Progress continues on the new engine shed for Fen End Pit. Lots of sheets of corrugated iron have been coming off the 3-D printer. I have printed a number of different sizes and shapes to save wastage from printing large sheets and cutting them down. The roof has a single large sheet printed which curves over the top of the roof and then there are two shorted lengths of curved sheet on each side.
I decided to use dress makers pins to form the fastenings and this mean drilling a hole thr
Inspired by people using the brickwork to interlock the corners of a laser cut building I had a go at drawing out my 'test shed' with the sides designed to interlock. As the material to hand was 3mm MDF (I have some 1.5mm and 1mm on order) I cut out the stretchers on the joint. This screenshot of TurboCAD shows what I mean.
The resultant kit of parts was amazingly fine and just demonstrates what the cutter can do.
The detail on the 'fingers' of each side shows the closure half
Yesterday evening was spent rewheeling my Christmas present of a Bachmann Cravens DMU to P4. Santa Claus had also provided a set of wheels from Branchlines. These are stub axles are a direct replacement for the wheels for the OO wheels. The key thing is to get the new stub axles parallel and here meeting with friends in the possession of GW Models wheel press is an excellent idea.
The hardest bit is getting the motor bogie off and this is best done with small screwdriver on the inside end of
Over the last few days I've been making progress with my new resin printer. It is quite a learning curve from the FDM (extruded filament of plastic) printers, getting to grips with 'Curing times' and other completely new variables. After several initial failures I'm beginning to get some useful parts printed. The quality over the filament based printers is remarkable. Certainly, if you are actually wanting to print small models they are worth considering. It is interesting to note that the Wanha
Reading Geoff Kent's 'The 4mm Wagon - part 1' gives the answer to the question on the Airfix brakes.
The kit provides two mouldings, only one of which is required, and two identical brake handles, the one on the same side as the brakes should be fitted with a Morton clutch.
So, I've removed the brakes from one side and cut the brake handles off the V hanger on the other. pushing it slightly upwards and used a piece of rod to represent the end brake rod and the Morton clutch. At the same
I'd spent a fair amount of time trying to solder up a belpaire firebox and despite many attempts I really wasn't that happy with the results. So, as much as an intellectual exercise as with any practical expectation of success, I thought I'd try and model the firebox, boiler and smokebox up in CAD and try to print it. This is very much a 'work in progress' but the results are rather encouraging. The layer lines at a .03mm layer height are virtually invisible to my eye and will disappear even fur
Over the last month PPD have been kept busy with a couple of projects. I've been helping my friends at Brassmasters with a potential EasiChas project.
As I mentioned a couple of months back the cab windows provided for the J17 in the PDK kit I'm building didn't seem to match the GERS drawing very well. I received the replacement etches from PPD and will see how they go together over the next week or so.
The second project has been considerably more complex.
Yesterday I visited ExpoNG and came away with quite a lot of inspiration and enthusiasm. I bought a motor to go into my P4 Barclay fireless.
I particularly liked some of the 'single baseboard' layouts like 'The Loop' and drew up a plan to give an opportunity to run some of my 7mm stock which doesn't get a trip out anymore since I sold 'The Works'. This is based on a fictitious exchange between the Wissington Railway and a narrow gauge agricultural line. I'm imagining a river along the back
So, here is the problem, cassettes are a great way to make a fiddle-yard but a complete pain if you want to make that fiddle-yard part of a continuous run. You need to be able to make the cassettes butt together tightly and align accurately but you also need to be able to get them in and out. If the ends of the fiddle-yard, where the cassettes join the main layout, are fixed at both ends then this is virtually impossible, either you will have a fit so loose that trains will derail or the cassett
After several evenings of fun, and I guess something about 20 hours work in total I have now got to the point of getting the replacement Penbits bogies under my Class 24. The initial 'rolling test' where you leave out the gears so you can just roll the locomotive along was great fun! I had used Black Beetle wheels in the original conversion and these went back into the bogies with no problems. Being insulated on one side only they made opting for what some people call 'the American System' of pi
While sorting out the new railway room I came across a packet of old photographs including several of my old 14mm narrow gauge layout called 'The Works'. This was a cement works that featured lots of skips, war department bogie wagons and even 3 feet of standard gauge with an Impetus models Hudswell Clark. I sold the layout about 10 years ago to a chap in Essex (Romford I think) and I was told by a couple of his friends at a show a few years back that he had sadly died so I have no idea if it is
I received my etchings back from PPD yesterday. Apart from an error with the J17 coupling rods which were on the same etch the Ruston bits look super. The intention is that these bits provide the strength I need for the axle boxes and motor mount together with lots of nice bits to detail the laser cut plastic body, This is the first time I've used PPD and actually produced etching for myself rather than just doing art work from others and I'm very pleased with the results.
The idea is t
An enjoyable night out yesterday gave a chance to stick more beautiful castings on the Simplex. Getting the bearing for the fan into the radiator meant I could try out the drive for the radiator fan. Very satisfyingly the motor drive works, I had to reduce the 'dimming' on the accessory output (to increase the power to the fan motor) which had the benefit of reducing the 'whine' caused by the pulse width modulation effect on the coreless motor.
