hartleymartin

I found a thread with a Peco GWR Brake Van kit built and it is most definitely the same kit. The give-away was the compensated axle arrangement and the buffers. Unfortunately, the brake-van is incomplete. I imagine I'll have to find some photos and make the hand rails out of brass wire rod and find suitable handrail stanchions.

You know you've got good friends when they just pick up a dozen wagons and a brake van for you from a model railway market. The first two stacks on from the left are all old Three Aitch Mouldings kits. One van is missing wheels and most of the others need some buffers. The third and fourth stacks are Slaters kits. One wagon needed new buffers on one end. I had some suitable spares on hand. In the last stack on the right there is another Slaters wagon, but underneath is what I believe to be a Diagram AA3 GWR TOAD by Websters. I can't find any references to Websters online, but I think the kit is the same as the one sold by PECO these days.

Yet another thread resurrected! I have some great friends. I was unable to attend a model railway market day and a friend picked up a whole pile of British O Gauge for me. About half Slaters Kits built up and quite a few Three Aitch Mouldings wagons and an unfinished Webster's GWR Brake Van. A few missing buffers, one wagon missings its wheels, a couple needing a paint job... With so many wagons, I think I need to do a British Layout. I still have a couple of Hudswell Clarke locos suitable for this. I also recently acquired a significant amount of Bachmann On30, mostly in various "promotional" liveries so I bought an airbrush and I have been using them as fodder for practicing my painting skills. Photos will follow!

The wood grain pattern isn't fine enough for 7mm scale. If you take a look at photos of varnished teak or varnished mahogany railway carriages the grain is nowhere near as pronounced - partly because hardwoods like that are usually quartersawn and not backsawn as depicted on that sample carriage. In short: the grain pattern needs to be much more subtle. In any case, I am not after this livery (as lovely as it is) but would be after one of the painted liveries or even just unpainted, undecorated so I can unleash my airbrush on it!

In case you were not aware, the Stewart Reidpath 0-6-0 Tank Engine and Essar chassis was used in the late 1940s as the first model of "Thomas" by Rev. Wilbert Awdry. He retired the mode around 1979 when a Triang 3F Jinty was repainted for the role, and later on a Hornby E2 was used.

Such a shame a lot of the older pictures were lost! I had a great hour or two reading back over this thread.

I can't get the one with wooden brake shoes, so "Rolvenden" has had an upgrade with iron brake shoes. It appears that the original pick-ups were mangled by whoever assembled the model at the factory. I made several attempts to repair them to no avail. The replacement keeper plate with integral pick-ups has fixed the problem at it now runs just fine. I actually purchase two replacements just in case I get another terrier with the same problem. After all, you can't have just one terrier! (I've got them in 4mm and 7mm scale now too!)

I have to ask, where did you get the Lucky Luke figures?

Am I correct in understanding that the rear trailing wheels are also geared to drive? I am impressed that they made a tiny flywheel out of the front worm gear.

The failure of my terrier to run smoothly is why I never bothered progressing my OO shunting layout during all the covid lockdowns. I have now ordered two sets of replacements. Now, did they ever release a version dressed up as Stepney in LBSCR "Improved Engine Green" ?

Does anyone know the part number for the chassis bottom plate with pick ups for the A1 version of the Terrier? I bought "Rolvenden" at the end of 2019 and it never ran properly. I suspect it is the flimsy pick-up wipers. I intend to replace them, but cannot find the appropriate part of part number in Peters Spares, except for the A1x version: https://www.petersspares.com/Hornby-x7425-class-a1x-terrier-chassis-bottom-screw-pickups-r3767.ir

And hoping that no-one wants the "collectable" American branding sets. The 2-6-0 seems to be easy enough to obtain. I've got one dressed up in red "Budweiser" livery and another in silver+blue "Moonlight Express" and covered with wolves. It seems that everyone is always on the hunt for a Porter. I just manage to get one on eBay and by the time it gets into my hands, it will not be quite so cheap. That is one of the disadvantages living in Australia. Seems like we get hit by the "ocean tax" for everything.

I'd like know how "cheap" was cheap. It seems to be almost impossible to get one of these in Australia at the moment. Last few offers I have seen for these cost as much as a mid-range OO train set! I am still looking to obtain more of them, but it seems to be both easier and cheaper to obtain the On30 Mogul, usually in some silly "collectable" livery like Budweiser or McDonald's. Still waiting for mine to arrive, and now that I have seen the prices on the On30 Streetcar and Gas Mechanical, I am kicking myself for selling off the ones I had until about 5 or 6 years ago!

The important question now is where do I get a figurine which is a reasonable representation of Lawrie Rose to decorate the cab?

