SomethingTrainLover

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

Now I have to get my RWS info out :P. You’re right for the most part. James was built, emphasis being on built, he wasn't rebuilt from a normal 28, to a modified Class 28 design. Plans for a 28 Mogul do actually exist in the NRM archive, though it’s almost certain that they ever never actually built the engine. Gordon was the original prototype to the A1 class, built circa 1922 to be the testbed to work out any kinks or issues with the design, tinkered and modified until the design was near identical to the engine that would come next, Great Northern. Given he wasn’t given a number, and giving him one would prove to be an, ehem, arduous process, he was sold in 1923 to the NWR. In 1939 he was sent to Crewe, following issues had with the conjugated valve gear due to the typical issues they faced with lack of maintenance etc, and was rebuilt by Stanier, in the books it’s explained that STH and Stanier both apprenticed at Swindon. His conjugated valve gear was removed, third inside cylinder was removed, his running board was raised to accommodate two larger outside LMS cylinders with LMS style motion. Henry started life as a bit of a mongrel, built using stolen plans for an early A1 circa 1919. However, the plans stolen were ones Gresley had discarded previously, and the resulting engine had the gaps filled with more taken from the C1 Atlantic’s, and notably a small firebox. I’m sure you lot know the rest. Of course he was later rebuilt in 1935 to a design near identical to that of the Stanier Black 5. It should also be noted that Awdry addressed, in a letter I believe, that the reason the engines appear in their later, rebuilt forms in the earlier books which take place before they would’ve received their mods and rebuilds was down to artist error. Basically, blame Dalby.

Well yes, that last part is well known ;P. And like i said earlier, there were hints to this for years, which is how i found out about OO scale and started getting into it and British modeling, it was cause I noticed it said HO/OO gauge on the packaging and I got curious.

Alright, so Skarloey update: Found and ordered a NP slimline kit on dundasmodels.com and I assembled it over the weekend. I assembled the slidebar brackets, though have yet to fit them, because A) they need to be cleaned up more, B) needed modification to the running board, and C) they are known to short out on the chassis and need to have something added along the point where it goes into the chassis or painted heavily enough, and I had time for none of these things, so I started the cylinders. Cylinders were first taken and had the slidebar holes bored out gradually, using bigger and bigger drill bits in my pin vise. This was done until the slidebars were easy to put in, but still snug enough to not fall out with out a bit of force. Some of this drilling saw small lumps of the plastic bending out of the cylinders, these were sanded down along with the cylinder block, as I had noticed with other models made using the slimline cylinders, these hand't been sanded down to get rid of the small but noticeable print lines. The crossheads were assembled as per the instructions, though I took the liberty to expand the holes for the pin, as I did for any other pieces that had holes. Some solder leaked into one of the slidebar grooves during the final soldering of the crossheads themselves, some of this was removed with a small saw i went out and bought, but I wound up instead getting a fine point soldering iron head and using it to melt away the excess solder and clear the groove. Here is the cylinder block with one of the slidebars in place with the mock up of the main connecting rod also in place, this was done to see how much the piston rod hole in the block needed to be expanded out. The block was then given some final adjustments to the aforementioned slidebar slot holes and was given 2 coats of Tamiya TS-8, before being test fitted to the model itself. I then soldered the crosshead, pin and connecting rod together as per the instructions and filed down the excess pin and solder flat. The original brackets were reused, and as it turns out somewhat unnecessarily modified to fit the new slidebars. The final touches were then fitted, I painted one of the numberplates given with the model and fitted it to the back of the cab, and added the builders plates to the bunker sides. After making sure the model ran well, I lined out the cylinders. And so here he is, now actually pretty much done, my updated RWS Skarloey: I will say that He's a bit jittery, but that's probably my fault, messed with the position of the axle gear, he runs but forwards is a bit jittery. He runs very well backwards so I know it isn't the new rods etc, have a spare wheelset though, just swap over the rods, which'll probably suck and take an hour but eh, gotta do what you gotta do. Otherwise, all he and Rheneas need is a coat of varnish and their side number plates, of which I've already ordered.

