Army_Air_Force

When I got to the bottom of the bucket of chair screws, I found I was one short, so I'll have to contact the railway where I bought the track and get one more screw from them. The middle sleeper of the seven must have had a different style of rail chair fitted, as the hole spacing was out and didn't line up with my chairs. As a result, I had to do some drilling to make new holes.

Here's a shot, part way through the afternoon. Eight chairs are screwed down, the empty sleeper needs the holes re-drilling as they didn't line up with the chairs I had. With all the chairs fitted, I could see the sleeper position was close, but not quite lined up. They all need a slight adjustment, moving the sleeper to the left or right to get a straight line through the chairs.

June 7th On the morning of the 7th, I painted the gatepost mount a second coat of Hammerite over all the areas that had been already painted. Once cured, it could be turned over and the underside could be painted. I also painted the anchor bolts that hold the main gatepost onto its concrete footing. After lunch, I began to transport rail chairs from the garage to the trackbed. Two chairs at a time, plus six chair screws was as much as I could carry in the wheelbarrow. They are very heavy. The first two have a casting date of 1939. While there were already holes in the sleepers from previous chair screws, they were very tight to screw in, especially the last couple of inches. Even with the two feet long wrench, it took two hands and a lot of force to get the screws all the way home. Bigger modelling tools than I normally use! Actually, I left them with about a sixteenth of an inch of play, to allow the chair to move slightly on the sleeper. This should help with alignment once I drop the rail into the top of the chairs. It took most of the afternoon to transport the chairs and to get them screwed down.

June 3rd On the 3rd, the sleepers were treated again with the Creocote wood treatment and left to dry. June 4th On the 4th, I painted three quarters of the way up the sides and ends of the sleepers with bitumen to help waterproof them. I also painted the footprints where the rail chairs sit, as water could gather under there. June 6th On the 6th, I collected the steel for the second gatepost mount and welded up the parts. Late in the day, the inside, outside and upper surfaces were painted in Hammerite.

I ran out of bitumen while painting the bottom of the sleepers and had some more on order. Once it's here, I plan on painting the sides and ends of the sleepers to at least half their height, to help waterproof the lower portions, as I don't want to be digging out the ballast regularly to re-treat the wood. Later in the day, after the temperature dropped a bit, I pulled the trailer out and unloaded all the R/C aircraft. This was to allow me to remove the four pieces of rail from the back of the box. There are two 9 feet long sections and two pieces at 7 feet 6 inches. They are HEAVY; and I thought the sleepers were heavy! Coming from a coal haulage line, I believe the rail is in the 100 to 130 pound per yard range, meaning the longest pieces could be up to almost 400 pounds in weight. Using some wooden levers, the rails were moved to the front edge of the trailer. Tie-down straps were wrapped around the rail and a piece of wood as a handle and they were dragged out to the edge of the drive, ready for the next move.

My neighbour, also a railfan, donated some old 3 inch fenceposts and some planking to the project. These will form an old looking fence to fill the gap to the left of the crossing gate. The fence will stop at the hawthorn sleepers, leaving a gap where the paving will go, to allow trimming the hawthorn. June 2nd I got back to the sleepers on Friday 2nd. The sleepers were turned so that the sides could be treated with the Creocote. They were turned again for the upper face and once more for the other side. In some places, it soaked in quite quickly so further coats were added in these areas. In the inset picture, you can see how light the wood looks prior to painting. The seven sleepers have soaked up a gallon and a half of Creocote so far. I'd hate to think of how much preservative went into each sleeper under pressure when first made. I also dragged some more earth from the pile to under the right edge of the weed barrier, to allow the sleepers to be positioned a little further away from the gate. In the picture with all seven sleepers laid out, they've been spaced out pretty much to their final positions. A yellow steel tape measure can be seen along the left side of the sleepers, which is the length of the rail - 16ft 6in.

