Adam FW

Another update on sirapite, I’ve added the gold boiler bands using HMRS transfers, then glued on the cylinder assembly which after some persuasion fit rather nicely, the running board with the smokebox was added next. Ensuring a good fit between the pipe from the cylinder to the smokebox was a bit tricky and needed some filler in the end unlike most of my models sirapite has a lot of wire on it to replicate the pipe work on the real loco, I had already drilled some tiny holes in the running board and the cylinder body for some 0.3mm wire to pass into, with all that wire in place I could add the thicker bent wire piece for the clack valve I’d made earlier the last bits of wire running to the cylinders were a pair of straight 0.3mm diameter pieces between the cab front and the back of the cylinders. I also glued into place the buffers and coupling hooks. now the only bits left to do on the body are the handrails at the back of the cab, a small hand wheel behind the flywheel, a final pipe running between the side of the cab and the running board over the top of the LHS splashers and the window glazing

All the painting is now done on sirapite and I’ve been working on the final assembly the cylinders and false valve gear went together better than I expected being printed and painted in 4 parts but painting it wasn't much fun as it’s so fiddly I’ve also started on the various bits of pipe work on the loco as well, in this case a 3d printed valve has a hole printed in it that the bent brass wire is glued into. The other end of the wire goes into a hole in the front of the cab whereas the 3d printed part slots into a hole in the boiler. Somehow this worked right first time the pipe isn’t actually glued in place yet as I need to add the transfers for the gold boiler bands and there’s some smaller pipes to run behind it once the cylinders are glued in place but it’s much easier to check the fit without the delicate parts getting in the way of my clumsy sausage fingers

Thanks for the info, my plan was to just fill every other gap between the spokes in with with filler and then paint it but a 3D printed centre would be a nice upgrade, I'll probably wait until I can get my hands on another set of these wheels to experiment with though I do now have a working chassis having got some basic pickups done but I they need reworking as they're very draggy but Sirapite's chassis will now shunt/violently shove 3 or 4 wagons so it all works and can move more than just itself around which was a concern of mine. I also 3D printed a back to back gauge which has been a great help with squaring the wheels up to minimise wobble

I finally got some nice green spray paint, though it took a bit of finding, one of my neighbours happens to have a green Peugeot in the shade I wanted so I found out what the colour of his car was and ordered a can to match (conifer green) I tried it on the water tank at the back of the chassis first and it turned out well so whilst the body is drying I pushed ahead and built the chassis up. I’ll glue on the sand boxes and pipes once I’ve finished the pickups as they’ll only get in the way. I’ve already filled the water tank and a void under the motor with lead shot and made sure the rear axle pivots and the motor and all the wheels spin freely I still need to figure out what to do with the wheel centres. Sirapite has 6 chunky spokes nothing like these Gibson wheels but they’ll do for now

It took 6 attempts but I finally got a good body print with no defects and which I managed to cut free from the support material without breaking so I got started on painting the parts, mostly it’s black, and green for the body, red buffer beams, silver for the valve gear and some gold detail parts. I wasn’t happy with this cab and boiler so I’m going to start again with it. I did want it all to be brush painted originally but my green paint was both really translucent and thick so needed a lot of coats which looks messy so version 2 will be spray painted, I just need to find a suitable shade of green

So here’s the first test print of sirapite, being so small most of the parts fit into a single print though I’ve left a lot of the small details on their raft of support material. The chassis came out near perfect and I’ve already test fit the motor, bushes and axle, I’m reprinting the running board as the rear buffer beam needs more support and really annoyingly there’s a small hole in the body print in the gear wheel cover so thats also being reprinted but it all fits together which was the main purpose of the test print. I also chipped the cylinders so I need another of those as well but it was to be expected with such thin pieces as I’ve said before this thing is minuscule, here it is next to an austerity for scale

I'm also looking forwards to seeing how it comes out but suspect it's going to take a few goes to get it right. the spaces I've got to add weight are the top of the smokebox, inside of the cylinders, the water tank under the cab, the top of the boiler so long as there enough clearance for wires but the largest space runs from the front of the cab to the boiler backhead and goes up as high as the valve gear (with some space needed for a decoder) I had previously thought about the whitemetal crew but they may be more of a hindrance as any weight behind the rear axle will take weight off the front axle which is the only driven one. White metal buffers on the front might be a good idea and worse comes to worse I can put some shot in the chimney as it's hollow but I don't expect this to be shifting very much, if it can shunt a couple of wagons I'd be happy.

