Fastdax

Looks like front-to-back planks but with a metal plate set under the firebox mouth. Also a picture of a splasher, since you mentioned them: Still following with interest!

Deeley Dock Tank First, a Happy New Year to all readers of this thread The dock tank had a coat of airbrushed very dark grey, followed by a light blow-over with Lifecolor Weathered Black. This is what I did to my Connoisseur Jinty and I want a similar colour tone for this loco. I started picking out a few brass details (backhead pipeworks, oil pots, safety and clack valves, whistle etc) with dry brushed Darkstar Brass acrylic. Lots still to do, including painting of the buffer beams, adding window glass, transfers, coal, crew etc. etc. etc. Hopefully it will be finished before next New Year!

Hi, 470uF won't give very much stay-alive capacity at all. I use Zimo decoders with either their SC68 supercap (6800uF) which gives 1 to 2 seconds of stay-alive, or Digitrains' own capacitor array which gives about 30 seconds (really!). My Dapol 08 will happily play idle sounds long after it's been lifted off the track as it has the capacitor array. 470uF would give less than 1/10th of an SC68 so under 0.1s, which isn't really noticeable. If you've got any other capacitors of the same voltage rating, try temporarily adding them in parallel to your existing capacitor, just to prove a point. At about 5000uF you should see a noticeable stay-alive effect. Hope this helps.

Deeley Dock Tank The body has now had a couple of coats of U-Pol Acid Etch #8. I have started painting the backhead while it is still loose. Really cruel close-up shows a few scabby areas to be addressed (or hidden under weathering!):

Looking good, Ernie! To get a more 3D effect on the printed bricks, have you considered adding a shadow under each brick and (say) to the left as well? This would make the brick faces appear to sit slightly in front of the mortar. A couple of pixels should do it, using a darkened shade of the cream mortar.

Try fixing the body to the chassis loosely. If there's a very slight twist to the body, tightening it to the chassis could twist the chassis a bit and undo your careful work in getting it all running with the chassis on its own. I often leave the body mounting screws only just "nipped up" enough to stop them coming loose by themselves.

Deeley Dock Tank For Xmas kindly got me a Zimo sound decoder for the Deeley Dock Tank. I will have to inform her of this fact at some point ... Since this loco doesn't have a dedicated sound file, as no examples survive, I opted for the nearest sound that I could think of. I went for an Ivatt 2MT 2-6-2T file because it's a similar small, outside cylinder, Midland-derived tank engine. The sample sounds made available by YooChoos on their website sounded reasonable for a small 0-4-0 tank so I plumped for a Zimo MX645 with this sound file and an SC68 stay-alive. I already have a selection of speakers so I'll see what fits. I dismantled the loco ready for installation of the sound chip and, whilst it's apart, painting (finally).

Wonderful!

Ian Kirk Coach The coach interior had an airbrushing in a medium brown colour (Lifecolor Wood Warm Base Colour). I picked out the seats in blue (1st class) and red (3rd class). The upper wall panels will be stickers by Roxey Mouldings and are simple drawings of pictures and mirrors. I hope they won't be too obvious through the tiny windows of this coach but better than a blank wall. Oscar the Cocker Spaniel watches from under the desk.

As opposed to my MGB GT which was an MGB GT engine in a rust-bucket body, atop woefully inadequate suspension. Once I had lowered it back to UK-spec, added thick anti-roll bars, anti-tramp bars, panhard rod, gas-filled telescopic shocks, wide tyres on minilites etc. it wasn't quite so inadequate but was still quite neolithic in its performance. Sorry for the off-topic post but I suspect that many of the parish demographic had cr8p old cars in the 60s/70s/80s. I have started collecting 1:43 versions of mine for Offerston Quay.

Ian Kirk Coach The coach is now in primer. It can be seen in this quick video of Offerston Quay station. The battery and charge/discharge circuit I mention previously are here, under the floor. The battery is the blob under the dynamo.:

I especially like playing with the "shave-and-a-haircut" horn sound.

Nice woodworking Dave. That construction looks light and strong. Perhaps diagonals across the middle two bays would add even more twist resistance? I'm glad to see you put big lightening/wiring holes in before building the baseboard. They would be a bu66er to add afterwards!

Hi George, Thanks for the kind words. I'll not be fitting Dinghams to these coaches as they will run in a fixed train on Offerston Quay's high level, usually under computer control. Screw-links are the order of the day for this. Dinghams do work well on the lower level, when inglenook shunting. Just don't expect them to couple/uncouple on sharp curves.

Thanks Simon. I may just be a lowly software type, but I do know about not letting the magic smoke out!

Thanks Simon. I do have a discharge protection circuit in there. Betwixt battery and AL3 is one of these: It allows charging from a micro USB charger and limits discharge to > 2.5V. Handily, it fits under floor between the chassis rails and is almost invisible in use.

