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About this blog

This blog complements my Pre-Grouping Blog by covering my modelling activities in the Broad Gauge era of the Great Western Railway.  As with the earlier blog, I intend to cover the various methods by which I construct elements of the Broad Gauge scene.  For more background see https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/17705-a-different-type-of-railway/

 

Entries in this blog

General

Fire Fly Class – Part Four

Angled Spokes   I ended the previous part of this series by noting that my next subject would be wheels. This subject, once again, raised questions as to what were the real facts! An ‘official’ GWR drawing shows alternate spokes sloping in opposite directions between hub and rim, as below :     Drawing of ‘Firefly’ Driving Wheel   On the other hand, another ‘official’ plan view of the frames shows one set of spokes fitted radially, while the other set is
MikeOxon

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From the Stars to Fire Fly

It’s been a wet Bank Holiday here and, stuck indoors, I found myself thinking about what it was that made the ‘Fire Fly’ class so special. The following notes reflect my musings:   After all, these engines looked very similar to their immediate predecessors, the ‘Stars’ that the GWR bought from R Stephenson & Co. This similarity is obvious in the first engine photographs ever taken, which include ‘Polar Star’, outside Cheltenham shed in the late 1840s.   ‘Polar Star
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‘Fire Fly’ class – Part Three

It has taken me a considerable amount of thought before deciding how to proceed with the next stage of building my my ‘Fire Fly’ class model. The obvious method would be to construct a strong frame around the outside, as I have done for previous models, but it doesn’t really work with this prototype.     Fire-Fly replica at Didcot showing Boiler Support   As I showed in the previous post, the prototype was built with four short frames linking the smokebox and firebo
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‘Fire Fly’ class – Part Two

As I carried out my research for this project in Part One (Research), I realised just how difficult it can be to decide what these old engines were actually like!   One of the problems seems to be that, in those days, engines were hand-built by craftsmen who. perhaps, were not so keen on trying to follow a drawing but knew how things should be done!   I noticed, for example, that the shape of the firebox casing on the ‘Fire Fly’ replica is actually quite different from that seen in an
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Gooch Goods – line of development

Following my recent post about research into the ‘Fire Fly’ class engines, @Mikkel remarked “I was wondering when and why Gooch abandoned the Haycock firebox for his own round topped version, e.g. on the Pyracmon class.” my model of ‘Tantalus’   It reminded me that, when I was preparing my model of ‘Tantalus’, one of Gooch’s ‘Standard Goods’ engines, I had collected together a number of drawings by G F Bird of various engines from this class and its immediate predecessors.
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‘Fire Fly’ class - Research

Introduction   One thing leads to another and what, for me, started as a small project to build the interesting-looking ‘Posting Carriage’ from the early years of Brunel’s Broad Gauge railway, for the GWR, rapidly extended to include a Luggage Truck and Horse Box.   All these vehicles appeared in some of the beautiful lithographs by J.C Bourne, published in 1846. In particular, his illustration of Bristol Temple Meads Station, shows an engine of Gooch’s ‘Fire-Fly’ class headi
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Broad Gauge Horse Box

My ‘Geeetech E180’ printer seems to be performing exceptionally well at present, so I have been cracking on with some items from my ‘to do’ list.   After the poor results I was getting last year, I made a point of going through the long list of adjustable parameters in the ‘Cura’ slicing software. I suspect that the most significant change I made was to the ‘line width’ setting. The default setting matched the print-head diameter of 0.4 mm but I reduced the setting to 0.3mm. Since the
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Hinged Doors for a Luggage Box

By the end of the previous post, I had completed the chassis for my planned Luggage Box. I expected the Luggage Box itself to be a simple construction: two panelled ends, two sides, and a roof.   Following my now usual practice, I created each of these parts as a separate ‘body’ in ‘Fusion 360’, so that each could be laid flat on the printer bed and could be printed in a few minutes, to the required panel thickness. A wave of a 200° soldering iron to seal the joints and that would be t
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GWR Luggage Box

Following my recent series about modelling the GWR Posting Carriage,  @Mikkel asked “But where did the luggage go? Next project?”.   In response, here is my next project!   In the early years, the GWR addressed the need to transport passengers’ luggage by providing separate ‘luggage boxes’ – and it seems that Victorians always travelled with a very large amount of luggage! It should be remembered that, at that time, passengers’ ‘luggage’ might also include their personal carr
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GWR Posting Carriage – Part 3

In this post, I turn to the design of a chassis for my model Posting Coach. Fortunately, there is a detailed contemporary description and illustration, given in Whishaw’s book ‘The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland’, published in 1842.   According to Whishaw: “The under carriage is formed of two soles, 7 feet 8 inches apart, 9 inches deep, and 4 inches thick, and projects 10 inches at each end beyond the body ; and six cross pieces, one at each end without the line of the body, whi
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GWR Posting Carriage - Part 2

I hadn’t expected to make quite such rapid progress with this model – I must be getting slightly more proficient at using the ‘Fusion 360’ CAD software!   In part 1, I showed how I created the rather complex profile of the sides of the Posting Carriage by extruding a drawing of one end. I drew the end profile as a series of straight lines and arcs, traced over a drawing contained in one of the very useful Broad Gauge Society data sheets.     While this process gave
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GWR Posting Carriage

After having constructed a range of models that were intended to replicate the two trains involved in the accident at Bullo Pill, in 1868, I have been casting around for ideas for new subjects.   The trouble with a 3D printer is that it opens up so many possibilities that it is hard to decide what to tackle next. It would be easy for me to continue modelling various carriages, wagons, and locomotives but I have been looking for something that’s a bit ‘different’.   One of the
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Adding Skins to Carriages

