mike knowles

Thanks for the reply. As you say Easibuild seem to do one side extrusion which fits all the kits (just different size window openings and positions cut out to suit). On the prototype the inspection saloon, is I believe based on a DMU, which has flatter sides than a MK1 coach, hence the difference. I'm guessing Brian may have just reshaped the ends of the sides to match the etched ends, we'll see. I have e-mailed Shawn about it but as yet am awaiting a reply, I'll keep you posted.

Hello Brian Some time ago you described on here your build of the Easibuild Inspection Saloon. I commented at the time that I had also purchased one of these and can finally report having made a start on it! However I have encountered an issue which does not appear to have been commented on by yourself and wondered if you had encountered the same problem. The attached photos will (hopefully) show that the curvature (tumblehome if you like) on the sides is much more pronounced than on the edges of the etched brass ends. Photographs of the prototype would suggest that the etched brass ends are the more correct. Your photos show everything matching so did yours fit as supplied or did you have to resort to some re-shaping of the sides?

Completely ignored by me as it passed my house just 3 weeks before my son Robert was born who started my interest in railways!

Fascinating photo Mick. I lived in the cottage shown (1 Railway Cottages) from 1977 to 1983. Alas I had no interest in railways at that time so the passing Deltics, 31s etc meant nothing to me!

I've recently done a 25/3 in similar fashion but using silver Fox cabs. All sat on (the superb) Penbits sprung bogies. Grateful thanks to J-S-W for the initial inspiration/ideas.

Great thread, being my local area. Hope you don't mind me posting pictures of Western at Scarborough on a railtour in 2009 (after all it's not everyday you see a Western there)! I know Scarborough's in N Yorkshire but the train did travel up through E Yorkshire to get there.

Never mind all these sounds of boiling kettles, how's the Class 14 Teddy Bear coming on?

Since the last post we've now got all the track laid and wired on the 4th board (the station area) so all the trackwork is now completed. Now whilst we are very grateful to Hessle Town Council for providing us with warm and secure clubrooms on a permanent basis at very reasonable cost the one downside is each room is relatively small. As a result we can only erect three of the boards at any one time. Similarly the guys building the 4mm layout based on Bridlington but called Cayton Bay have a similar problem and like us they have just completed laying their trackwork. So the decision was taken to hire the large hall for one day so we could fully erect both layouts and give them a thorough test. Below are some photos from the test day, firstly the 7mm layout which appears to have acquired the name Invermire. (Apologies for the non prototypical mix of unfitted, vacuum braked and air braked freight stock and the Class 14 was just visiting for the day!) Next some photos of Cayton Bay just for the record. Finally even the narrow gauge group took advantage of the day! The day proved to be really rewarding and although a few issues were encountered these should e relatively easy to sort.

All our Heljan locos (20,26,33,37) run fine through our 31.5mm gauge trackwork. Haven't got any Heljan wagons yet so can't comment on them.

The wire used throughout is 7/0.2 (i.e. 7 strands of 0.2mm wire). We obtained ours from that well known holiday camp/electronics supplier but other sources are available. To minimise the risk of wire breakages particularly on the fly leads which do receive an amount of handling, the end of the wire is stripped of insulation for a few mm then pushed in far enough for the screw on the terminal block to grip the end of the insulation (the screw penetrates the insulation and still makes contact with the wire). Not had any failures yet! Hi de Hi!

We're currently in the process at work of tendering to Network Rail for the removal of the Newsham Road and Plessey Road crossings.

