Player of trains

Thanks Annie, really I think we just started in the wrong place trying to replicate existing wagons, the thinking was to replace the old rather innacurate Peco whitemtal kits of GVT and L&B rolling stock, as well as this I think there was still some prejudice to 3D printing around 2019-2020 on account of Makerbots sullying early home 3D printing for a lot of people with overpromised quality back in 2013-16 which really I can't blame them for. Makerbots are bizarre little things. Leeds is a new maker to me but the Lionel mechanism would fit brilliantly I imagine, is it a pure AC chassis or does it run on AC with a rectifier to DC, I don't know all that much about Lionel. Both of those engines are very sweet though, despite the liveries I think they have a rather distinct Irish flair too them, especially the 4-6-0T, it looks like a Cork, Bandon and South Coast loco.

Had a good hunt though the boxes and found the wagons, a lot more than I thought, we definitely over produced for that first show but you don’t know until you try, I think I must have six vans in stock…I thought only five were produced. Whoops the brake gear is fitted separately in all these wagons and they take most makes of OO wheels, the GVT had two makes of 4 ton open wagon by Midland Carriage and Wagon and the more local Cambrian wagon co, the difference in brake gear is really the only visual difference, MCW mounted the operating axle for the brakes directly to the solebars whereas the Cambrian WCo fitted the brakes to proper V hangers. I’m remembering how these vans were made now too, the main body was printed in resin and the roof is made from filament material, says how long they’ve been in the box haha. The one ton wagons are a more obscure prototype from the GVT dating from when the initial motive power was single digit horsepower. I hope they’d fill your cuteness quota Annie. They did stick around for loco haulage and mostly carried cut slate or coal when the four ton wagons took over, even carried tar tankers for the “granomac” traffic which humorously did not fit the wagons so the doors needed to be chained shut around the tank for conveyance. Fingers crossed that was new information and I’m not looking like a total lemon haha. Do ignore the out of scale scenery the layout just happened to be the best photography plank, Alnogg happens to have gained an 3ft Railway which funnily enough I’m rebuilding based off the Plumbury Baggott illustration.

I'll wind my neck in after this opinion but the Universal points sound like a good deal if you can get them and want too. With the track you found in store it'd be pretty ideal, the old wren track always looked a bit coarse to my eyes but utterly fantastic for O.16.5 with its wider sleepers and rails flush to the sleepers as opposed to the Triang Series 3/4 track with the narrower sleepers and raised rail.

Great minds think alike, I think that has to be my favorite illustration Peter Barnfield created. Personally I think its the Wantage track plan or at least inspired by it with the passenger platform and train shed on the headshunt of the loop. Maybe a Owd' Ratty Manning Wardle would fit on that Tri-Ang Jinty chassis...

That's Fab, I'll have a check when I am home of what there is and get back to you. If I recall its a mix of Midland and Cambrian built 4 ton wagons I have, the one ton slate and one ton open wagons which are effectively small tubs and one or two vans left. On Thingiverse the items we never quite got around to releasing before jumping to 009. Iron body variation of the GVT 4 ton wagon and the Southwold wagons, the Southwold vans might be kicking about if I look around, we never managed to make a Cleminson wagon work hence the fox bogies under the MOY wagon.

Haha Happy to see you found some of our wagons Annie, those are the old GVT wagons and Southwold ones me and my friend put together (mostly my mate) back when we were starting out printing and designing kits, sadly it didn't really sell so we focus fully on 009 now, I still have quite a stockpile however of the GVT 1 ton and 4 ton open wagons and the box vans which I don't believe were ever uploaded to Thingiverse. I was already wondering if you might want some as they're just taking up space here but since you found the uploads I thought I'd ask. I'd be happy to box some of them up and send them off to you. I'll have a look and see if I could print the Sentinel too if you like? I can believe that the meshes were too small for an industrial printer as that supplier might have had but it could work on my smaller home printers. Sorry if that's too forward of me, just happy to help out if I can and pay some of that inspiration back.

And that's a follow! So happy to see another go Annie, funny you mention Lego as I recall coming across your rather boundless creativity on the Eurobricks forums back when I was more of a whippersnapper, safe to say I think you've influenced my own modelling a bit and I cannot wait to see how this progresses.

Good afternoon everyone, back onto the O scale wagon this week, the Y4 is progressing nicely but I've had a distraction arrive with a purchase I made in March finally making its way to me from the US. After a bit of hunting in March I've bought the Rivarossi kit for the Illinois Central Railroad No.382. It is a rather nice kit and I rather wish a few more plastic kits were available for O scale locos. Not an original idea I know but I'm building this model as an Anglicised export delivered during the builders strikes of the first decade of the 20th century. I'll drop a few pictures of the initial construction in the thread as soon as I am able but I just wanted to ask if anyone else had built one before and if anyone had a spare motorising kit I could acquire. If I can't find one I do have a few ideas using Slaters 5'1" drivers and Roxey components to power the small beastie but I'd like to at least use the purpose made wheels if I can find them.

