justin1985

Thanks for the comments. Jerry's TOUs look like a very sensible variation on the sliding sections design of the Association 3D printed one. I'm certainly converted to the moving sleeper and single stout pin approach for future projects.

It just occurred to me that a brass pattern makers dowel (of baseboard joint fame) might make an ideal pivot for the table. The ones I have got (from an aborted project) are from Station Road Baseboards and are 25mm in diameter - just 1mm wider than needed for a true scale turntable. So I'd just need a spacer between the TT deck and one face of the dowel, capable of carrying a gear (ones I've ordered have 2mm bore) - perhaps even a short section of 2mm rod with gear anchored between brass or even wooden blocks centred and araldited to the deck and rear face of dowel. I'd imagined this could be rotated using a worm on a simple rod feeding through from the front of the layout - twist the rod around a few times to turn the table. Or, as it will only ever have to rotate roughly 90 degrees, as bécasse says, would I be able to get by with some kind of crank arrangement?

Justin

Excellent! Its a fascinating village and your model captures the atmosphere perfectly. How will the railway relate to this scene?

My "one day" model will be Clare, Suffolk, where the Marks Tey-Cambridge line threaded between the motte of a Norman castle and an Augustinian friary. The station itself was built within the outer bailey of the castle, and lane led from the river and the end of the goods yard, past a row of brick cottages and a granary, up to a vast half-timbered sixteenth century coaching inn, and the medieval high street. A very different East Anglian vernacular, but perhaps a similar atmosphere

Justin

Such fascinating stuff on this thread! 

The range of buildings look excellent - really convincing, especially as a proper range of buildings that look like they've grown up together over the years rather than been jumbled together by someone designing a model railway Is the stone texture from a Scalescenes (or equivalent?) printed sheet, or actually a scaled image of a real building? The variation and weathering is excellent. The combination of flints and rich terracotta pantiles makes me think Norfolk - and with the superb medieval gateway nestled amongst the houses, I'm thinking of Castle Acre. Am I warm? 

The petrol railcars are fascinating - really elegant little cars - reminiscent of contemporary tramcars, and very model-able! More ammunition for my Wealden branch line thoughts ... (must focus!)

Justin

I made some more progress over the weekend and finished the track laying (of the basic plan anyway).

I've got the plans for the wagon turntable from the GERS Journal, and ordered some largeish nylon gears, worms, and 4mm loco bearings to try and put together a mechanism for the turntable. The prototype was 12' diameter, which makes sense when most wagons were 9 or 10' wheelbase, but should I be concerned about the potential for the end of the body work, buffers, coupling etc of the wagon being turned fouling anything? I like the idea of filing slight depressions in the rail tops to encourage wagons to stay put!

I used the Easitrac lever/cam based TOU and wire droppers again for the final turnout at the front of the plank on the basis it was easier to adjust the throw to match the electrical slide switches I've used for polarity switching and also latching. But I cursed this decision. While it worked at first, somehow by the time I'd finished laying the rest of the track, the blade no longer made tight enough contact with the straight stock rail, and my test wagon routinely derailed. Endless attempts to adjust it made it a little better, but in the end I realised the dropper had got more and more bent in the process - time to replace them. I'd used 0.4mm this time, but upgraded to the 0.5mm nickel silver I used on the first one. Much stronger, if tricky to bend accurately (took a few attempts to get the "shoulder" under the stock rail the right length). The little tufnol jig sold for this job doesn't seem to allow for the slight upward turn of the section of wire soldered to the rail, which is more important in being able to get a good joint when using a heavier wire, so it was bending by eye with a set of smooth pliers. Eventually, it worked!

So, what have a learned on track laying?