Also on May 31st, the three sleepers across the front of the gate were also pinned down and screwed together. I had to redrill one of the pinning holes, as it fell directly in line with the air raid shelter bricks underground. To hide the odd spacing of the pins, the sleepers will be capped by some three quarter inch planking, which will help to tie them together, since they are only a single layer. With that done, the railway sleepers were now dry enough to start treating. Several of them have some quite rotten areas; after all, they were removed as they were no longer servicable. I picked the best side to be the upper face. The underside was given two coats of black bitumen, to help to water proof the surface touching the ground.

Certainly harder than working in the N scale that I'm more familiar with!! The tools are much bigger and heavier too.

The sleepers were still a bit damp from washing, so I left them to dry. This is their approximate position, but they need to be spread out a bit more, extending the row further towards the hawthorn hedge. The closest one will also probably move towards the sleeper wall a bit. I salvaged some of the old weed membrane that we pulled up and got the decorative sleepers along the hawthorn finished, both layers.

May 30th On the 30th, I got all the proper railway sleepers jetwashed, to get rid of plant growth, dirt, oil and soot. This was to allow them to be treated with an oil based preservative. May 31st This morning, I managed to get each sleeper loaded onto the wheelbarrow and trundled down the garden to the trackbed. While loading and unloading, I almost gave birth to several of my internal organs. I'm guessing the sleepers are oak, as they are incredibly dense and weigh a ton!

May 23rd I got my angle grinder out and with a stone cutting disc, rounded off the edges of the concrete footings so that they wouldn't cut through the weed membrane that would be laid over the top. I then packed earth around the concrete, wetted down to help me pack it in firmly, levelling it off with the top of the concrete. This further helped to smooth out the transition for the membrane lying over the concrete. The mud was left to set a few days while I had other jobs to do. May 25th Now for the exciting bit. On the evening of May 25th, when wifey was home from work and free to help, we carried the gate from the rear corridor, around 150 feet down the garden to the railway location. The footing for the hinge end of the gate was drilled for the rawle bolts and they were installed. The lawn/railway dividing sleepers were then lifted and a 5 metre square weed membrane spread out over the trackbed area. The edging sleepers were replaced and can now be drilled and pinned down properly. The membrane was cut around the rawle bolts and the gate lifted and lowered into place. It took a bit of jiggling to get all the bolts through the metal post mount, without pushing them back down the holes, but eventually all eight nuts were in place and tightened down. The other end of the gate is just supported on a block of wood for now. I need to order some steel plate to make the mounting bracket for the other gate post, which will then support the end of the gate with its locking bolt.

May 16th & 17th Over the last few days, I finished digging out the soil for the edging sleepers. I've also done some tree surgery on the conifer bush at the bottom of the garden. When we moved here, there was another, quite bald looking conifer in front of this one. As a result, the remaining conifer didn't get any sun light on its front face and so was also deviod of greenery. Conifers don't grow back well, so I started knitting branches from the sides of the bush to fill in the bare area in the front. Branches were pulled around and tied in place with nylon garden twine. It looks a load better now and once those branches fill out a bit more, with a little future trimming, it should become quite respectable again. May 18th On the 18th, I did some more work on the gate footings. I've had to make some compromises with the gate, for the reasons of practicality. I needed to remember that this is a garden feature, not a working railway. The gate will be too low to open and clear the tracks. If I wanted to be able to open it, the gate foundations would need to be raised by around 12 inches, or the whole trackbed dug out and lowered by 12 inches. Raising the gate was going to make it look rather odd and digging out the trackbed through roots, concrete and bricks left over from the air raid shelter, was far more work than I was prepared to do. As a result, the gate height is set for a practical and aesthetic appearance in relation to the rest of the garden. The main footing, nearest the hedge, was raised by the addition of a 2 inch thick paving slab being cemented on top of the concrete blocks. This lifted it by around two and a half to three inches. The other footing was quite a bit lower, due to the slope of the garden. I added two more concrete blocks on top, bringing it to a very similar height to the other footing. Once the mortar is set, I need to back fill around them with earth to level the area, ready for the weed membrane that will cover the whole area.

