CarriageShed

They're not my scale or era, but it's always nice to see someone offering to fill a gap in the market with some high quality materials like this.

Or Maunsell Green for the best livery! That's what I'll be doing with my F1 version in N. Keep up the great work. I love the progress being made in terms of 3D printing for railway modelling. It's highly encouraging.

I think you'll find that underground overground is Wombling free...

Hmm... Sourcing a Terrier for the tender motor and a B17 for the loco chassis means that the costs for this project are quickly escalating beyond the reasonable... and I'd guess this would be true for a larger proportion of the N gauge modellers who are interested in it. On a personal note the only way I could justify it is if the B17 was being offered for a tenner as 'spares or repair', with a knackered loco body or tender motor. I've seen the odd pack of Beaver wheels on eBay, but the only ones visible at the moment are 6' 6'... Anyway, please do keep on trying to find a closer/better solution. I guess we won't really know for certain until you get your hands on the finished 3D print.

Nice try, Jim, but I'm not going finescale. Just fine N gauge

I rated it 'funny' because I'm not sure how you'd be able to source the parts for a full boxed kit in N gauge anyway. Having said that, there's a confirmed need to construct a scratchbuilt loco chassis, so providing the driver wheels would be very handy. At least noting the best existing N chassis to get hold of for parts would be helpful. I'm not sure that you can get N driving wheels separately - someone else will know better than me. The bogie can be sourced from N Brass Locos.

You can't yet. We're all encouraging and helping where we can so that just that thing happens.

If you're happy with modelling materials to be added alongside source material then Peedie Models have produced a set of etched windows and doors for Evercreech Junction's stone buildings. They're available in N gauge but, if they're not already available in larger sizes, just drop Peedie a quick line and he'll almost certainly zap them up to bigger scales for you. The thread is on 'the other forum': http://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=38211.msg455433#msg455433

To add a bit more to the N gauge discussion about this project, I wish I could claim this as my own idea, but the truth is I still greatly rely on others to come up with the smarts! Is the Terrier chassis without its body heavy enough to be used as a tender drive? Would replacing the weighted Dapol body with a 3D printed plastic (featherweight) tender top body produce a drive that won't pull anything (just like the M7)? A suggestion made to me is that the tender design alone is made available to be printed in a metal. Apparently Shapeways do metal via a casting process. You may not get quite the detail but it will make a big difference to haulage. https://www.shapeways.com/materials What do you guys think? Possibly even some details could be added to the tender afterwards, such as mounted springs (available from BH Enterprises) and real coal.

As a non-programmer, that's always been my experience with searching on Shapeways. It can be intensely frustrating and rarely results in a long search. I can probably get better results by entering a Google search.

It would be, yes. You won't find complete set numbers for all carriages, though. Those records just don't exist to that degree of completeness. You will find a few set numbers where they've been uncovered by the author, and Set 61 at least is mentioned (56ft composites).

Tongue firmly in cheek, of course...

And I don't get any, despite checking my settings to make sure that I should. This redesign is a bit clunky. The logo choice alone is... unfortunate.

I asked Etched Pixels about the availability of the Ironclad Pantry Third, but that was over a week ago now, and he hasn't replied. Update 06 Aug 2018: He replied. The Ironclads are on a list of stock that needs to be replenished, but he's not sure when it'll happen.

'Railway Liveries of the Southern Railway', Brain Haresnape, has a very dark colour photo of F1 No 1043 in 1937 after repainting and still without its tender - rivets. rebuilt cab, dome, and extended firebox. 'Southern Steam 1923-39' in the Bradford Barton series has F1s No 1187 and No ? (p10), No A233 (p13), No A149 (p23), No 1079 and No 1089 (p40), and No 1204 (p63) with all of the above too. There's a Class F No A222 on p8 with short smokebox (still with rivets), half-dome (flat-top), and old cab. All the rivet photos I've seen so far are post-Grouping.

It's a highly useful book to have. I also have the three LSWR volumes because that's my primary modelling area. With them you'll also get shed allocations for chosen periods in the history of the class (or you can ask me), and they're not especially expensive via our favourite online auction site.

