Jump to content
 

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 27/05/12 in all areas

  1. Having gone as far as I might with the trackwork from a running aspect, I turn further attention to scenery. Actually I'll be getting some third party input on the trackwork from somebody substantially more qualified than me; more of that when it's happened. Now then; I have been slapping paint around to try and build up those layers of believability that might just lie beneath the surface. What? Well one of the things that impressed me about Framsden (apart from the overall scenic quality) was that a bit of white fencing had a dash of crimson red paint on it. Not realistic from a photorealism perspective perhaps, but very painterly and somewhat audacious. Anyway, it worked for me. Indeed the approach is reminiscent of Cuneo (tie-in to last post) where apparently incongruous colours are used, yet work in the context of the overall piece. [Puts thesaurus away.] I've been getting very much into using tube acrylics for scenic work of late, applied in a very broadbrush manner using a proper acrylic chisel brush. The fencing which is being planted around the layout is benefiting from much of this slapdashery. I've also repainted the post and wire fencing to make it more subtle (I hope!) To top it off, I've been fiddling around with the camera to try and get some better pictures. Here is one which shows some of the aforementioned fencing and telegraph poles which have been daubed. Full picture: The fencing to the far left is unpainted. Cropped: Click on the photos, they're a good deal bigger than the thumbnails.
    6 points
  2. The need to place an order with Shapeways for components for the PTAs has seen some frantic work in completing a few other bits that have been on the back-burner for a while. One of these is a version of the LTF-25 bogie designed for the national power JHA/JMA: There are actually an awful lot of differences between this bogie that is fitted to these Finnish-built wagons and the one fitted to the ARC JHAs (built in the UK). Again, there are two versions of the bogie, one with a hand wheel and one without and again each of these has differences when viewed from the left side or the right side. The picture above shows the hand wheel version. Here are the main difference between this version and the ARC version: The main frame has a deeper profile box section onto which the secondary air suspension sits. Mounting points for the dampers are totally different Different hand wheel mechanism and brake application indicator board positioned side-on Larger cable stays Like the ARC bogie, this version also makes use of Colin Craig wheels and hand wheels plus the sequin and o-rings for secondary suspension. I have cut pilot holes for Colin Craig hand wheels that are in different positions on either side of the bogie. Here is a prototype view for comparison (albeit from the other side):
    3 points
  3. Although it is possible to load a sound project written for a standard (HO/OO) chip into a v4 XL, you tend to find that all of the bassy sounds are too loud when played through the bigger speaker, so relative volume levels have to be revisited. The bigger speaker also ruthlessly exposes any deficiencies in your clip editing. Any slight glitch leaps out at you, having been inaudible through a small speaker. First recipient of the treatment is my 26 project, which sounds great in my Heljan test-bed loco. The 20, 33, 37 & 47 will be next, for the Heljan range. The photo is from the early 90's. On summer Saturdays there was a train that brought holidaymakers from (I believe) Carlisle to Ayr. In days gone by it used to run to Butlins at Heads of Ayr but Thomas Cook et al put paid to that. Motive power was invariably a 26 or 37 and needless to say there were more bashers on the train than holidaymakers. My Bachmann 85 is now roaring merrily around the layout, the project having received a number of tweaks and improvements to suit the model. The model itself is absolutely superb, shame we had to wait 30 years for it. I wonder which AC electric Bachmann will use the chassis for next...?
