brack

Cork, Brandon and south coast.

Just to clarify - there's nothing wrong with buying something and running it if it puts a smile on your face, but I suspect there's a lot of people put off building kits or bashing/modifying rtr because it's very pricey and because unless you're very good you're likely not going to be able to match the standard of finish. How does someone get better if they haven't got a hope when they start or can't spend a 3 figure sum to chop it up when it arrives? I'm not speaking as if I'm better at this either - just I mostly model stuff that there's no kit or rtr model for. I'll happily admit that there's detail and finish on current 4mm rtr that I'd not attempt to match in 7mm narrow gauge stuff.

But that sounds right to me - it's a good model, runs well and is generally accurate and more reasonably priced than usual rtr offerings. Plus it allows people to improve/detail it if they so choose - that opportunity to do a little something to lift your model above the mass produced crowd is pretty much gone with current top line rtr production as they're very very good indeed. To me this reduces the opportunity for actual modelling and makes many people collectors.

The GWR ones they chose to keep (as opposed to work to death and then throw away) lasted until well into BR days. Just because Thompson chose to rebuild something doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad loco (and they were nearly 30 years old at that point), Looking at the stuff they produced themselves I don't think that LMS loco policy in the 20s is any guide to how good a design is. Those that went to Australia and China certainly lasted long enough. about 100 of them saw military service in WW2 as well - if they were awful, they'd have requisitioned something else. They lasted pretty well for a 1911 design - over 50 years of service. It isn't much of a surprise that they were surpassed by stuff 20 years later in design, but they were solid and dependable enough to select as the ROD loco in the first place and to keep them around for a half a century.

Loads of narrow gauge locos both pre and post preservation - ex ww1 allied and axis 60cm designs, ng15 and ng16s in Wales, significant parts of the roster at welshpool and Brecon mountain, o&k 040wt and 060wt. Given that the majority of locos currently running on what was BR were built elsewhere this thread could run a while.

The motor/gear combination will work fine. In 2013 I produced a 3D printed Y7 body/chassis kit in 00 scale which used this as a drive system: The large round boss was removed from the gear with a hacksaw as I didnt have any lathe or pillar drill at the time. The bevel Gears I bought were 3mm bore, so I reamed the axle gear out by hand to 1/8". After chopping it up with a hacksaw and opening the hole out with cutting broaches, it ran perfectly well. The finished model was certainly capable of pulling stuff - I put 800g of lead on top of a Bachmann 16t mineral and the loco could move it without trouble (and surprisingly the wagon survived unscathed too!). One thing I would say is that the gearmotors are available in a variety of gear ratios and voltage ratings. Whilst I suspect that the claimed voltage rating may not make any difference, I did find one that said 12V on the listing. I did use a 298:1 ratio just for fun, and I'd say that was probably somewhat too high! Turning the controller up didn't make much difference to the speed past a certain point, just made it slightly noisier. I reckon a ratio somewhere between 50:1 or 150:1 ought to be sufficiently slow for any normal persons slow running preference. The loco was pretty quiet at low speeds, and even at full pelt the noise was a) not very loud at all and b) principally down to running a gearmotor with a high reduction - I couldn't discern much difference in noise between running the motor on the bench and running motor+bevel gears in the chassis. Please don't take this as me trying to advertise my design on someone else's thread (I'm hardly a commerical operator, and there's only been 4 of these sold in 5 years), or boasting about trying these gears/motors a while back - my point is that I, with rudimentary tools and skills made it work well and it was a robust, practical and economical means of driving a model - easier than assembling a gearbox. Whilst these motors are very good (and I have a few more in stock that I'll use in future) there are smoother, better gearmotors available from china for under £10 (I have some lovely buhler and escap ones) which could be used with the same gears (but which are somewhat longer - they wouldn't have fit in the Y7 without encroaching into the cab). If you wanted a UK supplier for the 3mm bore gears I think I might have got some from motionco at some point: http://www.motionco.co.uk/pair-bevel-gears-mod16-bore-p-146.html I also have several sets of tiny 1.5mm bore bevel gears which came from gizmoszone: http://www.gizmoszone.com/shopping/agora.cgi?product=Other_gear&user4=Miter_gear;ppinc=1a those are for some O9 stuff where the white plastic 8.7mm diameter bevels won't fit between the frames. Hope you don't think I'm stepping on your toes Mr Edge

GNR(I) no.s 131 and 171, 131 has just been restored, 171 has run plenty in the past, not sure on current situation.

A fair point, a good job the rivers were 2-3 tons lighter than a black 5 to start with...

Just pressing the existing boiler (or a slightly beefier constructed one of similar design) from its 160lb to nearer the 225lb of a black five and it'd probably have proved a stronger loco. Funnily enough (in light of comments regarding our export designs and private builders) they were rumoured to have been based on a NBL design for the BB&CI

If only they could unrebuild the ge4/4 I. Great museum - I believe you get a discount with your Swiss pass (it used to be free with the pass).

