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News
9th March
The Kitson is now in etch primer and will
make an appearance, (not running though) at the Basingstoke show.

The fiddle yard is set up in my room and
finally I have identified the fault on one of the points. The Peco point
motor had failed. This has now been rectified.
8th March
I celebrated my new workshop by building the
Kitson Meyer. It is nearly finished and we are just waiting on a few bits.

4th March
Modelling standards in smaller scales are
fast improving. I am delighted to see more and more folks getting into
etching and other new techniques. Companies like Dapol nowadays trolley
down to the station yard and laser scan a prototype to produce masters
using 3D printing.
...........and then we have 'little people'. Our near perfect rolling
stock, set in highly detailed scenery are more often than not ruined once
the 'little people' are added. They may be purchased ready painted or are
white metal; it doesn't matter, they are so far from looking like real
people that the entire effect of the layout is often ruined. One of my
railway staff looks like Michael Jackson, for God's sake, and NO ONE looks
like that!

these days, this is just NOT good enough
4mm/ft seems simple enough to me....this does
seem to escape some suppliers too and it is often impossible to mix
figures as they have been made to different scales.
When at the Brighton exhibition, I visited 'Overlord' and was shown a
small range of 'little people' which for the first time actually looked
real. There was even a model of someone pointing with a scale finger. It
can be done but isn't!
What is needed is to get real people to dress up, laser scan them and then
3D print them. Then there is a chance. Am I the only one to feel the need
for something a lot better?
I have more or less moved into the new
workshop and hope to get to grips with the loco maintenance starting
today.
2nd March

My workshop re-instated. Now for putting all
the bits back in the new drawers!
So far, I have been able to do nothing on the
railway as we are still in complete disruption from having flood repairs
done to our home. One advantage of being flooded is that eventually, you
get a cheque for damaged furniture, carpet and decorating. The
disadvantage is that one is overrun by contactors who all have 'builders
bums', (a particular dislike of Jenny). Come to think of it, Jenny tells
all the Desperados who come to help showing County Gate, "Make sure that
John is not showing his bum on his scooter". Below is probably the record
beater of these proceedings!
By the evening, I had assembled the new Ikea
flat pack drawer units for my workshop. They go together superbly well and
are worth the trip to that dreadful store! I just wish loco kits went
together as easily!
MDF is unbelievably heavy and it astounds me that it
is still used by some for their baseboards. In fact, I suspect the severe
earthquakes are caused by the excess weight of Ikea MDF which is
proliferating around the world.
Jenny sent me to bed early as she thought I
was getting 'hyper' assembling the flat packs!

Still, the carpet went down today and I am
now building up flat packs of new drawer units for my workshop....
damn....there are some bits left over!
I do hope that some of the sick engines will be able to
be fixed before the next show.
22nd February
Back in 2008, County Gate attended the
Birmingham Model Railway Exhibition, hosted by the Redditch Model Railway
Society. This year, we were again their guest at the Redditch show. This
was held at the town hall and very comfortable it was too. I am always
struck by the friendliness of this club and this year's event was no
exception. We were very short of Desperados for the event and club members
cheerfully stepped in to unload and dismantle the layout.
The Warley show at the NEC seems to act as a
'black hole' for other shows in the area and visitor numbers suffer as a
result. This year was sadly not as well attended as it deserved. It is my
understanding that in future, the club will hold just one event a year at
a new venue.
County Gate automation caused a few problems
but began to improve as the show went on. We have not had time to do any
maintenance since Brighton so there is quite a 'to do' list outstanding.
River Avon ingested a lump of foliage and was
withdrawn. Brue is still out with a bent rod and Exe suffered a broken
wire to the companion car. My 40 year old K1 Garratt took over running the
eight coach holiday special and operated faultlessly throughout the day.
Altogether a good show and I would like to
thank the organisers for the help and kindness afforded to us.
15th February

So we are back from the Brighton
Modelworld show. We arrived at lunchtime Thursday and found ourselves at
the loading bay in freezing conditions. For one who dwells in the
backwoods of Herefordshire, Brighton is rather a strange place. Among
other things, it claims
to be the 'Gay capital of Britain'. On the streets, were men in frocks,
and others (of indeterminate gender), had trousers with the crotch well
below the knees. This made them look as if
they had shot a load in their shorts!

