relaxinghobby

Replacement motors from specialist in motors and gears. North West Shortline ? https://nwsl.com/collections/regearing-repower-kits https://estore.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=68 try the US Bachmann spare shop here. There H0 stuff probably uses the same 12 volt motors as they are all made in the same factory over in China ?

Some notes on rewheeling old chassis. I think these are old Tri-ang and early Tri-ang Hornby products ? Looking for an old chassis to re-wheel re-motor and modernise. Here's an early Nellie with Romford wheels, bearings and axles. The gear box is a folder job and the motor is something salvage from a computer CD player. These old chassis where later replaced by solid cast ones. These older ones had steel sides and solid spacers at the ends. This 0-4-0 is riveted together but even older ones where held together with brass screws across the width which makes them even easier to work on. I've tried soldered up etched chassis but have a very low success rate. I can manage a four coupled chassis, just. Finding an old Triang job means it will automatically be straight and true. Like the bigger one here a 4-6-2 chassis I think the trucks are long gone. The axle hole spacing is 26 + 26 mm is this a Princess chassis. A piece of copper clad Vero board from the electronics shop used for soldering on the wire pickup wipers. You can see the heads of the fixing screws. This chassis has been knocked about a bit and some extra wobbly holes drilled through it, but they do not effect the axle holes. If I cut off the front and rear overhangs it would make a short 0-6-0 chassis for an industrial type loco. The fixing screw on the far right would have to be relocated nearer the axle hole, Can I drill straight and at right angles to the chassis side ? You can see work done on Nellie's body. A round bottom to the boiler and a floor in the cab. Body needs some cab steps. The problem with train jumble finds, bits can be missing but that makes them cheaper. Lots of wobbly holes at the front of the big chassis. There is always potential in those boxes under the second hand jumble tables.

Thanks for the suggestion from The Johnster. There's not much plastic thickness for the glue to grab hold of and I'm afraid of the disaster of gluing the gears up solid. My probable outcome so that's why I've gone for the brass cover option, it's de-mountable. My engineering bodge. Now it's fitted and I've found some binding of the axles so some tweeking needed there. In other tweeking I notice the cab sides were turned in a little at footplate level. So I tried to break the glue joint so I could reset them, too much finger force and an explosive disintegration. Fred the fitter observes the resulting mess.... Some footsteps also beginning to sprout on the tender chassis.

My brass strip design seems to hold everything in place and under cover. Ends soldered in place and oiling holes drilled above each worm gear.

Motor drive tender for J 94 variant. These Bull-Ant motor bogies are very nice in the way they perform but the wheel bearings and frame that holds the gears and wheels together seems very weak. Plus they are vulnerable to damage. I dropped this one and one of the plastic end clips holding the back and front wheels broke and can not keep itself in place well under any mechanical stress. It just pops off as soon as you apply power. It clips back into position but drops off easily no good for reliable running. The center wheel bearing has a metal bracket holding it on and seems much more robust. I suppose being from Australia these motor bogies are named for the characteristics they share with the local variety of stubborn Bull-Ant. Slow heavy and just keep on pushing whilst emitting a growling gear noise. Has any one been to Oz and met the ants there ? Alternately don’t buy the cheaper but poorer running Kangaroo. So I’m developing this metal tray thingy to hold it all together and act to keep dust and loose ballast out of the mech’. Made from 10 thou soft brass sheet, scored and cut with a heavy craft knife. And bent and formed with pliers. The plan is to hold it in place with some self tapping screws into plasticard blocks behind the buffer and front frame cross piece. See Green lines.

This one ? where do you fix it ?

There does not seem to be any brushes on the end of the springs. Peters Spares PS3

Poor definition of the door detail end in this photo despite taking it in good bright sunlight. I've put the plastic coal load back in but can decide if I want to model the in side of the tender, would that be called the coal shelf ? So made it removable. Trimmed down the original coal detail from the Airfix Schools kit and made it the top of a box that can be dropped into the coal space. Not yet decided the use of this tender yet, it could be a box to hide a motor bogie in or a motor and gear box to drive the engine via a shaft. I’m aiming at motorising a small pre-grouping 0-6-0 where there is little room to put a motor. I seem to remember the modeller and professional loco builder, the late Iain Rice commenting that the low pitched boiler 0-6-0 prototype being one of the hardest to model ? Can’t quote the reference, possibly in one of his books on loco chassis making ?

