Hi all Just to let my my fellow U.K Z-scalers know where I'm at this year, these are the following confirmed show dates for this year. Everybody welcome to come along for a chat. Macclesfield 12-13th March Shasta Bradford 30th Apr-May 1st Fargo (if ready !) Blackburn 3rd-4th September Shasta Zedex 16th October Fargo or Shasta in long form Hartlepool 23rd –24th October Cuyahoga Shoeburyness 9th-10th November Shasta The extension board for Shasta is pretty much complete and I'm spending the weekend debugging some electrics ( a short on one of the loco shed feeds) and re-aligning a couple of cross board rail joints. I've made one of the extension cables, needed because the Shasta spring board is now further away from the control panel, a few inches too short so its stretched a bit tight but other than that no problems, Some Canadian interlopers are seen in the extended yard but I should now be able to run decent length trains. The layout is now a tight squeeze in the workshop! It butts up to the lathe at one end and cantileveres over the workbench at the other The other side needs point motors on the two handbuilt points so they are locked over for now and I haven't motorised the turntable yet but to be honest at shows it won't get that used that much. I'll do some better pics and video once it is all set up at Macclesfield. Main job needed now is to extend the lighting rig by four foot which means that there will have to be an intervening upright to support it. I like to have an uninterrupted view for the public but a 14ft span is pushing it a bit. Fire retardant curtains need extending for the front and we should be good to go Fargo, for those who were about to ask, is my new small Northern Pacific layout to take to one day and smaller shows, One board, simple track plan but lots of trees again! cheers Kev
Nice Kev! What turntable are you using? It looks like you fit 2 GP 9's on it. I really like the weathering on it,
I see some of Stony's RP models. RP has been good to z scale. Without it, we would have lot less detail scenery.
The turntable is the Peco 'N' scale one with the centre grooved out to take Peco Flexi track. I've used one of these before on Cuyahoga slimmed down on either side and with a control cabin on one end. Apart from the girder depth being a bit deep it looks the part and they are easily found in model shops in the U.K Handrails came from a Revell boat kit It is seen here outside the shed on Cuyahoga. The one installed on Shasta has the deck left the original width as the one at Dunsmuir is quite wide judging from pictures Quite agree about 3D models with the proviso that they are fragile, and depending on the design can have prominent layer lines. I've got a couple of U.K diesels that took a lot of cleaning up. Also the ones done in SWF seem to need a lot of primer-filling and rubbing down to get rid of the grain. The results with the Alco FA1 and EMD FT were nice but they were not a simple clean and paint job/ The etched RS11 I'm currently assembling is going to look superb in a way 3D cannot match at present Kev
Kev Zedex 2016 has been on my calendar since Zedex 2015, so I am looking forward to seeing your layout (and you) there. Unfortunately, as I live in South Devon the other exhibitions are a bit of range. Rob Pearce (aka ViperBugloss)