• Wire droppers are a monumental pain in the bum  (but most TOUs seem to be designed for wire droppers)
• Filed down bolt heads are much better in terms of ease of soldering on, rigidity, and reliability (and, in my opinion, no more visible once installed)
• The Finetrax \ new Easitrack keyed chair turnout kit tiebar looks even better in terms of accurately setting up the correct spacing of switch rails and maintaining a reliable joint - but based on conversations at the 2mm stand at St Albans, would be quite tricky to retrofit to turnouts already built (was it Alan Smith I spoke to)? This would probably be the way I'd go in future
• Using slide switches as part of the linkage to a TOU is tricky to balance with the required throw of the turnout - microswitches activated by the actual TOU mechanism, rather than the other way around, would probably work better - but in that case how best to provide latching?
• Tweaking Templot plans by cutting and sticking once printed is not the best idea - it ended up being very tricky to avoid a kink in the track from the fiddle yard entry to the first turnout
• The cast brass Easitrac sleepers are a great way of providing an electrical feed - I started off avoiding using them because of the cost, but bit the bullet by the end because its so much easier

Another picture with the bufferstop posed in place and a hint of the fiddle yard connection - sections of 20mmx20mm aluminium L section firmly attached and gauged with holes drilled ready to hold a pair of brass strip prongs that will hopefully locate and grip the cassettes.

Still some more electrical feeds to connect, then time for full testing (and work on the wagon turntable)

Justin 

That sounds perfect Richard - I look forward to seeing the result - and I'd probably be happy to buy about 6 sets if you're offering them to other members?

Justin

I've been using a relatively recent Farish 12t, 10' wb LNER ventilated van which I had rewheeled and weathered some time ago to test the track I've been laying on my shunting plank "Snape". I had been pretty happy with this wagon, and bought another 5 or 6 of them very cheaply from a discount shop that was shifting old Modelzone stock a little while ago. However, now I've been paying closer attention to the wheels and underframe from using it track laying, the more I've noticed how "wrong" it looks that the brake shoes are moulded in line with the W irons rather than the wheels.

Otherwise the underframe moulding is excellent - the brake leaver is about the best I've seen on an N gauge RTR wagon, and the rivet/bolt head detail, builders plate etc are all excellent. With a bit of weathering its really convincing - apart from those brake shoes! I'm almost tempted to think the Chinese CAD designer misinterpreted a drawing. So, what to do with them all? With a whole batch of them to do, I really can't decide whether to:

• Live with it
• Cut off the brake shoes and cannibalise etches to epoxy brakes on to the existing chassis (are there any etches of just brake shoes?)
• Replace the whole chassis with an Association etch (2-333 with 2-336 steel solebar conversion?)

Any thoughts? Has anyone else finescaled one these vans?

Justin

I've only just discovered this thread but really enjoyed catching up on it (other than the caravan/house saga - have endless sympathy on this - the English housing market is broken in many ways, but also in desperate need of reform in term of process).

Since moving to Croydon a few years ago I've been developing more and more of an interest in the Brighton line. The Dapol N gauge terrier has had me thinking of potential bucolic Wealden/downland layouts in 2mmFS. It's frustrating that despite doing what must be dozens of named terriers in Stroudley livery and now even KESR blue, they've resisted umber. Must resist distractions ...

Justin

Its certainly possible to ballast and paint Unitrack to look very convincing! The best known layout using that approach seems to be "Santa Fe Peavine Line" by an American modeller called John Sing. He did have a personal website with a guide to how he did it, unfortunately now seems to be dead. There are plenty of photos of the results floating around though: http://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?media/albums/john-sings-n-scale-unitrack-santa-fe-peavine-line.322/ 

I used Evernote web clipper to save a copy of his guide to ballasting Unitrack when I first saw it, PM me if you'd like a PDF or something of it.

The first step was building up the surrounding scenery to make the raised trackbed blend into the scenery (presumably using plaster etc) - obviously easier for an American west scene than say Norfolk! Basically then it just boils down to painting the whole lot with a uniform "track dirt" colour (sleepers and rails together - none of this artificial "rust" on the rails) and then very carefully placing on fine ballast, then flooding with water/IPA solution using an eye dropper (not a spray) then repeating with water/IPA/PVA glue solution. Around the points he made up a mush of ballast/glue and pasted it on using a fine screwdriver as a scoop. Finally he touched in the areas that couldn't be ballasted (between switch rails, around mechanism etc) with an "earth" colour paint that matched his ballast. 

Justin

Many thanks for all of the suggestions and references. I am indeed a GERS member, and have a copy of the journal back issues disc. The article looks really useful and I've printed out the diagrams. It is the single track version that I would be required for Snape, so at least that part of it should be relatively simple to construct!

