Pugsley

That looks great Pete - I'd buy a couple of EM versions.

There's no may about it, it would. Undoubtedly, yes. It's a good idea you have there, and possibly the best solution - it's going to be a lot easier than chopping the existing end off and sticking on a new one. The gangway could be resin cast from a 3d printed master, and incorporate the door, making it even easier.

It's the Pro version that I've got. One problem is that they won't let you buy it direct from them is the US, you have to use one of the UK resellers, links to both can be found on the Alibre website. If you are looking to get it, keep an eye on the main site as they frequently have special offers and the UK resellers have to follow the same deals. I can't remember the exact saving when I got my copy, but it was something like 20% off - I dealt with Draughtmark and they were quite helpful, but I didn't feel that they added any value for their cut though.

Yeah, sorry, I'm metric only when dealing with models!

I'm finding it really useful, one thing to watch is that I don't think the sheet metal function comes with the Personal Edition of Alibre. It's a great program once you get into it, I've picked it up quite quickly. I weighed up the options and in the end I thought that the saving in time was worth the extra expense. I think it was, but I'll only find that out when I get the frets back from the etchers, which seems a long way off yet!

Thanks, I used the plugin version of Keyshot that comes with the version of Alibre that I've got. It only does web resolution images, up to about 1280 pixels wide IIRC, but it's quite sufficient for my needs. I think the full version is quite expensive.

Which equates to 2743.2mm. Going back to page 40, and taking Ceptic's measurements up to full size, the MJT end scales at 2740mm, well within the margin of error. However, the Hornby VEP scales out at 2771mm, so about 0.4mm too wide in 4mm scale, but probably close enough, all things considered. In answer to my previous post, I guess that the Lima Mk1's were a tad narrow!

TBH, I've no idea how we coped without it, but we obviously did for a very long time! I wouldn't want to be without it now though. I'm also surprised that no-one took me up on the upside-down dog challenge - here's what you could have won: http://i207.photobuc...earsonfloor.jpg (It was, quite appropriately, 37415 that hauled the 2F38 from Blackpool on June 6th 1992)

The half right bit being at the end of my last, unusually verbose, post where I said that the next post would be about modelling and with pictures and stuff. So here it is! The part I was wrong about though is that I thought it would be about the 37 bogies, however I've decided to do a bit more to the TTA chassis that still only currently exists in the virtual world. I've now drawn up the axleguards (W-irons if you must ), mounted them to the chassis rails with Scale Hardware rivets, and put the wheels and bearings into the axleboxes and slid those into place in the axleguards. The good news is that it all fits together! Isometric view: One thing that I did discover during the assembly process was that there were some dimensional issues with the axleboxes - both of them were too small, but luckily as I'd scaled all the dimensions off photographs, all to the wrong ratio, I've got away with it by just scaling them up as a complete part. That was more luck than judgement though! Looking at both the side and end views, below, I'm happy that, so far, everything looks to be the right kind of size and in the right place. If anyone can see something that looks wrong, please let me know - sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees when you're looking at something constantly. The axleguards still need the wear liners added (these will fold up onto the axleguards), so there is a bigger gap than there would otherwise be between the guards and the axleboxes. The next job to tackle will be the inner chassis rails and cross-members, which is going to be quite an interesting task, I think.

The fact that the MJT ends are the same width as the Hornby body is quite interesting This means that either the Hornby VEP is actually too wide, or that the Lima Mk1 was too narrow - at one point I know what my money would have been on, but I'm not so sure now!

I'd agree with that - it's probably the best option if someone has the time and the inclination.

Can I vote for none of the above? I think I actually prefer the Hornby end. I know it's wrong, but it looks a better shape that the MJT one, despite the various features being in the wrong place. I guess what we need is an enterprising supplier to provide a new resin end for the Hornby model.

Undoubtedly B)

Now that's a feeling I've not had in a long time! Nice job on the loco (and the wagons for that matter), I think you've captured the more faded than grimy look of an industrial loco nicely.

Sorry to hear that - hope everything works out OK for you.

In terms of laser cutting, I've only ever heard good things about York Modelmakers. Very pleasant people - I had a good chat with them about various things at the Ally Pally show last year. The windows look good.

Jon, congratulations on producing an absolutely stunning model. The hard work you've put in is apparent and the level of detail you've gone to is quite incredible - I'm seriously impressed and am going to award you the maximum of 5 cools B) B) B) B) B)

Heh, probably. Spontaneous outpourings of love, whatever next You've got a very good point about the not great quality, but extremely useful photo, another advantage over the printed medium. Will - I can see the additional advantages that it has for you, what with being on the other side of the world and all! Tim - The people that say that the Internet is wrong, are, well, wrong! As an additional aside, the other thing that I found quite amazing was that, courtesy of the Fostoria Webcam, I could watch in real time something that was happening right at that moment several thousands of miles away. I must check if that's up and running again.

