BigAndy

Dribbly?

 

Technical term Andy?

 

Btw what ploughs do you use?

Dribbly.....Wibbly..........same meaning Damian!

Back in the days of yore, when Howes were still selling plenty of Heljan spares, I bought a load of sprues and still have a few left. I found that the Heljan ploughs were the easiest to fit and looked the part for the price, but as more and more locos are being produced for GQS, I'm getting near to exhausting me stash. Haven't yet sourced a replacement but Pete Harvey does an etched brass fret with what looks like very nice ploughs - have to fold up and solder though.....ho hum......

cheers

Andy

Has anyone attempted renumbering any of their coaches? How easy is it? Do the numbers come off without much  effort?

Respray and detail of mine on post #1250.

I stripped the whole coach, but found that the paint fell off after the dot4/IPA bath, so can't imagine the numbers being any different - just be careful when removing them bearing in mind how easy it was to remove the paint......

cheers

Andy

Ploughs always seemed to be in short supply. One chap I worked alongside spent a lot of time at the start of the winterisation period (October-) driving between Motherwell, Eastfield and Inverness with van loads of the ploughs for the depots to fit - usually it was the wing ploughs that were taken off.  The maintenance controllers had a job for a while recording what loco's had them missing and from what position to get them replaced.  As Regularity says - they were considered lethal by the Driver's Assistant's and Secondmen trying to couple up / uncouple the loco's.

But Sulzer's look so dribbly with them fitted!!

cheers

Andy

I fail to understand why Heljan are not releasing new versions based on the tooling they have spent much on developing for the Class 86. Sure it is not perfect but I think overall it is not half bad. I also fail to understand why they do not release discounted Class 47 releases based on the now paid for tooling.

Agreed. Not that I know one thing about market economics or such like, but on the face of it, if they were to release the 86 again and indeed more plausibly the 47 at knock down prices, then surely they would sell. Heljan were always very broad with their range of liveries for the 47, so releasing a limited range again would be something I would definitely be interested in - same as re-introducing their spare parts which are like hen's teeth.

cheers

Andy

Just to add my twopenneth...........I dislike using trackpins, always have, so as I have recently been tracklaying on Glasgow Queen Street, I thought I'd share.

Buy a load of cheap pound shop superglue. When you are tracklaying and need to hold the thing in a particular place, use temporary board pins - y'know, a bit like drawing pins but have multi-coloured plastic tops. Once you're happy with the alignment, tack in place with the superglue - I tend to squeeze in and around the edges of the sleepers. I also use a Cyanoacrylate accelerator, dispensed out of a syringe - makes the glue go off instantly and you can then remove the pins.

You can lay yards and yards of track in record time like this, if so desired. Then of course, once ballasting has been completed using the PVA method, the trackwork is going nowhere fast. Simples.

Easy to do, cheap and cheerful but stops any unsightly track pins or holes in sleepers etc.

cheers

Andy

Shame about the bucket and the spoon Kev, but would the RA of both locos been suitable for that line? Or was it, I like them so I'm running them?!

cheers

Andy

I don't know if this is news, but Bachmann is showing the DBSO Driving Brake Second Open in BR blue and grey on the news bit of their website (it's actually an item on their attending the London Festival of Railway Modelling this coming weekend) -

http://news.Bachmann.co.uk/2018/03/Bachmann-on-the-road-alexandra-palace/

 

John Storey

I see that they've still got the small deflector plough fitted on the blue/grey sample though! tut tut..........

I've got a couple of the ScotRail versions on pre-order and getting like a kid on the run up to Christmas now!

cheers

Andy

I’m just looking forward to the Stobart branded ones when they appear. Hopefully they will be straight forward to debrand ready for renumbering and DRS branding adding to recreate the Floodex service between Workington and Maryport.

 

Thanks

Mark

If life has taught me only one thing Mark, nothing is never straightforward!!

cheers

Andy

No Sean, your pretty well spot on with your dimensions - having got access to the profile drawings and spurred on by your measurements, I've finally tried to get my head round where OR went wrong and listed them in comparison with the prototype dimension and the other Mk3 models.  

 

Mk3a dims.PNG

 

just as thought the width over the bottom of the modules is a good 2.7mm too wide, giving that visible lack of slope in - It's compounded though by the super-skinny bogies!

 

​As many people have said already, neither Jouef or Hornby got the Mk3 / Mk3a's that wrong the first time round (with apologies to Hornby "shorty" owners).

 

 

Thanks for putting that up Bob. Makes me a bit relieved that my own measurements weren't that far off the mark.

