N gauge LSWR 3-Sub

[nick_bastable]

odd that never known bolts sold with nuts  other than in DIY warehouses at inflated cost 

 

check out watchmakers suppliers for broaches and there's a set on that auction site from 0.35 upwards for £5  remember that the broaches taper so the points are extremely small

 

M4 bolts look  a bit big to my eye I've been using 12BA to fit the body to the floor on similar  etches and M2 to mount the bogies 

[Colin parks]

Hi Mark,

 

I was just looking through your most recent posts. Now, you did ask for advice and bearing inmind that I haven't built an N gauge coach since I was thirteen, here it goes:  If I were you, I would leave the 3 SUB  sides well alone and not attach the overlays for the door louvres.  The chances of fitting them all in alignment and cleanly are small! 

 

As for fixing the bogies, why not solder the bolts to the floor?  (With the heads inside of course!)  That way you will have a positive location for the pivot point, as long as the opened-out hole remains true.  The prospect of soldering a nut over  a hole  and getting it in perfect alignment seems harder. 

 

You are going to need washers or some kind of spacers to get the ride-height of the vehicles correct too. That will be easier if the bolts are fixed to the floor.  The bolts will need trimming to length once the correct values have been established.

 

Good luck!

 

Colin

 

Edit: I have plenty of 8 BA brass nuts and bolts, which are quite big enough for the job - if you want some! 

[Castle]

Hi Southernboy,

 

Just to throw my 2 pence worth into the conversation and with no disrespect to Kris, I usually solder the bolt to the floor and then use a bit of thick paint as a sort of temporary thread lock although I have heard that several of this parish now use Deluxe Materials Tacky Wax for the same purpose. The bonus about going down like this is that it is easier to assemble and you can thin the bolt head down a bit so it can go either under or semi flush with the interior floor. The elephant in the room here though is that I model in 4mm not 2mm scale so there may be differing wisdom in your scale for reasons I don't know about.

 

The way to drill the hole in the absence of a broach is to step up slowly through the sizes and make sure you drill onto a piece of sacrificial timber so as to not deform the brass as you go. Tread carefully to start with and the drill should find its own centre and that is about it really.

 

I hope all this gibber is useful in some small way!

 

All the best,

 

Castle

[Kris]

The only reason I would go for the nut being soldered over the bolt, is that I find it far easier to pop the bolt through the bogie the tighten this rather than trying to do the same with a nut. This i due to the nut being far smaller and there being rather limited space in the bogie area in which to get my fat fingers to start the twisting. (I tend to use 12ba cheese head bolts).

[DavidK71]

I’ve experimented with several methods of attaching bogies to coaches. The main problems always seem to be how to minimize the visibility of the nut, and how to get the coach riding on the bogies at the correct height. The ride height in particular can be a pain: the coach generally looks more realistic if it rides fairly low on the bogie but, especially with these kits shot down from larger scales, it can necessary to have the body ride a bit higher to get round curves. It all depends a bit on how tight the curves you want it to go round are.

 

The simplest method I’ve tried is to directly attach the head of the nut to the underside of the floor, with the shaft of the bolt facing downwards. This is easy, and the head of the nut acts as an approximate spacer between the coach floor and the bogie. However, you need to file down the bolt to avoid it showing too much, and getting a nut onto the bolt to hold the bogie in place is very difficult, though you can just let the coach ride loose on the bogie – it makes picking the coach up a pain, but it will probably run fine. The head of that M4 bolt might also be too big for this method, too.

 

What I’m doing at the moment, and much prefer, is what you’re looking at: ensure a suitable hole in the floor, attach a nut on the upper side of the floor, and run a bolt through from underneath the bogie. You will need to think at some point about a spacer between the bogie and the floor, though. Also, looking at it, that M4 bolt is very big and will not be easy to hide!

