Ian Smith

I'm kind of in a quandary as to where to post this particular update - here, in the "3D Printing" thread or the "On My Workbench", - but in the end it's for Modbury so here it is ... Some time ago, I shared the STL files for the Outside Framed Van and 3 GWR Cattle Wagons (W1/5, W2, and W3 diagrams) that I'd drawn up and had printed by Shapeways with Richard Brummitt. In exchange for this, Richard very kindly printed 2 of each on his home printer for me (which I regret to say I've not as yet done anything with!). However, Richard also very kindly included a "surprise" among the 3D prints - a pair of Iron Mink (diagram V6) bodies. This post relates to the first of these. Among the wagons I have running on Modbury are 3 Iron Mink built from Association kits, in fact 2 of them date back to my first (aborted) venture in 2mm Finescale modelling in the 1980's. They were both originally fitted with compensated Colin Waite W Irons (which I eventually glued up solid with packers as I feel that better running can be had in 2FS with fixed underframe on short 4 wheel underframes - there just isn't enough mass to allow the compensation to work properly). All 3 of my existing Iron Mink have been modified / back-dated by replacing the kit wooden doors with the steel doors of the early vans, but all 3 also suffer from the major faults in the 2mm Association kit (primarily that they are too long, and that the vertical stanchions are too wide, meaning that the panels are slightly narrow which is a bit of a pain when trying to fit the 25" G W in but the fact that the vans are nearly 2mm too long actually helps in this regard!) At the time I drew up the artwork for the Cattle Wagons and Outside Framed Van I also started on a true to scale Iron Mink of my own but shelved it because of the layered effect noticeable on the Shapeways prints - you can almost get away with it on wooden planked bodies as it is possible to convince oneself that the layering looks like wood grain but on an all metal slab sided body like an Iron Mink I felt that it wasn't worth the effort. Anyway, back to the "surprise" that Richard had provided me with ... The two bodies were printed in a creamy coloured resin, and the only noticeable layering that I could detect is on the vents on the ends of each wagon - I decided that I would deal with that at the painting stage. One of the bodies that Richard provided me with. The layering/stepping is just about visible on the vent on the body, as is the lip that Richard has designed inside the body to allow the body to seat down level on an underframe. Richard had kindly cleaned all of the support material from the 3D print, but there were just one or two places that needed the merest dressing with a very fine file where the roof would fit. I had no idea whether Richard had designed the model with any specific 2mm Association underframe in mind, but I elected to use a 2-324 SNCF 9'0" wheelbase Mineral wagon one as I have a couple in my gloat box. I only wanted the floor with the fold down inner sole bar and W Irons anyway, once fitted with bearings, the V hanger was removed from one side and the W Iron stays were removed from between the W Irons and cleaned up. Because the Iron Mink is only 16'6" over headstocks, it is necessary to remove about 1mm from each end of the floor (after the etched bend-down headstocks have been removed from the etch by bending back and forth along the half etched line). Once the underframe was a snug fit within the body, a couple of pairs of wheels were dropped in so that I could check the running height - it transpired that some packing would be required between the underframe and the lip within the body to raise the body a little - I used a piece of 0.010" plastic sheet but could probably have used 0.015" really (clearly my Iron Mink has a heavy load inside making it sit down on its suspension). I decided to fit this first Iron Mink with Grease Axleboxes, so made up a set of 2-318 MR Grease Axlebox/Spring, and then employed a file to try to get a slope to the top and generally square the axle boxes up a bit to look more like a GWR version. The springs needed tweaking a bit to minimise the gap between them and the bottom edge of the solebar, but I'm pretty happy with the result. Brake gear is just one side of the 2-324 set, the brake handle being fitted after underframe and body were united permanently as this needs to be fixed into a hole drilled into the resin solebar. Prior to permanently uniting the body and underframe, I did a couple of things. The first was to drill the horse hook holes in the solebars (which I also transferred to the etched underframe where I drilled slightly larger holes so that the inner etched sole bar couldn't be seen through the holes in the solebar proper). The other thing was to fit a roof, fitted before uniting body and underframe so that I could get to the underside of the roof to apply drops of superglue. The roof itself was formed from a piece of 0.008" tinned steel - in a moment of madness I had thought about soldering on thin strips of shim to represent the re-inforcing strips across the roof - in the end sanity prevailed and I simply glued on narrow strips of 0.005" plastic sheet after the roof was fitted!!! Once the body and underframe were finally glued together, the brake handle was soldered at the V hanger end and glued in place in a hole in the solebar at the other. A set of 2-072 buffers completed the build. The completed Iron Mink ready for the paint shops. And posed alongside a contemporary Outside Framed Van which was a similar size and one of my 2mm Association Iron Mink (with back-dated doors) still with unfinished lettering/numbering. I think posing Richard's rendition alongside the Association offering illustrates the slight size difference, in fact the Association model might do well as a Taff Vale Railway Iron Mink as they were 17'4" over the headstocks!! It is now my intention to build up the other Iron Mink that Richard provided, but this will be fitted with OK Oil Axleboxes as it is my intention to paint the first Red and the second Grey (probably with identification plates rather than 25" G W) - somewhat contentious I know as there is still (and always will be) debate as to what colour the wagons were when fitted with plates! However, I placed my stick in the sand several years ago when I scratch built my first 4 plank open (that's grey with plates), my view is that there are photos of grey wagons with 25" lettering but still carrying their numbers on plates, and that brake vans with plates were also grey (yeah, I know they were always grey even when everything else was red! ) However, it's my train set and I want my plate carrying wagons to be grey, so there!! Thanks for looking Ian

