The latest club newsletter

Felixstowe Area “N” Gauge Group
APRIL 2023 NEWSLETTER

NEWS FROM MEMBERS

EVENTS by Trevor
Ipswich Railway Modellers have an Open Day at their clubroom 40a Norfolk Road, Ipswich, IP4 2HB on Saturday 15th April. 10am - 4pm with free entry.
There will be a number of club layouts running, N-O gauge, second-hand sales and refreshments.

EXHIBITION UPDATE by Trevor
Our exhibition will be going ahead on 15th July. The plans are still slightly fluid but here are the current plans.
Trade support from Orwell Models (new), Ipswich Railway Modellers (second-hand) and Mid Suffolk Light Railway with their information/sales stand.
Chris S has volunteered to help organise/man a table for second-hand sales of member's items. If you have any items for sale, please contact Chris. Items will need to be clearly labelled and an asking price (plus lowest acceptable price). 10% of sales will go to club funds.
If there is a demand, we could have a table alongside this with club info and showing models built by members (proved popular in the past).
Layouts appearing are; Sutherland, Stowley Loop, Assington Brach, Aruroa Yard, Colliery layout and a small unnamed layout. Woodbridge (if we get it checked/working or Clintons Bend if not.
A couple of planned layouts are doubtful, so contingency is Hartenberg and group modules. I also am looking at another couple of possibilities.
We are also aiming to serve teas and biscuits to visitors.
As you can see there are a number of club layouts/members layouts so we will be needing help from a number of members to man these. We will be looking to put names against tasks nearer the event.
Reuse of information from last year has resulted in the event being mistakenly advertised as free entry, when we were intending to revert to a charged show as before the pandemic. As the hall charge is low and to avoid any problems at a pay desk, we have decided to keep this year free. Next year we expect to have a number of new layouts available, so aim to move back to a charged show then.

OPEN DAY REPORT by Kevin
Overall the March Open Day went very well. We had a nice amount of layouts, and a couple of new ones.
Thanks to those who helped setup and pull down, and special thanks to Paul’s good lady for the lovely cakes.
It seems everyone had a good running all day, with no breakdowns that I heard of. Chris and my new layout performed well overall, the uncoupling worked ok, but some improvements are needed.
Looking around at all the other layouts, they all were running well and the people involved were enjoying themselves all day.
So if you have a mobile layout and would like to show it, please get in touch with either me or Trevor, and we would both be happy to oblige you.
Thanks again to everyone who helped, and see you all in July and October.

DISPLAYING MY WARES AT THE MARCH OPEN DAY by Chris
Kevin was kind enough to allocate me a space to show my bits (two miniature layouts actually) on the day.
I took along my 'photographic' layout, and also my new incline layout that I'd only started a week before - needless to say it's not got very far, but it works and had wagons going up and down the incline.

Once I've got a little further with it, I'll give some more details.
I was very impressed with the standard of the layouts at the open day, a lot of folks had been very busy!

OPEN DAY RUNNING by Another Chris
Well the open day went pretty well for all, as best I saw.
I spent most of the day running in and testing the new layout I’ve been working on for many months now. I’m mostly happy with the results, though the uncoupling system needs further work and I have found I need to convert a lot more wagons and tweak the shunting locos I plan to have for it.
For the most part the wagons I have converted all worked as they should; it’s a system I have tested on my Tramway (Hartenberg). But the locos need some further adjustments as the couplings don’t raise as high as they should to full uncouple.
I also found that the Fleischmann turntable may need a polarity switch; as it appears the bed doesn’t self=adjust as it rotates, like the Peco turntable does. So when its turn 180 degrees to the in road it shorts out the marshalling yard controller.
But I still prefer the Fleischmann over the Peco, as it has a great stepper motor and the moulding is perfectly centred, unlike with the Peco that is about half a millimetre off on the bed alignment.
I know many are not fond of the non-British layouts, but I feel it’s nice to have something different to see, other than ‘yet another 1950-60’s BR layout with the same Metcalf buildings on it’. There is nothing wrong with this time period and setting, I have enjoyed watching and running trains on many, it’s just it can get a big samey.

I also finally got my butt in gear and tried out my mini camera to make some ‘Cab-ride’ style videos of some of the layouts at the open day. Annoyingly I didn’t notice that the flatbed I chose to mount the camera on had a slight wobble, it’s not bad but it is noticeable. So I’ll have to find a better one.
I have since edited and posted the videos on my Youtube channel, and below are the links to both (if the link fails, then copy the address into your browser).

Three runs around our new German layout:
RIDE 1

Two more runs, first around the modules and the second around Dave new layout:
RIDE 2

You may see some familiar faces in the backgrounds ;)

I took some pictures too of the layouts, and here is a selection. I hope to see you all next time.

