Dave at Honley Tank

We P4 modellers are frequently seen as being humourless, and many are also seen as elitist and less than friendly. Possibly true for some in the fraternity but I do my best to be neither. As part of my efforts to cause a smile, about twenty years ago I built a scalefour-standards 'Thomas'. When I say "built" I mean that I built a chassis to fit under a totally unadulterated, genuine Triang-Hornby body in bright shiny blue/red/yellow. The chassis was a test bed for me to try out one or two new ideas for future scratch-built chassis: silicon tube as a flexible drive between axle-hung gearbox and fixed motor; totally enclosed gearbox; spring-steel wire pickups scraping on flange edge; three-point suspension but with the suspension beam being not a pivoted beam but a strong spring, centrally cantilevered to the two 'sloppy' axles; (springy beam????) a home-made plug and socket system that allows electrical items to be removed easily and without need of a soldering iron. All a bit experimental and 'way-out'! I had set up supply and tooling to copy Mike Sharman's enclosed gearbox but in brass rather than plastic, but "Porter's Cap" now HighLevel gearboxes came along to make life easier. The sprung beam idea works every bit as well as a pivoted beam system in fact Thomas runs excellently but the scraper pick-ups demand more maintenance than I'm used to with split-axle collection At exhibitions 'Thomas' came out whenever kiddies were viewing and caused much excitement for them and a bit of humour for the adults. Prior to the opening hour of a well known finescale exhibition, (which I shall not name in order not to cause too much embarrassment), with other exhibitors and officials watching our proving runs, we deliberately brought out 'Thomas' hauling a rake of Gresley suburbans. The majority of viewers had a good laugh but I have to admit that there was a minority who walked away in disgust. I have often wondered if those few 'elitists' would have shown a different attitude had they inspected the chassis! This last week, 'Thomas' has been 'in works' for attention to poor pick-up performance, and a general clean and lubrication. Of my little experimental features, only the scraper pick-ups were a real failure and were replaced by phosphor-bronze, tyre-back scrapers early on. The totally enclosed gearbox (Sharman) became no longer available about the time I built the chassis and is probably too highly geared;- No1 has a top speed of only around twenty mph . The silicon tube idea I have used several times now, as also has the sprung, rather than pivoted, beam been re-used. A satisfactory project with a lot of humour. Below are a few shots of 'Thomas with his "posh" train. Incidentally that train is a pretty accurate model of a trainset based at Ardwick Carriage Sidings, circa 1948, and which visited the real Birch Vale at least once per weekday. The difference is that Ardwick's brake-thirds had more compartments and less guard/ parcel space than my models, which are modified Comet kits. Usually pulled by a C13 rather than a 'Thomas' of course. I have a record of the "Trainset" number and its daily schedule as well as its consist but I'm too lazy today to find it! Dave

Hello dear reader; sorry I've been so quiet recently but a couple of worn out brains and bodies have been much less active than is the norm. The result has been plenty of armchair modelling and video watching. However we did manage to make the recent running day of Roy Jackson's 'Retford'; - a lovely day out among good friends. Some modelling has taken place and below are two pictures of the last building for 'Bowton's Yard'. the first pic was posted a few posts back. It was only by that posting that I spotted that the two nameboards: "Dukinfield" & "Cotton Co. Ltd." had been printed in differing font types. In the following post I made up a story to cover this error because it looked as though correcting it would not be easy. However, the building is entered in the Manchester MRS members competition to be held at our exhibition - (5th & 6th December at the Barnes Wallace building of Manchester University, close to Piccadilly Station in the city centre) - accordingly I gave some serious thought to correcting the error. The answer I came up with was to correct the original CorelDraw file and re-print but on copy paper rather than card. Weathering by charcoal and other powders was done on the sheet before cutting to an exact size to cover the first, card name boards. I'm satisfied with the result. Have to wait for the judges opinions! What do you think? Dave

Hi Dave, Well, you know me; - a simple bloke! KISS!!!!!!! 0.018" p/b It's a bit of a fiddle to make the shallow 'S' bend and also get a shallow turned up nose but both of us are used to tweaking, eh? See you at Roy's next month? Dave