I rather naturally burst out laughing on
seeing such apparitions. Someone suggested that I should go on a diversity
course. I found this hurtful as I have already been to two and last one
actually had more than thirty sorts of real ale.
The Brighton Centre is a slightly frayed
building more or less on the front. The interior is a rabbit warren of
halls with one large arena on the first floor. When they built this place
design work stopped some place short of the loading bays. These are
cramped in the extreme and totally inadequate for the size of venue. The
organisers made a valiant attempt to help exhibitors unload but the
'architecture' got the better of them. Many had to wait at
some race course half way to Dover before being called to unload some
hours later and there were quite a few grumps. Due to our long setup time,
we were allowed in quickly and organisers kindly helped us to unload.
Light relief was afforded for exhibitors when
the huge boating pool burst, dumping thousands of gallons of water across
the floor.
Six hours later, we were more or less set up
and retired to our hotel very cold and tired. The organisers had kindly
booked a hotel on the front. On arrival, the Polish staff were more
interested in getting guests to sign in multiple boxes to confirm they had
read their no smoking policy (which was longer than the Maastricht
Treaty), than actually making people welcome. A sort of Polish run Faulty
Towers, in fact. The real problem arose when they demanded £150 in cash or
credit card per person so they could fine anyone who broke the rules.
I rapidly disavowed them of any hope of
getting a deposit from us and we
retired to comfortable rooms and began to warm up.
Upon arrival at the venue the next day, we
were confronted with burnt out debris and an overwhelming smell of fire.
Some idiots had tried to set fire to the building. Fortunately, Brighton's
finest were there to extinguish it in short order. Hell, this place is
Dodge City in a frock!
The Brighton show is eclectic in the extreme
and is a first class venue for parents and kids. There was a large Lego
stand where kids could build what they liked and an area for huge model
tanks which gave battle to each other. Personally, I hate war games stuff
and see it as playing with large radio controlled Tonka toys and dolls.

There were boats, planes and cars galore, all
being controlled by RC. There was even a radio controlled goose! The entire building must have been awash with
radio frequencies and therein lay our problem.

At the beginning and end of the days, the
County Gate automation worked faultlessly. As more and more frequencies
fired up during the day, it infiltrated our system and all sorts of mistakes
cropped up which resulted in trains going into the wrong places and at times
colliding with each other.
Some superb large robots were also wandering
around. They were by far the most disruptive to our systems.

My favourite was 'Titan the Robot' which performed a great show. When
he was around however, points even began to start changing all on their
own!

Titan inspects County Gate
We had to almost run the thing by hand at
times and gave up the unequal struggle during robot and tank shows. For
the first time we did manage to run a Manning Wardle double header
though.

the first MW double header
Being in the main hall was certainly not the
ideal for us. As we were directly underneath the loudest Tannoy system
ever installed, close to tank battles with ordnance and extrovert
singing robots, we drowned in a cacophony of sound. It was impossible to
hear oneself think and regular exits were in order to get one's hearing
back. The lower floor, by contrast was as peaceful as a summers meadow and
I just wish that we had been down there.
The food provided by the Brighton Centre was
inspirational. I had no idea that road kill could be served in so many
different ways.