    3 points
  4. This won’t be much more than a “this is where I’m at†posting because progress has been zilch since the last entry... the warm weather, building work, decorating, allotment and work hasn’t helped the situation... but still I’m at a bit of a holding point. Having gone about as far as I’m going to go with the Bachmann 47 body (maybe some roof handrails beckon)... it was time to turn the attention to the underframe. Whilst I need to do some research on the fuel/water tanks, my initial focus was with the bogies. Yes they probably need some ride height reduction, but I was happy that once fitted with Ultrascale wheels these exhibited none of the rocking tendency that some of these suffer from. However, I wrecked some of the brake linkages when fitting the bogie frames back to the bogie body and really needed to work these (class 57 origin) bogies... so wondered whether there was a better option. James had been really helpful in pointing out various issues and solutions (cheers James ) and I acquired two pairs of Heljan frames to contemplate as these looked quite promising. These do have much crisper mouldings and are free of many of the errors of the early Bachmann ones... but they’re not perfect. Yes all the details are there, but some of the details have been added at the expense of the moulding shape, which I found a little disappointing to be honest. When I fitted these to the Bachmann bogies I also noticed that the distance between the axles was not quite the same... whether the Bachmann’s wrong or the Heljan’s wrong is probably irrelevant as I intended to keep the Bachmann workings... so more contemplation – picture shows my thoughts. Oh, and the bogie side frames are two pairs – so that’s a speedo pickup on each bogie .... really? Anyway, here's the Bachmann bogie (minus some brake gear) And here's the other Bachmann bogie with the Heljan sideframe Yes, I've been picky, I know! There’s the offer of a fully sprung Bachmann bogie... and I will be seeking the demonstration of this at Railex tomorrow. Yes, despite the truly gorgeous weather, swmbo has decided that she wants to spend the day cleaning and tidying tomorrow... so we’re not going out on the bikes with the kids so ... I’m allowed to go to the show ... woo hoo.... could be an enjoyable day! And I’m really looking forward to seeing some good layouts and exhibitors... and catching up with a few others. Early to the M25 I feel! Anyway, whilst I will look at these offerings, I’m of no expectation at being skilled enough to attempt them... but looking wont hurt... will it? In the mean time, I contacted Bachmann (eventually – they don’t make it easy do they) and ordered some new bogie side frames – of the newer models so they should be a bit more accurate at least, although I suspect I’ll still need to change those awful springs! Anyway... I’m still awaiting postie... and looking forward to learning tomorrow. That’s all for now. Time to get the kids up to the allotment to burn off some of energy – theirs not mine; I’ve none left! Jon
    2 points
  5. This week I am sharing some thoughts on the excellent kit from Mike's Models for the ex GWR Medium Yard Crane. I had a full set of instructions for constructing the crane but there was no mention of how to model a base for the crane. A Google Search highlighted a couple of results in this Parish but both acknowledged that the cranes had been assembled without instructions. There was a suggestion that the base should be circular. A search of my own books showed that the cranes at Lamborne and Tetbury had what looked like circular brick bases infilled with concrete. The brickwork for the Tetbury crane also had a circular steel band to hold the brickwork in place. My first attempt was to use two circles cut from 5mm thick balsa wood: Besides being rather untidy, my attempts at scaling from photographs was obviously wrong and these 40mm (10ft) diameter plinths were too small. Even when used for the little GEM crane there was nowhere for the 'operator' to stand. Reinterpretation of various photographs suggested that a plinth 60mm (15ft) might be a more suitable size. Instead of balsa wood I made up a 8mm (2ft) sandwich of thin corrugated card. Wives can be very useful and whilst searching the web for craft ideas my wife had come across the web site http://incompetech.com which offers a range of free specialist graph paper. Polar Graph Paper was ideal for setting out the brickwork around the top circumference. I mixed my own shade of Humbrol paint and as soon as it was touch dry I scored out the joints in the brickwork. This was made easier by leaving some of the printed lines uncovered. The concrete screed for the centre of the plinth was made from a separate disc of paper coloured Magnolia. The steel banding around the outside was made from 4mm (1ft) strips of black cartridge paper suitably indented at one end to simulate rivets or bolts. I should point out that assembling the crane and making the base seems like child's play compared to rigging the crane. The problem can perhaps be part explained by an old 'Boys Own Annual' trick. If you take a strip of paper and glue the ends together to make a circle, taking care to put a twist in the paper, and then cut the strip along its middle, you will end up with two paper circles linked together. In order to rig the Medium Yard crane and keep the linkage flat over each of the pulleys it is necessary to a put a twist in the linkage - easier said than done. The view above is a taster of where the crane might go. However now that we are having summer it could be some time before there is further progress in this particular corner. 'Planters or Plinths' - well the first pair of small diameter plinths may just end up as Platform Planters.
    2 points
  6. I finally finished off the rake of 5 scratch-built wagons that were built by prominent modeller Andy Elliot who built a number of models for Foster Yeoman before he sadly died five years ago. I obtained these last year from Gridwatcher who was a mate of Andy's. Andy constructed the wagons in styrene sheet and they are surprisingly detailed. I've done them as a rake of 2 outer wagons and 3 inner wagons: There was a actually quite a lot to do in the end: - Creating mounting points for the bogies and fitting my 3D printed LTF-25 bogies - Fitting lead weight - Fitting kadees as inner couplings at prototype height - Adding buffers to outers from Skits - Fitting kadees as outer couplings at normal kadee operating height - Painting - lots of coats of Phoenix enamels! - Transfers - from Fox and using my own home-printed data panels - Varnishing - good old Klear They still need weathering and one or two extra details adding such as the distinctive coupling bars. Here are a couple of shots of the individual wagons: Outer wagon: 17918 Inner wagon: 19890 Just to show how much had to be done, here is a pic from Gridwatcher showing the state of them when I got them from him:
    1 point
  7. Following high level discussions with PMP, there's a chance these two cheeky chappies may make an appearance on Albion Yard during its Railex showing. Both are suitable for the Forest of Dean although I make no claims for appropriate loco shed allocations, etc. The 94XX has featured on my blog in the past but it has now received a little more work and a touch of light weathering, hopefully to suggest a loco that could plausibly be running in early BR days, despite retaining GWR colours. I wasn't happy with the Gibson GWR straight pattern buffers as originally fitted - not only were they, in my eye, somewhat underscale in diameter, but they caused acute buffer locking on part of Paynestown - so I removed them and fitted some larger white metal examples which will do in the interim. The 4575 is a typically smooth running Bachmann example which has been running on my layouts since these models were introduced. I have to say, I am smitten with Bachmann's prairies and own more of them than I strictly need. But they are such sweeties. I have done very little with this model other than to renumber, add some crew, coal and lamp irons, and a smidgeon of weathering. Unfortunately I have lost/run out of appropriate vacuum and train heating gear for these locos. Cheers!
