Roger.s

Which side of the slip is only half there. It would seem that you need a double slip. One slip is for access to the sidings from the head shunt and the other for the run round. Regards Roger

Do you mean caustic soda which is sodium hydroxide or do you mean washing soda which is sodium carbonate? Sodium hydroxide reacts with metals such as aluminium, zinc, tin and lead (and copper when hot) producing hydrogen. It also corrodes skin and turns the skin oils into soap. Regards Roger

It looks to be in photographic grey so I wonder if it ever went into service looking like that. If it was just a works photograph why have they used it as a billboard even for GNR posters? Regards Roger

What do you use for chemical blackening and do you have any tips on how to use whatever it is? Regards Roger

Hi Tom, Can you tell me what size the bricks are and hat the item number is for Flemish bond? Regards Roger

The Great Eastern where using 30ft rails with 11 sleepers per length. In about 1904 the number of sleepers to a rail was increased to 13 because of the heavier Clauds coming into service. There is a thread on templot which gives much more information. http://www:85a.co.uk/forum/view_topic.php?id=965&forum_id=1 Regards Roger

Would it be possible to design and store a bell crank to use with the under baseboard tie-bar (item 1-100). Ideally it would need a firm pivot which could be screwed down and be adjustable and able to reduce the from 10mm or more to approx 1.5mm. I think the materials used for the tie-bar (1-100) might be ideal but I have no experience of this sort of design. Regards Roger

Thanks Jerry ~ just what I wanted to know! I wonder if Edward Sissling stocks them. Roger

How does the "bench plate" fix to the bench? Does it need to have a recess cut in the bench or is it a clamp on device. I need one to fix to the kitchen table without upsetting anyone.

You could use a crank with unequal arms. Mount the magnet on the long arm and drive the shorter arm. Alternately a lever pivoted at one end, the magnet at the other and driven say 25% of the distance from pivot to magnet. This would increase the movement fourfold but with a loss of force to move the magnet. Roger

Oh yes they will! https://www.lner.info/locos/IC/kitson.php

Thanks for the offer Don but I have a lifetime supply of new lead offcuts from some roof repairs. However I asked about copper tungsten as I am struggling to add enough weight. Regards Roger

Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately the product they sell is some form of cloth presumably loaded with tungsten powder. I measured the density and it was about 5.3 gm/cc about half that of lead and about 3/8ths of pure tungsten. Regards Roger

Does anyone know of a supplier or other source of copper tungsten sheet for adding wieght to a loco? Roger

Sorry for the delayed reply as I have not viewed this thread for a while. I have tried to draw a view of the tool which I agree is not easy to show so I have added cross sections of a normal cutter and of the skrawker. I ground off the end of an old cutter at an angle and then made the cut curved so that the end was nearer to vertical. I thought that if the end was at an angle it would tend to push the tool out of the work piece. The cut is made by the flat face which gouges out the plastic and does not try to cut through it. ​Note that the skrawker mentioned in post #1823 is a hand held tool, however my tool is made to work in the same way. ​Regards Roger

This could be because the bolt holes in the sleepers have worn and the PW gang have moved the sleeper and re-drilled the holes. This might happen more often on lesser and out of the way lines which did not attract the maintenance expenditure levels afforded to main lines. Regards Roger

Does anyone know why Brighton changed the locos from 0-6-0T to 2-4-0T? It seems like a lot of expense but for what gain; then more cost to convert them back. Roger

You both have it wrong, it used to be the Glorious 11th. As any trainspotter railway enthusiast of long standing (and good memory) will tell you, that was the day when one could see a procession of extra trains, overnight sleepers and goodness what else dragged out of countless carriage sidings and setting of in a northerly direction. On the 12th nothing much except certain persons wasting a lot of lead shot which could should have been used for weighting miniature locomotives. Regards Roger

Mike, Sorry I can't seem to take a better photo! The idea was to have a flat front face to the tool which will make a grove in the same way that a hand held skrawker does. The tip still needs to be behind the center in order to get a castoring action so the front face is sloped back to do this. Roger

Hi meltompieman, You may find an old post of mine of interest. I originally developed the method to make a brick viaduct.

How long would the wagon take to turn 90 degrees and look right? One difficulty with manual operation via cranks might be getting an even movement over the several seconds to half a minute needed. My own choice would be for a stepper or servo which can have their speed controlled. Roger

If you do this, do not have the double cut option active if the end of each cut is in a different direction to the start as Silhouette doubles each cut before moving on to the next. Silhouette Studio makes its zero point at the top left hand corner. Autocad, and thus DXF, files make the zero point at the bottom left hand corner so everything above the zero line will be over the top of the cutting area. When I do a drawing for cutting I start with a horizontal line at x = 0. I then make a 1st angle working drawing of the item above this line. Using different layers I can then trace over this drawing for the horizontal lines and vertical lines and copy these cut lines into the space below the line. I move different parts around to fit the cutting area and not to waste to much plasticard and also arrange the top left corner to be at about -8,-8 mm. The file then loads to the correct place in Silhouette. Regards Roger

As I understand it, the blade is free to turn and is not 'driven' to any direction except by the castor action of the tip of the blade being offset from the axis of rotation. Thus the blade lifts, does not turn and plunges for the next cut facing in the direction of the previous cut. To prevent the blade having to turn at the start of each cut I arrange to do all the vertical cuts together followed by all the horizontal cuts. Between groups of each direction I make a short cut in the new direction placed in an out of the way place, such as a window opening, in order to align the blade to the new direction. Of course cuts can be in either direction so it is essential to draw each line in the same direction, ie left to right or right to left but not both mixed, and verticals must all be upwards or downwards. The Silhouette Studio has an option in the cut menu under advanced to set the sort order. The choices are:- No Sort, Maximise Speed and Minimise Roller Movement. No Sort seems to maintain the cuts in the order they were loaded into Silhouette Studio and keeps the cuts in each direction together. As I the draw the artwork in Autocad and transfer it to Silhouette as a DXF file it must be in the order in that file. In fact I see that in my case the last drawn line is the first to be cut and the last cut is the first drawn so the extra aligning cuts between direction have to be after the set lines not before. For curved cuts I arrange that the previous cut ends with the blade moving in the direction of the start of the curved cut. As the cuts are made in the direction they were drawn but in the reverse order It can be quite tricky to sort out. Regards Roger

Noting wrong but you still want the screens to catch them as they fall on your head.

I tried scribing bricks with my portrait cutter. The result was raised edges to the mortar lines because, I think, to the scriber and/or cutter displacing the plastic but not removing any of it. When scribing plasticard the old way by hand, I use a skrawker which removes a sliver of plastic and so I made a tool to do this. I used a blunt cutter ~ the type that fit a CB09 holder ~ and ground a flat cutting face on it. The cutting face needs to be wider than the metal behind it so that it cuts and does not push the plastic out of the scribed line. This is opposite to the cutters shape and so the new cutting face is ground from the back edge of the old cutter. The new scrawker is on the left and normal cutter is on the right. The difference in the brickwork can be seen below. I applied a wash of diluted black ink to improve the contrast. The artwork was drawn in Autocad and transferred to Studio as a DXF file. I made sure that all the horizontal lines were drawn it the same direction and put them in one layer and similarly for all the verticals, put in another layer. This results in the cutter only having to change direction once. The bricks are 2mmFS so the mortar lines are 0.5mm apart and the bricks are 1.5 and 0.75 mm long. Roger