Despite our tribulations, the public did seem
to like the layout and we were awarded gold. All in all the experience was
'educational' and we shall certainly avoid venues with radio control all
around us in future. At all times the organisers did all they could to help
but for us, it was hard work to keep up a show.
My thanks to Desperado Rhys Davies who so
valiantly helped out.
9th February
The layout gets loaded into the trailer
tomorrow. The figures arrived from Aiden and have been planted. Some of
the figures were too large in scale but have found a place in the
foreground of the harbour. At last the awful flat sailor who stood on the
platform has gone!
click
here to see what
happened!
5th February
So it is time to knock down the layout ready
for going to Brighton. All seems to be going well and just a few repairs
and new detailing remain to be done. I have been very unhappy with some of
the figures on the line. Some new ones are due to arrive from Aidan
Campbell.
31st January
It has not been the best time for us as we
have had a death in the family and part of the house was flooded.
Sometimes, during such trials, it is better to get really lost in some
project or other rather than face reality! The website, which was
originally intended to be short had grown into a monster and its
navigation had become chaotic. In particular, the 'how we did it' articles
were scattered all about the site. They are now together in a section
which can be easily expanded. Of course, it is frustrating to have to
rediscover how to navigate the site and I apologise for this. Nevertheless, I do hope that the new look website will work OK for
everybody. Please let me know if there is a problem or bad link.
The Lynton and Barnstaple modelling section
has also been revamped although no new material ever comes our way. This
is disappointing as it could be a more useful resource.
22nd
January
Back in the workshop and I am glad to say that
after a few glitches, the layout seems to be working quite well. Taw jammed
up and the problem was that the crosshead slippers had become worn. A curse
on the covers over the slide bars on our Manning Wardle tanks. The job took
almost a whole day.
20th
January

Outside is yet again a blizzard and workshop
access impossible.
Being born at the end of the War, universal
hatred for Krauts and Nips was quickly displaced to the Commies. Our
household became worried about annihilation by nuclear war, woodworm and dry
rot in about equal measures. Rotten weather was always blamed on nuclear
testing, of course.
After many years of concern about nuclear
destruction, we have since been threatened with gigantic volcanoes, huge
meteorites, extinction of wildlife, AIDs, and mutated flues. For me, the last
two threats always looked quite hopeful. A mass reduction in the burgeoning
world human population would resolve one of the other fears, that of running
out of resources such as oil.
And now they have moved on to global warming,
terrorism and unrestricted immigration. First they said that British weather
would become like the South of France if we used aerosol sprays. In the
spirit of things, my consumption of aerosols went up four-fold but still our
winters remained grim and depressing affairs.
And now, that hotbed of potty extremists at the
University of East Anglia have managed to fiddle data sufficiently to
convince some fools that we are experiencing global warming.
Yeh, right!
Looking through the window at yet again, fast
falling snow, tells me that this global warming thing is just another excuse
to raise taxes for British politicians to pay for their absurd warmongering
and of course the city bankers must all still be paid kings' ransoms.
I used to think that such hobbies as railway
modelling were the preserve of those who suffered from horrible winters. I
even convinced myself that the best model railways must be in Scandinavia and
Canada. The internet has shown otherwise and it is clear that the hobby is
pursued even in places of good all round weather.
As I have become older and hopefully a little
wiser I now see that governments feel it necessary to keep us permanently
anxious about some major potential threat.
It is little wonder that many of us retreat into
imaginary little worlds where it is always summer and nothing ever happens!
10th
January
The bad joint is repaired and now stock operates
faultlessly. I would have liked to be testing on the assembled layout but the
weather has got the better of me. Snow has been sufficient to make it almost
impossible to get to the barn. Hopefully things will improve soon.
27th
December
After finishing off the cold turkey and chestnut
stuffing, it was time to go forth and work on the layout. Endoscopic
examination of the track joint, hidden in the tunnel between the viaduct and
harbour baseboards showed that one rail was .5mm higher than the adjacent
one. Clearly, during setup or knockdown, we had managed to hook the end of
the track to cause the problem. Jenny calls such things 'events'. This, in
girl talk, means something we did during exhibition and therefore nothing
whatsoever to do with her! It is quite surprising that most of the stock
managed to get across the joint at all. I am sure the endoscope had a faint
whiff of cow's bottom!
There was nothing for it but to cut out an
access hole in the baseboard, remove part of the track and relay it. All is
well now and we are left having to refill the access hole. Once this is
complete, the layout will be reassembled and testing begun.
19th
December
Now back from France, my thoughts are again
turning to some CG maintenance. Our little engines have really covered some
miles and were beginning to be less well behaved by the end of the Warley
show. As an example of our maintenance schedule, here are the worksheets so
far.
'Exe'
Complete ultrasonic clean. The plunger pickups were worn and giving only
intermittent contact. They were replaced by phosphor bronze spring wires.
'Yeo'
A coupling rod bush on a drive wheel had become detached which caused rough
running resulting in damaged teeth on one of the spur gears. The gear was
replaced as was the rod bush. The chip was not always responding so this was
also replaced. Chassis cleaned and loco tested and reprogrammed.
'Lew'
Replacement of failed plunger pickups with wire.
railcar no 200
Chassis cleaned and all bearings re-lubricated.
15th
December
I had found that the forum on modelling that I
set up on Yahoo was not a suitable format to easily combine photos and text.
As a result, I set up a more suitable message board which would allow for an
unlimited disc space for the storage of articles. Sadly, this forum remained
largely unused and as a result, it was withdrawn due to the cost of running
it.
24th
November
I am shortly off to France for a while and face
quite a lot of maintenance work on CG on return. For some reason, a baseboard
joint has started to derail a railcar (we will have to borrow an endoscope to
see why) and all the little engines will be visiting the ultrasonic cleaner!
Some of them have now travelled over 7 real miles; James May, eat your heart
out!
23rd
November
Well, we are back from Warley and we survived!
The drive to the NEC is a short one for us and on arrival, it did not take us
too long to be able to drive the trailer into the hall and offload.
Already installed was the K1 Garratt from the
Welsh Highland. What struck me was how tiny it looked in that barn of an
exhibition hall. Also at the vehicle entrance was a stand being set up called
S & M! We wondered at first if we were unloading in the right hall!