 

What I would do is to consider a smaller bolt (M2 or M1.6, with a 5 or 6 mm shaft length, which can be acquired on eBay cheaply). To open up the bogie centre hole in the floor I have a small, tapered circular file (from a cheap set from Halfords) that I’d gently rotate in the hole until it was opened up enough – slow and boring but gets the job done. It might be necessary to carefully drill out the hole a little bit to get the point of the file in, which I would do with a jeweller’s Archimedes drill with successively larger drill bits. Speaking from bitter experience, what you should not do is just try to drill a large enough hole in on go with a conventional hand or electric drill: that will make a mess of the floor. The smaller bolt will probably pass right through the hole in the bogie, so I’d glue a piece of plasticard with an appropriately sized hole in it to the top of the bogie frame so that the bolt would hold the bogie in place. Once I’d got the kit to the stage of a rolling chassis, I’d get the ride height roughly right using a piece of plasticard with a hole drilled in it glued to the underside of the floor, and then adjust the height with a thin washer or two until it looked right next to other coaches and goes around whatever minimum radius curves you have.

 

As a further suggestion, Ultima do some 3d-printed bogie mounts, which might be worth investigating.

 

Something else to worry about: while the bogie centre marked on the floor is likely to be accurate relative to the prototype, will it allow the coupler to stick out an appropriate distance? You might need to move the bogie centre a bit to get the coupler to look right.

 

As for the door vents, I’m guessing here, but it looks like the etched pieces are less high that the etches over the door so that, when put in place, there’s the effect of the vent being curved outwards: i.e. the vent is thicker at the vertical centre than at the top or the bottom. I’d suggest cutting one of the etched pieces off and putting it in place to see how it looks: if you don’t like it, leave it off. (If you do like it, do keep the piece safe – I tend to tape loose bits to a piece of paper that also contains a note of what they are.) Looking at the photo of the unit in the NRM its noticeable that the door vents there have some sort of flat cover over them, though this might be a later addition. It might be worth digging around for photographs from the period you want to see how the door vents looked then.

[Castle]

Hi David,

 

Out of interest, why do you not drill a hole, put the bolt in from the top and then secure it with a nut (to give you the spacer) and then solder that lot solid? It must be quite difficult to line up the bolt and keep it lined up while soldering. The other way would, I would have thought been far stronger and easier. I hope you don't mind me asking - I have never build in N before and I am just curious to know!

 

All the best,

 

Castle

[DavidK71]

Out of interest, why do you not drill a hole, put the bolt in from the top and then secure it with a nut (to give you the spacer) and then solder that lot solid? It must be quite difficult to line up the bolt and keep it lined up while soldering. The other way would, I would have thought been far stronger and easier. I hope you don't mind me asking - I have never build in N before and I am just curious to know!

I'm not professing any great expertise, but for me the problem when compared to 4mm is the size of the nut. I'm using M1.6 nuts and bolts, and while the bolt head on these is quite thin, the nuts are still several mm thick. Relative to the size of a 2mm / N gauge bogie that nut is quite large, and if it's underneath the bogie it will be visible when the bogie is viewed from the side, while a relatively flat-headed bolt can be screwed in to be invisible. It's telling that Colin is talking about 8BA bolts, which are M2 in metric, while I'm using bolts a lot bigger than half that.

[Colin parks]

Hi Mark,

 

Re, bolts, bogies and nuts!

 

I might have been guilty of not really thinking about measurements when offering 8 BA nuts & bolts.  It's just that I have plenty of them! 

 

The one value that I can think of which might translate to N gauge is the depth of the solebar + clearance to top edge of bogie.  On my SR EMUs in 4mm, the minimum is magically, 4mm.  Effectively, this is the distance from the underside of the floor to top edge of the bogie side frames. That is the absolute minimum for SR electric unit underframes, where the solebars are nominally 10" deep.  An extra 0.5mm is best added to be on the safe side in my chosen scale. So in N gauge that would equate to 2 - 2.25mm, although as others have said, more might be required for clearance to allow the bogies to swivel.

 

All the best,

 

Colin

[Colin parks]

Hi Mark a postscript to yesterdays posts and this is just a  suggestion: 

 

Today at lunchtime I decided to make a pivot pin for one of my 4 COR bogies which had to locate  into a .75mm hole in the coach floor, space the bogie at the right height and also provide a method of retaining the bogie itself.  I thought of you, as this is the sort of thing that would not need the holes in the etched floors of your 3 SUB to be enlarged.

