Felixstowe Area N Gauge Group
JANUARY 2024 NEWSLETTER
NEWS FROM MEMBERS
SAD NEWS by Trevor
I'm sorry to start the New Year with the news that our friend Alan Beniston sadly passed away shortly before Christmas. Alan had been a member of the group for a number of years, and had been a regular attendee of club meetings and always on hand to help at open days and exhibitions where his family would come and assist as well. Alan had his own dcc controlled 'n' gauge layout at home and had written about this in our newsletters. We pass on our thoughts to his wife Joan, daughters Jane and Louise along with his family and friends.
OPEN DAYS AND EXHIBITION by Trevor
First a thankyou to Kevin for his efforts over the last few years organising our open days. Kevin has stepped down from the roll and David has agreed to take on the task.
This aligns with a change to venue for this year’s open days. This year all our events; open days and the exhibition will be held at the Memorial Hall, Trimley St Martin. The main reason being that we are able to hire the Memorial Hall at a much lower rate than the Welcome Hall (plus easier visitor parking). We have been able to arrange access the previous evening (all events) to allow more setup time. The hall is larger with the only downside that we have further to move equipment from the clubroom.
The dates for this year’s events are:
Open Day - Saturday 23rd March, 11-4
Exhibition - Saturday 13th July, 10:30-4
Open Day - Saturday 26th October 11-4
David and myself now have the task of organising suitable exhibits for these events. Therefore, we are looking for layouts we can show. Ideally, we like to showcase new layouts at our exhibition (which will have charged entry this year) and avoid repeats on adjacent events (modules normally appear at all events). For the exhibition I'd like a couple of continental layouts as Scograil will attend in addition to Orwell Models. If you have a layout you would like to exhibit, can you let David and myself know. The March date will quickly be upon us, so please respond ASAP.
LONG TRAIN, SHORT TRAIN... by Chris
Quite often, I've teased Mike with photos or videos of lengthy Network Rail trains that run by my house, they can be anything up to around twenty bogie wagons, and often topped and tailed too.
In model form this can become quite expensive, recreating these long trains.
Well, just to show that length isn't everything, here's a photo of 66799 with just a couple of bogie wagons, that should keep the cost down a bit.
Incidentally, I often take photos with a nod to the late, great Ivo Peters who always took photos of trains with his vintage Bentley somewhere in the photo.
Unfortunately I can't afford a Bentley so my 1948 Raleigh Supebe will have to do...
Revolution class 66's - On the subject of the class 66, I see that the Revolution Models class 66 is not far away, and it appears for a few quid more, you can have one of the number that you want, first time I've seen that!
They are offering many liveries and can be ordered at an introductory price until the end of this month, looks a very nice loco indeed - has more tiny detail than my eyes can cope with!!
LAYOUT PROGRESS by Mike
I’ve been working on the big viaduct. I realised that there was a bad slope at one end, followed by a dip, which made locos look rather ridiculous as they crossed it. I could see where the problem lay, so it was rip up rails and then relay, creating new junction ends to lock the bridge in place and pass the current onto it. Struggling to attach the third board on my own, I accidentally damaged the track at the end of it, so there was even more work to do! Anyway, a couple of days work and it is much, much better, trains run smoothly across now.
I have also been working on the cliff faces at either side of the harbour. Built from cork bark, suitably painted and seagull poo covered, with the addition of some greenery, the first one looks pretty good, I think. I’ve glued the bark on at the other end now as well, and given it it’s first coat of very dark paint.
I’ve ordered some components to build a unique backscene, so I’ve also given the boards a coat of sky blue in preparation – more on this next month, I hope.
RAILHEAD TREATMENT TRAIN by Trevor
In the last newsletter Chris mentioned he was working on a Railhead Treatment Train RHTT. Little did he know that I've also been working on one (I believe another member also has parts to make one).
For those not familiar with RHTTs, these are engineering trains that are used to clear autumn leaves and improve traction / rail grip. They consist of modules built onto 20' container bases which include water tanks, power unit / compressor and sandite applicators. The modules are then placed on standard container wagons. The most common setup is two container wagons with 3x tankers - 1 compressor and 2x sandite, with locomotives at either end. The operation is normally contracted out to companies such as DRS / Colas. In service the sets are normally filthy as the track dirt / dust also gets lifted covering everything.
