neilkirby

Last night I glossed over the SDJR vans and re-did the Railtec transfers, they came out a lot better, I will put a coat of matt on tonight. Also they need a brake van, up until now I have only completed a late version of the SDJR 6-wheel 20t brake in BR livery, so on Wednesday I printed off the early version, then yesterday evening I painted it and applied some transfers ( you may notice the central axle and buffers are still missing, but I took a photo anyway

I started off with the High Level chassis, but didn't like it. I then tried a home brew Nigel Lawson pulley type, then modified it to take the gear arrangement I have now. Regards, Neil

Despite looking the part, I still need to refine the chassis, as although this works, is very noisy. As soon as I have that issue resolved I will make some available. I also have two of ths CSP Kits, which I shall never make either! Regards, Neil

Transfers on! I was going to do it in the LMS straw,which is how I last saw her, but I could not find any transfers small enough, so was stumped. Luckily someone told me that she had had a BR style repaint

Cannot offer many tips on CAD, I have tried a few different cad packages over the years, and not really done well with any of them until I tried Tinkercad (which most professionals wouldn't consider a proper cad program), but it works for me and the way my brain works, and I can find solutions to most shapes I want to do. The only real restriction I have found is compound curves. Which is a problem for the fillet between chimneys/domes and boilers. The Sentinels higher up the page are the first things I completed, but I still keep going back and adding/changing bits and pieces. This is the latest version of Joyce : Where I work we have a drawing office with 'proper' cad guys, they would be horrified if they knew how much time it took me to draw this. Come to think of it I probably would be as well if ever I totalled it up! One other tip, don't trust drawings. I used a number of different sources when I started this, starting with one printed in a 1970s model railway magazine. After I showed the early versions, I was kindly given copies of 2 different official drawings from Sentinel and also the modifications made at Highbridge. But after careful study of photos, they clearly weren't built exactly to the drawings!

Well, during the week I reprinted the one with the wonky door rod. This morning I sprayed them, and this afternoon I applied the decals, and thought i had finished. This evening I noticed that the decals were lifting a bit around the edges. So I applied a drop of MicroSol to try and bed them down. And now I have ruined the decals, they are really curling up.

First post for a while, 2 SDJR vans: Only just noticed from this photo that on the above you can see the individual chain links on the door peg! such a shame the vertical post has warped. Regards Neil

Another 1914 7F nearing completion, this one will be 53800: Note to self, stop buying 2nd hand 7Fs, no matter how much of a bargain they appear to be on ebay!

7f and 4f tender handrails on, and ready for the paint shop now: And so close, and yet so far away with a small fail again on a different Lattice post signal:

Latest 3d print, Large boiler for the Bachmann 7f. There's a little work still to do to get the rear of the firebox to clear the back of the motor, but the fit is pretty good now: **Edit** The smoke box door is now a seperate part, so the layering visible below is not on the latest version. Also a bit of a fail with a Lswr Lattice post signal, based on the up signal in Radstock yard. My usual mistake of going too fine rather than practical. I will have to thicken up the ladder, platform and telegraph supports.

TMC are doing the Bachmann southern Ransomes and Rapier crane for £124.95. I wanted this when it was announced, but the price was too rich for me. Couldn't resist at this price. Regards, Neil

Hi All, I thought I would post here a picture of my Genesis coach which I got after seeing a picture in 'southern wagons pictorial'. In 1927 An urgent need for ballast brakes was satisfied by converting 4 ex-LCDR 4 wheel coaches. Although no quite right the Genesis coach was fairly close. So after removing the lookouts, and plating over with plasticard. This is the result, I also added my own 3d printed oil lamp tops: Neil

Thank you, I was thinking about epoxy, and whether it generates any heat while curing. I left the shot loose for now as this was only a test print of the body. It turns out that I have a colleague whos son is a sound engineer. So I will see if he can come up with anything. in the mean time I will try a slight mod to the design and also try some silicone lubrication on the gears and try again. Regards, Neil

Hi All, I am hoping for some advice here. I have been designing my own model of a Sentinel locomotive for a while now which is to be 3D printed. I am aware that people say that 3d print locos do not have enough weight to give them any pulling power. So I created compartments in the body wherever possible to fill with lead shot. As of this weekend I thought I had a working prototype. (See below) and after loading up with lead it does pull about 8 wagons of varying manufacture along a short test track, and looks like it could pull a few more. But it sounded awful! AdmitedIy I am using a cheap ebay motor, but this doesn't sound too bad on it own. This motor drives vertical spur gears to a leyshaft below, the layshaft is mounted on to very small roller bearings in the chassis and this shaft has a set of tenshodo worms and gears onto each axle. as a test I removed the gears from the axle and the noise is still there, so I am pretty sure its the (purchased) spur gears that are making the racket. I am no expert in this can someone tell me what the likely cause is? Is the meshing too close ? too far apart? too much play on the stub axle of the intermediate gear? Any and all advice welcome Thanks in advance. I have included a quickly drawn diagram of the gears in case my description doesn't cover it ***Edit*** I have run it again without the body on, and it quieter again, so it must be the bodywork operating like a sound box, I have to think of someway to deaden the sound. Regards, Neil

