GER_Jon

The answer is that the tool is not gauge specific. Gauge is set using a separate button gauge or calipers or as per personal choice. Jon (shop 3)

The Locomotive magazine is another source of fascinating info on pre grouping topics and available from the GER society as a cd. I don't know if other line societies do this as well? Cheers Jon

At this rate I expect the track will be laid by sunday😀

I've always wanted to do this sort of layout after seeing those articles (the oval one as well). There's also a brilliant 3mm Irish layout balyconnel road? I've seen that one live. My version if ever made would probably be based on Widford from the Buntingford branch.

Finally an update on the tram - it now runs! much fiddling required. No pick up through wheels so took them out and replaced Simpson springs one of which had broken. I used an old coupling spring as shown in Nick Mitchell's jubilee videos although it might be even thinner wire. Certainly they are not straight, I fitted them on the outside of the chassis between wheels and chassis so they probably run the wheel backs as well as the axle. Then we had another breakdown due to one spring breaking. At this point only three wheels conducted so the assumption is the wheels are isolated from the axles. A new spring got us going again. I won't remove the wheels for testing individually until the next breakdown as I'm worried about the bending apparent in the frames from all the fiddling. The wheels were bought 7 years ago so don't know if there was an issue then with some 6mm discs? In my capacity as shop 3 custodian I tested a sample of 10 wheels from current stock with my multimeter and all conducted perfectly. Next onto weighting the body.

Hi Jim the motor died but the worm is proving difficult to remove and I'm concerned about damaging the gearbox. However one solution might be to modify the chassis and use the new brass 30:1 gearbox. I have a 2-4-2 chassis from n brass to complete and am planning to use this to test the direct 30:1 drive with a 7mm motor that should give me enough experience to know which option to try on the 0-6-0. As for the tram even when loaded with weight it doesn't respond well on the rolling road I use. The weight may of course be causing a different issue distorting the chassis and causing shorting somewhere. My approach to this will be finishing the body to get a final maximum balanced weight then hopefully optimising the chassis. With such a small wheelbase this chassis might not be true enough to work well it was another built when I was still learning to solder. However,i have confidence that it can be sorted eventually!

Big gap in reporting because the 0-6-0 chassis completely died. I think I got overconfident in changing motor so considering whether to dismantle and completely rebuild. However I do have a second unstarted kit so I might build that and then finish the first one when I have a working one which might help understand what's wrong with the original. Also the tram chassis is puzzling, everything works with direct power to the frames but the wheels seem insulated from the chassis (they do conduct individually) I have got Simpson springs fitted. Currently wheels are out while I try cleaning up the bearing holes. As a relaxation from the above I've resurrected a Bill Bedford UFO etch for completion!

David Eveleigh got a query asking if the K9 could be used with a Dapol 14xx chassis. David doesn't do n gauge so here it is Shows the 2mm vs n gauge issue maybe exacerbated by Dapol manipulating dimensions for production needs.

Or this waiting patiently in the queue

It's done - I'm the secretary of BMRC and the only 2miller despite best efforts! BTW your bits are in the post. Cheers Jon

Had a good session yesterday on this project. The unusual aspect of fitting the body to the chassis is that the top of the chassis frames dont sit directly under the body frame. THe body has a frame level with the bottom of the doors which I measured as approx 6mm above the pcb spacers at the ends. So I found some baseboard reject plywood (ex Tim Horn) which were 6mm and made a couple of wooden "risers". Different dimensions each end due to the gear tower. Tufnol might be better but at least wood is a non conductor and also a renewable resource!!! If I make another one of these I would create tufnol spacers to replace the pcb screwed into the chassis as this does not show due to the loco design. The rear riser is drilled out for the 12BA fixing screw to pass through and so: As you can see form the side it does look like you can see the boiler as in the real machine. I have started on the footstep enclosures since doing these photos but will leave you with a size comparison shot: This shows the tram compared to the Australian Tar wagon and one of the original Matthieson wagons. Looks like it needs OHLE wires to run😀