Hmmm, over a year since I last posted anything on here! Well work has been progressing steadily, all the trackwork on the three boards we are currently working on has now been laid. A start has also been made on the laborious task of painting the chairs and rail sides. See photos below. Whilst initial testing had been carried out using temporary wiring and wedging of the point blades with off cuts of sleeper material we then needed to get the points fully operational and the permanent wiring installed. Tie bars from JLTRT have been employed, a simple two part etch glued together with a paper gasket between them to provide electrical isolation. I know some people dismiss the use of rigid tie bars soldered to the point blades but so far they have worked fine, hopefully the slow motion of the point motors should minimise the risk of failures. See photo below. Under the baseboards now. The points are operated by Tower Pro SG90 servos attached to mounts available as kits from MERG, as are the servo control boards. The mounts contain small SPST switches to change frog polarity. An additional switch can also be fitted to give visual indication of route setting on a control panel if required. See photos below. For the power feeds to the track, droppers wires were fitted to each individual piece of rail (soldered to the bottom of the rail prior to fitting it). Note only one dropper wire is fitted to each length of rail, fitting numerous wires to each rail (for safety’s sake) just seems to cause additional work and shows an admission that your soldering isn’t up to scratch! Well that’s my opinion for what it’s worth! These dropper wires are then soldered to lengths of OO flexitrack glued to the underside of the baseboards which act as bus bars, to me much neater then wavy length of bare copper wire. A seven pin din plug provides connection to the power box (containing a Lenz 5amp transformer and LX100 base station. A Lenz LA150 panel provides connection for the hand throttles. See photo below. Inter board connections are via pluggable terminal strips, the male halves fastened to the boards and fly leads made up using the female halves. Saves the hassle of soldering wires to 25pin din plugs. See photos below. The control wiring for the points (and to be fitted yet signals) runs through to a bank of switches, temporarily mounted at the moment. See photo below. When time permits these will be housed in a purpose made signallers desk which will be positioned at one end of the layout as done previously on our OO layout Batterby North End. See photo below. So now we have 3 fully operational boards which contain all the pointwork for the layout so in depth testing can now be carried out (playing with trains if you like!) Next to do is lay and wire the trackwork on the fourth board (just three lengths of plain track in the station area) and then construct the fiddle yard board. I will keep posting updates but don’t hold your breath whilst waiting!

Right then as promised here are some photos of the JLTRT Class 37 parts. Drawing round the back edge of the cab moulding onto a sheet of card produced this template. Offering it up to the Heljan body shows it to be a close match. Photos below show the Heljan front and rear cab bulkheads fitted inside the JLTRT cabs, again a close fit. Finally a couple of comparison shots, hopefully they show what I mean about the shape of the windscreen. At some point I'm going to have to pluck up te courage and saw up the Heljan body - I'll let you know how I get on!

Hello Lee With regard to the 37 I again purchased a pre production sample from Heljan some time ago. The thing that let it down in my opinion was the windscreen area, too flat and missing the beading. I've been pestering Brian at Shawplan to do his windscreen etches and laser glaze in 7mm but without success to date (I know he's a very busy man). My son Robert, (Lord Flasheart on here) has been detailing an old Triang Hymek bodyshell using some parts he obtained from JLTRT and found Laurie there to be very helpful. Anyway following a phone call we received a "parts list" and from this we ordered two complete cabs plus other various etches and castings. I'll just say I thought the costs were very reasonable without actually stating what I paid as it doesn't appear to be an official thing. Although I've not actually started work on this project yet some initial measuring/observing etc indicates that the profile of the JLTRT parts are very close to the Heljan ones so hopefully a successful graft should be possible in the same way I combined 4mm Bachmann and Lima Class 40 bodyshells some time ago. If not the sides and roof mouldings are available from JLTRT, though the intention is to just detail the Heljan loco with the JLTRT parts, not fully replace it. When I get chance I'll take some photos of the JLTRT cabs so you can see how they compare to the Heljan bodyshell. The plan is to also convert this to single motor drive, the spare motor bogie can then be used to power my son's JLTRT Class 50!