My Sirapite project has been going a lot slower than I had hoped after facing quite a few set backs, put simply I messed up big time. I had a drawing of a similar loco and for some reason I scaled everything off the wheels but I got that measurement mixed up with the wheelbase so everything was overscale by about 20% which I didn't notice until I started wondering why my buffers were so high. Fortunately not much had to be scrapped from the 3D model as I could scale everything in the software and adjust around the bought in parts, where I was lucky that the motor and gears still fit (but it's really tight now), unfortunately I now need to buy new wheels and there's no space to fit a system to make the flywheel and gear wheel rotate, which at least makes my life easier So after a lot of frustration the 3D model is now ready to print and here it is: A lot of this is so small I've got no idea how well it will come out so there's bound to be some tweaks needed, Not shown are the covers over the side of the simplified valve gear as I think I'll make those from brass sheet because similar shaped pieces for the cab sides on my Manning Wardle warped quite badly. Internally the model will use a Nigel Lawton motor, scale link 40:1 gears, Alan Gibson wheels and axles with bronze bushes glued into the 3D printed chassis and a compensated rear axle. Only the front axle will be driven and I'll be putting as much lead shot into it as possible. I should be able to squeeze in a small DCC decoder into the cab between the cab front and boiler backplate, where the firebox, cranks and eccentrics would be in reality, luckily there's a guard for the cranks above the firebox on the prototype which will hide it nicely. And to finally visualise just how small Sirapite is, here it is next to my Florence model, which is on an Electrotren 0-6-0 chassis (it's a bit bigger than the Hornby B2)

that's really strange, I've never had an issue like it I have done a quick google search for bad resin symptoms and came across this from formlabs https://support.formlabs.com/s/article/Ragging?language=en_US looks to be a very similar problem they call 'ragging', it has a number of causes including out of date resin and densely packed parts, hopefully the article helps or at least knowing a potential name for the problem may lead to a solution. I do think something is wrong with the resin but I'd be surprised if it had 'gone off' as there was such a shortage earlier in the year that most stock should be very new.

There’s some more images of the staveley kit in my workbench thread. I printed, built, painted and weathered it very quickly over the course of a weekend with most of the time spent waiting for spray paint to dry and I forgot to take photos during the build, sorry One feature I’ve put into the kit is that part of the lower beam is attached to the dumb buffer print, this means that without the dumb buffers the buffer beam matches the profile of Avonside no3 when it had conventional buffers fitted, meaning it can easily be modelled without having to break out a Dremal you just need to fit a different set of buffers and glue them into the holes provided, what could be easier

I know it’s not a layout more a display but rather than a loop around the tree I went for this last year a pair of brightly coloured freight trains with small baubles in the wagons on top of the fire place. It got a lot of nice comments from visitors without the issue of it being knocked over if it were on the floor. the deer head and Santa hat are optional but highly recommended

I think an announcement besides the first CAD model or rendering that you’re happy with is the way to go in most cases, it shows you’re serious but it’s not too late to make changes if one of the experts spot something that could be improved upon and it allows those who need to enough time save up for it. 18 months or less before delivery of a brand new item is probably a good sweet spot, there should be enough going on to keep people posted with to maintain interest and it doesn’t feel like a lifetime away

At a guess I would say that’s over exposure leading to light bleed around the edges of the print partially curing the surrounding resin if it were me I’d work with only a few of those churns on a print to save resin and tune the print settings in your slicer software running prints until you’re happy with the result then re-slice the large print with those settings that worked and see how it goes For reference my pro on 0.03mm layers with elegoo standard resin has 8 bottom layers with a 40s bottom exposure time and 7.3s normal exposure time. I know the light source in the pro 2 is different but I don’t know if that will mean you can print layers faster

it shouldn't take much effort to remove a print using the plastic spatula/scraper that comes with the printer, if it's really difficult reduce the exposure time for the bottom layers (its a balancing act between good adhesion to minimise print failures and ease of removal, someone online can likely give you some ballpark figures for the mars pro 2), in the slicer software I'd recommend using a raft with angled sides so that your spatula can slide under more easily as well. I've never had an issue with resin curing on the build plate where it wasn't supposed to , my assumption would be that there might be an issue with your sliced files, load the sliced file into chitubox and you should be able to scroll through the layers to see if any with areas that were 'on' when they should have been 'off'. Again its an issue I've never had but I've heard it does happen. Otherwise it could be an issue with the resin (I also use elegoo standard grey resin normally and have never had such an issue and the grey is pretty forgiving) or the printer, run some more prints and see if the issue repeats itself. I wouldn't have sanded the build plate but it was a known 'hack' with anycubic photons to improve adhesion, if you were gentle and have cleaned it thoroughly afterward is should be OK, if not buy a spare. Personally I would have left it in IPA (as you would a print but for much longer) to clean it and see if that loosened anything stubborn, it normally does if somethings gets stuck to the FEP film. With the lid on I've left prints hanging for a couple of days without issue, I normally print very regularly so rarely clean the print bed as it's only got resin on it and is just going to go back into the resin anyway so if nothings stuck to it why bother. Same story for leveling the bed, I think I've done it 3 times on each of my mars printers in the last 6 months. I've never tried one of the flexi build plates so can't comment on those other than to say that I don't find a need for one. I've got a pair of Mars Pros not the Pro 2 but it should all be much the same

