Dutch Scale Seven Group Newsletter 22 June 2021

During last months in the Netherlands there where no model railway shows where we could promote scale seven. My modelling friends who came every Friday night to my workshop they stayed at their homes waiting for better days. In August we hope to meet each other again and talk about railway modelling. But at my home the scale seven Minehead railway is growing.

Tracks and points.

Almost all the tracks are laid and at some finished parts there are the first test runs with engines and rolling stock. All the sleepers for the tracks and points are made in my workshop weathered and stained so they look old and used. 

Signal box.

For the railway a model of the Minehead 1905 - 1938 signal box is under construction. The drawings came from the book "The Minehead Branch 1848 -1971 by Ian Coleby". The walls are CNC cut from thin ply and also the window frames are CNC cut using  thin aluminium. The wooden planking is made of plastic strips and look right.  I also need to fit the point rodding along the tracks.

A kit to build a signal box interior came from Severn Models. This kit has very fine details and fit very well in the signal box. 

Signal box interior Photo CdJ.

Minehead 1905- 1938 Signal box under construction. Photo CdJ. 

Cattle dock.

A cattle dock is build using differed materials. The base is made from plywood the stone walls formed using  Das clay. For the fences I used old rail parts, the gates are CNC cut from aluminium sheet. Models of cattle and a farmer and weathering completed this piece. 

Cattle dock. Photo CdJ.

Twin tank milk wagon.

For my milk traffic at my railway I bought the Slater's kit of the 6 wheel  GWR twin milk tank. A nice kit with a lot of details. I had to modify the space between the brake blocks to fit them on a correct position against the wheel tire. The wheels are scale seven standard. 

Frame of the 6 wheeled GWR Twin Tank Milk wagon Photo CdJ.

I mounted all the piping under the frame for a complete realistic look. Need still to finish the two milk tanks.

Almost finished frame of the Milk wagon. Photo CdJ 

Passenger train.

For a passenger train with 4 wheeled coaches I bought a Slater's GWR diagram E37 and I have a dia. E32 and K2 in stock to build pictures will follow.

Till next  Cor de Jong 

Dutch Scale Seven Group Newsletter 9 June 2020

The building of the Minehead platform is going on. The whole lenght is all most ready covered with tiles en gravel. At the end a new station building has to be build.

View from the signal box on to the platform. The 0-6-0 Pannier 5775 is ready for leaving to Watchet. 

At the left of the picture the small locomotive depot will be with the old engine house. A small turntable is needed for the engines with a tender such as the 2-4-0 Stella  Class.

Last instructions to the driver before leaving the station. 

The tile pattern is pressed into cardboard using my CNC milling machine.

A special formed pressing tool is used for pressing the pattern into the card board. The spindle of the CNC milling machine is not turning. 

The right site of the station at the left site of the picture the yard for the cattle loading dock and goods wagons . 

At the right site of the railway the tracks for the cattle loading dock and storage for goods wagons will build.
All the track is handlaid using C&L bullhead rails and GWR 2 bolt chairs. The slepers are home made. The templates for the points are generated using the Templot track design program.

Goods yard there is still a lot of modelling work to do. 

Till next Cor

Dutch Scale Seven Group Newsletter 13 April 2020

The proces of building a S7 layout at home still going on. For my Minehead railway I started to builds the platform, points and track. 
Building track is a lot of work and so also the platform with a total lengt of 4.75 meter. I follow the Minehead railplan 1900 - 1910 with the small engine depot and turntable. In the corner at the left side the engine house and a small coal loading dock. The other buildings are the station building and a warehouse. At the right side a cattle dock a road bridge and track to the fiddle yard. Some pictures of the progress to look at. 

The railplan fitted in the room.

The stone pattern for the platform siding is made of foam bord. One of the card layers is removed from one side, then I pressed the stone pattern in the foam with my CNC milling machine. After pressing the pattern I painted the foam with acrylic paint. 

Pressing the pattern into the foam board with the CNC milling machine. I drawn a DXF drawing load this file into the CNC control system USB CNC this program generate a G-Code and controls the machine. It's an other how to use the CNC milling machine. 

Result after painting. 