Is that because the font they use these days is harder to read than in the good old days when our eyes used to work?

On Modbury I used 0.8mm bass wood, glued to baseboard top with PVA, weighted of course while it dried. Once dry the whole was rubbed over with a fine glass paper (or it may have been emery paper - can’t remember) just to take any minor humps off and to ensure joints between pieces were level. Ian

I always have to have a wry smile when people modelling 4mm and above “complain” about trying to find room in their locos for motors and/or gearboxes - modelling 2mm finescale as I do with open cabbed tank engines I can only dream of the cavernous space you guys have Ian

Ian, I too like the pyramid way of loading the single plank wagon, although I think if you did that on a model it would raise a few eyebrows so you might need to keep the “still” from the film handy to satisfy the non-believers

I've done very little modelling recently, but have the following photo to share : This shows (what hopefully looks like) a couple of brick loads for a pair of my open wagons. On the real Yealmpton Branch there was a brick works at Steer Point. My imaginary line through Modbury would have followed the course of that said branch once it reached Yealmpton and hence would also have served the brick works at Steer Point. I have had a mind to produce some brick loads for quite some time but kept putting it off because I couldn't actually find any (clear) photos to illustrate how such a load would have been carried - was it packed with straw? Were the bricks on some form of pallet? Etc. Quite by chance, a few weeks ago someone posted a link to a video elsewhere on RMweb (the "Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread") which showed bricks being loaded into open wagons (https://www.ampthill.tv/playvideo.html?id=94&fbclid=IwAR3eZd3oo2SmzR3lPCLlZFnI0z2UhhIrzBpa1gesRaXH8i5pKFLCL8hqur0) - the loading of wagons starts about 8:40. Although a 1920's film, I felt that the evidence that bricks were just stacked in the wagons was enough to allow me to try to create a couple of representative loads. A piece of 0.020" plasticard was scribed with a grid of bricks (1.5mm x 0.6mm - about 9" x 4"), then that was cut up and layered to provide a bit of "interest" to the loads. Once dry, I ended up painting the whole lot a brick colour then picking out individual bricks in slightly different shades before filling the scribed grooves with a very thin wash of dark brown track colour to try to "separate" the bricks. I should add that each load has a small patch of 0.020" steel shim glued to the underside so that the loads can be removed easily with a magnet. Ian

