relaxinghobby

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.

Thanks for the tip Roythebus these photos show up the ragged look. I am definitely getting less smooth in my old age. About finished for now with this trad cardboard model but it sits on a plastic frame. Only had some of the latest large Hornby couplings so stuck them on for testing my 6 wheel chassis bodge-up. As a whole this model seems very tall and too wide but then I never found a drawing with an end elevation of one of these and most photos are three-quarter views from which it is very hard to judge the width. So I don’t know. I guess the original printed sheet was 4mm scale ? Here it is with a 10 ton coal wagon which it seems to dwarf and stands above a brake-saloon made from a hollowed out Mainline brake van. Six wheel construction very crude or as I like to think basic engineering, just some brass W irons and cup bearings resting on top of the Bachmann brake chassis with two holes cut for the wheel tops. It just rattles about there with just enough movement to ease it around tight curves. My points are 2 foot, small PECO. My tightest curve on this plank layout. The green plasticard is just a thin strip to reduce the amount of movement of the W iron has to flop around. Just superglued together. the pin-point axles in their bearings stop it dropping of off the top. The other side is as the makers intended, this side is fantasy, supposing the modifications a small country railway would make by adding doors to make it into a road van for small goods on a country branch and the six wheels help it ride over the low grade lightly laid rack. I prefer to make my roofs removable, the curved card top is held ridged over a balsa wood former sanded to shape and pushes into the body. there is enough friction to hold it there. The body has card and balsa wood cross pieces to stop it from crushing when it is picked up. A metal lump in the middle for ballast weight.

And Bag Puss too. Meet the Clangers in all their knitted glory. The Soup Dragon is Meccano but there is none of the original Ivor cardboard models. But there is a whole gallery of him and the Small Films design artwork. A nostalgic trip for all railway modellers of Ivor and other imagineering , as some mousers say. I found my self on a pre-Christmas shopping trip to the old town of Canterbury. Snapped a lot of cute and ancient half timbered buildings in the side streets all very model-able. Got snap happy then popped into the city museum and library on the main shopping street in the middle of town. Called the Beany for some reason but like so many museums, galleries and exhibition there is no where to sit down. I have low tolerance easy to tire knees. What a great surprise. A whole side gallery displaying the art work of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin know as Small Films including the Welsh branch line themed Ivor the Engine Stories. The only engine with a three whistle set up to play tunes. Also some social and cultural history at the entrance. Magnificent full size oil portraits of Farmer Browns favorite Bull, incredible agricultural paintings from the 18th century. Social history of ordinary people. https://canterburymuseums.co.uk/collections/the-beaney/the-smallfilms-gallery/ Some artwork here http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/ivor/index.htm

Similar to Neil's lowering of the Bachmman Thomass I cut the bottom off the sides but did not manage such a neat joint at the footplate as Neil's. I also added some slabs of plasticard to the sides to make the tanks wider. Twenty thou or 0.5 mm I think and pressed rivet detail in the outer layer. added a new chimney and dome and got this.

These small 0-6-0s seemed to have been every where in the UK. I think they were based on the the older Stroudly E1s of the London and Brighton with their round topped tanks and narrow cabs. Very modern for the 1880s I picked up a small Bachmann pannier tank as a poor runner. Not sure which version a 57xx or 64xx but it has 18mm wheels and a wheelbase of 29 + 33 mm or 4ft 6 inch wheels at 7ft 3” and 8ft 3 “ spacing small enough for my model. It could be a LCDR T or a Hull and Barnsley shunter or a Great North o’ Scotland loco they are all of a similar size. Sophia NSE I’ve seen your J72 based model it would be quiet small which suits these locos, much smaller than say a Jinty. Cypherman thanks for the idea but an M7 tank body would be far too big and I already had a cut up J83 body that needed finishing. I had a brass chassis for it but never got it running.

Back to my projects as it is my thread anyway. What with one thing and another not much progress. The Outrance style conversion of the old Airfix City of Truro, although that grey plastic looks like it’s from a Dapol version, anyway it is a bit of a bitsa. Tired plastic keeps cracking like the cranks here or the plastic pins snap, so I have tried to use brass track pins but drilling holes makes the plastic weaker. I have some half remembered outside crank axles from Romford in my bits box I think but setting up the cranks is very difficult. but metal would be stronger. Another slow project is this LCDR shunter, a Hornby J83 cut down and sitting on a Bachmann pannier tank chassis. There is just about enough clearance over the motor.

With boiler in place it looks more like an Outrance class 2-4-0 built for The Quest Railway of France in 1881 by Nielson & Co of Britain. Boiler is from the Collectable Model Locomotive 3mm scale 4-4-2 De Glen compound or Nord Atlantic for the GWR. Just the right size for a smaller 4mm scale Victorian era loco. The cab is one of the black boxes found in the old Triang-Hornby tenders as a sort of primitive sound effect chuff-chuff noises. It's just wide enough to make this cab and being a cast box it makes for a strong structure with properly square corners. Got to puzzle out how to refit the broken coupling rods and outside cranks. The high short footplate and big wheels Make these 2-4-0s look very big with their high up boilers but is not so big when compared to this 0-6-0 C class a very standard size loco for the 1900 era.

