The Leyland DAF MMLC DROPS

In my role as Newborn Blue Design, work is still taking centre stage away from any modelling at the moment. Although I have finished the first manual I was working on, I have taken on another. This time the manual is for the Leyland DAF MMLC DROPS, and is bigger than the last one I did.

The Foden IMMLC DROPS

There won’t be anything happening on the layout for at least a week because of work commitments.

As I may have mentioned before, I am a freelance graphic designer by trade, and I have just landed a job working on one of the manuals for the Foden IMMLC DROPS (I – Improved, M – Medium, M – Mobility, L – Load, C – Carrier) (D – Demountable, R- Rack, O – Offload, P – Pickup, S – System).

The manual is about an inch and half thick, so I’ve got my work cut out, and there won’t be any time for model railways for a week or so.

The last three cross members are glued in place, along with their corresponding upper portions of channel.

With the bridge turned over you can see where the bottom sections of channel are missing…

…but not for long. Still upside down, but the last pieces of channel are now in place.

At last. The finished ‘ironwork’ underframe of ‘Dalesmouth Viaduct’ is complete. Now all I’ve got to do is the deck, abutments, central pier and finishing touches. Still, I’m very pleased with my first venture into the use of laser cut parts. Apart from the time it saved, I doubt I could have cut some of the parts by hand anyway. Furthermore, if I had found a way to mass produce the parts by hand, I would probably have lost the will to live before I had finished them.

Before I start making the abutments and central pier for the viaduct, I just wanted to get a sense of how things are going to look.

Temporarily supported by coffee jars, in the abscence of any abutments.

Once I have finished building the basic bridge stucture, the abutments will be fabricated from ‘Plastikard’.

The bridge will be finished with a deck for the track to sit on. Not open, as seen here.

Another modelling session and ‘Dalesmouth Viaduct’ continues to grow. The more structure that is added, the easier it is to handle too.

More than half of the cross members and lateral channel pieces are in place now. One more evening should finish the framework of the bridge. Only three more cross members to add.

LED in place, lights down, and a long exposure later, this is a rough idea of the model lighting effects to come.

This is only one LED, roughly placed, but I’m sure it’s going to look great in night simulations with several LEDs installed in buildings, etc. At least I’ve proved to myself that I know what I’m doing now.

Wiring for the scenic lighting was installed from the transformer to ‘Dalesmouth’. I’ve broken the feed here with a connector block. The black ‘common’ wire only has to be installed once and can be used to power other ‘lighting districts’, such as ‘Dalesmouth’ station in future.

From ‘Dalesmouth’ the lighting wiring was routed to the back of the baseboards and up to ‘Overdale Quarry’.

To test the ’set-up’, I have temporarily wired an LED and resistor using connector blocks.

‘Switch 1′ is thrown on the transformer to test the circuit.

This single bulb was then taped to the inside of the ‘Overdale Quarry’ building to get an impression of the effect, as seen in the intro pics.

Another evening of modelling, and I’ve started to add detail in between the cross members of the viaduct.

Only the channels at the outside bottom of the bridge are continuous pieces. The pieces of channel that represent the other longditudinal channels are formed from cut sections. These are measured out with a caliper.

Here one of the first cut pieces of channel is fitted to the inside of the viaduct.

Some more cross members are glued to the base channel and cut pieces of channel fitted between them.

The sections that make up the inside bottom channels vary in length, depending on how the different cross members are arranged.

At the end of the evening this is how the viaduct looks. At first glance it doesn’t look a lot, but quite a lot of detail has been added.

Another evening’s work and ‘Dalesmouth Viaduct’ actually starts to look like a bridge, and some lessons were learned along the way too.

Constructing the bracing for the second side of the viaduct.

The second braced section is glued to the opposite side of the cross members.

Two more braced cross members are glued in place at the opposite end of the viaduct.

Two of the unbraced cross members are added to the middle of the bridge.

It was also at this point, the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed, that I decided to cut off the fine supports on top of the cross members. These were to have formed the ends of the fencing sections, but were so delicate that they showed a lot of distortion. They were also making handling of the bridge very awkward, to say the least. Lesson learned, I guess, for future projects. Primarily, what detail to include, and what not to include, in laser cut parts.

With these parts assembled the viaduct is now far easier to handle. Steady progress!

Another evening of modelling…

All of the unbraced cross members for the viaduct are now completely assembled.

Some parts for the bridge are bought ‘off the shelf’, like these Plastruct channels.

The diagonal braces, between the cross members, are taped to the drawing, using a ruler to align their bases to.

The Plastruct channel is then guled in place to form the base of the viaduct sides.

The first two cross members are glued in place and the viaduct starts to take shape.

For its first test I am running the Dapol Track Cleaner over the recently ballasted trackwork.

Here it is, hooked up behind the Class 60, ready for its first trial.

After running over the single track, in both directions, this is what it managed to collect. I was quite impressed with its performance, and I’m sure it is going to prove itself very useful.

Also, in the same session in the loft, I started to wire up the transformer for building and scenic lighting.

Pressing the old Hammant & Morgan transformer into service as power supply for building and scenic lighting.

I’ve decided on a colour combination of black and orange for wiring the lighting, with black being the common wire.