Whilst they are available RTR in 'OO' gauge, in 'n' gauge they are only available as 3D prints for the modeller to finish themselves. I purchased a couple of sets from eBay.
The prints were very good with little in the way of cleaning up required (none of the lines seen on early 3D prints). The prints are as seen in the following images and need no assembly. They do not include any of the safety handrails seen on the real units, so these will need to be fabricated. Therefore, the tasks are to prime the modules, blue topcoat and apply decals. For painting I used spray cans from Halfords (these are the best I've found). The blue is 'brake calliper blue' and seems a very reasonable match. I purchased the decals from Railtec Transfers. They have a particularly good range of modern image transfers and I've been impressed with the quality and ease of application. I'm now at the stage where I have a set of modules which can be run on a set of Revolution wagons (with Network Rail yellow bogies) in a pristine condition. I really need to make some suitable handrails and heavily weather them. I have a pair of DRS locos (powered / unpowered) which will be suitable to run with them. The images show the individual modules and then fitted to container wagons.
NEW BOARDS by Chris
I have managed to push on with the two boards that I'm making, these both measure 50" by 20", a good size to work on in the railway room.
They are individual boards, but will be able to come as one unit if required. Both have a slightly different track plan to each other, one even has two sidings on it.
So, the boards are made, the track is on and tested, all working fine, just the electrics to put on now. I plan to use infrared units, controlling the trains stopping and starting in the loops.
They are designed to constantly swap trains over, sending a different train round every circuit.
I was hoping to get four trains on each board, but sadly the boards are too small for four loops.
Following on from this:
N Gauge event in North Norfolk
Sheringham N Gauge Showcase is being held at Smiths Model Railways in Sheringham on Saturday 24th of February and I'm hoping to have them completed by then for display in the shop.
Steam and diesel trains are also running on the North Norfolk Railway on that date too, so why not take your sweetheart up there for a day of N gauge and also full sized train fun.
Add an ice cream from Ellies at the sea end of the high street and it sounds like the perfect day out to me!!
More details on the event and how the layouts are progressing in the next newsletter!
NEW TOYS
A selection of our member's latest acquisitions.....
I have purchased a few new toys in the Hattons final sale, but as yet, they've not been dispatched - I imagine they will have a lot of dispatching to do over the next few days at least so photos will be in next month’s newsletter.
RIP Hattons, thank you for many years of wonderful trading. I've bought items from them and they've bought items from me, a very happy partnership!!
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Well, having said last month that there are some new models in the pipeline in the near future, I suddenly got an email from Rails about a new pair of class 158 DMU’s arriving in stock – in GWR First Group green! As I had received a £50 Rails gift token for Christmas just two days before, it was a no brainer!
I didn’t even know that it had been announced!
A nice model by Graham Farish. Our new toys are getting expensive – this one was £220 – but the £50 off certainly helped! It’s not a wonderful photo, so here is a clearer image from their website:
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HATTONS by Mike
I guess I was as shocked as everybody else to hear this week that Hattons are closing. On reflection though, it probably shouldn’t have been such a surprise. I feel that their venture into manufacturing has been an unmitigated disaster – the A4 O gauge loco was particularly bad, with poor quality models with bits falling off and I read a lot of complaints online about poor running. They had to offload a lot at vastly reduced prices, probably making a big loss, and tied up a lot of capital. Perhaps more importantly, it lost them the Graham Farish franchise when GF saw them as competitors. Rails of Sheffield similarly lost the Hornby dealership, although they have since made their peace and stock Hornby again.
What effect will this have on the market? Well, my guess is that prices will go up a bit. Rails no longer have serious competition so don’t have to battle the undercutting war, and local shops don’t have to try to compete quite so much.
I personally find the Rails website very clunky and difficult to navigate – if others feel the same, I guess it will drive a lot of them back to their local shops, which can only be a good thing for the hobby.