Etched Pixels

They are indeed designed to match the bogies but if you are careful you should be able to file down the mount slightly, taking care your flanges still clear the coach floor. I look forward to the day I can put the rainstrips on the roof in the 3D print - but right now the rainstrips are right on the limit of the material and combined with polishing get a bit unpredictable to say the least so for now they have to be added by hand.

Enamel onto FUD can be problematic. Seems to be the wax - it can also make enamel take forever to set. White spirit seems to do the job for cleaning it up, but would be nice to find something less brutal.

The smaller N decoders like the Zimo or CT with cube speakers have been fitted into stuff like a Dapol N scale pannier and a Bachmann Farish 03, the well tank is really quite large on the sound scale of things 8)

I'd second using the new Farish motor bogies. If you check Hattons you'll find the Parcels DMU pair is available on the bargain pile and handily contains two motorised vehicles. For the curved domed bits which are lots of small bits of brass I'd be tempted to bin them and use filler. Life is too short to solder together zillions of little segments of brass in 2mm scale for what in finish terms is unlilkely to be any different from carefully filled/polished joins. For that cab however it looks ok and it ought to just shape nicely and then solder up from behind. Still need filler but will be a fair bit stronger.

Never install signals in quicksand

I've had some success with four wheel wagons in T by printing the bearings and chassis into the body then using the wheels from the bogies. You can also drill down the centre of the wheels and add axle ends. I did an NN15 four wheel coach this way, and it uses fine wire for the axles running in N gauge hand rail knob bearings 122 looks a little deformed - is that to fit the chassis ? (and N scale yellow decal lines make excellent T scale stripes...) Alan

Knew I'd seen a mad toad with lots of windows. http://glostransporthistory.visit-gloucestershire.co.uk/images/RR_NWM_MSC%20Toad%20GRCW.jpg Cholsey & Wallingford have one with an open balcony and windows down the sides.

I've got one of the Worsley 21 kits here waiting building. I've put it off for a while for various reasons but one of them was that the roof was going to need major surgery (it seems that nobody can get plans of the 21/29 roof right, even magazines have published broken plans next to a photo that definitively shows the plan is wrong)

Lovely stuff and a brilliant use for bits of Gresleys. I may have to try that with the one I'm currently butchering to test some sleeper sides on. For the toad - perhaps an observation toad with windows for the general manager to use 8)

Thats similar to what I found with wagons but some were ok - it's why my MGR wagons are Minitrix - they went round it

Yes. The brass is basically there so you've got something to glue. You can also fashion the entire thing out of phosphor bronze and fasten it to a tiny screw tapped most of the way into the bogie frame (take a look at pictures of old Tri-ang Hornby motor bogie to see how to fashion it for that style - but basically its two long arms to the wheels with a 'U' in the centre with the open end facing inwards. The pickups spring against the wheels and push the closed end of the U against the screw thread with the head stopping it springing off.

Phosphor bronze wire (not brass) and two tiny bits of scrap brass. Solder the wire to the brass, solder a fine wire from the brass to take the power into the vehicle, glue the brass to the bogie under side. You'll get almost no friction from phosphor bronze wire and unlike brass it won't gradually keep losing the springiness.

Shapeways at least don't object to sprues, in fact for small stuff they positively encourage it. You could print the buffers on a thin stalk on the inside of the body shell and hope i-materialise don't know about trains ;-)

I'm surprised you get bowing unless that is frosted ultra detail. WSF should not be bowed and if it is I'd raise it with Shapeways, they may reprint it. If it is FUD then you can often unwarp any warped fud by putting it in hot (70C or so) water where it becomes softer and sorts itself out usually. It's a resin so its basically the same trick as unbending Ian Stoate "banana Peak" castings and the like. Its another reason not to use FUD for anything large (along with the price!)

Take a look at Bernard's TPM chassis for 20 and 23m lengths. It's designed motorising Mark 1 and Mark 3 coaches and is clear below floor level.

Particularly if using polished WSF (so its a decent strength/price) I'd actually be inclined to make the entire black window area a single cut out and then cut a tinted glazing strip to fit (remembering the black goes beyond the windows a bit all around so you don't have to aim quite straight and then vinyl over it. That I suspect will also make it a *lot* easier to paint. Also as you can get black vinyl you can cut it without printing and thus without white edges. For the full piece body remember that you've got to be able to paint inside and assemble it so there has to be a join somewhere. Pendolino 'hide the join' looks less simple than most. Re tilt - tilt wedges are completely configurable, they don't have to be a flat wedge but an arbitrary profile which means you can set the vehicle to hit maximum tilt at say 15" and continue the same tilt level as it nips around the 9" curves into the fiddle yard. APT would be easier to model this way because if one coach sticks the wrong way now and then it'll at least be prototypical 8-)

Much like Llandrindod is Llan'dod

Jack'E McAuley and the Poormouth, I had the delight of seeing the early line up (half the Strawbs + Jack E) playing in London http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWSgERkkZb4

For the stock the 2mmSA does 12.25mm axles with N gauge wheels so you can build stock to run on N scale track. These fit the coach bogies and most of the wagons so you can run a fair bit of the 2mmSA rolling stock on N scale trackwork. There may be some minor compromises needed - eg you can't fit a couple of the detail bits on Chris Higgs shunter's wagon in with the extra thickness of N gauge wheels. For the locomotive wheels no.

ooh that could be handy. I didn't realise there was any. Just what I need for NN15" to get the traction problem fixed. (rechecks the shop pages). Amazing what you find when you read the page properly 8)

In my experience with FUD you can go down to 0.5mm + detail happily providing you've got a bracing of some kind (eg an interior bar of 1x1mm or so here and there or a curve or angle) - its like adding framing to the real thing. On the painting side looking at the way it came out when you cleaned off the old paint I'm curious if there is a way to get that lovely wood look from the cleaning back out of it painted and given a wash somehow ?