I've done very little modelling recently, but have the following photo to share : This shows (what hopefully looks like) a couple of brick loads for a pair of my open wagons. On the real Yealmpton Branch there was a brick works at Steer Point. My imaginary line through Modbury would have followed the course of that said branch once it reached Yealmpton and hence would also have served the brick works at Steer Point. I have had a mind to produce some brick loads for quite some time but kept putting it off because I couldn't actually find any (clear) photos to illustrate how such a load would have been carried - was it packed with straw? Were the bricks on some form of pallet? Etc. Quite by chance, a few weeks ago someone posted a link to a video elsewhere on RMweb (the "Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread") which showed bricks being loaded into open wagons (https://www.ampthill.tv/playvideo.html?id=94&fbclid=IwAR3eZd3oo2SmzR3lPCLlZFnI0z2UhhIrzBpa1gesRaXH8i5pKFLCL8hqur0) - the loading of wagons starts about 8:40. Although a 1920's film, I felt that the evidence that bricks were just stacked in the wagons was enough to allow me to try to create a couple of representative loads. A piece of 0.020" plasticard was scribed with a grid of bricks (1.5mm x 0.6mm - about 9" x 4"), then that was cut up and layered to provide a bit of "interest" to the loads. Once dry, I ended up painting the whole lot a brick colour then picking out individual bricks in slightly different shades before filling the scribed grooves with a very thin wash of dark brown track colour to try to "separate" the bricks. I should add that each load has a small patch of 0.020" steel shim glued to the underside so that the loads can be removed easily with a magnet. Ian

Stephen, Unfortunately, a photo of Dave’s Dean Goods and mine or our 517’s didn’t get taken. Some years ago though I did have a photo of one of my 4 wheeled coaches sitting atop of a similar 7mm scale coach (also in Edwardian livery), the 7mm modeller was producing all sorts of Dean coaching stock from Slater’s parts combined with some (I think) 3D printed parts to fabricate things like the deeper vent panels above the doors that some transitional coaches sported. Ian

Going back to an earlier discussion on brick loads, I have been intending to do just that for quite a while for Modbury. The original Yealmpton branch served a brick works at Steer Point, which in my little world meant that some of the Steer Point traffic would have gone through Modbury. Until I saw the loading of the wagons in the linked video(https://www.ampthill.tv/playvideo.html?id=94&fbclid=IwAR3eZd3oo2SmzR3lPCLlZFnI0z2UhhIrzBpa1gesRaXH8i5pKFLCL8hqur0), I was unsure how such traffic would have been transported - on pallets? packed with straw? etc. so didn't feel confident enough to make up a load. However, with the video evidence I now felt able to have a bit of a go. The photo below shows the results of my endeavours over the last couple of days : The bricks have been scribed onto 0.020" plasticard, and layered to provide "interest". A base brick colour was applied then a few individual bricks picked out in various brick shades for variety. A thin wash of brown (old tin of Humbrol track colour) was introduced into the scribed lines to help "separate" the bricks. A small patch of 0.020" steel has been glued to the underside of each load to facilitate easy removal with a small magnet. For anyone not familiar with my layout, it is 2mm scale, so that is my excuse for the crudeness of my work! Ian

Grahame’s response has reminded me that somewhere I’ve still got some IKB (?) baulk road track. This was a strip of ~1mm thick nickel silver strip about 4mm tall against which cast white metal half baulks were attached. If suitable strip could be sourced I would imagine that 3D printed half baulks would be pretty easy to produce. The IKB half baulks included the packing strips and flange of the rail (complete with bolts). Ian

For my 2mm scale representation of baulk road I too used a soldered construction. To represent the plates on the switch baulks I milled across the baulk, to leave the “plates” standing proud (obviously I have access to a lathe that I set up for small milling operations but it could be done by filing). I’ve compiled this response on my phone so unfortunately don’t have access to any photos from it, but a link to my Modbury thread (and my website) is in my signature. Ian

Everyone knows that John doesn’t need glasses because he uses “the force” for his modelling activities

