hartleymartin

I had heard good things about the 32 class kit and revised 50 class kit and I had thought that the 30 and 30T would be a similarly good standard. The chats I have had recently with various kit manufacturers seem to be along the line that new kits would be more or less the way that DJH do them with cast metal and etched brass making up the bulk of the kits in the manner of the 36 and AD60 class kits rather than the short-run polyurethane castings that we've mostly had in Australian O gauge. I think Australian modellers will prefer this as they would be more familiar with these methods from the HO scale loco kits which were for the most part made this way and allowed for both soldering or a mixed glue-and-screw construction methods. I have been having chats with people trying to convince them to do a beginner's kit of the X-200 and/or X100 classes in a similar manner to the Tower Models 02 and Barclay kits. None seem too keen on it at the moment though.

O-Aust have a 30 class Tank and Tender versions in their range now run by Glenn Scott of ModelOKits. At the moment they are listed as both being out of stock, but if you send him an email he may have one or two somewhere.

Is it possible to get the buffers shown in the above photo as a component in 7mm scale? I'm planning a model of one that ran in Australia, and those look like the buffers I need, but are not part of the body kit.

I managed to find a photo of Lo44, later 1065 which was a Simplex shunter used at a Wagon Works in Sydney. It has a completely different roof and a few detail differences (buffers and such) but I reckon I could turn out a reasonable model from the Shapeways body kit. There was also one used in Byron Bay in conjunction with an old tramcar. The simplex is still in a shed in the area, though the tramcars went to museums many years ago. It is amazing where these things turn up!

A few years ago I did some 3D-CAD and was going to do an 11t Hibberd Planet kit, but the one test print I did of a very early basic prototype was so poor, I decided it would have been better to do a set of laser-cut styrene sheet parts as a scratch-aid. Ultimately I abandoned the project as it wasn't going to be viable with my time and resources, but I may do something about it again some time soon. The big idea was to create a very simple kit that would be cheap, no harder to build than a plastic wagon/van kit and give you a useful little shunter. Some day I'll do it.

The big difficulty is painting the interiors, especially on very open-cab prototypes. Having it all as one-piece tends to make masking off and spraying rather tricky, especially since I don't have an air-brush or compressor and I tend to use Tamiya rattle-cans for the most part.

I appreciate how these things can be printed as a one-piece body, but I sometimes wish that they would be done up as separate major body components to make painting a little easier. Also, I generally prefer to use third-party brass buffers and coupling hooks.

You most certainly could do it on 3x 4' boards. But this plan demonstrates that the 5-3-3 Inglenook can be achieve in O gauge, using standard medium radius points.

Inglenook shunting layout in 9' x 2' (270cm x 60cm). O scale, standard gauge, using Peco Points and 4-6 yards of flexible track. The design is for three baseboards, 3' x 2' (90cm x 60cm) with all points in the middle board. I have included a kick-back siding off the "long" siding (capacity 5 wagons). The main shunting neck can accomodate 3x wagons and some fairly large locomotives - you could fit a mainline tender locomotive if you wanted. No suggestions as to what buildings or scenery would go on the layout - that is up to the individual. You could also curve the sidings slightly to suit personal tastes. It could be built as a portable layout with the main legs supporting the centre board and legs at the outer ends of the two outer boards. 3' x 2' boards if stacked or framed together could fit into the back of a hatchback with folded down rear seats or the rear of a station wagon (I believe you call them "estate cars" in the UK). If things go according to plan, I might actually build it myself. But I hope that this proves that you can have a functional O gauge layout in a small space. Not shown are the baseboard join lines, which should be at 90cm and 180cm from the left-hand edge respectively. The one on the right should be the 10cm line to the left of the thick line shown on the diagrams - will learn how to use this software in greater detail soon. Using 1x left and 2x right points: Using 1x left, 1x right and 1x wye points: If you curve the bottom-right siding inwards slightly you can get this layout on an 18" or 45cm wide baseboard.

Don't forget that you'll need a hole/slot in the cab where the reversing rod goes through.

For a Victorian locomotive, it has a veritable ballroom for a cab! I would have been surprised if they bothered with much more than a spectacle plate and a curved roof held up with four tubular posts!

If you add a loco release line between platforms 1 and 2 of a Minories layout you get that, but you do need to add length to the layout for it to work.

There are ways to put a very slight curvature through a Peco Straight point, but you do have to do some work to ensure that the switch-rails snug up to the stock rail properly.

I think that with the re-do of the forums those links in your signature block no longer work.

Just a thought on the sector-plate: Perhaps make the back-scene on that board removable and any buildings similarly removable, or have a long loading platform with the main building on the far-left which would be less obstructive. Another thought just putting it out there would be to make the building low-relief and attached to the removable back-scene, and run some sort of control rod or lever under the layout to move the sector plate.

That last left-hand point at the loco-release. If you substitute a Wye point, you can sneak an extra 1.5" inches or so of length and you don't have to swing that short siding quite so hard toward the front of the layout. I recommend getting yourself a bit of extra length on that sector-plate, even if you get it to 36". At that length, you get a small tank engine, 4x wagons and a brake van, or a pair of medium-sized bogie coaches with a tank engine.

Is there any particular reason for having the three differently-sized baseboards? I would think that three 4'x2' boards would be ideal, especially at the fiddle-yard end. If your sector plate is only about 30" long, you won't get much more than a small tank engine, 3x wagons and a brake van onto it. If you have a 4' long board in the centre, you may be able to put in another siding. You may also be able to use a Left-handed point to create a bay platform if you wanted to expand the operation of the layout.

It wasn't intended to be a harsh criticism of the model. The fact is that it is a very impressive model for an RTR offering, made in the old style tinplate. How under-sized are the wheels? I am aware that it is usual practice in this style to use slightly under-sized wheels to accommodate the flanges. Scale size is 32.4mm.

You tried it with the Peco Set-Track O gauge points?

If you wanted to be strictly prototypical, the centre wheels should be flangeless, but I think it with these wheels they would look too toy-ish.

I'm wondering if the SECR P class chassis would be right for a Manning Wardle L class in 4mm scale.

There was a drawing in Railway Modeller. A few inaccuracies, but gives a good idea of the generic members of the class. If you're going to do up a body casting, it is worth noting that the Ixion Hudswell Clarke Chassis is dimensionally just about right for the Manning Wardle, as long as you are happy not to have the characteristic MW wheels. I've got a spare HC chassis somewhere with a few odds and ends for an L class Manning wardle in 7mm scale.

That 3D-printed body moulding is pretty darn good! Certainly better than the ones I've had previously from shapeways.

Done and done.

The important question now is how do I buy one?