Edited version at 1753 hours: The extended hidden sidings are now in use, but not before some re-thinking. This blog started as a report on my building a super-lightweight layout - Wheegram sidings but has drifted from that purpose. However in an early edition of the blog, I described the cassette system developed for 'Wheegram'. For Bowton's new hidden siding I decided to copy that idea but raise the adaptability level by having two types of cassette, - loco and train. That's what I have used on ' Birch Vale for many, many years, but those cassettes are based on aluminium angle and are of quite complex construction. So I thought I was choosing the best of both systems! The basic idea uses copper laminate track with a wide sleeper termination. For the permanent, fixed track, a phosphor-bronze spring strip per rail is soldered to this and its adjacent normal sleeper. These strips are adjusted to push down but have an upward turned nose; they are also positioned to fit against the rail web. - see first picture The cassettes also have a terminating wide sleeper and because they sit on thin, felt sliders, when clipped in place they push up against the phosphor-bronze strip. Mechanical fixing and electrical connection by the same device. - see second picture and third picture. 'Wheegram' had proved the idea but here, only train cassettes are used i.e. only one cassette at a time and always clipped by fixed springs. What I had omitted to think through was that the clipping of a train cassette to a loco cassette did not produce the firm downward pressure of the springs fixed to the baseboard! Who's a silly boy then? I had decided that one end only of each train cassette needed springs and that a loco cassette could get by with no springs but relying only on the weight of train and cassette for the joint of 'train' to 'loco' gave too unreliable electrical contact. Back to the drawing board! This was when I remembered that the complexity of the clip system on the aluminium cassettes was caused by this need for a pair of loose cassettes to produce opposing spring pressures. Pictures four and five show my answer; - a strip of 0.018" brass araldited to the cassette base, below its spring clips. I've had a couple of running sessions and all is now working well. You can just see the edge of one of the felt sliders on one of these pics. .. This "warmer weather" season had been scheduled for scenic work on 'Wheegram Sidings' but as I write this, that "warmer weather" seems to have gone! Dave

Ah! Dave ; but you already knew I was mad!

Yes indeed it is. Honley Tank (my workshop) has been here for around twenty years. It's built as part of my garage building which was also designed to have a layout room and a domestic storage facility.

I recently reported that I was carrying out general maintenance on my three layouts while the ambient temperature allowed working in the layout room (garage!), but suddenly total madness came over me and I decided that the hidden siding at the Guidebridge end of Bowton's Yard needed modification. It started life as a single siding, which led to a lot of "fiddling". Some time ago a turn-out was added so as to give two roads, but in order to get a reasonable train capacity in this new road the point was an A5. Much too tight for my larger engines, and indeed for two smaller tender engines with correctly spaced loco-to-tender drag bars. This caused so many problems that some form of modification was much needed. After a measuring session I decided that it was possible to have this baseboard twice as wide as the original. Also I decided that a cassette system would allow a more acceptable train length and if I had loco cassettes and train cassettes there would be a big reduction in stock handling. I'm afraid that my past experience with various makes of flexi-track has not been good; - they always seem eventually to go under-gauge and with my insistence on a near S4 back-to-back, I get unacceptably frequent problems. This is a hidden siding, so copper laminate track was decided on. Hence "Madness"! With Manchester's exhibition fast approaching (first W/E in December at UMIST) and my C13s and row of terraced houses still needing an awful lot of work for the competition, I decide on a virtual new layout. A brand new baseboard; five train cassettes; five loco cassettes and about eight meters of track to solder up. There will also be the electrics and some modification to the feeder baseboard and its tracks. The following pics show the current chaos. Dave

Re. my last submission: No comments? That is surprising! Have another look at the company name boards. My all-singing-all dancing, new camera saw what my naked eye did not; I should have spotted the error in CorelDraw when I drew them; I should have spotted when they came out of the printer; and when I cut them to size; and when I fixed them to the building; and when I airbrushed with slightly mucky matt varnish; and when I dry-brushed and weathering powder brushed; and when I again clear varnished to fix it all. Doooooo! Removing the incorrect board to make a new one would almost certainly cause too much damage and I'd end up with a re-build. Making a new board to cover the in-correct one might just work if printed on thin paper but getting the weathering correct afterwards wouldn't be easy. So it's staying as it is, with a back-up story that Dukinfield Cotton Co. refused to pay the signwriter when he refused to correct his error. He did make so many errors that he went out of business. I wonder how frequently it will be noticed!? (even by rivet counters like me!!) Dave