I quite agree about “non-normal” viewing angles. Some weeks ago I casually thought about turning Modbury around, and adding 6” to what is currently the front of the layout, so that it would be viewed from the yard side - I quickly discarded the thought as madness The Uckfield exhibition was very enjoyable, it was really nice to have a degree of normality back, and to see old friends again. Modbury for the most part behaved itself, there was an odd derailment coming onto/off the train table fiddle yards, and the occasional problem with the DG couplings used. All of the locos performed well (including the steam railmotor). Ian

Following the Uckfield exhibition, I decided that before I reassembled Modbury in my lounge that I would take a few photos of the scenic boards from the non-viewing side, effectively from the break between the two boards. What follows are a few of the 30-odd photos I took - all with a DSLR using only f-stopping to get a half reasonable depth of field (no stacking here). For lighting, a LED tube was used (which isn't exactly the same as the normal layout lighting used at exhibitions (or for that matter at home!)) A sheet of blue card was blue-tac'd to the layout fascia to focus attention on the layout rather than the rest of my kitchen!! I hope that you enjoy these images that are simply not possible when the layout is fully assembled. 517 Class (number 551) draws into Modbury with a pick-up goods (it is just about possible to see the 3-lamp head-code on the bunker - my lamps have short pieces of 0.3mm wire projecting from their bases which engage in the lamp sockets of my locos allowing me to alter the head-codes accordingly). A view of the pick-up goods arriving into Modbury from a slightly more elevated position up the hillside. A view across the yard at a quiet Modbury, hopefully showing that I have modelled even the non-viewing side of everything. The lane along the back of the layout (to our right in this view) will one day become the A379. A closer inspection of the buildings at Modbury, the waiting room building on the Down platform is probably my favourite of all those I've built for Modbury. The couple waiting on that platform run a small market gardening business, and have some of their produce on the trolley close by. Another view across the yard at Modbury, this time with wagons awaiting collection in the Goods shed. The local coal merchant engages in conversation with a customer outside his disused van office while a couple of his employees are filling a few sacks from the coal piles at the end of the long back siding. A "Brian Monaghan view" of Modbury as 517 Class, 551, draws into the station with a Down pick-up goods. A somewhat less elevated view of the Down pick-up goods drawing into the station. The Station Master is hopeful that an award might be forthcoming this year for the platform gardens! Finally, a view of 551 shunting wagons in the yard. The cattle pen water troughs have been filled from the stand-pipe between the two pens, and the hose pipe has been left draped over the rail fence. Thank you for looking, and I hope that being able to see Modbury from the "back" has been of interest. Ian

Mikkel, I left the numbers on the bottom of the artwork for that very reason, I usually make up the required number in the blank area, the copy and paste from there, rotating on sheet as necessary to overlay the original numbers. Ian PS. I can’t remember how long either version remained in service, but for my circa 1906 period I use both for variety - perhaps I should change my timescales to c.1902-06

Dave, It was great to see yourself and Sherton Abbas again, the award for best layout in show was justified (although I will say I was robbed ). However I will admit that my vote also went to Sherton Abbas!! Like you, John and I called in at the Bluebell Railway (we were probably there at the same time you were), to enjoy those Metropolitan coaches being drawn into Sheffield Park - I must say the whistle on that Southern loco was a bit ear piercing, much prefer the tones of real green engines We too felt really well looked after, and thoroughly enjoyed the weekend. Ian

Stephen, It was very nice to meet you at last and put a mask to a name Thank you for the kind comments, I hope you enjoyed Modbury (and Sherton Abbas, Wadebridge, et al). You are not the first to comment that virtually the stock and layout have a "bigger" presence Ian

I would like to tender my thanks on behalf of the Modbury team to Adrian and the Uckfield team. An excellent show, we felt we were well looked after and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Thank you for inviting us! Ian

I live in the Midlands, and to be honest I think long and hard about going anywhere near London, let alone anywhere the other side of it! I’m 60 years old and this will be the first time I will set foot in Sussex Going North, East, West or South West I haven’t got a problem with

Modbury will be attending its first exhibition in almost 2 years this weekend at the Uckfield Model Railway Exhibition. Really looking forward to the weekend! For Edwardian GWR fans, Dave Stone will also be there with Sherton Abbas, and for 2FS fans, John Greenwood will be there with Wadebridge and Padstow too. Ian

I think it’s down to the diagonals - bottom of diagonal should be on the hinge side of door.

