Thunderforge

I had the same for six o gauge axles from Routemex, I know it’s overkill but a) couriers/postmen seem to act like heavy handed baggage handlers and b) at least it can all be recycled.

I can’t recommend a brass (I’ve only ever used warhammer’s acrylic ‘Brazen Brass’) but if you find a decent silver you could blob some yellow and brown in it?

I wonder if it was a case of someone in the design office forgetting to change the colour each month and now they’ve realised “It was a test, yes, to see if... er, we would sell more!”

I bought the Blue Cargo Train set with infra red remote control system, you can control the speeds of up to eight different trains with one controller. Might be quite useful if you stripped the parts and fitted them into a 7mm loco or bigger.

We used Lego AS a mould to cast a silicone rubber cube, dyed green, to use as a gelatinous slime monster for war gaming.

Here are a few clever Lego ideas I’d bookmarked;

How about 'ruckus' or 'fracas'? I think the newspaper industry can claim copyright on those!

They managed to fit the word ‘halcyon’ in there three times. That word annoys me almost as much as the word ‘ubiquitous’. Just saying.

Remember if you’re using a sector plate you’re combining headshunt, fiddle yard and all the pointwork in that one place. I’d say it would be more space efficient that way. Unfortunately I can’t think of a way of making it into a workable bit of ‘real life’, maybe an unfeasably large turntable?

Oh I don’t have anything against ‘nasties’, whatever works best. :-)

The only plus I’ve found is that glue and paint dry faster. Although I’m sure I lost a bottle of superglue because I left it in direct sunlight for a few mornings and now it doesn’t move in the bottle!

I’ve cut a spare bit of pvc pipe and glued ends to it, which will be a tank wagon if it works and a grounded oil tank if it doesn’t work. The angled strip is for the wheel brackets, the part which didn’t work in aluminium. Once I’d cut and glued these parts together I put it on the track and... It rolls nicely!!! I want to re-cut it without W-iron angles and add bits of strip instead. The only bad news is that the ends of the pvc ‘tank’ sort of plopped off when I tried to file them, and it seems the glue I bought hasn’t touched either of the plastics but dried as a rubbery layer between them. The glue was a ‘10 minute’ adhesive with acetone, but there was another one with instant hold, having petroleum and various other nasties in there to help it stick. So tomorrow I’ll pick up a tube of that and see if it fuses into the plastic properly. All the best Thunderforge

In the 7mm+ section of the forum I posted my trail in making 7mm wagons from aluminium lithograph plates (0.5mm) which was ... semi successful. It was a brilliant material for building bodies but a bit too malleable for building a solid square chassis. Another idea I’ve had is to use plastic, not the sheets of styrene you buy from a model shop but the various bits of plastic from household items I can scavenge. A big part of my project is getting into O gauge as cheaply as possible, and crafting things myself. So after some advice about glue from some helpful members of this forum I picked up some bits from my local DIY shop and set to work. The clear plastic is from an old storage box which has cracked.

Two long sidings might be more prototypical than three short ones, but in a cramped industrial area needs must! If you have three factories to be served that happen to be in three different places then that’s reason enough. Although if you have two loading bays on one siding you’ll have to clear the whole track to get the van at the back out, and then put the other wagons back where they were. Have you considered a switchback? A ‘Z’ shaped layout could need two engines to shunt properly and would have four ‘ends’ rather than two or three.

I wonder how many blade crimes are committed by the individual who ordered the blade?

Does it specify blades over a certain length? Mentioning sport (fencing?) and re-enacting maybe it’s to reduce the number of “collectors katanas” which can be bought without license being shipped in? Also I notice in the above post that the risk is put on the supplier not the customer, which would be policable if it’s a U.K. or EU company but how do they prosecute a Chinese eBay merchant?

Pretty much just Maldon Market with a turntable, I want to start something like this for my O gauge stuff. It’s animated but only if you click on it, apparently.

I've gone for a small tube of 'Ever Build Stick2 Hard Plastic Adhesive' which contains acetone. There was another tube with a much faster hold and a longer list of chemicals, but I thought I might be safer with this one first. I'll let you know my results. Thanks for all the helpful suggestions and information everyone! :-)

MEK? I think that stuff’s illegal over here now. My old boss had a tin for making rubber (temporarily) rubbery again, he used to take a big sniff from the tin and say how lovely it was. You’ll note I’m using past tense here.

I was thinking of using some PVC pipe and angle section for scratch building a few things, but I want some advice before I get into it. PVC is very different to the HIPS plastic of airfix kits or white styrene which can be welded together with polystyrene cement. I’ve tried polystyrene cement on PVC and it doesn’t touch the stuff (in fact not even superglue gave a very strong hold!) Can anyone recommend a glue which would allow me to weld the PVC together? I’ve found ‘glue that is suitable for PVC’ in my local DIY shop but on closer inspection it looks like a gorilla glue type which sticks TO it, rather melts into it. Thanks in advance, Thunderforge

I wonder if RMWeb supports animated gifs? Here goes... Only if you click on it, apparently.

Trident Yard!

Funnily enough I was thinking of trying some 4mm Ply or maybe MDF for the chassis base as my next step...

Update: I purchased a few new sets of wheels, which have somewhat confirmed my fears about my aluminium project. Basically it’s too bendy. I have made up about five aluminium 9’ wheelbase chassis, and when I tried fitting wheels it appears that most of them are warped by a few millimetres. They rock awkwardly on the rails with one wheel in the air. I can twist them in my hands and warp it back again but part of the problem is the height of the holes which the axlebushes sit in, all ‘by eye’ measurements. I think all the approximations, glue and flexibility of the material add up to something with too much variability. Some chassis work fine but it’s more luck than judgement! I’m happy with everything above the chassis, so I’m sticking with ali for the bodywork, but I want to come up with something else for the frames. Preferably something free! I’m going to have a play with a few other materials and post my results. All the best, Thunderforge

I never thought about Point 7, I shall remember that every time I couple to a carriage! :-)