Today I showed the old test-build at the Aus7 Forum (twice-yearly O gauge convention in Sydney) and got quite a bit of interest. I came home and started working on Revision 22 of the drawings. This has been immeasurably easier in AutoCAD than it had been in the previous drawing program. It seems that a lot of drawing programs fall down when it comes to drawing curves and tangents. The significant work done in these drawings is not immediately obvious. It is a re-design of the parts so that the body and roof are assembled as a series of sub-assemblies which are glued together and the floor level and chassis will separate. The plan is to use four screws to hold the chassis and body together. This way it is possible to access the interior for detailing - maybe some basic seating for passengers. I do not plan to make a lot of interior detail, but just enough suggestions of an interior.

Preview of what I think is now Revision 21 of the drawings. On the right-hand side are the parts where I have completed the revision work, and on the left are the old source images which I have to revise/redraw. Now that I am able to use AutoCAD I have been able to accurately plot the roof arc and make all the ribs and parts for the roof a consistent radius - something which was lacking in the old software.

Perhaps I am behind the times on this. Just started learning a couple of drawing programs and recently had the chance to learn a bit of AutoCAD as part of my trade certificate. I am currently re-doing some of my work on the KA Tramcar with better software so I can get the bits laser-cut. "Virtual" railways such as simulators are a bit grey in my view. They are virtual models of a railway in the sense that they are representations of the real thing. However, I find myself increasingly going off the digital world. I prefer being practical and I use computers to support my real world, rather than escaping into a digital one.

I discovered that I am eligible to use AutoCAD under education access so I am using it to fix up the old drawings. I no longer have access to the original drawing files, but I do have the PDFs exported from them, which I have been able to import and convert to a proper CAD drawing. I get much better precision than I ever could on the other program. This revelation came about because I had to complete a number of hours of CAD exercises as part of my furniture-maker's trade certificate. I've learned the basics of 2D CAD in a program that makes sense to me.

Marc - I may have to follow you up on that. I would like the prototype 8-spoke locomotive wheels for the Australian Manning Wardle locomotives which are not produced by Slaters or any other wheel manufacturer I am aware of.

I've contacted Tim at CWRailways to do the 3D CAD artwork. I considered 3D-printed bogies, but I am concerned they would not be durable enough in O gauge. I am looking at 3D-printed masters then having a batch cast in either brass or pewter.

I did look into that, but found that I could get what I needed from 0.8mm plywood. I have drawn that component up, but not shown it since it is basically a rectangle with rounded corners, a few holes for the oil-lamp pots and scribed planking lines which also help make it more bendy on the ribs which form the arc.

And now on Revision 4 of the underframe components. I plan to have this cut in 2.5mm Basswood, but 2.5mm Plywood will also work. The triangles are fillet pieces which will be used to strengthen the connection with the bufferbeams. I plan to use Dapol screw-link couplings pre-assembled. I tried several times to assemble the slaters working screw link couplings, and probably could have bought several wagon kits with the money. I botched every single attempt, so I gave up on those. I have also identified several components from an American manufacturer which appear to be suitable, or at least close-enough to save me the bother of scratch-building them:

So we are now at revision 20 of the laser-cutting artwork. Mostly minor dimensional adjustments to some of the underlaying roof components, Correction to the bogie pivot points (10mm too far apart on Rev 19) And additional slots and tabs to cater for new assembly method where roof and body are a single component and the floor/chassis/underframe are a single component. I no longer have the original drawing files, but I do have the *.svg export files where individual elements can no longer be edited, but I can always place a white box over sections and draw new lines over them.

Also, just saying that if someone is able to do the patternwork for the bogies for me, I am sure we can come to some arrangement where I will send you all the other components for you to build your own KA Tramcar or something similar.

A little over 2 years later. Yeah, there was some global emergency which distracted us all for a while. I have a test-build, with annotations written on to correct some dimensional errors. Unfortunately, about 6 months ago my old computer up and died, and I am not sure if the original CAD files managed to make the transition to the new machine. I only have the svg files exported for the laser-cutter, but not the odg files which has all the original features and points. But I know that those drawings are 90%+ correct and complete so I can leave them alone. I will have to redraw the underframe components. I am looking to obtain near-enough components from existing manufacturers' catalogues to complete the model, but the one thing which remains is the bogies. I learned to do the 2D CAD for laser-cutting and that I adequately understand. I don't really want to learn 3D CAD just for the bogies. I have decided to change the way the model is assembled. I had originally wanted to keep the roof a separate component, but I get bad gaps in the join which I cannot correct. I think now that it should be that the body and roof are assembled together and the floor/chassis is the separate component. I am less concerned with getting everything 100% correct, as no two photographs or drawings show exactly the same details on KA Tramcars. It seems that with just four carriages ever built, all of them were eventually unique and had different appearances at different times and places.