Dave, really looking forward to Uckfield - I’m there too with Modbury, so if Edwardian GWR is your thing then it’s going to be a good show Ian

I very rarely feel the need to subscribe to these discussions, but I must admit that I get really fed up about people moaning about the difficulty of subscribing to or contacting MRJ. My own view is that whatever the reasons are, the production team have decided not to embrace some “modern” payment or contact methods. We all need to accept that. For me, that philosophy doesn’t detract from the best model railway magazine available, indeed from a letters point of view I imagine that that philosophy would be an absolute boon as it minimises / prevents the dross that the keyboard warriors would submit - if one has to truly put pen to paper and then go to the effort of putting a stamp on an envelope and then putting it in a post box then hopefully the content will actually be worth reading! I personally don’t “subscribe” to the magazine, preferring to purchase my copies from a national newsagent, but I do have nearly every edition nonetheless. In short, I guess what I’m trying to say is that if someone’s business model works for them but not for you then the problem is yours not theirs! On issue 285, well done Jerry! One of the best! Ian

Not done too much model-wise recently, but I did get a delivery of number plates from Narrow Planet for my 517, so they have been fixed in place (with a dab of gloss varnish). I also knocked up some brake gear for it - the pull rods were fretted/filed from a couple of pieces of 0.010" etch waste sweated together, the brake hangers and shoes were similarly fretted/filed from some 0.020" phosphor bronze. The whole lot (once separated) were cobbled together to look a bit like brake gear, being built up around a couple of pads of thin double-sided PCB and 0.3mm wire. Once "sturdy" (a relative term as the whole ensemble is rather fragile), the cross shafts had pieces removed from their middles replaced with thin wire sleeving so that the two halves were electrically insulated. A quick prime and brush paint with Precision Paints Indian Red and the assembly was ready to install onto the bottom of the chassis. The finished brake assembly prior to painting. A crew of N Brass drivers were painted up (I chose just drivers because the fireman option is a "traditional" chap shovelling). Arms were bent a little (as one of them has his hand so far in the air and looks like he wants to ask if he can go to the toilet!), so that one has his hand resting on the cab opening and the other is reaching up to tap a gauge or something. Also a rather rudimentary backhead was cobbled up from a bit of black plasticard , a few bits of wire and a couple of slivers off the end of a bit of brass rod to represent a couple of gauges. Once painted, stuck in place with a couple of blokes standing in front of it there really is little to see. Completed loco with brake gear, numberplate, and cab populated. View of the rear of the engine showing what can be seen of the cab "detail" Over the last couple of days, with Modbury's first outing for nearly 2 years coming up, I have given some thought to increasing the population of Modbury. The first of these additions is a Shire Scenes Farm Cart (although I made and painted this a few months ago). To give it a purpose, I made some sacks out of milliput, forming one so that it sort of hung over the back. N Gauge horses are very unsatisfactory looking lumps of white metal generally, so inspired by some re-carving that Tim Watson illustrated in the Copenhagen Fields thread, I had a go myself. A small chisel was ground from a gramophone needle, and employed to re-shape a 4 legged lump of white metal into something that bore a little more resemblance to something equestrian, a longer tail being added in low melt solder and then re-carved. The driver of the cart I had already decided to feature standing alongside the horse rather than sitting in the cart, so I took an Andrew Stadden character and performed a little re-modelling on him too - an arm was removed, bent at the elbow and re-attached. His top hat was taken off, and a cloth cap substituted. His jacket was lengthened into a longer coat, which was then carved to be open with a waistcoat underneath. Once man and horse were painted, the horse was glued between the cart shafts, and thin strips of Rizla cigarette paper cut, painted and formed for the reins. The idea being that my little man would be holding one of the reins. Further short bits of pre-painted Rizla strip were added to link cart shafts to the horse harness. Thanks for looking, by the way the little chap is only just over 1cm tall so please forgive the (extremely) cruel close-ups! Ian

