hartleymartin

Guess what turned up after a rummage in my garage? About 7 scale feet longer too. Measuring and checking things continues. Mocking up the parts this way shows how I'll increase the height of the body with styrene. The width will be resolved by cutting out the end doors and fitting wider ones. A couple of skirting planks under the end-windows will make up the height there. Increasing the height of the side from 43mm to 46mm will make it a scale 6'6" high on the side. A flat arc roof will give a bit of extra height in the centre - I plan to ditch the clerestory roof, although I think I may make use of it on some other project.

Any particular reason you're using a 70ft turntable? (19.5" long) I would think that a branch-line would make use of a smaller one. A Collet goods fit on a 45' turntable with buffers over-hanging at both end. The great news is that you can adapt the Peco On30 turntable with a new deck and wider-spaced rails and you've got a reasonable O gauge turntable. Call it 1:45 scale and you've got a 45 ft turntable. The deck is 12" long, which gives you a rather handy extra 7.5" of length to work with. If you run larger mainline locomotives onto the layout, say as tour trains, you would use a tank engine to shunt the coaches to release the big loco.

Both bogies converted and ride height increased by about 1mm for wheel clearance:

I noted that the bogies on the KA Tramcar (pictured above) were not too dissimilar to the On30 bogies from Bachmann. So a bit of work to convert the On30 bogie to 32mm gauge with some wheels borrowed from an Athearn Arch-bar Truck (bogie) and I think the coach sits more comfortably on its wheels, even if a little low-slung.

This is one the prototypes I am using for inspiration. It may also give a few hints at some ideas I am having about increasing the coach body's height. I may even change it to the simpler arc roof if the mood takes me in that direction!

I had some San Juan Car Co. coach body parts somewhere (not sure where they got to) with a view of doing something like this. I just picked up the Bachmann RTR model at a 2nd-hand stall for very cheap. I also had another look at the narrow-gauge bogies. The wheelbase is about 28mm and the wheels appear to be 14mm in diameter. I might be able to widen these and fit standard-gauge wheels - the afore-mentioned 2'8" wheel sets. The Bachmann bogies consist of a centre plastic section to which the metal bogie side-frames are screwed down. They are a lot thinner than the metal castings used for the 2AA bogies, so I might be able to re-use them and the original mounting points.

Not much movement on my modelling bench for a while. I did pick up a Bachmann On30 coach at the recent Epping Model Railway Club show at Rose Hill Gardens. I pulled off the bogies and sat the body on top of some NSWGR 2AA bogies (5'9" wheelbase). The coach body in 7mm scale is 31'6" long over headstocks and the coach body section is 29'0" long, and the main body itself is 7'0" wide - a bit on the narrow side for standard gauge. I could widen the body by cutting out the end doors and putting wider ones in place, and splicing some extra material into the centre of the roof section. The bogies have 3'0" wheels but I think I might try for some smaller 2'8" wheels. I then attached the bogies with some small brass screws, using washers to pack up the height so the wheels clear the floor casting. Here it is, again with 1021, sitting on a Peco O gauge point. I will have to engineer some proper bolsters/bogie attachment. Of course, some buffer-beams and couplings will be needed. I think I'll get another set of these bogies and put the smaller 2'8" wheels into it. the carriage body is the same width as the cab of the locomotive.

Some years ago I started designing a 3D-print body for this, but I had to give it up. As far as I am aware there are no examples of this loco in Australia. If I can get my hands on a good drawing, I think the body will be a fairly simple build in 1mm styrene sheet.

Any developments? I do like your railway!

Funny thing about the Hudswell Clarke. On the Saturday it kept derailing on the curve into the layout, but stayed on track reversing on the way out. Then on the Monday it ran faultlessly around the same bit of track!

Do it. The "senior scale" is great for all types of modelling, whether it be kits, scratch-builds, kit-bashing, and there is a growing number of excellent RTR models to get yourself started. I generally recommend starting with an RTR tank engine and building some wagon kits. After that, the sky is the limit.

I believe that with 1/4" scale the use S gauge track standards (7/8" or 22.25mm) to represent the 3'6" narrow gauge and American O gauge (1-1/4" or 31.75mm) to represent the standard and/or broad gauge. There are standards out there for 7mm scale 3'0", metre and 3'6" gauge, using 21mm, 22.25mm and 24.5mm gauge tracks respectively. In fact, I had a 7mm scale TGR U class diesel shunter kit which I had modified to 24.5mm gauge, but it went missing from the back of a friend's car several years ago.

Chris and I assisted Gary with running his small O gauge layout at the Epping MRC Show at Rose Hill Gardens today. Here are a couple of shots of my Hudswell Clarke and a couple of my wagons running on the layout, named "River Dee Meats"

The passing of the two locos right at the end looks a little hair-raising, especially if you were the crew of the 0-4-0.

Which AMRM? I'd be interested to read that article.

I need those rivets. If MEK doesn't stick them, what glues work?

The only other large scale NSWGR layout I have ever seen was the Lasseter, Gumflat and Buckalong railway layout in April 1998 Australian Model Railway Magazine.

I didn't know there was anything NSWR available in 1/32 scale.

Just going to point out that 9mm in 7mm scale is 15.4" so it is basically the miniature railway/minimum gauge stuff.

I wired up the controller with a plug and I've wired up a socket. Now I just need to finish up the baseboard so I'll have somewhere for the socket to be mounted. I have also come to appreciate having heat-shrink tubing to help secure the wires and give them mechanical strength. I have used a 180-degree 5-pin din plug and socket from Jaycar Electronics. Of course, the advantage of doing it this way is that you can use the one controller on more than one layout!

I'd never had believed that you could do it with a flat-iron and not a steam-iron too!

Well, now I know that you can do something with those bogies. I now wish I hadn't turned down an offer of 6 sets for $5 each made to me last year.

I'm sad to hear that you can't progress with Little Loco Co. I hope that you get a good offer on the acquisition of the assets and intellectual property.

You might try Berg's Hobbies. They have some of the old O-Aust range in stock.

If you want the Dean bogies, ModelOKits has them.