Klaus ojo

Valentin, a really nice model and nice work! Thanks for showing Please allow some questions: There wouldn´t move any rods or pistons, would there? Do you know the composition of the 70° solder? And is it brittle? (The Rose Metal I have is very brittle, appox. 100°C melting temp., contains Pb,Bi,Sn) My own attempts in soldering whitemetal were not so convincing until now... The most common sources of the 70° solder do not tell much about composition but they should do so. AFAIC there are mainly 3 alloys in that temperature range: Woods Metal is containing lead and cadmium and the 2 other candidates are Indium alloys which are rather dear and so unlikely to be used (or explicitely would have been advertised therefore: for the 50g bar this is 10 quid for the Indium alone at sourcing ) The SDS I´ve found: https://belmontmetals.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SDS-Bi-Low-Melting-Alloys-1.pdf (It´s the cadmium I´m concerned, not the lead.) So precautionally keep your hands and desk clean . cheers Klaus

Dear n9 a double slip is a complicated little thing and Peco´s one is not one of the worst, although designed to cope with oldest track and wheel standards. With your high expectations: Have you ever considered to build your own turnout? That is having 2 advantages: You are getting a better idea what is necessary to make a turnout work and you can do one to your very needs. If you are designing your turnout with moveable wingrails (just like high speed turnouts of the prototype; or a moveable crossing vee ) you will be able to run without wobble - given that you are capable of building your trackwork that smooth. (If you are having access to 2mm Scale association archives: In Magazine 6/1990 Brian Tilbury is showing his approach) I´ve attached a picture of my little experiment. You´ll need a special pivot bar or 2 drives to operate it. Do not add checkrails then. The finetrax turnouts on Alston seem to be the older design with an inserted milled crossing. The new easy build (wooden sleeper!) turnouts are with a continous rail which may allow even better running properties. Worth a try. I only know and like the 2mm FS version of both single and douple slip (which is from the same manufacturer and basically the same design but with finer 2mmFS standards). Klaus

Tom, I´d agree with Bob: staight track is no problem and curves as well, as far as they are having a large radius. I´ve tried a narrower wheel gauge of 8.9 mm with a BR class 11 (otherwise to 2mm FS standards) and it did run astoundingly well on N Kato track even with an approx. 290 mm radius and simple turnouts. However, your code 55 is sounding like Peco. The gap at the crossing at the Peco turnout I have is 11mm long and 1.3..1.4 mm wide and at the checkrails it is 1mm. With a wheel only 1.3mm wide that is difficult. With special turnouts this might work. The FREMO FiNescale folks are running their trains on basically 2mm FS standards but reduced btb to accomodate +/- 9mm gauge. This is still not compatible to NEM standard N gauge. Klaus

Yes Keith, nice coaches! You might have seen that these coaches are some of the older prototypes. Before having air pressure brakes in coaches these had manually operated brakes as well, including cabin. German railway companies relatively early took over the Westinghouse air pressur brakes for premium passenger service, especially after a better operating Knorr brake was available which could be loosened and fastened repeatedly. Freight rolling stock was fitted much later because of higher more quantity and costs consequently. There were other attempts for e.g. mechanical brake installations to replace the need for brakemen. e.g. Heberlein brakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heberlein_brake As railway companies often were scarce of money older rolling stock from mainline and premium service very often was reused on seconday services so these coaches may have had a longer second live later. (You might have noticed stripes at the edges of German freigth stock of the era 2 between the wars? Thats for discriminating between unfitted and fitted rolling stock and the ones with just a pipe through to be able to run in air braked trains without itself having a brake.) By the way: The wagon for Ansbach on your photo is not a Bavarian prototype (seems to be a Prussian one. This is of course more probable than the other way round a Bavarian wagon in the north . Fleischmann did many funny things with these prototypes., which are indeed nice. Of course on a model raiway everything is allowed.) cheers Klaus

Thanks for that hint. I did enjoy it very much. (For me without British background this is all quite new) for easier access: beginning at 8:45