As promised some chassis shots unfortunately I only have the one loco so cant reconstruct the build process - here is the basic shape before folding (taken from instructions) I've "cleaned" it up a bit in paint. The key points to watch out for are clearance from the 37T gear to the pcb at the front and the clearance of the 21T skew gear on the back pcb. In these photos both look like they are touching but in fact they have a sufficient clearance. The front required a lot of filing which would have been avoided by a dry run with the gears and pcb components. We dont supply the 100DP gears anymore so I dont know how easy it is to get any. I suppose a flat plate could be soldered onto the front of the gear tower and a completely new combination created to use M0.3 gears. So here are four pictures covering the key angles noting that I bent the forward support on the motor mount when squeezing in the worms it should be square! This does look like an alien bug from outer space perhaps a companion in Dr Who!!!!! (K9 is coming later)

Hi Kevin I'll take some detail photos tomorrow but it's basically built exactly as per design the tricky bit is getting the axle steel through the two worms without crushing anything! mine is in two bits but you could use three lengths. Depending on how careful you are with soldering the PCB spacers the 37T gear may catch so filing is required guess how I know that😀. Cheers Jon

Summer is a busy time and I hadn't noticed how long since I posted. So the S56 has had the cab beading replaced with thin electrical wire so is now waiting for footsteps prior to painting and then as per Jim Watts advice final details glued on. I have also been fiddling with the chassis. The two bits went out to the inaugral Norfolk area group meeting but were not run as I havent fetled the insulated fitting of the two components. In our part of the world that was the hottest day but we had a great time. The next distraction was the arrival of shop 3 following my promotion to the big league - its an enormous collection of tiny bits and I'm nearly in control of things! 2/3 of the shop is now towering over my workbench the rest on shelves elsewhere: Probably a million widgets in there but it means when I need to order a part delivery is quite quick 😀 Ignoring the plan of not being distracted I have started on finishing my G15 0-4-0 loco (LNER Y6) so that I have something new for the 2nd Norfolk AG meet, like the S56 some bits had been done. So in a couple of hours I got to this stage The chassis uses two 21:1 100DP worms (one on each axle) plus 37T and 18T 100DP gears to give an overall 43:1 reduction. The chassis has a motor cradle for a 10mm motor eg the Nigel Lawton type (etch designed in 2005) but I have used a 7mm motor 3-242 (cut off one shaft to fit) and had to put a 3D print mount to get the height aligned. The 1.0mm to 1.5mm shaft adapter is long enough to support the muff with gear and engage the bearing in the gear tower. The black marks on the wheels are to help see when the wheels are turning during manual operation. I'm hoping that the motor will look like the loco boiler when viewed through the side windows! Its worth noting that you could now, when using the small motors, lower the motor into the etched motor mount by re designing the gears (14T / 28T ?) and re siting the gear tower bearings. Then a nice cosmetic boiler could be added made from lead!!! to give some weight which I think is going to be a fun part of this build.

Certainly a grand day out and credit to Richard for getting it organised. Plenty to discuss and some neat ideas shared -who would have thought a balsawood baseboard would work so well.

Despite the lack of updates things have still been happening - the chassis has soldered on crankpins and should be finished but I think I've discovered that the can motor was more powerful than the new slimline ones and that power was disguising an issue in the build. There may still be a dismantling to come. I want to persevere with the small motor as it makes weighting the body a lot easier so I'm going to finish the body and come back to the chassis when I've had a chance to run the "finished" item. On the body I decided to take off the cab beading as it had started to look too overscale this means I have a difficult jigging job to do to get in and solder the thinner wire. Basically I have been whittling a wooden peg to fit in the cab and provide a flat surface to press against. All will be reveled soon when I get going this saturday. I have succesfully ressurected a couple of very old farish n gauge locos and chassis for the grandsons enjoyment so something working has appeared in the last month.

