The Monthly meeting was held yesterday with the central theme being Templot.
As a number of us are interested in building our own track and I have previously had a go at Templot I gave a short overview of it. At some stage later in the year, when I have refreshed my memory better as to how it works (work managed to get in the way in the week leading up to the meeting so I didn’t get around to running through it as much as I had hoped – and as users will know, it does take some getting used to) we will revisit it.
In other activities which were either going on or discussed, Anthony continued some work on his model of Conwy – for full details of what he is planning on building and his progress see his blog on RM Web here. In the meantime a photo of progress on one of the tubular bridge ends is below:
Ben brought along his Atso-Cad Models Patriot which he had obtained from Shapeways. He has a spare Union Mills Fowler tender to put behind it and the Fox lining to go it. The lining is for a different, slightly over scale kit (!) so a bit of cutting and shutting to get the lining to fit the body and tender will be required. Again, photo below:
New member Ken showed us the results of his experiments with wire he had obtained from a fishing tackle shop (BCF for the Australians reading) in whipping up the loops for a DG coupling in seconds with no soldering required. Self was quite impressed and I plan in visiting the local branch sometime in the very near future and doing like Ken has done – make up a batch and have them ready to go. Once again, a photo below. The jig is a modification to the DG one available:
Other activities involved checking out a pair of new Farish Fairburn tanks which, at the time of writing, have been the cause of some discussion on a number of forums over “wobble” in the running. Both locos were adjudged to be excellent by the observing gathering – not so much the Dapol A3 on test which required quite a bit of mucking around with a Dremel to get the overzealous wheel blacking off to improve the pickups and running. I suspect had we been closer to the supplier rather than 10 time zones away, it may have gone back but after a couple of hours of work it was deemed satisfactory.
We were also lucky to have a visit from Harold from Modratec who is a bit of a signalling guru. His knowledge certainly had your scribe going back to the drawing board with what he thought was the correct way to signal a layout! Anthony organised getting the first of three planned lever frames and others present took advantage of Harold’s knowledge. Later in the year we will invite Harold back to share his knowledge again – but we might be better armed with our questions next time. I think he got off too lightly!
Discussions also took place surrounding the 2mm Scale Association Australasian Gathering planned for later in the year. A 3D Rapid Prototyped wagon is planned for those attending to take home as a souvenir and a decision as to which, will be made in about 6 weeks. Various options were discussed with some finding greater favour than others – and the N Gaugers were getting a say as they will have the opportunity to buy the wagon in due course and fit N wheels, providing they accept it will be at 1:152, not 1:148 (or even 1:160!).
Next month the dark art of wheel quartering using the 2mm SA jig will be attempted by David and I – hopefully with Graeme’s assistance. TOUs will be back on the agenda sometime soon and the usual round of UFOs will be tackled along with DG couplings.
As ever, if you are a member of the 2mm Scale Association, the N Gauge Society or BRMA and would like to join us, please get in touch.
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