Show us your Pugbashes, Nellieboshes, Desmondifications, Jintysteins

[009 micro modeller]

15 minutes ago, tebee said:

 

They are a nominal 1:24 scale but 1.5in gauge roughly half way between O and G scale. Oddly enough the same as Lego(near enough) 

I did wonder if anything else used that gauge (not sure for Lego if it’s intended to be measured in metric, 37.5 or 38mm, or in inches). However:

 

On 21/04/2024 at 10:37, Ben B said:

re-gauging from Lionel's stupid wide gauge down to 45mm

Which sounds as if it’s starting off as something wider than 45mm.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, 009 micro modeller said:

I did wonder if anything else used that gauge (not sure for Lego if it’s intended to be measured in metric, 37.5 or 38mm, or in inches). However:

 

Curiously, given its Danish origin, Lego is in fact resolutely Imperial: the basic unit of brick width is 5/16" and of height, 3/8" (or 1/8", with three flats or plates stacking to equal the height of a brick). Stud diameter is 3/16" and height 1/16". 

[tebee]

9 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

I did wonder if anything else used that gauge (not sure for Lego if it’s intended to be measured in metric, 37.5 or 38mm, or in inches). However:

 

Which sounds as if it’s starting off as something wider than 45mm.

Ah you could be right, think i got it wrong.Its 1/4 inch wider than G gauge not narrower, so 2 inches - was that gauge 2 ?

[Ben B]

Sorry for the confusion caused- I gather it's something close to gauge 2, yes. A fellow modeller in the US says he heard from a Lionel rep it was a commercial descision to keep the Ready to Play range exclusive and incompatible with other manufacturers. 

 

Some of the trains can be re-gauged, it varies from the relatively easy (the diesel), to the tricky (Hogwarts), to the nightmarish (Polar Express). Lionel must have cottoned on, as more recent trains are glued together, not screwed, so no chance of re-gauging without massive effort.

 

Where it gets confusing, is Lionel used to make a lot of this to actual 45mm gauge. I do wonder if Hornby thought they were getting the G trains, rather than isolated, incompatible sets. It's a shame, the point of the project was to explore Hornby using this toy range as a sneaky back-door to the garden railway market, especially as firms like Playmobil have given up on it.

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Ben B said:

Sorry for the confusion caused- I gather it's something close to gauge 2, yes. A fellow modeller in the US says he heard from a Lionel rep it was a commercial descision to keep the Ready to Play range exclusive and incompatible with other manufacturers. 

 

Some of the trains can be re-gauged, it varies from the relatively easy (the diesel), to the tricky (Hogwarts), to the nightmarish (Polar Express). Lionel must have cottoned on, as more recent trains are glued together, not screwed, so no chance of re-gauging without massive effort.

 

Where it gets confusing, is Lionel used to make a lot of this to actual 45mm gauge. I do wonder if Hornby thought they were getting the G trains, rather than isolated, incompatible sets. It's a shame, the point of the project was to explore Hornby using this toy range as a sneaky back-door to the garden railway market, especially as firms like Playmobil have given up on it.

The idea of keeping it incompatible on purpose seems slightly odd in some ways. Is it ‘Standard Gauge’, as I linked to earlier? I think actually originated by Lionel.

[Halvarras]

On April 11th I mentioned that I'd landed an old Tri-ang clockwork NBL 'D2907' shunter body and it was "in the queue". It was supposed to be a 'next winter' project. Yeah right, that resolve crumbled within a week.....it did a bit of leap-froggin'!

Here's the body with a next-to-scrap chassis-in-bits obtained at the same time to see how it might work. 

Other than for sizing purposes the chassis was a lost cause - motor was described as a runner, and so it was.....once I'd taken it apart to remove a coupling rod pin trapped inside the can. Then it barely ran and was clearly in the final throes of life. A couple of wheels were a bit wobbly and the quartering all over the place - I fixed the latter at least. The Johnson X908 motor on its side is too wide to fit within the shunter's narrow bonnet, but it would if it could be turned 90 degrees......

A body with a lot of work expended on it would be deserving of better running gear, so an Ebay trawl for something fitted with a younger X908 motor turned up this mint and apparently unused survivor from very early 1977, at what I considered a reasonable price by Ebay standards these days:

To put this in some kind of perspective, the day before this model was packed I'd seen D1022 'Western Sentinel' passing Wootton Bassett Junction on what turned out to be its last-ever working out of Paddington!

So, fantastic find then......er, yes and no. Ignoring the square axles, which I could live with for 'low mileage' use, it waddles like a duck and when the motor heats up it shorts out. Oh well, having survived for 47 years this typically late '70s Hornby product will continue to live on as I've taken a shine to it for some reason. Or maybe it's pity.......

