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Grimly Feendish

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Posts posted by Grimly Feendish

  1. 3 hours ago, aleopardstail said:

    tried one of the ZMCT103C coils, short answer: it doesn't work, well it will detect a 1k resistor or locomotive but not a 10k, nor a 5k. coil is far out of the required spec.. got some on order from the states, for somewhat less than a UK supplier, including duty & postage. should be here in a few days so will experiment further.

     

     

    Have you tried looping the through the coil two of three times? That should increase the ability to detect low currents.

     

    John.

    • Like 1
  2. I have used the Tam Valley juicers and did some research on them before purchasing. They work by detecting the short very quickly and then using a solid state switch to change polarity. They detect the short in something like 400 micro seconds IIRC. I'd wager that's much faster than any circuit breaker we'd use would detect.

     

    I found them to be excellent and had no probs. I would recommend them. I have no experience with the Gaugemaster units.

     

    HTH, John.

    • Agree 1
  3. 3 hours ago, andyman7 said:

    The 25 has now had some weathering, cab handrails added plus I have attended to the main bodyside grille - MTK provided a mesh for this which quite a few builders (as in this case) installed behind the crossbeam but in real life the crossbeam was partially visible behind the grille mesh. I has a pair of spare Class 40 frost grilles which I chopped up to overlay to improve this area. Whilst the finished model is of course not to modern finescale superdetail standard I can honestly say that it now manages the 1970s wow factor:

    - a modern outline model in workaday condition

    - all wheel pickup and twin motors

    - weighs a ton and crawls along with impressive haulage power

    IMG_20210727_133846.jpg

    IMG_20210727_133859.jpg

    Nice job!

     

    I had one of these when I was about 13 or 14. It was my first white metal kit. Once I opened the box I was so dissapointed! I had expected it to fit together like an Airfix kit. I think I made a reasonable go of it in the end. IIRC I used car body filler to fix the gaps because that was the only kind of filler I knew of,

    • Like 3
  4. Nice work James, very impressive.

     

    I'm not familiar with that software, I need to have a look at it. Did you have to do much work to get that functionality? Is it built in or did you have to write scripts, for example?

     

    Are you modelling a location or is it freelance?

     

    Thanks,

     

    John.

    • Like 1
  5. Non-corridor compartments were useful for courting couples, if you could get one to yourselves. I have happy memories of the 23:57 (IIRC) from London Liverpool Street which the now Mrs Feendish and I caught to Upminster. This would have been in the early-eighties.

     

    I can't say more on a family site.

     

     

    • Funny 1
    • Friendly/supportive 1
  6. 34 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

    Western practice was very much to work on the basis of sets for DMUs and if a vehicle had to be taken out for any reason every effort was made to get it back into its correct set as quickly as possible.  This ractice was still the case in the first half of the 1970s but some depots probably paid more attention to it than others if they were up against it for spare parts etc.

    Hi Mike,

     

    just curious, why did the Western prefer to work in sets? Was there any operational advantage or was it just felt to be the correct way to do things?

     

    Thanks,

     

    John.

  7. 1 hour ago, 87023Velocity said:

    Made a start on the Worsley Works FGA/FFA etched kits. Went together with not many problems, got additional detail to add which is not included in the kit - air reservoir  handbrake wheels etc. The one completed so far will be a FFA inner, the next 2 will be FGA outers. 

     

    Cheers

     

    Simon

    20200413_145038.jpg

    20200413_162551.jpg

    20200413_162327.jpg

    Looks great! What are you using for the bogies?

     

    Thanks,

     

    John.

    • Like 2
  8. Hi David,

     

    Love the Ironbridge/Coalbrookdale pictures. The inclined plane is know as the Hay inclined plane, it's now part of the Blists Hill museum. 

     

    I'm pretty sure J4243 is at the site of the old blast furnaces, in the grounds of what is now the Enginuity exhibition. If I'm right I believe my uncle (who's now in his 90's) used to get to drive it when he was a teenager. Kind of a cab ride on steroids I guess!

     

    I really enjoy your pictures. Thanks for sharing,

     

    John.

     

    • Thanks 1
  9. Next installment...

     

    Here is the end plug added and the roof and joints filled.

    211027298_IMG_20190106_203048(2)-s.jpg.bf08108bef8591d9b7ccb2b502d08a90.jpg

     

    And here are the DMBS and TC getting ready for priming. The TC ends are masked because I want to keep the factory printing if I can.861880983_IMG_20190113_171336(1)-s.jpg.ad170592edb1750fee42312da4503e6e.jpg

     

    At this point a couple of things were dawning on me.

     

    First, I wasn't happy with the way the etched sides looked. Nothing to do with the etches themselves, everything to do with the way I stuck them on. You can see the huge gap between the etch and the roof. Also the way the etch was stuck to the side was not robust. The cyano could not tolerate any bending of the plastic side. So I removed the sides, rubbed them down again and reapplied, paying more attention to the fit and using a thinner cyano. This resulted in a better fit, but is still not robust. At least now I am careful in handling it and it's surviving so far. I know I have to do something with the roof of the TC too.


    Second, on the DBMS I managed to get the roof profile reasonably acurate, but there is an unsightly gap between the two roof sections. I'm hoping that with judicious weathering it might not be too noticeable. You might get an idea from this photo, which shows the roof alongside the body after priming.

    IMG_20190303_112537.jpg.8a2a1a42c60d9bd6f33c4bece9ce6d26.jpg

     

     

    I decided on a different approach for converting the second 121. I would slice off the cab and put on an end plug as before, but would keep the roof in one piece and build up the profile at that end with filler, as shown below.

    IMG_20190126_191423-s.jpgIMG_20190126_191440 (1)-s.jpgIMG_20190303_112543-s.jpg.5da76360f4a7b45ef73f94f15dcf66f4.jpg

     

    I am much happier with this approach. The two are shown together below.

    IMG_20190303_112532-s.jpg.0f4015bf2efcce987f5915ac821ebf22.jpg

     

    Both have had a few rounds of filling and rubbing down since this shot. I don't have pics for that yet. 

     

    I'm sure you have noticed that as it stands, I'll have 2 DMBSs and 0 DMS. Since I struggled with the etched sides I'm tempted to keep it that way. I think I would rather have an incorrect consist than risk the look of me bodging the etched DMS sides on. I am not convinced I can get the joint between the etched sides and the Dapol cab looking decent.

     

    Anyhow, that brings us up to date. It'll be a while before I can get back to some modelling, but I'll post when I have something to show.

     

    Cheers,

    John.

    • Like 1
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