Sort of pug bash but of the more tender kind. I’ve just acquired, at an exhibition a beaten up Airfix kit for their Schools class missing part of the cab. The tender’s too tall and wide for my era of modelling, pre-grouping, so I’ve pulled it apart and cut it down into a series of rectangles. Trimming of a few millimeters here and there to make a smaller tender of the older kind. Whilst trying not to break too much and preserve as much of the surface molded detail as I can. Reassembly with some plastic inserts just cut into appropriate sized rectangles to act as spacers. Here I’ve used the original plastic wheels for now. This tender could cover up a motor bogie perhaps when I find a locomotive to run it behind. Some damage to the front edge right hand side, can make that good with filler. A the right is an American style tender top and plasticard frames to disguise a Bull-Ant motor tender. This is what can be done with old scrap tenders. Lots of nice rivet detail and everything is square. My home made never are 100 % . Here’s one I made earlier to go with an adaptation of an old Triang 3F which is still waiting for a older style cab to make into a pregrouping ex Cambrian Beyer Peacock loco of the1890’s. Other wise the 3F dimension are nearly correct. The rear over hang is too long ,this project has been stalled for some time . As a comparison there is the Bachmann C class tender, a similar sized 0-6-0 engine.

Hi RobinofLoxley I would just buy the factory kit and see whats inside. Metcalfe PO284 As Grahame said above they are cheap and adaptable. I had the other factory kit and used the sides and ends to make some low relief models between 20 mm and 50 mm from front to back. They are designed to assembled in several different ways. they have floors and a back to make up into a complete box for strength. Here's mine.... Starting at the loco smoke-box there is the boiler house and chimney which was reduced in height to fit under the top of this layout in a box shunting plank effert. Then the next four buildings are all ends or one side of a factory kit along to the warehouse with the green doors. Which is just 10 mm thick I'm not sure if that kit is currently available. Then into the distance are some homemade buildings little more than Metcalfe brick paper stuck to a cardboard shape and on the retaining wall is the Metcalfe terrace front kit unmodified. Extra card was from the backs of writing pads and food boxes. You can see about 600mm of the layout here. I also cut different amounts off the bottoms to give a variable roof profile. Get the kit and have a play around with it, as Grahame suggests if it goes wrong which it won't as they are well designed my kit came with a sheet of brick-paper to match the rest of the kit so modifications could be made to match. The factory with north-lights was also reduced in depth and it's little platform cut to fit the siding. Everything was painted with Wilkinson's furniture varnish to matt everything down and dull the colours for an industrial grime look. The boiler house behind the coach was unmolested. Have a go to make Metcalfe PO284 factory fit your site. We look forward to seeing your progress.

Sunny day, better light , better photography. At the back the loco has a new valve gear adjustment rod made with scrap etch parts. I'm going to make this a tender driven loco. I've got this short wheel base Bull Ant motor bogie. It needs a plastic skin disguise to make it look like a locomotive tender. This is the top half of a Bachmann H0 USA 4-4-0 loco who's chassis I used for a little 4-4-0 tank loco. Dispite being H0 it is wide and just fits on a footplate the same width as the loco which has the original Airfix kit footplate. A serial packet cardboard template was quickly made to test the dimensions and fit. You can quickly cut and paste the card to make a pattern. I'm copying the card template to make a more durable plasticard.

