Swissrail

I've got a Rowa Restaurant car in POP colours and it's a shortie. Not sure if it's 1:100 or 1:93 but it's definitely not 1:87.

In the end I went for the Roco full length 303mm POP coaches, 44917, 44920, 2 x 44921 and 44923. Add a Piko ARüm 216 half restaurant car, the three car Roco Touropa/Scharnow Reisen set and the Roco 44922 blue and white POP baggage car to bring up the rear and I have a very nice ten car tourist train from the early 70's.

Thanks for the help. I only want the exact 1:87 versions as I'm a stickler for accuracy. I didn't know LS Models did the Pop liveried coaches. You're right though...they'll be as rare as hens' teeth and cost an arm and a leg!

Does anyone know if the Roco POP liveried DB coaches numbered 45002/3/4 &5 were full length 1.87 vehicles or the 1:100 or 1:93 "shorties". Any help here would be much appreciated.

I have just bought the Märklin 4228 Rheingold Coaches set. Although it is beautiful, it needs weathering to really bring it to life. I have been told that these coaches have what was described as "tinplate" bodies although I cannot imagine such an antiquated technology being used to make models these days. As such, I am told, the livery was printed using a lithographic process which is "very easy to destroy". Is all this correct and if it is, how do I weather these coaches without ruining them?

I had this issue with Testors varnish. It attacks some kinds of plastic, in this case the plastic film of the transfer. If the varnish goes on too thick and stays wet for more than a few seconds, this is what happens. I found I had to airbrush it in very fine coats so it dried almost the instant it touched the model to avoid this crazing effect. I also found the same effect if I used it on an enamel painted model...it attacked the paint and did what you see here.

I was so enthused when Roco announced they were going to produce this monster and I couldn't wait to get my hands on one. Unfortunately, now that I've seen it, I'm disappointed. The standard just doesn't seem up to Roco's recent best. It looks plasticky. It has no pretence of a corridor connection between the two halves, just an outline of where it should be. Also, on all the pictures I've seen of it, the bodies do not seem to sit level on their chassis and the wheels are appalling pizza cutters. Other Roco models have been retooled with wheels that seem close to RP25 finescale standards but the Ae 8/14 looks like a throwback to the standards of twenty or thirty years ago, with wheels that are frankly unacceptable on a model costing close to £500 for the DC version and well over £600 for the digital one. The pantographs have also been changed from what Roco used to produce to a new version that has two very unprototypical tails hanging down from the bow which are used to keep the pans in the down position. The old version used a method that not only worked well, but which did not detract from the very good appearance they had. I do not know what Roco are playing at but I can say quite categorically that at that price, and for the quality on offer, I will not be buying one.

For Brunig Track plans try this site. It's got an amazing range of station track plans and although I haven't looked for the Brunig myself, they may be in there. https://www.gleisplaene-schweiz.ch/

If you want a veritable tresure trove of around 2,500 Swiss photos from the 50s to the early 2000s, look no further than this site: https://bahnbilder-von-max.ch/ If this doesn't inspire you, nothing will! And when it comes to Brünig Bahn pictures, this one of Max's is my favourite:

You could try chemical blackening. It's more robust than paint.

I may have to resort to Corel Draw to run up the artwork on scratchbuilt etched ones. I can't find a decent replacement anywere. The old ones I have are limited in their travel by a 14BA nut soldered to the underside of the frame and a screw inserted and adjusted to prevent the pantograph arm from rising too high. It means I can have only slightly tensioned OHLE and no overly deflected contact wires.

Hi Mike What are they made of?

Am I the only one who thinks the new Roco pantographs fitted to the latest Re4/4 and Re6/6 models don't look half as good as the older wire-made ones do? The new ones look like coarse castings or may even be, God forbid, plastic. Does anyone know of a high end etched replacement? The Sommerfeldt ones aren't very accurate for this prototype as the bow is too long and is the wrong shape.

I also loved the old Swiss station designs where the platforms were very low and if you needed to get to another platform, you simply walked across the track! It was like that in Lauterbrunnen until 2015. (Max Hintermann's photos)

It wasn't always thus. I intend to model the Swiss railways when they looked like this in the 1970s. Before the Bahn 2000 programme, the SBB was almost as starved of cash as British Railways was so they were a bit clapped out and filthy. Just look at the colour of those coaches! It's a weathering fanatic's dream! There were also functioning goods yards with shunting and trip operations that BR lost in the early sixties together with some very old and, to me at least, beautiful old rod coupled electric locos doing a lot of the work right up until the late eighties. It was all very characterful and far more interesting than it is now. (Photo credited to Max Hintermann)

I wouldn't mind new liveries per se, but why do they have to pick such vile shades of the colours concerned? There are some lovely greens out there so it's a mystery why the BLS, of all the greens they could have picked, chose that god-awful dayglow shade. It's positively hideous!

I've sent you a personal message.

That's very kind of you. just tell me what you need and any expenses I can cover.

The nozzle used was 0.1mm and the vertical height is 5mm. I see there isan 0.06mm nozzle and the result with that was even cleaer.

I've done as you advised, put the file into Cura and despite your misgivings about resolution, I think it looks pretty good actually. I'm not sure what the splat it's sitting on is, but that aside it is recognisable as an SBB catenary wire support insulator and it would do me just fine, thank you. If I were to send this file to Shapeways for instance, would they be able to do something to remove that splat or prevent it from coming out that way? My original file doesn't have anything like that in it.

I've already started using FreeCAD. It's quite intuitive and I've managed to get a good approximation (as yet unfinished) of one of those insulators by referring to a scaled picture. It would be nice however to get it absolutely accurate.

Hi Mike. I've tried that already. All the insulators in there are the current types (no pun intended). The old brown ceramic ones I'm after aren't included.

I'm trying to get all the bits and pieces together to enable me to scratchbuild early SBB overhead line equipment in HO. I have a lot of the artwork done for the steelwork and my next task is to learn 3D CAD so I can print the various types of insulators for the job. I'm having real difficulty in getting the sizes of them right. To that end, does anyone have dimensions or drawings of the insulators pictured below? I'd be be very grateful for any help I can get. Thanks in advance.

According to a contemporeneous report on the new AL6 locos for the "Western Lines" in a 1965 issue of Modern Railways that I have, it states that "the locomotives are being delivered in the new Rail Blue" albeit they had the electric blue livery layout...white window surrounds, red buffer beams and lion & wheel emblems. Some of the earlier ones didn't even have yellow warning panels, at least when they were brand new. I'm not sure if they were ever in service like that.