    1 point
  8. The research to locate a suitable two car DMU for ‘Hayfield’ has resulted in my deciding that Longsight MPD had severe problems in keeping their fleet of DMUs on the road and had to resort to asking for loan from Carlisle. In short I’m now fairly confident that the Bachman version I purchased, is of a pairing that was never used on the Hayfield Branch. I don’t want to start carving the Bachmann set to suit, so I have come up with this story as to how this set got to Hayfield. All lies of course but so too is my story that allows the use of a York based J72 at ‘Hayfield’, - Gorton had it on loan waiting for the ex MOD austerity tanks to be delivered! Back to the J10 :- It now has a reach rod, brakes, sandboxes and sand pipes, and the Belpaire box now has some washout plugs. Comparing as many side-on pictures as possible, scaling from each pic, and calculating a mean value of each measurement have achieved all these additions. I think that sizes and positioning will be pretty close to the prototype; more to the point it will look right. A small number of you may remember articles in the model press written by Jim Whittaker of Manchester MRS, a scratch builder of the very highest order, sadly no longer with us. Jim had a lot of influence on me in my younger years and I still use many ideas he passed down to me. One is making small, delicate parts by punching them from shim brass. I have several punches which have been used many times over many years and the J10’s washout plugs owe their being to Jim. So too will the works plate when I get round to it. This picture shows those plugs, the reach-rod, steps with grab rail, brake hangers with shoes and the sand boxes with pipes. The sand boxes are white metal castings. I made a set of four out of tufnol (any of the tufnols based on fabric machine just like brass!) but having done so realised that the same type of box was used on the Q4 (my next effort) and on several other Robinson locos; so I made a rubber mould and cast a few. The brake hangers and shoes were profile milled using plastikard masters originally made for my J39. Profile milling is such a useful process I’m amazed that more clubs with their own rooms don’t get one for the workshop. I can’t house one at Honley Tank but the Manchester MRS workshop is visited fairly frequently; - it just needs planning!! These last two photos show both sides of the chassis before the sand boxes went on. Neither shows the motor in its correct position; when the body is added it is pushed to a similar angle, but forward, to the first pic.
    1 point
  9. I was very pleased to receive the award at expoEM for "most authentically operated model railway" - the Reverend Peter Denny Memorial Cup, presented by his son Crispin Denny (of automatic Crispin fame) and judged by Bob Essery. However, it seems that some people seem to think that correct operation implies trains arriving within seconds. Even gaps between District line trains in the rush hour seems to exceed some people's attention span. In my book, correct operation means adhering to what the prototype would have done. So on Clutton there is a lever frame, with interlocking, bell systems with virtual tokens being released, signals that work, the role of signalman and driver split - the list goes on. Plus when there are no trains, there is something to see on the layout. I did some timings at the show, it takes a full minute to get from the staging roads at the back to the station at the front, and a full minute to get from there back to the staging roads. That could mean nearly two minutes between trains. I know that my layout is not to everyone's taste, but so be it. You can't please all the people all the time.
    1 point
  10. Whilst I was cooling down from doing the gardening I had a chance to make a little progress with the UFO collection that is slowly being worked down. X3900 Today I painted the buffer beams and used the waterslide transfers for the stripes on the sides. This caused a bit of bad language because I have never used them before. However, I got there in the end! There are a few places where I will paint such as the whiskers, which are going to be difficult, and the the small gaps by some of the doors. X5800 I worked on getting this painted up. I handpainted it using acryllics and found that getting the curves of the red paint at each end was very tricky. I am going to tidy these up but I will save them for another day. The chassis was also weighted down to give it better traction.
    1 point
  11. I love the X3900, the printing, and the shade of green, bring out the front 'face' with the grilles beautifully.
    1 point
  12. I am enjoying seeing you several posts materialise, you have the makings of a fine layout I would think. It is particularly pleasing to see the inspiration wall - as you say it will keep you from at least some of the silly errors and help keep you inspired. so keep up the good work!
