How about a Dictator Loco Class?

Oh my goodness Loftus road and your modelling never cease to blow my mind! Everything is so, so impressive! How many of you work on Loftus Road please? And how young were you when you started modelling James? Love the Connex VEP! I've never seen one in models form before?!? I've been waiting to see one for years, since I was down South and traveled on a Connex VEP Rob (-:

A question for all you geniuses out there (-: Were these loads chained down or tied with ropes or something else? It would be great to capture every little detail surely! Does anyone have pictures even? Thanks. Rob

Hi Atilla. The loads are made in house at TMC. If you inquire they'll no doubt supply them separately too. They look slightly better still in real life than in the picture. With a textured finish, a bias to metalic on one side and a bias to rusty on the other side. So you choose which way around they go.Some loads had chalk markings/writing on. That would be an interesting addition to the steel plates maybe! Rob

Wow, that's a fair bit of attention to detail time! I bet the old grimy Growler looked good! With time on your side you can do effects like; paint on steps worn through to shiny metal, fully painted interiors etc Loads of little fussy accurate details, copied from photos etc. Thanks for the reply Big T! If anyone else wants to add details of their longest weathering job, please don't hold back. (-:

When they come out you can spec them with trestles to model the retrofitted trestle versions. What can prototypically be done will be properly researched before they're on sale. And you can get prototypical loads, eg steel sheets in various stages of corrosion or iron ingots in various shapes and sizes potentially too I think. Sorry if this has already been said or if it's already advertised on the TMC website. I think it's fresh info though?!? Picture shows a similar kit wagon. Rob

Well used class 60 about to cross the main road to town. 20170306_183157-1.png Stephen Did you weather the class 60? The windscreen wiper effect looks good!! (-: Rob

I was just thinking, what is the longest any of you have spent weathering a single engine or piece of rolling stock?!?!? I'd love to hear a fair few answers if possible! It must be great to have not time or detail limits! Thanks! (The longest I usually spend on weathering a loco isn't much over 1.5 hours. But I'm constrained timewise as I only weather for work)

I can't take glory for this idea. Toby Jennings said his colleagues at Steam Railway thought a dictator Class would have been a fun idea. With locos named after Hitler and Mussolini types.A Colonel Gadaffi loco would be covered in crests many being the same ones repeated, repeatedly like the fictional medals he invented for his crazy uniforms. As regards Fictitious Models, I'm planning to make a 'Point Turntable' It's a turntable but with a point on instead of a straight track. You may say what's the point but at least it's not pointless, like a normal turntable! There actually is a double decker turntable in real life in Europe on a preserved line! May be narrow gauge? An intercity swallow livery 158 would be nice and a Class 142 in Royal Train livery!!! I'd love to hear people's fun ideas for fictitious loco names, layout place names etc? (-:

The Light Pacific rebuild (featuring giant prototypical soldering iron burn holes in the cab sides) is acting mearly as a display pedestal for the Lengthy Duchess. And giving an impression of the scale of said beautiful bird poo bedecked Duchess jockey. It's not a form of complex steam locomotive mating procedure. We joined a loco and tender with a 'crew link coupling' (as opposed to a skrew link coupling) with the cab crew's linked arms being the sole connection. Not very practical. We once modelled an in cab, cab crew fight scene. It was a gruesome affair with blood soaked tender tools brandished and the odd rogue limb kicking around here and there. Appropriately it was later binned! Then Toby Jennings (now assistant predator at Steam Railway magazine) once accumulated many pesky bluebottles one summer in a jam jar. They were skilfully and promptly shot down by his 6 shot, trusty elastic band gun whenever they zoomed in, pestering him in his 'no fly zone' Eventually they were put to good use with PVA in a loco tender. A real fly load as opposed to a real coal load. And inline with this fictitious re-liveried models topic, several were carefully dismantled, repainted silver and carefully modified with superglue to have extra wings or double length and push me pull you bodies. It looked horrible!!!! You will be relieved to know that such gross behaviour and silly games ceased many years ago.

