whart57

Plenty of shots on my Flickr page here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/barang_shkoot/albums/72157629781644838/page1

I've had a chance to look through your Flickr page and taken the liberty of forwarding the link to the second page on to the 158 guy as there is a pic sort of from above on it. I'd still be interested in the official roof shots if possible.

I'm surprised that in your comprehensive collection that you have only one shot of an ex-Queensland carriage. That's my next rolling stock project, and I'm hoping to use my Silhouette cutter to do something other than bits for model buildings. If you have more shots I'd appreciate them - interior ones especially.

Wim

we assume that a 'proper' war won't start again because of the UN and half a century or more of relative peace between powers of the first few ranks

I'm more inclined to believe another war like the two 20th century world wars won't start again for two reasons. One is that it would rapidly go nuclear and second that even if it didn't the conventional fire power that modern weapons have would wipe out armies in days. Remember the retreating Iraqis on the road from Basra in Gulf War 1? That was nearly thirty years ago. What are the capabilities now?

This is of course the perennial question.  And the answer tends to be horribly simple - threats are assessed, continuously one hopes, and our armed forces are then equipped to deal with those threats plus our international treaty obligations.  

 

That is the theory but of course the reality is rather different because in a democracy, particularly one which has been involved in a limited number of shooting wars over many years, there is a national tendency to regard expenditure on defence as 'a waste' or unnecessary' especially when it competes with other things paid for with state funds.  Yet the strange thing is that when the threats sometimes turn into reality there occurs a major clamour asking why our armed forces are being sent in to do their job while they're wilfully ill-equipped, oddly that clamour often seems to come from those who moaned the loudest about 'money being wasted on defence'..

 

As we live on an island and depend on sea transport for a substantial part of what we consume (in the important areas such as food and fuel let alone other essentials) it seems to me entirely logical that we should have a navy capable of defending our lines of supply against any potential threats to those lines of supply.  And for many years it has been the case that one of the best force multipliers at sea have been aircraft in their various forms - both for defence and offence.   That of course does not ignore the more important questions of providing convoy escorts to protect merchant ships because it has long been shown that they too need aircraft of some form or another while submarines also have their place in that role.

 

Overall the biggest problem our navy faces - standing aside the manpower situation - is a shortage of properly equipped escort ship hulls, lack of longer range offensive weapons to ensure self-protection (meaning also a shortage of submarines), and a lack of air cover while deep sea, and et's not forget our miniscule mine sweeping force - an area which must be regarded as one of the biggest potential threats.  But as a country, where political imperatives forever crop up, it seems we can't have it all - or indeed very much of it so i suppose we ought at least to count our blessings that we've  got some of it.

Generals and admirals are however always preparing for the previous war, and this is an example of that. No-one in the MoD or Admiralty was prepared for the asymmetric wars that resulted from the airplane "bombs" used on the World Trade Centre. Nor come to that was the Pentagon. Or the Kremlin. The result was that America - with Britain in tow - launched two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where easy victories were racked up against conventional enemies but then the wars were eventually lost - yes lost - because the Western forces couldn't handle unconventional enemies. It should be noted as well that those who decry defence spending as waste were unanimous in saying that Britain should not have joined the Americans in their Afghan and Iraq adventures.

A hundred years ago Britain had a War Ministry, government was honest enough to admit their military planning was to equip for aggression overseas. Now we have a war ministry but we pretend it is just for defence. Yet our "defence" includes a nuclear first strike capability and our politicians justify spending a huge chunk of money on the QE carriers because we need to be able to "project power". That is not defence. And is it appropriate when the biggest threat to our seaborne trade today comes from guys in inflatables armed with rocket launchers and handguns?

On land too the serious enemies go into battle in Toyota Landcruisers, and the West try to deal with them using planes. We can shoot them up, but then the survivors end up attacking our shopping centres with small arms and knives.

Threats should be assessed and the armed forces prepared for them. But we are in the 21st century and our military experts are still thinking in 20th century terms.

Note that 158Ts have a narrow gauge version of what's basically a class 150/156 bogie. 

Which is lucky because the 3mm Society have castings of those!

Wim

I always thought that St Pauls might be a good option set in the LCDR/SECR years. As it had an overall roof it wouldn't be necessary to model the actual station beyond the first foot or so and then you could concentrate on the interesting trackwork on the bridge that is now Blackfriars station. That might keep the project within bounds.

Wim

That'll be useful to know when we can finally afford to put planes on the new carriers.