J94 tender version This is a conversion of an old Airfix J94 saddle tank inspired by the actual full size one that I saw near the town of Ruddington on the northern section of the Great Central Railway Nottingham Historic Railway. I've waited several years for a model of the old Airfix to turn up so I could have a go then two turn up with in months of each other. Front end view shows the step made in the front footplate. I used the old cab back plate for the new spectical plate because it had round windows and the width was trimmed down. The original roof and sides where modified and stuck back on. Smoke box front reused after the saddle tank was carefully cut away. I used some old Mainline J72 metal wheels, these have the fatter axles and fit nicely into the Airfix plastic chassis holes. I think this plastic J94 is going to be tender drive, this tender is just to get an idea of how it will look. The tender is from parts of an Airfix Schools kit, chassis and sides cut down a lot and built into a smaller older sort. You can also see the step at the loco rear and the white layer is added back after I cut off too much from the height of the cab sides and found it looked silly. The new boiler is made from some handy plastic pen bodies and plastic card rolled around them until the correct diameter is achieved and super-glued together to make a solid piece. This all sits on the original smoke box saddle and firebox base. the black parts seen here. I've been doing the fiddle of adding handrails using a sprue of old K's plastic knobs. White metal chimney and dome. I think they where intended for a GWR 14XX tank. The safety valve base is a filed down dome from another plastic body.

1904 Merck sports car. Steering column shortened, handbrake lever from a bit of paper clip wire. Plenty of photos of the real thing on the internet. Some of these have survived in the vintage car world and must be fun to ride as they are run in exhibitions and races. 100 mph on wooden wheels, if that’s not exciting enough for a Sunday afternoon what is ? So lots of photos about to inspect and the model seemed to lack the springs and chassis projections that protruded ahead of the front wheels, so I stuck some plasticard triangles on the front axle to represent these. Photo shows the car in front of an 00 shed or signal cabin. The trouble to make the front axle swivel and introduce a form of three point suspension makes the model sit down well on an uneven surface like with the piece of card under a wheel. The cabin is a ……. kit, of course I got it second hand and had to make a new door and re-fit the roof and gutters. It might originally be an n-gauge model ? But a good size for an 00 ground-frame signal box. I tired to get a slightly dilapidated look with a drooping ridge line. Distressed the the plastic roof halves by bending them by hand to be concave, they have nice molded on tile detail, best to keep. Ridge tiles added individually. And here's the information card that came in the packet. 1970s £.

To make it into a G5 replace the wheels with 20 mm Markets and axle adapter bushes. This will give it the smaller 5 foot drivers of the G5 and lower the over high footplate of the old Tri-ang Hornby model. I think Markets also do a fatter axle for fitting into the T-H chassis blocks.

“Make it so”, the immortal words of Captain Picard of the star ship Enterprise ordering his crew to action. Well the old imagination is a bit like that, dream up a modification or new scratch build and then on the work bench you start out trying to do it there are endless problems to over come. (99 % perspiration comes after the inspiration as someone said once. Was it the great industrialist and inventor Henry Ford. ) Remember this is the old Hornby Dublo and Wren chassis block filed down and filed down some more until it fits but it’s the correct wheel base so I’ll press on. Now my imagination thought if I used one of the Highlevel tall gearboxes can I get the motor hidden inside the middle of the boiler barrel. This is the Hiflier Plus at 7.8 mm wide and a length ways extender arm, can I file out the original gear hole to fit it in and then set it up with all those complicated gear meshing nicely so it works ? The workbench reality is a lot of trial and error, fit it file some more and try to fit it again. Work in progress Does not fit yet Still more filing to get it to set down into it’s palce

Just because a railway company had any particular region mentioned in their name did not actually mean they ever got any where near it, just had aspirations to reach there someday in a future expansion. For example the Mid Wales Railway which never quite reached either end ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Wales_Railway ) or the during the Railway Mania period of the1830s. Another would be the Manchester and Milford Railway never got to Manchester or Milford Haven. https://longlostrailways.blogspot.com/2013/01/manchester-and-milford-railway.html Must be many others.

