Gare du Nord - draft 2.

Had another stab at the facade for my station - based loosely on the Gare du Nord, Paris. It's difficult for me to do an impressionistic rendition of the facade without losing the architectural minutiae and complexity of its decoration. So, I used pencils. Quite pleased, but not sure how it will fit with surrounding buildings which will be rendered in a looser and more colourful style.

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La Cathedrale Saint-Andre de Bordeaux:

I love wandering into a church and finding that the organist is practising - the phrase, "This is my lucky day." always pops into my head. That's what happened some years ago on a visit to Bordeaux Cathedral and so I bought the CD.

Some years ago a French female (tres petite) organist came to do a recital at  St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Glasgow. Later in the week, I was telling a chap who I knew was a keen amateur organist about what a fantastic performance she had delivered and how there was an instant standing ovation when she finished. He said that he couldn't remember the last time  his organ had received a standing ovation.

Snap lock connectors - a disappointment followed by unexpected success!

The idea that I mentioned in yesterday's blog regarding snap lock connectors proved disappointing.

This single core 1.5mm earthing cable seemed significantly thicker than the bell wire that I had been using for my feeder wire but still thinner than the main red BUS cable. Perhaps it would be less prone than the bell wire was to slipping out of the connector's grip.

It didn't slip out, but the same problem occurred of there being no electrical connection unless one crushed the blade until the plastic housing of the connector began to crack.

THEN SOMETHING BIZARRE HAPPENED - WORTHY OF BLOCK CAPITALS. Out of frustration I used a much larger blue snap lock connector and reverted to the thinner bell wire in combination with the thick BUS power cable. This should definitely not have worked. If the thin bell wire was prone to slipping out of the small red connector, what hope had it of being gripped by the large blue version? To cut a long story short, I tried the experiment 3 times and it worked each time - perfect electrical connectivity.

2 postscripts:

1) the reason I tried bell wire again was that the thicker earthing wire seemed, on closer inspection, to be too thick to be comfortably soldered to the metal rails of the track;

2) rather, worryingly, when I was mucking about with the bell wire (which is single core) a section of it snapped between my fingers. In an earlier blog I mentioned that an Australian modeller on youTube had mentioned this problem of single core wire being prone to snapping.

Conclusion: I'll buy another pack of blue snap lock connectors and try stranded, as opposed to single core, bell wire, although stranded wire is meant to be more difficult to solder.

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Country and Western music:

not a huge fan of the genre, but from 1967, what a fantastic song "Ode to Billie Joe" was when sung by Bobbie Gentry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc

Skrillex

This is a rather deceptive heading for a blog episode. The word "skrillex" sounds like some sort of particulate substance that one might scatter over one's layout to simulate ballast, or gravel or grass or some such.

In fact it is the name of an American musician. See below.

No time today to do anything on railway layout. However, I have been thinking a lot about a possible solution to the snap connector/wiring problem that has been exercising me these last several weeks. Will report on that over next few days.

In the mean time here are some pictures of other peoples layouts - for inspiration.

Here is a very impressive use of a 2D backdrop which fits in effortlessly with the actual 3D diorama.

The hobby is very much a male preserve, I suspect. Perhaps most hobbies are like that. Here are some male modellers in typical pose.

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Skrillex:

I try to keep up with trends in popular music. Not always easy when much of it develops in clubs where attendance is verboten to the likes of me.

I was aware of dubstep but hadn't really been grabbed by it. However, the BBC has recently been highlighting an American exponent called Skrillex. Downloaded a couple of tracks and liked them. Then I read that he is a controversial figure in so far as though he has thousands of fans, the critics think he produces a load of derivative tosh.

Decided to ignore the critics and downloaded an entire album. Having played it twice I think perhaps the critics are right! Oh dear, another £7.99 down the iTunes drain.

Will continue to persevere with dubstep, I have implicit faith in every generation coming up with music that is as worthwhile as that produced by any previous generation.

Isao Tomita

Too tired to do anything with railway project tonight, so here, instead, is a picture of an amazing model station built by some chap in France.

Had a phone call tonight from a fellow enthusiast and commercial salesman for a large manufacturer of model railway products who was stuck in a hotel room at Heathrow Airport ready for his early morning flight tomorrow to the huge Nuremberg Model Railway Fair. This annual event is for traders only - that's very frustrating. He was interested in buying my N scale Rivarossi SNCF 141R. Unfortunately, I'd already sold it to a chap in County Antrim. However, we agreed to stay in touch. He's from Yorkshire and has a house in France, near Nice.