Had slavery caused or catalysed the industrial revolution, then it would have occurred in Portugal or Spain first, or perhaps in France. Britain's advantage in trade didn't come from slavery, nor particularly a plantation system which wasn't massively different from the French one. Our advantage in trade came from stability, naval superiority and trade between colonies, rather than solely colony - motherland. Having said that, whilst this provided capital to finance improvements, the start of the industrial revolution didn't come from some far off benighted underdeveloped land, but from devon and Cornwall (er...) The Midlands and the north east. The stimulus was pumping out flooded mines to allow domestic mineral extraction at greater depth. Once Newcomen and watt/boulton had proved and developed this technology, making it smaller and mobile was inevitable, and that this occurred where there was a) a supply of fuel b) engineers looking after stationary steam engines and c) wagonways to carry coal to ports surely wasn't much of a surprise.

The north Sunderland got away with it on the grounds that they didn't care what the rules officially were, and they were so well known to the various regulatory authorities and officials that they were ignored at both grouping and nationalisation and essentially nobody much came to check. Operating and maintenance procedures were pretty flagrantly illegal on many of the smaller narrow gauge lines, perhaps a combination of lack of knowledge by the authorities or turning a blind eye on the understanding that the expense of compliance may render a line unviable and thus deprive a district of the service.

Bulleid originally asked for 150 leaders, arguing that he'd helped the war effort enough already with his design for a 0-6-0 goods loco so hideous no axis spy would dare risk their expensive camera lenses photographing traffic they hauled, nor would it be recognisable as a steam loco to any marauding Luftwaffe pilots. so when he was negotiated back to 140 dodgy pacifics the authorities figured they'd dodged a bullet and were so relieved they just signed the forms to get him out of the office. (The official version of events is a post war cover up I'm afraid, the above information was pieced together from several highly redacted files only released in the past few years).

Coal loader from plenmeller common opencast as referenced by dad in the other thread.

Can only answer 3) from personal experience. Narrow planet are excellent for both quality of product and service.

I'm going to regret this I suspect, but I'm not sure I can think of anything with unpowered carrying wheels between a pair of rod coupled drivers (or why you'd attempt such a thing).

Don't mean to be unduly pedantic, but the FL9 is a B-A1A, the centre axle on the six wheel bogie is unpowered. Nice locos though

As a native of West Northumberland, I would argue against this sentiment. Plus on those rare days when the temperature creeps above zero (-15 with windchill up your vallum) you could use wooden soaked wedges on the limestone.

Clive, given my soldering 'skills' I mostly work in plastic, though I'm trying to do better with the metalwork. I know some folk are a bit snobby about plastic Vs brass, to me the material choice doesn't matter so long as the finished result looks right. I often end up using plastic with brass roof or cab bits, copper pipe boilers, bits or wire and last year I turned a dome from some scrap aluminium. Once painted you can't tell which is which.

Stronger overbridges.

BG John - the only time the label is needed is for competitions or when someone else asks where it came from. To me hand controlled machine tools need some manual skill/dexterity to use them, which CNC or similar doesn't. The best way is when I'm short of cash and I need to sell a few models to raise funds. The 3d printed, kitbuilt or silhouette cut ones go first, as I know I can get another one easily if I regret the sale. The scratchbuilt ones I keep because it is unique and replicating it exactly will be a right pain.

Being slightly more serious, Scratchbuilding is building something from essentially sheet or tube materials, cut by hand, most people (if not trying to be too pedantic) draw the line to allow use of bought in wheels, axles, detail castings for small parts/boiler fittings, motor/gears and perhaps etched valve gear/motion and rods. Using bigger components from another model (eg cab, boiler etc) generally isn't regarded as Scratchbuilding. Nothing wrong with it, but it isn't quite the same. I've designed several 3d printed models, some of which include a chassis block, outside cranks, gear box parts etc. I've also designed things for my silhouette cutter, had it chop them out then assemble them. Are the finished models Scratchbuilding? No. They're kits that I happened to design/produce. If I designed my own etch work, sent it off to ppd and received a nice pack of etches in the post to solder up, that's the same thing - a self designed kit. It isn't a criticism of the model or creator, it's just a recognition that they haven't had to measure and cut everything by hand. To reproduce a scratchbuilt model would require a similar amount of work as the original and the same process to be followed (minus missteps). To reproduce a self designed kit is substantially easier.

Or because you've bought a kit, then opened the box for inspection and realised it won't fit together or look anything like the prototype.

Thanks, so that theory is out.

What is under the bump at the cab end of the bonnet on the later NBL shunters? Is it possible that d2701 was modified to incorporate something built into the later ones?