Locksley

Thanks Steve! A) Tbh it was easy peasy, the plastic Hornby hooks pull out with pliers. The shank of the 3-link hook was clipped off leaving a few mm which was then lightly filed down on the top and bottom so it would slide into the hole left in the bufferbeam. I then just popped them in with a blob of superglue. I can't comment on how they'd handle a full train but these wagons aren't light and they show no signs of giving up yet. B) I have, though I'm still not sure of the route I'll go down. The issue is simply the time it takes to print them (these are around 12hrs per section) so I'm not sure how cost effective it would be to sell them as prints, but I'd possibly go down the route of making the STL files avaliable. I have thought about it tbh, it does look great. I may treat myself to a set at some point. Sure, I'll try and get you some ASAP.

Surprised to find the Terrier wheels arrived yesterday so I was able to get the 50550 99% complete. It still needs a matt coat, crew, and works plates swapping over from the old body. The wheels look pretty nice with the gib & cotter rods.

Thanks Steve! It's a brilliant tool to have even of it feels a bit like cheating

I've been playing around with my 15 year old Hornby J94 for the last year or so since properly getting back into railway modelling. I resprayed it into an industrial example, weathered it, added some etched plates, real coal etc and was generally fairly happy with it as it ran stunningly well. I decided to put a Zimo MX617 chip in it, along with a stayalive last week and in doing so the lower plastic section finally gave up the ghost and the screw holes started to crumble away. I didn't want to condemn it as the rest was sound so popped a post up in the wanted section and an hour later had secured a mint condition replacement thanks to a very kind forum member! Not being one to keep anything in factory condition, I set about the body with the intention of turning it into a rough representation of a Hunslet 50550. It's been covered on the forum before, but the main thing I wanted to do was get rid of the awful saddle tank seam, so figured I might as well go the whole hog and convert it while I'm at it. One of the biggest visual differences is the use of gib and cotter coupling rods. I had a go at printing some and though they are overscale due to having to make them fit the pins, incredibly they seem to work alright. These will be added to a set of Hornby Terrier wheels which are a closer match to 50550 wheels and are a drop in fit. The chunkier front and rear bufferbeams were next, these were superglued in place after razor sawing the old ones off. The rear bunker was also modified to give the characteristic slope seen on 50550s, as well as a replacement 3d printed cab rear to give the square windows. Next, I sawed off the bottoms of the saddle tank sides, actually much easier than I thought. These were then grafted onto teh upper part, filled and sanded smooth. Finally, a Markits smokebox dart finishes off the face quite nicely. The whole thing was then primed with Hycote primer, checked for any issues, then painted with a custom mix of a horrendous NCB green, to be toned down with heavy weathering. It's not quite as Kawasaki Ninja-like in real life lol.

No problem at all Steve! Let me know how you get on! Unfortunately I very much doubt it tbh, these buildings are printed at a resolution of 0.04mm so I think you would struggle to get anywhere near the same detail with PLA/ABS. What I have seen people do though is use filament printers to print the main structure of a building and then clad it with brick or stone plasticard.

Playing around with a quick B&W snap of Frost's Mill

Reminds me of The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams: Amlwch (n.) A British Rail sandwich which has been kept soft by being regularly washed and resealed in clingfilm.

Thanks mate, afraid I have no idea what the white box is lol

Thanks Martyn, I believe they're called T0402 LEDs, you can buy them pre-wired from eBay for not much monies. Make sure you do get the pre-wired ones too unless you have Godlike soldering skillz as they really are TINY!

Cheers John, I think I used either Medium Sea Grey or Light Ghost Grey, can't remember which I'm afraid!

For those who haven't seen how the Hunslet turned out on my Handsworth Goods thread, here's a few pics. It's not perfect but doesn't look too bad.

Finally for now, I did a bit of work on my Sentinel, hardwiring a Zimo MX600R chip, stayalive, and some LEDs into it, plus a set of Smith 3-links. And I treated myself to a 48DS, which again received some weathering, Smith 3-links, a hardwired MX617F chip this time, with a stayalive and some LEDs. Runs like melted chocolate now, beautiful

Realised I forgot to post any photos of my On30 Mining Loco. Turned out quite nice in the end. No idea what I'm gonna do with it lol.

Next up, a random On30 logging/mining loco designed to fit on a Hornby 0-4-0 chassis I acquired off a workmate around Christmas. No idea what I'll do with it but I have vague ideas in my head of maybe some sort of garden railway one day. I've wired in a 6pin DCC plug which actually works pretty well, and at some point I'll pop a chip in and wire up the LED headlamps.

Figured I ought to update this thread as it's been a while. Some of these have been posted elsewhere on the forum so apologies if you've seen them before. First up, the Chilmark BEL turned out really nice once painted up. I added a couple of craft 'jewel' things for the lamps, as well as some Eduard pre-painted photo etch plaqards from a 1/48 F-4 Phantom set, and some solder/fuse wire wiring. The figure is a generic driver from Modelu and just about fits.

I can hear my wallet screaming at me from the other room.

Thanks! All of the buildings on Frost's Mill were printed upright with the base directly on the build plate, and the odd support where needed, with the exception of the tin hut as it had all 4 walls present so printing directly would have caused too much suction. I found the bricks and mortar were better defined when printed this way than 'flat'. I also kept everything at right angles, i.e. the front of each buiding faced the front of the printer which uses the shape of the pixels to your advantage in keeping the brickwork smooth and even. I did get some warping when using the full build plate, presumably from the FEP being at different levels of tautness in the middle and at the edges, but once everything was cleaned up and painted it was barely noticable.

Thanks guys, yep I was surprised too at what was achievable in Tinkercad. These buildings were mostly built by mocking up a rough version with a few blocks to the correct width/height/depth, then adding individual OO scale bricks or stone blocks where appropriate. The windows, doors etc were made with cuts into the main body of the building.

Well, I think I'm ready to call Frost's Mill pretty much complete. I added a few bits of seafoam foliage which completely transforms the look of the layout into something a bit more rundown and dilapidated. I also weathered up the vehicles and even added LEDs to the Sentinel which was every bit as much of a pain in the proverbial as you can imagine...

Thanks Brian, I think over the entire project I've gone through roughly 1.5l resin, which works out at about £60 at current Amazon prices, including a few failures.

That would have been Plan B lol. Incredibly a very kind forum member has a spare!

Your best way forward is to try to find photos of whatever stock you're wanting to convert and see what was used. I think within reason any type of coupling could be found on pretty much any type of rolling stock, so you'd struggle to go too far wrong but some were more common than others. For example, I think screw couplings would be more likely found on fully fitted rolling stock and locos than unfitted stock. Instanters were generally used on fitted stock too, but less likely found on locos. Standard 3 links could pretty much be found on anything. But i do have an extremely limited knowledge of these things so do take that with a handful of salt.

Edit: sorted! Hi all, This is probably a long shot but I'm in need of the lower plastic body section for a Hornby/Dapol J94. It doesn't appear to be currently available as a spare part, if it ever was. Livery isn't an issue as it'll be resprayed, and pretty much any condition as long as the screw holes are intact - mine have all crumbled away so the lower metal chassis can't screw in place, and neither can the motor. I hate to condemn the loco as the rest is all fine, and tbh it's one of the best running locos in my collection when it isn't in pieces. Thanks in advance, Alex

Nothing special for these, just my camera phone (Google Pixel 3XL) and my living room lighting. I do have a photo tent and some LED spotlamps for 'proper' photography but only tend to use that for my plastic models. I may get the spotlamps out and see how much difference they make though. Oh @SteveyDee68 I also got a pic of my un/coupler doohickey