I'm in Norfolk but its a big place - I live in the basement of Shop 4 near the North Norfolk Coast so its miles to anywhere except the nearby places. 🙂 If only the M&GN was still running. I used to enjoy the Darkest Essex meetings when I lived in that area, so a reasonably local group would be good. I have noticed that none of the smaller scale societies seem to have area groups out here but the O gauge do - not sure why that is. Cheers Jon

The answer is they both stopped working for no reason. I planned to solder the crankpins on the chassis as it seemed ok and I could then fix footsteps on the body and do running tests but a quick attempt at running before doing it gave no response from the motor so I checked for shorting with the multi meter not the problem, unsoldered the wires from the chassis - nothing. Finally removed the motor from the worm and mounting with some gentle persuasion and suddenly the motor works - I was convinced it had died. So reassemble it then - except no sign of any epoxy to stick the shaft to the worm adapter. Had to order some. No idea what the root cause was the gears move manually without the motor in so hopefully once refitted the whole thing will work. Thats two sessions of modelling passed by. The owner of the Paw Patrol racing circuit is still waiting for the car to be fixed although I think that may be more difficult probably due to the very cheap manufacture might have to pimp it up with the old CAN motor from the S56 chassis and see what happens !!!!

Following a 10 day lull here is a Saturday night quiz question: Apart from the prototype livery what do these two have in common?

Parcel arrived from shop 3 so worm fitted - the photo shows an axle steel in one end and the 0.8mm to 1.5mm adapter fitted at the motor end. Despite appearances the fit was level. At this stage the worm turned the wheel nicely when rotated by hand using the axle. Motor fitted and conected the motor is fixed to the mount with double sided tape to make it easily adjustable. as a reminder this was the situation when I started out on this thread: Clearly a lot better in terms of size and therefore room in the body for DCC chip if required. The original CAN motor does fit but is the maximum size useable. I need to run in the new motor so far I have connected power directly to the chassis to make sure it runs ok although given how easily the worm turns the wheels manually the motor drive is possibly not quite right.

Things took an unexpected turn. When I started to do the final fitting of the chassis and body I wasn't happy with the fit of the body round the motor so after some thought I decided to take the flat can motor off and try the new association 6mm dia motor. First I fitted a 3d motor mount then tried the motor for size of course despite having an adaptor for the 0.8mm shaft to fit 1.5mm worms my worm is 1.0 mm. I have plenty of spare worms but all 1.0mm, so an order has gone in for loco bits. No doubt the new motor will work fine space wise when fitted. I also ordered the 7mm version of the new motor for comparison. So the rest of the weekend will be spent on UFO coach finishing.

Hi David Yes the kit comes with replacement cab front and back plus later style roof to give LNER look by using these and leaving off the number plate. I managed to get an LNER back with GER front originally - now rectified! Also I think you can omit the condensing gear and westinghouse pump to make the LNER shunting version. Cheers Jon

More progress, condenser fittings and tank fillers fitted. Tanks fillers are N Brass and the condenser pipes are made from copper recovered from electrical cables which matched the size on the drawings. I might do footsteps before I attach the tank vents as they are a bit thin. Have also decided to leave handrails and westinghouse pumps off until basic painting done. Home alone for a few days so should(!!) be close to painting by monday next.

Recreating the earlier pose

I planned to put the westinghouse pump on today but couldnt see how to configure the nice brass one from N Brass so have decided to use a 3d printed one I have and will put it on after finishing with the soldering iron. So next up do the boiler furniture starting with the whistle - soldering this desoldered the boiler 😬 at the cab end so after refixing this bit I decided to superglue the rest on. Considering I have previously glued all of my fingers together accidently with the glue I use (acetone is the cure) I just struggled to get the bits to set. Eventually the result is this: Noticing that fighting to get the boiler refixed I've squeezed one of the cab handrails. I hope to file the chimney flare down somewhat and also further drill out the chimney top. I really feel like this is going to be completed!