Weathering

This business about how to underlay the track is connected with the broader issue of "weathering". This term refers to  making one's models look less toy like. It boils down to taking the gloss off and generally having a less homogeneous finish.

This applies to the underlay of the track and to the locomotives, rolling stock and buildings.

You can even buy specialist weathering paints and the internet abounds with videos about weathering techniques.

But, do I want to go in that direction? (See earlier episode of blog on Impressionism.)

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The English Acoustic Collective: Ghosts

Favourite track: St George's Day/Cuckoos Nest

This record awakes my English roots.

Mixing the grape with the grain.

I haven't drunk beer and wine in the same session for 20 years at least. At some point, I became convinced that to mix the two was a recipe for a hangover and other general unpleasantness. However, other people clearly didn't hold this view  and seemed none the worse off for not adhering to it.

This evening I decided to follow my instincts as opposed to my prejudices and had two pints of lager at an end of term social in Glasgow city centre and then met my wife off the bus from Edinburgh and we both felt like going to an Italian restaurant where we shared a bottle of red wine.

This must seem an unremarkable event to most normal folk. But for me, it was a real kicking over of the traces. It meant I could conform with the demands of two very different social groups - something I don't usually bother doing.

Hope I haven't spoken too soon. Will probably die during the night!

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On the railway front, the issue of track underlay has been exercising me. Take a look at these pictures.

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Tonight's listening: Alfred Brendel and Beethoven's 3rd Piano concerto. I much prefer the  5 Beethoven concertos to any of his 9 symphonies.

Single core or stranded wire

Still pondering this snap lock connector issue. If it works then it is far more convenient method than soldering wires.

The UK literature recommends single core wire be used for both the main BUS wire and the thinner feeder wires. The main reason seems to be that single core wire is easier to solder to the track.

But an Australian modeller on youTube recommends stranded wire because single core can snap leading to broken connectivity and it's not easy to locate where the break in transmission is. He says that this snapping is very likely to occur because of all the twisting and turning that wires take on model rail layouts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWJGor5_iVY

He also takes a unique approach to inserting the feeder wires into the connector in that he pushes it right through the connector and thus can have 2 feeder wires coming from each connector.

Might try this.

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Another great Eels album:

Snap lock connectors Part 2

Still not convinced about these snap lock connectors - see earlier episode of this blog.

I ordered a "set" of wires and snap lock connectors from someone on eBay. By doing this, I presumed that this time I would avoid the problems that I had encountered earlier. They were caused by  the thicknesses of the wires  not being compatible with the  connectors - the thinner of the wires never being properly gripped by the connector.

I presumed that since this time I was buying a "set", there would be no such problems of incompatibility.

In fact, the same thing happened again when I tried to connect 2 wires from the "set". The thinner wire slid out.

Frustrated, I then used pliers to crush the connector until it could be crushed no more. Success, in that the thinner wire did not slide out - BUT there was no electrical connection between the thicker and the thinner wire - please see earlier episode of this blog to find out what the hell I'm talking about.

Went away and listened to The Fall - see below. Then, came back to the work-table and with a new sample of wires and connector repeated the process of "crushing" . This time it did work and there was electrical connectivity.

But I would hardly describe this method as fool-proof. It's terribly hit and miss.

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The Fall

I love the Fall and would love to see them play live. But, frankly, I would be terrified of the rest of the audience. It's amazing the morons who go to these concerts. Attendance should be restricted to middle-aged men in sports jackets, and the volume kept down to sensible levels.

Defraying some costs - at last.

I have been a bit extravagant in my approach to this project. I've made a few expensive false starts and have purchased stuff rashly. (Having said that, I got a heck of a lot of pleasure - excitement, even - making those purchases online and then waiting for the postman to deliver the resultant packages.)

The biggest mistake was the initial decision to go  for the very small N gauge. It was only once I'd purchased quite a lot of French rolling stock that I realised N gauge was simply too small for me to handle. The advantage of N gauge (as I'm sure I stated in an earlier episode of the blog) is that you can run trains with 7 or 8 or more carriages which is what happens in real life. In a domestic setting one usually does not have the room to run such long trains with HO scale.

Anyway, I switched to HO scale some months ago and so have had all this N gauge stuff hanging around the house.

But, thanks to an advert in the magazine for the SNCF Society, I have now sold the N gauge items. I'll have to pack it and post it all off tomorrow. Conscience salved to some extent.

Today I have been mostly listening to an Austrian outfit, EPY.

When looking them up for details on the internet I find that one website describes their music as follows: Genre - electronic; Style - downtempo, abstract and breakbeat. I must remember that.

But, as I write today's episode of the blog it is the Danish National Radio Choir singing Brahms that is salving my soul.

Tracksetta templates

This hobby has one thing in common with my experience of DIY - nothing is ever straightforward.

For example, one would think that bending flexitrack to the correct radius would require a deal of preparation and perhaps some kind of calibrating device. I did not expect that laying it straight would be problematic.

Of course, I should have realised that what looks straight to the eye might be slightly deviating from true. Fortunately, there is a simple and effective tool available to solve this problem. But it is yet another tool that has to be purchased.

Basically, the tool - made by Tracksetta - is a steel plate which one lays between the two rails and then runs up and down the track. The track then conforms to the straight edges of the template. There are slots in the template to allow one to hammer pins through the plastic sleepers when one has reached the stage of permanently fixing the track in position - I'm months away from that, I fear.

There is an excellent video on youtube showing one how to do this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCiqMAAtApk&feature=relmfu

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Beethoven's 32 Variations in C minor for piano.

Never been keen on the concept of  "Variations" - sound as if they are either just a form of showing-off or an exercise for the fingers. In other words they don't suggest emotional commitment from the composer.

Well, how wrong can one be? (That should probably be the title of this blog.)

Heard Olli Mustonen playing Beethoven's 32 Variations in C minor on Radio 3 earlier in the week and have this  morning downloaded them from iTunes.

Poulenc

The very name, "Poulenc", conjures up Frenchness to me.

Today, using "shuffle", I decided to listen to whatever  iTunes came up with. Delightfully, it came up with Poulenc's Piano Concerto.

I actually saw this piece  performed at City Halls, Glasgow a few years ago with the piano played by Ian Fountain. In my opinion, Fountain's performance was faultless. The critic of the Glasgow Herald described Fountain's playing as "brittle". I had, and still have, no idea what he meant by that.