The 2-4-0 Stella arrived at the platform with a passenger train. The Auto coach is waiting for the next run. 

Sunday time al the engines are parked at the side track waiting for the next job. 

Dean Goods 2325 arrived with a mineral train. 

Till next Cor de Jong 

Dutch Scale Seven Group report nr. 13

After some months of silence here a new report  from the DSSG. There are some projects we are working on and that are making progress.

A small project was the rebuilt of a finescale GWR 0-6-0 saddle tank to the S7 standards. The kit was not designed for S7 standards so we had to change the measurement of the splashers on the footplate. We turned wheels into the S7 standard and replaced the first and third axle with a S7  axle and modified the power pickups. The middle axle with the inside motion was reused and we used Slaters’ filler rings to get the correct S7 back to back measurement. After this rebuild the engine was converted to DCC with a Lenz  DCC decoder. A challenge was to make the CPL GWR loco lights working. With a small SMD led fitted into the small brass CPL casting we got a working loco light. For this fine work you need to work with a magnifier to solder the small thin wires on to the 1mm x 1,2mm x 2mm SMD led. The CPL loco lights are relatively simple to convert into a working light.

CPL loco light housing, lens and very small SMD Led.



GWR 0-6-0 Saddeltank 2028 with working light.

In the GWR 0-6-0 Dean Goods Cor installed an ESU sound decoder with ESU power pack and speakers. After an experiment to find out what the best place will be for the location of the speakers we came to the conclusion that the best place is one speaker in the smoke box and one speaker between the frame plates. Important is a open chimney so you can hear the exhaust sound through the chimney. There is no speaker in the tender. In the tender we mounted the sound decoder and the power pack. The connection to the engine is made with an small 22 pins connector so the tender and engine can be separated very easily. For the synchronisation of the movement from the inside motion with the exhaust sound we will place 4 very small magnets in the big tooth wheel which is mounted on the axle in the ABC gearbox. An electronic Hall censor will pick up the change of the magnetic field and give synchronisation signals to the ESU sound decoder. For the sound we chose the SWD Pannier sound. There is no sound for a GWR 0-6-0 Dean Goods available. At the GOG 2012 Summer show in Halifax  Arnold and Cor spoke to an expert in DCC sounds and he told us the Pannier sound is the most nearby and so suitable as a Dean Goods sound.



ESU sounddecoder build in Dean Goods tender.

 The construction of the home Scale Seven layout  “Minehead” of Cor and son Joost is going forward with small steps. We produced a lot of wooden sleepers for the tracks and a lot of wooden sleepers with different measurements for the points. For the shape of the points we used the printed point drawings produced with the Templot track design program. A small part of the track is ready and connected to the Lenz DCC control system. The rebuild GWR 0-6-0 2028 Pannier tank was the first engine to run a few meters on the new Scale Seven layout “Minehead”.

GWR 0-6-0 Dean Goods at S7 point.



Joost building S7 track at the  "Minehead"railway.

 Arnold is busy building a piece of G.W.R Baulk road to display his future engines. After the conversion from broad gauge to standard gauge there was a lot of converted track in use at the stations and sidings. For this piece of display track Arnold will also place the square head bolts to make this track the most prototypical. It’s not an easy task but Arnold will pick up the challenge. When he has finished we will take a picture of his work and send it with the next DSSG report.

G.W.R Baulkroad.

Till next, 

Cor

Dutch Scale Seven Group report nr. 12

We had a busy time the last 4 months of the year 2011 which is why we didn’t have a report in the last S7 Newsletter.

But now there is time to write down all the progress and special things we did.

At two modelling shows we did set up the Scale Seven promotion stand. In October at the Dutch Nul weekend in Zutphen for two days where we had a lot of talk with serious 0 gauge modellers but they are still afraid to take a step forward to the Scale Seven standards. But we enjoyed the show and had a good time. This meeting is the only meeting for the Dutch 0 scale modellers. The second show where we set up our stand was the 0 weekend in Belgium. The Belgium 0 forum organized this small 0 Gauge show and we promoted the Scale Seven standards there on a Saturday. But the same as in the Netherlands the Belgium modellers stay where they are with the NEM or Finescale standards. But the promotion board we got from the UK Scale Seven group was an eye catcher at the shows. When everything goes well Ton will show his Scale Seven layout “Tripton at  Sea” at the Dutch Rail 2012 show in February.