Came across one of these old Jet Petrol Kits or early 1900s cars, there where 10 types IIRC. This is the 1904 Mercedes two seater. I've built it as a converted pick up farm truck. As many early cars where converted to agricultural vehicles in the 1920s. Not sure of the scale but the figures are H0 Preiser so slightly under size for 00, do they go with the model car. So it sits better on uneven ground I sawed the front axle off and drilled through it for a pin to make it rocking so there is a primitive 3 point suspension and it looks planted on a rough surface. I looks about right from old photographs of the real thing on the internet. One would have to be standing to steer with that wheel.

And yet another FUD project , they all came in the same mail box. A tiny Kitson shunter. It should have a 6 foot wheel base and outside coupling rods. Here it is sitting on a 24 mm bogie from the old Bachmann Underground Ernie. The coal wagon, it's self a small 10 ton one is for size comparison shows how small the Kitson is. If the 009 and n-gauge modellers can motorise their models so can I. Perhaps.

Another FUD printed project, the Millwall Railway single driver tank, as it would perhaps look if it was modernised. Printed by Shapeways. I've been playing around with wheel sizes, fit them and see how they look. I've settled for some old style Romford drivers, 20mm with large flanges but they fit inside the splashers. Next is to see what combination of gearbox and motor will fit. A High Level two stage gearbox and tiny motor.

Coupling rods on and it rolls nicely without binding in a loose waywhich works in 00 with it's more open clearances. A white disk of plasticard glued and screwed to the cab to hold the end of the boiler tube that just plugs over it. A bit blurry here but I've filed the front footplate step to give a curved look as with the prototype. The boiler, a retired pen body has chimney and dome from an old K's white metal 14XX kit. Safety valve base cut from an Airfix Schools boiler I think. All parts salvaged from broken bodies and kits found at exhibition club sales. So no good locos harmed. I think of all those old loco bodies as dismantlement parts to be rearranged into a new locomotive. To live again. I find doing the details less interesting than the earlier basic shape part of the model making. So things like handrails and chimneys may take me ages.

Hi Sleeper Yes cardboard is an overlooked material for rolling stock. Once it was all we had along with wood and thin veneer ply. The wood and card does not have the hard shinny surface of plasticard and is vulnerable to damp. It can be hardened and made more resistant to water with knotting, not a thing I have tried or the more modern superglue, the cheap variety from Poundland, it just soaks in. Thinned down enamel paint can also be used for the first coat as it will soak in a bit and help harden the surface. This kit was printed on very thin card, barely thicker than paper. You can see that here on the photo I've attached. But the photo is really there to show I've got the width of the kit to match the drawing. I still feel the kit comes out as a bit over scale. Finished kit matches printed width of end. I had to cut the ends down to allow for the thickness of the sides. A guess but does not give very neat corners. The grey is the original thin kit sheet. The brown card is a handy packet box. Gosh that coupling is wonky.

Finally got the fence on the coal drops. I found some steel fence sections, stamped out and ready blackened. Glued on with superglue, clamped with clothes pegs. Still waiting for someone to release the coal into the drops.

The short track plinth seen under many of the models above is adapted from the bit of plastic track on a shaped wooden plinth that comes under those 3mm display models of various famous trains from around the world. I don't know the make but they show up at train fairs and model show jumble sales frequently. The gauge is 15 mm not much use to us 00 models but the track can quickly be pried off, it's just glued and by cutting along the inside of one of the plastic rails a strip of sleepers comes away with the rail. About 2 mm is trimmed from the outer edge of the sleepers and the track glued back onto the plinth with some gauges acting as spacers. In the picture the metal rectangle is an official gauge it came with a copper clad point kit for solder construction. The other is a laser guided cardboard one from a piece of grey card from the back of a note book. Carefully measured to 16.5mm, works just as well. It is old, made in the pre spell checker age. A bit of a coffee stirrer jammed into the top grove to stop the bits moving while the UHU glue sets. Leave it under a pile of books overnight to keep it flat. I would have said other brands of general purpose UHU type glue are available like Wilkinson own brand, but that is now an historical thing.

