Lacathedrale

My first major project in 3D modelling with an end goal of printing, has been to model up the SECR / SR van to diagram 1426, from the Southern Wagons Vol. 3 book. I felt that this was a good prototype choice: the wagon was Maunsell-designed for the SECR and built by both the SECR and SR to Diagram 1426. Several of these vans were rebuilt with ventilated sides for use on London-Dover-Folkestone fruit traffic, subsequently labelled as Diagram 1427. This van survived into BR revenue-earning service, and several becoming departmental vans in the black livery. In addition to the livery and body variants, there were both unfitted and vacuum fitted versions. As much as possible matches the drawings, and I leveraged some existing W-irons created by John Dixon, this is what the underframe looks like: One of the more difficult components was the brake lever, since it bends and twists in all three axis, but with an extrude and intersect I got it working with thanks to the people in this subforum. Each side of the braking system is a single piece, including the brake handle and guide - the W-iron and rod hangers are attached to a plate which is inserted up into the recess of the floor. The finished model is shown below: There are always small tweaks to make for these things - setting the W-irons slightly lcoser together, thickening up the brake handles to make them more robust, etc. which I'm slowly getting around to. I also have the vacuum-fitted, ventilated version coming together now. I'm sad to understand this ventilated version isn't in the stone-and-red livery of the insulated vehicles, but I'm sure I'll find something in due course. The next item on the virtual workbench may end up being an SR Dia. 1349 10t 5-Plank - basically because it just requires a new body ontop of what I've already built!

Thank you all, I'll have to look up the intersect tool!

I am building up a model of an SR Dia. 1427 van for use in G1 - it's going pretty well, but the one thing which is flummoxing me is the brake lever handle. I know how it needs to look in plan and in profile, but I can't seem to figure out the order of operations to have it follow both - the following image shows the problem - it needs to joggle around the axleboxes by about 9mm: At this stage I'm considering just printing it in the flat and then bending it to shape with hot water - but I've seen lots of other brake gear designs which model the shoes, hangers, rods, lever, ratchet block all as a single insert that pops in behind the solebar and I would really like to mimick that if I can. I would normally consider using Loft, but the multiple profiles (and joggle) is in one axis while the path is in another, and the route between them seems anything but straightforward!

I agree with your latter point, @Izzy - I had a branch line terminus layout which got into the scenic stage but I just couldn't cope with constantly shuffling my trains off-stage for shunting or runaround moves: it completely killed any kind of immersion or suspension of disbelief. I guess that's just something you have to make peace with, in a confined space. My Edwardian layout, despite being about 15' long - has this problem to some degree too.

Spectacular work as always @MikeOxon! Is this going to be printed too? I'm planning out a garden railway in G1 and part of me is wondering if a little Gauge 3 track masquerading as Broad Gauge might be a useful addition somewhere :)

At Brighton, presumably the same work

I am so happy whenever I see a notification to this blog. You really should consider publishing this all - I would definitely buy one in a bound up copy! I continue to be amazed at what you've produced. Regarding your sketch of the boiler plate and yoke - are you able to expand a little on how you sort the alignment out in the axis that's not visible in the sketch? i.e. you are sketching a front profile and this is likely to end up at the very front or rear of your engine, based on where the model origin is. Do you do an offset extrusion? an 'Align' ? Do you create an offset plane?

Very observant of you 😜 Point taken, I’ll keep the gauge one stuff off this thread.

"Can ya guess what it is, yet?"

I have just been reliably informed that the G1MRA Fine profile wheels I've been using so far on my stock are quite niche when it comes to usage, and G1MRA Standard is what track and RTR companies use. Luckily I've only got to tweak a few parameters in my 3D model and I can pump out the new wheels for a few pence. From a rolling stock perspective the main difference is 0.5mm on the flange depth, and 1mm overall wheel width. It does unfortunately result in a much larger flangeway on turnouts - 3mm instead of 1.75mm - but frankly that kind of fastidiousness is not really appropriate for garden railways IMO! I can always run ScaleOne32 indoors if I am so inclined, I guess!

