Learning by trial and error.. StanB's work messy workbench

95% soldered - I use DCC concepts 100 degree solder for most white metal to white metal joins, although I have successfully used 145 for brass to whitemetal if the whitemetal part is large enough and the brass is pre tinned- ie soldering the etched sides to the whitemetal ends on my pair of MOGO's. Only once did I overdo the heat - one of the footboards is a fraction short, but overall I encountered no real issues, the usual rules of a clean, close joint, and plenty of flux being the key to a neat join.

Small parts are glued generally with Cyanoacrylate , with pva being used to secure the glazing

 

Its been a while since I have done an update, but a few thing have happened since I completed the brake van. I started work on the WD, and succeeded in getting it converted to DCC, and improved the tracking of the pony truck.. it sort of managed a 2nd radius curve. In doing so I became aware of some repair work needed, and a few runs in the paint work, so I started to strip it back. I also looked at the A5, and realised the front end needs rebuilding: not only is the front end skewed out of square, the smokebox door was put in upside down so what was originally going to be a simple repaint is now a fairly major job ...

Having sprayed those two with oven cleaner to strip them back I reassessed how the shelf was going - a few issues had emerged: my attempt at incorporating a 1.8m length of display track had meant a very short headshunt leading into it, and the decision to make a storage area above my desk on the adjacent wall meant a very sharp curve thru 90 degrees: while some models could manage it, derailments were common reducing the fun factor, and the tight curves precluded a few of the larger models in the collection. Some time spent in Anyrail proved that I could open up the curve, and correct the short headshunt issue, so easter was spent striping the layout and re-laying everything to the revised plan.

Some tests on my desk also showed that the DJH Gresleys could manage a 1200mm curve, as could the 7F. Even the E4 can manage it, just.. so this weekend was spent installing 8 pin harnesses and testing with my 2 Lokpilots..



As can been seen, all can just manage the curves, but all need some more tweaking to run perfectly smoothly: the A3 is fitted with a portescap, which is not a motor the Lokpilots deal with very well: I will eventually fit them with sound, and am a little nervous about the A3- the best sound file that I've heard for the Gresley's are those from Locoman, who unfortunately only creates sounds on D&H or ESU decoders - if anyone has any experience with these with Portescaps I'd be interested in hearing your opinion! (I may try a D&H on the V2,. and temporarily install it in the A3 to see how it goes)

In the meantime I may get a few silent decoders (Zen midi's?) to allow further testing