Waveydavey

Those air pipes look ribbed like vacuum pipes. They should be smooth.

Nice work John. I’ll be referencing this thread when I get round to building my Penbits chassis for my hybrid Lima/Bachmann 40 with the 4 axle drive.

It’s worth mentioning that Railtec now do decals for refurbished DMUs or ‘white ladies’ as we used to call them.

Most interesting for me is that they also do a pack for the prototype refurbished Met Cam unit too with the thinner blue stripe on one side.

Cheers

David

I've ended up with two strips of 2.5 x 0.25mm Evergreen strip (laminated up to a thickness of 0.5mm) between floor and solebar, then a couple of rectangles of 1.5mm plastic where the axleguard units fit. That seems to do the trick.

It’s interesting that you’ve only needed to pack the body up by such a small amount. The diagram in British Railways Wagons by Don Rowland gives a total height above rail of 2235mm which works out at 29.3mm in our scale. On my half built OAA I packed the Cambrian solebars up by 2mm and the BBs by 3mm from the wagon floor to get the body up high enough (it’s still about half a mil low). The repositioned buffers come out at just over 13mm above rail which is within official BR tolerances (14mm or 3’6” being the absolute maximum permitted height).

Colin Craig did do a test etch for OAA undergubbins but the one I got from him was a bit too finely etched and fell to pieces as I tried to do some of the multiple folds involved. I think Phil Eames at Stenson Models has it on his radar so I guess the more people that ask the higher it’ll get up the to do list.

Cheers

David

Those 51L distributors look rather on the portly size. I have some in my spares box that’ll never be getting used.

& a dalek in action in that clip too.

I also found it interesting to see how finely ground/crushed the coal was. Much finer than the larger chunks you usually see modelled.

That’s power station coal so it is pretty fine. It gets crushed to an even finer powder before being injected into the generator.

And this photo shows an early experiment to see if it was worth doing the alteration.

A couple of photos of Met Cam front ends to help to illustrate the problem.

Apologies for them being 90 degrees out. I can’t see how to spin them round to the right way.

Newly released over the weekend.

Many people feel that the Lima/Hornby Metro Cammel DMU has a better basic shape than the more modern Bachmann offering. The big thing that lets the driving body shell down is that the front windows are too tall and the destination box is too small. Following a long, slow burning, project involving myself, Youth and Brian at Shawplan an etch is now available to correct this. Thanks also to Eddie Knorn for arranging my visit to measure the windows at Grosmont

As can be seen you get enough frames to do two driving cars. Four windows are provided for each end to allow the fitting of the reinforced window frame that was normally fitted on the drivers side following refurbishment.

Now available from Shawplan at a cost of, I think, £7 per pack

Thanks for the offer Guy. Despite deciding to only do one exhibition a year I find myself after the weekend with two bookings for 2019. How does 2020 sound? I’ve already told another exhibition manager that he’ll have to wait till 2021.

A couple more. Much altered Lima Siphon G might be a bit fuzzy but at least the static grass is in focus.

A couple of photos. I think that was the only delivery the coal merchant got all weekend.

All set up on Friday evening.

Clackmannan Goods finally broke cover last weekend and appeared at Scalefour North in Wakefield.

I was lucky enough to be off in the week running up to the exhibition so managed to get the layout up to exhibitable standard with not a moment to spare. Amongst a great many other tasks Tuesday was spent fettling the cassettes for the fiddle yard, Wednesday was final scenics and static grassing leaving Thursday for a final tidy up and testing session before packing away. Friday morning was reserved for checking back to backs and wheel cleaning on the stock.

Had a couple of niggles over the weekend but nothing too serious. We found a point blade that didn’t have a feed to it, a servo that needed a small adjustment to make sure the micro switch went over and a couple of the points seemed to be a bit ‘sticky’ and could cause derailments if not checked by the operator. The first two were easily sorted and the last will be investigated over the next couple of weeks. Overall though a quite successful weekend.

Big thanks to James Dickie (Wizard of the Moor) for the invite and loan of some stock, my operating team Alan, Simon and Bertie and finally to Phil Sutton for the loan of one of his 24s.

Are you coming back tomorrow?

 

I have an MRJ binder for you...  Dave Furmage may have mentioned it today, but I didn't catch you.

 

 

I think John had already left by the time I was asked to tell him about the binder.

That time is traditionally known as the "fiddle yard building week"

Funnily enough I spent Tuesday fettling the cassettes for Clackmannan Goods.

Layout is now packed in the car and ready to set off for Scalefour North

Russ,

Have a look at this conversion from Paul James.

http://www.emgauge70s.co.uk/project_lima31mods.html

Cheers

David

I haven’t done this with the Hornby 110 but have done it with a Lima 101. I didn’t use the Replica chassis surround and just gently cut the Lima chassis until it fitted snugly from below. Wasn’t too much of a job but I did need to space the frame down to get the buffer height in the right position.

I think Clive Mortimore might have looked at doing a 110 conversion as I remember it being discussed a few years back.

If H are erroneous, it is to be fair not entirely down to them, as this is an old inherited Mainline model which they will not have re-tooled.  Mine, in carmine/cream early BR, dates from the Mainline era and was constructed by trilobites.

Not quite.

The Hornby model was all new a few years back and is very nice.

It’s the Bachmann version that dates back to Mainline from the 1970s.

There are a few things not absolutely spot on with the Lima bodies, mainly the cab front windows, but these issues can be sorted out reasonably easily and is far easier to fix than the issues surrounding the Bachmann 101.

 

 

The cab front window issue should be fixable with a handy etch in the near future.

Cheers

David

Russ,

Hornby have done the four light front end on the ex Lima Met Cam.

But if you want an early unit adding the two missing lights to a Lima/Hornby or Bachmann front end is going to be the least of your problems. As well as adding the ‘spoiler’ to the front I think the underframe equipment was quite different.

.........and the Limby 101 really needs new underfloor detailing (Class 128 spares bought from Howes to assist) but the whole set is certainly different.

 

There isn’t anything much from a 128 underframe that is reusable on a Met Cam and there’s no reason to replace anything. Just cut out the infilling that creates the box for the weight, add the fuel tanks and add a few bits of wire for fuel fillers, exhausts etc.

Although Class 40's were the normal motive power for the Cliffe-Uddingston cement trains north from York it wasn't unknown for double headed Class 26's to perform this duty, even a single one on the return empties. I've seen a photo of a single Class 26 on one of these at Dunbar which was pretty near to the Oxwellmains cement works which was also using these Cemflow wagons well up until the late 1980's when they were confined to shorter trip workings.

26s would probably have got the empties as far south as Tyne but there wouldn’t be the traction knowledge to work them south from there. There could, of course, have been a driver kicking about at Tyne who had transferred south from Scotland and still knew them but it’s a bit of a stretch.

They are running unfitted with a brake van, maybe cripples, perhaps from Colwick?

 

Mike.

The leading class 20 is vac only so if the tanks are air brake the van would be required.

Looks like a mix of tanks so a cripple trip sounds good to me.

Well the bogies are awful and underscale, so those will need to be replaced.

 

We’re getting a bit off topic here. The Lima bogies are a bit lacking in height of the main sideframe but their main issue is they are not the correct pattern for a Met Cam. On mine I’ve used the early black DC Kits bogie sideframe which are a fair representation of the prototype. Some people like the Hornby 110 bogie frames but I find they are just as compromised as the Lima ones but in different ways.

Back on topic. The Craftsman and Heljan jumpers aren’t much cop but as they go under the buffer you don’t see them much. Until someone decides to do an accurate set 31A’s idea of making your own is probably the best and cheapest solution.

David