A Bank Holiday gave the perfect excuse for some more soldering, but I'm running out of bits to solder on the body now. I put on the pipes along either side of the valancing, complete with little joints. Also got on the lamp irons and buffers.
The chassis now fits, but for the wrong wheels in the pony truck.
Still left are the guard irons on the front bufferbeam and the various bits of frame underneath the footplate but I'm waiting on getting the pony truck right before I do thi
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I built a Wills N7 kit. The chassis was built using the etches for the kit, now sold by South East Finecast. The original chassis had the 'posh' hornblocks from Gibson (I think) which were the lost wax casting with a tiny springs pushing down on the bearing with a bolt through the top of the hornblock to locate the spring and set the ride height.
All of this worked fine until you took into account the sheer weight of the white metal body. The body c
The original Wills kit was designed to fit around a Hornby Jinty or such like with a massive X04 motor protruding into the cab. Having built the chassis with something a little less 'old school' it was pretty clear that the absence of a floor, or backhead or crew was going to be a bit noticable. It isn't as if you can see much in the cab through the windows, it is just that you can really seen the absence of anything through the windows, if that even vaguely makes sense.
So I decided to put
Christmas seems to be a traditional time for me to do some Scalescene's buildings and this year seems no exception. The large goods warehouse is at viaduct level with a street level entrance below track level. I spent a few hours cutting card to make up the road level and I am quite pleased with the view you get from under the bridge of the main line. I think the retaining walls looks like a suitable location for some bill boards.
I also decided to put some hipped roofs on the building.
Last night and tonight I made up some Brassmasters etched windows for the warehouse. I think these make quite a difference. Next step is probably going to be working out how to do the roof. One the one hand I fancy doing something with a pitched (maybe hipped) roof, but on the other I'm concerned how that might look given that the backscene means there would be no straight lines.
I think this calls for some cereal packet mock-ups!
David
I liked the look of the Fergie, but decided that the steering mechanism was very 'representational'. The 3D model just had a couple of bumps meant to represent the steering rod and axle supports. I decided to try and model a better mechanism. I was able to import the STL file into CAD and then try to draw up the extra parts. The original model was designed to be printed on a filament printer so the detail was quite simple.
Ideally I would have removed the original features from the m
I realized that the spring on the lever was effectively duplicating the one in the micro-switch so in the best traditions of trying to keep things simple I tried to build a version which doesn't bother using it. The revised lever arrangement is a bit simpler but it takes a little bit of adjustment to:-
get the springing in the lever right,
the micro-switch to change correctly as the catch handle is pulled and also
the screw which fastens the attachment to the lever not to foul the mic
Thursday night saw the bodies of the wagons fitted and Friday evening was spent fitting weight and Alex Jackson couplings. Still need to fit the dropper wires for the coupling.
I realized that having removed the toy hinges for the side doors I needed to replace them with something more to scale. A few pieces of plasticard from the scrap box were enough to fabricate something suitable. Painting was by brush with Humbrol acrylics.
Transfers from the Modelmaster range were applied
Inspired by an excellent day out at the Peterborough Festival of Model Railways I launched into more track building. The turnout from the down mainline into the yard got finished as well as the rest of the down line on this first baseboard. Much pushing of wagons and coaches around has followed. I'm generally quite please with the way it looks.
The mirror is not because i have suddenly got particularly vain about my appearance but because it is an excellent tool to look along the t
A good few months back I was working on a Rumney models chassis and tried to fit a Parkside Shocvan onto it before realizing that it was planked and it should have been plywood to match the chassis type.
http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/186/entry-15555-a-little-bit-of-suffolk-or-learning-to-love-templot/
it was helpfully pointed out that Red Panda actually did a kit of the plywood version and so I purchased one of these from a trader at the Ely show. An offer over the weeken
Over the festive period I got most of the track for the quayside built and wired. Point control is all manual via wire-in-tube and/or cranks. I've fitted check rails to most of the line and think I'm probably going to try some Noch cobbles for the road service.
The J65 shunts a couple of vans in the loop. This loop is just long enough to take three short wheelbase vans without fouling the three-way point which gives access to the pair of sidings.
This is an overall view of the
After an all to brief week in the Lakes (traveling north via Scaleforum North in Wakefield, obviously) I returned to work and the workbench this week.
First task was to build a combined keeper plate and spring assembly for the D16/3 chassis. Having cut the cosmetic springs off the bottom of the frames as I was fitting the hornguides I've now used some strips of nickel silver and some extra frame spaces to make a keeper plate that stops the axles falling out, it will ultimately be held on to
I'm not sure how much more by way of constructional details I can give but here goes.
