justin1985

Many thanks all - some great suggestions there. They look amazing, but probably a bit of overkill for me for now. I need to stop adding new things to my railway library ... I need to stop ...

I recently picked up some of the long wheelbase four wheel German wagons that you always see in second hand stalls, etc. The types that have always been in Märklin and Trix train sets since the year dot. These particular ones are in Z scale, but I've seen identical Märklin models in HO and even Gauge 1. My plan is that while these wagons look a bit generic, and all seem to use the same chassis, I might be able to improve them with some weathering (and fitting MicroTrains couplings to shunt with). Inspired by the interesting thread about the Hornby "KitKat" wagon actually having an interesting prototype, I was wondering how accurate the equivalent German models are? However, I'm having trouble tracking down many actual prototype photos and weathering inspiration. Can anyone recommend websites with good selections of photos of German ep.4 trains, and especially wagons? Is there a German equivalent of Paul Bartlett's excellent wagon photo albums? Märklin 8605 - I understand this is meant to be a "Gedeckter Güterwagen" - a bog standard covered wagon. However, looking on Google Image Search, this design with the ventilators but smooth sides, rather than planks, doesn't seem super common? Is it meant to be this one? https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Gedeckter-Güterwagen-Gs210.JPG I'd love to see more photos of these in use! This moulding also seems to appear a LOT in yellow with banana branding - is that remotely prototypical? Märklin 8601 - the classic beer wagon - or "kühlwagen" - refrigerated wagon. Again, from what I can find on Google Images by searching for "kühlwagen DB", the moulding looks pretty accurate for a Interfrigo refrigerated wagon (models do seem to appear in this livery too) but the vast majority of the prototype refrigerated beer wagons that come up seem to be older style ones with wooden planks rather than metal sides. Are most of the beer livery ones entirely fictional? Märklin 8622 - Offener Güterwagen - open wagon - UIC code Omm? This obviously looks like a bog standard open wagon, but I've failed to find a photo of one looking like this actually in service, rather than just as a model! What would be a suitable load? I get the impression that coal was almost always carried in hoppers from quite early on in Germany? Cheers! J

Actually after I posted last night I tried with a few more settings and got somewhere. On paper setting it jammed before even getting any toner on it. Set to "200gsm glossy card" (which sounded like a fair description!) it jammed in a similar location, but did have toner on it - just not fused on, so it rubbed off with a finger I found a post on an aircraft modelling forum where someone described a similar problem, and solved it by changing the paper setting to "colour transparency". Apparently this increases the temperature of the laser to better fuse the toner. I tried this and it kind of worked - the sheet jammed again - but 2/3 of the way into the out tray (so I could just pull from the front) and the laser was successfully fused on! I'd still be in the market for a different type of sheet though. I'll look up Mr Decal Paper. Cheers! J

I've finally got around to trying to print some decals onto some clear laser decal paper that I got from "Crafty Computer Paper" a few years ago (I understand that they are no longer trading? However, this paper, despite being labelled as for laser printers, just jams every single time in my HP M277dw Color Laser/multi function printer. The jam seems to happen in a place where to get it out takes a bit of force and results in the paper getting a lot of dents - so is ruined. As "Crafty" don't seem to exist anymore, I guess I don't have any recourse there. I wonder if anyone can recommend a source of laser decal paper that works reliably, especially in smaller multi function type laser printers? J

I went to order some on the RevolutioN website, and noticed how many different running numbers are listed under each livery! Very impressive! But do the different numbers have different livery details? (like the Hazchem stickers, etc). The preview image doesn't seem to change when you choose a different number, so I feel like I'm picking some out just at random! I'd kind of prefer some without/fewer Hazchem logos so they could at least plausibly look like they might have been carrying something other than military matériel (even if that's the only things they carried in the later liveries, in reality) J

There's two different questions here really, isn't there? The resin calibration test helps you get the best detail/reliability from the particular resin you're using. But there is a different question of what practical design elements work or look best in reality? e.g. a 0.15mm rivet might technically print, but would it look better at 0.25mm? A 0.5mm thickness wall might print, but would it be more reliable at 0.7mm? etc. The thingiverse link looks super helpful for that kind of question!

Worsley Works etches are explicitly sold as "scratch building aids" - Allen Doherty who designs then makes it clear that they might not contain everything you need to create a complete model, and some ingenuity might be required to work around making the design work. Allen's main market seems to be 3mm scale, so it may well have been designed with components for that scale in mind, then just re-scaled for 2mm scale - so things like bearing holes might not be the right size. If this is your first 2mm Scale loco kit, I'd definitely recommend you do one, or even several, of the simpler Association etched loco chassis kits (if you're interested in the GWR, the kit for the Farish 57xx would be a good start). Personally I'm on my third Association loco chassis kit, and while I've learned from each one when working on the next, I still have to do a lot of fault finding to get them working. I've also bought some Worsley Works kits, and some other etched loco kits, but I won't be tackling those until I'm confident of being able get a simpler loco chassis right first time. Sorry not to have a more positive answer, but I don't think there is any way around needing to work up to a kit like this.

