Captain_Mumbles

Update on the Coal rails.

Great, will place an order at Strathwood. Cheers

G'day all! I have been after the book, Edward Thompson - Wartime CME for a long time since watching a certain podcast video with Simon on YouTube. Upon learning earlier this year that the book existed, and not residing in the UK, ordered a copy on Ebay. 5 to 7 weeks later, it arrives! but like a slap in the face, I am greeted with the wrong book. Southern Electrics, Volume II. So, it is sent back, and the replacement sent to us. 5 to 7 weeks later, it finally arrives! But, after all that, I have received the wrong book. Southern Electrics, Volume II, again!!! So I am finally refunded. So I got the book from Amazon, cant go wrong with Amazon right! 4-6 weeks later. I have Southern Electrics. Volume II AGAIN!!! Unfortunately for me, the Southern Electrics represents none of my interests. I feel like my adventure with getting this book has been going on all year. Is Simon's book a scam? does it even exist? Should somebody tell him? Does he know? Cheers! Ben

I think you mean the rigid wheelbase? Front axle to rear axle looks to be about 79mm on my railroad P2. Unfortunately, (or fortunately?) my Thane of Fife was confiscated for being too pretty and is in a display case locked behind the glass and getting it out is a bit of a faff.

With the concave shape sanded at aft end, the beading is applied. It is .020 strip cut into even smaller strips. It might appear heavy at the moment, and it always will be on the heavy side. But there isn't really any alternative. In a few days when the solvents and plastic has thoroughly dried I can round if off a little and that will improve it a lot.

Some parts of the tender are made new as it is easy to cut the styrene sheets rather than modify some of the old bits. The front bulkhead of the tender is used, but the detail is removed and new sheets fitted in front of it to match how it looks on one of the other Hornby GNR tenders I have. The old bulkhead becomes more like a structural skeleton. The next part will be to shape the rear where it is concave and to add the beading. But all this is going to be left for solvents to dry overnight.

I have started modifying the side sheets of the corridor railroad tender to match the GNR type. Starting with the upper doubler strip and the curved plate at rear. It is also necessary to file the ends so they are curved corners instead of flat like the A4 tenders. I also did that on the end of the Cab as can be seen in the previous post. Well, as much as I can without filing off that molded handrail.

This is my attempt at flush windows on a railroad coach. Unfortunately, I cut the clear strip too narrow and couldn't use it, but I think next time ill get it right.

This is a try at making flush windows. It was pretty easy to do. It is the window pane cut into a strip, and thin styrene sheet glued on top. It looks like it will look great once fitted and painted. Unfortunately I scribed the positions of the windows with a sharpened pick and didn't appreciate the thickness of the point, and also the taper of the mold rebate around window. I cut along this top edge of the window line and ended up with a window strip that was too short. Lesson learned there. I tried it on a new window pane and it ended up being of a different material which wrinkled along the line that i had just cut with the blade. So will probably have to order a sheet of 1mm polycarb to get some consistency. I probably wont use clear evergreen as their thickest sheet is thin, .040 from memory and will probably be difficult to glue in so that it is flat enough.

I'll go with the filament printer first. I think it will be easier to have someone print off plug chairs for me than have someone faff around with the sleepers/timbers. Path of least resistance when it comes to relying on others!

Thanks for that. I collected and studied a lot of pictures from the web and I think I am seeing at occasions or exceptions sometimes where full length step boards can happen on both sides but as a general rule that is what i suspected and makes a lot of sense. Some very good reference in the video! Seeing those boards with people on em puts their size in perspective!

Stupid question: What determines what side has the step all the way along the sole bar?

It is about time to get a printer then! Good to know, cheers!

The clear ones probably look OK after paint.

How do you find the paint interaction with these materials? I agree with you that we are up for some exciting times ahead. Imagine just printing off a group group of beautifully curved points some day????

You mean cut the plastic fish plate? This can work! Cut biased to one side, insert into gap, and then glue the other side on?

That sure is impressive. I think my opinion of 3D printing is a little skewed. At a job I had a while back, we did a lot of prototyping and we had 3d printers going all day and this came with people also working all day fixing the printers. Not to mention things breaking in unforseen ways after it was always too late or inconvenient. Although I do understand they are really good now. Especially those Prusa ones.

These are all great ideas, thank you!!

I hope this is the right place, as it could be placed in other areas. As the title suggests, I need inspiration for isolated rail joiners. So far, I am not using any isolated joiners on my hand laid points and I am just leaving a gap. But I can see this becoming a problem eventually. I have some plastic fish plates from the C&L sprues that I have. But one, they are difficult for me to obtain on my part of the planet and, two, if they are installed after the track is laid to avoid damage, they mostly fly apart trying to get them in. Thanks for looking. Ben

Lovely

A bit late to the party here, and at the risk of this being seen elsewhere, I think it has a lot to do with Peco Bullhead coming to the market. As well as modellers discovering Templot. Which, thanks to Martin Wynne's amazing perseverance, discovered its quirks and began to find it very addictive. (to the point where I MUST fight to stop myself redesigning my layout just because it is fun) I have been dismantling the Peco BH flex track, and using the rails, and in most cases carefully cutting off the chairs to re use on the points. I have C&L chairs, but since they are hard to get for me, being in Australia, I decided I would use the C&L chairs were they are close to the foreground work as they are, absolutely gorgeous once you get it all together.

I bought the legacy track and the chairs. Three soldering irons later I decided I can't solder it either. Having said that I might be able to now that I have built a lot of points. As for the legacy chairs they needed to be filed so the rails would go in. E v e r y s i n g l e one. This is probably OK if you have a small shelf of box layout, and the product would no doubt be gorgeous if you can pull it off, but I have a lot to do so I just ended up buying Peco Bullhead flex track and take the rails out. I use a chisel ended scalpel blade to slice the chairs off and reuse those to.

Also as I have just found out, performing the whole task without scratching the windows. I know what you mean, the inside will have to be carefully painted as well.

A while back, somebody alerted me to the fact that the 'brake' end of the coach is usually narrower. And this was after I made my modified long brake ended coach. I do wish to fix it some day and so I have used an old brake for practice, inspired by Mike Trice's work. I used a razor saw, and some .025 plastic strip to replace what I cut out. I also practiced one flush window on that door. It took some time making it individually so will think about options. The narrow body section is a nice touch.

I have performed this on the old Hornby A3 with the join line down the boiler. It will depend on how well they glued it!