My layout Bowton's Yard, originally thought up in 2000 and having been underway, among other work, ever since, has at last reached the stage of building the last mill type building, the sum of which make up the layouts back scene. There are in total nine buildings, all typical of Lancashire textile industry in the vicinity of the Lancashire- Cheshire border area known locally as Tame Valley. All are in card plus some foamboard (ex supermarket adverts and totally free!) with Scalescene's brick paper (and a much modified kit) but totally freelance. One is actually a true scale model of Globe Worsted Co. at Slaithwaite (you have seen it if you ever visited Expo EM North held at that Yorkshire village), but it has changed from Yorkshire stone to red brick. In fact the layout is supposed to be on the Cheshire side of the border and represents what may really have happened had not John Summers & Son Ltd moved from Stalybridge in North East Cheshire to Shotten in North West Cheshire. The Stalybridge steel works had a very inconvenient rail connection, hence the move to Shotten and massive expansion. In my version of history a freight only branch came off the Guidebridge to Stalybridge line on the east side of Dukinfield station, continuing on the Cheshire side of the River Tame and terminating inside the works. Bowton's Yard is about half way along the branch where there was (still is in reality) a suitable, relatively large flat space. This did of course make the branch project much more viable. Originally this last building was to have been " Co-op Dairies", but then I remembered that it was line-side rather than rail-connected. So, briefly, it became "Dukinfield Spinning Co. Ltd" but the name had to be split into two name boards of equal size which that latter name won't. So it became "Dukinfield" - "Cotton Co. Ltd.". The design is freelance to suit the sight. The window frames are also freelance and were produced via CorelDraw, Silouette Studio and a Silouette Portrait paper cutter using 0.013" high quality card. Just two pics: A cruel close-up of the windows and my new all-singing-all-dancing camera didn't do as well as expected! The full building. Both posed on my bench; may upload some again when it has been fixed to its foundations. Dave

Well not actually a strike, but the spring and early summer months always see my visits to the workshop to actually carry out modelling work, are shorter and less frequent. I could report here how well my tomatoes, sweet peas, Dahlias etc are doing but it's hardly model railways is it? To keep to the modelling theme I could report on all the bits of layout maintenance I've carried out, but we all have to do those jobs and it would be an uninteresting report. There then are my excuses for not having blogged recently. Increasingly, I'm aware of age interfering with my abilities and, while I may not yet be quite there, I'm not far off having scratch-built my last loco. This is causing me to try to re-asses my hobby which for so many years has essentially been finescale model engineering and layout building, involving skills which I am slowly losing, making a change in my expectations a necessity. If you give any thoughts towards a study of model railways as a hobby then you begin to realise that it is actually a myriad of hobbies and only a very small number of modellers have expertise in all of them. For many years now mine has been scratch, or semi-scratch-kit building, of locomotives associated with Gorton steam sheds, but this has led me into to other branches of the hobby so that my locos have some where to run Many years ago I was content to have RTR (very little available and what was, was very much "toy trains" rather than models - Hornby-Dublo and Triang!). These I ran on my efforts at layouts which were scale models of a real place, examples that reached the model press being-: Holmfirth (TT); Hayfield (OO but scale, home-made track); Lockwood (OO on scale track); Birch Vale (OO on Peco flexitrack). Many readers will recognise "Birch Vale", and this became my test bed to a move to 18.83 gauge, initially in P4 and then later to S4. Eventually the whole track bed was removed and replaced with good quality birch ply and the new track was all ply timbers with plastic chairs and steel rail laid to S4 standards. Where I attempt to go in the future is still being pondered; for the present I'm concentrating on a large backlog of maintenance to locos, stock and layouts and perhaps getting both "Bowton's Yard" and "Wheegram Sidings" to a more completed appearance. As part of that, I'm currently using the computer, CorelDraw and Sillhuette Portrait to produce the last building needed to make 'Bowtons Yard' look finished. More in the future, Dave