Mmm, quite a running joke how the original release express coaches were so overpriced. Most were trying to sell them for over a hundred bucks, absolutely ridiculous. Even the brand new vrelease this year, same tooling but updated paint, are a bit overpriced. Most I’ve seen from retailers are about $42-45, which can get you a proper, modern Maunsell coach. And yeah, it is 4mm. No idea why Bachmann US decided to make it OO, figured that they thought Hornby would eventually give up the license soon, which obviously they did, and/or the fact they planned to reuse older Mainline and later some older Branchline toolings.

Indeed, converted my Rheneas, though it didn’t become Dolgoch ;). And when I began to get out of Thomas, got more into RWS, which involves actually modeling realistic prototypes if you get my meaning, converted two of my Bill and Bens. They make lovely freelance Industrial 0-4-0s.

It has been considered since announced a few months ago that the new range could be rebranded Tomix ones, though it seems that this is less likely given things Bachmann have said in regard to the range since announcement. In other regards to the thread topic, Bachmann UK have revealed that they’ll have new packaging for the models, presumably to do away with the HO on the packaging, and perhaps to give it a proper box? And in contrast to the original announcement made by Bachmann US, they will be selling the range on their own site, as opposed to the normal US site. Of course, they’ll be carried by retailers, Hattons is almost certainly a given and a Rails of Sheffield’s recent post has basically said they’ll be stocking it. While this won’t really affect me directly, already in the US, hopefully this will lead to A) lower prices in general, they’ve reached ridiculous heights, though this is mainly directed at the ones listed for buying direct from Bachmann and B) lower prices for the NG stock, which I think is what the vast majority of people here actually, and fairly so, care about. I just hope they’ll actually get a regular supply of parts for engines that have parts out of stock, not listed, or where the engine as a whole isn’t listed(Rheneas comes immediately to mind).

Well, the US Branch, which has been behind the HO/OO gauge, LS, NG and the new N have said All ranges will be coming to the UK. The main one is of course the OO range, and the new N gauge range. Yes, they will be bringing out Skarloey and Rheneas, if they’re smart they should do it after the initial launch but by the end of next year at least

Just to clarify, the Bachmann TTTE “HO” range is actually scaled OO, this can be seen by measuring the buffer width, and the fact that they use ex-mainline tooling for many of the range’s rolling stock. It’s sold HO cause the vast majority of people don’t know what OO is, but they still including a little bit of info on the packaging that says “HO/OO gauge”. Same goes for the TTTE NG stock, as many of you already are aware, which is sold as HOn30 but actually scaled 009. That said, Large scale range is a bit of a disappointment, well, for Gauge 1 modelers though they probably already know this. The LS range is scaled G3, an odd decision, as I still think G1 would’ve been perfectly fine for children, and given them a bit of an extra market in G1 conversions etc. The new N scale range scaling isn’t known yet, whether it’ll be scaled to a larger scale like the Tomix TTTE N scale range or scaled to British N remains to be seen.

I have just happily received my MR-209 J70 yesterday. Took me by surprise too, wasn't expecting it until Wednesday. Very happy with the quick shipping and of course the model itself. And the half foot of track it's actually been able to be run on show a very smooth running mechanism. The quality is superb, and all the extra details and goodies are just fantastic for the cost. Once I get back home in a few weeks I'll start setting about adding some of them and look to start weathering it.