6" to wide doesn't sound a lot, but when you combine that with the skinny bogies like you say, it makes the whole coach look terribly top heavy. At least I now know exactly how much to cut out from the centre of the module - 2.7mm.

cheers

Andy

I'm in the planning stages for building some 101's for Glasgow Queen St. My own thoughts on this are to use the Lima/Hornby bodies ( plenty of which I've picked on Ebay ) and for motorising them, I've settled for using the new Replica chassis :

http://www.replicarailways.co.uk/die-cast-chassis/chassis-variants

( usual disclaimers apply )

They supply both the 57' and 64' chassis varaints, from which you can build pretty much any DMU you fancy. There are a few things not absolutely spot on with the Lima bodies, mainly the cab front windows, but these issues can be sorted out reasonably easily and is far easier to fix than the issues surrounding the Bachmann 101.

cheers

Andy

Is this an advertising feature?

???????

Excellent first day today - I've talked to that many people, I hardly got any modelling done! Hey Ho, that's what demo's are for though, talking to the public and swapping ideas. Dave on the other hand has managed to airbrush the bottom green band on his Hymek - I think he's going for broke tomorrow and spraying on the dark green upper............and before anyone mentions that Hymeks never got into GQS, this is for his own layout!

cheers

Andy

Layout packed and ready for the journey to Macclesfield this weekend looking forward.to a great weekend with my new GN15 layout

The Old Works

 

Eltel

As far as I know Tel, John is coming over from N.Wales tomorrow to see the show. Bringing the Mother-in-Law with him, but she, my wife and daughter will be doing 'Ladies wot lunch' whilst he comes to the exhibition!

cheers

Andy

Looking good there Jeremy. Are you planning on putting actual wires in eventually or leaving just the posts and gantry's? I'm undecided in 2mm whether it looks better with or without!

Cetainly, whenever I see photos taken from a distance of the real thing, which would be the equivalent of viewing a layout in 2mm, you can barely see any wires, if at all.........

*Tin can.........can opener............worms everywhere!*

cheers

Andy

It's Ok Ray, you won't need the snow chains! It's all well thawed and gone now, with the forecast for the weekend although being a bit damp with some rain forecast, temperatures are set to be around 10 - 11 degrees - positively tropical!

Looking forward to seeing 59th and Rust, great bit of modelling and a wonderful atrmosphere as per your photo above.

cheers

Andy

Quick bump.

Macclesfield show is this weekend - two days away! I'm still putting transfers onto the latest loco for the Glasgow Queen St (EM) fleet.....then it's got to have a final coat of varnish........will it be finished on time? If you want to see the latest loco for the layout makes it onto the stand, plus the Oxford Rail MK3a that I've cut about and finished in ScotRail blue stripe, get down to the show this weekend - it's always a good do, so stop by and say hello to myself or Dave on the plastic abuse roadshow.

Oh, and the restaurant is well worth stopping off at for some tasty refreshments.

Cheers

Andy

A few of us were planning on modelling Crianlarich to scale, in Em, so we went up there in 2010, took a shedload of photos and measured the whole area up. It was only when we looked at an OS map and Google Earth, that we realised it was going to be something in the region of 36 feet in length......and this was planned on being an exhibition layout! That did incorporate half of the viaduct across the town though.

We also figured that in order to reduce the amount of operators, we needed to make it a roundy roundy. That however meant a flying junction and split level fiddle yards for the Oban lines and Fort Bill lines, so that they could join up again at the Glasgow end of the yard.....the layout would have needed to be at least 12 feet in width to facilitate that.

That's when we shelved it and Glasgow Queen St ( Em) was born.

Regardng your backscene connundrum, we took a load of panoramic digital shots of the surrounding country at Crianlarich, which involved a lot of hiking to find the best vantage points and where one of our number ( who shall remain nameless, stumbled into a bog - right up to his Trossachs....)

The intention was to create a photo realistic backscene ala Black Country Blues, however we never got as far as costing it out, so that may be prohibitive. I certainly agree though that backscenes can either make or break a layout - it might be something to look into. Andy Y may be able to help further as I think he had some dealings with the backscene on BCB's.

cheers

Andy

Could be you were spot on Dave - I found the picture (not mine to publish) of one of the two Mk3a TSO's in the works for Chris Green's livery "experiments" and dated 2 September 1984 - it's shown during ETH & flash testing so it couldn't have been far off release. After he viewed them with the Scottish Region Board members at Queen Street the vehicles were outshopped in ScotRail livery from then on.

