Guy Rixon

I learned something today: if I'm going to spray enamels after spraying acrylics, then all my painting gear needs to be super cleaned to remove all traces of the acrylic. Otherwise, badness.

I was spraying the purple-lake body-coat on my Grand Vitesse van. The first coat was good, but I thought that a second coat was required. I stored the pre-mixed paint while the first coat dried, in a plastic jar that had previously held acrylic colour. There was enough acrylic residue to curdle in the enamel paint and deposit crud on the model.

I need to examine the mess in good light tomorrow. It may be that I can rub down the bad patches and then spray a third coat of clean paint to complete. Or I may need to strip and start again. It's a brass model, so stripping is probably feasible.

4 hours ago, 57xx said:

 

The issue there may have been using white paint. The white pigment is too bright on it's own and can cause some funny effects, it's better to use cream or a lighter grey to try and lighten other colours.

It's a separation effect, I think, possibly brought on by incompatible solvents. I had a really old tin of Precision LNWR coach-white where the blue component had separated and gone a bilious green. I'd only use Precision thinners, so when fully mixed back together it turned the right colour and sprayed properly.

Some turntables -- I think not the LNWR ones --- had stops for the wagon wheels, such the capstan man could run the wagon on hard against the stop. Presumably this saved the need for a second man on the brake. I've seen an archive film of this somewhere but can't find it. It may be that the stops made it feasible to position a 10' wheelbase wagon accurately on the table.

It's worth noting that the bearing carrier pokes through the axleguard on this design. C.f. other axleguard systems where the carriers lies entirely behind the axleguard and only the bearing pokes through. This means that the axlebox needs to be mounted to the carrier and moving r, as Lochgorm has it, not fixed to the axleguard front surface as I prefer. That's why I gave up on these in 4mm scale.

The square-based version of the Dean coach-buffer is the one that fits on a 9" headstock, I think. The round-based one  seems to have a wider base.  

I need some of the square-based variant myself for some fruit vans, and was planning to print them.

I suspect 9'9" was the practical limit as the LNWR adopted this standard wheelbase.

The Huntley archive has footage of turntables in in use.

The unequal holes in the centre must be either a design error or sloppy etching.

I made up some of the 4mm-scale kind once but never completed them.

The Ambis axleguards can be made fixed, rocking or sprung. For rocking, you need to file off the tabs on the top. For springing, you need to cut out the plate with the bearing hole between the legs of the "W".

IIRC correctly the springs are to be made from spring wire that engages in the slots behind the W irons. I've no idea what gauge of wire is needed. Given the length of the spring is only the width of the axleguard, I'd imagine that the wire would need to be thinner than in the Bill-Bedford design where the spring supports are on outriggers. Since there's nothing to contain the springs along the length of the wagon, I guess you're supposed to solder them to the bearing carrier.

It might be worth ringing Hobby Holidays for advice. I agree that the instructions are not very well written.

5 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Sorry to be dim, but how do you apply pressfix type transfers either as water slide or methfix ones.

 

Dave

Water slide: position the transfer, but don't press it so that it's held on by its glue. Wet it with water, remove the backing paper, then slide it around in the water film. Usually, surface tension in the film holds it to the model. When it's dry, after 10 minutes, varnish it immediately or it may curl up and fall off (applies to single letters and numerals; bigger transfers are less likely to do this).

Meth fix: position it and hold it in position with a tool. Brush on 80-20 meth-water mix to melt the transfer onto the model. When it dries it should stay put without curling. Don't do this on an acrylic finish because the meths will disrupt that. If you absolutely have to meths on an acrylic finish, use a more dilute mixture, maybe 50-50 meths and water, and not to much if it. Cured acrylic varnish seems to tolerate meths better than bare acrylic paint, so I varnish before and after transfers.

I have a few sprues of brake bits from Slater's PO-wagon kits. Would they be any good?

Loot! Got this on eBay for a reasonable price. Get yer skates, hell's frozen!

For cutting thin brass (< 0.5mm) snips may be better than a saw. It's hard to get enough teeth in contact on 0.35mm sheet, so the saw catches and judders. Finer blades judder less but are easier to brake. Snips are quicker and easier to control, but do tend to curl up the brass. If the brass is very thin (0.25mm or less) it can be cut with good scissors ... but they won't stay good scissors for very long if used like that.

10 hours ago, rue_d_etropal said:

I can set any available option on . If you mean Smooth Fine Detail Plastic, then that is always set for N scale items.

I was considering Smooth Fine Detail Plastic in 4mm scale.  Cleaning up a Versatile Plastic print of this loco would be especially hard as there are panel strips and rivets all over. I'd like to see the SFDP price; if it's too high, then I'd build the thing from scratch, but it would be good not to have to.

