Etched Pixels

Not had problems with the 3D print ones I did breaking and you can with care even print them in WSF. Dapol ones are also definitely a good choice.

If you are using FUD for the bogies you'll need bearings - otherwise it wears away rapidly.

If you don't mind the beading edges being a tiny shade off the normal with the side (and imperceptably so IMHO) then the approximation is to make the side and the panels both solid blocks and then intersect them with the tumblehome profile at different positions. Rather easier than computing the normals and works fine for shall curves like sides, but not such a good idea for roof detail ! You need to make your sides a flat projection if you do this - if you start with a side designed to be curved and then extrude and intersect you of course end up with the positions somewhat wrong.

The Dow book (vol.3 for the most part) has basic diagrams of the various coach types showing all the window layout and other handy details for each type. Historic Carriage Drawings has better detail but covers only a few vehicles - Barnums and the later stock, none of the six wheelers or shorter stock. In fact I've not found a good book on GC rolling stock at all.

Alan

The Ultima one is the non articulated pair. Wouldn't be hard to do replacement ends, trussing and articulation bits if wanted but its a pretty obscure prototype and I'm not sure where drawings would lurk.

Alan

You can certainly print multiple items together in one order and it seems to be cheaper that way. With your UFM160 do you have supports on the underside to keep the body from bowing while printing. Shapeways are now recommending that you have some kind of removable supports on the bottom of hollow FUD shells of length and I had to redo a couple of the railbusses for this.

Alan

Welshpool is another one. Apparently it was ok for the post office to arbitarily rename 'foreign' towns while leaving the English one as 'Poole'.

Wouldn't the map be a little different if they'd invented postcodes in the 1840s 8)

There are some basic dimensioned drawings of the Barnum and a few other GCR vehicles in Historic Carriage Drawings in 4mm Scale Vol.1. They are not bad but contain the odd error that can be checked against photographs. There are also some handy diagrams in vol 3 in particular of Dow  'Great Central'

I've been doing some of the GCR coaches in N in part from these drawings and they are certainly adequate if not perfection.

Alan

I thought exactly the same - but you said it first.

 

Years ago we had Welsh neighbours. They insisted that the Marches town of Clun is pronouced "Clean". As it's their language, fair enough - except that when you drive through the place there's a pub called The Sun, with a slogan "The Sun at Clun" presumably pronounced "The Scene at Clean"?

Sun is an English word so pronounced the English way

Clun would be Clwn if pronounced the English "Clun"

It's like Sean Bean...

I've only got one. I think Julia hoovered-up a few at Ally Pally. Ray has talked about trying to recreate the artwork for the kits from an existing etch and has kept one of each design back for this reason. I'm not sure that this will work terribly well though - and if you went down the road of new artwork, it would make sense to do a full redesign.

The two are not mutually exclusive as you can digitize, tidy and import an existing design and then re-work it.

With the Nigel Lawton motors at least the worm rapidly tears the motor apart (oops.. guess how I know) so you need to have something to take the thrust each end of the worm - eg washers and metal pieces secured to the chassis.

Alan

Mike was still doing it last I checked, or you can 3D print your own for basic seating stuff.

Guess you need a couple of personnel carriers (permaquip unit 68803 and similar) - should at least be a lot cheaper to print although perhaps tricky to motorise 8)

Alan

If you remove the weight of the heap (if you could which has its own logistics questions and would take years) you would then have to wait a very very long time for the land around it to stabilize because it will all flow (at very low speeds for the most part) towards a new equilibrium.

There are as you say ways to tackle bits of it (and also to build sections line on something akin to a raft), but I would still be surprised if its open before December.

Alan

If you "simply" remove the spoil heap (which is not remotely simple and would probably take years) then the resulting removal of the massive weight will itself cause all kinds of redistributions of pressure in the soggy ground and it'll move in all sorts of other interesting ways.