There's one trade secret that I realised should be shouted out! As it's related to people's health and safety. Here in these pictures are our respirators of choice at TMC. These filters protect against many different things. Ie inorganic, particulate, fumes etc. (Can't be bothered going into it properly atm) Many filters only protect you from one or maybe two harmful nasties. After a lot of research we saw the Scott Profile 2 mask and changeable screw on filters to be our favourite by far. A basic tip is, if you can smell your paint or modelling related fumes in the slightest bit, your mask isn't good enough. And you are probably being harmed to some degree. One danger is we can get accustomed to a smell and slightly desensitised to it over a short time. So please look after yourselves. I've tried many filters and masks and this is by far my favourite. We've used these for many years. And for some serious hours! On an intense 14 hour day it can eventually feel a tad uncomfortable sometimes to wear. For a few hours or an on and off day it's perfect. If you struggle to find these for yourselves, let us know and we may look into supplying them in future?!? A gutsy ott spray booth is another life saver for your longs etc. I get my industrial spray booths custom built from scratch, with extra powerful service free motors, that also won't ignite gasses and we have speed controllers made for them. Then you can have a quiet mild breeze for a light N gauge weathering and a concord's afterburner like noiser blast for a heavy G gauge and upwards weathering. A model in a gauge twice as wide requires between 4 and 8 times more paint. Big models hence can be a real enemy of your health if you don't take the proper precautions. It's worth finding the appropriate m/s per m2 of air required for your room's m3 size. Many spray booth companies I've delt with don't even know these official requirements sadly. Spray booth and compressor noise are another nasty to watch out for. (Or listen out for if your hearing still exists) A good rule is, if your ears whistle due to the noise. Then a degree of damage has happened potentially each time. If your hearing is already lessened sadly, please don't think it's too late to bother with all that health and safety/personal protective equipment rubbish! You can help by not adding to the problem. My first compressors were an ear splitting 94db. My more recent ones are 40 to 60db. A 40db is quite impressive. If you buy an oil cooled one, check it's duty cycle!!! And it's advisable to get a medical spec one. Unless you like oil splattered all over your model as soon as it's got up to temperature. I wear ear defenders sometimes. As a silly side point; My mum ascertains the bio resonance of the substances I use at work etc (not illegal substances/mind warping drugs) and monitors how much I have in my system when I get home. Then she cancels it out overnight. Heaven knows what she's doing lol!!! I feel rightfully dubious as to how many things this expensive complex so called wonder machine can treat. So I thought I'd try it on something I could see. On bad fresh midge bites namely. As the machine said each individually targeted bite was treated, the bad itching stopped. Taking 2 minutes each to treat on average. One hour later the swelling had subsided on each treated bite. The next morning the red marks had gone too, so the problem had vanished totally. Whereas the untreated bites persisted for nearly a week. My dubious friend on another evening got midge bites from playing football next to the same wooded area where the midges tucked into me (something we'd experienced often) and he was amazed by the results too. Recovery stages taking the exact same timing. So there's potential my mum isn't totally mad like me lol!!! If anyone has better input than me on these "railway matters", ie the best respirators etc, then please add to this post. Thank you! (-: Rob

Bulleid's Turf Burner 66look alike Loco in Load Haul livery would look great (spelt Toad Hall I saw that on drawn onto a real class 60 once!!!) Or the gas turbine Apt in Class 158 Express livery. This picture is of the body for a giant version of a spoof Duchess I once did.

At TMC about 10 years ago I did a livery switch between a Virgin HST and a Flying Scotsman. The HST was re-geared 18 times higher and finished in BR Green early crest. It's motors just produced smoke and it never really ran. I have it somewhere still. But the Red Virgin Cross contry Flying Sccotsma looked amazing! The tenter finished with a huge black triangle and white stripes to match the coaches. The wheel rims were painted white (a bit like the rims on the Royal class 47's) The livery worked so well! We pulled 10 donors out to do a batch of them due to popular demand but then I never got round to them. One was to go to Richard Branson as he had just funnded the Scotsman's work back then. But I did a few models for Prince Charles so eventually had a claim to a famous customer anyway. The model can now be seen (on request) running around the track in the Birchall Inn in Beck Hole. I'll photo it this week if somehow I remember. What a great topic JDW and everyone else! Rob

Oh wow that's interesting! In November I'd spent quite some time designing and manufacturing loads and loads of alternative couplings. The exact 45 degree coupling you mentioned was one of the designs I thought up. That design started from an idea with swivelling interlocking vacuum pipe varients. My laptop is off otherwise I'd post pictures. Maybe you could interlock a pair in a picture for those with challenged imaginations? (-: I've got pictures on my phone of upside down couplings and single a single piece ABS plastic version of the standard OO NEM couplings. As the coupling hooks so often annoy me by falling off. It worked well obviously when made and tested. (Obviously as it was such a basic and 95% standard design)

Wow!!! Jonny Number 5, do your ramblings have anything to do with 'Model Train Speed Records' If this was a round of 'Just a minute' Paul Merton would be frantically buzzing for deveation (-: Or maybe I'm too dumb to get what's being said lol (Awesome Profile pic btw!!!)

Ok Jonster my Spanish friend, I'll try explain; Because I'm still a bit immature for my age. I'm on the boarder line in my life, where I still sometimes have enthusiasm for having a laugh. I'm not bright enough to design real high speed trains, F1 cars or Jets. So putting the basics of those fields into action in silly cheap projects is as near to that fun as I'll get. Occasionally I'll post update snippets on rmweb, in the vein hope that I might not be alone in the universe. There may just be someone out there who's a little like me to talk to. It's rubbish in life when you have things that you're really passionate about but there's nobody on earth to discuss it with who's on your wavelength. Then after working on a few thousand serious models a year for over 14 years, I welcome a fun break from the norm once in a while. As usual, even though it's 3:12 on a Sunday morning atm, I'm still 76 miles from home, working killer hours weathering huge never ending batches of locos and rolling stock. I do enough standard normal stuff to go mad. Surely it's not a sin to have a mess around and be different once in a while?