Bill, (Well- and I´ve seen that there is something on Wikipedia as well sounding very similar) I´m not an expert in this topic, however, some reasonable assumptions based on habits on Bavarian railways - which might be better than nothing: 1-2 see rekoboy (although with the vast variety of different manufacturers, countries and railway companies for glazing everything is possible: see 6. ) 3. Was there a mandatory number that had to be manned ?: The companies ordered braked wagons in a ratio between of about 1:2 or 1:5 (braked/unbraked) in their rolling stock and used them according to topographic needs spread over the length of the train which were shorter these days. If there happened to be more braked wagons than needed, why should the surplus be manned with cost? I´ve read (but do not know the source right now) that for very steep sections (like the Schiefe Ebene - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiefe_Ebene ) there were additional brakesmen which only did service there, left the train at next post and returned to repeat the procedure. These trains would need some more braked vans than average. edit: there was a directive "later on in 1892", see §13: https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Bekanntmachung,_betreffend_die_Betriebsordnung_für_die_Haupteisenbahnen_Deutschlands#§._33._Bildung_der_Züge. 4. Did the brakemen on a train have to be from the same Landerbahn as the engine crew?: The wagons were inter-operatable, but I´d assume the staff wouldn´t as the rolling stock in many cases was wide spread. Not the locos and staff. AFAIK typically staff and loco changed at borders. 6. Would a branch-line train always have a wagon with brakeman’s cabin from the home company, or could the brakeman occupy any convenient cabin? I´d say yes, any "convenient" cabin. There were wagons even without any cabin. It was a dangerous job and many were injured and some even died e.g. with frost in winter and summers was not better I´d suppose. Life was not worth much these days. Brachlines were different in different countries(=Ländern). Some were operated by the larger companies, some only by own staff depending on the rather individual legal and economic background. 7. Did there have to be a wagon with brakeman’s cabin at the end of the train (e.g. to prevent runaway if a coupling broke mid-train). It is reasonable to always have a braked at the end for that purpose. 8. Where the brakeman’s cabin is lower than the height of it's van and so has no commanding view.. The commands were typically given by piping from the loco so view was not essential. The very early braked wagons did not have a cabin, then there were open covers (e.g. see: www.laenderbahn-forum.de/journal/die_steintransportwagen_der_BOB/die_steintransportwagen_der_BOB.html ) followed by closed and elevated cabins. These were lowered again when electrification was more widespread beginning after 1900, well: first lines. After introduction of air brakes after 1920 the cabins were broken down step by step (leaving a simple brake stand ). 9. A Gepäckwagen is for luggage in a passenger train. Typically it was behind the loco as protection and not at the end. You are thinking of a "Güterzug-Begleitwagen" (Pwg) which was for marchalling personnel, guard/train manager and- yes- to warm up the brakesmen at stops- not when the train was running. And yes- these were braked as well. The early trains did not have Pwg, this came up after about 1880 and was more widespread after about 1900. Hope this does help. If I happen to come across further information I might add. Please correct me if some details are wrong Klaus

You do not tell much about the experience you already have. Doing a chassis from scratch you might have to overcome that "horror vacui" building up something from nothing and so for me it was a good idea to approach this step by step. Be prepared that you will redo some steps more than once until it works or you are satisfied with appearance. With soldering this is not much a problem. The publications above are fine, the 2mm conversion chassis´ as well. As said: Take something simple but large enough preferably with gearbox and frame assembly jig to "get the feeling". As quartering is more difficult with more axles the M7 would be an idea (but you need to think about how to mount the motor and worm onto the chassis) If you like something for your learning curve after that perhaps try a Worsleyworks "scrach aid kit". There are no instructions and the chassis parts are very basic but with holes etched for the correct wheel base. For details, motor and gears you need to find your way. My choice was simply plonking and glueing on a gear and a motor. If you are not posh and just want to find out if doing your own chassis might work for you: take the Worsleyworks´Class 04 diesel etch and 3 pairs of wheels (3-040 and tram etch if you do not want to bother with connecting rods and quartering ) or the Class 02 diesel and 2 pairs of 3-003 wheels for practicing a little in quartering. However, these models are quite small, the motor is only 6mm diameter. The class 04 chassis 3-680 from the 2mm SA shop is another option here and is providing jig and gearbox...and even cosmetic spoked wheel covers. Have much fun! best wishes from Klaus

Chris, thank you for this valuable information, now I feel better. I guess I´ve got the instructions for the BR class 08 together with the parts some 2 years ago. And maybe I´ve simply read it too lazily... ... I like these gizmos on the VR F class... Including the bent front grill... regards Klaus