Fantastic model. I shall order one once enough pennies have appeared. Now I wonder if I can get the track cleaner in one end of it....

I had a fair bit of trouble getting the ridiculuously long standard N gauge axles (15mm) into a 3D printed bogie. It's just about doable but the width ends up a bit off. The 2mmSA does 12.25mm axles for N and those plus bearings fit rather better and allow for a fairly decent wall thickness. I have however gone back to brass for my next bogies 8)

It's noticable that the newest Bachmann Farish vehicles are also using shorter axles even when combined with very thin plastic sides in order to get nearer to scale.

Ben - I'm dubious about using those as casting masters. If your master isn't very finely polished and clear then your copies will also carry the same surface roughness and look frosty.

If you can find something with a very similar optical behaviour then it might help perhaps - the same way coating the old Mike Howarth shells inside and out in gloss acrylic varnish does.

Alan

FUD is definitely improving - although some of the wall thicknesses seem to have gone up - the pullman lamps I used to print no longer get through the system.

As I see it they need to sort out this spoil heap one way or the other - they can't just leave it as a spreading blot on the landscape.  Once they have done this there is no further risk to the railway so it can be relaid on the original alignment. 

It is quite possible that the only thing that can be done is to sit and watch for a year or so. They can't work on a large heap like that while it is unstable - anything could happen.

You might also want to have a look at the work being done on N gauge code 40 track/point kits that Wayne Kinney is working on as 'fiNetrax' . It's conceptually similar but using cast n/s frogs and milled based pre holed for chairs so that aligning and assembling should be much easier

Alan

Roller gauges for Code 40 are an issue, though you could use 9.42mm gauge roller gauges for the running rails, with home-made gauges for the checkrails on your pointwork. Assuming you are going modern image, like your OO layout, then Code 40 might be too small for main lines. Code 55 from C&L fits perfectly into some N gauge roller gauges I purchased a while back.

 

Modern bufferless stock will be far less of a problem than stock with buffers. Modern coaches and DMUs can be got around tight curves as there will be no buffer locking.  

I don't believe any of the modern heavy rail profiles in the UK are beyond code 40 or thereabouts. Some of the older pre BR branches and sidings could I think be quite reasonably laid with code 30 rail.

Alan

It has been wondered if a lagoon has been deliberately created on the top of the tip in order to recover fine coal (it's good stuff for power stations apparently) and it would be interesting to know if that is indeed the case?

Yes powerstations love the stuff - it's been a blessing (and in some cases a curse) because quite a few problematic spoil heaps went away - they used to dump the fine coals so it was actually cost positive to clean the tip up. It's been a curse in a few cases because junk land that would have been quite handy for building on has suddenely become rather valuable.

You can always ebay the prototype to someone who doesn't mind...

There will come a point where its quicker (and in overall costs in fines, to the bank and insurer) to simply give up and reroute the thing well clear of the mess. It could easily be a year or more otherwise.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. It is the modern way of doing things. Cheapest and quickest and don't worry about the future too much if it reduces the profits now. Land drainage generally is badly neglected and many ditches and dykes have been left to get choked and blocked as there is no profit in spending money clearing them.

It's not just the modern way. It's how it often used to be done too - ask the Gloucester 8) Quite a few of our coal tips are a) higher than the Netherlands and b) have bases that are 2-300 years old and predate any record keeping or real understanding of the problem.

I think it's also a bit early to be assuming that the problem was solely modern or entirely the fault of the current mine owners, time (and the high court) will no doubt eventually figure it all out. As to their insurers - it may depend how much insurance they carry. If its not an unlimited policy the insurer may not be too worried, but the council may have a very large problem on its books if the mine owner goes bust as a result.

Alan

Much as like the idea of dumping it all on Coventry I don't think people grasp the sheer scale of that tip .. it would take years of trains to move it all to Coventry, Newquay or any other big hole.

Alan

I gather Alton Towers will be bidding on the franchise