DGO

A while ago someone either told me or wrote on here that there was an old plan that showed Wengen Station with a turntable, I've never seen that but I can tell you that there used to be a small turntable at Kleine Scheidegg, it was located on the Grindelwald side of the station at the Grindelwald end of the platform along with a small engine shed and was probably only ever used for the steam locos which would have needed to be rotated if they were swapping sides due to their angled boilers. Having one at Wengen would be a big surprise, firstly because of the angled boilers mentioned above and secondly because operating rules require the engine to always be at the valley end of the train to prevent accidental loss of wagons should any uncoupling occur, this was why the reversing Y was constructed at Kleine Scheidegg. I believe the latest trains have every axel driven so in theory one could run continuous from Wengen to Grindelwald

Good meeting, hope it helped a few people David

This type of arrangement might have come about if one door/crane was used for inbound and the other for outbound goods, or given that it was a textile mill and thus likely powered by steam, perhaps the canal bought coal which you would want to keep away from cotton

There is a reason it's called stainless, commercially they tend to use a black lacquer (at the cheap end), electroplating or hot bath chemical blackening which uses a bunch of different chemicals to effectively convert the surface into magnetite which can be oxidized to a black finish, much of the latte process involves temperatures around 140C caustic materials and finishing with boiling oil, you have to put the hot oil on or you will quickly find a lovely red/brown iron oxide finish !

Such a design can often be found on buildings beside navigable rivers or canals where goods could be taken or delivered straight to the vessel below, probably first seen on mills where the need was to deliver the raw material to the top of the building where it would work its way down under gravity through the mill machinery, later on other buildings used it as a very efficient way of getting goods up and down the floors, when lifts became generally available you will find the buildings typically got rid of doors on each level

You might find that to transport they just take the wheels off, they certainly do that with the huge trucks found at some quarries

As others have said best case for unsupported structures would be 0.25/0.3mm thick but you can cheat, firstly forget the handrails, either wire or photoetch is what you need to do those, the rest will be difficult but not impossible, I'd do the web of the C channel as 0.5mm thick, the flanges can be 0.25mm thick but make them shorter so that the overall size is correct, the box section column can be solid, the top platform should be at least 0.5mm thick, the stair treads 0.3mm thick and use fine supports on the underside of everything

Of course if the wrought Iron plate were in the same state as the bridge in the report an airgun pellet might have made a decent dent in it, more likely a .22 rifle.

Also one disadvantage with hot rolled steel, it's likely to be coated in scale, of course you can always remove that with Hydrochloric acid which does at least not require machining LOL

Hot rolled equal or unequal angle steel to BS EN 10025:1 should have a sharp outer corner, whatever size. Only issue is that it tends to come in long lengths, most metal centers will cut it for you, some will even cut short lengths, 6M of 13 x 13 x 3 is under £15, I guess if I were being clever I'd design something with toggle clamps rather than screw threads so if I were doing a lot of the same thickness I'd just have to throw two toggles rather than screw in and out a couple of bolts

More than a few days, I also got Building 00 Gauge Wagons for Model Railways by David Tisdale. Simon Boltons book might better be titled Building a 00 Gauge J15 Loco and tender from scratch as much of the book is dedicated to that, don't get me wrong theres plenty of good advice in there but of the 192 pages including index 132 are about building that one loco, a further 6pages on building it as an EM gauge 6 on building a diesel in no detail at all and the last 4 pages with a few words on S scale 2mm scale and a conclusion. I would say that if you are planning to build a small to medium sized 00 gauge Steam loco that Boltons book would be an excellent purchase, for other larger steam locos I'd still say it has plenty of good advice, for anything else I'd say it has a lot of useful information on tool use etc but I'd only go that far, I've yet to find a good book covering scratch building diesel/electric locos, perhaps there's not a market for it, or maybe no one really wants to scratch build them I don't know. David Tisdale on the other hand has a different approach, he starts off with kit building, then moves to detailing kits, them modifying kits and finally scratch building, I would say his book is probably a must buy for anyone planning to build their own stock in any way for any 4mm/3.5mm scale layout. He does not go into quite as much detail as Simon BUT the book is very well written and full of good advice. Still looking for a good book on building small Diesel/Electric locos though at 00/H0 scale, maybe I shall have to write one myself LOL

fair enough, by the way you could probably use a grinding machine rather than a mill if it's only a small radius, however if it's working for you I'll not say any more on the subject.

