I thought folks might like to see my 3D printed model of a GER yard crane based on drawings in the GERS journal a few years back. The crane was built by the Chatteris Engineer Co and there were examples in several GER goods sheds and in the goods yards of some of the Stour vally line stations including Clare.
I modeled the parts up in CAD a few months back but knew that it would need something better than my original 3D printer to be able to actually make it. The resulting parts, particularl
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
Back in the early 90's I drove up into the wilds of the Fens and found a few remnants of the Wissington Railway. The photos came to light again as I was sorting out my drawers so I thought I'd share them.
Turning off the A10 north of Southery and you could still find the remains of rails in some of the concreted field entrances.
In other places you just had to imagine where the railway once went along the size of the drain.
Here the railway once ran between the concret
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
Thanks to various comments on and offline the curvy roofed option won!
I drew up the timber frame in TurboCAD and cut it out in 6mm ply on the laser-cutter this lunchtime. The resulting structure is 'quite large'.
One of the reasons I opted for the curved roof was that I'd solved the problem of how to make curved corrugated iron. With any products available as sheets, either corrugated copper from Ambis or plasticard it is almost impossible to bend in circumstances where you want to
Progress continues on the works end of Fen End Pit and I've started thinking about the design of the two road shed. The size is fixed by the site, 330mm x 220mm and the height which needs about 9 scale feet. I want something suitably agricultural and given the Fens the construction material of choice would seem to be corrugated iron. (homage to Dennis from Grunty Fen)
I have a few pictures of the rather nice barn behind the Prickwillow Drainage Engine Museum. This barn actually has two diffe
When I first build the 10RB dragline back in 2000 the tracks were made by heating plasticard under the grill and using a simple press tool to form each of the track plates. The result didn't look too bad but 17 years of service they had got pretty worn out. The plasticard was only 20 thou so the pressings didn't really capture the nature of the solid castings used for the tracks.
Ruston Bucyrus produced a number of different widths of track which would have been chosen depending on the
While on holiday in Cornwall over Easter I visited the bookshop of the Launceston Steam Railway and purchased a copy of the Robert Hudson Light Railway catalogue from 1915 as reprinted by the Narrow Gauge Railway Society. I decided I'd try to draw up and print a U skip more as a scenic feature than as a working piece of rolling stock. I trust one small picture is allowed under 'fair use' rules and I'd strongly recommend the book.
The 3D model took me a few hours to put together, modeli
Yes, I did get my spelling right and mean braking not breaking.
The Binnie Engineering Hudson Tipper wagon is a staple of 16mm narrow gauge model railways. Understandably Fen End Pit has quite a few and one of them was converted many years ago to have brake standard to give a little variation. I'd often thought about converting a couple more to give one braked wagon per train of skips but never got around to it.
I decided that this might be a good challenge for my new 3D printer so
I applied Deluxe Materials Scenic Rust to the skip, this pack contains a bottle of very fine 'Rust powder' and a binder which feels like a very dilute PVA. These are mixed together and applied to the model. Once dried a 'Rust developer' is applied which makes the layer of material actually produce real rust.
After about 8 hours the rust is fully developed and you end up with a very rusty skip.
It works rather well on corrugated cardboard to make rusty corrugated iron.
David
A little bit of cleaning up last night and I assembled the extended skip chassis. I need to add a tiny bit of filler at the joint between the original Binnie chassis and the extra parts but hardly any. I put a coat of Humbrol matt 113 on with a brush and this had the effect of really showing up the detail and just how good the printed parts had come out.
I hardly did any work on top surface of the extension and I'm really chuffed with the smoothness which the printer achieved.
As luck would have it my maintenance men at work finally got around to installing a pair of glass 'white-boards' which we'd ordered in September. This was perfect timing as each board was packed with some 1/2 inch expanded polystyrene ideal for my landscaping. The job of cutting out the pieces to fill the pit was a little messy, put in the end I got a reasonable shape and managed to smooth it all down to avoid a terracing effect only suitable for tea plantations.
Another few hours an
As I've mentioned the revisions to Fen End Pit have meant the insertion of extra sections of baseboard between the original boards. Over the last week I've been adding camping mat and starting to lay some track.
The shed was actually the original view block block before the layout was originally extended to include the works end. This was half way along the layout in its previous configuration but now has an additional 15cm of board next to it.