I started off by making the back of the fiddle yard from 6mm MDF. Two computer rack mount brackets were screwed to the wall. These were originally from Dell PowerEdge servers. If you find a friendly IT department they will probably have some spare as each server comes with new brackets but if you are replacing a server in a 19" rack the chances are there is a set in there already. You will probably find the
Today, being a bit milder, I was able to take a bit more time in the garage with an aerosol before having to get back in the house to warm up. The result was that I could get a much better coat of primer on the building and apply it in several thin coats and let it harden off before going any further.
The resulting luminous building showed the joints weren't going to be too bad. I made a bit of a mess when gluing it together last night, I tried to stick the inner walls to the outer walls bef
First up the results of my attempts to cut a mitre joint with a laser cutter. My jig worked pretty well but it was very time consuming to get the part on the jig correctly and to align the laser to where I wanted the cut to be. The biggest problem is that the 'red dot' is only really a rough guide for where the laser will cut and it isn't actually in the same place. It is good enough to spot whether the job fits the material when you press 'test' but not really up for fine alignment.
Th
I'd been looking for a suitable industrial building to form a back-drop to my rebuilt scalefour empire and also provide a source of rail traffic. Those with very long memories may remember my attempt to model Mistley maltings (or at least part of it) more years ago than I care to think. I didn't want anything quite that big this time so spent a good few hours on Google searching for 'East Anglia Mill' and similar terms. I end up finding Ebridge Mill near North Walsham. There is an excellent web
A good Friday night and weekend of activity sees more progress on the J39 Chassis Kit from Dave Bradwell
The frames get the various additional plates to form the back end of the pistons.
This shows the slide bars in place for the (dummy) connecting rods.
The coupling rods have been assembled, complete with the rivot for the joint.
And the hornblocks and guides were made up. These are going to be fun as there is no slot in the hornblock and just a piece of brass on the out
I've been a bit busy fiddling with dodgy electronics recently but haven't produced anything worth adding to the blog (yet). However I have also found time to build another Dave Bradwell brake van chassis so thought folks might like to see a picture. On the left is the completed one from last year, on the right the one I've just finished. I decided to do a slightly different version of van, this time with the shortened foot boards. These kits really are enjoyable to put together, a bit fiddly in
More fun with MERG electricery. I purchased a PICKIT2 which allows you to change the software running on the PICs used by the MERG Servo4 controllers to a version called Sema4 which has the option of setting 'On' and 'Off' positions, the 'On Speed' and 'Off Speed' and then up to 3 'bounces' in each direction. The result is shown in the attached YouTube clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un5LMUBFDM8
For the technically minded I've also now upgraded the software on the MERG CBUS modules
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 consider myself to be very lucky to live in a town which still has a shop with a worthwhile model department. Ely is lucky to have City Cycle Centre as it holds a very respectable range of paints, raw materials and tools as well as the usual RTR/RTP models. Also relatively locally a day of shopping with the family usually involves going to Bury St Edmunds (no one in their right mind attempts shopping in Cambridge, no parking, too many tourists and no model shop!). Model Junction in Bury is the
It is so much easier to design a model based on a prototype than to try and work in a vacuum. In this case I was lucky enough to have a friend take a few pictures of various suitable station buildings which I could try and base Empire Basin station on. I've spent a happy few hours counting brick course and have tried to draw up the proposal in TurboCAD. I've stuck pretty much with the original just altered the window sizes very slightly to fit the pile of Brassmasters/ Scalescenes etches I have.
I've started work on another vehicle for the parcels train, a MK1 GUV. So far the B4 bogies have been replaced by Mk1 type. These are Bill Bedford etchings with the sides off Bachmann Mk1 bogies (suitable thinned down). The Bachmann bogies came from Kernow Models last week and at £3.50 for a pair are actually cheaper than some less detailed white metal castings.
The original 'Rail Express Systems' livery came off easily with model strip and will be replaced with plain BR maroon (and lots of
I thought folks might be interested in a couple of photographs of the new MERG CBUS based DCC system. This uses a CANBUS (originally developed for the automotive industry) to transmit the signals from the handset to the command station which then generates the completely standard DCC signals on the track. The advantage is that this is the same wiring bus as I using for controlling the rest of the layout using other MERG CBUS boards. Ultimately I should be able to run the whole layout with 6 to 8
Having joined the MERG at Biggleswade I went down to their meeting at Keen House a couple of weekends ago. Very pleasant day out, welcoming bunch of people and an interesting talk on computer control. I purchased a number of kits including the servo controllers and some of the CBUS modules designed for accessory control. Several hours with a soldering iron later and we have the CBUS playground featuring a number of modules designed to test and develop some ideas on how it might work on a layout.