May 10th Finally between showers on the 10th, I got some concrete and high density concrete blocks and got the first gatepost foundation mixed and laid. Concrete blocks are cheaper by volume than buying concrete to mix and pour. Four 10mm diameter, 500mm length re-bars, are concreted into the corners of the foundation to help anchor the footing into the earth. The area around the blocks was filled with concrete poured in to tie it all together. May 11th The second concrete gatepost foundation was laid on the 11th. Due to the amount of clearance between the bottom of the gate and the ground, I may need to raise the height of the foundation. The bottom of the original gate post was rotten, so I had to cut some material off during the restoration of the gate.

Throughout the last week of April, I was working on installing the sleeper edging. Digging in this area isn't easy as it is full of tree roots and also bricks and large chunks of concrete left over from a World War 2 air raid shelter. In the picture below, the new lawn area is covered by a weed membrane, just to stop things growing there until I'm ready to work on this area. One original railway sleeper is seen on the right, along with some decorative sleepers to get a feel for the space needed for the railway. April 27th Yet more digging, but I got three of the rear edging sleepers in place and two and a half sleepers of the second layer screwed on top. The offcut from the half sleeper was cut a little further to fit in the centre stretch of the lawn/railway sleeper divide. These aren't yet pinned down. I want to put a weed membrane under the railway and the edge will also go under the lawn/railway divide sleepers. Before I can do that, I have to also get the last sleeper and a half fitted along the hedge. Two holes just this side of the sleepers, are the foundation holes for the crossing gate. The right hole was particularly bad for bricks and tree roots and took some time to dig out.

In March this year, I'd arranged to buy some track parts from a local heritage railway and on March 25th, set off with my empty trailer to collect everything. I came back with 7 sleepers, 14 rail chairs and screws and enough rail to make about 16 feet of track. It weighed a ton and was hard work loading it into the trailer and removing it again once home. My big toe can testify as to how heavy the rail chair castings are!! The next patch down from the observatory would become a new lawn area, with the area at the bottom of the garden becoming the railway. After the tree stumps were ground out, it took some effort to level the area. The sleepers to the left will form a divide between the lawn and railway area. I also planned to run a length of sleepers parallel to the hawthorn hedge and then pave the area. This would give a firm flat area for ladders for trimming the hedge and allow easy sweeping up of the trimmings.

Yes, you read the title correctly, I'm doing some 1/1 scale modelling! Someone suggested I do it twice full size to get extra detail in!! I haven't built a model railway for myself since 2007, though I did build one for a customer between 2010 and 2016. In early 2021, we moved house from Washington in the North East of England, about 10 miles south to Durham. There were several reasons for the move, but it resulted in a house with a much bigger plot of land than we previously had. Across 2022, an area that had been woodland, was cleared to make way for my new astronomical observatory. There was still quite a lot of land beyond the observatory that needed tidying up and the plan was to reduce the amount of maintenance required. The remaining bushes were removed and another seven tree stumps ground out. Through February, a sleeper wall was built and the earth which had sloped down to the lawn, was back-filled to level off the area more. When we moved house, I found a partly rotten wooden gate behind the garage. It had previously been a driveway gate. It immediately struck me how much it looked like a railway level crossing gate! In years gone by, going back to the early 1800s, there used to be a wooden wagonway that ran past the end of the garden. By the mid 1800s, the North Eastern railway had replaced the wooden railed wagonway. A big garden, railway history on the doorstep and a gate that looked like a level crossing gate.......I knew straight away what I was going to do with it. I was going to build a 1/1 scale railway as a garden feature! Over the winter of 2022/23, I stripped the gate down, cut out the rotten wood and replaced it with new. It was repainted in white, all the metalwork cleaned up and repainted and a galvanised steel disc cut for the centre red warning circle. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.

I did some more wet sanding on the prop this morning, then turned my attention to the chosen pilot. I needed to reduce his bulk so his legs went at the knee, his parachute and back were sanded away and his arms and shoulders were slimmed down. I also sanded off the headphones from his helmet. That was about it for today, other than some photos at the current stage. The white is a bit textured here and there, so I could do with giving it a really fine sand. The wheels may be a fraction oversized, though they are quite big on the film aircraft. Overall, I'm happy with them for something that cost me nothing to make.