WHR K1 Garratt
The layout was together by 4.30 pm except, where
was the electricity? Our automation does require a start up cycle that takes
at least two hours. In the end, power did not come to us until 7.45 but by
then, all we could think about was getting to the hotel for a meal and BEER.
It was nice to be alongside John and Jane Jacobs
'Nettlecombe'. That layout is exquisite. John and Jane were
a tad more concerned in case I collided my mobility scooter with their fiddle
yard, however! Despite many 'attempts', I am happy to say that the yard
remained intact throughout the show.

Nettlecombe looks just like
the place I would like to live in!
John tells me that in one show overseas, he was
not awarded a trophy because his layout was too low. Certainly, in Europe,
there are now more layouts at shows that are not accessible for the disabled
to see than those that are. In Britain, the law requires that there is
accessibility for the disabled at public events. It is amazing how folks can
be so selective about observing the law. As a smoker, I do have to go outside
for a ciggy. However, as a disabled person, I have to campaign just to be
able to see a model railway!
I had wanted to see the WW1 layout Willesden
Junction. This was brought to the exhibition by members of the Greenwich
Narrow Gauge Railway Soc. Sadly, I was out plum of luck as they had clearly
decided to further their campaign against the emancipation of the disabled,
short people and children. Just to make quite sure, much of the layout was
lower than the foreground! I am given to understand that there were a lot of
things that looked like cow pats on the layout but then again, I shall never
know! The Greenwich operators did however remember to bring step ladders to
stand on so they could see their own layout.

