The welcome return of High Level Kits caused me to order, amongst other things, one of Chris' 'Rustlers'. I've had an 4mm Impetus Ruston 48DS in various states of rebuild for the 35 years I've had it. My attempts to motorise it have been many and varied but I'd always been stuck driving only one axle. The advantage of the Rustler was that it drives both axles using High Level's usual high quality gears. I had to make my own 4-wheel chassis to fit the gearbox in but this wasn't too difficult usin
I had the opportunity over the last few weeks to model up a batch of Cavan and Leitrim four wheel vans. These started out as rather odd wagons, with an external wooden frame and a central section of roof left open to be covered with a tarpaulin. Apparently they doubled up as both general goods vans and cattle wagons depending on weather it was cattle market day! As with all things C&L they were rebuilt over the years and the appearance in later years depended very strongly on who was in the
I modeled up the alternative battery box which had the peaked roof rather than just a flat top. I also completed the second chassis, which had a couple of little modifications over the first version. This time I added the spring tags onto the High Level hornblocks and added supports for a length of sprung steel wire. The result is that the axles are now properly sprung. As the sprung wire connects electrically to the hornblocks and the wheels I used it to feed power up to the motor. I've also m
I know I said I wasn't going to make much more progress until a boat from China delivered some tiny bevel gears but I got a bit bored waiting. I decided to see if I could actually print some. Turns out you can, I'm not sure how hard wearing they will be but it is at least a prove of concept. Given that current issues with the Suez Canal (blocked by container ship which has run aground - probably the weigh of all those tiny bevel gears it was carrying!) it was probably a good idea not to wait.
Commercial 16mm scale figures tend to be a bit cartoonish and rather limited in terms of style and pose. My tiny new locomotive requires the driver to tuck his knees in to be able to fit in the tiny foot plate, in a mine he'd probably also be fairly hunched to avoid bang his head. I found myself following the same route as Mike Trice in the 3D Printed Passengers thread.
Makehuman is an impressive bit of free software and is not too difficult to use. It is obviously intended mostly f
Having worked on repairing my Lister thoughts have turned to building a new locomotive for Fen End Pit. I'd rather taken a fancy to the tiny battery electric locomotives built by the likes of Wingrove and Rogers and I thought that one of these engines might be worth trying to 3D print. A recent video in the 'Lawrie goes Loco' series on Youtube also rather drove my project along.
There are some superb plans available on Flickr from J. Tilston. I purchased a number o
A little package of wagon bodies was posted off last week and my friend Phil has put one together with its chassis and sent me a photograph.
I think it rather looks the part.
He just has another eight to do now, should keep him busy for a while.
I have been making some more coal wagons for a friend's Irish project. The first attempt were slightly too narrow because some idiot (me) got the dimension wrong on the 3D model. Having fixed that we now have a models of 3 different types of wagon and the beginnings of a coal train. The wagon chassis department is apparently working at peak capacity assembling etched underframes.
The 3 wagons are subtly different, one design has two doors in the middle while the other two have a pair
So Phil asked 'Could your gadgetry print wagon bodies' and attached a photograph of a Cavan and Leitrim 3' gauge 4-plank coal wagon and a 2D drawing he'd made. Well I couldn't let that challenge go could I? Over the course of the festive season we have bounce various images and drawing back and forth as I hopefully got closer to the prototype. Photographs are somewhat elusive, I don't think many people who got to travel on the C&L bothered taking pictures of mundane old coal wagons. This one