While the tyre paint was drying, I had a rake through the spares box for props and pilots. Some of the props were handed the wrong way, but I found one that was suitable, with a little modification. There were several pilots, but only one looked slim enough to be trimmed to fit into the cockpit. He's the one on the left. The prop needed some filing at the blade root, to reprofile the blades, more in line with the screen captures from the film. Both blades were filed and then brushed over with some plastic solvent to get rid of the rough texture. They still need a wet sand with some fine wet & dry.

The wheels were dry this morning, so I moved on to the next step. The way the wheels were cast, the wire spokes were laid flat on the board and so the ends of them overlapped the tyre. The excess was of course sanded away, just leaving a small part overlapping the tyre. The easiest way to fix this was just to paint the tyre in matt black paint and paint over the ends of the wire. Here's the outside of the tyre after painting and with the paint still wet. There are quite a lot of micro bubbles in the clear resin, when viewed with a macro lens, but you don't have to be far away before the bubbles vanish and you just see the tyre and spokes.

After that, the axles and oleos were painted silver and left to dry. The wheels were polished with some T-Cut and then painted with Klear, to try and help restore clarity to the resin. They are seen drying here and that's where I left it, coming in for lunch while everything dries. There's not a huge amount left to do on the model. Wheels on, rigging, a prop making and a windscreen. I think that's about it. I lost the pilot ages ago. I'm sure he's in a box somewhere, but I've no idea where, so I may have to raid the spares box again for another! EDIT - The wheels were attached later in the day.

It's been a tad over a year since I did anything on the Skystreak, but over the last week, my workshop has slowly turned back to a more organised state. It still has 36 railway sleepers piled up in the middle of the floor, but now I have a more or less clear work bench again. With wifey and daughter out for the day and it's too cold and frosty to be working on the military vehicles in the garage, I turned my attention back to the Skystreak. It really is a year since I had more than about 18 inches of free bench space, or the ability to actually sit at the bench! I'd left the project where I was trying to make some tiny wire spoked wheels, which are around 10mm diameter. I'd cast clear resin into a rubber 'O' ring, with thin wire laid across for the spokes. I had a few air bubbles, which were filled with more resin and that was where they were left. This morning, I wet sanded the excess resin off the bubble overflow and from the edges of the tyres, then drilled the axle holes. This was quite hard, getting a tiny drill to cut through the resin without the spokes pushing it off centre. After that, the resin was wet sanded again, leaving it slightly frosty and the wheels were trial fitted.

Following with interest. Always found it interesting to see where other modellers work their magic. I moved house in February 2021. My new workshop was the first room in the new house to be fitted out. After all, if I didn't have my workshop and tools set up, I couldn't do any of the other jobs in the house and garden! It is basically a 20ft square room, with part of one corner taken up by another room, making it an 'L' shape. It was also made using kitchen cabinets and benches, all stripped out and moved from my old workshop, built in early 2000. They were the £10 each MFI base units and have served me well. Here it is. There was a small coat cupboard just inside the doorway which became a small display space and photo studio.

