Wife took my joke about a trainset for Xmas too far...

[Hroth]

These were spotted at a garden centre recently, approx 45mm gauge, with smoke and sound effects Yours for only £59.99 ( batteries not included)

I like the idea that it could get into "orbit", although I don't think it would get that far if they had to bring the coal and water for the loco through the carriage*.....

 

* See the box-end illustration above the main pack!

[smiths park]

My son bought me a 1.99 toy train set from Home Bargains last year, old time wild west loco, battery obviously 12mm plastic track roundy roundy. By the new year too much sherry has addled my brain and I had bought another four and I've now got a partially built rabbit warren layout with railcars of a sort of french theme chugging around. Such fun!

[Hroth]

I agree that if 7mm is your forte the obvious way forward is to use it as the basis of an NG train. One of our club members actually buys cheap second hand OO gauge stuff, makes it into nice On16.5 models and sells them on ebay. Not suggesting that as an approach. But new bodies to go on the chassis can be very effective, though if it turns out to be a modern image diesel set that might be a bit more of a challenge.

But I agree with others. For this Christmas go with the flow.

(And Peppa Pig turns up from time to time on one of the serious 7mm modelling threads in this parish!)

Or if it suits the theme make pointed comments about keeping it safe for when the children are old enough.

By the way when they do come you need to bring them up properly. My daughter was making Slaters wagon kits very expertly at the age of 12.

Jonathan

There's a variety of inexpensive 7mm resin bodies to go on Hornby 0-4-0 mechs at Smallbrook Studio  ( http://www.smallbrookstudio.co.uk/products/4569521210/0e---7mm-Narrow-Gauge ).  But if keeping it as it is, I've one of the Hornby Santa Express sets, which I set up on a baseboard with a small Xmas tree in the middle. The fun thing was using an Arduino to control it!

Edited November 27, 2017 by Hroth

[Northroader]

May I suggest it is quite possible for you to get good use from your wife’s present? For a start, as a small circuit around the base of the tree over the Christmas period, something which is a widespread practice in America. Beyond that, “lighten up” and see what your creative talent can do with it, probably as a base for a small On16.5 circuit, with a humorous/ eccentric connotation. Have you ever visited this site?http://www.carendt.com/, which has plenty of examples and ideas for off beat modelling. Good luck with it, please don’t put it down.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Northroader

[The Johnster]

OWL was a brilliant photographer who had a long and successful career as a Manhattan studio photographer specialising in portraits.  In his retirement he took on the project of recording steam locomotives on the Norfolk and Western, the last American Railroad to build steam in it's own workshops.  His technique is very much a removal of studio technique to outside so that he had control over the lighting, hence the batteries of flashbulbs.  He had to pre-arrange his shots with the locomen so as not to blind them, which enabled him to get the best smoke and steam effects as well.

 

But he was not a nice man; a right wing hardliner and white supremacist.  His wife was not a nice woman either...

[The Johnster]

These were spotted at a garden centre recently, approx 45mm gauge, with smoke and sound effects Yours for only £59.99 ( batteries not included)

 

Wow, this thing's so fast it needs an orbit circumference!

[BG John]

My son bought me a 1.99 toy train set from Home Bargains last year, old time wild west loco, battery obviously 12mm plastic track roundy roundy. By the new year too much sherry has addled my brain and I had bought another four and I've now got a partially built rabbit warren layout with railcars of a sort of french theme chugging around. Such fun!

Photos?

[Silver Sidelines]

Hi Neil

I guess I am lucky that I didn't have to worry whether my last years Christmas present would fit in with the rest of my model stock. . . .  the wife bought me a TV wall mounting bracket! :beee:

Neil

...and did you fit it for her?

[neilkirby]

Hi Neil

...and did you fit it for her?

Yes, but it took her moaning until the end of January before gave in!

 

Neil

[Silver Sidelines]

Hi Neil

Yes, but it took her moaning until the end of January before gave in!

 

Neil

My wife says 'shame on you' - her bathroom cabinet only took four weeks.

 

Ray

[bimble]

So basically the SWMBO has given you permission to build a layout... and once the inevitable complaints about the (apparent) waste of time/space/money you can just point to the gifted "trainset" and say, 'but I thought you wanted me to do this...' 

[Coppercap]

OWL was a brilliant photographer who had a long and successful career as a Manhattan studio photographer specialising in portraits.  In his retirement he took on the project of recording steam locomotives on the Norfolk and Western, the last American Railroad to build steam in it's own workshops.  His technique is very much a removal of studio technique to outside so that he had control over the lighting, hence the batteries of flashbulbs.  He had to pre-arrange his shots with the locomen so as not to blind them, which enabled him to get the best smoke and steam effects as well.

 

But he was not a nice man; a right wing hardliner and white supremacist.  His wife was not a nice woman either...

Did you ever see that TV programme about him taking his last photograph in his traditional fashion? It followed him setting up his subject, connecting all of his last flashbulbs, and it was going to be fantastic finale. All went to plan, everything worked at the right time to get that final superb shot, all the flashbulbs fired on cue. On going to take the plate out of the camera, he suddenly realised he'd forgotten to put the plate in the camera before taking the shot!

[DCB]

A line around the Christmas tree is fine for inexperienced novices but can be hazardous for enthusiasts relationships.

