F-UnitMad

31 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

There was a period in my life.....

What a great tale!! 👍

I detect Volume 2 of "Johnster's Confessions" in the making.... 🤣🤣🤣

6 hours ago, SonOfMike said:

An FA unit in a far more disgusting state of disrepair than ought to be physically possible,

Is it a Walthers Trainline* model? I had one many years ago & it ran exceptionally well, right up with Kato & Atlas. 👍

*Edited - Trainman is Atlas. Trainline is Walthers. D'oh!!🙄🤦‍♂️

On 08/06/2024 at 09:47, Dr Gerbil-Fritters said:

The 3d printed draft gear box also helps a lot - where is it from?

It's a private project by a member on Western Thunder, he sent me a pair to try out.

I do have plans for coupler cut bars & the air pipes; just need a Round Tuit to get started!!

15 minutes ago, ianmianmianm said:

 

I don't want to be rude about mobility scooters in themselves and this may be more a symptom of driver technique than the scooter itself. But are none of them fitted with coreless motors or flywheels? They appear to go from a standing start to full speed in less than a second.....

Like Tesla cars, then. 

1 hour ago, Andymsa said:

On a more light hearted note, I was dragged along to a crafting fair and the parallels to a railway show was uncanny except there were a majority of women middle to old age and rucksacks were replaced with shopping trolleys 🤣 

I'm waiting in the car for SWMBO, outside a branch of Boundary Mills - that craft fair sounds exactly the same!! I refuse to go in, I call it Zombie Central, in fact... 🙄🙄🙄

9 hours ago, CameronL said:

Off to The Tower with you...!!! 🤣🤣🤣

56 minutes ago, Northroader said:

B&O didn’t scrap the last of their bobber cabooses until 1952: ....

Reading, 1950:....

PRR, 1950s:...

Well, just shows I was wrong.... yet again! 🙄 Fancy that!!! 🤣😉🤦‍♂️

Thanks though, Bob, I didn't know bobbers lasted quite so long on some big systems. 👍

With the body back on, the car sits lower, with the trucks now looking right compared again, to the real thing....

It 'sits' so much nicer, now. I've done this with all my Atlas Evans 53ft boxcars....

Here's how I lower these boxcars. It's a bit crude, but it works. First off, remove body & trucks from the chassis, which is metal. This reveals the plastic underframe & details, & also the bolsters, which a lot of Atlas cars don't have, as (wrongly) they have a sort of bolster on the trucks. The combination here of bolsters puts the body too high. I suspect this is a bit of 3-rail legacy, too (even though this is a 2-rail model), as those awful 3-rail wheels need all the space they can get...

Truck removed:-

I will also remove the Atlas couplers to replace with Kadees, but that's for another post.

Screws hold in place the plastic underframe, each side of the bolsters - which I chop off..!!!!

There's a metal stub under the bolster, I leave this in place, but open out the hole in it with a 3mm HSS drill bit....

The remaining plastic underframe is just glued back in place with contact adhesive.

Also seen here, an experiment with a Kadee #745 coupler & 3D-printed draftgear box, for something more authentic looking than a standard Kadee box. ignore the skid marks from a drill bit that didn't like my centre-punching!! 🙄🤦‍♂️ Like I say - stuff for another post. 😉

To mount the trucks, I use an M3 machine screw up through the unmodified truck, and held inside the body with two nuts, the top one is a locknut for the lower, so a bit of slack can be left, mainly for coping with my track....

I don't know about anyone else, but to me, Atlas O Evans 53ft Boxcars seem to ride a bit too high, looking a bit 'stalky', with a lot of daylight under the body.

I've lowered the ones I already have, but with it's silver trucks, this latest aquisition of a Union Pacific example is an ideal one to demonstrate the issue.

The excess height is most noticeable with the roof line, and the trucks. On the prototype the trucks are quite tucked up under the body :-

On the model, they aren't...

Next to another boxcar, the roof is higher by a few mm - enough to notice when looking along the train...

So.... next post (due to photo download limits); how I lower the car....

1 hour ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

 

Stupid question - is there a particular reason for this being a six-axle rather than a four-axle locomotive?  Just wondered, Keith.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_SDL39

The unit was built on a short 55-foot-2-inch (16.81 m) frame with C-C export trucks, barely tipping the scales at 250,000 pounds (110,000 kg) and managing a light-footed axle-loading of just 20.8 short tons (18.6 long tons; 18.9 t) per axle.

They were built with particular routes# in mind that the MILW had, which needed short but powerful locos with a light* axle loading.

*Edit 1 - "light" in American terms, of course. 😁

#Edit 2 - I think I have more specific info about the route/s concerned, in one of my books, somewhere...!! 🤔🤷‍♂️😁😉

4 hours ago, Traintresta said:

This isn't an exhaustive list but a small selection of what I can remember off the top of my head. 

You did mention the Milwaukee Road's SDL39 on the previous page, which of course went to the Soo Line & got the "Bandit" black patch paint treatment, but at least a few (if not all 10?) of the class then went to Wisconsin Central, and were repainted properly. So in honour & memory of a classic livery that seemed to enhance any loco it was applied to.....

