TurboSnail

Chassis painted and test fitting parts, pickups fit nicely but I need to work out how much to modify the motor mount for the final version - it may use different gears to this one as they're a bit fiddly to mesh and not the easiest to get hold of. Bonus points if you can spot the part of the chassis I had to repair due to it arriving broken!

Made a start on the detailing, so far we have coupling hooks, SR pattern buffers (apparently, I'm no expert on these things), and handrail knobs. The engine bay doors are also in the works from plasticard - not having them in the 3D print saves a little bit of the printing cost and makes smoothing down the sides much easier. Next steps are to fit handrails, finish the doors, fit the grille mesh (I should probably order that at some point...), fit the body retaining nuts, then it's ready for primer and paint. I'm not sure yet as to whether I'll finish the body then do the chassis, or mix and match as I feel like it. The chassis is pretty much ready for paint already as there are no separate details to fit.

I'm sure they'll make their money back, but it's definitely a low tactic, especially when the people who miss out are often the people who use traditional model shops and can't make online pre-orders. Surely the manufacturers are missing a trick though if these pre-grouping liveries are consistently selling out on pre-order?

Time to have another go at getting a H class in SECR livery, now the Hornby collectors club has the Bluebell one available. The H is one of the ideal motive power options for my Kent branch line based shunting plank. I tried to get 308 when it first came out, but Hornby short-changed the place I'd ordered it from, so my order got cancelled - I've been monitoring eBay since, but most sellers on there are chancing it at an average price of about £160 (the only one on there right now is £244!). I did have to join the collector club to order it, but still comes to £127 total, which is pretty much RRP for one of these, plus I get a free 0-4-0 to butcher into something completely different (maybe a crane tank this time? I'm already CAD modelling the Neilson one to see if I can make it 3D printable). I did think about doing a CAD model of the H class to add to my (currently very limited) range and 3D printing it, but I only want to model things that aren't available RTR as the detail won't be as good. Sometimes it's worth spending the money. Maybe I should have ordered six and put the rest on eBay...

Yes, that would be ideal, but I can't find any really (really) cheap ones. I've just tested a spare set I have for a 4F and they fit so it seems Hornby may use a standard size. I've also just noticed that one of the conrods from the 4F set is only 1.5mm shorter than the 0-4-0 ones, so I think the next version of the model may come with a slightly shorter wheelbase to make use of the nicer rods and crankpins. I might just have dust off my wallet and buy another set for the current one as well at £6.29...

08 coupling rods would be out of proportion as it would end up being half of an 0-6-0 wheelbase. They're also more expensive, so I don't want to buy a set just to get the crankpins. I think 3D printing the crankpins will work ok, but the coupling rods themselves would be too flimsy at that sort of thickness.

Last night was the first chance I had to work on the model. Step 1 was to sand down the body and chassis to get a smooth(ish) finish, concentrating in particular on any curved areas. You can see where the primer has been completely taken off where I've concentrated the effort. I used a Dremel but could equally be done by hand if you're a little more patient than me. Now I've seen the photo, I'll probably do another shot of primer and get the Dremel out for round 2... I also enlarged the motor hole slightly, this won't need to be done on the final version once the CAD model is corrected.

I had the opposite experience with iMaterialise, as they initially quoted about the same as Shapeways for my diesel shunter project, but once delivery and VAT were added, Shapeways was about £10 cheaper (without the iMaterialise student discount which I couldn't be bothered to set up - even so, it would have been £7 more expensive). I guess their pricing structure is different, still odd though.

Thanks! Yes, it's standard 0-4-0 coupling rods, I still need to find a way to fix them to the 08 wheels though, I tried printing fixing pins as part of the chassis on a sort of sprue, but I've made them a bit small - will be corrected for the final version but in the meantime, nothing that can't be solved without a little bodging.

It will be available once I've finished this test model, which depends on how hectic my Uni schedule gets. I will need to make a couple of minor changes to it too, the only one I've noticed so far is that the motor mount dimensions are slightly out - nothing a bit of packing under the motor won't fix for this example, but I'd like it to be right for the final version. It's on Hornby outside framed class 08 wheels - Romford/Gibson/ScaleLink were a bit expensive for me! Spares no X9373M.

Exciting times - the 3D prints for the Mk2 arrived yesterday, I gave them a quick coat of primer to show up the imperfections. Looking quite good actually, although I won't be doing anything with them this weekend as the flu that's been going round my house has finally caught up with me... But couldn't resist trial fitting the wheels to get a sneak preview of what it'll look like.

It does, the front wheelbase is way too short, hopefully I can correct that without it looking out of place against the body, which I think is also wrong - but not wrong enough for me to bother starting from scratch.