After Rheneas was finished, I decided to just get on with Skarloey rather than just wait for for the NP slimline kit to come back in stock. First thing first, I needed to get rid of that bit of metal that blocks the forward cab windows. This was a simple job of just cutting with a cutting disc. the smokebox hand rails were then filed down and the molded knobs were used as guides to drill out holes for some proper ones. They're alan gibson short knobs with some wire off an HO engine. The model was then stripped, and using the molded tank handrails, I drilled out two holes for new 3D ones, the wire used also came from an HO engine. After these holes were drilled out, the molded handrails were sanded down till the tank was smooth, bar the rivet detail of course. The new handrails were carefully bent to length and shape, using pics of Talyllyn as a guide. I had noticed that others modeling Talyllyn using the Bachmann Skarloey have had a tendency to make the handrails stick out quite a lot, nothing against these models of course, these conversions almost always tend to turn out brilliantly, but I did want to avoid it. This meant constantly checking the length against the body and accounting for the tank weight that the body sits upon. After the handrails were firmly lined up and glued, filling putty was lightly added to the holes to fill them in and then sanded smooth. The model was then primed and painted red. The rest of the model was carefully painted through spray and brush techniques. Once the body itself had finished painting, it went off for lining. This was followed by using water transfers to represent the painted name, as in the books, this was a 4 hour or so process cause the letters just didn't want to stick and stay. Like Rheneas, the face was replaced by a far superior one from an ertl toy. And here he is. He's not done yet, and I finally managed to order an NP kit. Plan to add the full rods and cylinders. "We ended up back to back, not speaking" Now, this isn't the end, because I recently made a big step into the next step of Skarloey's upgrades. What I did was try and give him a cab interior. Now this went nowhere near to plan and in the end I shelved the original idea I had, which was to do what I did but add an actual interior made of brass sheets. Unfortunately, this didn't go well, and cause fitting issues. So what i did was I just painted the interior black which I was going to do anyway, and it looks fine honestly. I also bought a backhead off of shapeways, which isn't done yet, still need to add the water gauges, but I did add a rough handbrake wheel, made from an old Bachmann TTTE buffer head. Like I said before, he isn't done yet, still needs the NP slimline kit and him and Rheneas need to be varnished.

Rather unfortunately, something went wrong with my cc info according to Kernow. They emailed me, and while I would’ve liked to instead call them to update my information, I would rather not rack up my phone bill to call them from across the Atlantic. I have followed their directions and re-ordered my J70 with a follow up message that this order is to replace my original. Hopefully this doesn’t delay my order much.

So, nearly a month on, Bachmann finally added and restocked parts for the Bachmann Skarloey, they now thankfully have some wheelsets in stock. So that problem is solved for now. Hopefully I won’t need them and the one I have will have a good set of crankpins but always best to be prepared. Here’s the link for anyone who needs it: https://estore.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68_93_694&products_id=10362