One idea leads to another; in this case, I have tried extending the idea that I showed in an earlier post of adding cladding to a brass-tube boiler by 3D-printing an outer sleeve.   3D-printed boiler cladding   During my early ‘learning curve’ with 3D-printing (i.e. about a year ago), I made some broad-gauge carriages, as described in a short series of blog posts.  Printing the complete carriage as a single task had several advantages, such as including internal partitions
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Small Things

I make no secret of the fact that I find it hard to keep up momentum once I’ve completed the main structure of an engine and have to think about adding the various small details.   Gooch Goods ‘Tantalus’ – bare bones   One particular irritation with my Gooch Goods was that there were some things that I could easily have included in the main 3D-printed components but had neglected to do so. This was largely because, like most of my projects, it was experimental in that I
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'Rob Roy' - Bits and Pieces

Readers with long memories may recall that, back in March 2017, I started to think about construction of a Waverley Class locomotive – ‘Rob Roy’. This was a part of a project to build the components of the two trains involved in the Bullo Pill accident of 1868.   My modelling of ‘Rob Roy’ became a test bed for many different ideas – how to build sandwich frames, adapting a brass kit intended for a Goods engine, exploring the working of early valve gears, and so on.  In between, I was e
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Adding Cladding

In commenting on an earlier post, Michael Edge pointed out that the visible diameter of a locomotive boiler is greater than the diameter of the metal boiler itself and he suggested that I should have bought a larger diameter tube for my model of 'Tantalus'.   I had already been thinking about how to add the visible boiler rings and then had the idea “why not 3D-print the boiler cladding?” After all, the prototype boiler was metal, whereas the cladding was initially of wooden planks, th
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Building 'Tantalus' - Part Three

At the end of the previous Part, I wrote that I intended to turn my attention to the chassis. Before that, I had broken off from work on the chassis, to give some thought to the problems posed by the curved splashers over the driving wheels.   Now that I have proven the technique of ‘hybrid’ construction, combining traditional etched brass model-making with 3D-printing, I’ve decided to pursue similar methods for the chassis. For wheels, I recovered a spare set from a ‘Mainline’ Dean Go
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Building 'Tantalus' - Part Two

Having acquired some confidence in making 3D extrusions from 2D drawings, I decided it was time to move on and try something slightly more ambitious.   While there are many good things about building engines from sheet brass – after all, the real things are made from metal – there are limitations when it comes to making components with significant depth or complex surface detail. Although it was an interesting challenge to complete the firebox and smoke-box from the BGS Gooch Goods kit
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Building ‘Tantalus’ - Part One

The goods train involved in the ‘Bullo Pill’ accident, which is described in some detail in the Accident Report, was headed by the locomotive ‘Tantalus’ and comprised 20 cattle wagons, plus a third-class carriage at the rear, in which 8 drovers and the guard were travelling.   ‘Tantalus’ was built in November 1862, in the last lot of those engines which, together, comprised Gooch’s ‘Standard Goods’ design. The name ‘Tantalus’ was taken from a figure in Greek mythology, whose name lives
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A Tender for 'Rob Roy' - 2

Having suitably ‘girded my loins’, I decided to make a start on the under-frame for my Broad Gauge tender, initially described in my previous post.   Drawing of Gooch 6-wheel Tender   The section of the Instructions relating to ‘Frames and Spring Hangers’ starts by stating “Decide the type of brake gear to be modelled”. Not knowing much about such things, I set off in search of more information and the instructions helpfully referred me to ‘A Study of GWR Tenders, Broa
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A Tender for 'Rob Roy' - 1

It’s been some time since I last tackled an etched brass kit, after spending most of my time recently in learning about 3D printing and, before that, Silhouette cutting. I had to refresh my memory on ‘the rules of the game’!   I bought the Broad Gauge Society kit (FL07) for a 6-wheel tender some time ago and have only just got around to its assembly. I was pleased to see that the instructions start with the reminder that “… some parts are a little over scale due to limitations of the d
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Wooden Goods Brake Van

In a previous post, I commented that I felt I was getting the hang of 3D-modelling. That didn’t mean that I can’t still get into a mess and sometimes things happen in ‘Fusion 360’ for which I have no explanation. For example, I was approaching the final stages of the chassis I shall describe below and found that one of the complete axle-box assemblies had moved about a centimetre from its proper place on the sole-bar. Back-tracking through the history made no difference, as the software seemed t
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Wheels for my Wagons

I got something of a shock when I saw the current price of Broad Gauge wheel-sets so that started me thinking about 3D-printed wheels. I realised that I wouldn’t be able to make metal rims but it could be a way of making basic wagon wheels in bulk.   Many early GWR wagons used the form of wheel ascribed to Losh and Bell, in which wrought iron spokes were cast into the hub and wrapped around the inside of the wheel rim, to give the characteristic appearance shown in the following illust
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Open-top Cattle Wagon

Whoo-hoo  – I seem to be getting the hang of 3D modelling, at least for simple shapes like carriages and wagons.  Whereas I had some infuriating moments when designing my first cattle wagon model, its open-top cousin has proceeded with scarcely a hitch.   I decided to follow exactly the same procedure that I used for my first wagon : floor and ends as one ‘body’ and individual sides as two separate ‘bodies’. After printing these separately, I used a soldering iron, set to 200°C, to ‘we
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3D-Printed Cattle Wagon - 3

Building the Chassis   This is an addendum to my previous post about building a Broad Gauge cattle wagon body. Although I built a chassis at that stage, I found the construction was too light and would not support wheel-sets adequately. I should have remembered that I had the same problem with the first design I did for a carriage chassis, so this post is an aide memoire to help me avoid the same mistakes again.   My chassis is basically a rectangle to fit under the body, wit
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