MORETON REGIS, AN UPDATE by yet another Chris
Hi Folks. I thought a little update on the progress of Moreton Regis might be welcome. You may recall my article in the newsletter a while ago which outlined the idea behind the inception of the layout and the basis of its purpose in terms of what the layout represents. To quickly re-cap for anyone that missed it, Moreton Regis is a fictitious market town in Dorset which has a large terminus station, The main business in the town is a large Yeast Factory, part of British Fermentation Products, which comprises of a number of large storage tanks for Well water, Live yeast, Molasses, and ancillary tanks for chemicals used in the process. The main buildings are quite large, and comprise of the main office and processing plant, a boiler house with tall chimney, and the most important building, the fermentation hall.
I was pondering on a design to suit the model of the fermentation hall, and spotted a couple of kits on Flea-bay, but they were not cheap. However, one design was an eye catcher and as a low relief model would work well. One evening at club, I was chatting to Dave and showed him a picture of the kit I had in mind to use and he asked if I had considered making a model from scratch. The idea had crossed my mind and so I decided to give it a go. Years ago I used to model in 3mm and made several scale models of the station buildings for Midsomer Norton (another story), and set about working out the design for the fermentation hall based upon the picture of the kit. I wasn’t too concerned about the general method to build it, but the windows presented a problem as they were not going to be available from any modelling company, at least not the size I needed. The windows of such a factory are quite large with equally large panes of glass.
Not being put off with the issue of the windows, I made a start on the parts for the building, using good quality stiff craft card, Metcalfe brick papers, a good selection of glue, UHU and a quick drying card glue. Partway through making the front panel for the building, our N Gauge club magazine arrived in the post, and one of the articles was from a fellow modeller who had also had issues with making windows, and his solution was to use a fine paint pen, Bingo! I obtained a white paint pen with a 0.8mm nib and set about testing it out. At first the efforts were poor, paint running and smudges until I developed a technique which worked well, including storing the pen upright when not in use in order to reduce the amount of paint flowing to the nib. I also found that the use of a ruler with a step along the edge worked well as the nib did not catch on it and smudge everywhere when the ruler was moved away. I first drew the windows on a white sheet of card as the outline and then secured the glazing to the sheet with masking tape around the edges so that I could copy the outline. The results weren’t too bad once I got the hang of things and learned to be patient and let the quick drying paint dry! In the end I was getting a success rate of about 50% which I considered pretty good.

The factory kit

The factory where I work, has six massive yeast silos which tower above the plant and I wanted to replicate something similar. One of the sellers on eBay which several of us now use for scenic items makes some cracking 3D models at a very reasonable rate, so I purchased two sets of three silos from him at about Ł5.99 a set and used them to represent the silos on the fermentation hall.
I completed the main build with Ratio Products corrugated roofing for the apex roof, and for the flat roof I used ultra fine emery paper. I gave the model a fine dusting of weathering powders which I make from coloured paint sticks that have been scraped to produce a fine dust, which is then applied with a short stiff brush to work them into the model. Blending colours produces some really good effects, greens, blues, reds and of course, dark grey, brown and so on..
The paint sticks are very cheap, and easy to use. To complete the building work, I made up barge boards, gutters and down pipes, the doors were painted with acrylic and a very fine permanent marker was used to define hinges, door knobs and so on.
I have also attached some pictures of the storage tanks which I have made. In real life these are mounted on large deep concrete plinths with slanted sides which I have replicated on the models.

The lettering on the tanks is from a large handheld Brady label making machine (ahem, borrowed from work) which goes down to six points on the font size. The buildings need finishing with the company logo and name, roof vents, and ancillary pipes and structures which I will sort out soon.

LAYOUT PROGRESS by Mike
Chris Hart has finished building the two new boards for New Wookery for me, an excellent job thanks Chris. The boards feature a massive drop forming a large well, so presenting me with a massive engineering job! The twin mainlines will snake across the embankment on my original two boards, and then thunder across a five and a half feet long viaduct bridging the huge gap on the new boards! As the viaduct will cross two boards, I have decided to build it in one large removable piece rather than two halves, as I’m worried that they would warp with time and no longer meet in the middle.

The view down the embankment

I’ve built the arches for the viaduct

Just to make it interesting, and even more challenging, I’ve given it a bend!

I’ve started printing off the many pages of parts needed for the next stage, all the viaduct piers, but of course my printer ran out of ink (which I had), I ran out of photo paper (which I don’t have) and I ordered the wrong thickness of card (more ordered) so work will continue when the shortages are resolved.

THE COLLIERY LAYOUT by Chris
Sadly no progress here this month, too busy messing around on incline layouts - my friends says "how many layouts do i need??!!" Well, I didn't know there was a limit... Seriously though, now that the day job is due to slow back down a bit, I must continue the colliery project - once the scenic side is done, it's ready 'for the road'.

And finally, a selection of member's new models acquired this month....

NEW TOYS (1) Although I've not had much time to do too much modelling or reading, I have had the opportunity to buy a few new and previously enjoyed toys.
Oddly, some very modern image (for me) locos have joined the fleet!
A Colas class 60, a class 66 and two 37's have arrived, all beautiful runners. I also picked up a Network Rail 31 and a GBRf class 60.
I can feel a modern image section of layout coming on, I knew I shouldn't have bought that rake of Network Rail 'Falcon' wagons, that started the ball rolling!