Thanks for the sound advice, I think I have managed to solder the dumb buffers to the buffer beams but I've shored up the join with cyano. I think I'll be epoxying the rest of the white-metal parts for this kit together. Gel CA glue and epoxy seem to do the job, not the best solution but the large whitemetal components on this model were just acting as a heat sink and absorbing more heat than I was comfortable with from the iron and I'd be pretty uncomfortable running the risk of melting the tank sides when I try to put that together.

Afternoon everybody, I've been sat on this project for a while and now I'm rather eager to get back to it. I'm hoping to tackle some of the white-metal parts this evening but I have never soldered white metal before and its a skill I really need to learn. I'm used to working with the material as I mostly model in 009 but I've always glued it, this will require far sturdier joins so how do people best recommend soldering white-metal? I have low melt solder already but do I need a low temperature iron? And if so what temperatures? I know a lot of this information can really be solved by a quick google but I've found a fair bit of variation so I'd be very grateful if people can help me come to a general consensus for the best way to practice soldering white-metal. Cheers, Alec

I did wonder why the station had those big stripy poles either end of the platform, just the station staff's lances

Thanks PH but no thanks, I’m treating it as a private company, the NAR is one of the more fascinating companies though. But Great Bear Island is on the west coast or northwestern coast of Canada nowhere near its operating range. The main inspiration by the game developers was Vancouver island although despite the name is probably not located in Great Bear Lake either. At the end of the day I’m adapting a piece of popular culture into a layout and I’m trying to stick relatively close to what’s already established by it rather than adding heaps onto it. I do this a lot with my pre-grouping inspired Alnogg thread and I think this is a good project where I can just switch off my brain from bothering about backstories and focus more on the technical side of things and experiment with DCC, scenery and lighting.

Ah it’s alright I do understand, ideally that is the best solution. My reluctance to add a shed behind the station is because of my space, it’s exceedingly limited width wise due to the limitations for layout storage and I’m trying to stick relatively close to the inspiration. And in any case it’s neither CPR or CN or even BCR haha so I don’t necessarily need to stick to the established practice that exclusively and it is all fiction at the end of the day. The tippler is a conundrum to scratch and I’ll probably just further extend the sidings, the original sketches really shouldn’t be taken as being to the scale and I’ll mock up the boards and scale the layout out this weekend. This evening though I’ve been tackling some Ambroid kits I’ve had in the kit stash for a while. I managed to get a trio of Boston and Maine cars to build up, the platform passenger car, combine and baggage car, I’m on the lookout for another platform passenger car but these will do very nicely for the passenger needs of the GBR especially up to the isolation of Transfer Pass. My only comment is that the kits were missing several components, either corner blocks or lacking enough strip wood to finish properly, given the age of these kits I can’t complain, not really, and anything missing I can substitute with styrene or print. I suppose I’m pushing the boat out using vehicles of this vintage but suitable passenger vehicles that didn’t cost an arm and a leg are tricky to find, this is the kind of line that definitely doesn’t need big six axle heavyweight cars especially with the timber trestles.

Ahhh believe me I'm aware that the coal tippler is very awkward where it is, this is only the first version of plan and I'm only copying what I've based it off at the moment. You'll see on the charcoal map half pinched from the game that the tippler is at the end of a siding, I'm assuming as its fed from a road its only having a car load or two loaded at any time. Its a fair enough assumption about the warehouse but another reason why I applied it to its own siding is that this is still a through station. Transfer Pass is a terminus for passenger working but freight continues on to a large opencast mine, I did not think it made much sense to leave pieces of rolling stock on the main running line and making block mineral trains run round it on the loop. I'll tinker with a second design, moving the warehouse to the station side of things. Thanks for the input its greatly appreciated especially for a project like this where I'm not so much starting from scratch but more fixing something that already exists.

ahh thanks for clearing that up, the locomotive used in game is modelled after the Southern Pacific’s MP15ACs with their unique headlamp arrangements and square machinery cabinet so that was the model I was trying to track down, I had assumed that the CSX one wasn’t such a model due to the mismatch in those details.

thanks, it could be an AC? The differences seem rather trivial visually and mostly concern the machinery cabinet on the bonnet in front of the cab. I’ve no clue if it’s one or the other as I bought it advertised as an AC type and it came in a box from a Walthers hopper car!

