Hi all

With the excitement of the last few weeks with gilling mainline rally, things at Neasden carriage and wagon outpost have calmed down!

The lull in any running and with the exam season in full swing the opportunity was taken to do a bit of finishing and new things in the loco. so this post will be a bit of a workshoppy type post

The project to build the full rake of coaches nears completion. My dad, the builder of the coaces has received the final eight wheels, the last few days they went onto their axles.

Hes been painting the bogies, having assembled them as he built them, mainly from aluminium, and them disassembled them for painting, for the past few weeks, However while the 4th coach in the set, the Metropolitan railway dreadnought first class coach made its debut at the Mainline rally at gilling, the other one, was still lacking wheels. On friday he got them from the machinist (yes we could turn them ourselves, we have the capcity but its easier and quicker to expend the money and have them CNC machined) and fitted them to the axles, after a slight hitch where we only had 7 of the eight wheels! The axles are turned to SMEE (society of model and experimental engineers) back to back standards from 12mmsteel bar, the wheel bores are 10 and the bearing surfaces are 8mm, running in plastic bearings inside a white metal axle boxes, running in slots in the frames, supported ansd sprung with an 8 leaf working leaf srping, made from 10mm wide packing crate banding! Try getting that in a 4mm model!

so we now have all five carriages rolling. In theory we could take it to a friends track tomorrow and give them their first run as a full set. But as ever the problem remains of transporting them. We take three in the trailer but the current system for securing them is awful and would have been replaced this weekend but our metal suppliers were closed for the weekend (grrrrrr mutter lazy mutter mutter) so that put paid to building the new system for the trailer that would allow us to stack and transport all 5 with space for extra gear.

But the time did allow him to detail the coaches further.

On the end of the vast majority of coaches of that era there exists controls for the lighting, These are a series of rods, running through or below several electrical switch boxes. They are a very prominent feature that is part of the clutter on the end of a coach, but our first coach has been running without it for nearly 10 years! So, a little while ago some research was carried out, with the aid of a London transport rolling stock engineer, (heres your credit Engineer_London!) and we found a general arrangement of these control boxes (two for heating controls and 1 larger for lighting), in relation to battery boxes and the 600 volt train line for the engines, and carriage orientation. But as with all best plans, picture evidence always contradicts so a certain amount of license has to be taken!

Whatever, the boxes were cast from whitemetal into a homemade mould. The patterns were rapid prototyped, a brlliant but expensive process, and sillicon moulded around to make the moulds. Rodding is brass strip, cant remember the exact size, and the securing covers, only approximations of the full size thing because of their small scale size, were milled from more brass, and all glued together, before being nailed to the body work. The biggest problem came from positioning. There is very little spare room on the rear ends, and on the protoype some boxes replace the steps. what made it worse is the drawings for the end are not accurate copies, so a lot of jiggling was required to fit all the rodding between steps, other rods, windows, vacum pipes, tail lamps and lamp brackets! But he got it in the end.

The final job were all the conduits that run from the Heating control boxes upto the top corner and diappear into a junction box. This was made fom 16th rass rodding, bent to the proper path and soldered togther, before being painted black and fitted on.

These are all fairly simple jobs but it all takes time. this has been the work of nearly all week for him, though we cast the boxes a few weeks back. But considering there are 5 coaches, thats10 small boxes, 5 larger ones, 20 bits of rodding (one rod is in two parts) 10 bits of conduit, 10 securing rails, and about 30 bits of wood packing, not bad really, all of course sprayed black individually.

All that now remains are lighting connectors, the 600 volt bus line (actually 12 volts coach lighting circuits) works plates, bodyside numbers, one set of vacum pipes and door handles (64 off! They'll be made by lost wax casting, by an outside contractor, he did the original 20 by hand!)

I havnt been totally idle. The exam period has afforded me with the odd bit of free time and i have spent it semi constructively!

For a long time now, the loco (Metroploitan railway Metrovick no 18 michael Faraday) has had front and rear headlights. however further research reveals they are actually headcodes, and marker lights rather than headlamps as such. they were a cool white with red being achieved by lenses. Rumours of green and blue lights via similar method persist! But red was only used when running light or shunting. Our loco has always carried red and whites. this however is really wrong, because it is not the end of the train. So with the advent of radio control and are ability to switch at which ends these lights appear, thoughts turned to havng the option of taking the reds out as and when required.

The original basic circuit was of 5 LEDs in one circuit running of the 12 volts off the main batteries on one circuit (4in series, 1 in parallel) and four in another circuit arranged bu use of a dual LED lamp (perspex rod with LEDs fired into it so either colour can appear out the end!) so that each lamp except one can be switched from white to red, by the flick of a joystick on the controller and a radio control swithc wired to a relay.

For the electrically minded of you, a circuit diagram is included, not 100% accurate but the basics of it. A relay was then into the existing circuits with the option that rather than going via the red LEDs, the current returned via an equal resistance resitor and back to the battery, leaving the reds off. The relay was controlled by a remotely operated switch on the 5th channel of the radi set (the one usually used for landing gear in model aircraft)

After having rewired parts of the body shell, the lighting was tested with the loco on the rolling road, and hey presto, everything worked perfectly first time! Very pleased i was with myself that day! I then replaced all the water proof covers for the LEDs ion the body shell (scaffold tubing end covers!) it is now back in service.

The next challenge was solving a problem highlighted over the past few runs. The loco is incredily free running, and will roll away down a hill, or as at gilling, heavy shunt into rolling stock parked on the down hill, annoying the shunter no end! So, fitting in a servo operted radio control parking brake is the next challenge! we still have a channel free on the radio set so.

But, if you have battled your way through that,and found it interesting, then comment, leave your thoughts etc etc and await the next installment, if not all abuse kindly sent elsewhere!

If off to quainton tomorrow, the Bucks railway centre, to see a m,an about a dog, but i beleive the next run is at Brent house in cambridgeshire, for the GL5 AGM on 17th june. If nothing interesting happens before then, i shall post then,but feel free toleave comments here.

Thanks all

Mark