Chris Higgs

We seem to have heard this before. I do hope we are not about to witness Class17gate all over again. Chris

Instructions are in VAG files area now. Please read - Richard this means you :-) Chris

I expect you have been brainwashed by Tim into thinking all great layouts must take 30 years to build. (he is of course wrong, the truly great take more than 50). Or just waiting for Easitrac to come along? Chris

That bus is a bit unlikely for the early 70s, though. Chris

Here's a quick tip I don't put in the instructions. The quickest way to cut the spacers to length is with a Xuron track cutter and file smooth. Beats cutting them with a saw. Chris

Hint: in this case, you will need to read them. There is one part that must be done in exactly the specified order, otherwise it goes horribly wrong. Chris

These went to Shop 2 Friday. I still need to write the instructions though. Chris

Dapol use three different factories, and I suspect this lies at the bottom of what we see. I suspect the factories tell Dapol how the design details will be, rather than the other way around. And if when you come back for more there is no capacity to make it , that's the end of it. I was quite disappointed by my Dapol 121 which everyone seemed to be raving about. It's bogies sideframes are way more chunky than they need to be. And the windows have a far more prismatic effect than other manufacturers seem to manage. Bachmann on the other hand own a factory as I understand it. Chris P.S: I am very happy with may latest modern EMU though, an 8 car unit manufactured by Hornby in N. I will leave you to work that out.

Farish do that (churn out 40 year old models). Whether they should is another question.

Probably a step too far. Might as well build the David Eveleigh kit if I want an accurate model. Chris

I found to my horror that I owned one of those later GPs. I have a whole box of the plastic version in my attic, but I also have now a metal one whjich came as a job lot on ebay with a J94 body that I did want. The funny thing is, I picked it up and realised functionally it would make an ideal 2mm loco! It weighs a whole lot and have acres of space inside for a Mashima motor. Think I might design it an 0-8-0 chassis to counteract all these teeny-weeny things that are everyone else's taste in locos. Should make a change as I can put the wheels where I like to suit the gears rather than the usual palava of having to match a published drawing. MR design for a hump-shunter for Toton yard? Or perhaps not... Also measured the 'J69' and was surprised it was not as distorted as I thought. Tanks are too high and long, but not by much. The body itself is actually not as wide as it should be for a J69, so it could even take some side overlays. Chris

You may be interested to know that three new Association cattle wagon kits have been ordered from the etchers and should be in the shops in a month or so. 1. GNR/early LNER 2. late LNER 3. late LMS (also a BR diagram). Probably only the first is in period for your layout though. Chris

With your choice of metric gears, you need 1 each of muffs 3-102a and 3-102b. The other two axles you can put on what you wish as they have no gears, so 3-100 woud be fine. If using imperial gears (64DP), you would need 2 x 3-101 and 2 x 3-100. 3.-157 is the correct frame spacer as it is the one used with thin etched frames. 3-156 is for those who still build locos by cutting out frames from thicker material themselves. Chris

No, they had some lines built to 9.42mm gauge but with the point flangeways set such that N gauge stock could pass through. And there were practically no points on those lines anyway. They also used Code 55 rail instead of Code 40 to give extra depth for the bigger N gauge flanges that were used in those days. If it was built today they would just have used Easitrac. Chris

No. Assuming we are talking about the later GP tank, a monstrous carbunkle of a thing that looks like it accidently wandered off a TT layout. They are dirt cheap on ebay as they represent nothing real at all. The chassis from these was/is used under the 94XX tank, for which it was also incorrect. The earlier GP tank was a sort of variant on a J69, and there is a chassis in preparation for the J69 which will also fit this. Chris

I didn't do the 14 because I thought someone else (presumably you) had already done it. Otherwise it certainly would have been on my second list as a useful industrial. I had been given the impression (no idea by who) that it was already finished and ready to go. Chris

I am doing two things in this regard: 1. Ordering replacement etches of the assembly jigs only for these three locos. 2. Checking whether the chassis will build OK as is - for the more impatient! Notwithstanding remarks on the VAG, I found that the test etches of both J94 and 03 built OK, which is why I did not spot the error at the time. This was because although the axle rods were going through the jig at an angle, the two frames were still held square to one another and so soldering up true. The slots in the jig, which are primarily there to hold the frames at the correct width were wide enough to accomodate the fact that the frames were not actually quite vertical in the slot. I have to test whether that is still true in the production etches, which were etched with a different company. Unfortunately I have to attend a funeral today, and so will not have time to investigate until tomorrow at least. Those using the old fashioned method of assembly with the Association jig (3-270) won't be affected by the issue. Chris

18" is probably the absolute minimum you could get away with, and on a gradient - well I would try out a test. I don't think there are any layouts out there that have this combination. 24" radius would be better. Chris