Comparing the photos of wagons from the same railway, there is significant variation. I wonder: did Mr Richards make reasonable variations of each company's grey, or has the NRM photographer adjusted the colour in these photos?

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

There are shortcuts?!?

Roll against intelligence to detect magic door.

I thought the point about Byzantine law was that it quickly evolved away from its Roman basis, such that a romanised western-European would feel completely lost in a Constantinople courtroom. Since the Roman law was about all that the Western empire had left after the fall of Rome, seeing it change must have been very unwelcome.

The brass body is of the GV van is now complete. Detailing was tricky, as the tails of all the handrails lie very close to the louvres. Were I to make another one, I think I would reverse my usual approach, detail the sides and ends in the flat, then assemble the body with lower-melt solder.

I need to decide what to do about the roof. I had intended to use the vacuum-formed plastic from the kit,  but it's horribly thick in the centre and that would show badly at the end. I may replace the plastic with ply planks covered in paper, in which case I need to add some wooden inserts to which the planks can be fixed.

The lovely thing about these vans, in condition of 1909, is that they weren't lined.

I too use the Everbuild Industrial Superglue and find it very good, but I've been seeing a weird effect: it seems to set very slowly after dark. Something in my workshop that correlates with time of day is upsetting it. I thought temperature, but in daylight it seems to work in both winter and summer (and the workshop used to be really cold in winter when the heating was bust). I thought humidity but that doesn't correlate either. Breathing on the joint (old folk remedy) doesn't speed things up. Could the glue really need light to set? Seems a bit bonkers.

3 minutes ago, runs as required said:

I keep discovering old computer stuff: the old Locland PC I went all the way to Livingston New Town near Wemyss Bay to get specially tuned up to run Autocad on at home after I retired, a later under-desk big vertical stack job I built built myself after doing a computer course - and whole box fuls of old electric and audio kit not to mention old railway stuff I've unpacked.

How do others deal with such junk ? I take tons of old mags to the Tanfield (to do what with?), but what about old files of personal stuff , lecture notes, old project drawings and files?

For computer hardware, our non-solution was to stuff it in the loft. When we recently had to clear the loft to insulate it (lots of luverly RHI money!), it finally got dumped. It didn't quite mature enough to interest a computer museum.

Re old files, I suggest buying two archive discs and making dual copies of everything. Physically-tiny, shock-proof discs larger than 1TB can be bought for little money now, and can be mail ordered. If you spin up and verify such a device once or twice a year, and otherwise leave it powered down, it can last a very long time; professional archives in astronomy are built on this principle. As soon as the verification reveals errors on one device, replace it and copy from the other. £50 every 10 years or so seems a small price to pay for not having to delete parts of your life.

13 minutes ago, jcredfer said:

 

The US hierarchy can hardly be seen as moved on from the system in favour back in those times.  Voting for a King, every four years, rather than taking the sword to him, as and when, may just be seen as an improving step forward...                        although??        

 

Julian

 

The big step forward, which America took for the wrong reasons, was to limit each president to two terms. Even if the Creeping Orange Blight can swing a second term he can't go on forever.

Could you tell us about the gearbox you are using? It looks unusual.

On 12/05/2020 at 21:53, rue_d_etropal said:

I have wanted to do the District/LTSR train coaches for a while. Along with the District electric loco. One set of the coaches ended uo on the S&MR duringf WW2, and a couple of them survived (modified) till line closed, and then transferred to Long Marston Depot.

 

 

http://www.rue-d-etropal.com/3d-print-photos/metropolitan/ltsr-district-brk-3rd-coach-1a.jpg

http://www.rue-d-etropal.com/3d-print-photos/metropolitan/ltsr-district-3rd-coach-1a.jpg

 

Simon, would you consider doing the loco in SFDP?

I've recently acquired a jeweller's mitre-vice for squaring up cuts in small sections like this. It's an expensive tool by modeller's standards but gets a good result.

14 hours ago, Edwardian said:

I think the Westerham branch calls for a Q, IIRC.

SER kits do etches, but not castings, for a Q in 4mm scale. Provisionally, I expect to buy this kit and print the missing bits. The price is £30 for the etch if ordered on long lead time.

Falcon did etches for a Q1 but not the original Q. Did Westerham have the rebuilt kind?

14 hours ago, Regularity said:

If you have separate loco cassettes, you simply move them from one end to the other, and don’t need to turn the whole train.

That was the point of Chris Pendlenton’s original design.

Yes, that's probably how I'll arrange things. On Strand, it's important that the main-line trains not be turned, as the through coaches have to stay at the proper end.

The point of reducing the fiddle yards from 60" to 48" for home operation is to fit the layout into the house, not to tame the unwieldy size of the cassettes.