flyingtardis

i know an etched chassis would run better, its not about being better its kind of an experiment into seeing how much of the cheap kit can be kept as a full kit while making it powered plus if i do do an etched chassis i'd rather tackle a smaller loco like one of those tiny LNER y engines (Y8? Y7? little 0-4-0 side tank thing) as its less to muck up, so its far better for a first crack at that sort of thing than what is essentially an 0-8-0 with 2 of the wheels missing 50% of its mass, putting bushes and wheels in the plastic kit seems less daunting, especially having built an O gauge loco in card (mountboard) either way i thank those of you whom have suggested wheels and the like, i shall be looking through the options over the next few days, will likely follow up on the thread (or make a thread elsewhere) when ive made a decision and made sure the project can go ahead the last thing i'll say, well ask, what brand are most similar to slaters? i like the slaters 7mm wheels and i'd rather stick with something i know (such as square pegs for auto quartering and a nice end cap with a little opening for a tiny alan keyto tighten them up) then look into the others as ive seen romfords before with the weird screwdriver attatchment thing which i'm not too fond of, will be fine for the tram type but for the open type i'd rather go for something a bit like the slaters offerings

cheers for the responses, i'm not really wanting to go down the RTR chassis route if i can help it, especially the mainline/Bachmann 03/04 chassis, if i'm to get one of them i may aswell just have the full thing. i just wish to add bearings to the plastic frames to then put wheels in, as i'm curious to see if doing that is all that's needed to make it work to have a motor and pickups fitted to then run, trying to keep it a little bit cheaper if i can Also which wheels would you recommend? the only ones i can find are romford ones

Hello all, so as the title says i'm looking at motorising the class 04 kit and i was wondering if anyone can give me some advice on what wheels and bushes i'd need to get for it, ive an idea for a motor/gearbox and can bodge some pickups but i'm just mainly interested in finding out what the best bushes would be alongside wheels and rods. i am aware i could just buy an 04 RTR or considering i want to tramify one get a motor bogey but it's not quite the same thing, would rather have it running on all 6 wheels rather than 4, plus if all goes well i can consider another project or 2 i have floating around in the old noggin Cheers Mr. Morris

Hey, so i'm trying to repaint my Hornby henry into a more realistic looking model and the tender chassis frame has always had an issue since day 1 that the frame is completely green, my plan is to strip it and respray it black and apply appropriate green and red where i need/want it. so far ive left it submerged in methylated spirit for about half an hour, but there isn't any signs its even started working, like normally half an hour you get some gummyness of the paint or something but there doesn't seem to be any at all, have i made an error in judgement? do i need to put it in white spirit instead? consdiering its made of metal i'm not too worried about any plastic melting, i just want it to not have the factory paint on it. any help is greatly appreciated Cheers Mr. Morris p.s. ive decided to attach a couple of images of the henry repaint, the reason he has a smokebox door is because of accidentally melting the original body a bit when trying to remove the face so this is a completely different bodyshell but you can see in the second image what i want the chassis stripping down from and too, as the bare metal was done with a wire brush but it was far too time consuming and won't get into enough nooks or crannies

theres deffo a few things i'll be getting from this lot, Police Boxes are top of the list also, really nice to see the analogue controller go back to its routes a little bit, the silver controller just looked wrong after years of the the old wedge black with red knob design, might be looking into them concidering i'm starting to get failures after like 5 minutes use on an electrotren 0-6-0 loco or even a Bachmann thomas loco, doesn't matter who makes it or how modern, i think ive worn the poor dears out being my main controllers for years, last one i got was nearly 10 years ago now, or just over. might look into the harry potter stuff, see how different it is from when the chamber of secrets set came out, that set was the second set i ever owned, so will be interesting seeing the differences era 3 scotsman and era 6 (america tour) sort of tickle my fancy aswell, even double tender bittern has my intrigue up, and i'm not really a streamliner-person gonna have to get me some sherwood trucks just for being proud of the shire i live in pecketts are beautiful as ever, might hve to pick me one or 2 up, especially the 0-6-0 ones, as i do really quite like shunting engines :3 kind of what i collect, shunters and tank engines in general, something about them that just appeal in such a strong way, think its got something to do with the versatility for their size, no doubt the little blue 0-6-0 E2 has had some role in this liking of small engines, TVS shape not RWS

i'll fix the above post at some point, and i will hopefully carry on with this in the near future, but sort of halted production, still working out how to do a couple of bits