Really good show again, particularly liked Giles' RC crane build, I've been wanting to do something similar for a while and it's good to see how he tackled the problems

Thanks for the link, when I googled for more info earlier I couldn't find anything but the spec listed seems to tick all the right boxes, I particularly like the idea of including different works plates and optional details that aren't the usual couplings and hoses. The lined grey IW&D stands out as the most unusual and appealing, it will be interesting to see how it compares to Portbury's IW&D livery as I still have plans of making a small dockyard layout and a pair of IW&D locos would be rather nice on it.

excellent news another industrial loco Really interested to see how this develops as I really like the victory and was very surprised to see a oo rtr example of such an obscure loco announced But you’ve left me with a real quandary as I was going to fix my old white metal kit that has a dodgy chassis and knackered motor but now have the opportunity to buy new Laziness may well win out so you’ve more than likely sold one to me but I’ll wait until the liveries are revealed to make my mind up.

A brief update on Sirapite, the CAD is developing nicely and I've figured out how to make the drivetrain and chassis work (whether it works in reality is another matter), not sure whether to go with bushings or bearings to support the axles though A lot of the detail on the running board, boiler, cylinders, valve gear and smokebox is pretty much done, the cab needs some work though as the interior is pretty barren and it needs the external handbrake and other bits and bobs I'm really interested to see how the lion/leopard plaque on the smokebox comes out when I print it, it's tiny and was very simply modelled by tracing the outline off a photograph but the smokebox looks so dull without it The big remaining job is figuring out how to make the flywheel and gear wheel rotate without it being impossible to service. The easy route would be to make it solid and not rotate but I'm interested to see what I can do with belt drives

Back to the Avonside kits again, I've been working on another example for Railway Mania, this time it's Hartington from Staveley Quarry/Ironworks. It had 2 sister locomotives, Avonside No3 (later renamed Cranford in preservation) and Devonshire which as far as I can tell were identical to each other bar the number and position of the 'dogs' on the smokebox door Compared to my earlier square tank Avonside kits this one has some obvious differences, firstly the deeper buffer beam and massive dumb buffers (though standard buffers could be fitted to replicate 'avonside no3' in its later life). The smokebox is also different, the door is dogged (I think that's the right term, aka: midland style), a handle can be fitted rather than a dart (holes for either can be drilled easily as both sets of holes are there just capped off) and there's some additional reinforcement plates to beef up the connection between the smokebox saddle to the frame giving a really interesting heavy industrial look. Other changes include a new taller dome and chimney to better match the prototypes as well as the earlier round tank style sandboxes all 3 locos carried I've painted up one of the first prototype kits in a dark green as the only colour photos of Staveley steam locos I could find were green, it's also been my first attempt at loco weathering done almost entirely with dry brushing, I might go back and add some powder at a later date as I think the top of the tank should be sootier despite me dry brushing some extra layers on already I think it captures the prototype nicely

for the pickups I was thinking along these lines with a coils to reduce the spring force applied to the wheels and thus reduce the drag but repositioned from the top of the wheels to avoid the splashers, I'm not too fussed if they're a bit visible I'm pretty sure I have an old kit built 0-6-0 with similar tender pickups and it's wheels spin freely, I could belt drive between the axles but I think that would need the belt to be on the axle centre so might be tricky to achieve the tenshodo issue for me beyond the poor running I've seen some people have is that it'll cost a fair amount to buy and then I've got to swap the wheels from 10 to about 20mm diameter (and ruin it's slow running in the process), then butcher the pickups to suit and then alter the motor wiring for DCC, I think working from scratch might give a better end result in this case haven't got much further as the sun started shining not long after my first post, got the slide bar set up modelled though