Hi Sophia NSE Is Number 12 sitting on a Hornby 14XX chassis ? These Hornby -Wren-body shells work well for smaller tank types. Problems that have stopped this loco from being finished. Several listed below. A * Bogie pivot screw here because there is a tapped hole in the chassis here, not necessarily an ideal point for the smooth running of the model. I hope to replace the bogies with a metal one incorporating electrical pick up but must not touch and short against the bottom of the chassis. B -B and C the green lines are where I hoped to make the chassis pivot relative to the body shell C D -The transmission shaft is now finished but not shown in this photo. E -Some sort of pickup is needed. F -Some sort of pivoted coupling link here to stop too much sideways movement of the bogie.

PGJ's post above shows a great Airfix Chop. Here's mine a distraction from a brass kit which is going wrong, on the slippery slope down into an over soldered mess. With the fantastic Bachmann RTR City of Truro model available what to do with all those old Airfix static models which turn up at toy fairs and clubs sales stands ? Chop them of course. Here's a teaser photo of my chop. Inspired by the recent acquisition of the book of overseas railway locos. North British Steam Locomotives built 1857-1956 for railways over seas. A book of early 2-2-2 up to massive multi wheeled monsters like the big 2-10-0 tanker in PGJ's post.

PGJ thats's great a tanker version of a 9F. I have a Railroad 9F which was at a bargain price from Hattons or similar box shifter and have some sort of vague plan to turn it into a tank engine. the sort of thing industrial railways would do to a cheap second hand mainline loco. A wooden cab and some sort of home made side tanks . But yours looks very professional if a trifle Great Westernish. I hope some motorised chassis terns up at a good price for you.

If there are any Bishops on the website perhaps they can confirm that quote? Yes Roythebus I am probably guilty of not using enough flux, I have the little yellow tub of Fry Power Flux from the plumbers merchant. It seems very acid. There is no temperature gauge on my soldering station just yellow orange and red settings the red being the hottest. so perhaps I should just keep it st to hot? Definitely an art to be learnt through having a go. But there has been progress with the chassis. Side view. Top view. Under view. The insides of the right hand set are jammed against the frame. Friday. Lost a day looking for tiny screw, found it four foot away and I'm sure it had pinged off in the other direction. Monday 9th Oct 23. Spent a bad weekend trying to setup the new chassis configuration with screw in spacers. They are made from some brass tube, K and S I think, anyway the type that comes in telescopic sizes so two lengths from the smaller one are cut and two from the larger one. And they can be slotted inside one another. A drill is used as a vice as a drill chuck is just right for holding round things whilst they are being sawn through. With the tube firmly held I used a jewelers saw which is like a super fine fret saw. Again the tube is held whilst I taped a 10 BA thread from each end all very fiddly and took all weekend until my home made spacers where done and tried out. Seems I can’t measure for toffee so they are too long. The motor now drops through the frame sides which is good but the chassis frame is too wide and jams against the wheel backs. Onwards and upwards.

I’ve just remembered an earlier project where I'd tried to motorise a tiny engine based a prototype called Ant. The saddle tank is a metal toy, it comes with a plastic footplate and smoke box, all nicely molded much nicer than I could model from scratch. This would hide a 20 mm wheel base Quaddriver, I hoped, so I’ve brewed up a brass chassis, folded from one piece of 5 thou brass sheet. Only got this far before it went into kit hibernation back before the covid panic. If they can do tiny in 009 and n gauge surely it can be done in 00 ? Even by me ? A saddle tank allows a lot more space for hiding motors and gears. The smoke box is from the toy. the boiler is a suitably sized pen cap with a plasticard wrap around firebox. Cardboard attempt on left made of parts drawn out with the computer app' Inkscape which is an open source or free drawing package like Corel Draw for professional graphic artists. But we can use it for secret drafting of engineering drawings. The cardboard chassis and wheels work 100% as a sizing exercise. Making a mechanical one is where the trouble begins. It allows you to trace and draw out plans and work out panels and parts sizes. Roughly folded brass chassis for insertion of the Quaddriver. See how small Ant is compared to a Hornby pug. The Hornby pug is it’s self shortened to scale length and riding on a Bachmann Percy chassis. The drawback of 00 at 12m wide the motor case is too wide to slot between the chassis sides.

Another go at the tram chassis. I want to get the Quaddriver mechanism working and be able to slot it into the chassis without disturbing the motor attachment. Or any of it, as it is really difficult to get smooth running, it still requires more fettling. The trouble has turned out to be the motor is too wide to slot up through an 00 width chassis. The motor at 12 mm wide is just to big. Would work fine in EM or P4, more space between the wheels. So I am thinking of a screw together chassis to cradle the Quaddriver mech.

