luke_stevens

Which bearings did you use and where did you get them from?

Do you prime both sides of the piece? If so what do you use to glue things together. I assume wood glue will no longer be any use. Yes, I've found that the "cuts" are not vertical. All the pieces seem to be trapezoid!

On going progress... It looks good, though there are a couple of issues I had to deal with. Drawings to follow :) Luke

I was wondering about the grain. My concern with things like the Halfords primer is how fine the laser cut parts are: the bogie is scarcely an inch long. I'll keep people informed :) Luke

As I've kept going with the bogies I've been struggling to get things to go together smoothly. My first assumption was that i was getting it wrong, but then I went and found some actual photos and things became clearer. Reference pic in picture below https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/GWR_"American"_type_equalised_bogie_(6901708506).jpg The helical springs in the kit are the same length as the axle boxes and that is too long (pointed to with the cocktail stick) For the 3rd and 4th bogie side frames I will trim them down. And the wheels are just too wide to fit between the frames. Nothing that a sanding stick can't fix! But that is a job for tomorrow... Final pic, all the bits of the bogie before I realised what was wrong...

Some point in the early 80's I read a quote for an American Railroad modeller (I think it was John Olson) that said "No one was ever shot for not following the instructions, just for not reading them". So having read the instructions several times I decider to not follow them... My reasoning was that I haven't had much experience of this kind of laser cut kit before so I'd rather start with a piece that is less significant that the bogies: I began with the brake cylinder. The instructions suggest a strong PVA and / or superglue. As I'd already purchased a bottle of the Deluxe Materials Laser Cut Kit Glue I chose to use that. The brake cylinder went together ok and after a few minutes it had cured enough that I could gently smooth out the surface using a medium course sanding strip (Albion Alloys). I believe the prototype is metal so the banded wood grain wasn't going to be authentic. Pic 1 The rest of the chassis parts pretty much fell together as you'd expect. The truss rods fitted neatly as did the v-hangers. The holes for the battery boxes are too deep and they are loose so I backed them with a spare piece of fret to hold them a little more firmly. When gluing the bogie bolsters in place I supported them into the holes using a cocktail stick that was quickly removed so it didn't get stuck... Initially I'd been using the needle point applicator that came with the Deluxe Material glue. In pic 2 you can see the clearing pin became stuck and the complete applicator came loose. I continued by placing a large drop of glue on the packaging and using the pin embedded in the needle as an applicator. I applied glue to one surface of a part leaving the mating surface clear. It is important to make sure that nothing protrudes below the upside down floor level or the body won't sit flush to the floor. Pic 2 I missed a trick with the bufferbeams. I should have checked the holes for the buffers to make sure they were the correct size for a push fit. That would have been easier to do _before_ I fitted the bufferbeam to the underframe. There are a couple of odd things I've noticed. The v-hangers have holes for a cross beam and the body fret has holes for door handles. Nothing is provided. I'm going to dig up some brass wire to do those jobs but I'm surprised no reference is made to these, beyond a cryptic reference in the initial painting to "pick out the handles"...

Yesterday I ordered and today I received (v.impressive speed of service) one of their Syphon G kits ALTT OCWW 080 TT Scale 1:120 GWR Siphon G. First Thoughts: This is a "serious" kit. It looks to be well designed and neatly produced. It comes in a flat box (pic 1) and has several laser cut frets, of different thicknesses to better capture the porotype (pic 2). There are also turned brass buffers and a rather natty painting mask. I'll be doing mine in BR blue so won't be using the mask which designed for the GW chocolate brown Freight livery. I have attached a photo of the instructions (Pic 3). I hope Osborn's Models don't mind me posting this but I think it is a good indication of the thought and effort that has been put into the kit. Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3

Osborn's Models have started to produce a range TT120 parts and laser cut kits.