That's a very good looking loco, though I don't recognise it, is it based of a prototype or is it freelance? From the looks of it you're going to have the flywheel and some simplified valve gear moving, which will look very nice with the spoked flywheel. I was considering making the flywheel and the centre of the gear wheel rotate on my model with a belt drive off the driven axle. My intention for the chassis was for it to have a integrated motor and gear mount to make it one lump but only for a single axle, the second axle I'd allow to pivot sort of like figure 35 on this website: http://www.clag.org.uk/41-0rev.html#figure35 and have it bolted or screwed onto the main lump so any warping or misalignment shouldn't affect pickup or running. I'd have pickups on both axles but only drive the fixed one of them as this isn't going to be hauling a lot anyway. I have a kit built brake van with a similar set up that seems to work very well If that fails one of the Tenshodo motor bogies happens to be within 0.5mm of the correct wheelbase but I'd have to swap the wheels out and they're not supposed to be the best runners anyway I agree lack of weight is going to be a serious issue, Sirapite seems to be a bit chunkier than yours and I have to cab to hide some sins so I should be able to to fit more weight inside and I can always fit white metal crew members for a few extra grams

it's wet and miserable outside so time for some modelling that isn't an Avonside for Railway Mania which makes a change, back to the weird and wonderful. I've wanted to do a something properly tiny in oo gauge for a long time and the recent thread on smallest standard gauge locos really got me thinking. Originally I wanted to do one of the chain driven traction engine based locos but their lack of body work makes hiding the electronics and adding weight challenging so sticking with the traction engine idea I decided to go for an Aveling and Porter loco more like Sirapite or sir Vincent who's cab and big wheels give me a fighting chance. I've started on the 3D model basing it off some dimensions and a basic drawing I found, combining it with info from pictures to judge the width of everything. It took me far to long with a model that looked completely wrong to realize that the boiler doesn't sit in the middle of the wheels as the drive gear offsets it There's a lot of work to go to make it look right but I think it's a nice starting point, I'm not sure what to do about the valve gear, it almost certainly won't move so I could 3D print it or I could glue together some scrap valve gear Motorising the model is also going to be a challenge, I was going to use belt drive like Nigel Lawton hidden in the cab but I don't think I can get enough reduction easily so worm gears is probably best with the motor in the boiler area, as for the chassis I think it will be a 3D printed lump as atleast that's one new skill I won't need to learn with some brass bushings for the axles to run in, reliable running is going to be a challenge so I may need a Hornby Ruston style pickup wagon or consider a compensated chassis (god help me)

It's not just my St Thomas model that's being used for the other type of modelling, Portbury has got in on the action as well and can now be seen as the example on the railwaymania.net store, at least until we do a good representation of the fully lined IW&D livery that we all know and love, rather than my 'in storage' wasp stripe paint scheme fortunately Corbs can use photoshop as my 'photo booth' was more than a little crude, just a sheet of A4 leant up against an old biscuit tin to give a white background (I'm sure it's what all the professionals use ) On a side note, though it's a little late, after a Portbury kit appeared in BRM last month I'm very proud to say that another one of the round tank Avonside kits makes an appearance the November 2020 Railway Modeller magazine (volume 71 issue 841), this time it was an Edwin Hulse kit that got built, and just like my Portbury it was painted in a 'primer' livery the real loco only wore whilst in storage before full restoration but after it's working life, in this case Edwin Hulse was stored at Fry's Somerdale for a while whereas Portbury was at Radstock, Washford and finally Avonmouth.

it's been a while since I posted anything but quite a lots been going on, firstly St Thomas has been spending some time with @Corbsbeing the guinea pig for the new Railway Mania waterslide decals and looks better than ever. It's also been doing some modelling and now appears on the Railway Mania shop page I'm seriously impressed by how good the decals look, far better than I could manage with painting or using generic lining sets. However when Corbs got his hands on St Thomas it wasn't quite done, the wheels needing repainting after the original paint came away from the tyres and it was lacking coal, both of which have now been added along with a fresh coat of satin laquer to protect the decals and make it all the same sheen All it needs now are some nameplates, builders plates and I need to cut down the mounting screws. Then I just have to decide whether to leave it pristine or get it weathered, add some more details (oil cans, poles, lights etc) and a crew. Decisions, decisions

I’ve spent some time recently practising my brush painting in particular I’ve been trying to get better at matching colours by mixing paint just for this job of painting a Hornby b2 peckett boiler, wheels and cylinder covers to match my spray painted Avonside B4 st Thomas 3d printed body this is what it looked like before with the NCB blue wheels and cylinders firstly I dismantled the b2 taking the cylinders off and Then primed the wheels in situ. After this I found that I could free the boiler casting from the rest of the chassis so I didn’t risk getting paint where I didn’t want it and I also took the wheels off to paint separately as well after testing a lot of different colour mixes I was happy with the colour match and applied several thin coats I added a coat of gloss varnish to the cylinders as the Vallejo paint I used was matte and I’m going to be having decals on the cylinders so it needs to be a smooth glossy surface, and this was the end result: Unfortunately after a bit of running the paint on the tyres had mostly rubbed off so I may need to redo the wheels with a different primer but I’m happy otherwise and think my colour match is pretty spot on