Hi Phil,

I'll bother to look at it - if you keep it updated

 

Wasn't there a certain brass kit started on the old forum?

 

... and posts of your 1:1 scale work?

Mikel

Thanks Mike - 2 brass kits were in fact started, a Meteor 7mm O2 and a PDK 4mm 700. The Meteor was paused when I realised that it is in fact an aid to scratchbuilding if a reasonable model was to be produced, the PDK kit, although a very good kit, entered the same state as I failed to reach, in my eyes, a reasonable standard of build. Both will be revisited in the near future although not until after I've got something finished. This will be a 7mm Tower models Barclay 0-4-0 tank which I purchased part built and for which I have tonight started milling new con/coupling rods for, not liking the built up soldered ones. I am going to try and become / remain disciplined about this, and hope to take it slightly more seriously than I have in the past which should lead to better results than previously and hopefully resulting in finished projects.

So the blog plan is:

Produce list and pictures of ongoing projects

Produce evidence (and progress pictures) of finished 7mm Barclay

Take it from there

As far as the 12" to the foot stuff, that's just ticking over with a couple of days a month spent on the MHR, either driving or in the locoshed. I've still got some unfinished 5" gauge business too...

Phil

Come on then, where's the progress? :icon_yawn:

Cheers

Dave

Come on then, where's the progress? :icon_yawn:

 

Cheers

Dave

I am doing some bits, currently trying to carve some coupling and connecting rods out of solid for the Barclay at the moment. Trouble is I've got a lathe and mill which is somewhat too big for stuff like this. Next buy might have to be a Unimat or similar with milling attachment, or at least a vertical slide. Will get some photos of the various projects posted this week.

Please do keep on nagging, gets me off of the sofa!

Hi Phil, I would love to see some of your 5" gauge stuff.

Many many years ago I was involved with a club in NZ which had a raised 3 1/2" and 5" gauge track, I spent many happy hours driving some of Martin Evans and LBSC designed locos amongst others including Springboks, Enterprise, Maid of Kent, Brittannia, Caribou, Virginia, Simplex, a Juliet as well as a couple of New Zealand type locos from memory I think one was a J or a JA 4-8-2 .

There was a vintage Stirling Single that was origanally built to 4 3/4" gauge which was converted to 5" gauge, it had a lovely exhaust note but was a ###### for priming without the dome.

 

Darren.

Hi Darren, glad to hear that you used to be involved with model engineering. I think that LBSC and later Martin Evans certainly made the hobby accessible for a lot of people, their designs are on most tracks around the world. Unfortunately my model engineering took a back seat 20 years ago when I started messing around with the full size stuff - I used my workshop almost exclusively to machine bits for full size locos for quite a few years after that. I then started with a model railway which further marginalised my ME activities, then came a disaster - I knew I had a leak in my workshop roof, but I didn't realise the extent of it, not going down there very often. To cut a long story short most of my previous efforts were reduced to piles of rust, the water having got into the cupboards where it was all stored. I also lost hundreds of pounds worth of tooling as well, precision tools rusted beyond use. All because I was too lazy to sort it out when I first noticed it. I had made the frames and stretchers for a 5" Merchant Navy, pretty useless now. I think I will be able to rescue an 80% complete Isle of Wight O2, will include pics of this when I post the pics of my various projects.

Phil