I was going to ask how you'd got the corners to be sharp on the steel bars but I can see from the pics that you didn't, If you don't get rid of the radii on the bending bars and you use on etched kits where the bend lines are half etched you won't get perfect corners which is likely to result in a poor fit

As it happens I was looking for the same thing without even knowing it, so thanks from me as well David

I think I can answer this, maybe, It's almost certainly because the half fare card is probably not valid for some of the things the graubündenPASS covers (typically private railways, funiculars and busses) so you end up with a reduced reduction probably between 20 and 25 percent, you get a similar deal in the Jungfrauregion. Special note if you travel with your children and they are under 15 Get a family card, kids with a family card get a massive reduction om Swiss Rail

Whenever possible do not measure from Paper Drawings Many years ago I worked on some original QE2 Drawings for her last refit, we scanned in the original shipyard drawings that had at some point got damp, when we measured off of those drawings there was a 2.5 foot difference between one side of the hull to the center line compared to the other side. Fortunately we only needed the drawings as a guide as we were involved with fitting new interiors to the cabins. But it shows what can happen when plans get damp.

In HO scale they work out to under 0.1mm in diameter, the vast majority of layouts I've seen tend to put far thicker wires up giving the impression to the viewer that there is something really quite solid there when the reality is that at typical scale viewing distance you won't see them unless you have outstanding eyesight. The only reason to put them on a layout is to give the pickups on your engines something to brush against.

Well the campaign for real ale group started in 71 but that might be a bit optimistic, traditional breweries tend to be quite large and tall, often with skylights to give light to the vat rooms. As an alternative a small chemical plant, or an engineering firm might well work for a 60's to 80's period

Following the advice received my copy of Simon Boltons book arrived today, now if I could just find something about scratch building electric locos ....

Even cheap Chinese made 123 blocks should be accurate enough for holding panels at 90 degrees to each other though I wouldn't use them for precision grinding, I bought a couple of pairs of 123 blocks only recently off a well known online auction site which are more than accurate enough for this sort of thing. Using Engineers Blue (a paste) or marking fluid (a liquid) is much more accurate than simply scribing the metal, personally I prefer the fluid, well known brand Dykem, brush the fluid on the surface you want to mark up and it leaves a sub 1 micron layer of blue lacquer on the surface, this gives a matt finish and can be scratched with light pressure from a scribe, in fact the pressure can be so light as to leave no marks on the metal beneath, this lets you create incredibly fine and accurate lines, very handy when working at small scales, always do a test on materials to make sure there are no adverse effects before use (but I've yet to have any) it can be removed with a cleaner obtained from the same manufacturer, or fine emery cloth or very often with acetone typically found in ladies nail varnish remover ;-) When developing a pattern start off using stiff paper or card as close to the thickness of the metal you plan to use, this should highlight any technical issues with the pattern before you start cutting metal

The solid rail can also sometimes be seen on overhead gantry cranes (though sometimes the section of track under the train is just not powered) with a solid rail that can be swung up to one side to allow loading or unloading by the crane. I assume that the solid rail becomes de-powered when it's swung out of the way so even if the crane cable touches it there would be no electric shock anywhere. This person has created something similar Now that said, catenary spiders for turntables will always be more common because they don't have so much potential for failures plus you don't need to supply power to the turntable itself

My biggest issue is guidance concerning material thickness, as an engineer and keen model maker for the last 40+ years I'm fairly confident in my skills and abilities but my engineering has been real world not 1:87 LOL, there's a small but significant difference and seeking others advice never usually hurts. I'm planning a Swiss Narrow Gauge alpine layout which in my case means electric since they only had steam locos from about 1892 - 1910 though a couple lasted until 1918 with electric ever since, I don't get Side Rods and Pistons, instead I get Rack and Pinion, Oh and rotary snowploughs :-) One issue, I'm pretty certain all the locos I'll be working on have external frames, any advice ?

Out of curiosity I've been considering getting the Simon Bolton book, is it actually any good ?

then Talc or really fine grit sand (or other abrasive) paper, 1000 grit will give a very fine uniform texture, on the other hand if you are after a cast in place look then make a former with thin 1mm plywood (sealed to stop it sticking) and cast in plaster of Paris maybe, this lets you make casting marks in the "Concrete" If you make multi story walls in this method cast the walls on the flat and embed something like car body repair mesh inside the wall as a reinforcement, else a small knock and your carefully cast wall might shatter

You haven't said what scale, however talcum powder can sometimes be used, paint surface then add a thin blown layer of talc