Nostalgia for a huge navy is OK but back when the Royal Navy did really rule the waves teachers in inner-city schools drew "nit lines" on the floor of the classrooms and rickets and TB were common ailments. A bit over a hundred years ago the Daily Mail headed up a campaign that demanded the government built an eighth Dreadnought rather than introduce old age pensions. The USA can afford carriers because it is the world's richest country, China because it thinks as second richest country it should be able to afford them and Russia has them because Putin doesn't give a sh*t about the living standards of ordinary Russians. And us? A Danish politician recently said that Europe is made up of small nations and nations that have yet to realise they are small. I think we know who he was talking about. We are not in the same league as the Americans and Chinese, or perhaps we are in the same league in the same way that St Johnstone is in the same league as Celtic. We are screwing this country because too many of us think we are still a major player in the world  but really, is there any maritime threat to this country which isn't equally a threat to the French, Spanish, Dutch or Norwegians? Germans too given how much of their export trade goes through Rotterdam. Why do we think we have to secure the sea lanes to Britain and Europe on our own?

Sorry, I thought I'd ended up at the Daily Express by mistake

The LMS 4F is now available from the Society

Wim

Could someone explain how this is a railway modelling topic, or are the frigates being repainted GWR chocolate and cream now?

My body kit is 0.4mm brass and the chassis kits 0.5mm nickel but with two pieces per side giving 1mm thick frames, one here for Tri-ang motor/wheels and one for Mashima motor.

 

Garry

Not a thin frame advocate then ;-)

I must say it looks a neat etch. However as N7's didn't run in Thailand I have no use for one.

Wim

PS I was recently given a few Mixed Traffic magazines and read through them with interest but did note on a few occasions how some members found it hard to put together some of the kits. But, I do appreciate there were a lot of nice looking locos completed but the difficulty of some kits, if correct, would put a few people off.

I think I can guess the vintage of those MTs and the kit in question.

When etched brass first became popular there was an idea doing the rounds that all it took was a few clicks on the computer to rescale a kit from one scale to another. With a basic kit that works, with the more sophisticated kits that started appearing in the mid 90s on scaling up was OK, scaling down meant some parts become impossibly small and the more complex assemblies didn't fit. It was overlooked that an etched sheet has three dimensions and the thickness is a factor in how sharp folds can be and how well things like cab sides fit together. A quick and dirty solution is to use thinner metal when shooting down a 4mm or 7mm kit, which sort of works, but really the entire artwork needs review and test. Which is rarely done.

Wim

Wim, I appreciate what you are saying but as far as I know he was not a newbie but was only really interested in Tri-ang and to be told it was no good as such, which gave him the impression the society did not respect it and tried to push it under the table, was not the way to attract a possible new member. Sorry to say but I would have given them a right mouthful if they tried to demean Tri-ang to me.

 

Had someone on the stand done that in my day as Chairman I would have pointed out to them that Second Hand sales funds a lot of the newer stuff the Society produces. It's tricky, because on the other hand the Society does want to promote the scale as a viable option against 2mm FS and EM/P4. One of the challenges of being a Scale Society rather than a gauge society. Another of the challenges is having to maintain and support three wheel standards and the track gauges to match.

Wim

The other comment was repeated from what was written on a Forum page a few months ago.  He never said Tri-ang was the future, (neither have I), but that was just his interest as is mine.  He was quite annoyed to be told that Tri-ang TT was not the option to go with and I would feel the same as we are all individuals doing our own thing.

 

As I said, it depends on the context of the question being asked. If someone goes to the 3mm Society stand at Warley or some other show as a new modeller or is thinking of 3mm scale after experience of other scales then it would be wrong of the Society's representatives to give the impression that starting with an old Triang set would be the way to go. There are sound technical reasons - track and wheel standards, quality of product by modern standards - why that would be starting in the wrong place. Now that is not to say Triang doesn't work, nor that there isn't a strong nostalgic feeling about Triang. Due to 3mm scale's particular history it is easier and cheaper to recreate a nostalgic 1960s layout (which after all is the childhood era of a heck of a lot of us) using Triang TT material than it is with Hornby Dublo say. But the Society has to advise people on how to butcher a PECO HOm point to allow Triang wheels to pass unimpeded, is that advice you'd really want to be giving a newbie?

Wim

I am not too sure about this as I have heard from a couple of people about certain issues/statements made.

1) One person who is in the 3mm society stated that he was not allowed to buy any spares as it was thought he was a dealer and selling them on for profit.

2) Another person stated that when at a large show (I think he said Warley) he was told by the people on the 3mm stand that Tri-ang was no good, out of scale and he should forget about it and be looking at doing the finescale side of 3mm.

 

Without Tri-ang TT, the 3mm society I doubt would have ever existed.

