put-off to allow more time for other things, what ? well like running trains ?

Today after about 15 exhibitions I decide to make up the signs for the Thomas
layout - Just in time for the next showing on 1st October.

This is also an extended build as I never put names on St Oval, and need them for
Castell Mawr.

Here we have the rough, unpainted without name and propped on St Oval station
to see what they look like.



Perhaps the post length above the sign is a little too long ? Otherwise I'm happy,
except my chocolate brown paint has dried out so I'll have to go shopping again.

Never a dull moment down here in Dorset.

Geoff T.

[railwayjim]

Station nameboard looks good to me Geoff.

And don't you just love it when you settle down for a bit of painting, only to find it dried out........grrrrr.

Jim.

[Dad-1]

Thanks Jim,

I seem to spend more time binning tins of paint than using them at the moment.

Been away for a few days and took the part done signs. Now all together, 2 are single
sided, the other pair are double sided so the station name is seen from the road outside
as well as alighting passengers.



Geoff T.

[Dad-1]

A break to recuperate and recharge after the CM work.

Put the station signs up and repaired the broken fire buckets.
Cleaned the track.
Cleaned all the locomotive wheels.

All ready for Saturday !!



To improve pick-up a graphite pencil rubbed along all loco wheel
backs to assist the wipers in giving faultless running. I wonder
how many people use that trick ?

Geoff T.

[Bufferstop]

Always got my trusty 3B pencil in the toolbox. It worked well on 1990s Amstrad disc drives too. They had an earthing spring that pressed on the end of the spindle, known to cause walk outs in offices where one ran dry. Lid off, whip drive out, quick rub with the pencil, all quiet again.

[LukeB]

Yep, same here. I use a big graphite stick on the rails too.

[Dad-1]

Good to see others use an easily available tweak.

I'm having a silly morning, I put all the locos back in the "Thomas" stock box
and spied my now redundant Hornby Annie & Clarabel laying neglected in a
corner. I thought I'd wipe the names off and turn into Schools Seaside Specials.
My Acetone nail varnish remover took all the paint as well as the names, but no
panic this is not rivet counters territory. I re-painted below the waist with an
orangy Revell paint - nearest I have to Hornby's laughable Teak. I could have
fully re-painted but I wanted to keep the end faces.
They will become Mary & Jane, a permanently coupled pair with compartment
numbers 1 to 6.
Can't use this weekend as paints, varnishes and home printed decals won't be
done in time.
So I'm still a big kid at heart.

Geoff T.

[Dad-1]

Not on my Thomas layout, but these schoolboys were once stuck on the Bride Bay
platforms before I got my brain in order and realised there wasn't enough space to
close the layout down. They have sat in a pending tray until today when clear plastic
bases were glued on.

Here they are getting ready to board the Schools Seaside Special. Notice the little lad
in the distance, he left going to the toilet very late and is worried they'll go off without
him (Images from the past of me ?)



Forget all the fancy rivet counter stuff, first and foremost railway modelling should be
Fun !!

Geoff T.

[Bufferstop]

Geoff your your clear plastic bases show up. Try some plastic cut from Inkjet transparencies which have one shiny surface and one matt one to absorb the ink. The matt surface reflects far less. Stops it looking like everyone wandering around in their own rectangular puddle. If you don't normally have transparencies I'll send you some off-cut bits.
(Reminder to other self, order a pack of transparencies before retirement finally shuts down our office.)

[Dad-1]

No I don't have any John, I used to use scraps on Metcalfe glazing off-cuts
for that very reason, less gloss on one side.
My office bound periods ended around 1983, so none of these modern things
knocking around.
Just like Dickens I know how to run a complex stores stock control using just
big ledgers ..... The only company computer took the entire floor of a large
building. I'm a dying breed, someone who can 'run the world' without electricity,
other than some power for GPO phones. I remember the 1970's when the office
was lit by Quartz light bulbs in jam jars powered from cars batteries all parked
close to the office windows.

Geoff T.

[Bufferstop]

I'll pop some bits in the post. This is how they look, not invisible but not screaming out. A lot depends on how you position them.

feet.jpg (29.18 KiB) Viewed 2689 times

It's getting to be that people who use overhead projectors are getting thin on the ground. When we first set out to be our own bosses it was unheard of not to go to a presentation without a set of OHP slides, just in case they didn't have an LCD projector, we got through boxes and boxes of the things. We even devised a way of putting the content in the centre of the slides so that we could use overlays which fitted the corporate image of whoever we were presenting too. Then it became a case of "oh we must use an LCD projector and we were able to claim for using one of our own. We thought it was an expensive purchase, but using our own and "treating it as our own" at £50 a pop for taking it along it's paid for itself six time over at least. So the pile of blank or recyclable transparencies is slowly drying up, but with us letting contracts go as they come up, there will be another pile of "chuckings out" in the not too distant future, so I'll be going through salvaging the blank bits.

[Bufferstop]

As a PS, I remember the 70s, I was working in Birmingham city centre. There was a light we were allowed to leave on as we had to climb to get down spares from the racks. So we moved our mess room in there. My patch included Newhall Street and Colmore Row home to all the legal firms. Many of them studied the 3 Day Week regulations and discovered that the lights could be left on for the purposes of routine maintenance, so the B****** would put in a call on Friday afternoon just to get us there on Monday morning, meaning they could keep some lights on. Wouldn't work today, we'd just tuck 'em under our arms and hike back round to the locker so that three or four of us could work under the same light.