Tim, do you have a picture of the kind of aileron pivot that you mentioned? I can't seem to find much online. (or were you referring to point mechanisms?) I discussed the wagon turntable with a few people, including Jerry, at St Albans today and I'm leaning towards the 4mm loco bearings. What about something to locate the table at the right alignments? My first thought is just notches in the surround and some kind of slightly sprung phosphor-bronze strip set up.

The 3D printed turnout operating mechanisms arrived during last week, and I put one together to operate the turnout that I'd already installed with the filed down bolt heads as droppers. The TOU arrives like this:

Its a very efficient design, clearly arranged to take up as little space, and use as little material, as possible for printing. The disadvantage of this is that its a little tricky to adapt to a different design of dropper connection. I drilled new 1.9mm holes such that they included the printed dimples for the 1mm holes, but were further inboard to avoid risking punching through the sides. However this meant that I also had to carve a little off the inside face of the base of the thing - I compensated by filling the hole in the base with plasticard. I forced the 2mm OD brass tube through these holes to accept the bolt threads.

The other "gotcha" was that as the intended wire droppers run under the stock rails, and therefore come down vertically at considerably wider than track gauge, but the filed down bolts sit inside the switch rails, and are therefore at less than track gauge, the closest setting for the screw-adjustable gauge setting was too wide, so I substituted one of the provided screws for a thinner, longer screw, and just screwed them together through the central shaft itself. I flooded the joint with cyano once I was happy with the spacing and operation too. 

The throw needed to operate the TOU is less than that of the electrical switches I've been using, so it took a lot of careful adjustment of the piano wire to allow it enough travel to throw sufficiently far to still operate the switch while not stressing the TOU. I did get there though, and it works without leaving anything in tension. Still, I think for the third and final turnout on this project I'll use one of the Easitrac cam based TOUs as the throw required on the closest hole on the lever seems to match the throw of the switches (which I've already prepared and wired up). I'll save the other 3D printed TOUs for future projects and remember to use them with microswitches rather than electrical switching via the manual linkage. 

I also picked up a DG electromagnet from MSE at the St Albans Show today - I hadn't actually planned locations for them (or made any holes or mounting arrangements before starting track laying - so will need to factor in locations where I'll need them. They they only had one left, although I do have a massive reel of thin enamelled wire bought for wiring up surface mount LEDs - more than I'll ever need for that purpose - so I'm half tempted to wind my own electromagnet around a steel bolt. Is it worth it, as I have the stuff, or more trouble than its worth?

Justin

I would encourage you to end the headshunt with a wagon turntable in front of a building, like at Snape. It'll really capture the atmosphere of the area.  It wouldn't be too hard to make the turntable work, it only has to rotate through 90 degrees, which you could easily achieve with a lever & pushrod mechanism. You could then move wagons independently using a neodymium magnet under the baseboard acting on the steel wheel axles of Association wheelsets.

 

Mark

Actually, if I moved the frontage of the maltings further back from where I had imagined it, this should be possible. I had planned on leaving enough space inside the maltings to be able to reach in through a hole at the back and swap wagons or insert/remove loads under the maltings roof. However that would be very fiddly. Squeezing in a wagon turntable and perpendicular track in front should work, and would probably add more interest as you say Mark.

Any suggestions for a suitable pivot? Would just a bolt attached to the underside of a PCB table running through a plate under the surface with a few washers, and stops, do the job?

Justin

Thanks for the notes on operation Mark. I'll definitely be interested to see the pictures on Saturday. I've based my drawings of the station building on the floorplan from OS mastermap and elevations from pictures on Flickr etc ... Then I noticed that the chimney must have been rebuilt relatively recently - the original had the ornate "bridge" between the stacks.

I'm happy for it just to pootle back and forth rearranging a rake of wagons using the (invented) loop. I was really just looking for a compact rural terminus - the maltings themselves have ended up as little more than a scenic break. A light railway style passenger service may yet appear ...

My preference for turnout operation is to make the tiebar and operating mechanism as rigid and robust as possible, so the blades are held snugly against the stock rails. Then I allow for lost/excess motion in the movement mechanism.

