Lacathedrale

I do apologise, @Izzy but being a little out of the loop I'm not sure what forthcoming parts you're referring to? I was thinking of the (aged) Dapol 73 which IIRC has no drop-in equivalent and is unlikely to get one?

Thank you, Nigel! I have a lathe, but I think it’s far too big and I have no experience of turning anything so small! is there an alternate solution, or is this going to be my first time experimenting with turning down wheels 😂

Good morning, is the wheel-turning service still available for those who have diesel locos that don't have drop-in wheelsets?

I have a few @Matloughe - but since this is primarily a passenger layout, they have so far been gauged to P4 or EMSF for a future, notional shunting layout! Thank you for your very kind words. I got the backscene cut and supports attached, the boards are just placed - they will need a coat of blue grey and I may as well do that before I attach them to the layout. This is an overall fisheye view. And the two wings. Just for the sake of variety I have swapped the signal box and water tower around and I think I like it more. I did, of course, forget that I can’t put a backscene on the left hand side of the layout, due to the clearance issues around the up and over door - so it will have to be something that gets attached temporarily if the layout is ever exhibited. I also mocked up some of the original mocatta windows from the architectural plans and attempted to 3D print them: mostly successful! I’m not sure that the backscene boards add as much to the layout as I thought they would, but maybe it needs a coat of paint first, and it was needed either way.

The dangers of 3D printing, it's very easy to re-scale things...

Thanks again! Class 17/24/101 is a decent pool of potential motive power, and the K1, J39 for sojourns back in time. I definitely don't have the scope to model Alnwick itself, but the theory is that I could pull inspiration from different parts of it - the coal drops, the gates and steps up to the station, the yard buildings, etc.

Cheeky little Cambrian kit of an LBSC open: Apologies for the weird angle, I was trying to illustrate how AK Ultra Matte Varnish really does cut down any surface glare

Lovely stuff, I guess it's down to me to get up there, now. Freight-wise it looks like the Flickr album linked above has a good deal of flat wagons, coal hoppers and cattle wagons? This is very modellable:

Thank you all for that amazing advice!! if there were to be diesel Locos running on that branch what would they have been??

Good afternoon, I'm off to visit my mother-in-law's birthplace soon which is Alnwick - being a soft, southern pansy I've not ventured very far in that direction and certainly my knowledge of locos, freight, etc. is very limited indeed apart from the general understanding that there would likely be coal drops and hoppers in ex-NER eras. I'm sketching out some ideas for a layout based on this part of the world and I'd like to draw inspiration from the surrounds. I know there are books available, but at this very early stage I'd prefer to rely on internet media/information to see if it's something I want to invest my time and energy into more heavily. Can anyone help me flesh out my understanding, plase? What motive power would one expect on this specific branch for passenger and freight from the very late steam period through the introduction of diesels up to around the end of the BR Green diesels? Alternatively, what sheds would have served this branch (so I can do my own research!) Was there any obvious freight traffic on the branch that I might draw inspiration from? Is there anything obviously idiosyncratic about this part of the world it would be foolish to not include? From the last time I looked at this I think I grabbed a Bachmann green Class 24 (no headcode box or yellow panel) and a Lima Class 101 with whiskers - I think that's broadly the era I'm interested in but might stretch back to the last gasp of steam or forward to the BR Blue era. Thank you!

That’s really lovely work! At some point, I love tomorrow some multiple units but I’m just not there yet! Is there any chance you might be willing to share the STL?

Do we need to say any more?

Ah, so the axle with helical gear are chassis-mounted in bearings/holes, and the nigel lawton motor with the worm is then shimmed and shoved around to mesh properly? Very good stuff! Do you have a handy supply of worms and helical gears?

Well, yes - but I don't know where to find quality 4mm STLs either and I imagine it would be less prevalent (despite the disparity in popularity) since everything under the sun has a 4mm model!

Hello Nestor, what bogies in particular? The First-Second Composite (one in from the right in the YT thumbnail) and the two brakes are Triang conversions still with the original GWR 8'6" bogies with fat pizza-cutter wheels - to be replaced with 12.4mm Bachmann disc wagon wheels The two all-thirds are Peco/Parkside MR suburbans with AFAIK Gibson wheels, with Wizard Models SR 8' plate bogies. A close-enough match for the Fox(?) bogies of the LBSCR.

I'm experimenting with turning my 3D printing and modelling skills to the railways, after a sojourn elsewhere - and it seems of all places that 3mm/ft would benefit most from the affordability of resin 3D printers and the scale being somewhat economical to print without having the structural issues that crop up in 2mm/ft. While I'm a lapsed member of the society (I stumbled on getting a locomotive together), I would feel a good deal better if I could get some rolling stock bodies painted and arranged to get a feel for how a 3mm layout might look in my space before potentially rejoining and investigating what's on offer commercially. Thank you, William

The use of those motors and gears looks so straightforward - can you talk a bit more about how you went about matching them up, mounting them at the correct distance and orientation, etc? What reciever do you use?