Not wanting to get too involved as I am just a 3mm dabbler, but I do model in P4 and 2mmFS. It seems to me that the theoretical S3 outlined does differ from 2mmFS in a key dimension - that of flange depth, and there it differs by 40%. Knowing that P4 mostly needs compensation or springing with a 0.37mm flange depth, I really do wonder whether a 0.3mm deep flange would stay on the track, especially on anything but the most generous curves. And I suspect nobody has actually tried? I have a P4 layout with 5' radius curves and it needs checkrails to keep the stock on, even with compensation. Don't want to say never, as they said just the same about P4, but it does seems to me that some dimensions can really only scale down so far before things like dirt on the wheels become significant. Having said all that, I have never seen a connection between the flange depth and everything else in track/wheel standards. I have often wished I had some wheels that were P4 for everything except a having deeper flange. Incidentally, your figure for P87 flange depth is incorrect. It should be 0.35mm (actually the spec says 0.31-0.35mm). Chris

My favourite tools are 1. Small pair of watchmaker's pliers. I only seem to need the one pair which I inherited from my Dad. My kids will tell you what a stink there is when they have been lifted without permission from my workbench. 2. Top of the range needle files. Worth every penny. 3. RSU 4. Mole wrench. Does everything else around the house and even finds a few uses in 2mm modelling. 5. CAD software Piercing saw was lost years ago. No idea where it is. Chris

0.25mm (10 thou) like everything else in 2mm! I did the Association 08 kit frames in 15 thou, which wrorked well, however the finer parts - brakes and rodding - won't come out in that thickness. And creating a chassis with two different thicknesses is a logistical nightmare. If 10 thou is good enough for the maestro Bob Jones, it's good enough for me. Build the 03 first, the 08 is more challenging. Not much room for the outside frames (it's that issue with overwidth wheels and true-scale track gauge, Natalie) and you have to get those outside cranks right. Chris

Best to say accurately drill. I have had a few tribulations with gear meshing over the years, which is why I etch all my stuff now. Not to mention no need to cut out stuff with a piercing saw, at which I was also rubbish. I can build one of these chassis kit from its parts in an hour (excluding the brake gear). Ok, I've had a bit of practice. Everything from then on is the stuff you have to do for every loco, kit or scratch built. Quartering the wheels, fitting the coupling rods, getting everything running smoothly. Chris

Well there almost certainly will be a clearance issue. In 2mmFS, we have to move the effective centres of the cylinders outwards to clear the coupling rods and valve gear behind. This is normally done subtly by placing the hole and slots for the slidebars off-centre in the outside cylinders. These issues tend to arise more with etches shot-down from larger scales where these specific dodges have not been designed into the kit. Cutting off the splashers and moving them marginally outwards is an absolute pain. Even in P4, often the front crankpin often has to be omitted to avoid fouling the valve gear. The fact that the 3mm Socieity now do moulded track for 13.5 I think shows it has caught on. Or alternatively one well-heeled devotee stumped up the money to produce it. :-) Chris

Well, yes and no. They have built a high speed route from Brussels to Liege (near where I live). It is little used by high speed trains, a bit more so by conventional trains using a non-stop route which cut half and hour off the trip. Even these only run twice an hour each way, so hardly releasing loads of extra capacity on the conventional route. The extra 15 minutes reduction in travel time by going in the Thalys just isn't worth the extra money they want. I cannot see that it has paid for itself, or ever will. So NIMBys or not, these thing do actually have to make economic sense. To be honest the minutes saved London-Birmingham really don't impress me that much, It is when you start to talk about Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow it begins to add up. So if they only intend to build to Birmingham I would forget it. It needs to be part of an overall strategic vision for a national network, as it was in France. I somehow wonder if that is really the case in the UK. It certainly won't help anyone in Caridff or Exeter. Chris

My understanding is this. Although 14.2mm is almost exactly the correct scaled-down track gauge, unlike P4 where everything is just scaled down, including loco wheel widths, flange depths etc. the 3mm version does not do this, with a more pragmatic set of other standards. That, as it does in 2mm Finescale, produces a side effect that overall widths of wheelsets is overscale, and hence you get issues with things like splasher widths, clearances behind outside valve gear and so on. Using 13.5mm gauge (which is the same in 3mm scale as 18mm i.e. EM is in 4mm scale) gives a good solution to these issues. 12mm is just the track gauge of continental TT, and like OO in 4mm scale, is what the commerical manufacturer at the time (Triang) decided on when they produced commerical stuff way back when. Use a British scale for the locos but a continental scale for the track. It lives because it's what most people still choose to use. As in 4mm scale, the three track gauges are not going to go away. Unlike 4mm scale, there is no war going on about them. Chris