My first day as a junior engineer on the Pix Valley Railway

My first day as a junior engineer on the Pix Valley Railway. by Marc Toddington

Yesterday I helped granddad put ballast down on the track at Rushmoor station. I sprinkled the ballast on the track and brushed it level I then sprayed it with water and dribbled a glue mixture of white glue and water.

When the glue was dry we used granddad’s Hoover attachment to suck up all the loose bits of ballast.

I had fun shunting all the engines around the track to see if everything worked.

Light bulb moment.

When ballasting the track on my layout “Pix valley” I found that recovering the ballast that had not fixed down was tiresome. I tried one of those cheap miniature suction cleaners from that well know auction site; well to put it bluntly my goldfish has more suck!

Then I had that Light bulb moment. I would us that old bottle trap.

 

First off cover the suction inlet inside the trap with some filter material or a couple of thickness of an old pair of tights. Around 8 cm square should suffice and attach with the ubiquitous “Tyrap”.

Next Cut and fit a blank cap insert from 2mm plastic card. Depending on the outside diameter of the inlet hose drill a hole 0.5mm less in diameter. I used a length of 6mm bore silicone tubing available from that well know auction site.

Reassemble the trap and fit the pipe from the domestic vacuum cleaner mine was a snug fit however you may have to fabricate and adaptor depending on the pipe diameter.

You can see how effective the device is and of course you are able to reuse the contents.

A budding “Trigger”

Today I had some help with ballasting from my grandsons as Tesco’s say “every little helps”

Ballasting the track bed

A start was made today on ballasting the track bed, I chose Gaugemaster/Nock GM114 Granite Ballast and deluxe materials Ballast Bond. So far I am impressed with the bonding agent it runs extremely freely over the graduals as there is only around six inches of track done as I write so far I am quite happy with the result. Here is a short video

GoPro tour

A few shots with the GoPro taken at eye level, of some areas which are easily seen from normal viewing. Some snagging on the buildings and ballast needed on the track.

 

these last two are taken with my canon 50D

Dumped

Messing with Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Card ultra low relief modern industrial style units

First a basic frame was drawn with Photoshop then imported into Acrobat Pro

Next graphics were either created again in Photoshop or downloaded from the web

Finally the various elements were placed into the PDF file.

The final file is printed and mounted onto 2mm card

Cutting the front and removing the door opening from the card the rear sub base is then glue centrally over the front section making sure both sections are square and central.

Old Arkwright is hanging in there

A few photos of the construction site and the corner shop Old Arkwright is hanging in there, but there has been a lot of groundwork clearing the site adjacent for redevelopment. Arlesworth model railway club has a reprieve the proposed retirement homes will butt up to the clubs boundary once Arkwright’s shop is demolished.

Routed out 1 to 2 layers of ply for puddles and tracks

Painted with brown earth acrylic paint and rubbed flush 

Scatter being laid, brown, sand and dark green 

More scatter this time brighter green to highlight 

Arlesworth model railway club has erected a new sign to celebrate the fact they are staying put!