A little more progress on the Steam Railmotor ... Over the last few days, I've been trying to finish off the roof. At the end of the previous update, I had fitted some fine wire to represent the rain strips and the lamp tops had been fixed, so the first task was to cut a suitable piece of nickel silver for the engine room roof panel. I elected to cut this from 0.004", but in the end wish I had cut it from 0.008" instead - once rolled to shape and temporarily placed on the roof it didn't seem to provide quite enough relief, so I tacked a couple of strips of 0.004" along the lower edges to raise it up a bit. By marking diagonally from corner to corner, the centre was marked and a hole drilled to line up with the chimney hole previously drilled in the main roof to help when aligning and soldering the panel in place. Before fitting though I had to remove a little of the upper rain strips where the panel overlapped them. According to the drawings I had, a strip of L angle was attached 6" up from the lower edge of the panel (possibly as a rainstrip) - I tried to fabricate a bit of angle from 0.004" but with the foot and upright being less than 0.5mm wide I gave it up as a bad job and elected to just solder a bit in 0.25mm wire 1mm inboard of the lower edge instead! The top half of the chimney was turned on the lathe (predominantly with gravers), and was cut off with a 1.5mm diameter locating peg on its bottom (to fit into the hole in the panel/roof). The prototype has a weather proof cowl just below the copper cap of the chimney (to help keep the rain out of the engine compartment), so a piece of 0.004" was cut to be a snug fit around the chimney and shaped into the oval shape of the prototype (quite why the cowl is oval rather than round I have no idea as photos show that the chimney projected through at one end of the cowl not centrally as one might expect). Anyway, once filed to shape the cowl was soldered in place around the chimney such that there would be a slight gap between the roof panel and chimney cowl. The next stage was to complete the roof panel by drilling a 0.35mm hole where the whistle will eventually go, and also drilling then filing an oval hole above where the safety valves were attached on the boiler (oddly, although the whistle has a little weather proof cowl around it, the hole for the safety valve exhaust doesn't). With the engine compartment cover panel done, I then lightly scribed the lamp pipe runs on the roof. The pipes were made from 0.2mm copper wire (having first rolled it between a metal ruler and flat surface to straighten it). It was then a simple matter of making the bends in the main pipe runs and tack soldering in place before making good the soldered join along the full lengths of the pipe. Further short lengths of wire were added between each lamp and the main pipe before trimming the wire (one end soldered to lamp pot, joint made with main pipe then the excess cut off). It would appear from photos that the gas feed pipes of the different lots came up through the roof in different places - No. 93 has the pipes appearing fairly centrally, but No. 61 (which I'm basing this build on) has the pipes appear above the driving vestibule at the non-engine end of the carriage. In both cases though a small cover is positioned over the place where the pipes come up through the roof, so I filed up a bit of 0.014" brass to represent these covers and positioned them over the tail ends of the wires representing the pipe runs. With all of the solder work complete, today I have fitted the shell vents. The exact position of these has been estimated from photo evidence, and holes for each vent were drilled before Ultima vents (available from the 2mm Association) were super-glued in place. The photos below show the current state of play (the body is just plonked on the under frame for these photos) : At the moment, the chimney and its cowl are just pushed into the hole in the roof - its an interference fit (in actual fact the hole is big enough to allow small screw driver access to the motor bogie retaining bolt, so I may leave the chimney as a removable feature!) The next step will be to add the mouldings needed to the central doors to finish the conversion of the single access door to the double doors that I'm trying to represent. This can now be done in 0.005" plasticard now that all of the soldering is complete on the upper works. Once the upper works are done, I will then move onto the undreframe (including fabricating the headstocks and buffers - I hope that N Brass will have suitable auto coach buffers at TINGS when I'm there helping out on the Association stand in a few days time), then it will be on to trying to make that flipping Walchaerts knitting that I keep putting off for as long as possible Thanks for looking Ian