47137

On 03/01/2016 at 12:00, 47137 said:

The Electrotren coupling pockets droop quite badly (photo posted above). I have added supports with piano wire glued into wooden blocks, the blocks glued onto the steel floor. I couldn't manage to drill holes into the floor:

 

Five and a half years on!

The couplers on this wagon never worked well enough for me. I have just realised, the later Electrotren models with their NEM sockets on cams use exactly the same steel chassis panel with new wheel/coupler assemblies. It is really straightforward to extract the old ones and pop in a pair of new ones:

I am back with Electrotren wheels, but more modern ones, for the time being.

- Richard.

 

Honestly, any PO tank wagon drawings will do. Being more specific though, drawings of tank wagons owned by ESSO or Shell built for Class A and B Liquids would be nice.

You might find the diagram books helpful.

You can find many of these on the web site of the Barrowmore model railway group, for example:

http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/BRBDocuments/BRPOStockP2Issue.pdf

- Richard.

 

Anyone who is interested in this topic and who has not yet got a copy of the volume by R. Tourret may wish to know that brand new / remaindered stock of this book is currently being offered by PostScript Books at just £14.99 (pub. price £33.00); see:

https://www.psbooks.co.uk/Petroleum-Rail-Tank-Wagons

 

Tony

(No connection other than as a long term and very satisfied customer)

 

I picked up a copy last month in City Bookshop of Norwich, just £7.99 remaindered.

The text is dense and I don't think I will ever cope with reading it BUT the book contains hundreds of photographs and diagrams and is worth getting for just these.

- Richard.

I have found a few British H0 building kits in the Gaugemaster range:

GM430 Mortimer station, the former Pola kit

GM480 Teignmouth station, the former Heljan kit

GM481 Teignmouth signal box, another Heljan kit

GM482 Fordhampton goods shed, another Heljan kit

Maybe there are some others lurking on their site?

- Richard.

I wonder, can we use the Roco chassis from their steel carriers as the underpinnings for any British models?

Length over headstocks about 35 ft 4 in (124 mm)

Bogie centres about  22 ft 6 in (79 mm)

The parent models are much too wide for the British outline but the chassis moulding measure only about 32 mm, only a tiny bit excessive and not terribly noticeable. Roco 46941 and 4749 amongst others.

Some nice things about these chassis is they include cams for the coupler pockets and they run well. I am reluctant to let them go but really I ought to find out if I can ever use them.

- Richard.

2 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

 

What made me smile was the contradictory nature of the sporting officialdom, not in anyway, shape or form anything to do with bikini bottoms... (that is a whole set of different reasons for making me smile, which I will not go into here).

Sometimes I want an irony button but not often enough to justify one. Then I try a combination of our notification buttons. Then I end up writing some words - I noticed this too, if there isn't irony here then the officials (at least as reported) are verging on hypocrisy.

- Richard.

On 18/07/2021 at 17:54, ISW said:

I know the feeling. I'd just keep assembling buildings / scenic items that you enjoy and, one day, you'll have an epiphany whereby it'll all find a place on your layout. Main aim, in the meantime, keep enjoying the process.

I have built the Ratio kit for a pump house (or boiler house) to go into the place intended for the mess hut:

The kit windows are printed onto acetate like a card kit so I went for the blocked-up look. The steps are Pikestuff ones for H0. The model is standing on a patch of foam board to let it hide an unwanted detail in the backdrop.

There is a brick-built goods shed in the backdrop behind the tram platform, hopefully the pump house helps to connect this to the modelled part of the layout:

At the moment I imagine a security fence going all around the pump house.

This gets me to a good stopping point for a short while. I have built and painted all of the buildings for the layout except a couple of silos. The sensible thing to do now is the ground works and ballasting ... and I want to revisit my trains, and indeed some other interests like photography.

- Richard.

There are a couple of the Alexander Models kit for the USATC S100 on eBay, price seems reasonable:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143993755740?hash=item2186b2585c:g:RYcAAOSw54JgZHcD

- Richard.

The longer I leave this the more embarrassing it will become, but I did buy a Roco ferry wagon from him a couple of years ago. I paid him the £28 he wanted, most UK dealers would have asked barely half this but I had been looking for ages and never found one. It turned up in perfect condition, it was advertised as used but it looked like it had only been taken out of its box for photographs, never run on a layout.

So - I got my wagon, and a tidy example too, but this would be a bad habit to get into. It would spoil the hobby for me and I wouldn't recommend it. Maybe he is shrewd enough to know, a woman buys two things at half price because they are a bargain. A man buys one thing at double price because he wants it. And most of his model train buyers are men.

- Richard.

I have been giving Fairport a minor overhaul. It had got very dusty (in spite of the lighting rig / lid above it) and the crane had got broken.

So I have worked over every surface and nook and cranny with a vacuum cleaner, a soft brush and a blow gun, and then the vacuum again. I have removed the silver birch tree and the fruit tree to use on another project. The layout doesn't really look as though anything is missing. So maybe these were too much detail in such a small space. I have also put the crane back together.

Here is a photo from this morning, this layout is I suppose "finished" but it is a nice place to pose models for photos and it is also of course the furthest destination on my railway:

I like the effect from the mirror here.

The layout now has ladies' scarf, a long narrow one, to hang across the front to try to reduce the dust. Bought in the charity shop where I work, this is cheaper than buying fabric from the haberdashery stall in the market.

- Richard.

12 hours ago, polybear said:

It occurred to me that the wisdom, skill and knowledge of Gordon will continue to live on, in part at least, thru' his Eastwood Town thread.....

Thank you, Gordon.

38 minutes ago, Dragonboy said:

That would be fantastic but unless Andy York pins this to the top of the page - maybe with an introduction, then I’m afraid it will just fall down the listings  much as Tetley’s Mills has done.