On Jonas' recommendation I tried out Citadel / Games Workshop "Hashut Copper" (this was also convenient because there is a store very close to home). I tested alongside Revell copper, which I still had a very old tin of. The Revell one didn't seem as bad as I remember, but the Citadel one seemed to have a very pleasant aged but polished copper look, whereas Revell looked like a brand new factory fresh bit of copper pipe. Here's one of the main batch that I did using Citadel. I airbrushed the paint using Vallejo thinners over a base of Halfords Gloss black. Then after a few hours finished with an airbrushed coat of Humbrol gloss. There is still some "glitteryness" to it, but then the still is only about 2cm high, and will only be seen though a window ... I think if I was doing a bare metal tanker or something I probably would try the Alclad route. Sounds fun to experiment with in any case! J

Thanks Nick, really helpful. I don't have my own laser, but I am a member of a MakerSpace that has a rather nice Trotec laser. I've not used anything as thin as 0.8mm yet - I suspect that's in the territory where it will need to be held down with magnets. I was thinking of exporting the track plan from Templot as a DXF and using as a template in AutoCAD to create the design for the wooden inserts.

Thanks Nick, that sounds like a really useful tip. You mean that, as well as expansion gaps within the length of the rail, you'd try and allow some kind of expansion gap between rail and plaster? Perhaps by tucking something thin and non-stick (an offcut of silicone baking sheet?) between rail and plaster/clay when bedding it in? I had been wondering about using offcuts of plasticard or something to fill in between the sleepers and reduce the depth of the clay, to avoid issues with shrinkage as it dries. Were your issues more with the rail expansion, or the plaster? For the paved point, I was planning to use a generous amount of wooden planks to make it more easily taken out/adjusted. Thinking of whether to try and laser cut in very thin ply, or 3D print with a kind of "comb" to lock between the sleeper gaps?

Someone just posted this video to the GER Society eGroup, showing the units on store at the Mid Norfolk railway. Watching the seemingly endless line of coaches go past, punctuated by coloured strips, is pretty mesmerising! Kind of reminds me of this! But what do all the colour strips mean? It's back to the tradition of the Liverpool Street Jazz Trains! Yellow is obviously first class. And I thought I saw a disabled accessible logo within one of the blue strips. So what is green? J

Check rail visible in this pic. The contrast in the rail tops is pretty dramatic! The 3D print of the malt kiln ventilator failed, which was annoying, but the mini version for the engine shed turned out pretty well. Posed on the card mockup. The first shot stills were a bit small, and some of the print supports failed, but I think they still look good with a coat of copper

Several of us seem to have been tempted by Simon Jackson's Z rail upgrade kit for the Photon. Mine arrived during the week, and I fitted it one evening. It was pretty straightforward, apart from the anti-backlash nut, which I found pretty tricky to screw onto the stepper motor Z rod. Looks good when it's on though! The proof of the pudding is in the print, and there is a noticeable difference - although quite subtle I think. Before (left) and after (right) with my GER open wagon design. Both printed at 0.02mm with 4xAA. Even though these were only angled up (around 20 degrees, as per the chart of optimum angles that's doing the rounds on the Facebook group) and not along its axis, I still always seem to end up with a "good side" and a "bad side" in terms of banding. Both of these wagons are showing their "bad side" - you can see the quite prominent wavy effect to the one on the left, whereas the one on the right does still have one or two subtle bands, but much more easily ignored, I think. I think I did revise the design to increase the plank gap - I think from a 0.15mm hollow pipe to 0.2mm - perhaps over scale, but it looks more like what my eye wants to see!

Following on from the really interesting "Choice of Paint for Airbrushing" thread, I'd like to ask about metallic paints. I get the impression from skimming aircraft modelling forums and blogs that metallic paints have come on a lot in recent years, and the traditional Humbrol metallics are a bit passé. I can't say I've opened a tin for a long time, but I recall the Revell and Humbrol metallics I had for copper and gold etc were very gritty in texture - almost like you'd covered your model in very fine glitter, rather than it being a solid metal object. However, a lot of the stuff written by/for aircraft modellers seems a bit impenetrable in terms of assuming you know your way around the different products and how to use them! They also seem to be focused very much on modelling "NMF" - natural metal finish - primarily for aluminium, rather than the metals we tend to need to reproduce for railways - brass, copper, and steel. I gather paints like Alclad are popular, but I've not seen these at all in person. How do you use them? It also sounds like there is a method out there that uses a gold leaf type approach (with other metal foils). Modern paint brands like Vallejo and MIG also seem to be advertising new metallic ranges recently too. Any experience? My current project involves some stills for the interior of a whisky distillery - which I've 3D printed but want to be a nice shiny copper finish to be visible through the windows. I'd also be interested to get genuinely smooth and non-grainy finishes on 3D printed domes, whistles, chimney caps, etc. to represent copper and/or brass. Cheers Justin