 

 

This example has a 6BA thread and nut.  There is a tiny spigot on the end which is just as the part came off the lathe whilst being parted-off ( I did tidy up the end of the spigot after this photo was taken though).  Done like this, evrything would stay perfectly in alignment.

 

I bet you are going to say you have made the holes bigger already now!

 

All the best,

 

Colin

[roebuck195]

Hello everybody,I have been following marks build of the LSWR 3-sub and all i can say,like his Falkland build,just fantastic.I thought you guys should know,if you don't already,that Arjay models,who sell 00 gauge kits of southern electric units are for the first time producing a 2-Bil kit in n gauge  He is asking for £30.00 

deposits on them,mmmmmm should I or not,I think I will

 

Best regards Mark

 

Alan

[c2c]

Hello everybody,I have been following marks build of the LSWR 3-sub and all i can say,like his Falkland build,just fantastic.I thought you guys should know,if you don't already,that Arjay models,who sell 00 gauge kits of southern electric units are for the first time producing a 2-Bil kit in n gauge  He is asking for £30.00 

deposits on them,mmmmmm should I or not,I think I will

 

Best regards Mark

 

Alan

 

 

REALLY!! I'm going to a look!

[Revolution Mike]

REALLY!! I'm going to a look!

Here you go: http://www.southernregionmodels.co.uk/2mm-2bil-kit/

 

Cheers, Mike

[c2c]

Here you go: http://www.southernregionmodels.co.uk/2mm-2bil-kit/

 

Cheers, Mike

 

 

Thanks Mike, had a peek but they are not available yet.

 

DaveH

[nick_bastable]

When i asked them about the 2-Bil they where unwilling to  quote a final price and where  looking to use a Japanese Chassis so wheel base will be miles out  

 

Mr Bedford does a splendid set of 2mm etches for sides and end for a  2-BIL ( I know I have two pairs stashed away ) 

[roebuck195]

When i asked them about the 2-Bil they where unwilling to  quote a final price and where  looking to use a Japanese Chassis so wheel base will be miles out  

 

Mr Bedford does a splendid set of 2mm etches for sides and end for a  2-BIL ( I know I have two pairs stashed away ) 

Hello Nick,but who is Mr.Bedford?What is the company called,excuse my ignorance,but i am pretty new to model raiway modeling,after virtualy a lifetime of modeling royal navy warships,

I thought i would try modeling in n gauge southern electric,having lived on the Hounslow loop line at Brentford for nearly 50 years.I will probaly need all the help i can get from you guys.

 

cheers Alan

[nick_bastable]

Alan

 

Bill Bedford produces 2mm and other scale etches http://www.mousa.biz/_downloads/Catalog2.pdf  to order delivery can be extended but the quality is very good.  I  intend to use the floor unit or a Worsley Works 2HAL  which is ½" or 12.5mm to small in real life so should be close enough  which Allen will supply to order 

 

I have been using old grafar DMU motor bogies but its now cheaper to buy a new 108 Parcels unit from a major box shifter and throw the body away so will use one of those motor units for this.

 

 

For a change the gloat box worked 

 

However given how long its taken me to get the bits together for the 201 and 207 which have been on going for too long I do not anticipate any rapid progress on the 2-Bil

 

 

 

 

[roebuck195]

Alan

 

Bill Bedford produces 2mm and other scale etches http://www.mousa.biz/_downloads/Catalog2.pdf  to order delivery can be extended but the quality is very good.  I  intend to use the floor unit or a Worsley Works 2HAL  which is ½" or 12.5mm to small in real life so should be close enough  which Allen will supply to order 

 

I have been using old grafar DMU motor bogies but its now cheaper to buy a new 108 Parcels unit from a major box shifter and throw the body away so will use one of those motor units for this.

 

DSC_2695.jpg

 

For a change the gloat box worked 

 

However given how long its taken me to get the bits together for the 201 and 207 which have been on going for too long I do not anticipate any rapid progress on the 2-Bil

Thanks Nick for the link,very usefull,and for the info on using the 108 parcels unit,i was thinking of the grafar GWR railcar,but i bow to your superior knowledge mate.As for how long it is taking you to build the 2-Bil units,rome was not built in a day,keep at it mate.

 All the very best Alan

[-missy-]

Sorry for going a bit off topic but is Bill still producing 2mm stuff then?