Fee Fie Foe FUD I’m not sure what FUD means its one of the types of plastic materials used to do 3D printing but it is a snappy tittle. Clever eh? FUD is according to the internet Frosted Ultra Detail plastic set with ultra-violet light or Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. We will see if this modelling experiment brings about either one I’ve been trying to learn to draw three dimension drawings to print my own models but have got nowhere. So I bought some ready made off the shelf hot from the Shapeways printing head. Hot off the press ? So to kick off here is an example the cheap grey stuff, not FUD which makes me think of fudge to see what you get for your money. Mostly the different 3D materials seem to be for a range of prices which get you a rougher or smoother finish. I went for the cheapest option Basic Nylon Plastic. This is a model of The Cab, steam engine and carriage combined rail motor. I got one from Recreation21 By Simon Dawson designs via the printers Shapeways. Just so to have a go at motorising it or at least getting it as a roll along on a home-made chassis. And to see how well it can be painted up. An Irish prototype The Cab as it was know was built at Inchicore in the McDonnell period in the 1875 for the Castleisland branch. It was to be used as a lightweight branch line train, three similar ones were built with a slightly varying coach sections. Later the locos where separated from the carriage part and used as little shunters. Great Southern and Western Railway class 90. That 3D model is also available and the real one survives in a museum. The grey image is computer generated and so perfect. but what to you get for real in the solid material? Basic Nylon Plastic Wheels are about 15 mm in 00, I had a second hand set from an exhibition junk sale somewhere, origin unknown. They have big flanges, how good of a fit will they be ? A temporary balsa wood chassis to hold the wheels apart, just strips glued together to see if I can get the wheels to fit under the footplate and splashers. Basic Nylon Plastic does not get very sharp corners or rivet detail and that mottled effect is hard to photograph. The material is soft but tough, I had to cut away around the back of the wheels to get clearance. The flanges still rub.

Back to the J94 tender version. When the rods were fitted I could not get the wheels to turn. The modellers bind of trying to get the loco wheels and coupling rods all to turn together. I had to make my own coupling rods and there the trouble started. They where the wrong length only slightly but enough to jam. I find it hard enough to get an etched chassis kit to run smoothly, where you start out with matching wheel spacing and coupling rod crank pin holes. Needless to say all the wheels are exactly to the identical dimensions as well, sometimes they aren't. Worth checking just in case. The old Mainline wheels I’m using have very fat coupling rod pins, meaning I could not just used some accessory suppliers etched rods if there are any for this old Airfix kit. Or maybe they are some from a Hornby spares supplier like Peter’s Spares, if indeed they have exactly the same spacing. So I had to reuse the Mainline ones with their extra wide crank pin holes. Plus I had to reattach the wheel stubs to their plastic centers. Fixing with Locktite super glue GLASS and Granville’s Lock Thread. And lining up the spokes looking through the wheels along the axial. Allowing everything to harden up for 24 hours. So back to the rods I went for home adapted or home bodged in this case. Cutting down the original Mainline ones just to keep the big bosses. And re-soldering them to a shorter length on a home made jig. Using the plastic rods from the Airfix kit as a spacer to drill through the holes into some plywood I’ve then pushed in nails to hold the rods in place whilst soldering the ends together. Result is a bit tatty with globs of solder in the middle and the first time they locked up but making new hole spacing for the rear set I got the right length and the wheels all turn together and at last it roles freely. There are some etched rods there from a scrapped 0-8-0 chassis kit. I tried to solder large pads to the crank-pin holds and open them out. Did not work so I gave up. This has held me up for months, one of those trip points that can stop a build but being forced to stay in during the cold and icy weather last weekend has kept me at it, and a solution worked out. Is the cab floor level too low. Like the actual tenderised J94 2890 I lowered the footplate after cutting down the frame ends. It's much lower than the floor on this GBL C class tender. The GBL tender had fixed wheels because it was a cheap static kit. I've fitted a chassis from a Hornby Schools class tender with it's metal wheels and pick up wipers. You can just see the copper strip between the lower right hand wheels. A step towards motorising this loco or I may try to motorise the tender.