Just in case anyone things they come off the printer like that, they are typically in the form of a kit of parts, something like this: After printing the body, chassis, headstocks and wheels on the filament printer the brims are peeled and trimmed off. The wheels were reamed 3mm to accept the axles. (note, the spoked wheels are upside-down, they look a bit more detailed than that from the front side !!). The brake gear, axlebox-springs, and W-irons were printed on a resin printer, so are washed and cured. Everything gets a coat of primer: the wagon getting grey followed by a mixture of Heavy Bluegrey tempered with German Camo Black Brown (all paints are Vallejo acrylics) and everything below the solebar getting black primer and then a misting of neat Camo Black Brown. I painted the wagon interior with Light Brown, again moderated with Black Brown and Pale Sand to desaturate and darken slightly. The pivoting w-irons were reamed 8mm (in the red sleeve) and the roller bearings inserted, and the wheels mounted on 3mm silver steel axles cut to length. The pins shown outboard of the w-iron units are used to attach them to the wagon body. The Axlebox assemblies are attached using M1.4x4mm screws (you can just about see the teensy holes in the underside of the chassis) which self-tap into place, and the buffer housings are opened out to 2.5mm on the housing and 1.5mm through the headstock, and the sprung buffers inserted and bolted into place from behind. The hole in the drawplate and headstock is de-burred by twizzling a drill-bit in there, and the hooks inserted and spring/washer/retaining pin added. In this particular case for some reason there's not much lateral space for the pivoting W-iron assembly to move around, but the screw/bolt/pin arrangements mean I can take it apart and fettle it without risking damage to any components. As I've said I would probably err on using Slaters wheels going forward, but at (effectively) £18/pair it's a significant investment, so I think I'm going to sit on my hands until I've got a track and loco so I can validate the real world impact.

The last of the 'easy' G1-3D printed designs, an MR/LMS 3-Plank Drop-Side Wagon from the fold of Mr. N. Millier - unfortunately a link broke on the Walsall coupling hook, and there's a bit of a puzzling mis-fit on the brakes so they're just resting in place presently. I'm still umm'ing and arr'ing about whether to go with slaters or 3D printed wheels. For these I rounded over the axle ends in the lathe so they don't catch on the inside face of the axleboxes and that's helped a little but they're still not quite as smooth running even with the ball-races.

So I have been (not so quietly) amassing Gauge 1 freight stock: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/148665-williams-workbench-lbscr-lcdr-ser/?do=findComment&comment=5461007 I have a line on a couple of rolling restoration live steam locos - an LMS Black Five and a GWR County, and ordered a pair of battery RC loco kits: a Model Engineer's Laser LNER Y7, and a BR Class 33/0 - and I think this is indicative of what I want to achieve with my garden line: a continuous run and steaming-up bay for kettles, and some sidings for shunting with remote control.

If I had to have one set of coaches to get me by in G1 my gut feeling is BR(S) in green. Obviously they are distinctive designs, but if you squint they’re visually similar to pre-war Bulleids - at least in the sense of being green and smooth sided! My justification for this is that I have two groups of locomotives I’m interested in: SECR/GER/ELR which can both run with teak four wheelers, and SR/BR steam/BR diesel all of which can run with green smooth sided carriages without looking incongruous. Now to see how I can make that happen…

Absolutely spectacular @Phil Mason !

GW Iron Mink almost complete - it needs a bit of weathering and overspray clean up, marking and a roof (which I'm getting laser cut for my own sanity) :

I'm 3D printing rolling stock with some metal parts (sprung buffers and hooks, and occasionally wheelsets but so far mostly 3D printed wheels on axles) - the meshing of commodity 3D printing, cheap import bearings/ground bar and affordable laser cutting services is DEFINITELY opening the door. I've got four wagons and a brake van done for about £15 each, which is a damn sight cheaper than injection molded 00! The G1-3D circle have also got a Sentinel, NSR Battery Electric, and a Class 08 all available to print in due course. In terms of motive power though, while I've got a line on some live steam locos, I have also put an order in for Model Engineer's Laser LNER Y6/ GER G15 - at £140 plus whatever battery/RC system you want it's a complete no brainer and kid-friendly - but part of me was really hoping for some tinplate and clockwork fun. I understand this is vanishingly unlikely now, unless I find a basket case! Talking of toys, isn't the large-scale Harry Potter train effectively G3?