👍👍👍👍😁😁😁

7 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

so why are Conductors left to bounce around in bobber cabooses at the end of trains,

As per TT above, Bobbers barely made it into the 20th Century even in secondary service. I think they're more popular with modellers 😁

For about the last 30-ish years the Conductor has shared the loco cab anyway, Cabooses are only rarely used in certain circumstances, like long shoving moves. They are no longer the 'home from home' they used to be.

On 01/06/2024 at 15:24, z4driver said:

 

Glad to hear that you're enjoying them. Although I like operations, I do enjoy just watching trains as well. That's why I made sure I had a continuous run. Most of the time I run it as an end-to-end but it is really nice just to set up a train and run it around. Hopefully you'll put some videos up of your layout as it progressives.

 

Lee

Agreed, if you have the space, a continuous run is always worth putting in place. 👍

On 19/11/2023 at 14:10, F-UnitMad said:

Most of the Regulars on this Thread will have already seen this photo on my layout thread, as they're Regulars there, too... however in the spirit of providing inspiration and support to fellow modellers of the Dark Side, I'll just leave my "in progress" Shorty project here...

 

American loco & caboose, and only 4 axles in total..?? Must be some mistake... 🤣👍

For the benefit of Trainresta, I'll repeat this post from further up the page, along with the finished model...

(and yes, it is named in honour of our resident King of the Shortys 😁👍🫅)

2 hours ago, Traintresta said:

why, when we have to selectively compress so much do we not shorten our rolling stock to fit better?

Hornby tried that with their first BR Mk3 coaches in the late '70s - only 7 windows instead of 8 like the prototype. Hmmm, that went well..... 

30 minutes ago, Traintresta said:

based on a prototype location (Menasha, Wi). 

There's a UK group who built a layout based on that location, a few years ago. Set in Wisconsin Central days, very good it was, too. 👍

Edit: link added. 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/34509-menasha-wi/

16 hours ago, melmerby said:

I had edited it before your post quoting me went up!☺️

Well thanks for the link anyway, must admit I wouldn't have thought of B&Q if I was looking for IPA. 👍

A New Pleasure.... 😁😁😁

Getting back to 'serious' railroading, this book has just joined my Soo Line collection. 👍

It isn't new in the sense of 'just published' - in fact it came out 10 years ago; if I was ever aware of it before I must have clean forgotten about it, but whilst googling for something else recently, this came up in the search results, and I decided it was worth the outlay. 

This does NOT mean, however, that I am now an Instant Expert on all Soo Line freight cars, nor does it mean my fleet of Soo models will be absolutely 100% accurate without fail. 🙄😳🤯 but they stand more of a chance of getting close, now. 🤣🤣

12 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Isopropyl alcohol is readily available in the UK

https://www.diy.com/departments/1-x-5-litre-strong-isopropyl-ipa-disinfectant-cleaner-suitable-for-electronics-glass-paint/5056062658098_BQ.prd

 

Check the small print - "available online only". So available yes, but not like you can just pop it in your cart as you buy other stuff.

Also works out at £5:35 a litre. Compared to 3 or 4 bucks for 32fl.oz (just under a litre) in any drug store etc in the US, still more expensive, even if a pound or so counts as 'not much'. 🤔🤷‍♂️😉

1 hour ago, rapidotrains said:

What a neat-looking engine! I think it only has two big driving wheels! It must have gone very fast in the 1950s or whenever it was built. I didn't catch what type of engine it was,

Are you trying to blend in with people like the irate woman I saw at Bridgnorth a few years ago, who, with two very disappointed-looking young boys in tow, accosted a member of Staff on a normal service day & asked him why none of the steam 'trains' had faces on them..??!! 🙄🙄🤔🤪🤪

On 31/05/2024 at 07:36, SM42 said:

The problem i see here with your methodology is that 0 gauge and 00 gauge prices are rapidly converging. 

 

Time to move up to gauge 1? 

Not for me. Time to focus more on my American O. The wagons freight cars are bigger than UK O, still mostly cheaper, Kadees are easier than 3-links, and it's still sufficiently outside of the 'Mainstream' to give me the satisfaction of having models & a layout that not many others will, at least in the UK. 🤩

1 hour ago, NHY 581 said:

The new F.A.R.Ts performed well though one was a bit of a tight squeeze. 

Hmmm.... the ones you have to squeeze can be quite embarrassing. 🤔🤪🤣

7 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

Now there is a further cunning bit of IKEA-bashing! How fortunate that the plywood drawers are exactly the right depth for wagon boxes! Have you made a front cover for transporting the box, or do the boxes hold themselves in place? And are the drawers used for locos?

 

Meanwhile, all the best for the exhibition!

 

Steve S

Hmmmm..... I must put a complaint in to Ikea; their complete oversight in not producing similar suitable storage options for us O Scale modellers is rather annoying. 🙄🙄😂😂😂

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

with the crossover, I think it just shows there’s a downward limit with having a small line as to how you can fit pointwork in, and run anything bigger than four wheel jobs.

Yes, tighter the curve radius, smaller the stock has to be.

Although in this case, some advice I received was to actually extend this piece of rolling stock, so it would fit.... 🙄🙄😂😂😂

I suppose it would've made a passable impression of a turntable... 🤔🤪👌