And now painted: Regards Neil

In addition to the above, this is what they look like on the wagon:

Over Christmas I built 3 Chivers Finelines kits, 2x Diag.1771 (Tunny) and 1x Diag.1773 (Ling) On one I managed to break a whitemetal buffer. I had been using 'A Pictorial History of Southern Wagons' vols 3 and 4 for diagrams and pictures and had noticed that one of these has a very detailed drawing of the buffers needed, So after an hour on the Cad software I had them drawn up, and last night I started the first print this year the results are below , along with a vacuum pipe designed for the Tunny which isn't in the kit: I have got to say apart from breaking one of the vacpipes while removing it from the supports I am really happy with these. Regards, Neil

Small permanent way train made up of a Bachmann 'Bagnall', Two Rapido dropsides and a home made ex-SDJR ballast brake:

Another print, but not S&D, or even 4mm this time. 30 odd years ago I half built a Vulcan 7mm Dean goods. This never got completed as I managed to badly damage a major part and also a number of the tender brake castings were shorts. Below is some replacements for these

Hi, short update showing re-angled and reprinted backheads: Regards, Neil

Just a short update showing progress with the chassis for the Sentinel. The gearing works fine, I just need to wire in the pickups and give it a trial run: I also printed off a boiler I drew up last year, to to convert the Bachmann 7f in to the 1925 batch. This is the second attempt, the first on I tried printing with the chimney and dome in place but that did not work well, so I have split them off to print separately. The Chimney came out perfect and fits well. But as you can see in th picture, the dome failed on the very thin edge where it would meet the boiler: I will try another dome tonight, but maybe slightly thicken up that edge first, I will also do another backhead as it looks like I chose just the wrong angle so it shows stepping. Regards, Neil

Hi Steve, My problems started when a small hole in the fep damaged the screen. I got a replacement and swapped it out. Afterwards, I could not get a decent print, I was getting failures every time, with the prints breaking away from the supports. I tried increasing the lift height and reducing the lift speed to try and stop that happening, I also slowly increased my exposure time from around 2.5 secs up to 4+ before I could get it to print at all. Above this time I could get a print but the parts looked awful. I eventually noticed that the 'light off delay' didn't seem so be happening. Investigation revealed that this (rather illogically to my mind) starts from the end of the previous exposure rather than from when the build plate gets all the way down. So the increased lift and reduced speed left me without any effective delay, which meant that the exposure starts while the resin is still moving, causing partially exposed resin to flow to the edges outside the print. I now know this is called blooming, However this is not the whole story. Just before I noticed the lack of delay I saw a really good deal on a Mars 3 Pro ands ordered this. This has printed faultlessly since day 1 with zero fails. So all my recent stuff has been from this. My Saturn 'kind of works' but was always very temperamental and I was not really happy with it before screen swap as I always had a high fail rate, plus I see no good reason why a change of screen should make it so much worse. The upshot is that I now have a Saturn shaped lemon next to the new Mars in my workshop! For the moment am just happy to be getting decent prints on the Mars, once the memory of the frustrating months dissipates I will try again to get the Saturn sorted out. Regards, Neil

Something else I have tried on a whim. A lattice post signal based on an LSWR example but not really dimensioned, other than by eye, just to see if it would print. The lattices are ridiculessly fine, being .2mm x .15mm thick! but still they printed. There is a small 'wobble' about 30mm up from the base, but that could be down to me handling it before it was cured. But not bad for the first test print I will try another one , but will put a frame around the lower half so I can get it into the curing machine without touching it, and will see if that comes out any better

Another print today of something I have been working on. A 7F just about to pick up a token from a Whitaker exchange apparatus

Hi, For some time I have been designing my own SDJR stuff, that I have posted sporadically of various parts of RMWeb. I was making what I thought was good progress when last october my Elegoo Saturn decided to stop working correctly. Months of frustration and wasted resin followed, and the machine nearly went out the window a couple of times, but I have now started successfully printing again. Below are two of my most recent prints, a rivetted version of the Johnson tender top which I designed last year, this is to be fitted to the Bachmann model, so that I can better portray the SDJR 'Armstrong' 4Fs 44557-44561: 2nd is my latest model that I did a couple of weeks ago . This is my take on the Wells no.9 brake van, the chassis is pure conjecture seeing as only the body survives, and there are no drawing that I am aware of: Another stalled project that I am hoping to get going is models of the S&D Sentinels, and Joyce as shown below from when the printer was working last year. I think I now have a viable chassis design to go under them, I have printed to prototypes and just have to assemble them to see if they work!: I have other things on the go including various types of S&D brake vans and 2 road vans, and a G9BS boiler to fit the Bachmann 7f. I am currently at work and may post more pictures when back home. Regards, Neil