I do apologise for posting something tangently related, but there is a corpus of expertise here bar none! I’m putting together a loop of gauge 1 track with some 3-D printed wagons - initially I am looking to buy a live steam loco and build a battery remote control one for myself. in due course, however, even if it’s not something that they enjoy long-term my kids are going to want to play with it - so I’m thinking of a clockwork loco of some kind. I’m quite happy to do a restoration and repair, but I figure this is probably got the most chance of surviving!! Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? Only things I can find on eBay are very expensive collectors items!

The iron mink is coming together. This is an as built version with the plated doors, grease axleboxes, and single sided brake. I think I might paint this in the GWR like my 4 mm version a la @Mikkel - it’s gone together so well I think I’m going to build the later version with planked doors, oil boxes and the additional single brake break on the other side. Because of the size of the grease axle boxes there’s only space for solid brass bearings, so I’ve used the slaters wheelsets and they’re just perfect. It’s obviously significantly cheaper to print wheels and mount them on steel axles, but the running qualities seem to be quite different. I think a bit more investigation and testing is required! My prototype eight spoke wheels are in the foreground of the photo.

I have done most of my modelling time on my Brighton Trafalgar layout recently, and little time building on my workbench - but after a brief hiatus I decided to get back to building some more Gauge 1 models and this is the result: From left to right, an RCH 1923 open wagon (Slaters), an LNWR D88 (3D print, design by Mr. N. Milliers), an MR 5-plank (same) and a BR 20t Brake Van (3D print, design by Mr. T. Waldor. The LNWR D88 is printed on my own design of split-spoke wagon wheels, I made a silly mistake by just downloading an STL off the internet without checking the dimensions and spent hours chasing the problem down until I realised the wheel I had used was Coarse-scale rather than G1MRA Fine - which was why it was clouting the W-iron assemblies (too large of a flange) and scraping the inside of the W-irons (since the wheel is thicker, the same B2B results in an over-width face to face measurement). Incidentally my Fine wheel is available on g1-3d.uk and no doubt will be supplemented by straight, disc and mansell designs as I build the stock that require them: Wheels, bearings, compensation and axles are not really a solved problem in 3d printed Gauge 1, it appears every designer has their own opinion. For what it's worth I'm trying to stick with 3mm silver steel axles in 3x8x3mm ball race bearings (acquired cheaply on aliexpress). The Norman Millier designed chassis are very elegant with pins to retain and/or pivot W-iron units and when I get around to designing my own I will hope to emulate it. Really, 3D-printed Gauge 1 is such an absolutely fantastic convergence of technologies I can't believe more people aren't taking it up. I would estimate for the average 3D printed wagon costs are about as follows: 150-200g of filament (£2) 3D printer power cost (£1.50) 3mm Silver Steel axle (£2.50) Peter Korzilius steel sprung buffers (£8) Walsall Model Industries sprung coupling hooks/links (£3) - the latter are a little over-sized but the notional plan is to build up a collection that can stand the rigors of an outdoor track and live steam. Of course Mr. P. Korzilius, Slaters, MEL and Walsall all offer various metal components to further pimp your wagons - individually sprung W-Irons, stainless steel wheels, laser cut pushrods, etc. - but so far I've not found a need for them. One thing I'm going to have to get a handle on soon is transfers and lettering - there simply isn't the availability in G1 for pre-group transfers, and those grouping-era which are available run in the £10-20 per wagon range - time to learn signwriting. For the immediate future I have a GWR Iron Mink on the workbench, and I am awaiting delivery of a GER G15 / LNER Y6 Tram kit from Model Engineer's Laser and GER Brake Van from PreGrouping courtesy of @MarcD

That looks fantastic @Skinnylinny! I await your progress with eager anticipation!

I've managed to re-wheel a few of my wagons and got them running, but unfortunately the E2 needs more fettling and I still don't have a reliable coupling so while this was originally part of a video, I decided to take a snapshot. I have tried to approximate the early film style with the red tones looking black...

thingiverse - it’s half of a double Fairlie. The 7mm body is designed to take Smokey Joe chassis on each end.

Which school? I went to Ennersdale and lived just off the south circular, early memories of 33’s pulling freight trains at night outside my window on the embankment between HG and Grove Park.