Right, next up, we'll be leaving normal OO gauge and taking a trip into the ever charming realm of 009 NG. A big foray into this scale, I bought a Bachmann Rheneas for less than $100 immediately when it came out late 2017, fearing a repeat of what happened when Skarloey was released. After some time, I finally got the NP Kit for the model and got to work on making my RWS Rheneas. Started off by dissembling the model and went straight for that admittedly terrible funnel. Started by cutting off the funnel and then using a grinding bit on my dremel to get rid of the rest of it and the base, then drilled out a new hole. The funnel was fitted, with some excess of the model and funnel being chipped away at. The model was then stripped completely and the new cab included with the kit built, This also required some grinding away at the coal load in the right hand bunker, which i chose to keep cause...reasons. I also primed and painted the cab, making sure that I liked the red I got to represent the Skarloey Railway's red in the books, it's darker in pics but in most lighting it's pretty bright. I also fit the etched smokebox front plate. The body then followed the cab in priming and painting. Some of the paint did chip, as can be seen. I wound up stripping the bodyshell a few times, whether it be after priming and/or painting due to major chips, as you'll see. I had acquired an Ertl Rheneas toy a year earlier at a flea market, and before this major conversion had already taken the face of the toy, given it's a far better representation of the character from the original TVS Season 4 models, and in turn the books. I also temporarily added the kit handrails and whistle to see how they looked. Of course, would't be one of my builds without some sort of disaster...So here's a disaster: At this point, my general inexperience with assembling kits like this had started to go a bit wrong, this being the cab. I hadn't really added the roof correctly...at all. I glued the roof before actually bending it to the contour of the cab, so it wasn't exactly resting neatly, nor was the top vent and small traces of glue surrounding it. There was also the fact that I hadn't painted the roof, so i had to paint it black with the rest of the cab bar the coal rails being red. Oh and the coal rails dropped off at the rails and front section that bends near the front of the bunker. What was the real disaster was that it wound up crushed. Won't go deep into the details but some yelling was involved. However, the back section of the cab survived. So I got a bit innovative. Yup, the rear tank was basically cut free from the remains of the back of the cab, so now I could have as built condition. You also may note that I had started painting the smokebox and side sections black as needed, along with the running board and cylinders now being painted up. I even managed to salvage the bent sections of the original cab, with the generous use of a hammer. Used the original model's cab and the two other etched cab sides included with the kit to try and make an early cab, though this hasn't gotten very far even now. Eventually, another Dolgochification kit arrived and learning from the first build, I assembled the cab fairly quickly, minus roof and vent, which were both carefully bent to the contour's of the cab and glued together and painted separately. It was at this point that I forced myself to add the kit splashers and remove the stock ones. the cab and splashers were quickly primed and sprayed red. Compared to a stock Bachmann Skarloey I also finally got some gold paint for the brass, given it looks like polished brass of course. Eventually, January 2019 came and I finally made myself get back to work on Rheneas after about a month doing nothing on him. Granted i was away at University and then away for all of Christmas to New Years, but still, it was time. I managed to pick off another usable part of that Ertl Rheneas, the sticker nameplates. They were in incredibly good condition and at this point the Ertl Rheneas had given up it's smokebox for another project i was working on, and I'm not kidding about that. I also painted the cab window lenses brass and the coal rail black. Then I started the part I had been holding off on...the lining. This was my first time ever using waterslide transfer decals. So I got to work. I also finished up the actual smokebox itself and added the cab roof proper. \ And soon after I added everything else, bar the westinghouse pump, still need to get to that, from the kit and finished any paint daps and touch ups. And so here he is; my RWS Rheneas: From the start, he's been repainted completely, relined completely, had a new brass whistle, handrails, clack and injector valves fitted, a new cab, a back tank for cab-less mode, new splashers, new funnel, brass builders plates, and I made some, decent looking I think, Glazed windows for the cab. All he needs now really are numberplates...and a varnish to protect the paint and decals, want to see what finish i want and do want a brand that won't eat away at the paint or decals. But yeah, this is him. Hope you liked it, at least the model. As always, comments, thoughts, etc, are welcomed.

To continue from the previous post: Moving forward in time again. Got him a headboard and both sets of builders plates, one are the original Doncaster plates, the other is the set of Crewe plates he got from his rebuild at Crewe in 1939. Other than that it's just been the occasional additions and touch ups. Finally added a smokebox dart and lamp iron, also added a bufferbeam number: AND, I swear this is of it right now, here are the most recent pics. I have another NWR engine in progress that i got a Mainline Fowler tender for. Now i thought it would be weird for this engine's tender to have a coal rail, cause it had one, but Gordon's too not. So i cut it off the mainline tender and modded it and glued it to the Hornby tender behind Gordon and I swear that's it for Gordon for now:

Right, so next up is my RWS based Gordon. Model was built using the SCC G2 mid plate bodyshell, on a spare Hornby "Book Law" chassis, modified with Black 5 cylinders and valve gear, among other parts. Started out as usual, WSF shell off shapeways, so filler primer coats were applied to do both of those things. Will say now though that i wish i applied a few more layers cause there are areas that didn't turn out near as smooth as I would like. And then started the cylinders, the Black 5 cylinders were essentially cut and shut at new heights and distances from the original middle casting section Test fitting the cylinders, valve gear and body on the chassis Cylinders were then glued in place using the bodt and rods as a guide, mind that the chassis had a tender wire, and I hadn't yet tried to re wire this part yet to get it to run, this will matter later. eventually the rest of my parts arrived, including the Fowler tender. The dummy hook coupling and buffers were then removed, I then added a screw link and bashed my own sprung buffers, using a diesel's rectangular buffer heads and Bachmann LNER sprung buffers. These were glued in place eventually, and the tender was painted. Painting had only started btw, didn't just leave it with the black showing through. And then everything sort of went wrong, tried re wiring the tender connecting, thought maybe paint was on the contacts, and then the wires let go from the contact plate It was a disaster. I I still wanted the model to at least look the part though, so i through the chassis back together and did a mock up until i could get a new soldering iron to try and fix it. The face I acquired was an old Hornby Gordon's and i needed to re-paint and the first attempt was...Let's just say he got some of that special coal. Course eventually, I did manage to bodge the contacts and wires, soldered them back up, found the cylinders were too far back, had to cut the middle section of the cylinders to slide them forward, found the contacts were catching on the wheels, contacts horrible bent were bent even more, glued the contacts straight to the side of the plate. Had a decent running model I was happy enough with. Course, that's not where this ends. Started trying to add a bit more to Gordon. Started with making an eccentric bracket, eventually replaced after Knuckles(Sparkshot) kindly made me some 3d printed replacements based on his, which were based on LMS brackets. Finally painted the smokebox and added handrails to it and the cab. And then, it went wrong again. My contact plate bodge kept giving out, requiring more and more glue to keep the wheels and contacts from interfering due to the bent nature of the contacts. Well, eventually the contacts ripped themselves apart. So I did what i should've done to begin with, ordered a new contact plate and fitted it. This was about the time that i finally got rid of the jumpiness in the valve gear, found that the cylinders(which at this point are just 50% glue) were actual still too far back, moved them forwards and i haven't had any big issues YET after that.

They were announced as part of the 2018 range I believe, and they’ve been on the Bachmann shop site for a few weeks. Given the pics used, looks like they’ll both be based on TR’s Coach No.4, while it had been hoped the Blue coach would be No.4 and the Red coaches could be based on 1 and 2, this seems unlikely. They’ve been announced as costing $39 from Bachmann, so I expect they’ll be marked down at least a little bit from retailers. So if the rolling stock follows the current NG rolling stock made for the range, it should be quite good. No word on when they’re supposed to be released, was hoped the 2019 catalogue would have pics of them so we could see what they look like but no luck sadly. They have updated the Rusty model a bit, filled in the big gap on the top of the bodywork, so should be a bit better for those modeling any larger Rustons or any freelance diesels. New images have been released of the new Rosie model and rolling stock for “HO”, though I doubt anyone here would be particularly interested. The N scale range is in the catalog, but stock images from the HO range have been used. So there’s a likely chance of them making these models from scratch, though I also wouldn’t be surprised if these new N scale models were rebranded Tomix models, course this is just hypothetical. We’ll just have to wait and see. Either way, be nice to have the Tomix models be more readily available, and equally nice to have new chassis for 009 use, cough Percy cough.

Should point out that its actually OO scaled, Bachmann only day the Thomas range is HO cause nobody knows what OO is for the most part.

Should point out that its actually OO scaled, Bachmann only day the Thomas range is HO cause nobody knows what OO is for the most part.

Alright, so it could’ve just been a bad set fitted to his, hopefully mine will be hold up, cause man do the replacement rods look better, I mean the standard ones are fine, but they do look quite big once you see the NP ones fitted. I assume there aren’t any issues if assembled and added correctly with the rods and cylinders?