The section near the pit has grow
I usually only blog about model railway stuff but I hope you'll excuse this little ramble because it does include some pictures of trains! After a significant number of years and now the kids are both big enough to look after themselves my good lady wife and I had our first foreign trip. The boss wanted to 'do' some Christmas markets and we settled on Berlin. We'd never been and as she had spent 5 months behind the Iron Curtain in Moscow just after we started going out it seemed an interesting d
Sometimes I suspect people only blog when they have got something that works, that demonstrates the best of their modelling, the kind of blog posts that get answered with lots of 'Superbs' and craftsman/clever likes. I guess this might be natural but possibly a little off putting sometimes.
So, Friday evening and the F4 chassis made it into wheel shop. We had the tools, we had the company, we had the coffee. The GW wheel press was prepared, I even had a brand new magnifying lamp from Hobbyst
The turnout leading into the yard got laid today, this leads off from the loop back into the double-slip in the yard. Once again I've been able to reclaim the V, switch-blades and tie-bars from the previous layout. The point was built on a copy of the Templot template off the baseboard and then stuck in position on the marks I had previously cut into the cork.
You'll see various tools sprinkled around the layout. The original box of 'Brook-Smith' gauges, the 10BA bolts which I'm using t
Given that I have now got trains moving I thought I'd put up a bit of video to show it.
I've also managed to fit the first uncoupling magnet so I can play about with Alex Jackson couplings. While most of my old stock has them fitted some need a bit of adjustment and some need the magnetic droppers replacing as they aren't the right length. Still I can shunt a train up and down and break it where I want so I'm happy.
Hope you like it
David
Back from an unnaturally dry week in North Wales and I was able to start laying some track. I had salvaged as much as I could from the previous layout (with the price of components following the practices of all the prototype railway company and retrieving components from closed lines makes good financial sense!). This did mean that I already had assembled switch blades and rail with chairs fitted that I could reuse. I printed the Templot template for the B6 point which is in the yard and stuck
Yesterday I popped into Makespace and cut some test sleepers. I wanted to make sure I'd got the right allowance for the laser width in my drawing. I also cut a test part in the .8mm sheet of ply I'd bought from City Cycles in Ely on Saturday (we are very lucky to have a shop that sells model and craft items in Ely!, too much of this country is a model shop desert). The laser cutter is worked by controlling the speed and power of the laser to get the right level of cut so you can see from this te
With the majority of the baseboard work completed on my first two board these were moved up to the railway room from the garage. The 'works' end of Fen End Pit got boxed up and space made to put the new boards in position. I couldn't resist positioning a couple of items of stock on the boards just for fun.
An order to Amazon last week resulted in 4 sheets of 6mm cork 2' x 3' being delivered. I'd deliberately order some quite thick cork available as flat sheets rather than rolls. So
I managed to get my second 'kit of parts' assembled into a baseboard this weekend. I'll be honest and admit that I'd made a few errors in the drawing on this one, some of which resulted in a bit of 'fettling' being required. I'd missed out one set of slots and got a tab 6mm out of place. When you try to cut rectangular holes in 6mm ply the traditional way, with a drill and a piecing saw and file, you realise how much you get spoiled by a laser cutter.
I've still got to fit base-board do
Back in the day new railways were always started with great ceremony. Contemporary reports always describe how the town band would play 'suitable tunes' (what would be considered an 'unsuitable tune' in 1850-60 I wonder?) and the shareholders would be treated to a meal befitting the occasion.
So yesterday was spent in Makespace cutting 6mm ply with a lasercutter and this afternoon spent assembling the resulting kit of parts. As is usually there were a few places where 40 watts didn't quite g
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
Over the last week or so I've been inspired by an article in the MERG magazine to have a go with an Arduino. These little micro-controllers are ridiculously cheap and can be programmed to do all kinds of things. I've chosen to control a couple of stepper motors to make a pair of level crossing gates.
David
It's taken a few months to make much progress on the level crossing. I made some gates but hit a problem as I tried to mount them on the stepper motors but needed to make them removable. This meant that there was a bit of slop introduced and that allowed the dreaded backlash to rear its ugly head. It took sometime to adapt the code to deal with this as I had to make the stepper motors 'take up the slack' every time the gates change direction.
Here is a little video.
David