Some work on the tenderised version of the J94. Theses are some wheels from the original Mainline and then Bachmann Branchline J72s and Pannier tanks. They were the awful split chassis or rather it was the wheel set and axle design that was bad. The central plastic sections became loose from the metal wheels at each end so the wheels all turn and loose their quartering. As I‘ve found yhat out trying to fit these coupling rods, I’ve cut them down and re-soldered the ends to make shorter ones for the shorter J 94 wheelbase. Somehow I will have to glue the wheels solid with the correct quartering. Room for a motor and gearbox in there ?

Over here in the Kit Building section I am head banging my way through setting up a Quad Driver for a small tram loco. Using my all thumbs it is slowly developing into a running loco...maybe. Two main gearbox sections, the vertical gearbox and the separate extender arm to the second axle. I'm finding it difficult to get it all set up and running smoothly.

What's bigger the Ratio small signal box ground-frame or the Mathews tram ? Maybe I should just stuff a motor bogie under the hut, and get what the American modellers call a Speeder.

From some long forgotten build I had filled off a quadrant off the right hand build spacer, allows room for the cross frame L spacer. These came as a set of three. I don't know if anything similar is made now-a-days. I found them in an exhibition rummage box. We now have the larger side and rod jigs Like the Hobby Holidays one I have waiting for construction, but they are meant for larger chassis using 3mm and one eighth inch axles. Another blurry phone picture of the Highlevel Quadrider gearbox and transition being prepared. This picture is so blurry, I can't seem to control the phone camera at all. If it gets any worse I could submit it to the papers as a UFO sighting.

I've forgotten which exact order I did things. What seemed a good idea on paper did not work when made solid. Trial and error. Here's some trials. The middle chassis 23 mm wheelbase worked but put the wheels too neat the inside of the buffer beams so I've started a second with a 22 mm wheelbase. This time the balsa sandwich did not work well and the two sides would not be parallel, somehow I had squashed the soft wood or something. Distorting it slightly. So I've hauled out these old spacers or chassis jigs. Not much room for them in such a small chassis. A simple heavy brass spacer with a bolt passing through where the wheel axle will go. A spring, washers and a nut screws on the end. Tighten up it holds everything together nice and square whilst you solder......maybe. At the front are two L sections of brass for cross pieces.

 Tram chassis, I've a High Level Quad-driver gear box which when assembled will be able to drive all four wheels via a gear train. It is made to power wagon wheels with a 2 mm axle diameter meaning wagon wheels which suits this build. I'm on my second attempt at making a small chassis out of 1 mm X 12 mm brass strip. Old stock bought from Eileen's emporium I think. It's going to make a slab sided box with L shape stretchers at the ends and two identical slots to slide the axles in. The identical bit will be the hard bit to do. I've glued two pieces of metal strip together, they are the length between buffer beams. Marked out with dividers and a scalpel blade to scratch lines, set square and ruler. All cuts are straight and made with a junior hack saw. Finished with a file, keep it simple. Then separate the almost identical two sides ? A balsa ply and card sandwich is glued together to make a packing piece between the brass sides. And may even keep the two sides parallel. This makes a temporary chassis to drop onto the wheels and see if it whizzes up and down or just wobbles about.

The pink glove of power. I found these cheap cotton gardening gloves ideal for holding the metal as it gets hotter and hotter during the soldering process.

How do you get the mechanism so tiny ? Looking at the grainy old photos of these locos I interpreted the center windows as plated in so I've solder brass behind mine

Reply to Chrispbacon about small tank locos and where to put the motor? Previously I’ve built one of the Highlevel chassis for the old Airfix/Dapol Pug static kits and also it can be used to up-grade the Hornby Pug with a quality motor and gear train. It has a specially designed gear box as part of the chassis to put the motor high up and in the firebox and boiler completely out of sight. With daylight under the boiler. On that model there is also a saddle tank that gives you extra space inside the tank to play with to accommodate a motor. I got it working on the second attempt. Below the footplate it is all Highlevel. The footplate and above is Airfix kit, a shortened saddle and home made cab. This loco represents a Southampton Docks Vulcan later taken over by the LSWR and Southern Railway. The slight hint of red under the tank is the inside of the frames. Motor and gears hidden inside the firebox and boiler and tank. Fly wheel fits in too. I chose the 100:1 gear ratio option and slow is not an adequate word to describe it imperceptibly moving off. Put the controller to half power and it gently moves away. The tender is an afterthought, North British Ralway style to extend the range of pugs across complex industrial sidings. Here it helps with electrical pickup. I should post some photos of the mechanism. The wheelbase is 26mm, would this fit in your Wantage loco?