AJ427

A loco at the back of my mind as a future model was the rather elegant L&YR Aspinall Class 27 or 'A' Class. Having recently seen here, Coachman's excellent conversion of a Bachmann C Class chassis for use as a RTR chassis beneath his Craftsman kit, I was inspired to give it a go as a 3d print. A C class was duly purchased and examined. The chassis is not 100% accurate but is very close and comes with the benefit of good running and reliability. It will be a tight fit though and some small compromises will be required. The tender will need to be completely 3d printed (other than the wheels). These are the first draft renders of the model. Ignore the threepenny bit look of the curves - that's just how AutoCad's inbuilt renderer represents them, the STL output will be smooth. Some work is still to be done in determining the cutout for the motor and the chassis fitment. Also I'm not sure on some of the tender details, especially the front parts, as I only have images of preserved 1300 to go on here. The C class isn't cheap so I intend to re-use as much of it as possible - the backhead is again, not 100% accurate, but very similar, will fit over the motor and is better than anything that could be printed. The C class raised safety valve assembly is a separate piece and will also be reused (if I can remove it, there seems to be a lot of glue).

So saddened by this news. Tetley's just oozed atmosphere and was (and still is) a huge inspiration and one that got me back into the hobby. Dave, you will be missed.

Yep, just got that too. Mine was for my dad's 70th in two weeks - I think he will be lucky to get this for Xmas now.

Hi Jeff, It's important to remember that any 3d cad model designed for 3d printing is not a model of the actual prototype, rather it is designed to be a scale model of the prototype and has to follow strict manufacturing rules regarding minimum size details and wall thickness. Although this is perfectly possible really all you would be doing is scaling a 4mm model up to 7mm along with all the (relatively) crude 4mm details. So you'd end up with things like oversize rivets and walls far thicker than they needed to be. Additionally the resultant size of the model would now be too big to print with the higher resolution materials such as Frosted Ultra Detail so you'd have to change that to just standard Frosted Detail. For the best results a model needs to be designed at the scale it's intended for. Most of the cost of additive manufacture is based on the volume of material used so you'd be looking at around £200-300 (depending on material) for a model of this sort of size in 7mm.

A little more progress on my J50/2 body with some detailing added. The buffer beam is from the Jackson detailing kit designed for the Lima body which I thought I might as well use. This particular body is designed for my experimental 3d printed chassis but is here seen sitting on an etched brass chassis obtained from ebay some time ago. Again, waste not want not - it's dimensionally accurate and runs freely and just needs a motor and gearbox and brake details.

That's looking excellent Simon, and the write up's coming along nicely too. The removal of the pannier's sandboxes makes even more of an impact I think. Will you try and disguise the pannier's balance weights with more half-moon looking ones?

Nice work Simon, starting to look the part now.

Definitely needs weight Simon. It runs just about acceptably with just lead weight in the chassis but should be vastly improved with more added to the body. There's ample space to put weight (smokebox, bunker and side tanks) even allowing for fitting a decoder. I need to experiment with this and what works best. Looking forward to the pics.

It's been a while since an update on this. I've been concentrating on the J50/3 printed chassis and body and it's gone through several redesigns to improve robustness and accommodate a different gearbox (Roadrunner+). There have also been some printing issues with Shapeways involving quality issues and missing parts (details of which can be found on my blog) which have ultimately been resolved satisfactorily but have required several reprints. Here's some pics of the final test chassis and body as received after cleaning. The right cab steps were also missed off and a replacement pair have been sprued up inside the chassis along with the brake blocks. GNR and LNER buffers and under cab pipework are included on a sprue under the body.

Hi Shaun, This image may prove mighty useful for your footbridge build: http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdalecompanion/mh149.jpg And some more general photos of Queensbury station you may or may not have seen. http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdalecompanion/ph2002.html

Hi Shaun, I just found this lever function list for the East box in my collection which may be of use. It doesn't mean an awful lot to me though! Also I have a signal diagram which I'll PM you. Yours doesn't look far wrong.

Hi Shaun, 69467 was a saturated boiler loco. The signal box is looking rather excellent by the way.