It seems no one has changed their destination blinds on their Bachy DMUs! -(see last posting) There are of course two problems:- (A) - removal of Bachy's destination, (B) - production of the replacements My unit will run between Manchester London Road and Hayfield. There were at least two routes used and I wanted that which stopped at Guidebridge. My research suggested that these read "Manchester via Hyde" and "Hayfield via Hyde" and in both cases the "via" sat above the "Hyde". Measuring with a digital calliper gave me Bachy's dimensions so off to the computer and CorelDraw. Arial proved a reasonable likeness to the font used by Bachy and white lettering on a black background with a brown border was drawn at about 100 magnification. All dead easy and looking good. Print it with inkjet; ooh! horrible. The text was totally illegible. Back to the drawing board; (well CAD program!). Increase font size, juggle with font line thickness; try dropping "via Hyde" & use even larger font: swear; I tried all sorts. Eventually, with a selection of attempts, all looking good in the drawing program, I decide that the normal inkjet paper was having ink spread. Try printing on gloss, photo-paper at best print quality you fool. At last, very tolerable results, but the version I really wanted - "via Hyde"- was not readable to the normal, unassisted eye, so I settled on the plain "Manchester" and "Hayfield". Only now did I try to remove Bachy's lovely work. I found that about 10-20 minutes with a pool of meths on the paint was good enough to allow slow and careful scraping away by the end of a cocktail stick. I aimed at removing only the black background and then, after a second soak, the white lettering. As much as I was able I left the brown border untouched. I intended using Kleer to stick my effort in place but first tried some on a part of window moulding which did not show - no problem. Brushed my inkjet part with Kleer and it very successfully caused the ink to flow again,- that blind ruined. Not serious; I had duplicated each attempt several times prior to printing, but how to stop that ink flow? Spray with gloss varnish, and while the varnish tin's open, stick it with gloss varnish too. Actually I was too lazy to set up one of the air brushes and didn't fancy the clean up after so little work, so I sable brushed it. Job's a good-un! Dave

Well the Derby Lightweight is running, but the correct back-to-back for P4 is not easily obtained. The replacement wheels on their axle stubs have a length of the stub turned down to a slightly smaller diameter; i.e. a step against which the plastic, insulating muff comes up against. In every case, my wheelsets ended up with a B-B figure of 0.701". From memory the top limit for P4 is 0.699" and the bottom limit for S4 is 0.701". My aim is for 0.7" and I have found this to work well with either P4 or S4 but because in both cases it is on a tolerance figure, the track must be very accurate! at crossings and must have no tight-gauge places anywhere for P4. Correction is dead easy for the non-powered axles; slice off about 0.020" of the plastic muff, prior to inserting the stub shafts. The muff for the powered axles is actually the final gear wheel and I think I'd rather take a bit off the stub axle, rather than thin down the gear-wheel. Still to be done! I decided that it would be best to use Bachmann's suggested decoders, one for the driven vehicle and a different one for the trailer which is only needed to control the direction lights. There was a delay because they were part of a birthday present (last week). Bachmann's info sheets give no information beyond which decoder goes where and their installation has caused me more grief than any other bit of this project. If you want the full story, then go to "Modelling Zone>DCC Questions>Bachy DMUs and decoder in trailing vehicles". All units of the DMU should be programmed as one unit but some systems (I used Lenz Compact and then NCE PowerCab) will not 'talk' to a decoder with no load on its motor terminals so my trailer DMU did not get progammed. It's been a frustrating week!!!!! I'm currently painting some Preiser figures to become passengers. Has anyone changed the destination boards on these units? If so, some guidance would be helpful. Tara! Dave

It's done! 18.83 gauged Derby Lightweight ran over 'Bowton's Yard about 2hrs ago. Easy-peasy conversion; thanks lads, Dave

Ok then; one of our traders does offer a conversion set for Bachmann's Derby Lightweight! Thanks to those who guided me to Branchlines. While I was waiting for delivery I set off to have a tidying session of ''T'Tank', and in the course of this came across the two Kitmaster cattle wagons that I started to convert from OO to 18.83 last year -can't remember why I stopped that project but the bits were in a box in a corner of the 'Heavy' bench' abandoned rather than stored! They now have new, sprung underframes and while being not marvellous models of no known prototype that would have run down the Hayfield Branch in the mid-1940s they now increase my total of, at least reasonable looking, wagons to make up varying local goods trains. They were the first use of my own-drawn, chemically etched nickel-silver exercise, and it was a bad choice. My etching covers 9' and 10' RCH underframes and these are 11' wheelbase vehicles, so I've been involved in much jiggery-pokery. I've made no attempt to make them better cosmetically. other than the underframe metal work is much nearer scale than the original plastic bits. Rubbish models really but how many viewers have the genuine knowledge to spot it? Picture below:- Oh! as from this week I am an octogenarian; the one good side of that is that I took delivery of about £100 worth of DCC decoders. (Prezzys!!!) Bye for now Dave