Nice to see a 7mm Class 26 being modelled so I thought you may be interested in the work I've carried out on the locos for our club layout. The locos being modelled are 26038, 26041 and 27025. For the two 26s we obtained a pre production example from Heljan and a spare bodyshell and bare chassis block from Howes. As on our layout the locos are only required to haul a maximum of three coaches we didn't consider traction would be a problem so one of the powered bogies was removed from the complete loco and placed in the spare chassis. For the other (trailing) bogie in each loco we used etched bogie frames from PRMRP fitted with Heljan bogie sideframes obtained as spares from Howes. As we now had only one motor in each loco, initial trials were carried out fitting them with basic cheapo Bachmann decoders and they worked fine. Subsequently we have now installed "standard" Loksound decoders from Legomanbiffo and again they work fine with no sign of the decoder being overloaded. To install the decoders the complete Heljan PCB was removed along with the lights and an eight pin prewired decoder socket from Digitains installed so then the decoders could just be plugged in in the normal manner. Given we had plenty of room (one big advantage of 7mm modelling!) connections to the pickups were simply made with chocolate block connectors and a 40mm x 28 mm speaker from DC Kits installed in a homemade enclosure. They sound fantastic! Hopefully the photos below will make it all much clearer. The chassis for 27025 has received similar treatment, the bodyshell being converted from a Heljan Class 33 by my good friend Sean. As a result each of these locos, fully detailed and painted stand us at about £200 (less the sound decoder but these have "only" cost £100 instead of nearly £200 for the XL versions).

Has anyone got photos of 50007 on the Colas steel train to Boston Docks last Saturday?

Looking really good Sean. All it needs now is some bums on seats. Err, excuse me are you allowed to say bum on RMWeb? I don't know, I'll ask...................excuse me are you allowed to say bum on RMWeb? I don't know, I'll ask...................excuse me are you allowed to say bum on RMWeb? I don't know, I'll ask...................excuse me are you allowed to say bum on RMWeb? Yes you are. OK thanks, I'll pass it on...............yes you are allowed to say bum on RMWeb OK thanks, I'll pass it on...............yes you are allowed to say bum on RMWeb OK thanks, I'll pass it on...............yes you are allowed to say bum on RMWeb Oh good. Bum,bum,bum,bum,bum,bum..............bum,bum,bum,bum,bum (Adapted from a Kenny Everett sketch)

Sean (aka The Penguin of Doom) brought his Class 26038 and coaches to the club last week which are now replendent in their newly applied paintwork. I know Sean has posted a couple of photos on his thread but I thought they also deserved some exposure on here. Just for the record the 26 is basically a Heljan model though the body was purchased as an unpainted pre production sample. The two Mark 1 coaches are Easibuild kits and the Mark 2 coach is two Triang Big Big coaches merged together with additional detailing. All have been painted using aerosols cans purchased from the company who used to do them for JLTRT. Although they aren't 100% finished yet I have to say they look absolutely superb, I hope the layout will do them justice.

Ignoring the complexities of maximum/minimum and +/- tolerances all I can say that the trackwork I have built so far to O-MF standards, usings the gauges from Debs looks and works beautifully with all the various wheelsets we have - Heljan, Slaters and Easibuild. See thread titled "More First Ventures in O Gauge" for further information - apologies I don't know how to add a link.

Right, the test/running session referred to in post #75 took place last night. Since the last test session we have laid and wired the track along the two sidings on the harbour front so we are now able to run the full length of the three boards we have assembled (about 14 feet). The testing went extrememly well. All the stock used ran smoothly through the pointwork, encouraging given that the point blades were only set using scotch blocks (bits of plastic wedged in place) and also the various whhelsets in use Heljan, Slaters and Easibuild. Again it shows the advantage of using O-MF standards. Some photos to keep you amused. The Penguin of Doom tends his coaches. Next job is to complete the trackwork on this third board (the run round loop/incoming lines). After that there is only the fourth board to do - the station area and this only consists of three lengths of plain track. However we are already considering an extension!

Yes please

More excellent work there Lord F. Meanwhile track building continues, hopefully in a couple of weeks time we should be ready for another running (sorry test)session.

Chuff Chuffed?

Having seen this in the flesh the other night I have to say it is very impressive. My initial impression was that the paint must have been sprayed on, so good is the finish, but in fact it has been brush painted. Well done your Lordship!

You could always cut the coach body down the middle and widen it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!