Bruce, what a pity that I do not have broad gauge and knuckle couplers. The VR F class looks great! "Wrong gears" is an issue: I thought the BR class 08 and 11 chassis are designed for 14 and 18 teeth 64DP gears and so the mod 0.4 gears should be an acceptable substitute. However, no way at my chassis. Only the 16 teeth instead of the 18 did allow the wheels spinning smoothly. I wanted to drive all axles with wide and heavy 14 teeth gears which I have plenty of. So now I can do the cranks and coupling rods. cheers Klaus

When recently Bruce (VRBroadgauge) said that the 2mm SA kit of the BR class 11/08 was a nice thing to do I decided to have a go as well. For me it was not as straight forward as I had been hoping. The fret partly was a bit weakly etched and so I had to open the door gaps and the handles were far too thick. And I was a bit audacious deciding to do it with the soldered cosmetic outer chassis but wanted to get practice in that technique. So I got what I wanted: a learning curve. There now is a short between one side and the middle of the PCB footplate which was not there before soldering the hook onto the buffer beam. Let´s see if this will have an impact on function. I hope not. The front steps are having a gap towards the buffer beam because I wanted to avoid something like that. Now I know again why I like superglue: when mounting the door sides to the plastic bonnet it did ooze out of all gaps between the hinges. Let´s see if I´ve cleaned it up thoroughly enough when I´ve applied some base coat varnish. I want to give it a black early livery, perhaps LMS. This would be an idea as well: DSB ML 6 https://www.jernbanen.dk/forum2/index.php?id=60108 I´ve seen several photos on the internet but suppose that the choice of photos is mixing class 11 and 08 and the LMS 7120 possibly is not in original state. Personally I am not so peculiar about this but on the other hand: I still could come closer to a specific prototype, so why not? On the photo the coupling rods and cranks are not yet mounted because I am waiting for some newly ordered gears which I must have used otherwise.. And some other parts are lacking yet as well. Some hints how to proceed are welcome. (Otherwise I will show a freelance loco here in my surroundings 😉 ) yours Klaus

Hello Adam, if this still is of some value for you to compare: here a photo. Please disregard the chassis. (I made it "just for fun") cheers Klaus

Richard, I agree with Bob. You may as well file flat a side on the flange of the 3-126 long crankpins to facilitate soldering/glueing. (Preventing the crankpin turning loose is not as important on the Austerity but for return cranks on locos with Walschaerts gear) You are aware that the etch 3-640 is including a jig for the assembly of the chassis? Not the kind of the 3-270 but useful. Take 3 of the axles (if you don´t already have): The loco has 3 axles and the etched jig has holes for 3 as well. ;-) Having one surplus is not wrong. The jigs are fine and a great help but not mandatory . With some practice you can cope without - e.g. if you are having a small wallet or you like fiddling until everything is right. have much fun with it! cheers Klaus

Do you want a horsebox? see: RMweb 2mm Finescale Down Under Work Bench - Page 3 When recently we´ve been asked by Sithlord75 and VRBroadgauge if we´d like to have one of their horseboxes I said „yes“. I´ve expected to be number #17 or so on the list of applicants being told it would take some months and having to pay xyz plus p&p... Surprise!: After a fortnight there was a pouch in my postbox with a fret of a neatly etched NE horsebox! This was my inspiration to instantly begin (of course before asking for and reading any instructions. Who does? ). All went together very neatly and it was quite straight forward. A really nice model and worth running on any layout. Well- I ended up with thoroughly sweating on some scrap parts I had to remove afterwards and added a bufferbeam which was not prototypically. A look at the picture of the GNR horsebox before would have been better. I was afraid of wiggling the half etched parts when filing off the pips. The photo shows I better would have filed these off more thoroughly. The etch is providing some brake levers, handles and steps I have not yet mounted. The edges need some rework to cover the slots which were very useful for easing the bending. So I´d say: we are having a new star of etch design! Bruce, Thanks for that!

