A fine day out yesterday at the March MRC show. Thanks to the organizers for their efforts, good lunch and excellent provision of tea. There were a good number of people through the door and we had an appreciative crowd.
Getting the layout up and running gave the opportunity for a few pictures so I hope you'll forgive the indulgence of posting them here.
The Simplex 40s sat by the small loco shed, I need to look at the power collection as it wasn't picking up
I know I said I wasn't going to make much more progress until a boat from China delivered some tiny bevel gears but I got a bit bored waiting. I decided to see if I could actually print some. Turns out you can, I'm not sure how hard wearing they will be but it is at least a prove of concept. Given that current issues with the Suez Canal (blocked by container ship which has run aground - probably the weigh of all those tiny bevel gears it was carrying!) it was probably a good idea not to wait.
The welcome return of High Level Kits caused me to order, amongst other things, one of Chris' 'Rustlers'. I've had an 4mm Impetus Ruston 48DS in various states of rebuild for the 35 years I've had it. My attempts to motorise it have been many and varied but I'd always been stuck driving only one axle. The advantage of the Rustler was that it drives both axles using High Level's usual high quality gears. I had to make my own 4-wheel chassis to fit the gearbox in but this wasn't too difficult usin
After a couple of weeks I've now completed the cross-over and catch point on the fourth baseboard. Following prompting from 'Western Star' I redrew the cross-over using a pair of C8 turnouts which meant I could use the pre-prepared Vs I'd bought from C&L earlier in the year. I'm quite pleased with the results. I also managed to get the baseboard pretty much wired up.
Wiring up is quite straight-forward with DCC and the MERG control system CBUS.
I drilled loads of holes and threaded
Since I built my J17 by scrapping most of the parts of a PDK kit and making my own etched and 3D printed bits I have been thinking about the possibility of turning the result into a kit. A first draft of the artwork was turned into nickel-silver by PPD with help from my good friends at Brassmasters. (If this turns into a kit that will be where it will come from). The intention is the use etched metal for the chassis and thin bits like the cab and foot plate while 3D printing the complex shapes l
An excellent day out was enjoyed by the crew at Steam in Beds in the village of Eaton Bray near Leighton Buzzard yesterday. I suggested adding an incorporating 'Diesel's near Dunstable' tag line should have been added to the exhibition flier! The chancel arch of the parish church was once again filled by Fen End Pit, the layout performed well with very few problems that couldn't be solved quickly.
The new M1/A5 link road made for an easy journey and the provision of bacon butt
I managed to get the lever frame I'd printed painted (as per posting on the Anycubic photon thread) but additional furniture was required.
I found a website which had photographs of the tokens for the sections either side of Clare. These showed that the token apparatus was of two different types. A Tyer number 6 and a Tyer number 9, the web also furnished pictures of each type which I tried to model up in CAD. The results came out rather well, even the details of the pil
As suggested by Tim Horn I tried painting the building with Halfords primer once I had stuck it together. This shows my interlocking brickwork nearly worked but the end of the stretcher finishes about .2mm too shallow behind the adjacent wall. To make it work I'd need thin the wall sections down to something like 2.8mm before gluing up the joint. I'll try this next time.
Also on Tim's advice I then tried painting with an acrylic mortar colour Citadel Karak Stone from Games workshop and
Set up on Friday went smoothly, despite missing the right turning from the North Circular for Ally Pally. My Son did an excellent job at map reading (no new fangled Sat Nav for us!). The unloading was greatly eased through a helpful trader who had just finished using his rather excellent 4 wheel trolley which he kindly let us borrow, reducing the number of trips between vehicle and site considerably!
Everything worked well on set up and we celebrated by visiting IKEA for Swedish meatbal
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
Last Wednesday I was lucky enough to get off work early and join some friends in an evening visit to the North Norfolk railway for a trip on the line and a tour of the engine shed and works. This was an excellent event and a good time was had by all. We can now all count up to 34 with ease! (you had to be there!). Although the light was fading towards the end I was still able to get a picture of the J15 Y14. What a superb locomotive and HOW COULD Hornby GET THOSE HANDRAIL KNOBS SO WRONG? (sorry
I've made a start on the girders of the river over-bridge at the Cavendish end of the station. This bridge is still there but one of the girders has been removed. There are two distinct bridges, one with very conventional plate girders which supports the running lines and another bridge with really odd cast girders which supported the original coal siding, removed by the time I'm modelling.
One of the difficulties that I'm facing is that, as is inevitable, I
Having started a discussion on laser cutting on a thread in the 3D Printing, Laser Cutting and CAD group (Thanks to AndyY for adding the laser cutting bit!) I'll continue to post some of what I'm doing here just too.