 

Mark

That's definitely a more appealing approach. I'm hoping the bolt heads combined with tube inserted into 3D printed TOU will do the trick in that regard, perhaps with lighter wire (the 0.5mm nickel silver?) With an omega loop for the final linkage from the electrical switch to the TOU to take up any over-throw.

Justin

Thanks Jerry! I will be at St Albans on the Saturday, and possibly also see you at Tim's later in the day - I've been roped into helping lack track in the CF goods yard.

Justin

For some time now I've been working on a 2mm FS shunting plank, on and off. So long, in fact, that I had designed and built the baseboard to 4'x1' for the London MRC layout competition, but of course I didn't make anywhere near enough progress to submit it to the competition last year. Progress stopped when I started a new job in the autumn, but I managed to get back to it during the Christmas break, so I thought I'd post the current state of it. 

The layout is based on the goods station at Snape Maltings, Suffolk, at the end of the short branch off the Great Eastern East Suffolk Line. Although the branch was very short indeed, and almost all of its traffic went to or from Garrett's maltings, a complete station was built with a goods shed, station master's house, and passenger style platform. No passenger service ever ran though (aside from railtours just before final closure).

Beyond the station the platform line and the goods shed line converged at a wagon turntable which connected with a further siding which ran through a rather grand gateway into the maltings complex. Another siding ran perpendicular to this to access the small wharf alongside the river at the end of the maltings. The geometry of the wagon turntable meant that no locomotive could physically access the lines beyond it - the lines converged as effectively a truncated turnout, with the turntable in place of switches. Rather than replicate this I've replaced it with a simple B6 turnout. 

The board is cobbled together from a mix of 3 and 6mm ply offcuts, and designed to fit within an old IKEA long, low, storage unit that is made of "Lack shelf" style egg-box structure material, which will serve as an safe and crucially flat and rigid storage box and base for it, as well as a fascia. Most of the construction is simply using blocks of pine batten and Gorilla Glue, occasionally reinforced with screws. Its not the best bit of woodwork by a long way, but its much more square than anything I've put together before! No progress on the "fiddle yard" though - I've left about 6" or so, and I'm imagining a lowered hardboard surface for cassettes made from perspex and aluminium angle to slide around on. 

I've made a start on track laying, based on a template I just about managed to put together in Templot (and then adjusted and tweaked by cutting and sticking the paper). I printed duplicates of the turnout templates and constructed them using primarily Easitrac sleeper strip and chairs, but also a "belt and braces" amount of PCB sleepers and chairplates anchoring every piece of rail after earlier experiments of pure Easitrack had been very fragile, and even with the recommended 4 or so PCB sleepers had been difficult to adjust. The turnout closest to the "fiddle yard" is a second attempt! The third turnout, which leads to a small headshut, has been built but not yet stuck down.

The track laid so far seems to work, and my J94 trundles back and forth through the turnouts relatively happily, even without the weight of its body, as does a Dapol cl.73 electro-diesel with turned down wheels. Only the fiddle yard end turnout has a proper mechanism attached to it so far though. I used one of the Easitrac cam-based TOUs for this with wire droppers to move the switches. The 0.25mm wire recommended in the "Track" book seemed much too thin and springy to actually work, so I used 0.5mm nickel silver bent up using pliers - even this needed a lot of tweaking, and some aggressive bending over of the wires under the TOU to keep the blades tight against the stock rails. The TOU is worked by a piano wire which is threaded through a standard maplin slide switch, constrained with the remains of choc-block electrical connectors. 

I wasn't particularly happy with the wire droppers, so for the turnout at the other end (which is all PCB, as it will be buried under paving) I have used one of the other techniques described in "Track" - a filed down brass bolt head soldered to each switch rail. I built a TOU from sliding plastic section with brass tube soldered to PCB offcuts attached, as per another suggestion in the book, but I think the inner plastic section I used was a bit thin, and I couldn't really get the uprights to stay anchored at the right angle with the suggested bolt, so I glued it solid ... at what turned out to be the wrong angle. Then I saw the new 3D printed TOU in the Association shop, and have ordered several of those, and I'm planning to adapt one with the brass tube rather than wire droppers. Currently waiting for the shop order to arrive!