Thanks Ralph, I knew about your 108 but I was unaware that it was split axle. I've already tried to order from Branchlines but 'phone was on answer mode so I'm waiting for him to get back to me. However I think I could use the Bachmann wheels by re-profiling the tyre, turning of the pin point, then centre drilling through which would take the stubb shaft but not the larger dia section behind the wheel disk. Add half a 2mm pin-point axle and re=join with Bachmann's sleave. The motorised axles could have same treatment but with a plain 2mm axle stubb and into the gear cog. I might try that, ready to convert another Derby Lightweight, but one of the "Manchester Group". Mine's from the "Carlisle Group" but I have invented a story which allows its use over the Hayfield Branch.! Dave

Thanks you three for the reminder about Branchlines. Thanks too to 'Pannier Tank' for his "Like" tick. Is the Bachy 105 also split-axle? I agree with Dave that it would be odd of Bachy to design different types; but they do do odd things! i checked Ultrascale, and I 'spoke' (e-mail) with Colin at Gibby's. His comment when I referred to the weird method of spli-axle was along the lines of..."Why do you think I don't do a drop-in set?" I'll check the Branchlines route, but that model engineering challenge is starting to appeal!!!!! Dave

Well! At long last the two new chassis are running acceptably. At least they are running far better then ever in their long history. On 'Birch Vale' they operate as well as my expectations. They are not so good on 'Bowton's Yard', but that is more due to my track making skills than my chassis making skills. When I was building 'Bowton's Yard' I deliberately used several track making methods in an effort to decide on what I thought to be the best method to suit my needs. Remember that this is a layout designed to use S4 track and wheel standards. I used ply-&-rivet with cosmetic white-metal chairs: working w-m chairs and cyano to ply; working plastic chairs and MEK on ply and PC board sleepers/timbers off-scene. I also tried steel rail as well as N-S rail. In fact it's a right hotch-potch. However the experience set me up nicely when I renewed all the track on 'Birch Vale' using steel rail on ply sleepers with plastic chairs, and MEK. The end result is that 'Birch Vale track is all that could be desired, but that hotch-potch that is 'Bowton's Yard should really have all the track-work renewed. 'Bowton's is a freight only branch and the Gorton C13s were lovingly looked after and used almost exclusively on weekday, suburban passenger trains in the Manchester London Rd area, being rested or maintained over the weekend, when J10s, J11s, J39s or anything that was available, looked after the local traffic duty. Accordingly, my models work acceptably on the layout they were intended for. and had the Bowton's Yard branch really existed, C13s would have been very rare visitors (it's freight only!) Here's eight pictures that are various views of the new units with their cloths on and then some of the naked chassis (naughty or what?) No captions; If something is not obvious, then please ask on here. The C13's will now have a few weeks rest before detailing starts, because Honley Tank has agreed to start converting a Bachmann Lightweight DMU to S4 wheels ready to do occasional passenger service on 'Birch Vale'. Having already done a survey of this split-axle RTR unit, I can see why none of our wheel traders are offering a conversion kit! Looks to be an interesting challenge. More next time perhaps. Enjoy your modelling, Dave

"Rest Box"? Strictly speaking the word "rest" can here be applied in any of several ways:- 1. The modelling project is having a rest while I think up methods of progress. e.g. 'can't think up how to .......... 2. I'm having a rest from the modelling project because I'm making a hash of the da** thing! Obviously it's the project's fault not mine! 3. I've been fired by enthusiasm for some new idea and have totally lost interest in the current project. 4. The weather is warmer so I can work on the layouts. The reverse applies too; - the weather is too cold to be in the railway room (garage), so back into the nice warm workshop. 5. It's the club's competition in two months! I'll need to shove this lot in the "Rest Box" so I can complete my loco competition entry. Number 2 is increasingly the most usual reason. It seems that as age takes its toll on my body and brain, then my modelling projects start to misbehave and various bits refuse to do what I tell them to do. However, putting the two GC 6-wheel brakes in the "Rest Box" is more related to No.1 than any other, but there's a bit of No.5 in there too. The "two months" is more like eight months, but I hope to enter the two refurbished C13s and also the Q4. All this means that the C13s have come out of the" Box" and the GC 6-wheelers have gone in. After only one modelling day on the C13s they are close to going back in!?! Numbers 3 & 4 are likely to come in to play shortly; No.4 is obviously related to the calendar and I've just ordered an electrostatic fly killer and also various lengths & colours of static grass; therefore 3 is likely when those are delivered. That means that both Bowton's Yard and Wheegram Sidings may start to get overgrown. Does anyone know if there is a static grass weed killer on the market because I may need a weed killer train next? Sorry; no pictures because my photographic skills don't run to the taking of pictures of philosophical thought. Enjoy your physical modelling Dave

