Tequila Sunrise

shoes and socks

The big problem I see with doing replacement wheelsets for recent DMUs - particularly Dapol - is that they seem so ephemeral. By the time you read a review in a magazine and decide to buy, many have already sold out - forever. I don't know if Dapol are using common components in N scale. My friends who buy Dapol 4mm products say they seem to invent new, non-standard solutions for each model they produce. This makes conversion to P4 particularly difficult (except for the Sentinel shunter, anyway). Sending the wheels off to be turned down to 2mm standards may be the only practical option in 2mm scale. Anyways, all of this talk about modern DMUs is getting me drooling. Any chance someone could come up with a totally different question to be answered? Otherwise I might turn into a "Thoroughly Modern 2Millie" myself. (With apologies for the reference to the very cringeworthy, late 1960s Julie Andrews musical)

Now I come to think of it a little deeper, I think I am getting mixed up with the old 101s with 8-wheel drive. I do seem to remember the springs on the transmission fracturing on 158s though.

The old Farish chassis for the 158 was very unreliable - so much so that surely there can be few left in working order(?) I remember the plastic bearings in the gear train melting if they ran for more than a few metres. Bachmann continued to use the same design for early Chinese-built models. They eventually revised the 158 chassis around the time they introduced the 170. I think both have basically the same design. It is a solid and reliable hunk of metal these days - totally different to the 108 and 101 though. Just a shame the 158 body was never upgraded too - it looks very toy-like compared with more recent offerings.

Try http://www.brlines.com for bodies - I was only looking myself yesterday (though for something else!)

Maybe the whole thing is a conspiracy by the authorities to improve the quality of prison football teams?

Unless you look really close up, then the way you lay out the sleepers is likely to have more impact than the appearance of the chairs. Pre-grouping track was different to more modern bullhead in the spacing of the sleepers and the profile of turnouts. Depending on your interest, you might also need interlaced sleepers. There is also the matter of 9ft sleepers on plain track - but in reality the difference between 17 and 18mm sleepers is very small.

If it is any help, there is a link here to a photo on line. http://oreald.com/picture1563.html

We should remember that this is a photo, not a painting. Most if not all the natural fading that people talk about for the more distant objects should already be there - unless either the camera or someone after the photo was taken has adjusted everything to make it less natural. One approach to make the overall scene more amenable would be to brighten up the darker bits, whilst leaving the brighter bits untouched. I did this quickly in Photoshop using the Shadow/Highlight function. I make no claim that this is in any way better than what we have seen already.

If you plan to use lighting, you may find this washes out the darkness in the backscene a lot, so beware or you may find all the detail in the backscene disappears in exhibition conditions. Also, the more you brighten the picture as a whole, the more unnatural the sky will look, as you lose much of the cloud detail. If your software will do it, split the sky from the land and give it far less adjustment.

See here http://www.lner.info/forums/newcastle-quayside-branch-p15806.html

The etched chassis are a big step forward for 2mm modellers - really appreciated. A couple of points though - would it be possible to list the actual wheelbases of the kits, as not everyone knows much about the Farish models or the specific locos and might wish to use the chassis for something else. Also, I assume we have to buy the kit then read the instructions to work out what gears etc we need to order. It would be great help if the list of components could be shown on-line so we can order everything all at once. I appreciate this is a lot of extra work for someone and time is very valuable, but the net result would be less work for everyone, including the shopkeepers.