Hi Alan, if you are scrolling upwards you can look it up how beginning times are changing. There will be a reminder here and at VAG. The 2 different times have been arranged since last year specificly to allow members from the Americas to join in at least once a month after someone from California wanted to participate Now our brave friends from Downunder get up very early in the morning each month... Be prepared to put your screen and camera onto your workbench and do some modellng while chatting- or in front of your armchair if you prefer. I am participating regularly since about 2 years and felt welcome from the beginning! Here in my surroundings is no 2mm Area Group and I´d say the Zoom AG is more than a substitute for that. It is fun and encouragement. I´d assume that you soon might be able to see Chris´presentation somewhere on the 2mm site or on Youtube... see you! Klaus

Hello Alan, you are very welcome to join and if 9:30 GMT does not fit: what about 19:30? Time is changing exactly to allow members all over the world to take part. AFAIK usually the meetings are not recorded, because the fun is doing some modelling, chatting, asking having fun online and not watching a telly show. It is quite informal , without planned schedule and nobody needs to be shy to say something and recording might take away a part of that idea. This time it might be a bit different with Chris´presentation. see you soon! cheers Klaus

Worsley Works´ etches for steam loco chassis are coming with plenty of spares for the Walschaerts gear. So I felt tempted to have a try with moving valve piston and moving radius rod in the expansion link. With a bit of success on the first and a drawback on the latter. I´ve made a cruel close up for yesterday´s ZAG meeting and think it is a good idea to show it here as well. The etch is chassis only and with the homebrew body I ended up a bit too high. I´ve learned that this could easily happen with these "scratch aid kits". Well, the cab already is dismantled to make a more proper one... cheers Klaus

Hi Martin, for my 2 pennies on the gearbox issue I did not want to interfere with David´s present question on "Any question answered". I´ve learned with 2mmFS and answers here that there are so many ways to do a bogie, gearbox, point... Planning is fine and designing with CAD would have the potential for a separate hobby as well but if you possibly are doing a project in lot size=1 you some day need to cut metal/wood/whatever anyway. So why not today? Even a failure is experience. So I´d like to encourage you to do more "butchering" on the real thing - especially with Worsley Works kits. That is the way gaining the experience to do the CR class 60. For illustration 2 more photos of "my butcherings" on Worsley Works chassis. My goal was to learn Walschaerts gear and so I did not fuzz around much with the gearing. The pacifics had much space for holes beneath the cab but on the chassis of BR standard class5 there is much less. However, the idea with simply soldering on 2 pieces of brass with a hole on both sides of the frame for the reduction gear and skew cut gear was no success. I´ve removed it now because I did not get the right meshing with just clamping together and soldering. On the other side I do not have another simple idea and might have another try using callipers. If tinkering that way does not work, try the machined brass gearbox (it is really fine!). If you are not satisfied and you have to scrap the kit chassis: do your own chassis or adapt one from shop3. If that does not look nice: Allen will be happy to sell you another etch. With other words: do as you like. This is just some words and pictures to feed your own ideas. Happy modelling! Klaus

Martin, that´s what he machined brass gearbox actually does: directly driving the axle with the worm via a 1:30 skew cut gear. Well, the instructions say to use these parts but as both worm and gear were not avialable at shop3 at that time I just used a brass worm and a gear without skew and it does work as well. That´s why the photo is looking a bit different but I hope it may help you despite of that. I simply have glued the brass to the PCB spacer as the gearbox is sitting loose between the frames. It does not look nice but it does the job. You could use the brass gearbox, perhaps with chopping out a bit of the PCB to give it the space it needs. However, when I bought one of the first ones available I had to ream the hole for the muff to 1/8" plus as the hole is smaller. You already told you do not have a broach or reamer of that size and I am not sure if filing or drilling is the method which will keep the dimensions right for meshing centers. So possibly you are better off to try it without the brass gearbox and e.g. solder on a cradle for the motor to one side. I did attach another photo of a Worsley Works class 2 with plonked in gear drive, however, there are more skilled modellers with more knowledge around to show you how to do this....(Sorry for the very basic wording but it is not my native language. Do not use the silicon tubes for a tender drive . It will very well connect a motor shaft with a worm shaft) cheers Klaus