I guess I was suggesting that but your description sounds very much more correct. My photos of the underside of 41708 show the steam heat pipe apparently exiting the back of the firebox, but that may just be a convenient pipe run rather than a means of generating steam. Apologies if I assumed incorrectly.

Ian Kirk Coach Roof and Lighting OK, where were we with the LMS Period II composite? I last posted progress (because that's when I last made some progress) back in April. So, recently I marked out the roof for the torpedo vents and fixed them on: I'm using Markits (IIRC) torpedo vents instead of the plastic ones in the kit. I also put in place a lighting system that I hacked from a Train-Tech AL3 lighting unit. These little battery-powered circuits sense movement and switch on an LED, either constant or flickering. To me, the big advantage is that there doesn't need to be any wheel pickups and there's no switch, which would mean handling the coach. Once it starts moving, the AL3 switches the lights on and they stay on until there's been no movement for a couple of minutes. I used one on my former EM gauge layout in a guard's van and they work well. Although they are supposed to run from a 3V CR2032 button cell battery, I guessed that they could cope with 3.7V from a LiPo mobile phone style battery, which has a vastly bigger capacity and is rechargeable. I wanted a bigger capacity because I will be running nine LEDs (one for each compartment), not one. Also, it means no disassembly of the coach to change the battery. Voiding my warranty totally, I clipped off the button cell holder and connected a 150mA LiPo battery, via a little USB charge/discharge circuit, to its inputs. The outputs were connected to 2 self-adhesive copper foil strips fixed to the underside of the roof. Nine surface-mounted warm white LEDs were (quickly!) soldered to the copper strips, one above each compartment. I did a test to make sure that soldering wouldn't melt the roof: Wires and a miniature plug take the battery/charger output through a hole in the floor and up to the roof. This allows the roof to be removed but places the charger in easy reach under the floor. This is the underside of the roof. What's left of the AL3 (about 1cm square) fits into a corner and the SMD LEDs are quite flat against the underside of the roof. I hope they won't be too visible when the coach is finished. Superfluous yellow wire snipped off. The battery and charger fit between the chassis rails under the floor (sorry - no picture) and the charger circuit can be pulled away from a blob of blu-tac so that a standard micro-USB charger can be used to charge the battery. Testing shows that a full battery will run the lights constantly for at least four hours. A battery top-up only takes about 30 minutes. To find its duration, I left the coach being shuttled back and forth on Offerston Quay's high-level track, where the constant motion kept the AL3 alive and the LEDs lit. The AL3 seems to cope just fine with the extra 0.7V. It doesn't get warm and it has been running for many hours now. More pictures soon.

A correction - there is no vacuum brake that operates on the loco brakes - just a manual hand brake applied by cranking the handle on the front of the coal bunker. 41708 may have been built with steam loco brakes, but these have now been removed. The vacuum bags front and rear are for train brakes and were probably added after 41708 was first built, when it was required to shunt vacuum-braked stock. The train brake has its own control in the cab. The ejector on the RHS of the smokebox creates the vacuum for these brakes. 41708 now also sports steam-heating connections to heat coaches, probably dating from its life in preservation. I can't tell from my photos whether the loco actually generates heating steam or is just through-piped. Maybe the former as the steam pipe does seem to run through the firebox.

The brake cranks are probably these: They sit just behind the rear wheels. When the vacuum or hand-brake is applied, the cross-shaft between these cranks rotates and the cranks pull on the bake pull-rods. If you make the brake arms/shoes/cross-rods/pull-rods detachable as a unit, you will need to make the joint between pull-rods and cranks not fixed, so that the pull-rods can be removed, leaving the cranks attached to the chassis. No idea what the "etched brake cross pieces" are. There are some elongated diamond shapes on your etch with an etched groove along their length, as if they could overlay the rods joining the bottom of the brake arms. But (on 41708 at least) the bottom of the brake shoe arms are connected with plain rod, like this: BTW, I'd drill the dimples in the pull rods 0.9mm and solder the rods right through, then file back to resemble nuts. It will be a lot stronger like this.

You could remove the 27mm wires and open out their 0.9mm holes until the "A" pegs fit in without slop. Then fix in and solder the stretcher rods at the bottom of the brake arms and tie the whole lot together with pull-rods, soldered on.. The whole assembly should then be removable by springing the tops of the brake arms apart and taking the "A" pegs out of the chassis holes. This assumes the pegs are a consistent diameter. If removing the 27mm rods leaves the chassis too floppy, reinstate L-shaped stretchers made of scrap etch.

Thanks Fabrice!

Better Picture I found that Microsoft Photos is a quick and easy way to adjust the colour, brightness and rotation of a photo. This is considerably less blue than the original attempt at this photo.

I made it to Swadlincote today. No Mr. P in sight but I had a nice chat with several of the club members. I wish I had space for something like Wychnor!