Simond

There’s a lot of low cost opportunity, by searching the cheap bins at shows, and being careful on eBay. 00 is relatively easy, 0 is certainly possible. I would not discount DC in any way, but given the prevalence of digital items in our lives, I suspect any technically minded kid would probably grab DCC with both hands, I certainly would have done, indeed, some 25 years ago, I did! Marry that with laptops, Decoder Pro, Java and Arduinos, and it’s cool geek rather than dad-hobby-geek…. (and directly transferable into academic/work-related skills)

i had a boss like that once…

I encouraged my offspring in the hobby, built them 0 gauge Mavis & Toby locos when they were very little, which they were allowed/encouraged to play with on my, and my pals’ railways (Vmax on DCC is very helpful for young kids), and let them get on with it. Now, neither is even slightly interested, though one has a MSc in Mech Eng, and the other is a few months from her MEng finals. Young sir has developed into a cautious consumer, and is disinclined to make anything, MsD, on the other hand, is quite capable of getting one of my lathes out and making precisely what she needs. Show them the path, if they choose to follow, encourage them. If they choose a different path, get involved, see what they’re doing, it might be fun, and you might learn something. I have.

About 1974, we had a cap inspection at school. We were expected to wear them at all times in uniform outside the school gates until the sixth form. This was late in the fifth. This made us “posh kids” a bit of a target, though I never experienced any issues on my walk to/from school, I know a couple who did, particularly on the bus. “Eeer, where’s your cap, boy?” ”Sorry, sir, I don’t have it any more” ”Why not?” ”I shot it, sir”. (Mirth was heard from the back of the class) ”oh…” funnily enough, the inspection stopped at this point

Hi Steve, Happy New Year to you and the gang! Good to hear of your progress, and looking forward to hearing of your forthcoming new running sessions. Will there be video? atb Simon

Ye gods, what a way to go! Very messy.

Presumably the weird semaphore thing mounted just above the coupling hook.

Bit of a rabbit hole, found a couple of pix with one lamp iron top centre of smokebox, but found this too looks like sockets rather than lamp irons. LNWR style?

As nobody mentioned it, I just have to tell you that the suggested musicians all released versions of Cat Steven’s’ “Peace Train”, which seemed appropriate… Merry Christmas, and a Peaceful, Prosperous, Happy & Healthy New Year to all.

A lovely clip, and exquisite music. As a musical alternative, you might also want to consider Cat Stevens, 10000 Maniacs, or even Dolly Parton… A Merry & Peaceful Christmas to all

ah, thanks, hadn’t spotted that! still made me smile. Small things, I suppose :) Merry Christmas!

Then I noticed this, which raised a smile. the url is in lower case as expected, but the tab name (which I assume Apple assigned, this is on my iPad) has the “W” capitalised.

Just to be awkward, on the odd occasions that I’m referring to RMWeb in text, rather than verbally, I always type “RMW”. Everyone seems to cope.

This is fantastic! you said “More on that later” referring to painting the brickwork. Do please post on that too! cheers Simon

I’m sure the originals had some variation in colour! Mine is a 58, rebadged and re numbered. Unfortunately, removing the printed logo has left a glossy bit. I should have given it a dose of Matt varnish the other day whilst the airbrush was loaded…

I think for your 2-4-0 you can go beyond 28mm, but it’s a good compromise. I am currently rebuilding an older model of a GW small prairie with 26mm outside the frames, I have fitted Slaters horns. I’ll be putting spacing washers between the axleboxes and the wheels, but it means everything has to be mounted further outboard, brakes, sandboxes and cylinders, to get them where they need to be. Not a problem as I can 3D print what I need, but it seems daft to go narrower than you must. (And the S7 guys know this. Their compromise is the minimum radius of corners their stock can traverse.) As regards calculation, it is possible, with an excel spreadsheet, to work it out, but I could never be bothered to build the spreadsheet, because it’s easy to draw. Easier still on CAD. Draw your coupled wheelbase with your wheels to scale, you need the flanges too. Cut a horizontal section at railhead height, you should have a pair of rectangular-ish shapes for each axle, the flanges are of course coned slightly, and have radii at the outer edge, and the root where the flange and trad meet. Id ignore the radii for this exercise. Then draw your minimum radius (maybe less a little tolerance) so it is tangent to the outside of flanges of the inner wheels at the middle of the wheelbase. Draw the outer rail concentric to the inner, and obviously to gauge. if the outer rail interferes with the flanges (it’ll be the leading edge of the leading axle, and the trailing edge of the trailing axle) you need to allow sideplay. You can measure it off the drawing. Sideplay can be accommodated by having some on each axle, or all of it on the middle, or by doing clever tricks on two axles, and not on the third. on a x-4-x like yours, the sideplay inherent in 0gauge standards will be all you need. I’d recommend 28mm. More is possible but might be tricky, less is simply unattractive imo.

My approach is to standardise on 28mm over the frames. You can go a bit wider if you want, 28.5 is entirely possible and 28.8 might be, depends on the curves you want it to go round, how many axles, how long it is, and so on. For some reason, probably to do with the potential use of coarse scale wheels, the frame widths of older models were typically around an inch. There seems no excuse for this in modern finescale modelling, it looks wrong, even daft, and the S7 boys will be in hysterics. For reference, the GW locos I have recently been working on had real frame spacings of 4 feet and some fractions between the frames, and frames about 1.25" thick - that scales out at 30.11 mm which obviously won't work with standard Slaters wheels which are 29.0 back to back. It'll massivley improve your models if you can get the frames close to the wheels - that's what the real ones look like atb Simon

I doubt the invention of bogie bolsters was the issue, but the availability of suitable lengths of mild steel section from which to make them (economically) might have been the limiting factor. My guess is that wooden solebar bolster wagons were around for a fair old time before steel solebars became the norm.

Pinned, as in a hole in the chassis, and a hole in the bar end, and a pin through it, at each end of each bar. There is no fixing between the bars where they cross. No slack. it’s an “anti-parallel” linkage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparallelogram atb Simon

Much enjoying my Patreon membership. I wish I were better at figure painting. Still, I have the figures on which to practice!

Ta Steve, bit late for me! Simon

Steve, What’s the book, please?

Chris, do have a look on my Porth Dinllaen thread, the loco shed and the coal stage were so treated. (And the brick-built “small office” :) ) They’re are both laser cut MDF, painted with rattle can red oxide primer, then wiped as described. It can be a bit variable, but it largely washes off if it hasn’t dried, so you can play with it to some extent. Most recently I used Wickes ready mixed stuff, but there are lots of options. good luck! Simon

10.5mm is 18”. sounds to me like there was more than one “standard”. :) Adrian Vaughan’s book doesn’t help, without searching the GWRJs I have, I can’t offer further insight. S

I tend to use ready-mix filler (something like Polyfilla, other variants are available) wiped over the brickwork with a sponge, and a couple of moments later, wiped off again with the same sponge soaked and wring out. This technique can leave mortar lines filled, but also seems to give a dead matt finish to the bricks which I find helps enormously.