Last of the Summer Work

With the dismal Summer drawing to a close, and our holiday in India fast approaching, I'm feeling the pressure to make a final push.

Sir Arthur Heywood, whose approach to small railways has so inspired the minimal railway movement, would no doubt have approved of me resorting to a  "stout mackintosh" which was his preferred alternative to locos with a cab. Sadly working in pouring rain did little for the quality of my woodworking skills, but I did manage to produce two basic flat bodies.

Talking of inspiration it appears that many of us who have embraced the minimal ethos were independently influenced  by a picture of Roger Marsh, with his original Tinkerbell working a goods train on his Nunfield Tramway. It was published in "Model and Miniature Railways" in the early seventies - a book that is well worth getting hold of.

So here is my homage to that well known photo, featuring my two new wagons.

The bodies are built in a simple jig. These are the short version, intended to sit between the supports of the tipper wagon. I'm planning to build a longer version for the bolt together wagons. They are designed to have de-mountable bodies, like the Heywood "tops" wagons but I suspect will get most use in this form. The handles on the other body make lifting it on and off the chassis a lot easier, but also facilitate hand tramming when Teddy isn't available.

Teddy actually went U/S today and wouldn't move in reverse. One of the great things about his design is it only takes minutes to strip down. Since he was working well going forwards, and with the clutch off was moving freely in both directions, it was fairly easy to work out the problem was with the wiring in the direction controller. What came as a shock was the problem was a dead earwig.

Here are a couple of shots that should really have been part of the last post. First the sub-assemblies of one of the bolt together chassis  in transit.

And here is a more complete view of the first turnout

Construction of the second one, which will provide access to the engine shed, is well underway and the third is on order. An oddity of  7 1/4" is that I've had to treat the timber sleepers of the turnout to try and get them to look like the plastic sleepers used on the plain track. 

And finally Simba has been making a big play for promotion from linescat to driver.