I've worked up scale plans for the station building in CAD, which I'm planning to build in card with scalescenes papers. Some custom windows will be required though, and I'm not sure whether to etch or beg some laser cutting (or even improvise with strips of sticky label) for that. No work on the maltings facade or goods shed yet though. I will use the GER lightweight buffer stop from Chris Higgs' new etches in the shop for the end of the headshunt siding - no idea whether its correct, but it is nice!

Any suggestions gratefully received! Hopefully posting on here will help to keep me motivated to keep making progress!

Justin

The 2-6-0 looks excellent Gareth! It seems quite rare to see American steam locos done to finescale standard, especially in N. I guess for most people the problem of non-availability of wheels is a fundamental stumbling block, but using 2mm Assoc wheels is the perfect way around. Are you working to the formal FS160 standard? (or is there an equivalent North American P160 standard?) 

I don't envy North American modellers having to deal with all of the external "plumbing" - although this one doesn't seem too encumbered - very handsome loco actually!

Justin

You talked me into adding an order for a "one" unit, in addition to the 2x Great Eastern and 2x NSE units I'd already put down for. I'd be happy to swap for one or possibly even two more NSE or FGE if "one" doesn't make the cut. Likewise, I'd happily pay a bit more per unit to make sure they go ahead, if it comes to it!

There is a lack of supporting models to prevent the East Anglian options being terribly feasible....

 

Oh I dunno about that, Dapol 86s in most relevant liveries (excluding Anglia but including Intercity Swallow), Mk2 air cons in Intercity Swallow due at some point in the next few months(or years) from Farish and DBSOs (even if the earlier style front). There's also a a Farish 170 Turbostar in one "refresher" livery, 150 in Regional Railways, and Dapol 153 and 156 in Regional and now Central Trains "express" (common on Norwich services). Plus no end of Freightliner stock. As with most lines it's the lack of supporting EMUs ...

Justin

Thanks - very tempting to give it a try! I'm imagining a rough and ready jig to hold all the cranks from one side at 90 degrees before soldering the other side at 180. As you say, would be a lot easier if the cranks were a tight interference fit on the axle. Looking at the image of the etch on the shop website, it doesn't look like the holes are any bigger than the crankpin holes, so presumably 0.5-0.6mm, and if the last step of the axle is 0.9mm, should be reasonable to drill/ream them out to a good fit. How many thicknesses of etch did you laminate together for each crank? Looks like quite a few on each etch - enough for four layers?

Cheers

Justin

After struggling with this aspect - it was annoying when they kept on shifting -  I discovered the answer lay in the 2mmSA 3-205 coupling rod etch produced for converting GF locos some time ago. This has several sets of rods on it, and outside cranks as well.

 

This brings it neatly around to the discussion on quartering outside cranks. Here it's another little challenge as they have to be soldered, and quartered, onto the same axle. But they are an improvement over the originals as you can see. One day they might even get a coat of red paint.

 

Oh what fun we have.......

 

 

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Izzy

Thanks Izzy, really useful post! I'm leaving my modern stock as N gauge (possibly building a layout using Finetrax eventually) rather than rewheeling as 2FS (reserving 2mm for my pre-group stock). I'd love to slim down the cranks on my 08s though, so it's temping to use the old Farish replacement rods etch.

How did you approach the quartering when soldering the cranks onto the axles?

Justin

They look really good Jerry! I always like short wheelbase stock, and the combination of loco (?) and dumb buffers on the SDJR wagons.

What size of plastic rod did you use for your bolt heads? They look very neat! I had planned to use Archer resin rivet decals on a GER sand wagon I'm starting to scratch build, but I'm having second thoughts as to whether something meatier is needed. I suspect its a case of the eye wanting to see more relief than perhaps should be there to scale?

Justin

I haven't had much chance to do much modelling at all in the last few months, but the Christmas holidays have given me a chance to get back to the 2mm modelling. I eased myself into it by building a wagon chassis. Wagons are always my favourite part of modelling and I'd picked up a PECO "Colmans Musrard Traffic" van - prototypical livery - but completely the wrong body, being an SR refrigerated van. Still, there's no way I'd be able to replicate the livery, so I built an Association replacement chassis. Along with a bit of weathering I think it really improves the look of the thing.