 

M.

[nick_bastable]

Sorry for going a bit off topic but is Bill still producing 2mm stuff then?

 

M.

Julia

 

ordered the 2-Bil's from Bill via email in September last year  and according to my pay-pal statement I paid for them on the 8th of December  which would have been on delivery

so as far as I know yes

 

Nick

[Southernboy]

3-Sub update 05

 

Hello everyone,

 

Firstly to say thank you for so many replies, hints, tips and asides. It's all been very helpful indeed and I do appreciate it.

 

Well I decided to have a play around with the bogies and get a feel for how this may work (or not as the case may be!)

 

In my railway cupboard was a carriage from my aborted 4-Lav from a few years ago which I thought I could experiment with ...

 

 

 

 

 

Also in the cupboard was this drill bit

 

 

 

 

 

I turned the bit by hand to make the hole in the floor (please ignore the soldering - it was my very first attempt some years ago!

 

 

)

 

 

 

Then I made a spacer from Plasticard (I'll use a washers when I do the real thing). It's about 2.5mm thick.

 

 

 

 

 

It doesn't look like the bottom of the bolt is likely to fowl any track - especially considering there's the extra thickness of the brass floor for it to go through yet. Hopefully no trimming required. If I do need to trim them what do people recommend? A good old-fashioned bolt cutter?

 

 

 

 

 

In situ: The height looks right and the bogie swivels freely. (Again - excuse the dodgy carriage work please - first attempt ever!)

 

 

 

 

But then I noticed the bogie protrudes too far out at the end of the carriage - and also realised that actually this wasn't a good test scenario because a 4-Lav and a 3-Sub (and the etchings) may be quite different in this respect.

 

 

 

 

So I looked at the original plans and have marked the position of the bogie ends in red on the picture below.

 

 

 

 

 

Next I laid a couple of Farish bogies over the etching (and aligned with the pre-etched bogie-centres) to compare and contrast...

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion: The Farish bogies are too long, I'll need to buy the N Gauge Society SR 8' Steam bogies. I did revisit the 2mm Association bogies - but think such a kit is something I'd like to have a go-at in the future - but not for this project.

 

 

I had thought about drilling the bogies-centres closer together - but it just wouldn't look right, especially on such short carriages.

 

So that's the update. Slow progress, but hopefully sure-footed.

 

 

--------------------------

 

Castle

" ... you can thin the bolt head down a bit so it can go either under or semi flush with the interior floor."

 

How would you do that? Although I ask the question more out of curiosity simply because I'm coming to realise that in N gauge you can rarely see a carriage interior unless it's illuminated. People seated by the windows may be visible - but little else.

 

Colin Parks

" I thought of you, as this is the sort of thing that would not need the holes in the etched floors of your 3 SUB to be enlarged."

Thank you for thinking of me - very much appreciated Unfortunately I don't have a lathe - (nor room for one - wish I did!) - so I'll have to stick with basic tools I'm afraid. Nice work though - your 4-Cor is coming on a treat and I'm looking forward to seeing the feature on 4-Cors in the next edition of Southern Way.

 

--------------------------

Once again many to thanks to one and all for your helpful suggestions and dire warnings!

A couple of final questions:

Any idea on where to buy 140º solder cream? (ref c2c #50) - Google seems to want to offer me industrial sized packs at £40+

In general which retailers do people find to be good sources for the more obscure products useful to the smaller scale scratch modeller?

I came across an Aladdin's cave with http://www.squirestools.com ... but any other hidden gems?

 

 

Mark

[c2c]

Hi Mark I use LA-CO regular solder flux it's great, it can make solder flow even on the dirtiest of surfaces (not that I practice this!)

 

Its sold on ebay I think a small 60g pot which will should last you for quite a long time is sold for around £3.00.

 

For whats its worth buy flux in small quantities as over a period of time it does become contaminated with foreign matter, like most people I use a small brush to apply it to and frow to the surface being soldered.

 

DaveH

[Etched Pixels]

I find it easier to simply use screws with the right head thickness or thereabouts and glue them to the coach floor than drill holes and add packing.

