SomethingTrainLover

Really the only thing they’d need that I can see is seating, unless some want to go the extra mile and add real brass handles

They’re 4mm, like all Bachamnn Thomas stock.

Hey look Gary there I am. Also, updated the thread with the new promo pics released today by Bachmann

In new news, Bachmann have released the promo shots for both coaches. Confirming both a Coach 4 and Coach 1-2 variant, though I think we all knew this already from the NMRA pics.

Note the shade of blue is darker than the promo pics show, spotlights for the picture etc.

On 23/07/2019 at 09:41, HonestTom said:

I'm pretty sure at this point that Bachmann are making their Thomas stock with "serious" 009 modellers in mind. They saw how well Skarloey sold to the periphery demographic, i.e. people who bought them to convert, and figured there was money to be made that way. First we got the slate wagons that don't look like the TV models but do look like Talyllyn wagons, then we got Rusty (a relatively unpopular character based on a very useful prototype), now we're getting Talyllyn coaches. I wonder, as with the slate wagons, we'll see the coaches released specifically as Talyllyn coaches?

 

I'd put money on them releasing a Corris or Talyllyn brake van. I mean, Cora or Beatrice...

Well Rusty is popular, the character and model, though the model is only really useful as good 009 bashing stock. Sharing the dimensions of the original Midlander but being in the current CGI shape, means he ain’t sized right for the TVS models and isn’t proportioned right for IRL Midlander or RWS Rusty. This is in major contrast to Skarloey and Rheneas, who just need a bit of tinkering to get them up to scratch detailing wise, cause they’re dimesuonally and proportionally accurate for the most part.

Certainly, I’d expect either the Talyllyn BrakeVan or the Corris one next rolling stock wise. Maybe even the Open air coaches, based on how they are currently of course.

2 hours ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

Am I correct in my impression that they don't have faces on one end?

Yes, as far as I can see, they’re ideal for use as Talyllyn coaches, especially the red variant given it being based on 1 and 2 and already having the livery. Ideal for me regardless cause I model the books, so they just need a repaint.

Not entirely sure if this is the correct place to put it, but it is NG modeling technically. 

So Bachmann have revealed recently their long anticipated coaches in the Thomas narrow Gauge range:

To the surprise of many, they’re 2 separate toolings. The blue coach is, expectedly, based off the Talyllyn’s coach 4, but unexpectedly the Talyllyn-liveried red one appears to be based on coach 1 and 2. 

These are even more highly anticipated, and they’re scheduled to release in November. The price is surprisingly really good, just $30 RRP. 

Nah, I wouldn’t say you’ve gone far enough with Rheneas, wink wink nudge nudge 

Looking to get a OO Bachmann Crimson Ivatt, No. 46441 from 2007. Looking to spend $120. Must ship to the US. The amount is a bit negotiable though.

Been a while, so straight to buisness. Got Skarloey running creamy smooth, and he can now really crawl at slow speeds.

I then decided that with the remaining transfers i had left, Skarloey would be the one to get them, and as such received lining on his rear cab sheet. Remaining lining was used to redo and tidy up the bunker lining.

I also decided that I would suck it up and make him a handle bar for when he was cabless, to get a rough "1864" form, course I need to do another bodyshell without splashers and handrails for that, and i will, but for now he looks fine. I removed the trailing wheels and he really is how he was described to run before he got his trailing wheels in the books; a Bucking Bronco. 

I recorded some back and forth of this before the trailing wheels were added back:

And just some miscellaneous pics:

Should have a small update covering a few other projects tomorrow as well. Thanks for reading and as always thoughts are appreciated.

Well this wasn’t exactly real life:P. And STH wasn’t exactly CME. And everything I’ve mentioned previously 

9 hours ago, HonestTom said:

The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways states that the pre-rebuild Henry and the post-rebuild one are actually two completely different engines - the first one was scrapped and the Fat Controller managed to get a new Black 5. Although post-rebuild Henry remembers events that happened to pre-rebuild Henry, so there are three possibilities:

 

1. Thanks to some weird metaphysical thing, an engine's identity is the engine. If you call an engine Henry and treat it as Henry, it literally becomes Henry. This would also explain how in a later book, the replica of Iron Duke remembers the broad gauge, despite not having been built then. This of course raises other questions - when locomotives are renamed or identities are swapped, what happens to the engine's personality? If the first Henry hadn't been scrapped, would you have two locomotives with the same mind? Is the new Night Owl under construction by the GWS going to be a nightmarish amalgamation of the minds of locomotives 4115, 2861 and 5227 trapped inside a single body?