If I mention Andy like this @Andy Y maybe he will pass by here. Pinning the topic would be a marvellous tribute to Gordon.

- Richard.

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

If he destroys cranes, no wonder the neighbours kick him out.  He looks a bit of a character!

Harry is allowed everywhere in my house except the hobby room and he knows this. One day he made his way onto the window sill and got stuck in the blinds:

I ended up clearing much of the bench to get him out, this was when I noticed the crane. He doesn't try to get into trouble, he just does. He is good company around the place, really his most annoying habit is walking around my legs in figure of eight patterns when I am using the toilet. No decorum whatsoever.

- Richard.

The layout progress is faltering. When I was 7 years old I had a cardboard baseboard for my Lego and I arranged loads of new layouts on this:

I am in the same mindset here: I do not want to stick anything down. And leaves me with little new to write about the project. I have painted my BYA wagons, see

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/67-how-realistic-are-your-models-photo-challenge/&do=findComment&comment=4510994

and a second post today.

I am having a go at the Ratio 508 pump house/boiler house. The idea is to put this in place of the Faller hut, to provide a bit of older architecture to connect the foreground to the images in the backdrop.

- Richard.

Thanks for encouragement a few posts above, here is another go.

A BYA with its original cover latches still in place stands at Fairport awaiting inspection:

One of the foot steps shows some impact damage, perhaps there has been a collision with a road vehicle.

- Richard.

Postscript. The crane looks ok in daylight but a bit fresh here. I have just given it a minor rebuild after Harry gave it a strength test. Only two joints came apart. Harry belongs to my neighbours but spends his time with me whenever they kick him out

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

It’s good enough for this topic; I can see nothing that gives the game away that this is a model.  

Many thanks. I am actually rather pleased with this as a model.

- Richard.

On 24/06/2021 at 10:25, BernardTPM said:

Corrugated iron roof and it could become a village hall or Scout hut maybe?

On 24/06/2021 at 11:51, Ben B said:

Same as Bernard, I saw that and thought 'scout hut'. Our group have stopped in many like that one over the years.

My intended "mess hut" now has an iron roof with shallower eaves and looks a lot more British:

It would indeed be a good sports pavilion or village hall, but for another layout.

I am still with Tamiya paints.

- Richard.

John @Allegheny1600  told me about Lincoln Locos a while back, and I have just received their print of a Wickham railbus:

This seems pretty fabulous to me. It really does look like an injection moulding, with none of the stepped surfaces and surfaces like sandpaper I have experienced on prints from other sources. The length is spot-on for the 38 feet of the prototype, and the shape of the bodysides looks just right to me too although I realise this isn't terribly obvious in my photo.

Lincoln Locos design and produce their prints for 3mm scale; they did me this as a one-off for H0:

https://lincoln-loco.co.uk/

Usual disclaimer.

- Richard.

12 hours ago, Les1952 said:

 

Not having had mine apart I suspect the full width splasher hides the gears.  I may be wrong.....

 

Les

 

I didn't dismantle mine any further, but there is a gear in there. There is a longitudinal shaft driving both of the driving wheels.

(Sorry I clicked the 'agree' button but realised this was ambiguous)

- Richard.

Masks are social badges to let people show they care. They might as well wear a green lanyard or a poppy. A double jab is hugely more effective.

If show organisers want to do something useful they could keep the windows open and admit only adults. And if they wish to impose rules on visitors e.g. time limits or compulsory mask wearing, they need top make this clear in their pre-show advertising not at the door.

- Richard.

16 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

That looks a bit too short to me - no buffer locking?

Yes and no - depends what I try to couple it to.

It is ok coupled to a loco - but only because all of my 00 locos are 4- and 6-coupled things with the back of the Kadee knuckle forward of their buffers.

Example on no.2 radius, the well tank has a no.19 coupler:

It would be sensible to put the screw further along the tail of the coupler, but this is my only 00 bogie coach.

Edit: I know this makes my layout look ridiculous. More representative photos here:

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/152888-shelf-marshes-first-attempt-at-a-cameo-layout/&do=findComment&comment=4473124

- Richard.

This looks rather good.

I wonder if the larger axle support could be usefully integrated into the beam, offset a little from the middle? And above this, a bracket to hold one of the miniature coreless motors which seem all the rage in RTR at the moment?

Doing this would allow for an 0-4-0 or 0-6-0. If the beam were to be long enough, the driven axle of an 0-6-0 could be the centre axle or one of the outer axles.

Do remember, the wheels of H0 locos are smaller than those of 00 ones. So the gear on the driven axle may be quite small. We might need an idler between this gear and the worm.

You must let us know how the test sample works out.

- Richard.

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

Vaccines will provide some protection but as we know it is not 100%.  So the question as Harry puts it:  Are you feeling lucky punk, well are you?

I would like to factor in the location of the first show I attend. For example at the charity shop, the rate of infection in the district is currently around 1 in 1,200 not 1 in 260.

The true infection rate of people at a hypothetical show near here is going to be even lower than 1 in 1,200 because the show won't attract people from the demographic groups who refuse vaccination. So say, 1 in 1,500.

As a male under 60 (just), my probability of death unjabbed might be around 1 in 1,000, reducing to say 1 in 10,000 now I am double-jabbed.

So may 1 in 15 million? Here, I would feel lucky.

Then again, supposing the infected person happens to be an exhibitor and I visit every display including theirs for fifteen minutes. This is the worst case I can imagine. The odds get a lot worse, but - well - I would still feel safer than sitting for 30 minutes in a peak-time commuter train, or (as is happening at the moment) a train full of rowdy football fans. I think I would trust the people around me. I may be a bit misguide to say this, but I would be able to feel safe at such a show.

- Richard.