oh... well, heres the constructive criticism i can give 1) use either Games Workshop or Revell paints or something like that from a model shop, the cheap supermarket paint really shows 2) use ACTUAL decals, bits of paper just glued to the sides are not decals, its just bits of paper stuck to the side of a model 3) when doing running boards its best to do the flat layer first, get it situated as perfectly as you can, filler it and then put the edging on underneath, it looks as though you've tried to do both at the same time and it actually sort of shows 4) try not to chop up perfectly good expensive models, like where you've used cheaper it actually works better due to the thicker mouldings, but honestly Bachmann stock isn't worth modding unless you've got your skills sorted on say the old tri-ang/Hornby moulds 5) masking tape is your friend, i know a lot of people can get perfectly fine lining jobs without, but they usually have rules and bow pens and only really work on flat surfaces, your best bet is masking tape to help you get those nice crisp edges on lining, stops it wiggling off and it will stop paint going everywhere causing what some would call carelessness (percy's lamp comes to mind having random black splodges in places) 6) measure, measure, measure, i can see on some examples bits of extra material used that don't appear to sit properly, always double check your measurements or that will happen 7) keep at the faces your custom making, they look a bit like a loaf of bread thats been set to rise on a baking tray then in a tin, try to refine the lines a bit more and add or take away depth until you get something more akin to what was on the show (in a more RWS light obviously) also smooth out before finalising, the lumpy look never suits try wetting the material a bit to try and create a smooth surface and gliding over gently with a craft knife without adding too much pressure. 8) on arthur i can see a lot of something for his face to be kept on, try to not do that, it makes the face stick out far too far, try taking bits out of the face that is fowling the smokebox door, or just take the smokebox door away if permanently being arthur, at any rte it should fix the sticky outy problem 9) and finally, take you're time, if a model takes you a few months to a few years to perfect take that time period, move onto something while your waiting for poly cement to dry or for the paint to dry, always leave time for things to dry/cure, as constant tinkering can be detrimental, i should know i've wrecked a few locos myself, but with time and effort it can become something good, like i have one of sparkshot's E2-x shells i'm workign on, what ive got is actually pretty good for a novice, i just need to get the tank lining done (and some paint touch ups due to tape failure but eh, nothing is perfect) but i took my time, using masking tape, time and patience, i also have actual decal paper lying around somewhere to make the numbers out of but it wouldn't be at it's current state without time and patience, it's always good to look back and think this isn't quite right and re-do bits, its how you get it from looking fine to you, to brilliant to you and others. trust me, take this advice on board, better to try and improve than for your stuff to be potentially mocked in a discord group or something, its happened to me a couple of times, first custom paint job locos were utter rubbish, but i didn't have the same tools i do now, and i've improved since, if i remeber i'll try and post my E2-x thomas when i find him, need to fathem out the bag he's in and where said bag is...

Hello there, welcome to my WIP CakeBox Challenge Thread. This Diorama is based around one dockside area seen in the 4th Series episode of Thomas The Tank Engine & Firneds "Special Attraction" later appearing in the Music Video for "Gone Fishing". The plan seems simple enough, even on paper, it's 2 areas of track, 1 higher than the other, at a dockside somewhere on the North Western Railway, Presumed to be Brendam Docks but unsure as of writing, no pointwork needed just some flexi-track cut to size, a couple of set track pieces and 6 Custom Buffer Sets, well it's not so simple as i'll explain later. First Things First, Refference Material (courtesy of The TTTE Wikia) The above area and conclusion is what i will be trying to achieve, now feast your eyes upon what i have so far: the overview of this is to sort of show what i'm going for, the plus side with getting a box from the range is i can open up the side to be able to take pictures, makes life so much easier below are a few close-ups of the areas so show for clarities sake what the plan of attack is roughly: now as you can see i do have a decent idea for the trackwork but ive not built any platforms yet, that's because ive not actually built them simple answers are lovely aren't there, but the reason they are nto built yet is because ive sort of hit a boo boo in the plan, as my plan was to do a 3 levelled area as that was what i thought there was, when looking at images and the episode i realised it was only 2 layers, cuts some work out but ive already prepped for tri-tier, oh well The white buffers you can see are a proof of concept for sudrian buffers, here are a couple of close-ups of them: no they are not made of plastic, they are made of card, a medium i have come to enjoy since joining the Woodthorpe Model Railway Club and learning about building locomotives with them, if you were there at the last show you will have seen my Thomas, Percy & James, the latter 2 being WIP, and it is a lovely medium to work in, but for concepts it's brilliant, and yes i will be building all my future stops out of card, as it's cheap simple and not as fiddly as it may seem, also suprising stuff card being bale to withstand a fair whack. so yeah that's my CakeBox so far, a way to go yet but hopefully, given time i'll hopefully do it justice. Thanks for checking out the thread, and any questions or critiques or suggestions welcome. ~Thomas P.S. i sort of had a bit of fun with James and the buffer concept slightly re-creating a scene from Thomas And The Magic Railroad, i'll pop it in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpLV7qJdW7w&feature=youtu.be

honestly the Red Maunsell type were pulled by 2-5, 6, 8-10, so if you were told off for that then the kid is clearly too young to have seen the model era, i'll just give a quick run-down so that you can counter some of the kids that think they know it all Thomas, Annie (facing bunker), Clarabel (facing the open track), Sodor Mail Coaches with or without brakevan, and The trucks Percy: A&C as before but with a brakevan added to the end, Sodor Mail Coaches with or without brakevan, and The Trucks James: A&C, Red or Green Maunsells, Trucks Henry: R/G Maunsells, Trucks Gordon: R/G Maunsells i'm gathering thats all you have, i don't want to bombard you with info about every engine if you don't have them