Good morning everybody, it seems I spend much more time modelling outside topics outside the UK than in it nowadays, and I’ve been collecting HO models as and when for the past year with the intention of some day doing something with them. That some day was yesterday as it turns out, and I’ve finally settled on what to exactly do. Great Bear and it’s railway. Great Bear is a fictional north Canadian island from the survival genre game by Hinterland Studios, a Canadian software developer, the game takes place in the decaying ruins of post industrialised Great Beat following a cataclysmic geomagnetic storm, much like the real Carrington Event of 1859. The Great Bear Railway is one of the main thoroughfares though this decaying wilderness and is heavily inspired in game by the various railways that once plied Vancouver island. The railway was first laid though this wilderness in the early part of the 20th century to reach timber stocks on the islands mountainous slopes and then blasted into its interior to reach the Far Range mountains and the mineral wealth within. The line is a common carrier and would have begun with steam haulage before moving to diesel, plans were afoot to convert the railway to electric with hydro power but little became of the scheme, by the early 21st century passenger traffic was seasonal for tourists to the natural parks on the island and accomplished with home built speeders. Freight traffic was still running at the courtesy of the Breyerhaus timber company and Langstron mine within the Far Range but it had dribbled to a point the only locomotive seen in use was an old MP15AC switcher. Seismic activity left the railway precarious and its exact working status before the apocalypse is sketchy. I have had designs on modelling the entire railway in more prosperous times and as seen in the game for quite some time, the game world split into various regions with the GBR running though several of them but that will take much more space than I really have especially with a larger layout in the works for my Isle of Alnogg. So I’m settling on modelling a single location, the depot at Transfer Pass. Track Plan This is the first track plan and bundle of notes I made around September/October 2022 following the sections of track then in the game, I did find the idea rather attractive effectively being a layout in a landscape but I simply don’t have to e space for it so it’s been shelved for the time being. In December Hinterland Studios released the first section of addon content to the game, that being the Far Range mountains, accessed by the old branch of the GBR that reaches into the mountains and terminating in Transfer Pass its ideal for a small portable HO layout but holding some wonderful scenery being penned in by steep cliffs either side. internal “charcoal” map of Transfer Pass Transfer Pass is a simple depot, run round/ passing loop and siding with a coal tippler for loading hoppers. It should provide ample operating interest with a few tweaks and really be a good exercise in scenery work. Now with all the context out of the way let’s get on to my actual interpretation. My track plan is largely the same but I’ve added a kickback siding to a small warehouse to park a boxcar in front of to make shunting a little more interesting much to the chagrin of a Canadian friend in BC who insists the freight siding be the same side as the station! The track will be Peco Code 100 because it’s what I have in stock and the layout is to be split across two 77l Christmas tree boxes for ease of transport and storage, this gives me 240cm to play with length wise so I hope to be able to fit a decent bit of cliff side running in. the baseboards will be made from foam board sheets cut and laminated together and the scenery carved from a whole lot of black packaging foam I’ve been saving from work for just such an occasion. I’d like to have the buildings (all three!) illuminated internally and I would like to experiment with building a lighting rig for this layout to simulate a day light cycle. Motive power So far the collection is rather eclectic and could quite easily allow me to represent any time from the 1910s to the 1990s. The current backbone of the fleet is an Athearn MP15DC, Bachmann high driver 4-6-0 and Atlas GP7 The MP15 I have finished and began life as a CSX variant, they’re annoyingly rare to get in the UK and while I was looking for an AC version specifically I snapped up this one when it was on Hattons back in July 2022 The 4-6-0 is a tricky devil bought for a song and I know why, it’s a spectrum sound model but the sound is poorly timed and the dcc cuts out intermittently, I intend to pull the chip and speaker out entirely one day and replace with a proper aftermarket sound setup when funds allow. So far I’ve just begun to modify the tender with the GBR roundel and I intend to finish the locomotive next. The GP7 I bought from the Stafford show in October, I intended to repaint it but I’ve been told the Aberdeen and Rockfish variant is a rarer model so I’m reluctant to do so just yet. Is anyone able to confirm that for me? I did find it was only produced in 2005 but no idea of the quantity or if that’s even true. This will do for now because my fingers have gotten rather numb typing on a phone. I do hope this will be a fun project for myself and that everyone else enjoys reading about my progress. The next update will be a little bit of CAD a little bit of woodworking woes and a not so little pile of locomotive parts. Cheers Alec

I don't see why not, on the large end of things for the Colonel to buy but he bought large things for use in Anglia anticipating a boom in post war Kent coal traffic, at least I think that's why he bought Hecate and the Radial tank. A cut down or replaced tender might suit a Wooley either for greater visibility as this line is unlikely to have turning facilities, or the railway only purchased the kit of bits for the engine and give it an older six or four wheel tender. It's unconventional but far from unfeasible or unrealistic given the locos various actual light railways did end up with and sounds a fun project.

