TurboSnail

It is indeed one of Boulton's, plan 7 in the Sharman drawings book. There will be a few errors here and there as all I've got to work from are the chassis dimensions (3ft wheels, 5ft 6in wheelbase) and that one side-on plan. But if I've got it close enough that you can recognise it, I think that's a promising start!

Thanks! That sort of thing doesn't bother me too much really, I'm happy doing what I'm doing. But on that note, I do find that CAD modelling and physical modelling require different moods to do. I find CAD modelling more of an active thing, where I can do lots of background research, think about the engineering challenges and develop my skills. Physical modelling tends to get done when I feel more relaxed and want to get the satisfaction of making something with my hands.

Motivation for real modelling has been a bit lacking lately, but I've done some CAD - while it was literally modelling done while sat on an armchair, I feel it doesn't quite fit the normal definition of 'armchair modelling'.

Not yet, it hopefully will be shortly though! Made some more progress on it since last posted, along with the other Pugbash.

Fascinating to watch, too.

Merry Christmas all! I was supposed to add a nice festive green and red loco here, but I didn't quite make enough progress on that front...

It is rather. It's not as bad in real life, but still loud - when I first assembled it it was about the same as any RTR loco, but I inadvertently messed up the mesh while adjusting the quartering. Rather than disassemble and start from scratch I added a bit of a bodge. Annoying, but I can live with it!

I've had to dig out tiny bits of wire embedded in my fingers more often than I would have liked today, but I think the result was worth it...

More info on one of the M4s here, with some dimensions: https://www.southdevonrailway.co.uk/rolling-stock/locomotives/lee-moor-no-2-peckett-0-4-0st/ Wondering what the origins of 4 1/2 ft gauge were - perhaps an attempt to rationalise standard gauge to a nice round number?

Allegedly this is an M4 (Peckett 770, 1899), no dimensions given but certainly smaller than a W4. Another (built to Dartmoor gauge) is preserved on the South Devon Railway. Source: https://www.martynbane.co.uk/peckett/locos.htm

It'll be more of a static thing really, I doubt the railway bit will get used that often. The plan is to have the top surface as a table, with the circle of track underneath with a bit of scenery round it to make it look nice. Kind of like a shelf diorama, but circular - though I may as well make it able to run! I didn't show it in the video, but a Pug runs fine on it too, which is the biggest thing I'm likely to use on it, and also has fairly chunky flanges which I guess would be more likely to derail on harsh curves than smaller modern ones.

A little while back, we had a conversation going about whether I could make a tiny circle of track on a cable drum... we may now be closer to an answer!

Progress on the tiny Ruston loco, very fiddly to paint all the black! Now I've "just" got to see if I can get the top-mounted motion working...

I printed a whole load with various dimensions incrementing by 0.1mm each time. The hard part was getting the crankpins to screw in without cracking the resin, which I think was only possible as the thread on them is tiny! The other complication is that the dimensions you use will be affected by print time and light bleed, so it's a bit of a minefield.

You could print some alternative wheel centres fairly easily for those - it takes a bit of fiddling to get the tolerances right for a push fit, but is pretty straightforward. I had to make these for my overtype so that I could add crankpin holes.

I might well be. Still think it's worth a test though! If it works, it will really be a novelty, not a serious layout so I'm not bothered by prototypical inaccuracy. In the meantime, I've finally got round to crewing four more locos. I don't really enjoy figure painting, so tend to do them in batches!

Having a look at that, the chap uses a 20" diameter circle, or 500mm(ish), so not far off what I need, reason to be cautiously hopeful. This might have to be a Christmas experiment when I can next get access to some of my deep storage (also knows as the parents' loft)

I may have mistyped somewhere there, I meant 450mm diameter, or 225mm radius... which is very tight for OO! It would very much be 0-4-0s only!

Slightly odd post this morning, so here goes: I've recently come into possession of this cable drum, which I intend to make into a table of some kind - but that's not the interesting bit. The interesting bit is that it occurs to me that I might be able to fit a circle of track, about 450mm diameter, on the lower level. This could give me somewhere to run in small locos (I don't have a continuous run layout) and if I add some scenery, might help it look a bit less like someone's just plonked a cable drum on some legs and called it a day... The obvious next step is to see if a Peckett or Pug and some wagons could happily negotiate that tight a radius, but unfortunately I don't have enough flexitrack to test this out at the moment. What do we think? Nice little feature layout or am I barking up the wrong tree?

It's on the new Hornby Terrier chassis.

Potentially! I'll have a couple of conversations and see what we can figure out

Another project left languishing for far too long - I've finally got round to painting the wheels and getting it back on the chassis, which hopefully will motivate me to finish off the few remaining details. A Manning Wardle of an indeterminate class and age, probably a catalogue locomotive with a few customer-specified modifications, which was used as a contractors loco when joining up Guilford Colliery to the East Kent Railway. The Kent Coal Company subsequently bought the loco, naming it in tribute to Sir Edward Watkin, who had been an early enthusiast of the Kent Coalfield at their Shakespeare Colliery site. Its more powerful construction with larger wheels made it better suited to occasional trips on the light railway (when required) than the Company's other smaller shunters. I hope that's a good enough justification!

Thanks! That means a lot knowing your meticulous eye for detail Is the Peckett cab a more modern design? I'd thought it was an earlier one, the inspiration being the B1 Class and the X Class of the 1880s/90s. Though I suppose the early W4s would have been contemporaries. I'm rather a fan of grey too, which is entirely down to the SECR livery and inheriting a Bachmann N in that scheme. I've got a couple more SECR locos in the works with that livery, despite it fitting neither of my layout's two running periods (1912ish and 1947ish)! As for the lettering (all of it), we have @Corbs to thank for that - I'd send him an inspiration pic of something similar and a few days later some gorgeous photoshop work would be sent back to me. I won't pretend to understand the process, but I can certainly admire it!

You glad I spent so long nagging you about the Pug chassis?

The Channel Steel fleet is coming together nicely, I need to build a couple more of the wagons but I'm happy the design works now (transfers kindly provided by @Corbs). Still need to think of some kind of mini diorama or shelf layout for these to run on... maybe I should have thought about that before building them! The Peckett can make occasional appearances on my main layout but I'd like to reserve the Pugbash for something a bit different. I'll go and brainstorm some ideas