Putting these castings on is a real pleasure, t
This is one for those of you who fancy building potato or sugar beet railways, or maybe a drainage board line taking clay to strengthen a bank. I took these pictures a good few years back during an afternoon driving around the fen. Some of these magnificent buildings are still standing though most of the engines inside them have long since gone.
First up is Hundred foot bank, near Welney.
Like several of the engine houses you have a tall central section which
The Ely Show was great, it was good to meet up and chat with several rmwebbers as well as various current and ex-colleagues. The layout operated well all day with faults limited to a broken rail joint on one point, a missing or failed dropped to one switch blade and a missing uncoupling magnet, not too bad for the first outing of a completely rebuilt layout. We had more troubles getting everything in the car than I would have liked but I think we just to learn how to back it better. The public r
As I mentioned in my previous blog posting I was concerned about the design of the fan and fan grill for the Slater's Simplex. As the kit doesn't provide for the fan to be driven the grill around the radiator would prevent the fan and the belt driving it from being removed ever being replaced.
I decided to see if, rather than just gluing the radiator grill in place, I could make it removable by using 16BA bolts. I bend up the grill which is provided as a etch and strengthened the corners wit
I've spent this afternoon trying to draw up a plan for the new layout. I'm waiting for PPD to come back with an etch for the narrow gauge Ruston and felt like an afternoon in front of the PC. Having received the structural engineers report which means that hopefully we should soon get a quote from the builder I hope this isn't tempting fate.
I started off taking a scan of the OS map into Templot and then trying to draw track over it. This is an interesting task as I'm sure that what you thi
Over the weekend I finally fitted the motor and some pick-ups to the driving wheels. After an initial problem as I hadn't fastened together the High-Level gear-box with its extension and some insulation tape to avoid any shorts between the pick-ups and the foot-plate the locomotive now moves under its own power around the layout! The wheels actually stay on the track and the quartering and wheel fitting worked well so it is nice and smooth. The speed is about right too which looks as if I chose
I finally got around to fitting the buffers, crew and coal to my E4. I also converted the bogies on my second Hornby Gresley to make a nice short branch passenger train.
I'd be tempted by the 3rd coach, possibly seeing if there is something suitable in the Ian Kirk/Cooper craft range may be an LNER 51' Non-Corridor Full Third ?
I'm not sure what the typical make up of train down the Stour Valley might have been.
I'm rather pleased with the way this kit went together, I've n
So the fifth baseboard got drawn, cut and constructed, together with the cork for the track bed. Then I got as far as sticking down the sleepers and laying 3 feet of track before the temptation to 'play trains' took over. As I now have a little bit of track at either end of the loop I can now pass trains. I got a variety of stock out of the cupboard to make sure it would run.
A Cravens DMU (Bachmann) arrives from Cambridge passing the goods yard, the reason for a Class 31 and 4 Mk1s in the l
Fen End Pit had a very enjoyable day out at the Leighton Buzzard narrow gauge railway, making an exhibition of ourselves in the locomotive shed at Page's Park. The stand next to us from the Darjeeling railway society probably felt at home with the morning monsoon but the roof on the shed didn't leak and we had an appreciative crowd who enjoyed playing 'spot the Leighton Buzzard locomotive' on Fen End Pit. (It isn't difficult as the answer is 'most of them!')
Additional sound effects wer
A few months back I was tempted by a pair of Hornby coaches while in Model Junction in Bury St. Edmunds. I had a rake of 3 old Bachmann suburban coaches in BR Blue but these weren't really suitable for my period and move to a less urban setting.
I was prepared to re-use the Bill Bedford sprung bogies from the Bachmann set to go under the Gresleys. The shape isn't quite right but you can't really tell. While wandering around Scaleforum I had looked to see if anyone had any Gresley bogie sidef
I was really not looking forward to building the double slip. Two crossing Vs, eight switch blades and the horrible obtuse crossings. Building this lot off the baseboard is the best idea and I tend to build the crossings and solder them up individually on nickel-silver scrap etch. These sub-assemblies then get stuck to the sleepers with epoxy carefully jigging them to gauge.
The obtuse crossings are the hardest to make and get aligned but they are the most critical bit. I'm prepared to
Last Friday I had a particularly productive evening rewheeling my old Alan Gibson J15. The kit was built about 25 years ago (gulp) but had languished on the works sidings for a couple of years following the wheel quartering slipping and the wheels being so old that they were loose on the axles and no amount of locktite would hold them in place.
So, finally I bit the bullet and ordered some new wheels from new Mr Gibson. The biggest problem with some of the wheels available from Colin at the
After thinking about this for sometime i had a rummage through the bits box and found an old Exactoscale 2:1 reduction box. I'd already thought that the 36:1 gearbox might be a bit low geared given the size of the wheels and DonW's comment on putting a spur gear drive to take the shaft to a more convenient height seemed sensible too.
The Exactoscale box took a bit of work to get back up a reasonable state, but fits nicely between the frames of the tender chassis. I've also modified the chass