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Isao Tomita: Snowflakes are Dancing

This morning on Radio 3's Breakfast programme, a track was played from Isao Tomita's 1974 album of Debussy played on a synthesizer.

In my view, it's a peerless album. But after it was broadcast this morning, someone tweeted into Radio 3 and said it sounded like Dr Who meets House Music. That made me think.

Brass models

This is not a line I'll be going down, so to speak, but there is quite a lot of interest in highly accurate HO scale locomotives made out of brass. They are fantastically expensive - upwards from £1,500 by the looks of things. Sometimes they are left unpainted so as to gleam like collectors' items.

Here are some examples of French locos.

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The Posies:

Not terribly sure who the Posies are or how two of their tracks ended up in my iTunes library. (It's distressing how one's memory deteriorates as one grows older.)  Using the random shuffle setting two of their songs appeared today. "I guess you're right" and "Love comes".

Very melodic. Turns out their American, which I would have guessed.

Found this review on a website called "musicOMH".

"Crunchy, scuffed up guitars, blissful harmonies and wishful melodies are the order of the day. Imagine The Beatles locked in a garage with Mudhoney doing cover version of The Hollies and you're almost there. The twin modes of attack are the killer riff and the gentle finger picked melody."
I think I'll download the rest of the album.

Snap Lock connectors revisited.

This episode of the blog will only make sense if one reads the much earlier one about snap lock connectors and my severe doubts about them as a reliable method of electrical connection. Basically, one joins 2 separate wires by threading them through a plastic connector and then crushing them with a metal blade which cuts into the plastic sleeves of them  both and so connects them electrically.

Last week,  one of the helpful folk in D & F Models said that he found the choc bloc method of connecting wires to be more or less fool-proof.

But the literature questions this method because it involves breaking the main power supply cable everytime one takes a feeder wire off it.

Checked the literature again and every one speaks highly of the reliability of snap lock connectors and they do not involve the power cable being broken. But I had found that these connectors simply did not work more than 50% of the time. (See earlier episode of this bloc.)

Because I had a few spare hours today, I decided to try the snap lock connectors again. Also, I wanted to try out my ammeter which I bought to test the strength of supply to all parts of the layout - once the layout exists, that is!

I wired up 3 snap lock connectors for another trial of the method.

First problem: only 2 out of three would grip the thinner feeder wire. Now that is very irritating!! So I wired up a fourth.

Then I set up the tender of my ancient Jouef 141R steam locomotive on the Bachrus running stand.

This business of the motor being placed in the tender and not the locomotive is common practice but I'm certain that was not the practice when I had a model railway as a child.

So, using the ammeter, I checked that the tender would run off the battery with a standard wire connection - it did. Then I tried using the snap lock connectors as a mode of electrical connection.

To cut a long story short, none of the three examples of a snap lock connection worked. So, I took a pair of pliers and squeezed the blade down as far as humanly possible and tried again. This time all three worked.

But how hard is hard? I thought I had squeezed these connectors tightly enough in the first place. Will every connection have to be repeatedly tested with an ammeter or similar to check that I have pressed hard enough with the pliers?

Jury still out on this.

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Patti Smith:

Last year, read Patti Smith's excellent memoirs.

She is still making relevant music - this album of cover-versions is very accessible; could be a touch soft-rocky for some tastes. Her version of "Feels like Teen Spirit" reveals what a truly great song that is.

Blind Willie McTell

Have laid more of the cork underlay down - a tedious task, yawned throughout wishing there was a Jeeves figure to call upon.

Temporarily laid some track down to remind myself of the station layout and propped a Venetian Advent calendar against the back wall to indicate a townscape.

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Tonight's drinking will be Gamay.

When we spent some time in and around Lyon last year, I had to get used to drinking Gamay in various forms. I've never liked this grape but drank it then so as to enter into the Regional spirit, so to speak.

However, after several months of a concerted Gamay drinking campaign, I'm pleased to announce that I am a convert - at least to the older, richer varieties.

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Blind Willie McTell:

The disappointment of playing this record to some school friends in the late 1960s and their mocking me and it (rather hilariously and complete with cruel mimes) has scarred me. It took me several decades to accept that there is no accounting for taste. Different people like different music and that is all there is to it - you can rarely convert anyone to something that they are not pre-disposed to.

This is a fantastic record with a great cover and it includes some interesting interviews with Blind Willie.