I worked up a design for a malt kiln roof with a Doig style "pagoda" roof last night. I didn't fancy the prospect of making such a complex shape from card, so I've designed it in Fusion 360 to 3D print. I'd very interested to hear any views on how well I've captured the shape? I've been looking at lots of photos - and of course each distillery was subtly different - and feel like I've lost the ability to distinguish what looks in proportion, and what doesn't! I wonder if my design is too squat, or the ventilator is too big in proportion, but when I tried making it smaller, or the roof more tapered and slender, that looked kind of wrong. This is in 2mm scale (1:152), the bottom edges of the roof are 75mm long (to sit on a building 70mm square with 2.5mm overhang each side) and the whole thing is about 80mm high, to the sphere on the top. I'm planning to fit slates as paper strips, rather than include them in the design, to try and make it more consistent with other buildings on the layout which will be made more conventionally.

The track is pretty much finished now - just waiting on a Shop 1 order for some NBR bufferstops before I stick down the final two sidings. Once again I'd tried to save time by using a section of PCB track that was "in stock" for the rear siding (will be buried in cobbles). Although it looked like bullhead rail, once I'd stuck it down, it became obvious it was a much thinner (but same height) section of rail - perhaps VERY old stock? I thought about living with it, but then realised that as I'd need to fit a check rail to this siding anyway (for the paving), this thinner rail would be ideal for this, so I just nudged it in to check rail gauge using the soldering iron and roller gauge - then added new rails to normal gauge outside of this using normal code 40 bullhead. Almost as if I'd planned it! The cardboard mockups are still acting as placeholders, but definitely starting to give a sense of the layout now. I think I've decided to move the large square building (the malting barn, which will have a Doig ventilator roof! prototypically it does have a siding running into it, see photo at the top) to the back, and the pitched roof building forward, to become the one with the rail siding running into it. The long building with the four windows was actually an earlier attempt at the engine shed, but is standing in place for a similar building holding the still room. Obviously a still room on a distillery scene is going to need some nice visible stills! I'm planning on using quite large etched windows and fitting lights inside. Here is the design for the stills in Fusion360 - should be a nice simple 3D print! One of the most attractive features of the particular distillery that inspired me is the engine shed with the mini Doig-style ventilator as its roof ventilator. I've just drawn this up ready to print too

I'd never really "got" automation on layouts until I saw this layout at the Stevenage exhibition this spring: http://www.mscmaasenwaal.nl/burg-oberloewenstein.html It's an N gauge layout of the rough kind of size you have in mind, and a very simple visible track plan, but plenty of hidden storage loops. Watching a succession of trains waiting for the line coming on or off the single track junction, with correct signalling, was pretty mesmerising. That layout is automated with iTrain, and the exhibitors had a second monitor facing the audience as part of the exhibition - which made it even more mesmerising! The operators mainly seemed to be sat around and enjoying themselves as it was all working so reliably!

The summer hiatus in teaching and the rather cold and miserable August have conspired to encourage me to make some progress on this. I've now got a 6mm ply road bed fitted on top of the remains of the board left over from Snape - after a first attempt with 3mm ply went banana shaped - and now most of the trackwork glued down. Easitrac glue is really great! I love the very quick "grip" that it has - much better than most wood glues (what actually is it?). I've tried to be a lot more careful with alignment, and especially vertical alignment, this time. I'd stuck down a templot plan on 160gsm card (although I ended up diverging a bit from it as the track went down permanently and I decided to tweak clearances). However, I found that where I had to join sections of track with a butt joint - rather than being able to stagger joints across panels - because I hadn't left enough spare rail at the ends of vees etc - the sleepers were bonded to the top layer of the card only, and the rest became a bit spongy. This made it virtually impossible to fix the vertical alignment. So I ended up flooding the card with thin CA superglue, which did the trick. Another lesson learned - always leave enough rail to stagger joints - and perhaps revert to paper templates, and/or treat with shellac or even just CA before track laying? (I don't know how people who use cork as a roadbed manage this?!) After all that care, only once I'd stuck down the plain PCB turnout (and after taking the above photo) did I notice that the Vee was too fat and poorly aligned. This turnout was recycled from an early attempt - I didn't think would matter as will be buried under cobbles. Inevitably this was something that hadn't shown up testing with short wheelbase wagons, but when I tested with my see through 6 wheel tender (whose idea was this that I stole?) it jumped up over the vee every time. One side of the vee was clearly too long and projected too far into the knuckle area. I managed to prise it out of the well stuck down turnout with the aid of a soldering iron with only one section of PCB delaminating, so managed to rebuild the vee and fix it back in place in the right alignment this time. Phew! All of the switches are fitted with wire droppers more or less as per the illustration in the TRACK book - i.e. projecting out in an L shape under the stock rails. Rather than the recommended 0.25mm piano wire or phosphor bronze, I used 0.5mm nickel silver wire. Largely just because I had it and it felt rigid enough. I did then file the tops of the droppers down to ensure enough clearance for wheel flanges. I'm planning to use the 3D printed TOU bars with them. The first one is fitted and works well. After the debacle of my previous attempts to use manual rodding in conjunction with slide switches, this time I'm planning to actuate them using cheap and simple Conrad stall motors (as per my hand laid Z gauge thread). In danger of getting something running soon!