    1 point
  13. It's not very often I finish two projects at once but that's what has happened this time. I have a policy of continuous improvement so I don't really consider any project as truly 'finished' but the Class 50 & 303 are both at the stage where I'm happy to release them into the wild. It will be a while before I do videos of either though. As mentioned before the 50 comes with multistart which in this case means user-controlled priming and both cold and warm starts. It has two different sets of horns, one in each direction, and an automatic cooler group fan which starts when the driver takes power, as per the prototype (this can be turned off if you don't like it though). You will definitely need a bass-reflex for best results, ideally in the underframe, but the effort is worth it. I was expecting the 303 to be similar in character to the 304 but in fact they sound quite different. One reason for this (I learned at Bo'ness) is that the traction motors on a 303 were cooled by a quiet oil pump rather than noisy blowers. And of course the 303's had sliding doors and beepers rather than slam doors like the 304. As mentioned previously, around 90% of the sounds with this project are genuine 303. Nothing particularly noteworthy about the Class 303 photo other than the location - platform 5 at Nuneaton! It was taken in April 1983, in the middle of an All-Line ranger which cost me the princely sum of £100. I think there were a handful of them allocated to Longsight at the time though I stand to be corrected?
    1 point
  14. One thing I've never been happy with about the layout are the buildings along the back scene; particularly the end on terraced houses on the right hand side of the road bridge. I've decided to replace these with an industrial building. Before starting on this though I've added some supports to prop up the retaining wall (replacing the rainwater down pipes which used to hide the joints in the plastikard); also extending the wall to include the area behind the goods shed: At the opposite end of the layout this large industrial building, which I've been building today, will be installed at the end of the sidings. I'd previously extended these sidings through into the fiddle yard, thinking this would increase operating potential, but found that this wasn't the case; so now I need to replace the bufferstops I demolished earlier in the year (with some of those nice GWR pattern ones from Mainly Trains). The next Foundry Lane related entry in the blog is here
    1 point
  15. The JMA's i've been working on for some time on and off have reached this stage. This wagon still needs three thin vertical stripes of blue adding, where it was welded and repainted along the lines of the hopper partitions, the NP logos have been painted out, with little care, as per the prototype. They also need some weathering, though not too much as the prototype seems to stay fairly clean. These wagons have hit the buffers at the mo, the bogies, which in look are a reasonable representation do not run well enough for them to stay, they don't derail but create too much drag, with just 6 wagons behind a Hornby cl60 it was taking far too much effort; the whitemetal frames are not easy to get square as there are no proper flat edges to work to, plus the holes for the axles needed drilling quite a lot to accept the axles, all this resulted in bogies that looked square to the eye but no when run on a wagon, plus if you try to tweak the bogie frame, being whitemetal and thin, they snap quite easily! So i have begun soldering up bits of brass to make something free running, which seems to be working, now just in the process of getting various brass section to build a whole set of bogies, which will be built and tested as a rake before adding detail, some of which will also be revised. Fancying a break from the JMA's, I decided to re-visit a project i'd started when the Dapol KIA came out in Tiphook Rail blue livery. Eventually I'd like to model a fairly accurate covered steel coil train, made up of BYA, KIA, JSA, IHA (canvas hood) and maybe FCA's with containerised coil loads, theres a way to go yet but at least 1 step closer with the KIA. Dapols model, as purchased leaves a bit to be improved imo. I don't usually get too involved with wagon mods unless there are major problems, but with these it straightaway looked like it needed new buffers, the plates Tiphook Rail is printed on ( and therefore transfers to re-transfer, and some of the ones Dapol missed ), lashing hooks and eyes, brake handwheels, couplings, bogies, probably other things i've missed too. I've replaced all but the bogies, although Hurst did produce these in their kit of this wagon, they don't seem to be available separately so for the mo they're staying. The lashing hooks and eyes are from Hurst, though i drilled out the existing eyes and only replaced those that i made a mess of. Buffers are S-kits reverse pattern continental buffers, which look right, certainly better than what was there to start with. Brake handwheels are from Colin Craig, i probably haven't done these etches much justice with my soldering skills but they improve the look of the wagon. The main thing for me was the Tiphook Rail logo printed straight onto the bodyside, these needed changing so i contacted Scale Model Transfers to produce the transfers for these and the IHA, which is the same wagon from a different lessor. I've now got the transfers and was going to apply them to the strips shown in the pic above, however they look way overscale so i will be replacing with brass strip for a more scale appearance, so can't do much to these at the mo either, waiting for some bits of brass. I'll prob start on a model of 56054 in transrail grey in the meantime, clog the workbench with another half-finished project!
    1 point
×
×
  • Create New...