Hello again everyone. In my last posting I told you how I intended to fit the roofs to those two CG brake vans, - a plug-in system that would allow the roof to be removed without damage, thus allowing access to the verandas. Hence the title, - “The Best Laid Plans….” Well those mice & men certainly had a good go at me! I have now got the idea to work but it cost a lot of frustration and much use of those Russian words that always seem to accompany my frustrations. I had intended that the roofs would be 0.020” Plasticard, curved to the roof contour by fixing the sheet plastic into a curve using near boiling water poured over the styrene which would be wrapped around a suitable former. I’ve done it before, many times with success and occasionally with a bit of deformation. This time all I could achieve was the “deformation bit!! My next attempt was to try two laminations of 0.010”, scribing lengthwise planking on both, hand-bending one with the scribing on the concave side and the other on the convex. The scribing should aid getting the curvature and the convex planking would be correct too. Laminating these two should hold the curve and all would be Hunky-Dory. It wasn’t! Actually it was an improvement on the first try but it had a tendency to curl up at each end rather than retain a straight line, causing the roof ends to not lie where they should. This caused my mind to turn to sheet metal rather than sheet styrene and I decided on making the roofs in brass. A strip of 0.010” was cut to size, offered to my rolling machine and then rolled to a curve of slightly smaller diameter than the roof. OOOH! I much prefer metal to plastic! At this point I realised that part of the problem had been that I had produced circular curves and then tried fitting them to elliptical curved formers. With the brass there was no problem in tweaking the circular shape to elliptical, - simple squash it! Well, take care, but it does only involve gentle squashing pressure on the top, longitudinal centre line to achieve the required elliptical curve. More quickly than any of the plastic attempts I had two nicely fitting brass roofs sitting loosely on their bodies. All that now remained was to araldite the brass to those inserts I talked about last time. This however was not so simple as those words may imply. The roof had been made too long to allow for adjustment when fitting to the body, and a ‘dry run’ was used to mark how much trimming was needed. That done, how could I ensure that the araldite made contact only with the insert and not the body, while being sure that the roof would end up correctly positioned when the insert was pushed home? This decision was that araldite would initially only be introduced to the middle of the top edge of the two inner end-formers, the insert pushed home, the roof carefully positioned, i.e. equal overhang, sides and ends, and rubber bands left to hold that position over-night while the araldite cured. At last my ideas were starting to work! The following day I added araldite to the insert’s outer former-roof joint with the unit out of the body and all now seems good. Just two pictures: The roof is in place with still a bit of fettling required before acceptance but at least looking the part. Also, the roof off its body, displaying its fixing method. On this picture you may be able to make out a red blob on the inside of one of the formers. This is colour coding to ensure the unit goes into the body the right way round. An OOPS moment! Writing those last few words caused me to check: the ‘roof-on’ picture shows that I forgot to check, and the roof is the wrong way round in that pic. I thought much less fettling was required than that picture implies. Dave