 

Sadly ballast and deep pile carpets are not entirely compatible and drilling holes in the floor for droppers risks putting holes in the under floor heating pipes. 

 

Partners should always ensure experienced modellers put down a "baseboard" around the tree before letting them loose with the trainset, PVA glue and a soldering iron.

[davefromacrossthepond]

I've always loved Steinbach wooden nut crackers.  I have collected them for quite a number of years (have a few that were made in "East Germany.").  When I started dating my now wife she had seen a few of them  on the bookshelf but never really looked all that closely at them.  Our first Christmas, one of her presents to me was a nut cracker she had got for me.  Steinbach? Far from it, I believe it came from the local craft store.  She had yet to realize the difference.  Guess which of my nut crackers is my favorite by far?  That made in China wooden thing means more to me than if it had been made by old man Steinbach himself and decorated by Faberge.  The old saying is so very true . . . . the thought is what counts.  Why our spouses/significant others put up with us and our silly "hobbies" is sometimes beyond me.   

[corneliuslundie]

I am afraid i have a complaint. Ever since I clicked the link on the first post I have been getting adverts for that trainset popping up everywhere on the net!

Jonathan

[BG John]

I am afraid i have a complaint.

I'd advise either seeing a doctor, or installing Adblock Plus.

[Judge Dread]

Circular layouts come in all sizes. Unfortunately we have three cats or more accurately they have us, and anything at floor level is a legitimate target for them.

This collection was seen at an exhibition in Bremen in 2001. 

As to hobbies of the railway type, my wife thought should a thing would keep me out of pubs. Wrong, wrong, wrong! 

Edited November 29, 2017 by Judge Dread

[corneliuslundie]

After Christmas of course you can use it to deliver fruit and nuts to guests along the dining room table.

Jonathan

Though you may need to buy the appropriate wagons; I am sure the GWR had something suitable.

[Northroader]

This sort of thing? (Maharajah of Gwalior)

[Joseph_Pestell]

These were spotted at a garden centre recently, approx 45mm gauge, with smoke and sound effects Yours for only £59.99 ( batteries not included)

 

Can someone who speaks US English please explain to me what 500cm Orbit Circumference means? Two countries separated by a common geometry.

[Joseph_Pestell]

This sort of thing? (Maharajah of Gwalior)5D9AA7F4-2A73-4386-84E5-DCDEC95C6D2E.jpeg

Shouldn't the port be going the other way? Needs a passing loop somewhere.

[SRman]

This sort of thing? (Maharajah of Gwalior)5D9AA7F4-2A73-4386-84E5-DCDEC95C6D2E.jpeg

 

The Scotch Express, or The Flying Scotchman?

[Pacific231G]

Did you ever see that TV programme about him taking his last photograph in his traditional fashion? It followed him setting up his subject, connecting all of his last flashbulbs, and it was going to be fantastic finale. All went to plan, everything worked at the right time to get that final superb shot, all the flashbulbs fired on cue. On going to take the plate out of the camera, he suddenly realised he'd forgotten to put the plate in the camera before taking the shot!

Ready when you are Mr. deMille (very old film industry joke with a twitch inducing level of truth behind it)

[Sir TophamHatt]

Depends what sort of train it is.

I passed up an opportunity to purchase some trains that someone had butchered into Thomas the Tank Engine models.

They took the ERTL range apart and basically stuck it on a OO gauge train, but actually really well.

[Pacific231G]

Shouldn't the port be going the other way? Needs a passing loop somewhere.

This looks right for passing the port to the left so it goes round the room in a clockwise direction with each guest filling the glass of the person to their right.

 

Several of the Oxford Colleges had a  "port railway" running along the mantle of the fireplace in their Senior Common Rooms to allow the Fellows to pass the port bottle to the left without anyone having to get out of their seat. Railway was probably rather a grand title for what was at most a couple of brass bars with a small four wheel trolley that when given a shove would run smoothly to the other end. It would of course be rather difficult for the person at the far end of the fireplace to fill the glass of their rather distant neighbour so perhaps the Fellows didn't follow that part of the tradition.

They could, but AFAIK didn't, have designed a trolley able to hold both the bottle and a glass which would arrive empty, be filled and sent back with the returning trolley but that sounds dangerously close to W. Heath-Robinson terrritory.

 

Unfortunately I can't find a close up image of one of these things though at least one college mentions it as a feature in its conference centre offer.

I did wonder whether the design of these devices led to the establishment of Oxford University's engineering faculty

 

Update: Though it doesn't specifiy how it worked an account of "an arrangement of pulleys and a slope" quoted in a memoir suggests that at least one of these "railways" was a gravity operated funicular of some kind. That would make sense if the weight of the bottle caused the trolley to descend a slope to reach the other side of the fireplace with a counterweight (either built into the device or simply a plumb bob) to return it when the bottle was removed.

 

It would probably need to be damped to prevent the trolley from careering up and down the railway (shades of Hoffnung's barrel of bricks) but it sounds like just the sort of thing a professor of engineering might have given his students as an exercise to design and build,

"Allowing for frictional losses, calculate a parabolic slope and the vertically acting counterweight required to give a speed after initial accelaration of between 20 and  30cms/s over a distance of 250cms to a trolley weighing 2000g carrying a bottle whose mass varies between 650g (empty) and 1400grammes (full)" 

Edited December 1, 2017 by Pacific231G