I'm sure we'd all like to see the Skystreak progress, me included, but this year has been crazy busy with the house, observatory and garden. My workshop has been full of stuff most of the year and things haven't changed! The pictures above show the workshop full of observatory parts. I was modifying a 12x8ft pent roof shed to the roll off roof observatory, but the wooden shed was only 50% of the job. There was a huge amount of clearing and ground works, including the pouring of around 1,000Kg of concrete for the footings and the two piers for the telescope mounts. That of course involved a huge amount of excavation! We went from this when we moved in..... .....to this at the end of August this year. We also extended the concrete hardstanding around the garage for my trailer and moved the garden shed. There's lots more groundworks to do to the right of the observatory. A new lawn and a 1/1 scale garden railway!!! When we moved in, we found the old driveway gate behind the garage. It was somewhat rotten in places, but due to the fact that there used to be two railways that ran across the bottom of the garden in days gone by, I thought a railway garden feature would be a nice nod to the past history of the site. As a result, the old gate was restored to become a level crossing gate. I plan to lay about 16 feet of track beyond the gate, with wild flowers beyond that. As part of the next step of the garden project, we had 38 railway sleepers delivered to form a retaining wall between the old lawn and the new raised lawn and railway area. They all ended up in the back corridor and my workshop, drying out so they could then be painted with shed paint and bitumen. I can't even reach my modelling bench due to the three stacks of sleepers in front of it! The observatory is getting some good use, but that is still a second hobby, behind the 1/1 scale military vehicles. Modelling now comes at least third and usually behind the first two and house and garden jobs. I do want to get back to the bench, as I also have a 1/72 scale halftrack that my daughter wants to build, after having a ride in a real halftrack last year.

Jeep Winter Photoshoot - December 15th We seem to be living in a little island of snow and ice in our immediate area. You don't have to go many miles for the snow to vanish, so while it's here, I wanted to make the most of it. After spending the morning, checking all the anti-freeze in the three vehicles to make sure it was up to the job of the current cold weather, I decided to go for another drive. Then I realised I'd be in trouble from my daughter if she missed out on a second snow trip, so decided to wait until she got in from school. We wouldn't have long before the sun set, but hoped to catch a nice sky at some point on the route. We'd had several heavy snow showers across today, topping up the landscape with a fresh blanket of white. The trip followed the same route as I'd taken with the Dodge a few days ago, though I missed one stop next to a small woodland due to poor lighting there. My daughter snapped a few pictures while we were on the move and I used my DSLR for the parked shots; shooting in Nikon RAW format as usual. The sun was already very low in the sky when we set off, only 3 degrees above the horizon at our first stop. The view at the church yard was a bit more snowy this time and after a few pictures there, we moved on to a road we call "sunset lane" ( named from a previous photoshoot ) to end the trip. The usual spot was in a bit of a depression and was only just seeing the setting sun. A little further up the lane again to the stop with the steep banks. This area still hadn't seen much sun, so there hasn't been much snow melt. We took a few pictures of ourselves here and then headed back home to wash the road salt off again and warm up.

Dodge Winter Photoshoot - December 9th On the evening of December 8th, it began snowing. There was quite a lot falling, but it wasn't laying on the ground as much as the snow fall suggested. By late evening, the garden was white and there was a covering of around 3/8 inch. As I've never had the Dodge out in snow for pictures, I decided if the snow was still on the ground in the morning, I'd go for a local run around and get some pictures. While in its "Flying Control" colour scheme, the Dodge always spent the winter hibernating in its shipping container with the battery out. After moving house in 2021, I could garage the Dodge at home, which also allowed me to return it to olive drab. On the morning of Friday 9th, the snow had melted a little but there was still enough on the ground for some nice pictures. I was on the move by about 09:20hrs and got the first pictures are a layby near home by 09:30hrs. The sun was still very low in the sky at that time, but the temperature was sub-zero and the sun gave no warmth. I wasn't going far, but there were a number of spots to pull in for pictures along the route. Several of them were more suited for shooting into the low sun, which was only around eight degrees above the horizon at that time. Blue sky, some clouds and a golden yellow light added to the atmosphere of the pictures. Near the next village, there's a nice country lane that I often visit for pictures. There were a couple of places to stop for pictures along this road. With it being a quiet road, it was still mostly snow covered. There was one last stop towards the end of that lane, in a bit of a hollow with steep banks on either side of the road, an ideal vantage point for getting some slightly top side views. It was also more sheltered from the sun, so had stayed more snow covered. I headed back home after that, having covered about 7 miles. Of course the garden hose and tap were frozen, so I had to wash the Dodge down with a bucket of water and a brush before putting it back in the garage. The snow persisted over the next few days, giving me the opportunity to take one of the Jeeps out..... ( See next post )