Sorry to hijack your thread sem, but do you (or anyone else) have drawings for the SECR R/R1 class 0-6-0? I'm making a chassis to go under some old Wrenn bodies and some proper dimensions would be very useful! The Wrenn chassis is basic to say the least so I can't just copy that. Hijack over...

Body and Chassis prints are now on order, £13 for the body and £10 for the chassis. I had a look at a couple of companies, but ended up using Shapeways, as theirs was £23 with the extended production discount, compared to £36 from iMaterialise.

Gears arrived today for the Mk2 - in miniature! It's a bit of a gamble using such small gears, but I need a gear with a 3mm hole to work with the Hornby axles, plus it gives me a reasonably slow 1:60 ratio. CAD model just needs to be adjusted for their size, then I can print.

I'd also go for the chassis with the closest wheel diameter - from my (limited) experience, you'll notice even a 1mm difference in wheel size more easily than a few mm out on the wheelbase. I'm currently working on an easily adaptable 3D printed chassis for this sort of thing, it won't be ready particularly soon, but maybe if you want to offer a scale version in the future... The prototypes are being built for one of my R1s and my freelance diesel shunter project.

Mk1 finished! In sort-of SR black (no-one makes the word Southern small enough to fit on the sides!). Still needs grille mesh though. The photos aren't too flattering, though bear in mind it is several times life size...

I don't actually have any track at my student house, so I can't test it now, but there is a video of the mk1 chassis running on my blog, there's a link on post #19 in this thread. It doesn't run great as it is so light - the Mk2 will be a much better runner as I've allowed space for a flywheel and lots of ballast inside the body and I'll upload a test once it's built. The build progress will be in this thread, I'm just waiting for the gears to arrive so I can make sure the CAD gearbox is the right size, then I can put in the Shapeways order and get on with it.

Thanks! I was under the impression that it was ex-SER not ex-LCDR, ordered for Folkestone Harbour duties according to SEMG.

This approach makes much more sense than mine, I just tend to start from scratch with a few key dimensions. Is that SketchUp you're using? Also, you wouldn't happen to have drawings for the SECR R class (0-6-0 version) and the crane tank 0-4-0, would you? They'd be very handy for something I may be planning...

Working on motorising the Mk2 today. I had a motor and gearset in mind and I wanted to have the option of fitting a flywheel, useful if the short 0-4-0 wheelbase loses electrical contact with the track. Fortunately, the body is reasonably roomy, so I've modelled it with the biggest flywheel I could find, a 17mmx12mm one from Roxey. The second image without the motor shows the pickup arrangements, one on top and one underneath, which will be the DCC concepts wiper pickups to save me faffing around with phosphor bronze strip. These also have holes to bolt onto the chassis, hopefully making assembly easier.

The LCDR coaches are also available here: http://www.roxeymouldings.co.uk/category/51/4mm-scale-lcdr-coaches/ I plan to have a go at one as a first step into etched brass kits at some point.

Bricks are now looking more bricky - coloured using a wash of mortar colour, then doing the brick faces with several reddish pencils, an idea I nicked from Phil Parker. Worked out better than I expected too, it gives a fairly uniform look with subtle variations in colour. Only issue is, I now have to spend a lot of time colouring in the main walls, although if the University bookshop is anything to go by, colouring in is a surprisingly popular student hobby!

It's very much home made, not the best engineering I've ever done... The components are a cheap motor and a pack of multiple sizes of gear, total cost about £3, plus some aluminium sheet and a lot of bodging to get it all to work properly. More info available on this blog post. The video doesn't really do it justice as anything filmed in 18fps will look terrible. I'm deliberately being vague about the specific components, as sellers seem to come and go on eBay - search '12v dual shaft motor' and 'module 0.5 gears' and you'll find similar things. The Mk2 shunter has a much better set of gears on order and the gearbox will form part of the chassis so will be far more precise - I'm working on that at the moment and it will be posted in this thread. I've been thinking of making a proper re-gearing kit for the Hornby 0-4-0 using a 3D printed gearbox and brass gears, but I've got a few other things to get on with before that

Glad you like it! The Mk2 will be on Shapeways, but only once I've built one to make sure it all fits together properly. It will be available in two parts, body and chassis, designed to work with specific gears, wheels and motor but will probably work with other ones with a few modifications. I can also put the more industrial-style Mk1 body on if anyone requests it, which should fit on a modified Hornby 0-4-0 chassis (but I don't have a spare chassis to confirm that with, as mine has a different motor and gearbox). I didn't intend this to be a 'product' when I started out, but I kept adding bits to the CAD to make my life easier later on, to the extent that it has pretty much ended up like a kit, so I may as well make the models available to everyone.