 

Garry

Was the guy a dealer? It is true that the Society has on one or two occasions refused to sell to an individual who they suspect is acting either as a dealer or as a front for a group of modellers. Terry Smallpiece and the others who built up the Society's stock of spares in the 60s and 70s by going round model shops and buying up what they found on dusty shelves were adamant they did this as a service to members and not as a business opportunity, and the present custodians of the secondhand and spares stock continue to respect that attitude.

As for the other comment, what was the context? I was Chairman of the Society for seven years and I regularly had people try to tell me that Triang was the future. Really? Triang TT is 60 year old technology, it was good for the time - it was VERY good for the time - but it is not the future. Even if it does continue to give a lot of people pleasure now.

And without Triang TT there would be no 3mm scale, never mind no 3mm Society.

Wim

For info, the 3mm society once had a member who supplied 5 pole versions of the small TT motor. I have a couple of these and they are truly magnificent. They're no longer available as the person who produced them passed away some decades ago.

IIRC, Model Railways in Cyril Freezer's time had details of folks who could provide 5 and even 7 pole armatures for standard motors circa 1980 or thereabouts.

The 3mm Society also had modern rare earth metal magnets made to replace the old Triang ones. I'm told they're like putting Grandpa on steroids

Wim

TT is still big in certain circles especially since the 3mm society formed but I am not a member and prefer to be a "loner" ................

That "loner" description probably applies to three quarters of the 3mm Society's membership. You may find access to the Society's bits and pieces useful and no-one will try to evangelise you.

Wim

Ah yes, watching the pilot - usually the rustiest GE UM12C on the railway - loose shunting carriages from the Rama I road bridge. Great fun. Nice shots of a rake of the ex-Queensland Railway carriages near the end. An Aussie friend sent me a scan from an old QR stock book which I need to turn into a drawing of the Thai modified version.

Great to see the Thai models. I think I might have got some pictures of the roof of a 158 in Bangkok. I think I got a couple of shots from the bridge where the first couple of clips in this youtube video I found were taken

 

..........

 

Am away at present but will check once home again

Thanks, I'd appreciate that

Wim

Track btw, is PECO code 60 FB rail (sold for OO gauge modellers to model SR third rail electrification) on copper clad sleepers. No cheating and using N gauge track!

Layout is not far enough advanced for photographs as yet. All track is laid and tested and wiring is complete (Don't let anyone tell you DCC is just two wires!) But ballasting is still only half done and ground cover even less. I have three buildings under construction (one of Thonburi station building and one of the Starbucks on Thanon Langsuan ) and am currently working on the station platforms (can't ballast the platform roads until that's done)

Wim

I should share some pics

I started scratchbuilding some vans, but that was too time consuming so my first shortcut was to make a mould of the four wheel van body and cast it in resin.

My first loco was this Alsthom - construction was described in CM

For my next loco I went for a hybrid resin cast/etched brass construction.

This is now completed and fitted with a Loksound DCC chip and speaker

Wim

This is one thread I wish I had known about ages ago, but not being a regular on RMWeb I missed it

My interest is in Thai railways, which I am building to 3mm scale on 9mm gauge track. My layout is based on Bangkok's Thonburi station, though I have no intention of making an exact copy of that. Some of you might have seen the articles I wrote for Continental Modeller a few years ago, which I hope some people will find useful at some point.

At the moment I have a GE 4000 class and an Alstholm completed, with another Alstholm near completion. I also have a couple of third class coaches built and have the etches for another five. I have resin casts for four wheeled freight vans and I have a trio of BCFs as well. I am working on container flats and fuel tankers as my layout also takes in the Khlong Thoei branch to Mae Nam (near the Rama IV road and the Thai boxing stadium in Lumphini), as Thonburi has no freight these days. I'm thinking of calling the layout Maenamburi! I try to avoid scratch building and most of my stuff is etched brass done to my artwork.

The reason I came across this thread is that I have asked someone to do a 3D print job of the Thai 158 (he already does the BR version so it's a mod rather than a complete new item, but the beauty of 3D printing is that mods are relatively simple to do compared to other technologies). What he needs is some pics of the roof in order to get the aircon and other grilles right, so if anyone has any shots of a Thai Sprinter taken from above, can they post them here please?

Thanks

Wim

Probably a good idea to join the 3mm society.....

 

Probably is. If you have done plastic modelling before you'll love all the wagon kits that are available

It's also worth checking the Web for 1:100 figures, cars etc. 1:100 is a scale used by architects to model projects for clients. Bought through architect's suppliers they are expensive but they are often available cheap in bulk over the Internet. The Chinese suppliers do use 1:100 and HO interchangeably so it can be a gamble. I have bought about 500 figures and 100 cars this way.