 

Alan

[MrSimon]

Hi Mark,

 

If you're ever up in Clerkenwell/Hatton Garden, have a look in S&M tools - they're on Leather Lane, where the market sets up near the chip shop (the other end from Chancery Lane tube).  They have a stand at most of the big train shows; I can't remember if they sell the solder you're after but they're good for little modelling tools (I think they sell to the jewellers around Hatton Garden.)

 

Watching with interest - I could never work out how to fix bogies on - and glad to see that someone else's first go at an etched coach looked like mine!

 

Cheers

 

Simon

[Castle]

3-Sub update 05

How would you do that? Although I ask the question more out of curiosity simply because I'm coming to realise that in N gauge you can rarely see a carriage interior unless it's illuminated. People seated by the windows may be visible - but little else.

Hi Mark,

 

Personally, if I was soldering the bolt in place, I would hold the bolt in a vice or similar and use some sort of grinding device in my mini drill to nibble away the metal that I didn't want and then go from there. I am a big fan of diamond cutting wheels and I use them all the time on my brass projects.

 

If you want to cut a bolt then the trick used by myself - even in 12":1' scale - is to work out and mark or measure where you want to cut the bolt. Then screw a nut all the way down and clear of where you want to cut. You then cut the bolt (in this scale the vice and mini drill with grinding discs would be my choice) and dress the end square with a file. You then screw the nut off and this then forces any ragged edges of metal in the threads out where another light tickle with the file can deal with them. This means the nut will go back on again with ease if you have dressed the end of the bolt fairly square. I hope this helps!

 

All the best,

 

Castle

[Southernboy]

3-Sub update 06

 

Thanks for comments and information gentlemen - and apologies for the delay in my reply - I've had work, being unwell, and a real frustration getting in my way ...

 

So to update:

 

 

The NGS 8' SR steam bogies arrived ...

 

 

 

In the picture below upper is Grafar, below NGS bogie.

 

 

 

Here's the NGS bogie:

 

 

 

 

So that's all well-and-good.

 

Next came another delivery - nuts and half-nuts, (just to see which best suits the job in-hand); washers; solder and flux; a hand-reamer for opening up the apertures in the underframe to take the bolts that will retain the bogies; and a set of cutting broaches (0.3 - .065mm) plus pin-vice.   

 

 

 

And then the frustration set-in ...

 

I started making the grab handles by wrapping them round a file and then snipping half-way 

 

 

 

But they just looked liked a random bunch of sad bananas, not proper regular-shaped handles!

 

 

I was not happy with that - so want back to the Frankland Workshops to brainstorm a solution.

 

I experimented with all-sorts of ideas over the last couple of weeks and was getting really quite fed up with not finding an answer.

 

I knew at the back-of-my-mind that in real life some sort of industrial press would have been used to produce such shapes - and that I needed some N Gauge equivalent - but what or how?  

 

Last night emerged the following idea that seems to have worked - hoorah!

 

 

 

A clothes peg, cut flush at one end, with a section of rail mounted into the upper and lower jaws.




This allows me to form crisp angles to a consistent size.





The wire goes in and jaws clamped shut ...




Bend wire down ...

\


Take the wire out and turn it around. There is a small hole drilled into the peg on the other side of the embedded rail. Insert the handle into this hole, close the clamp, and bend down the other half of the handle ...




And Hey-presto! Neat, crisp and regular-sized grab handles!



I then cut one side shorter than the other ... reason being I find it easier to get the long-side located into one hole first and then fiddle about getting the second located into the other hole, rather than trying to get two long-prongs located at the same time (I can't explain why - it probably only makes sense if you're actually trying to do it).

Anyway - the final picture shows progression: On the right the first handles I made, in the middle those that were 'ok', but still a little banana-shaped. Finally on the left the 'new-improved' version.







I think I'll be happy with that. And I'm pleased to report the handles more-or-less 'click' into place

 

 

Whilst the above has been going on I've also been practising soldering - so far - erm, more practice needed!

 

 

And finally a question: This sort of work always seems to require more hands than the average human has, does anyone have any hints / tips / clever inventions for holding and folding that don't require unnecessary expense? In particular I'm thinking of when it comes to soldering carriage-sides to carriage-ends.

 

Thanks,

 

Mark