It’s been great to be back in the workshop and actually doing a bit of model engineering and using eyes, fingers and brain to design and make things without the aid of a computer and a computer-driven device. That digital card cutter and its associated computer programs have taken a lot of learning time and I’ve missed being in the workshop environment. I knew I got pleasure out of designing, fabricating and machining, but building the two chassis for those computer-produced brake van bodies has reinforced that belief. The two (may become three!) Great Central six wheel brake vans, now each have a working chassis; a couple of chassis that worked well first time, (well, with one minor hi-cup!). The “may become three” was added because sentimentality may have me make a chassis for the hand-produced body I made so many years ago but rejected when my attempt at making a six-wheel Cleminson chassis failed. Such a complicated chassis would be a non-sense anyway in this particular application. I’ve written on here before that I have believed in sprung axleboxes for locos for many years and I use a system first devised by Alex Jackson and Sid Stubbs in the 1940s. Their wagon chassis used what I think is a unique system combining springing and ‘wobbly’ axles, quite complex and demanding of high skill levels. I never attempted to copy this but since Bill Bedford introduced his etched ‘W’ irons with sprung bearings, that, or a derivative of it, is what I have used. I tried the Masokits sprung chassis and would recommend them, but Bill’s are simpler to make. However the Masokits design produces a chassis of correct wheelbase and with truly parallel axles every time; Bill’s units need fairly high skill levels to achieve that parallelism. The secret of the Masokits units is what I choose to call “the central spine”. I’ve pinched that idea (sorry Mike if you read this) and linked it to Bill’s etches. Indeed I drew my own drawings and had some chemical etchings done, this in an attempt to overcome some niggling changes introduced by Bill or his successor for his etched items. No, sorry I shall not be marketing my etchings! So, these GCR brakes have a central spine chasses with the outer axles carried in B-B type sprung ‘W’irons and with a very sloppy centre axle carried in inside bearings. This sloppy axle can rise & fall through approximately 0.030” and has side-float of about 0.020”. That “minor hic-up” mentioned above, was in my maths used to mark-out the inside bearing carrier in-the-flat (it’s a folded, square ‘ U’) - I managed to fold and achieve parallelism, but the axle holes were too high by about 0.050” and, when on the track, although it looked OK when stopped, when it moved, the outer wheels rolled nicely but the centre wheels stayed quite still. After several “oh dear me-s” or words that mean that, I made a new bearing carrier with corrected dimensions and carried out my “fling test”. I’ve described this before on here but for any new readers it means I “fling” the vehicle along a section of my S4 layout ‘Bowton’s Yard; this section starts with a B6 Turn-out, through a second one and then a B6 double slip, all on a curve of around 6’. “Fling,” means exactly that! -pushed hard so that the vehicle’s momentum causes a scale speed of the order of sixty miles an hour. At least four trips in each direction without derailment is the acceptable result. Rarely is the vehicles first test an acceptable one; they normally need to go back for a bit of tweaking. These two were good first time, so I must have got something right. So exhilarated at being back to model engineering, I’ve gone on about these two brake-vans for too long. I should first have shown you some pics of custom window frames, doors etc produced by that card cutter, particularly the windows for a Model Railway Scenery’s 1930s factory that now sits comfortably on Bowton’s Yard; next time perhaps; meanwhile here’s a few pics of the brake-van progress. The van on the left has had the scribing emphasised by being rubbed with pencil lead dust and includes the roof insert. The right hand one has the central spring/axlebox unit in place but the outer axles show the outer ends of the waisted, pin-point bearings ready to be covered by modified MJT white-metal, axlebox/spring units as per the left hand one. The roof insert is missing from the right hand view. Perhaps an explanation of "roof insert":- In order to allow access to the verandas, I want to be able to easily remove the roof. Accordingly these inserts were made as a fairly tight fit inside the van body. The roof itself will be carried by these, so allowing the roof to be plugged out as it were. Front & side view of these inserts. Worth noting that they are a pair, well colour coded and numbered to ensure no muddles, but finally welded as one with a central spacer, filed and adjusted to make the whole unit a good fit inside its dedicated van. The black shading in the top corners will be behind the glazed van windows - it'too dark in there to be able to see inside!?! Here we see one insert in position and viewed from above, while the second shot shows some detail of the removable underframe. For the good-sighted and axlebox knowledgable, I am aware that the central boxes differ to the outer ones!. This was originally an oversight but accepted on the grounds that this did happen in real life, and with my operating period being late 1940s, these brakevans from the 1890s would have seen a good amount of repair and change. Any way it's my railway and I'll do what I want - so there! Dave

Thanks for that Mike but the reference to Cleminson is spurious really. It was some 45 years ago when I part-made that model, it's probable that I'd been reading about such devises for the first time and set off to make one with negligable understanding of them. This 6-wheeler certainly don't need one! It will have front and back sprung-axlebox W-irons with non-working middle W-irons and the middle. axle will be on internal bearings with about 0.020" side-play. For Nick: Not coaches but a six-wheeled brake van. I build all my rolling stock to run on S4 track, - greater B-B than P4 - but capable of having the P4tread wheels pushed in for EM track. Incidentally, I've never had problems with differing tyre profiles; most of my scratch-built locos run on my own wheels made as per Sid Stubbs (etal at MMRS). His wheel profile is for a well worn tyre and I've run such wheels happily on OO; EM; P4 & S4. I've also thinned down Hornby & Bachmann RTR wheels, usually for EM, and had no problems. I've read a lot of rubbish about wheel standards!!!! Dave

