animotion

Can someone who administers the website sort out the invasive advertising that is making rmweb a conduit for advertising. The screen that pops up at the bottom right hand side of the screen can't be turned off. I suggest you take a leaf out of the Western Thunder book that also offers the same services as RMWEB but without the invasive advertising.

Rocket 1printer looks impressive but I would avoid any printer that has slots on the build plate. I like to print without supports if I can do so and this would be impossible on this printer with some of the smaller items I print. It is better to have a large print platform than the ability to print tall items. Take a 4mm coach for example, if it can fit it on the platform parallel to the surface you have reduced the Z height considerably and print time. To really speed things up and if you had a large enough print platform you could print the sides and ends separately flat on the bed.

Had a look at their website and wasn’t impressed with the surface quality of the locos. I can produce loco bodies that are close to injection moulded quality and have been doing so for a number of years now.

I am in the process of doing some research on Matlock Bath Station having recently returned from the area and taken some measurements of the station itself. Bill Hudson’s book ‘Through Limestone Hills’ is an excellent book on the line that went through the station with detailed drawings of stations on that line. Matlock Bath is one of them but I am a bit perplexed by the drawing in the book which details the station as it was before a minor alteration took place in 1909. The drawing shows the station with a protruding section jutting out from the front of the station. This was moved back to be flush with the rest of the station front to allow a wider gap between the front of the station and platform edge. As passenger levels increased at the station the Midland Railway deemed the gap to be dangerously narrow and hence moved that section of the station backwards. It is obvious that when Bill went to the station to take his measurement’s this section would not have been in existence. Has he just added that section to his original measurements or was he working from the original plans ? Unfortunately Bill is no longer with us to ask him and his son is still sorting out all the archive material that his father collected for the book. I have checked all the obvious places that these that these plans could possibly be residing but so far have drawn a blank space. If anyone could throw some light on this I would be most grateful. The images I have added illustrate what I have talked about.

Does anyone know of anyone who takes on Templot work and would be able to create a track plan in EM gauge to Midland Railway practise? Thomas.

Thanks for the feedback. I had no idea that the Exactoscale chairs were prototypically made to hold the rail at a slight angle which I believe is 1:20. I wonder if the C&L chairs are also made to represent this as well?

I am about to embark on building an EM gauge layout and have been gathering as much information as possible with regards to track building. I will be using Exactoscale code 75 bullhead rail with four bolt chairs. I have been looking at several forums on track building and came across an article in the scalefour forum by David Thorpe regarding track laying. The track gauges the EM society supplied me were a mixture with some by DCC Concepts. I was not aware that you should use Exactoscale gauges with exact scale chairs because the chairs sit on the sleepers at a slight angle or are we only talking about P4 here. I would be grateful if any modellers out there could clarify if I should be concerned over this matter. Here is what David Thorpe said. “Without wishing to worry you, do make sure that you are using an appropriate track gauge when laying track using Exactoscale chairs. The reason is that these chairs hold the rail at a prototypical angle, with the top of the rail canting slightly in. If you use a gauge (as I did) that holds the rail straight up and then put a weight on it to hold it in place while the MEK sets (as I did!) you may find that when you remove the gauge the rail will gradually begin to cant inwards, leading to gauge narrowing. I had to carry pout a lot of remedial work to several sets of points because of this. It seems that you need a gauge such as an Exactoscale roller one that only holds the top of the rail. If the gauge holds both the top of the rail and the foot, as some do (including, I believe, the Society ones), then after removal the chairs may relax, leading to gauge narrowing.”

I need to buy a track cutter and there seems to be two Xuron ones that do the job. What I would like to know is can the verticle one do the same job as the ordinary one of cutting rail before it has been laid. If it does it makes sense to buy the verticle one incase you have to cut any rail that you have laid.

If I am making my own points should the block gauge be 18.2 or can I get away with it being 18.26 for the points.

I have just received an order of track components from The EM Gauge Society and hoping to start building points and track for my layout. Amongst the items I ordered was an EM gauge block gauge by D.D.Wheelwrights which I tested on a short length of Ratio EM gauge track and to my surprise it did not want to sit between the rails. I thought maybe the track was slightly out of gauge so I measured the block gauge with my digital vernier gauge and found it to be 18.26 mm. I know it is only 0.06 mm out but is this regarded as acceptable or should it be exactly 18.2mm for it to be of any use. The DCC Concepts EM gauge track gauges that I also ordered fit on the Ratio track perfectly and are 18.2mm as measured with my vernier gauge. Have any modellers out there encountered the same problem with these gauges?