I've seen that Photo Bob, from what I remember the blue stripe was a lot darker on that particular MK3 - almost a BR Rail Blue and then as you say, they settled for the lighter blue ( Provincial Light Blue ) in the end.

cheers

Andy

Got me interested what dubscottie posted, as Butler Henderson says above, they were fitted as a direct recommendation following Polmont. So I've had a look around to see if any were fitted whilst the DBSO's were in blue/grey, and I haven't found any.

If anyone can find a photo of one in Blue/grey, with plough fitted, post it up as a lot of the ScotRail stock was being actively repainted in 1985 into blue stripe - even if it was a short period, it would be interesting to see.

cheers

Andy

As can be seen from the demos section, I'm going to be there with Dave from the 'Glasgow Queen Street (Em)' team, and our plastic abuse roadshow.

Plenty of our stock on display that will be running (hopefully!) on GQS next year and also of important note, is that Ken Ball - well known architectural modeller is retiring from the exhibtion circuit after 60 years! He's decided at the outrageously young age of 87 that he's had enough of setting up/knocking down, BUT he is still taking commisions ( I should think so as well ).

This is a great opportunity to come and have a chat with Ken, see some of his wonderful scratch built buildings and wish him well for the future at the place where it all started for him all those decades ago.

cheers

Andy

Event Name: Macclesfield Model Railway Exhibition

Address: SK10 2EE

Day 1: 10/3/2018
Opening times Day 1: 10:00 - 17:00
Day 2: 11/3/2018
Opening times Day 2: 10:00 - 16:30
Prices: Adult £6.00, accompanied children FREE (under 16).


:
Website: https://www.macclesfieldmrg.org.uk

Disability access: Yes
Car parking: Yes

Organising body: Macclesfield Model Railway Group
Organiser: S. Horrocks

A friendly exhibition with model railways in scales from Z to G. Traders supplying a wide range of model railway products. KEN BALL will be making his final exhibition appearance with a display of buildings of old Macclesfield. Excellent refreshments - everything from a coffee to a Sunday roast! NEW THIS YEAR - VINTAGE BUS SERVICE (from Macclesfield Station via the town centre to the venue) - see web site for timetable.
Layouts
Z

8]Republic Steel

N

8]Marx Engels Platz

8]Todmorden Midland

OO9

8]Negarth

8]Pen-y-Graig

OO

8]Bodmin

8]Carminster

8]Eastgate

8]Happy Valley

8]Newhaven Harbour

8]MMRG Raffle Layout

8]Westmoor Junction

HO

8]59^th and Rust

8]Euro Fracht Zentrum

O

8]Jennings Sidings

GN15

8]The Old Works

1:32 – 1:700

8]Habbaniya

Demos / Displays

Mark Henshaw - 148^th N Gauge Stock Building

Andy Clayton - EM Gauge Modelling

Ken Ball – Old Buildings of Macclesfield

Robert Seaton – Meccano Locos

Traders

ABC Model Railways

Axminster Tools

Bespoke Sign & Print

Book Law Publications

Country Park Models

Country Scenes & Trees

Direct Train Spares

EBMA Hobby & Craft

High Lane Model Railways

Linda Tinker Railway Books

MMRG Members’ Sales

North Western Models

Online Models

SMTF

Sweets of Yesteryear

The Junction Box

I don't know for sure but maybe the molds are not made right?????

All depends on how OR designed the model. Mostly these days, 3d scanning is employed - in which case it is a complete mystery how it came out so wrong............If it's entered into CAD from drawings and measurements, then whoever was at the business end of the tape measure kinda has some explaining to do.

cheers

Andy

In my haste to get the coach ready for Glasgow, I failed to remove the CDL emergency release handle...........doh!

I will rectify that, but thought I'd just pop this on here before Flood of this parish comes along and shoots me down in flames!!!

cheers

Andy

Thanks for the kind comments guys.

Bob Reid has messaged me about starting another thread, which he will post, devoted solely to the alterations done on the OR MK3. I've got an FO currently taken apart and awaiting to be dunked into the DOT4, so I'll make sure I take some how 2 photo's as per Craig's suggestion and then it's there for anyone who wants to have a go.

Of course, these are just my own musings and findings, if we have a devoted thread to it then if anyone comes up with an easier or better way of doing things, then it can all be put on there. Over to you Bob!

cheers

Andy

I can only echo what everyone else is saying Jeremy - superb stuff.

I too have a young family, so I know the difficulties in juggling work, family and railway modelling. I'm pretty certain one day that you will have a series of professionally taken photographs to accompany an article in a well known publication!

cheers

Andy