Hi @Mikkel - it's a scratchbuilt version of the SER 6-ton van of 1863 - but I made a mistake somewhere in the construction and it's ended up too long and thin. I think I put the sides inside the ends or some such? Either way I can't actually fit running gear under it, so I figure it is a perfect 'grounded van body', being well past its sell-by date in 1912. An earlier picture of the construction is here: Here's another short video for your delectation - threading those screw-link couplings is already terrible so definitely going to be replacing at the end of each rake with something more manageable! DC vs DCC I am still pondering block-isolated DC vs DCC - though the Terriers are a bit temperamental everything else has worked just fine and I think that's because i've basically only just started cleaning the track. Operational Needs for Control I have realised through this exploration with the layout that as a primarily-solo operator I have no need for simultaneous arrival and departure - sequential is just fine - so the need for very complex power routing of the throat while in DC mode is superfluous. I'm still hoping for signals and turnouts to be mechanically actuated either via rods or wire-in-tube, it SHOULD just a case of piggy-backing microswitches onto the levers to retain DC compatibility to turn on and off the blocks - It would mean cutting a few isolating gaps on the throat board (loco spur and old turntable road) - but nothing dramatic. I'm going to do some thinking about the specific implementation - i.e. throat is always live, traverser is made live through selected road's alignment pin - so it's just the arrival/departure signals to a given platform that energise that platform. I need to work through the station pilot and shunt moves in my head before taking this any further I reckon! The major problem is that the lighting pickups on the carriages bridge isolating sections!

That looks absolutely lovely - thank you so much for the article. I think I’ve come to realise, partly thanks to your efforts, that upgrading and resurrecting all the models and putting your own spin on them is so much more fun than buying the latest and greatest. I did this with a Lima class 33 a while back and more recently with some triang carriage conversions

Mojo Thank you @Caley Jim - I went to the Uckfield Model Railway Exhibition / ScaleFour SouthEast yesterday, and so Saturday's faffing I think is the start of the mojo returning. I could tell its coming was near, because during a recent trip to Hove I made sure to take a picture of the Mocatta-designed station building - much smaller in scale than Brighton but with at least the same broad architectural cues: Coupling While I was at ScaleFour SouthEast there was a very, very clear contrast between layouts which had automatic coupling/uncoupling, and those which didn't: I vastly preferred layouts where the operator was not blocking a large portion of the visible scene, back to the public. While I have no concrete plans for this layout to be exhibited, given the aforementioned discussion around couplings it seems to make sense to explore those options. As a result, I am going to maintain three links/screw links for within rakes, but I'm strongly considering the use of S&W's on the outer edges and have ordered a sample pack. Show Goodies I finally picked up a Roxey Balloon Auto-Trailer for my ersatz Kemp Town/Dyke shuttle service - £79 for a single coach kit! Now I remember why I did those Tri-Ang conversions... I also realised that I have no LBSC goods stock AT ALL, so I grabbed a Cambrian LBSC Wagon (D1369). It's not suitable for my Victorian rake really, being brand new in 1912, but is just about in period for this Edwardian layout. I cobbled it together in a couple of hours last night and now it's on the painting table - I'm sure a stark contrast to the Auto-Trailer, which I think is going to end up being a bit of an odyssey. Rolling Stock While faffing around with creating the previously posted video, I have realised My Tri-Ang converted coaches are in no way ready for use: they all still have huge plastic pizza cutter wheels whose gauge is all over the place - I've ordered replacements (Bachmann disc wagon wheels- I'm not made of money!) and two of them don't even have hooks, let alone three links. Though this layout is almost exclusively passenger oriented, I will re-gauge my EM-SF Victorian wagons for use on the layout, even if they are (relatively!) anachronistic for the period and location. I still think a Victorian P4 shunting plank could be fun - but I'm not quite at that point yet in my modelling journey.

Hi @billbedford I have three: one on the sketch for the handle, and on each of the two revolves for the lamp shade. I've not 'got to' assemblies yet so haven't looked at joints.

Thank you @F2Andy - as detailed above F360 is doing exactly as I ask it (exporting the design) and Lychee is doing exactly as I ask it there (validate the model can be printed). The error arises because Lychee doesn't know that my model consists of multiple components/bodies and so detects faces exactly against each other as an error, but the model actually prints out fine.

Taking your advice to heart, I knocked up a quick switch-box for the platform roads and had a play:

Do you have a link to aforementioned video?

Really very lovely. I've read through the thread and thoroughly enjoyed it. Am I correct in my understanding you're not selling/sharing 3D files, instead going via Shapeways? Your PGA looks fantastic, and the Class 24 bogie would be super handy for a future model-up of a Class 33 - but obviously, it's your hobby!