 

2. The second Henry is an imposter and underwent a gruelling programme of education to enable him to effectively pretend to be the first one. I'm envisioning a shed at Crewe that's set up like that scene in A Clockwork Orange to brainwash him into thinking he is Henry. Days of learning and testing. "Once an engine attached to a train was afraid of what?" "How many buckets of water did the elephant drink?" "How many wheels did you have on page 23 of Troublesome Engines?"

 

3. Maybe we can ignore The Island of Sodor.

This is something that's been debated, and having Henry 1 and 2, generally its accepted that they're the same engine. Even among the Awdrys this was debated, and given Henry mk2 remembers everything Henry mk1 does, it only really makes sense that they're the same engine.

The main issue was fuel capacity, which is why the last 5 got extended side tanks, but the big issues was coal capacity. They were very hungry on coal.

SD=Super detail/standard range

RWS is the Railway Series

And except for Henry, none were even “RWS-Accurate”, that being realistic and accurate to their depictions in the illustrations and how Awdry described them.  And Henry’s only that way because he was rebuilt into a design near identical to a Black 5.

Well, what also probably, and this is the most likely reason, it was the fact that they weren’t selling enough for it to be profitable. Aaaand you can see why, like has been said, they were using ancient tooling marked up to a point where you’d be better off getting a SD version of the model and painting it, cause many bought those cause “RWS”. And even then, they weren’t bar Henry. 

That I highly doubt.

12 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

Dalby's illustrations were bright, fun,  but terribly inaccurate and so unsuitable for modelling purposes. Some locos had different numbers of wheels from one page to the next. Gordon's square buffers turned up on Henry at one stage, and Thomas's stepped front end was also an error (as it made the buffers at each end different heights!) - this error is perpetuated in the Bachmann model which has no front coupling as a result.

 

"Proper" would be modelling the locos that inspired Awdry in the first place.

 

Incidentally Dalby's reign as illustrator ended when Awdry described his illustration of Percy as "a green caterpillar with red stripes" - a phrase which made its way into one of the later books!

Essentially, though “proper” would more mean modeling them as they were described by Awdry and for the most part as they appeared in later books, mainly looking at the Peter and Guvnor Edwards for that one. Funny enough that they’re the ones who actually illustrated, the generally agreed, definitive Percy.

So. Percy. Like with most of my other projects there's a lot to cover, so: Percy was made using one of 2A-Rail's Avonside shells, as Percy is stated to be an Avonside that was modified over the years with parts of other industrials, Hunslet and the like. The body was fitted to a Hornby L&YR Pug chassis and the model was painted up. And it look...alright. 

But I wasn't really satisfied, so after a few months, I decided last June that I would upgrade him to be more like his apperance in the books, i.e., how he appeared in Ghost Train which is, as most agree, the definitive Percy. This meant adding a tank flap, i had a spare Hornby one, and fitted it to the forward most dome, I roughly cut off the original pug bodyshell's dome and modded it for use to fit over the original mid-dome, and used spare plastic and brass safety valves to make the safety valve housing seen on the rear most dome. I also added handrail knobs, handrails and springs I got off a spare HO engine. 

This was then painted up...and then i stripped it and took it apart again to actually prime it, and finally get rid of all the print lines. I should mention that the area where the ladders are and the cab openings are is very fragile, I have removed so much material cause it's been glued so much the cab bends out and up at the back. I can no longer do this to try and get rid of the bending because I've removed so much material it's not really possible to safely remove any more. Now, this happened again, but this time, the funnel broke off, along with one of the buffer heads. The funnel was found but the buffer head was lost, so I chopped off what remained of the front buffers and drilled out holes in the bases, so now he has sprung buffers. I also sanded down all the pug windows off the cab to fit Percy's lens's, as well as adding cab handrails, also from the pug cab. And again, he looked fine.

But I still wasn't really happy due to the simple Pug motion at the crosshead, with it's lack of piston and generally looking ridiculous. As such, i took a note from Corbs's book, and modded some Bachmann Percy connecting rods, by trimming down the piston and connecting rods and drilling out a new hole. I also used some 16 gauge wire and made new slidebars that would be fitted to the modified pug cylinders, having holes drilled out for the piston and slidebars. 

Still not satisfied due to the lack of "sliming out" at the end of the connecting rods, I modified the original pug rods to be able to take the Bachmann crossheads. 

Here's a comparison between all the connecting rods carried so far:

And So here's Percy as he stands right now:

I do want to get a new version of this shell in future, and may get a Peckett chassis  to put under it. I also would like to use some finer scale parts, such as the vacuum pipe. 
Anyway, that's it for now. Thoughts, comments, etc., always appreciated.