It's not often I feel compelled to compose a more typical blog post with my general wittering (I think two in as many years is quite sufficient) but over the last few days I've been, well overwhelmed isn't quite the right word, but I've come to truly appreciate what a fantastic tool the Internet really is. Of course, there are the more immediate aspects, (one of which I'd probably best not mention here ) such as bringing together like minded groups to discuss their interests and share their models and information. Forums have allowed people to share their projects with others from around the world, and have allowed people to see some fantastic modelling that they may otherwise have never known anything about. Forums such as RMweb (other model railway forums are available) have also lead to a bit of a revolution in terms of passage of information. Want to know what loco hauled the 2F38 from Blackpool North on the 6th June 1992? Someone probably knows (an upside-down dog for anyone who can tell me, and yes, I do know the answer ). There is a veritable mine of information here alone, before you even start casting the web wider, outside of forums and other groups. There is also the social aspect, where online relationships, in the broadest sense, transfer into the real world. I've certainly met some great people, who I regularly keep in contact with, through RMweb. A special wagonphile mention must go to the Barrowmore MRG - I'd be struggling to do what I'm currently doing without the amazing resource created by putting the BR weight diagram books online. Before the demise of Fotopic, there were a huge number of images available to view stretching from the 60's to the present day. Want to find a photo of a particular loco in 1991? It was probably on there. The demise of Fotopic has left a bit of a hole in that respect, although it's great that a lot of people who had images on there have slowly migrated them to other providers - especially the like of Paul Bartlett and Martyn Read (and others) - their photos are invaluable to wagonphiles. It does, however, highlight one of the major Internet negatives - the transient nature of the content and the ease in which it can be destroyed - keep those hard-drives backed up! What's prompted this outpouring of Internet love? I've been searching the web for information on parabolic suspension for the tank wagon project. Although most of what I needed has been measured from prototypes, I find that no matter how thorough I think I've been, there's always something I've missed. Either something I didn't photograph properly, or a key dimension that I didn't measure, or if I did, I recorded it in such a way that I no longer understand quite what I did... Anyway, after a bit of deft Googling, I have now ascertained that the length of a Bruninghaus parabolic spring is 1200mm over the eye centres (when straight) Edit - I've since discovered that a UIC standard spring is 1200mm, the standard UK spring is 1400mm, which was the cause of much head scratching when dimensions scaled from photographs didn't match! For the UIC suspension, the bottom link pin is 750mm from the spring centre, there is a 150mm offset between the top and bottom pins and the pins are 288mm apart and 35mm diameter. The pin dimensions will be the same for the UK spring, but I'm guessing the 750mm dimension quoted above should be 850 for the UK spring. In short, everything I need to get my suspension parts drawn up and in the right place on the model. Stuff that would have been very difficult to obtain even a few years ago, and I would have had to take another 230 mile round trip to go and get the information that I didn't get first time around. So, in short, I think that this is a brilliant time to be doing what I'm trying to do and I'm now more fully appreciative of the role that the Internet plays in it, it would be a darn sight harder without it. If you've got this far, thanks for reading my waffle and I hope it's been interesting/struck a chord/not been a complete waste of time (delete as appropriate) I promise that the next post will be more interesting, with pictures and everything.

Oh, I don't know....

Sounds like a top few days! It's always entertaining when the Shawplan Massive are in town

As a further distraction from the 37 bogie project, I thought I'd do a little more to the chassis for the Nitric Acid tanks. I'm using Alibre design for this as well, which has a sheet metal function, that calculates fold sizes and the half etched fold areas based on the parameters I specify. It's taken a while to get my head round, purely because there's so much it can do, and I'm not really familiar with CAD, so I'm very much learning as I go along. There's a few hours work gone into this so far, it would have been quicker apart from the sharp learning curve, so I've redone a few things several times to get where I am now. It's just the outer members at the moment, the next thing I'm going to draw up and add to the assembly are the axleguards (W-Irons), I've just got to work out a foolproof way of locating them, which I think is going to involve etching through and using Scale Hardware cosmetic rivets. All other solebar rivets will be of the usual half etched and punched through variety. Although this is going to be mostly etched, I'm planning on making as much use of castings as I can, in order to reduce construction time and complexity. I'm aiming for a compromise between the JLTRT speed and ease of assembly and the MMP looks and details. Only time will tell if I can manage it! Everything appears to look OK size wise at the moment, I've scaled the buffers down and fitted them virtually. They're the right distance apart (scale 1727mm) and there's only a tiny bit of bufferbeam visible on the outer edges, just like the prototype, so I'm happy. More as and when...

Me too! It shouldn't be too long now, with any luck, although I haven't done anything to it this weekend.

Thanks Peter. I'm not entirely sure if it does run as I hoped, as running it up and down a desk, wired up to a Hornby controller, didn't really give a good indication of how well it's going to work. I think it should be OK, but I won't really know until I manage to get it on a test track. Cheers GWRfan.