No my local model shop (they e-mailed me the leaflet). We couldn't find them on the Peco website either. They said they would put the order into Peco and see what happens... Luke

I got sent this today which might be of use to others. Peco Ready-to-run 7-plank wagons TTR-7000W GWR grey TTR-7001E LNER grey TTR-7002S SR brown TTR-7003M LMS grey TTR-7004B BR grey TTR-7006P Coleman's Mustard yellow TTR-70014P Cadbury Which suggest there are several other liveries planned (05. 07-13) I ordered 3x BR and 1x SR. Luke PECO_TT120_Brochure.pdf

Still no sign of the wagons :( Luke

Yes, I noticed that. The statement seem to be that there are difficulties getting the gears. I assume they were a byproduct of some other industry; X04's were derived from WW2 aircraft requirements, Cannon motors were from film camera's, etc. Luke

Hi Les, Yes, that is part of my point. A 3mm chassis for say a GWR King is going to be dimensionally significantly different from a chassis for a GWR King to TT120 2.54mm. A 3mm Chassis at 12mm is going to be of no use, beyond proving a chassis can be built to a 12mm gauge, unless it happens to already match a TT120 prototype. Hornby were talking more about the difficulties of reducing the 3 dimensional tooling for an injection moulded body. If starting with flat etched sheets then a set of CADs to a reduced scale will give a good start but will be effected by available metal thicknesses, etc, requiring redrawing of slots, spaces and bends to get to fit to TT120. P4 4mm loco chassis can be built to 00 but so much of 00 is incorrect that it is easier to not start there. And most modellers who are working at P4 dimensions aren't going to be building in 00. I doubt that there will be many R-T-R N gauge chassis that are going to be much use to TT120 modellers. Luke

Holes etc don't worry me but to lose around 2mm on a chassis width is going to cause issues with thing like gear thickness and motor dimensions. Luke

I'm already looking forward to ripping an HST apart! Luke

But we will need to get the scaled down. I contacted Worsley about getting an EMU scaled down which they are perfectly happy to do. They said it might take a while, That was last July... Happy to wait :) The other issue with just reducing 3mm etches is that none of the ancillary components like wheel bearings, motor & gear box combos will fit any longer. Unlike coaches I would think chassis would be a redesign. Ideally we'd have a manufacturer do a resin body with etched chassis. Luke

One other thing on Facebook groups: I'm on several FB groups but I'm not posting there as most people aren't established modellers so they are unlikely to be able to answer questions / respond to inquiries. I'm more likely to be posting here on RMweb where modellers will respond with some kind of relevance :) It's not a criticism of the FB groups but at the moment they are self-regulating to the more basic end of the hobbies knowledge spectrum. Luke

Part of the issue of kit-building is that there aren't many/ any kits out there. Beyond the Lincoln Loco's resin bodies and a few Worsley Works etched kits there isn't anything. When kits start to be available then things may change, but it is too early. Luke https://lincoln-loco.co.uk/ http://www.worsleyworks.co.uk/TT-120/TT-120_Scale_Index.htm

I knew it was something like that. Thanks for the confirmation 👍. Luke

And this will be the difficulty. On another forum (Powering Lincoln Locos) you can see the difficulties I have had getting the chassis of a German Bo-Bo electric into a UK cl 33 diesel. The original model was about 1.5mm over-width, +2.5mm over-hight and 9mm too long! Many years ago Aztec Trains in the US did chassis frames where you could add trucks, motor, etc and get a chassis to accurately fit a model. I could see this working for diesels and some steam loco's. For example the Hornby proposed Black 5 could provide parts for a King Arthur. Luke

I was starting to think the same. What is the market like for N body kits? I believe Langley do some, but is there much else? https://www.langleymodels.co.uk/awd1/index.php?route=product/category&path=208_219 (A larger selection that I'd realised) Luke

It used to be popular in 00 back in the 60's but by the time we got to the 80's with the finer scale models from Airfix/GMR and Mainline it went out of fashion. Whilst there are still some resin body-only kits (Golden Arrow) the majority of white metal kits (Wills / South East Finecast) that were body-only have been retooled to scale and have etched chassis. I would think TT120 would go down the same route with white metal / resin body / etched chassis. Luke

"Not my department"! Quite possibly but I don't know. But then again, wheel diameters, brake hanger, ash pans are all different. I doubt there will be much demand for close-but-no-cigar chassis. Luke

The 2251 has the same chassis as a 94XX I believe. The 54XX, 64XX and 74XX have the same chassis but I think the wheel diameter is different on the 74XX. Luke

Back in TT3 days (+50y ago) a "close enough" chassis would be good enough for a kit manufacturer. Nowadays I would think a chassis would have to be correct for a model. If I remember correctly the chassis under a 57XX could also be used for a 8750 and 97XX. And that is pretty much it, save a South Wales tank class. Specific steam loco kits will need specific chassis. It may be different with diesel bogies... Luke