Willesden Junction - a view from quite a high mobility scooter
It is still my hope that exhibition organisers
will eventually wake up and insist that layouts shown, comply with the law.
We stayed at Holiday Inn Express and I have to
say what a comfortable place it was, so we were able to get back to the NEC
on Saturday morning in reasonable shape. It is such a pity that the hall
lighting is so awful. All visitors should be issued with a valium pill to
compensate! We were not able to go through the start up cycle before the
visitors came in so for the first time we did suffer from a series of
automation glitches throughout the first day. Luckily, trains were still able
to run for the most part.
Saturday was extremely busy and at times,
visitors were five deep trying to get to see County Gate. Sunday morning gave
some respite and one was able to wander around the hall and see the seventy
odd layouts and the numerous trade stands.
One thing that has always upset Jenny and
myself. The people on County Gate. This is just something that we have never
managed to get right. I have often seen the work of
Aidan Campbell
and the photos on his website always look like caricatures from Punch
magazine. In real life I was very surprised how jolly good they actually were
and the painting surpassed anything we could do. I therefore kidnapped him
for a while and we will now be starting a gradual replacement programme with
painted figures from Aidan.
I must say that I am getting less sure about
some folks with sound chips in their trains. Some were actually louder than
the prototypes and could be heard many yards away. Behind us was a G scale
LGB layout with lots of sound... again rather loud, but it was the sound of
Westinghouse pumps which did me in. Every time they parked close to us with
the pump noise on it made me want to go to the loo!
I really enjoyed the 7mm hi-tech layout Dinas 1869 by Paul Holmes.

Dinas 1869 by Paul Holmes
Other favourites were:

New Ponca Yard, a very
evocative US layout
Quite a large number of continental layouts were
there, including our old friend
Ems-land Moortrack who we had met at Utrecht.

Ems-land Moortrack
We were sharing the hotel with folks exhibiting
at the National Cat Show...(very sad for me that it is the same weekend as
Warley). At around 2am on Sunday morning I was wakened by "Mau....mau....mau".
At first thought it was one of my cats wanting to get under the duvet until I
realised that I wasn't at home. Oh well, got up and dressed and found a fine
looking grey English shorthair at the door; and very worried he was too!
Picked him up and ran him on the scooter to the lift and down to reception.
He never stopped with his "Mau....mau....mau": as accurate as an atomic
clock! At reception, he was reunited with his equally worried owner who
suspected that 'cat show sabotage' was behind the whole affair; (those people
will kill each at the drop of a hat).
All in all, a very well run friendly, huge
exhibition with a high standard of layouts and the largest selection of
traders you will ever see in one place. County Gate won best NG layout in
show and the huge trophy spent time standing on the Contisbury cliffs. A few
felt it was somewhat out of scale. I later discovered that the trophy was
presented by Pete Waterman!

All too soon it was all over and we were
knocking it all down. Some delays were experienced in getting the trailer
into the hall following a car accident outside. How someone managed to run
over a traffic warden covered in visibility vests and reflectors I have no
idea. I only hope that he will make a full recovery. Despite this, it was all
packed up soon enough and I was home before 9pm.
I had heard many tales of exhibiting at Warley
and was somewhat nervous. We actually enjoyed the experience and felt the
club had looked after us well.
As usual, a thousand thanks to the Desperados
for helping so wonderfully at the show and well done Warley MRC.
15th
November
With everything working properly, the time has
arrived to pack up CG for Warley. After the 10 page article on CG in the
British Railway Modelling magazine, showing at the NEC seems a hard act to
follow!

7th
November
Work is now beginning to repair the detached
cross member under the viaduct section. Once this is completed, the railway
will be reassembled and the new and repaired rolling stock programmed and
tested for automation.
5th
November
Diesel electric 'River Avill' was completed
today and has been passed for service.

I have also been busy fixing a few small
problems encountered at the previous two shows. River Brue began to run
roughly and I replaced a wheel set and keeper plate. These had become damaged
during the initial construction. The loco is now as smooth as River Avon.
Better bogies were fitted to the Glenthorne railcar, (one had become detached
at Genk), but the greatest effort as been with our 'Taw' (Mr Slippy) which is
fitted with a Class08 chassis. It is impossible to add further ballast to the
loco so I am fitting a Tomytec Scale 16m Chassis to its companion box car.
This will have to have its own chip and be adjusted in speed to match the
loco. It is the only way I can see to obtain reasonable load hauling
capability up our grades.
29th Oct
Following mediation, a well established model
railway exhibition will no longer be exhibiting in their current venue where
no access to the disabled is afforded. Further details will be released
shortly. The action took place as part of a campaign to ensure that this
hobby remains inclusive for those with mobility difficulties.

logo of the Desperados, those kind enough to
come and help run County Gate - click on image to enlarge
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