For those who don't know what a J17 is, here is a picture.
They were a James Holden designed locomotive built for the GER between 1900 and 1903, a sort of half-way house between the lighter J15 and heavier J20.
As I hinted the J17 kit from PDK is also quite 'old school' by today's standards. The frames just had simple holes for the bearings, not even a half etched line as a nod that some people might spring or compensate their locomotives.
Progress today
So there I was feeling quite chuffed that I'd managed to get the wheels on the J17 chassis. There is a video which includes it running on youtube.
Then I started work on the footplate, I got the buffer beam and valancing on quite nicely and then turned to the splashers. I felt quite good about the job I'd done until I put the footplate onto the chassis and realised that the kit had exactly the same issues as the previously built J20.
Now I don't exac
As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, the splashers on the J17 kit were designed to accommodate the most steam-rollerish of flanges, being almost 4mm in diameter larger than scale. Well I've managed to take them back off the foot-plate. file them down to size and refit them. They look to be about .5mm too large now but I'm ok with a little extra clearance for the springing.
Missing from the kit, but visible on the plans and photographs were the beading around the ba
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
The prototype J15 had 15 spoke 4'11" wheels. Unfortunately the nearest available from Alan Gibson in a 4'11" 16 spoke wheel or a 4'7" 15 spoke. Gibson sells a pack of the 4'11" 16 spoke wheels with 2mm axles as a conversion set for the Hornby J15 (which has 2mm axles) and on reflection the 4'7" really does look noticeably too small to me. The Brassmasters' sprung hornblocks come available as 1/8" or 3mm bore so my decision to use the conversion pack wheels meant I also had to use Gibson's 1/8 t
The second test etch for the Easichas for the Hornby J15 arrived via Brassmasters. Once again a superb etching job by PPD. Most of the mistakes from the first etch were corrected, though there are a couple of minor changes to be made based on actually putting this together. I've also been putting together the instructions and one of the other Brassmasters has been attempting to follow them! I'm really happy with the way the basic chassis goes together and very pleased with the fold-up brake gear
Well over a couple of years ago I asked my friends at Brassmasters about the possibility of them producing one of their EasiChas range of kits to fit the Hornby J15. These chassis utilize the original motor and chassis block put provide a method to fit EM or P4 wheels with some springing. The design has now covered a range of prototypes including various LMS, GWR and LNER locomotives. I have produced artwork for some of the Brassmasters range in the past (point rodding components and the origina
A little package of wagon bodies was posted off last week and my friend Phil has put one together with its chassis and sent me a photograph.
I think it rather looks the part.
He just has another eight to do now, should keep him busy for a while.
I have been making some more coal wagons for a friend's Irish project. The first attempt were slightly too narrow because some idiot (me) got the dimension wrong on the 3D model. Having fixed that we now have a models of 3 different types of wagon and the beginnings of a coal train. The wagon chassis department is apparently working at peak capacity assembling etched underframes.
The 3 wagons are subtly different, one design has two doors in the middle while the other two have a pair
So Phil asked 'Could your gadgetry print wagon bodies' and attached a photograph of a Cavan and Leitrim 3' gauge 4-plank coal wagon and a 2D drawing he'd made. Well I couldn't let that challenge go could I? Over the course of the festive season we have bounce various images and drawing back and forth as I hopefully got closer to the prototype. Photographs are somewhat elusive, I don't think many people who got to travel on the C&L bothered taking pictures of mundane old coal wagons. This one
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 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
A couple more pictures.
Firstly this is the switch end of the three-way. The check rails were basically just soldered on to the copper clad using the a set a Scalefour Society jigs to locate them. I was given some old Studiolith rail which is actually a little thinned than the current bullhead available from C&L et al. In reality the guard would probably just have been a piece of angle iron rather than rail, but it was rail I had to hand.
To give you some idea of how the lower l
The lower level of Empire Basin is meant to consist of a coal yard and sidings next to the canal. I plan to use cobbles for some of this but thought I'd have a go with some rough tarmac too. This was built up using 'fun foam' from my local art shop which was cut to fit around the rails. The top surface is Green Scene's 'Yard Filth' textured paint.
I'd appreciate your views.
David
This little pair of gates for my cattle dock was pushing the Anycubic photon but I thought it was worth a punt even though I thought it unlikely that it would come out. I'm rather happy with the result, particularly as I needed 3 pairs which were identical. I wasn't exactly looking forward to having to make 3 out of scrap etch and wire and that would definitely have taken more than the hour these took to print.
In place they look like they would have kept the cows in.
An excellent day out to day at 'Steam in Beds' organised by the Bedfordshire area group of the 16mm association. Our surroundings in the church at Eaton Bray were rather impressive and it seemed only right given the Church of England clergies long history of interest in railways! Many thanks to Rad and 2BIL for their help.
Despite the obvious temptations to things 16mm I managed to resist buying any new toys, probably a good idea given the orders received from the MERG and Rapid electro
I thought I'd put up a few pictures of Empire Basin, my bit of East London in P4.
David
This is the view from the door to the spare room. The minimum radius is down to about 40". It is rather nice to sit on the PC while trains go round and round.
The fiddle yard is vertical but only 1 metre long. The unit moves on brackets designed for rack-mounting computers and is counter balanced by a large lump of MDF.
The Riceworks J65 sits on the loop with a brake van in f
Following a request for some garden tools I took to the Thingiverse and found a couple of items to print. The spade, fork and grass rake were made for 12th scale but scaled down to 16mm without too much issue. I then drew up a rake and, because I couldn't find ones I like the look of, a watering can and plant pots.
The nice thing about the plant pots was that I only had to draw one size and then scale them in the slicer on the printer to get a range of sizes.
I wanted be able to put a mitre on small pieces of MDF which are used to make walls. I've decided that mitred corners look nicer than trying to interlace or butt joint but sanding the mitre is a pain. I looked at bench sanders as a way to do this but the commercially available tools are quite expensive (around the £80 mark) and mostly very large (sanding disks around 8 inches). So I thought I'd have a go at making one myself.
I laser cut the bulk of the components in 6mm ply and 3D
Hmmm, over a month since the last blog entry. Well it is the holiday season.
Progress on the P4 layout continues. To be honest I'd hit a bit of a wall in that I didn't want to get things much further along scenically because I was terrified I would have to take everything apart if I needed to fix anything below the baseboard. I needed to take some time to sort out how to make the gubbins more accessible before I ran too far ahead.
This is where the hindsight comes in and possibly a good
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
Thanks to the advise on this website I painted and weathered my Dapol BR (SR) CCT this afternoon.
I purchased the wagon from Trains4U earlier this year along with my Expo compressor. The mouldings are a bit 1970's to be honest with dreadfull W-Irons and springs etc. However the solebars were wide enough apart to fit a Bill Bedford sprung W-Iron between with only the minimum of filing. I was able to cut out the plastic leaving only the J hangers, spring and axlebox casting and then stick the
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
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
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