Good question! I suspect the real answer will depend on the ambient lighting on your layout as well, and the quality/specification of the "warm white" LEDs - they vary quite a lot! Buying from an electronics supplier like RS or Rapid, rather than model suppliers or eBay etc, should give you a much better chance to getting an LED that actually matches the colour temperature that is quoted for it. But in general, I've tended to go with yellow LEDs for representing oil lamps, and warm white to represent incandescent bulbs.

That's interesting back story, thanks Hayfield! I guess the other part of the story is that PCB production in the UK is drying up, and without much commercial use, the supply chain is drying up with it. I recently joined a MakerSpace, and the electronics focused guys there seem to have entirely given up on etching and soldering their own PCBs, even for prototypes. It's so much easier and cheaper for them to commission even a one off PCB from China. Personally, I don't have any interest in actually building any 4mm pointwork. I'd just originally hoped to be able to use the sleepers as a more robust alternative using 2mm approaches. I suspect by design rather than luck, in 2mm we have plastic sleeper strip that is the same thickness as the usual PCB, and plastic chairs that raise the rail by the same height as etched chairs. So I've evolved my own approach combining the best of both:

How on earth have 4mm scale PCB sleeper strips become so expensive!? Perhaps, in the cosy world of 2mm Scale I've been a bit insulated from changes in the market. As I understand it the 2mm Scale Association bought a very large stock of the appropriate type of PCB board a while back, and some association volunteers guillotine it to size using a dedicated tool. Recently I went to the C&L stand at an exhibition with the intention of buying some 4mm scale PCB strip to use for more robust 2mm scale fiddle yard track, etc. I walked away when he quoted the price. His prices seem even higher than those charged by FastTracks in the US for CNC milled PCB ties: https://www.handlaidtrack.com/copperhead-turnout-ties I remember hearing that it was getting harder to find the appropriate type of resin backed PCB, rather than the fibreglass type that's more common in electronics these days. Is that forcing the price of what remains in the market up? Certainly in 2mm scale, even with the copious use of jigs, I find that the degree of wiggle room you get by using soldered construction rather than glued is invaluable. At least for the crucial areas around the common crossing. A bit of heat and a nudge can be the difference between success and failure, whereas attempting to adjust this on a glued turnout can easily end up with chairs breaking or getting too loose.

I remember you saying that you had a bit of grief getting the one on CF to run successfully though Tim? Or was that just down to the motor? Obviously comparing with the other locos on CF is hardly a fair comparison for an RTR loco, but I can't help noticing that the B17 still seems one of the least successful runners on the layout - it always seems to have a quite pronounced "waddle" side to side, sometimes seems to contribute to derailments. Perhaps a product of the rather chunky UJ arrangements from the tender? Or from the slack in the valve gear? My loco building skills clearly aren't up to it yet, but as a long term aim I'd love to convert a Dapol B17 into a proper B17/1 "Sandringham" - with small GER tender - rather than the "Footballer" types that Dapol have always produced it as with the larger group standard tender.

Is there any chance you might also be tempted to tackle a Dapol B17, Chris? Another example of a nice body moulding, but a dog of a chassis with very flakey valve gear. No Catrazzi truck to worry about though!

I ordered them direct - the order process is a little old fashioned - sending forms by email - but nonetheless quick and painless. I used TransferWise to send payment via IBAN bank account transfer without the horrendous fees charged from UK current accounts. The prices themselves are still enough to make you wince! But I'd definitely recommend the kits - the quality is superb! The kits are made from a pretty normal feeling greyish cardboard, with the thinner parts from very thin ply. Window frames etc from normal card. So, no solvent, but the recommended UHU Hart glue does seem particularly good as a modelling glue for card - as the name implies it dries harder than normal UHU but sets nice and quickly. You can get it from 4D Modelshop, amongst other places. The instructions for the MBZ kits recommend their own range of powder pigments to "paint" them, but I've just used Vallejo acrylics. I did prime the card with shellac/button polish to harden it up. J