Right, guess I'll start off with the obvious. My first real kit built/bashed/project model that I built up was my RWS Thomas. Based on how Thomas appeared following a rebuild after meeting the station master for breakfast. Shell is an SCC E2-X bodyshell, available in WSF and FUD on Shapeways, but Sparkshot, aka Knuckles, is now offering them in Photon resin prints, a frankly much cheaper and superior material and print to the Shapeways versions. He is also offering other models in his range in this print as well. Anyway, the model was bought in WSF plastic, and modified to fit the Bachmann Jinty chassis. Now sadly, many of these early photos are lost, the server that had them being long since deleted. I have been able to recover one image, taken after the first modifications done to make the shell roughly fit the chassis were made. After that I finished any mods left needed to make the chassis and body fit each other, then sanded it as smooth as I could before using filler primer to start filling in the rough texture, many coats were added and sanded smooth until I was happy with it. The great thing about filler primer is that it does just that, fills in and primes the model for painting. I used Tamiya X-14 for the main blue, with the rest of the paints being used being flat Testor pot paints. I also painted the cab. Then started off finishing the painting for the rest of the parts, wheels, smokebox door, roof, etc. Following this, I lined out the model using the thinnest line of Testors trim tape. The splashers took sometime, for the straight bottom used a piece of testors trim tape, and then painted the curve by dotting the paint and cleaning it up. And as seen above, I used sticker paper for the number, did try and use decal paper so i could print my own but every attempt, and there were many, failed. Also used some spare tie wire after stripping it of plastic to make the rear window bars, was going to try and cut them to fit in the frame, but that was just too fiddly. Some more time passed, modified the box the Jinty had come in to now take Thomas. Finally added vacuum pipes, and got a snowplow so i could run him round my Christmas Village layout. And I also added handrail knobs and hand rails, these have since been replaced by less chunky versions. (sorry for the poor quality on this one) And it just so happened to snow on the night I did all this... Later on, I also added a full coal load: (Yes, i did take care of that piece on the back of the bunker) Also bodged some window glass, really should replace those actually, and got etched build plates Also made his coaches using some Dapol Stanier Subs i got off Hattons, looked the part and were above all else, cheap. And here's Thomas after getting the current handrails: And also, headboard: And this has probably gone on for long enough as is, so here's the latest pics of him. He's now got a bufferbeam number. That's pretty much it for Thomas as of now. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and thoughts are appreciated.

Well it could've been just been a bad batch that was fitted to my acquaintance's, but just in case, do just want to have my bases covered to avoid any potential crankpin breakage and what happens if they do break. How'd you unscrew them anyway? Just used pliers or one of those Hornby spanners?

Hello all, I've decided that I want to try and be a bit more active on this site. Some of you may recognize me, others may not, so here's the low down on what to expect on this thread. Basically, you'll see a lot of RWS based models, reaching for accuracy of the engines seen in the books, with a blend of some more prototypical aspects and some personal touches and changes I've added. Of course, I also do have some other models I'm working on that aren't related to the RWS at all, so you'll be seeing some normal and modified normal models here as well. Thoughts, comments, etc., are appreciated.

So recently I started modifying my Bachmann Skarloey into a more RWS/prototypical form, I do plan on adding the NP kit but I've been wondering something. See I have heard that the crankpins are quite fragile, and have seen someone who attempted to apply the kit have to buy another whole model as a result of all his crank pins just sheering at the slightest amount of force. I wanted to know if anyone else has had this problem, and for those who have upgraded the rods using the NP kit, if they used one of those specific nut tools or something like pliers, or just made sure to oil it up to make it come out easier? And if possible, anywhere to locate spare parts or suitable non standard replacements for the crank pins should they break, cause Bachmann US's parts department is useless.

They really do look fantastic, have to wait for MR-209 though. There any info of when that variant left on the ship? I'll admit I'm tempted to cancel that order and just get one of the other skirted LNER variants that have already arrived.