 Just a minor nit-pick. :-)   The S Gauge Society in the UK changed its name to the S Scale Society a few years ago to reflect the fact that several of its members modelled gauges other than standard gauge - like 5' 3" and 3' 6".  So we are now a scale society. :-)

 

Jim.

I stand corrected, thank you

Does anybody here have experience of either or both? Would you care to comment of the relative merits of either approach? I read variously that 14.2 is actually an equivalent of EM in 4mm and not P4 – is this really the case? If working in 13.5mm are there less wheel sets/kits etc or is that not really a problem since all can be adapted?

 

If working in 14.2mm is the minimum radius extremely generous?

 

Thank you in advance.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread of replies, the 3mm Society is a scale society and not a gauge society. As a result the Society's published wheel and track standards can appear confusing when set against those from P4, S guage or the 2mm Association. The easiest way to pick a way through the undergrowth is to think of the Society's standards being three sets of wheel standards.

The coarsest is the legacy Triang standard, set by Triang over fifty years ago when every railway model manufacturer thought trains were steamrollers on rails. The problem for the 3mm Society is that Triang did such a damn good job at the time making indestructible mechanisms and producing locos, coaches and wagons that were superior to their OO counterparts that a lot of Triang TT is still in use today. However, similarly coarse wheelsets are delivered by Continental TT manufacturers at least until very recently.

The next standard is the Society "Intermediate" standard. Not a very good name as it doesn't convey the fact that this is the more forgiving of the two wheel profiles used by the 3mm Society for the wheels they sell to members to use on the rolling stock they build. In the past wheels have been made to this standard by Chris Hardy, Romford, Kean-Maygib and Alan Gibson. The Sharman Millimetre range also fitted this profile. About four years ago the 3mm Society launched their own SQ (self quartering) range. These have a square axle hole for ease of quartering, and - more importantly - ensuring wheels stay properly quartered. Dimensionally these wheels are about 0.5 mm too wide for exact scale and the flanges are approximately twice as wide and deep as the exact scale equivalent. In proportion these wheels are only slightly coarser than 2mm FS are of a similar fine-ness as 7mm finescale and are a little finer than RP25. Or RP25 as was, the NMRA seem finally to have twigged that RP25 doesn't match their own wheel standards

The Society also drew up a Finescale wheel standard and through the 1990s produced loco and rolling stock wheels to that standard. The full range is still available to Society members. These wheels are correct scale width, albeit that the upper tolerance is about 10% over scale width, but flange width and depth are about 50% overscale.

The fact that 3mm Society finescale wheels are still a little overscale has led some people to propose an S3 standard, one where wheels and track are built to exact scale. The reaction of most 3mm Society members has been along the lines of "best of luck with that" and certainly the Society, nor anyone else, has not delivered any product to that standard.

All three wheel profiles have been used on different gauges

The legacy Triang profile, and its modern commercial TT relations, is really only for 12mm gauge though back in the 1980s a layout appeared in the model press where Triang wheels had been pushed out to allow the rails to be set 14.2mm apart. That approach is not recommended by the Society.

The Intermediate profile is intended for 12mm gauge though the Society will sell axles for the SQ wheels that allow them to be used on 13.5mm or 14.2mm gauge track. Track standards have to be tweaked however, flangeways widened, so that these wheels can pass through crossings. I personally have built a small test track with three points to 13.5mm gauge and using Intermediate profile wheels and it seems workable.

The finescale profile has been used with 12mm gauge but most of those who use the FS wheels also use an exact scale track gauge - 14.2 mm for standard gauge, 15.75mm for Irish broad gauge and 21mm for Brunel's broad gauge. George Mitcheson was building an ambitious 13.5mm gauge layout using the finescale wheel profile on his stock but I believe a change in circumstances has meant this project has been shelved.

As to what works, the best thing is probably to view some of these layouts at shows. At the Crawley MRS show this weekend there were examples of 12mm gauge using Intermediate standard wheels (Paul Hopkins' Redford Junction and Tony Briddon's Bilton Goods), 14.2 mm gauge using finescale wheels (Peter Bossom's Whatlington and the Croydon MRS' Hemyock) and 15.75 mm gauge using FS wheels (Ballyconnell Road). All fine layouts demonstrating what is possible in 3mm scale.

There will be similar pods of 3mm scale layouts at Wells and Warley later this year, showing the different ways of modelling in the scale and in October, in conjunction with Worsley Works there will be a 3mm scale only show in Kidderminster.

Hope this helps

3mm Society Chairman