It's raining and getting markedly colder this morning in Lincolnshire, so I think it must be officially Autumn. After the great burst of activity on the garden railway earlier in the year, I have been distracted onto other things over the last three months and have been somewhat horrified by how quickly the garden attempts to reclaim my new trackbed - I've only just started building and a regular weedkilling train is already becoming a necessity.

We did the annual pilgrimage to North Wales last month, main objective was to climb Snowdon with the boys but, of course, we still managed to find a little time for railways - Ffestiniog, Welsh Highland, Talyllyn and Fairbourne this time round (as well as a look round the Snowdon Railway on the way down).

A whistle-stop tour of Wales

The Welsh Highland Railway continues its rapid progress towards Aberglaslyn - father and I have been walking up and down the pass for the last forty years imagining trains running there again (and in those days you could still walk through the tunnels). We can't have long to wait now. Beddgelert station, behind the Royal Goat Hotel, is a hive of activity - for years the only sign of the old railway was a pair of concrete pillars which used to support the water tower. They are still there, in the middle of the newly rebuilt station, now well-advanced.

After taking the Llanberis Path "tourist track" the last few times I've been up Snowdon, this time we started from the top of the pass and went up the shorter, steeper Pyg track. Highly recommended, the views are superb all the way up - having got to the top we came back via the Llanberis Path so that we could see the engines running up and down the railway as we walked down.

The workshop is undergoing a fairly massive rearrange at the moment in an attempt to create a bit more workable space whilst at the same time accomodating some more machines to expand its capabilities.

For many years I've run the workshop with two lathes, originally a Colchester Bantam and Triumph 2000, with a Chipmaster replacing the Bantam in recent times. It is fair to say that the Triumph gets to do less work than the smaller machine, but when it is needed, nothing else will do. Plus I enjoy using it. Which makes it even more unfathomable why, when friend Joe needed a big lathe last year and asked if I wanted to sell it, I said yes. Possibly it was because at the time it was in the unit next door, awaiting recommissioning after the move, possibly because he caught me at a time when I hadn't got anything big to turn. Whichever way, he took it (and has put it to good use ever since) and I have regretted its disposal every month when I have to run across the road to get large things turned at the precision engineers opposite. 

Having regretted its disposal for the last year, when a local company replaced their Triumph with a new Tornado CNC machine, I bought it virtually before the spindle stopped turning (they had it on pretty constant production work - it was still earning its keep the morning I collected it). It's almost the same as the last one, grubby but still accurate (which is pretty typical of most Triumphs), complete with Ainjest high speed threader (which I rated highly on the old machine) and a DRO (which I've never had on a lathe before, I'll just have to get used to these new-fangled gadgets).

The last time I bought a new machine was the Bridgeport EZ-Trak mill, about seven years ago. It's still in constant use, is an immensely versatile machine and is pretty much ideal for one-off prototyping and small batches of components. It has two axis CNC control, three axis DRO - basically it needs an operator (me) to operate the quill for Z moves and change tools. This is hardly an onerous task, but does require fairly constant attendance unless it is doing a long cycle at a constant depth setting - machining out expansion links usually gives me twenty minutes where I can be doing productive work elsewhere (or grabbing a coffee and nattering to Karl next door...).

Having deliberated for some time about a new machine, I have finally bought a new mill to run alongside the Bridgeport, a vertical machining centre this time, which is a much faster, fully 3D machine with a 10 station tool changer. It was delivered a couple of weeks ago - at just over three tons it's not something I can easily move around in the workshop, so let the professional machine movers crane it in and then put it in position using a pair of sixteen ton capacity skates.

Lots of buttons...

In the seven years since I last bought a new machine, either I've got older or the manuals have got thicker. This one arrived with four books the size of a telephone directory each, which has provided me with bedtime reading for some months to come - I'll let you know when I've managed to switch it on.

In the time-honoured fashion, having brought two new machine into the workshop, I've convinced myself that with a little judicious tidying up and rearranging, I'll actually end up with more floor space than I had before. It is actually starting to look tidier, but it still needs a little fine tuning. I'll post some pictures next time to show how successful the new layout turns out to be.

20th September 2007

News Archive

June 2007 - Station Road Steam at Harrogate Show, herd of Tinkerbells, Martin's railway
March 2007 - Building a garden railway competition, A Workshop in Herefordshire
January 2007 - Miniature lathes and photography, Midlands Exhibition, Churnet Valley Railway, testing small boilers
October 2006 - Updates on part-built and projects
July 2006 - Evergreens Miniature Railway, local 10 1/4 line, collecting the Pacific from Cleethorpes
April 2006 - Progress in the workshop, visit to the National Railway Museum, visit to Woody Bay
January 2006 - Moving to new units, grit-blasting my hands, shiny Romulus
October 2005 - Stamford SME, Sam starts the restoration of "Pendle Witch", Casterton Working Weekend
August 2005 - New workshop, Thurston Pacific back from Cleethorpes
May 2005 - Berkely Light Railway, dodgy boiler certificates, full-size ploughing engines at auction
January 2005 - digging
October 2004 - initial planning for the garden railway
July 2004 - Fowler ploughing engines in Yorkshire
May 2004 - Moving the workshop, a 9 1/2 inch gauge garden railway
Apr 2004 - Holiday in Shropshire & The Severn Valley Railway, LNER liveried Black 5
Feb 2004 - Refacing a Tangye slide valve, new acquisition 10 ton Aveling roller
2004 - 12 1/4 inch gauge Pacific