Brian, The huts were in 0.020" plasticard for roof & body but 0.010" for window/doorframes etc. The reference to "chipboard" is miss-leading; I think it's Americanese for what we would class as course cardboard; it certainly is not the type of chipboard (wayrock) we used to build baseboards with! My experience of the 'Portrait' model is that 0.010"styrene(plasticard) is the thickest that it will cut cleanly and easily without multi-cutting. Even with as many as six double passes (equal to 12 cuts) I've not got 0.020" beyond the 'scribe and snap' method. Of course the machine's designer was aiming at the greeting card craft fraternity rather than we pretend engineers. (smiley). My wife is a member of the above craft fraternity but is not computer literate so I have cut paper and card (about 0.010"thick) for her. Originally I expected to only use the machine with card, that's what just about every piece of model architecture I have built over many years is made of. The attraction was being able to cut very fine accurate window frames etc, with a pretty much guaranteed repeat accuracy. Indeed my first cuts after those huts were window frames for Model Railway Scenery's '1930s factory'. (May put a picture on here next time). Next was sash widow frames and paneled doors for terraced houses. I cut these in 0.010" styrene and 'Kellogs' card, both came out very well. My view is that if such work, - doors, windows etc, - was all you could achieve with this machine, then the machine would pay its way. With care and thought it can be used over much wider field than just that! Dave

That was my next intended try; cut by colour. Slow learner or what? Some of us owe you a lot Jason! Without this thread I may not have decided to dip my toe in; Thanks again - that includes all on here who give guidance. Dave

Yes, we've had a fair bit of snow up here! I set off for Dean Hall (MMRS clubrooms) this a.m. and had to turn back as local roads increasingly were white covered as I climbed. OK at home, we're about 600'ASL, but within less than a mile from home I reach about 800' and by the time I reach the Pennine Way crossing of the Greenfield Road, perhaps three miles, we're at about 1500'. I gave up at about the 850' level, on new, wet, white snow, - with still well over thirty miles to go it seemed most prudent. I was supposed to be one of the tutors for a soldering course but there were to be two others so i'm sure i'll not be missed (except for Margaret's cakes!). 'Honley Tank' - (the workshop) is still not seeing much of me, as the card cutting machine and the related CAD prog is commanding total attention.Margaret's craft room used to be the visitor bedroom and is nicely heated, and as the card cutter is for her use too, its installed in there, with a couple of laptops. Heating 'Honley Tank' is good but being electric it's rather expensive to run at a comfy working temperature. So I'm saving a bit of dosh in this cooler weather. These card cutters will, I'm quite sure, be an increasing part of our hobby in the modern digital world, Computer draws an item very accurately and the cutter cuts laminae material equally accurately, so many of the hand-eye coordinated skills become less important in producing your scratch built whatever.It's a fairly steep learning curve, particularly for the computer illiterate but I'm sure that, for me at least, it will lengthen my modelling life. In the 1970's I started on a project to scratch build a GCR 6-wheel brake van; more or less completed the body in plasticard but then got bogged-down trying to make a Cleminson-type underframe. I decided to restart this model and use it as the subject of my first attempt at a true modelling project based on the card cutting machine. I now have two new bodies, both better than that 1970's version but perhaps not yet quite what I wish to achieve. There's much more info about these machines elsewhere on rmweb - try a search on "Silhouette", - or feed in "topic 79025". i 've put some pics up there if you wish to see my progress. BFN, Dave

Thanks Mick; yet again you've helped me; this time to make-up my mind. I had been considering that the initial scribe should include the cut-through lines. So my personal "How to ..." notes will be modified so that the first move is to scribe everything with the knife blade. I'm waiting for two cb09 holders, a set of 45 degree and a set of 60 degree knife blades. As to a diamond scribber, the modern pen holders for the Portrait don't have collets so small, and there sounds, from input to this theme, to be other problems too. May end up turning my own scribbing tool(?). but weight on the head may raise issues. Incidently a good few days back I tried to order the 1/8" diamond scribber from Amazon uk but they have introduced a system where they only allow you one if the total order for Amazon products exceeds some figure. My order well exceeded that figure but the majority of the order was via third parties and my scribber was " put-by" for some future order!!!!! Dave