50 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi there,

 

I've always liked the idea of a "Proper" version of The Railway Series locomotives and rolling stock rather than the not quite right RTR items that ate available. Do you have any more of the Railway series locomotives ?

 

Gibbo.

Oh yes, That I have in supply ;D

48 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

"Proper" in the sense of being based on pictures of the locomotives at the period if interest? That's the approach one would surely take with any other prototype. In which case, the point of reference has to be C.R. Dalby's illustrations.

Not really, I, and most others, would never suggest using Dalby's as reference. Even Awdry, in a letter, ret-conned that he reasons why the engines appeared in rebuilt forms they wouldn't receive until periods after the books in which they appeared in these forms in took place as artist error...Mainly because he hadn't entirely worked out the backstories yet. But yeah, the Edwards's illustrations should almost always be the point of reference for any RWS modeling really.
 

26 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Compound,

 

My preference would be the locomotives and stock from the Gunvor and Peter Edwards illustrations with the look and style of the architecture and infrastructure from the John T Kenny illustrations. I was not altogether impressed by C R Dalby's illustrations even as a child although some were better than others.

 

Gibbo.

Mmm, not that Dalby never had good illustrations, some of the illustrations for The Flying Kipper are still very excellent, but for the most part...yeeeah.

Well, technically this is a pug bash, it does involve a Hornby L&YR Pug chassis and bashing parts of the body and motion ;P. So last year, got one of the 2A-Rail Avonside bodies to build a RWS(Railway Series for those not in the know) Percy, yes, that Percy. Originally, I just painted up the shell straight up, and it was alright: 

But I decided to upgrade him to look more like his RWS counterpart, so tank flap, bigger mid dome, rear most dome became safety valve housing, handrails, and springs. Notably i took a page from Corbs's book, and modified some Bachmann Percy rods to replace the very simply pug ones, I also decided to mod the original cylinder block with new slidebars and to take an actual piston rod. Still wasn't satisfied, and used some spare Bachmann Percy crossheads and the original pug rods to create a more slim combo of the two, these are the ones currently fitted.

Comparison between the rods carried by the model so far:

Need to figure out a away to blacken the crossheads to match the rods but eh, i also need to replace the shell with a new one in the future anyway, as can be seen above at the ladder area. May just fit it with a Peckett chassis;), but here's how the model sits as of now:

Well, restarting this old thread. It's funny given the talk of the UK license and here we are, with Bachmann now bringing everything TTTE they produce over to the U.K. now. Also, been quit busy repainting my Skarloey into his more realistic form as seen in the original books. Done quite a bit, and he's not completely finished yet, honestly the world may end if I ever truly finish any of my models, but he's been done up quite a bit. Been repainted, relined, gotten proper handrails all around, a (mostly) done cab interior, and the addition of an NP slimline kit, bar kit brackets currently. Still needs to have the lining finished off, as I recently found out that he would have lining on the rear of the cab sheet, and the he needs to be varnished. And I still need to paint the smokebox door, I do like having face-less options as it were.

9 hours ago, Nile said:

The Rev Awdry originally drew Henry as an Atlantic, he was supposed to be smaller than Gordon but bigger than Edward. It was because the early artists kept making a mess of him that Awdry had Henry rebuilt as a black 5, making it clear what he should look like.

Yeah, this is the irl reason why Henry's background is what it is.
 

13 hours ago, GreenGiraffe22 said:

A boiler rebuild must be quite traumatic for a Sodor loco, presumably the face would have to come off? If the new boiler has a different circumference do they get a new face? I recall that rather dark illustration in one of the books of locos rotting away alive in the scrap yard. 

 

Happy Sunday! 

Well there's a fairly easy explanation to this...Don't go that deep

I tried to remove the shell off the chassis to just check it over, I unscrewed the four corner screws but the shell just would not budge. Anyone else had this problem? I mean it's probably just well mounted and stuck on there, but I do want to NOT break it after waiting so long ;).

18 hours ago, No Decorum said:

That won’t do at all. Henry was reboilered Stanier-style to overcome steaming problems. I’m prepared to concede that the LMS was as good as the LNER but not better!

He was a bit more than just reboilered. Contrary to the TVS and some illustrations, Henry mk1 was a pacific. To get a good idea of what he looked like I'd reference the early A1 drawings from around 1919, and those that come before and after, these greatly resemble the original plan of the A1, being a stretched C1 and this is what Henry was said to look like prior to his rebuild. His rebuild would've entailed a bit more than just a reboilering, I suspect that given the intensity in the difference between the pre and post-Kipper incident that the only major component that was reused from his original build were likely sections of his frames and maybe some cab fittings. 

Got around to removing the Jinty brake linkage from Thomas, only nearly 2 years after starting but better late then never.