Okay, D L Bradley in 'The Locomotives of the South Eastern Railway', 1963 says: Class F original build 1883-1897 (p98); Stirling cab, no dome, steam reverser; Patrick Stirling-similar chimneys (early members), plain cast chimneys (later members); Smith's simple vacuum until 1888, then the automatic system replaced it as servicing came around; Nos 156 & 172 fitted with Westinghouse system. Between May 1892 and April 1903 new boilers built at Ashford and fitted to many engines (p102), similar to the old ones but with deeper fireboxes. Class F1 rebuilds New domed boilers between 1903-1920: new cylinders and square cabs; but same overall boiler dimensions. Those rebuilt between 1903-1914 had short smokeboxes, but 1915-1920 had extended smokeboxes (p103). All shorter smokeboxes were extended by 1924 (some Class Fs were still domeless even by this date, which is when withdrawals started - p104 - but a few more F1 boilers were added to remaining Fs in 1925). All remaining locos soldiered in until withdrawn. Rivets Bradley doesn't mention these in his text. Fig 50, though shows an early F (no 208 in 1884) and I can't see any rivets in the smokebox. Fig 51 shows No 240 in 1889 - no rivets Fig 52 shows No A172 in 1928 - rivets! (and old cab) Fig 53 shows No 140 in 1903 after rebuilding, no rivets, rebuilt cab Fig 54 shows No 1249 post-1931/32, rivets, extended smokebox, rebuilt cab Tenders Bradley doesn't mention these either. The figures show three tenders but they all look the same to me. One is empty, the other two well-coaled. It's a bit of a minefield if you're after a specific loco at a specific time, but in general, versions with those variations should cover them all at some time in their lives. I hope that helps Peter

N gauge at a scale of 1:148 should be perfect for most of us (certainly for me and Gareth, if he doesn't mind me speaking on his behalf). The estimated cost is not bad, considering I have a coach in my Shapeways cart for £24 (I'm leaving it there fore a while in the desperate hope of a Shapeways discount day!). Forgot to add - definitely an F1 for me please, with the improved Wainwright cab and Maunsell extended smokebox (I'm operating in 1930).

Eek! and hurrah! in equal measure. I look forward to reading the idiot's guide to converting a Terrier chassis and the other one for scratchbuilding a 4-4-0 chassis in plasticard. Believe me, I'll be monitoring the guide for 'idiotness' and if I don't spot enough of it I'll be in touch As a side note, my ambition one day is to build an LSWR A12, so this guide may be a huge step towards that ambition too (although I understand that the A12 can take a UM motor in its tender so there will be some differences). I'll be taking it very seriously, you can be sure.

Hmm... for some reason I don't seem to have received a notification of a reply... Wouldn't a Union Mills tender drive do the trick just as well (and at a lower cost, with less waste)? That, of course, would raise the problem of how to do the electrical pick-up bit - for me at least - with one side of the loco chassis needing to be isolated from the other... The loco chassis itself is also a bit of a question for this loco. We've already discusses the wheelbase, and no existing 4-4-0 chassis seems to be accurate enough for it.

The second part of that sentence is definitely seconded, but the first part most definitely isn't! The rest of us who aren't expert loco chassis scratch-builders and hackers may need to use a more readily-available N gauge chassis

On a side note, Quarreyscapes, I clicked on your model shop link and got the following connection warning from my browser: The owner of www.coastlinemodels.co.uk has configured their web site improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this web site.

There's not much left of the station today. I cycled the entire branch line a few years ago, taking photos as I went: http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/RailwayWalks/Britain/Polegate_Eridge/Polegate_Eridge01.html Horam station starts from slide 32 onwards.

It looks Greasy to me. It may even be Wet & Rusty...

If 'reasonable' is the odd pound or two then I'd be happy to pay that for a one-off coach like Saloon No 17. The SECR brake van was somewhat rough, but you can get away with that in an old, careworn brake van. It's not so easy with a coach.