Brighton Belle in N !

[Revolution Ben]

Didn't they always run in Europe?

 

Ha - yes!  On the Continent then!

 

Incidentally, I had a chance to look at the mouldings for this at the BRM Peterborough Model Railway show this weekend and I was impressed.  The tooling is very neat and the etched roof boards are a nice touch.  The bogies are very finely detailed and I was told that the wheelsets would be specified to the finer standards used by Farish and Dapol, rather than the coarser standards usually favoured in Europe on the Continent.

 

The only slight negative is that the conducting couplers are unique to this unit and mean that the intermediate coaches will need some work to convert them to use with other haulage, perhaps for those of us wishing to recreate more recent VSOE workings.  However, in the brave new world of 3D printing it is quite feasible that replacement slot-in couplers to (albeit forfeiting the electrical contacts) may be feasible. 

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

[Etched Pixels]

Not sure 3D printing is needed here, araldite and some NEM pockets should do fine >-)

[Revolution Ben]

Hi EP,

 

I am not sure.  I had a good look at the mechanisms and I felt the moulding "roots" were pretty fine and given that the force through any join would probably be at 90 degrees I wasn't convinced that even with epoxy adhesive there was enough surface area for a strong enough bond.  Happy to be proved wrong though.

 

On the 3D front, it occurs to me that while the current technology is a little bit hit-and-miss for smooth components (finished bodyshells etc) designing working components that don't need to look pretty to very fine tolerances is something that 3D printing should be ideal for....

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

[njee20]

I'd rather see other manufacturers adopting the conducting coupling, save the need for 3 decoders on a 350!