Hi Paul thanks for your comment. These locos need to have a very flat bottom to them and I find that if I add supports to the bottom of the locos there can be a slight distortion to the bottom surface and plus the fact that the supports need removing which leave a small dimple on the surface that needs sanding down. Because I am printing at 0.03mm layer thickness I do not have to worry about the surface finish and the bodies get sanded with wet and dry paper afterwards. At .4mm layer thickness the sides of your loco probable look ok but I would imagine the boiler looks quite striated. I have also noticed that you have had to add a support for the chimney which makes cleaning up the delicate chimney a lot more difficult. Once the two loco have been post processed I will post the images to show how it is possible to get an injection moulded finish.

Looking at these rail dimensions I assume that Peco rail has different dimensions to Exactoscle's 75BH N/Silver rail. Does anyone have contact details for Exactoscle, I would like to find out what their dimensions are for their track. Tom.

Hi Wayne Did a test glueing the chair to a ply sleeper with Bond it high viscocity super glue which is a cyanoacrylate glue and it has stuck very firmly to the ply. I have applied some pressure to the chair to try and get it off but it did not budge. Tom.

Hi John the check rail chair is the only one I have done sofare but I will be working on the block chairs for all the different angles and they will be to the Midland Railway paterns that will be available in 4mm and 7mm. Tom

Hi Wayne the printer I used is a Nova3D Elfin 2 printer available on Amazon and the software is Fusion 360.

Here are two 3D printed masters for Camkits, the left loco is for the Midland Railway A Class kit and the one on the right is for the Cambrian Railway 73 Class kit. They will be cleaned up to an injection mold finish before being sent to the casters in Birmingham.

Doing some test prints for scratch built EM gauge track. Here is a 3D printed Midland Railway check rail chair with a 1mm gap for EM gauge I have produced. I plan to create a whole range of Midland Railway chairs that aren’t commercially available for point work.

Hi Mick I have just come across this. You can get hold of me by messaging me on RMWeb Thomas

I am in the middle of planning a EM gauge layout and using either .8mm or 1.5mm birch ply for the track work. At first I thought .8mm would be a good option as the sleepers are the same thickness as the ready to lay EM gauge track and so no packing would be needed if I was to combine the laser cut point timbering with the ready to lay track. I am now having second thoughts and looking towards using the 1.5mm ply as it will look more realistic for the thickness of the sleeper and will facilitate the tie bars and point roding more efficiently. I plan to have half etched tabs between the sleepers to keep the timbers in place which will be covered by ballest and for this purpose 1.5mm will be better suited. My only concern with using ply is the consistency of the thickness that some suppliers can’t guarantee. One company in particular, SLEC Manufacturing, states on their website that their 1.5mm birch ply has a tolerance for the thickness of being +/-10%. This means a 1.5mm plywood sheet could be between 1.35 and 1.65 in thickness. The C&L ply sleepers are the same thickness but have not stated on their website the discrepancies that might be encountered with the thickness. Have any modellers encountered problems of this nature when using ply timbering?

I am at the planning stages of doing a track plan in Templot for Matlock Bath Station but I am a bit perplexed by the sidings into the quarry yard and how they were worked. If you look at the map diagram I have posted I can’t see how you could possibly shunt a load of wagons into the two roads 1&2 unless you already had a loco in the yard and pick up a wagons one at a time from the end of road 3. This to me would seem like a very laborious move as you would have to shunt the loco with the wagons on road 3 backwards and forwards uncoupling each wagon so that the loco in road 1 or 2 could pick up the wagons. If you wanted roads 1 & 2 to be occupied by wagons you would need two locos in the quarry yard. Maybe someone could kindly explain to me how wagons were shunted in the quarry yard. Maybe shunting horses were used. I look forward to your replies. Thomas

When I google Little Muddle no images of the harbour scene come up. Maybe it is called something else.

What layout is the harbour scene?

I am about to embark on building a MR layout and would like some feedback on the choice of timbering material modellers have chosen for their layouts. At the moment I am experimenting with using Templot templates which I am saving as DXF files for laser cutting. The timbers will be connected with half etched tabs under the rail that can be hidden by a covering of ballast after the track is laid. The ply I am using is .8mm thick which I believe is the same thickness as the plastic track that I will use in the fiddle yard. The advantage I see of using ply sleepers is that you can get a more realistic look than you can on the plastic ones providing the grain is going length ways along the sleeper which I haven’t done on the image below. There was a good article a while back on using ply sleepers with plastic chairs in the MRJ but maybe thing have moved on from there and modellers have a different approach . My only reservation is the bond strength between the chair and the ply sleeper as I would imagine you would get a better bond with a plastic sleeper. I would be interested to hear of any experiences from modellers who have gone done the route of using ply sleepers and what glues they have used.

Thanks for all the replies and as I thought there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer to to which is better, nickel or steel which both have their advantages. Although steel probably looks more prototypical a large hand hovering over the steel rail to rerail a loco somehow makes the word prototypical less meaningful.