Our modelling is going forward with small steps. Ton is hard at work with his GWR 517 Class engine and his GWR 0-6-0 Pannier.

GWR 0-6-0 Pannier detailed cab.

   And Cor did some work at the inside motion of the GWR Pannier tank Ton built.

Inside motion GWR Pannier.

And Arnold made progress with his GWR 'Paco' Horsebox diag. N8. This model is almost finished so Arnold can start with a new project to build. 



GWR 'Paco' Horsebox diag. N8.

Nice details at the doors.

 Cor’s work at the Cowan Sheldon crane is almost finished. At Cor ‘s house the Scale Seven railway is making a lot of progress and the project is still on schedule. At the end of 2011 the first part of the woodwork and wiring is finished and we started to build the tracks. All the tracks must be hand laid. We produce our own sleepers of real wood.

Three stages of track building.

Cowan Sheldon Crane.

The railway is build as a home layout  so we can’t  set up the railway at shows or exhibitions. We made a heavy wooden base with 18mm surface MDF boards as a basis for a strong and steady layout. Under the layout surface we mounted the standard DCC wiring  and in the front the Lenz LA152 connector units.  For the railway bed we used 3,5 mm hardwood multilayer and on the bed we glued the wooden sleepers.

As a prototype we used the Minehead station during the 1900 – 1910 period. A perfect guide to get information about  this station is the beautiful book “The Minehead Branch 1848-1971” .

And certainly we have a lot to do and still some unfinished kits in the drawer but we can’t resist the fine kits offered by the traders. Arnold bought the beautiful MOK Armstrong kit, Cor and Ton bought some kits to build wagons such as Iron Minks, Toads, Scorpion etc. We like modelling with brass so we only bought brass kits.

Till next,

Cor.

Dutch Scale Seven Group report nr. 10

17 July 2011

In this report we inform you  about the start of the Scale 7 layout located in the house of  Cor.

Some weeks ago one of  Cor’s children moved to an apartment in Haarlem. As a result an extra room for railway modeling was created by internally moving furniture in the house. This room is connected with the already existing railway room so there is more space now to set up a model railway. The shape of the two connected rooms is not a normal shape as one of the walls has an angle of 45 degrees. The result of this unusual shape means we can set up a model railway with a length of 14 metres. And we have a space extension in the third connecting room for a fiddle yard with a length of 4 metres. We will set up this fiddle yard extension on the evenings we want to run our trains or on the open days we will plan in the future. But first we need to work hard to set up the layout.



Drawing left side.

  

Drawing right side.




Left side frame construction.

 

 In the third week of June all the basic painting in the rooms was done and we could set up the first woodwork of the new layout. After some discussion we decided to build the baseboards on the height of 1.45 metres. This height creates space under the layout to work easy and serves as a storage place. The height is at eye level so we can see our models in a realistic view.

More daily information about the construction of the Scale 7 railway will be published on the  new DSSG blog.   http://dutchscalesevengroup.blogspot.com

The DSSG members are still busy with their models.

Ton has started to build a 517 Class with a kit from Malcom Mitchell/JLTRT, Slater’s wheels profiled by Christopher Makepeace and an ABC motor and gear. Arnold spent time to collect all these parts for Ton. Some pictures will follow. Arnolds horsebox is progressing and Cor is hard at work to get the 15 tons Cowan Crane ready. And we did some experimental work to produce sleepers for the new layout. The best wood we could find to produce sleepers was bought at Action, a shop here in Haarlem, where you can buy all kinds of house decoration articles. We used the sets of wooden sticks which are produced for mixing paint. The cost is very low but the quality of the wood is just what we need to produce wooden scale sleepers.

For drawing the track and point templates we will use the well known Templot track design program.

15 Tons Cowan crane under construction.

For more detail photo's see the next link (Dutch text)

http://www.blokpost-nul.nl/Project_GWR_CowansCrane_CDJ/Project_GWR_crane_cdj.htm

Till next,

Cor