Martin, thank you for showing your projects! I like it much! And I bet at FCAG you are finding experts for any modelling problem. The 2mm Area Groups are the best support for small scale modelling I know and if there is none nearby the Zoom Area Group is more than a substitute. Having had a second look on the bogies of my couple of Worsley Works´ etches and models it seems to me that they are designed for all and nothing. So whatever you do: you can and have to make it a fit to your needs. That´s what I like the Worsley Works kits for (and for their moderate price as well). You even may use RTR bogie wheels if you want. Widening the little holes in the etch to triple the size with a tapered broach for the phosphor bronze bushes was no fun for me as well and I did yield some distortion, too. You already have made the experience what happens if you are using a drill. I´ve made a little test sample with 12BA washers as an alternative to the larger PB bushes to reduce the size of the hole I needed to ream out. I´ve soldered the washers onto the bogie etch and then have widened the hole to a bit more than 1.5mm. It did work, however, there is no great advantage. However, the washers could slide aside when becoming hot again and unsoldered as there is no recess to hold it and the sharp edge of NS might remain unless you break the burr thoroughly. I´ve been told the PB frame bushes (or something alike) are needed because the MK4 wheels in the long run would wear out with sharp and hard NS plate. As the bogies are not the most complicated parts and they should have a bit more weight than an etch plate would yield it is a good idea to make your own from a thicker piece of brass scrap (or PB sheet if you have). ( I suppose you all like photos: The top bogie is made with PB bushes, the bottom one with 12BA washers and the large brass thing in the middle is the drive bush, the smaller one a PB frame bush ) cheers Klaus

Just to confirm Jim´s first answer and oppose the same moment: You can´t really run the wheels on N gauge pointwork. But you can pretty well run 2mm wheels on something like N gauge rail as long as you are constructing your pointwork to the 2mm standards or your adaption to this standard to your needs just like the FREMO people on the continent do with FS160. But why should you do this extra effort if you did not want to mix N gauge/TT and 2/3mm or use RTR railwork? Mixing would cause the major problems as you would need pointwork being able to cope with e.g. 2mmFS and N gauge. Trailing switches or moveable crossings noses or wing rails are possible solutions. All causing more work at construction, maintenance and care and trouble at operation. The photo is showing my approach and it is not yet really tested. Let´s see how it fails... (No check rails because not needed and would only cause a problem) happy modelling! Klaus

Hi, will this help? The 2 strips with the tabs on both sides have to be folded in an U-shape at the half etched lines. There are possibly 2 kinds of crosshead layers on the etch (for the 7F there were 2), a pair with slot and one without slots. The slots are for the tabs on both sides of the U. They may need some widening and the tabs some filing to be a perfect fit. On the first I´ve soldered together I put too much pressure and it collapsed. It was some effort to rework it but it went well in the end. I like this crosshead design... cheers Klaus crosshead parts from Nigel Hunt SDJR 7F etch.pdf

Michael, I am very easily a victim of funny ideas, however, I think I should not follow you in this respect: Physics do not necessarily scale in a linear way and something that does work in 1:1 may fail in 1:152, e.g. due to different impact of friction, inertia etc.. Would you recommend to design a model with a representation of compensated sprung hornblocks? My photo of a paused project making use of a 2mm SA chassis (3-640) is showing what I am thinking about. Would this have a chance to work? I fear making compensation functional would demand much more space than available and look coarse. Even with an outside frame designed for hornblocks. And I´d need more acurracy and better skills... I´d appreciate some hints for a possible future etch design of this prototype. I had problems with accuracy doing it with saw and file and might have a try with a more sophisticated approach, at least as an option parallel to a simpler design. Richard, thank you for showing your interesting experiment ! cheers Klaus

Hello Ian, I guess this was spurneun: www.shop.spurneun.de/shop/category/50-n40 multi-layer kit with wood and castings or Haubrich www.juergenhaubrich.de/download/2022preisliste1000.pdf possibly no longer available more modest prices (caution: you have to choose what you want: part, kit or RTR. And the first price is for the cheapest item): Mago-finescale https://www.mago-finescale.de/fine-scale-shop/gleis-system (this is the fs160-project, milled PCB, rails AFAIK from micro-engineering; see photo of a narrow gauge point under construction) Marsiius https://www.marsilius-trains.de/n-scale.htm N-tram https://spur-n-teile.de/?view_mode=tiled&manufacturers_id=52&listing_sort=shipping_asc&manufacturers_id=52&filter_id=619&listing_count=50 more for diarama than for real track cheers Klaus

Thanks Nigel! So plenty of options. Let´s see what works best! The Minitrix axles are 1.5 mm like many -but not all- RTR axles (and of course I don´t have a ID 1mm tube at home to modify the 2mm axles) Have a nice weekend! Klaus