The hut is definitely an attempt at adding a doghouse for brake crews to shelter in at the loco end of the train. I think it was mostly Southern Pacific and Santa Fe who employed them in North America. The Lone Star 0-8-0 is just a great big shunter so unlikely to really have it although there were trip working 0-8-0s such as the very attractive locos the Indiana Harbour Belt had

Thank you Eheaps, I have a particular adoration for your Trainsim designs as well particularly the articulated ones, I've often thought about making the Golwé in 009. I do agree with your points about the lining, the lavender is absolutely brighter in person than it is in photos so I will probably go with the red wine lining I already have thanks to Corbs, although I still want to explore pale blue or turquoise for lining and shading coach numbers. The lavender is a unique colour for locos I know and the LT&SR one must have been appalling to keep clean. The reasoning in my head is that it is actually one large advertising sponsorship. One of the main industries the C&SCR serves is the Kennadrin Chemical Co in the Pidd Vale. The company manufactures paint as well as caustic chemicals which are brought down the vale by the Chevril Magna & Bramble Fosse railway for export at Chevril Magna. The KCC purchased production rights to Mauveine after its discovery and began to manufacture industrial grade paints in a variety of hues. How better to demonstrate the long wearing properties of your product but applying it to a steam locomotive, it worked for Solvite! Originally the KCC were going to approach the CM&BFR but at that point it was a rinkydink operation in a well hidden valley, instead they approached the C&SCR which was already using a shade of Vermillion supplied by the KCC produced from ore extracted up near Bramble Fosse. A darker shade known as Kennadrin Mauve was used from 1871 to 1902 on passenger locomotives and a lighter shade known as Kennadrin Royal Lilac was adopted in 1902 until 1952 as a celebration of King Edward VII's coronation. The livery would be taken out of use when the C&SCR was amalgamated by the nationalised railway system in 1953 but it can still be spotted on various preserved locomotives and is still considerably brighter compared to the more austere liveries on the island.

Seconding the video, it's a place I would love to visit one day. I can't help but adore these 0-8-0s, it possibly has to be one of the biggest family trees of locomotive design as I understand it, ranging from Pre-WW1 designs though the 20s and 30s though distribution and variation as a standard design in the Soviet Union and then into China with the Q designs

Good evening everyone, the 2-8-2 tanks are on the back burner for a bit while I figure out chassis problems, I bought a battered 47xx as a donor but it has ended up being a bit too big overall so back on the search for a suitable mechanism or building one. Still I've wanted a loco to actually pull the coaches I'm working on so this weekend I've used components of the 2-8-2 tanks to put together an 0-6-0 tank. The original idea was to make a new cab for a Hornby terrier. The results were spectacular but just looked like a terrier doing its best impression of a hermit crab. I liked how daft it looked but it suited an industrial rebuild rather than the bespoke loco I was intending. The cab ended up being cut and shut into the overall design I went for and I think its my favourite design yet. I'm intending it to be a general purpose shunter and light trip working loco so comfortably at home across the C&SCR network and working onto other lines on the island. This has been a first major attempt at printing handrails too and I am very pleased with how they came out. Support requires delicate removal but when the material has cured the handrails are surprisingly durable. Wire and turned knobs are absolutely superior but the printed rails can stand up to some punishment before breaking. Livery wise I've finally settled on the London Tilbury & Sarf'end Lavender, I've had my heart set on lilac or mauve locomotives for a while now. Pregrouping companies always had fun liveries when the manpower to clean them was cheap and there's a good prototype for it in the LT&SR Lavender even if it was a short lived special occasion livery. Plan is for passenger and mixed traffic locomotives to be painted lavender with red frames, lavender wheels, white rims and white lining. The lining and lettering might be white and blue or white and red wine as I've used on the ROD rebuild a few pages up. The paint still isn't finished and the photos in the thread aren't yet up to date but I am very happy with how this loco is going and has come out. The Lavender is enamel and needs a few more coats and the black needs touching up where it has rubbed. After that I need to finish off a few other details, I need to source a few more brake pipes and print a variety components such as a tablet catcher for working on the branch lines. For now I'm happy to have another loco in the fleet and I'm already looking out for damaged terriers to donate their mechanisms. But what to do with the body that's left over...

Fantastic overhaul of the Beyer Corbs, it really does make the model look far more proportional. I’ll have to make notes for remotoring my own Beyer when I get around to redesigning the body shell from scratch

It's for sure a definitive large tank engine and bloody gorgeous but I think the French and Dutch will have a contender for the title with their beautiful 4-8-4 tanks. But these are real not imaginary. I'm pushing the boat out as it was never built than imaginary but I am slowly working on getting materials together for designing an 0-6-6-0 Meyer based off the 1905 proposal by Kitson for the H&B for banking between the Sugarloaf tunnels.

The bunker is a bit under sized I suppose but it does project significantly into the cab, it's a design that's not particularly going far or fast. It's filling an equivalent role of the Churchward 42XX tanks just on oil trains