One of the things that is concerning me is how to make the corners of building. Some people are trying interlaced brickwork and I'll probably try butt joining some ABS as well but one thing I wanted to try was to mitre the corners. I had trying to sand anything accurately so I'm
Do you refer to the colour of a signal as a livery? I suppose in these days we should consider ourselves lucky that they don't get repainted with each change of franchise. Fancy a signal in 'Barbie Rail' pink and purple?
Anyway, following advice from folks here and more photographs from 'Adrian the Rock'
http://www.roscalen....ratfordUponAvon I decided to repaint the post white, ladders black and also take the actual banner head a darker grey.
I think the result looks a bit more s
Something a little different today!
I took some drawings from Middlepeak of this parish and modeled up a Danish platelayer's hut in 1:87. The complete hut is only 40mm x 32mm x 32mm. This was basically a trial just to see how the Wanhao D7 would cope with it. The result isn't bad, probably up with your typical Bachman/Hornby 'ready-to-plonk' building. The hut came out pretty square and the detail is quite nice. The 3.5mm brick work just about comes out but is stretching the resolution of the
Blog postings have been a bit lacking over the last months as the house becomes a building site. We have now got walls, a roof and windows and things start to progress on 'first fit'. I can see the size of the railway room, as well as the other bits like new master bedroom and study for my wife. It is all quite exciting but taking a long time! Still we are making progress and at least have use of some of the house even if the kitchen has no ceiling and the kids have nowhere to sleep if they come
This will probably appaul the continuous springy beam folks but when you have individual springs on a chassis it is important to be able to adjust them so that the effective weight on each wheel is similar. I had some problems with my J39 which would hold the track then 'turning right' but not 'turning left'. It was suggested that perhaps the springing on the front axle was uneven so I decided to build a rig to try and check this out.
An £7 set of electronic scales was purchased off ebay (I'
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
Back from the summer holidays and a small gathering on Friday evening allowed for what are pretty much the final bits of brass to be put on the D16/3. First to go on were the front guard irons and then the brakes on the tender. I had some fun because of the earlier issues with the folding of the internal tender chassis which was slightly on the dink owing to the 1/4 etching rather than 1/2 etching of the components which made folding it up damn near impossible. in the end I had to enlarge some
I finally managed to build the last sections of baseboard for my layout, these two sections were both odd shapes and needed to be drawn based on the reality of what I'd already built and not just from the overall master drawing. I've already discovered that 'square' means a different thing to builders and walls aren't always at 90 degrees to each other!
The short section over the right hand side of my desk carries a 3'6" radius curve which is does most of the turn back to get along the wall
The small yard on Empire mill is entered by a trailing point from the down-line. This had been built while I was building the continuous run around the room. However the yard itself needed a asymmetric double slip to give access to the two sidings and the cattle-dock. the crossings are all 1:8 but one of the curved sides is quite a bit tighter that the other. As with the rest of the track Templot was used to draw it out. The crossings, both standard and obtuse were made as separate units solder
As next Saturday Fen End Pit is off to Expo Narrow Gauge at Swanley this afternoon was spend checking and preparing the stock. Several couplings needed adjustment, lots of wheel cleaning but nothing serious in need of repair. I had realized I was one driver down so have also been trying to convert 'Larry the Lister driver' into 'Sidney the Simplex driver'
I took the opportunity to take a few photographs and a short clip of the Simplex 40S with the sound chip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
Being a private siding the line to the mill needs protecting by a catch point. At least this didn't need another 'V' making! However as you can see from the picture getting the sleepers of the crossing space so as not to foul the line for the loop exit was a pain and more glue was smeared around on the underlay than should have been. The intention is to have a gate across the siding just beyond the catch point.
This leaves me with one last turnout to build and then lots of plain track -
The internet is a great tool for research for this hobby of ours. Following inquiries on the Scalefour forum I was pointed at some drawings of banner repeater signals. I found few pictures on 'Adrian the Rocks' signalling web page http://www.roscalen....gnals/index.htm and following a quick email Adrian sent me a couple of pictures showing the rear of the banner signal without having to resort to Eileen's extreme products.
At just under 11mm in diameter the result isn't big and has caus
So we've now had three major purchases for my Ruston project.
As usual the final drive to the axles will be delrin chain and the actual gearbox is being positioned in the same place as the prototype, central between the two axles and driving to one from the left and the other from the right hand side. I need a gear box with enclosed gears (owing the large amount of sand moved around on Fen End Pit) which ruled out my usual options from High Level. I remembered using on enclosed box on my J39