 

I've come to the conclusion that the Johnson X908 motor must just deteriorate with age so seeking another one is probably pointless. Plan B - obtain a new Chinese-made 0-4-0 chassis from Lendons of Cardiff for a tenner. This runs extremely well, but the can motor is wider of girth, if a bit shorter than the X908, and turning this one 90 degrees it's a very tight fit, even if the soldered motor connections are rearranged, so some interior gouging may be required - I'm wary of widening the bonnet as this would adversely impact my intentions for the cab windows. But I've decided to press on anyway with fingers crossed that this combination of silk-purse-from-sow's-ear and square-peg-into-round-hole can be made to work.

First 2-3 hours of butchery in my quest to make this thing look more 'NBL':

You'll notice that it's now shorter at both ends, which immediately changes its overall appearance. And that I've made provision for a jackshaft drive..... Yes, I'd had this idea to shorten the steam loco connecting rods, turn these around and solder them to the coupling rods to face backwards to non-existent jackshaft drives behind the cab steps. This turned out to be hopelessly optimistic because, even if I hadn't backed the steps on all four corners with 60thou plasticard, clearances would still have been too tight for comfort. At this point I decided that the model would represent a one-off prototype (that NBL somehow found the money to build, possibly in a last-ditch attempt to win export orders - that sound you can hear is a barrel bottom being scraped!) that used a similar engine/transmission arrangement to that employed by YEC on their Class 02 diesel-hydraulic. Perfect (excuse). So most of the curved bits were cut away. But why did I glue the 60thou backing on in the first place.....?

Edited April 27 by Halvarras
Got the 'thou' wrong

[Halvarras]

Had I been able to get the fake jackshaft idea to work those very shallow footsteps all round would have grated - I mean, imagine a 4mm crew member trying to climb them. So I thickened them up with 60thou then drilled and filed out all 12 openings - that kept me occupied for a couple of hours....actually I thought it would have taken far longer, but I got into the swing of it, so to speak! The steps were then backed with 10thou.

I felt that before going any further I had to check whether the Hornby chassis could be shortened to fit between the bufferbeams, and this is where the scrap chassis came into play. The thick  flexible plastic used by Hornby in years past is quite tough and difficult to saw - however it yields to the brutal use of a Stanley knife fitted with a new blade! Try that on a 'Nellie' chassis! 

I was pleased to find that, when shortened to just fit within the bufferbeams, the inside ledges at each end sit on top of the chassis frames and it looks just about right:

Overall height compared to other stock is OK; the buffers are a little too high (well it IS Tri-ang!), however the weedy tapered buffer stocks - which I believe were never fitted with buffers in clockwork form - need replacing so mounting the new buffers slightly lower down would be the easiest way to resolve this. 

 

So the butchery to the scrap chassis shows what I need to do to the new one - but more carefully! Sawing and filing may work better on this as the Chinese chassis appears to be made from a harder, more rigid kind of plastic, but as far as I can tell they are both products from the same tooling. I think this needs to be tackled next since, if I really can't get the chassis and especially the 90-degree-turned motor to fit, further work on the body would be futile and I have lots of other things to be getting on with instead! However last night I couldn't resist fitting the front radiator grille from a Lima Class 08/09 - it's not glued in yet and I may bring it out flush with the front. I have some spare etched brass grilles - mostly twin - left over from a couple of A1 Models Class 22 conversion kits (appropriately NBL then!) but at the moment I'm undecided about the bonnet side detail. Also coupling fitment and body-to-chassis securing need some thought......

I have an idea about its final appearance, but as it involves 'wasp stripes' it will depend on the length of the journey between now and then!

 

[Hacksworth_Sidings]

Thinking, thinking…

 

I recently got one of those “ Trains, a complete history” books, the ones with paper models you can build, included as one of the 50 models is a BR class 03, which I’ve just finished assembling…

 

 

Scales up rather close to OO… Of course, it’d look hideous on a layout, plus it’d be extremely flimsy without any internal structural modifications, so at that point you’re better off buying the Airfix/Dapol kit unless you have plenty of coffee stirrers knocking about, but for £9 for the book, and thus less than 20p per model… Has anyone got a spare Nellie chassis? :)

[Halvarras]

38 minutes ago, Hacksworth_Sidings said:

Thinking, thinking…

 

I recently got one of those “ Trains, a complete history” books, the ones with paper models you can build, included as one of the 50 models is a BR class 03, which I’ve just finished assembling…

 

 

Scales up rather close to OO… Of course, it’d look hideous on a layout, plus it’d be extremely flimsy without any internal structural modifications, so at that point you’re better off buying the Airfix/Dapol kit unless you have plenty of coffee stirrers knocking about, but for £9 for the book, and thus less than 20p per model… Has anyone got a spare Nellie chassis? :)

 

Looking at the running number and those shiny wheel rims I'm thinking they used the Mainline model as a reference.

 

A spare Nellie chassis to do what with exactly......?! 🤔