Dear Johnster, I don't speak French (if that's what it is)? If you were wanting to get where I dug those numbers from, my last message should explain a bit. Thanks.

Just done some wind tunnel and motor temperature measurements. Without the windows to lessen drag, It flips at just short of 5meters per second on the anemometer reading. It only weighs around 4 grams. And at a tachometer reading of around 75,000rpm the motor burns the finger from cold start after a mere 6 seconds. With a front spoiler and a rigid coupled trailer, it's stable at 10m/s head wind now and flips at 10.3m/s If it was actually moving I'd expect vibrations coupled with head wind, to cause derailment slightly sooner than 10m/s. 13m/s (29mph ish) is similar to Bolt's peak speed hit during the 100m sprint. With a 13m/s headwind the motor ran at 75,000rpm (ish) for 15 seconds and barely got warm! Very pleasing news to say it's a very stuffy 22.4 degrees Celsius (72.32 Fahrenheit) in my room atm! So with a few more tweaks 13m/s looks achievable (4,292mph 1:148 scale speed) on 1cm circumference wheels. Thus potentially outrunning Bolt and without being well over 6ft tall too! I'll open up the radiator grill on the front of the Wickham to channel the cooling breeze in to the lower chassis. Extra weight low down or a mini R/C helicopter gyroscope could improve stability further. As long as everything is hidden! As Bachmann somehow struggled and failed to put one motor into their OO model it's nice to prove a point.

Actually I'm now thinking of running a twin engine, direct drive N gauge Wickham Trolley for a record run. Using 2 twin output, 100,000rpm+ brushless transverse mounted motors. My N gauge Wickham's are designed for a single longitudinal mounted, geared down motor, with space for a dcc chip. But I've realised it has room for this new crazy idea! Maybe a twin motored trailer could be coupled to it, if this can somehow be added in a way that can make the thing more stable? It's such an unstable proposition though! My magnetic suspension system will fit in without being visible but I don't know if it will help that much on this particular model? Normally these ultra micro models require extra weight to pick the power up well. If anyone who understands high output micro capacitors has any imput on whether they will help I'd love to know please! Crazily well laid, smooth jointed track will be needed too. Probably a cheap laser alignment tool and soldered/smoothed rail joints. I'm calculating 4,000mph (scale speed) area is achievable without burning it out maybe. Got enough spare motors to sink a battle ship thankfully. The motor is just sat above on the third picture. I'll CAD up a smart version where the motors seamlessly slot in. And use a more detailed updated version of the Wickham with much smoother finish. My actual OO speed record model exploded its gearbox and tore its strong, flexible chassis recently!!! And it was no where near it's 120,000rpm top speed at the time. So I'm going for a more conventional gear system now.

My only problem with the Wickham Trolley is, they're so damn HUGE!!!! So I got me a smaller, easier to manage one today. Very cheap £££ compared to Bachmann's failed OO engineering challenge! And available in O, OO and N. I'll post pics when it's painted up, has driver/interior in etc and the motor fitted. The N gauge Wickham Trolley is so tiny! Hehe The big Wickham Trolley should have it on a lead by it's side and take it for walks.

The APT-E is my favourite train ever! Finished weathering another just now. My previous lighter one was probably a bit more prototypical and better still though. Although the prototype did get this dirty sometimes. What a great model! Interior detail is emense! I've varnish sealed it quite well as pale colours really show scratches.

It would be fun to have a 3D printed Kit Spackman 'Kit' Do a Kit Scan in 3D first. Then he can be stood in a the POP (-: On a more serious note, well done with your model. It's brilliant!!! What do you think to doing the aerodynamic nose fairing as a kit to put onto a class 86?! And simpler exterior cladding versions of the POP? Rob

Every HHA Freightliner heavy haul wagon I've ever seen has in your face weld lines down the sides. For some reason Bachmann do it without these? I've had a go and I think it looks more realistic. But it takes ages to do. And I've had a stab at a some Wickham Trolley Car's. The roofs don't seem to rust in pictures I've seen but do have patches of bare metal sometimes. I'd like to see someone re motor one so it doesn't need the huge ballast load in the back. Tarpaulin curtains covering the sides would be a good mod too. Also some have visible exhausts. So one could be scratch made. Most OO people wont fit in the cab. The drivers head is actually often higher than the windscreen on the actual trolley cars. A dcc chip could fit in the roof without showing.

Cattle wagon detailing. I'll put a basic tutorial on YouTube and give a link later on how to do this little fun job easily and quickly. A bit of real manure wouldn't go a miss to add that extra realistic dimension of smell to the models! Maybe even some mooing and chewing sound effects from multi functional DCC units and speakers! On these Flying Scotsman models I've done a gloss finish and a light weathering. The two effects seem to go hand in hand! Especially for how she would currently look.