Also in the picture is an Association etched J94 chassis. The chassis I previously built for the old style Jinty eventually got to a state of running reasonably well, but with a bit of hesitation when going backward only. I'm pretty sure the problem is the motor mount and bodged sleeves for the 1mm motor shaft (as fiddling makes it better, intermittently). Anyway, with the new Jinty and conversion kit looking much better, I've lost the drive to get it fettled and finished off. But, learning the lessons, I'm building the J94 for another spare old Farish body I had laying around. This time the motor came with a nice long 1.5mm sleeve, so I'll use that with a stub axle in the two "gearbox" bearings, and leave the motor restrained by much thinner more flexible wires and blu tak (used very stout wire on the Jinty, which I think is much of the problem).

Another diversion was an attempt to produce a scale (ish) working street/platform oil lamp. Every commercial working N gauge lamp I've seen has been hideously over scale. I didn't fancy trying to rig something up with surface mount LEDs in the lamp itself, but it struck me the Ratio lamp moulding, which is mainly solid translucent plastic, could be used with fibre optics.

I replaced the post with an equivalent length of 1.5mm OD, 1mm ID brass tube, and wrapped around, tweaked and soldered some 0.4mm wire to represent the wrungs at the top. I then ran a 1mm fibre optic up the middle, roughed up the end that sat nicely inside the moulded lamp, and connected it to a flat topped warm white LED with heat shrink. The result isn't terribly bright, but then the real thing wouldn't have been either, I don't imagine? The closest resistor I had to hand was 1K (working from 9v battery) so imagine I could make it a tad brighter by swapping this for a lower resistance one. I did consider trying to find even thinner tube and optics, but I imagine the result would be even dimmer? Here's the works

Happy New Year!

Justin

I registered interest for 4 units when this project was announced - I'd probably be prepared to increase this to 6 or maybe even 8 if it comes to it!

Has the project been promoted via line societies at all? I very rarely use the Great Eastern Society Yahoo! email group myself, but it is quite active. This and other relevant line societies might be a way of drumming up a few more collector orders?

J

Didn't see any sign of them at Warley - the only new steam model showing any progress was the painted sample of the Schools.

I wouldn't hold your breath for them any time soon - Dapol seem to have more or less given up on N gauge this year. 

I noticed that the engineering sample of the Pacer that Dapol had in their case at Warley still looked like the windows were on the short side. I had forgotten the details of the conversation on here when I was looking at it, so can't comment on whether the problem was the gap between the windows and the rivet line (discussed above) or whether everything was too high - either way it certainly looked "wrong"  

The painted sample 33 did look very good though!

Just got back from holiday and first saw this in Rail Express which had dropped through the door - very exciting! 

I've registered interest in 2 x NSE sets and 2 x first Great Eastern sets, and might even be tempted into one or two more to help ensure production goes ahead, if it comes to it! I take it the 1000 is across all liveries? Is there anything we can do to help promote the project? 

Frankly I'm not bothered about running numbers or whether the 321/3 or /4 is depicted - the prospect of a high quality RTR model with a factory paint job in liveries like NSE leaves any other route to a model of the GEML in the dust. I'd much rather have a high quality model with an incorrect window detail than no model, the effort of building one from scratch, or something bodged together with vinyl. 

I'm also slightly surprised at all the requests for a OO version - what is wrong with the Bratchell version? They look very good to me, seem to be effectively ready to run, and are not outlandishly expensive (compared to Bachmann unit trains of similar length etc). 

Justin

Well, I'm not sure if its the talc, having poked around at the thinnest corners of the mould with a scalpel and tweezers to open out the thinnest bits, or removing the mould from its lego frame before trying to flex out the cast parts to get more flex and hopefully put less pressure on the mould. Either way, I've done another two batches, and all have turned out essentially perfectly! Well, apart from extra flash around the corners where I was poking with a scalpel and evidently created little slits into the mould - better too much than too little though. I can't see the EMU roof mould lasting very long after this abuse, but it will have served its purpose if I can get four "perfect" matching driving car roofs to produce 2 N gauge class 309 EMUs.

Next up will be a 2mm pre-grouping covered sand wagon and outside framed van, once I get around to finishing the masters ...