The section between Halifax North Bridge and Holmfield and the High Level Lines from Holmfield to Halifax St Pauls were joint GNR/L&YR and generally run by the GN. Plenty of evidence for ex-L&YR stuff on these sections though. Regards unusual motive power for the line it was used for DMU driver training 55-56 ish. The only pacific that is known (well as far as I know anyway) to have ever traversed the lines was A3 60081 Shotover when it was used for scientific tests (along with a couple of then brand new class 20s) in the Lees Moor tunnel in 1958. Speed was limited to 25mph for the duration.

Hi Shaun, I've PM'd you some pics which may help although only one shows the Bradford-Halifax platforms. Can't help with the colour, though your educated guesses tie in with my own research. I have pics showing the awnings from 1905 and sometime in the 1920s, otherwise they'd been removed in all post war pics.

Q1 asks which track and pointwork we currently use but there's no option for C&L/Exactoscale/SMP plaintrack (which could be used with hand/kit-built or current RTL turnouts). Are all these options to be other?

The current Streamline offering is hinged flatbottom and not bullhead. The point about Peco's reliability and robustness is a good one though. With care it can be ripped up and reused several times and will last for years so many new purchases will be just to add to an existing collection of pointwork for a new layout. With this sort of stagnation the introduction of a new product may in fact provide an impetus for additional sales rather than eating into sales of the current offering as has been suggested. e.g. I'm planning a new layout, I have 10x Streamline turnouts already and I need 5 more to complete, OR do I buy 15 of their "new improved British outline OO"?

So our challenge now is to come up with a compromise that keeps enough people happy

True Clive, but they are an example of as close to RTL as is currently available and a lot closer than the C&L kit which was being used as a price comparison and which isn't remotely RTL.

Some further work has been done on the FUD printed J50 chassis to verify its feasibility. The dimensions have remained stable since printing and painting with no shrinkage at all. By contrast the two bodies I had done on the same print have both shrunk very slightly. I surmise that the rigid box structure of the chassis as opposed to the more open structure of the bodies has prevented this. So far I've fitted bearings, a High Level Loadhauler & motor, Gibson wheels and coupling rods, lead ballast, and finally pick-ups. I still need to add pick-ups for the front wheels as well as some more ballast. Unfortunately some of the peripheral details (guard irons, brake parts and springs) have proved too flimsy and have been damaged due to manhandling but otherwise so far so good - the running is nice and smooth (albeit rather slow - this gearbox was originally intended for another project) and has proved the concept for further development. The flimsy parts have been redesigned for the next test print. The version for the Bachmann Pannier chassis sits a little too high at the moment so needs a small redesign.

If you want as close to RTL as it gets that's probably the Marcway range which are handbuilt copper clad soldered construction (SMP components). That type of construction wouldn't be acceptable to some though I would guess. The range starts around £25. While it would be very nice to get a RTL 00 turnout for £15 I think that's really unrealistic as an expectation, especially for a new product. I would agree that £40+ is too much though.

See my post #345 - it's only that price for the kit which includes some ready built parts that you can make yourself cheaply from rail.

No but the purpose of this thread is to try and determine what an acceptable compromise a OO guage track system would be, what it should include, target market, etc and so far Joseph has done a pretty good job of keeping it on track. Statements along the lines of get a whip round arranged, your wasting your time, build your own, go to EM/P4, no matter how tongue-in-cheek don't really add anything and just turn it into yet another in a long line of pointless OO guage track debates. Fact: Some people (I don't claim to know how many) want and would be prepared to pay for a OO guage track system that's better than the current Peco offering so let's continue to keep this on topic and move it forward. (all puns intended)

To be fair to the C&L Turnout in a bag, most of the cost comes from the included pre-built common crossing (£16) and filed switch rails (£10.50). If you buy the components seperately both of these items can be made up from rail lengths by hand fairly quickly and for pennies. If you have the skill to do so.

I've been reading with interest and liking the way it's going now. Although I do build my own BH turnouts it's time consuming and I'm never 100% happy with the consistency and reliability so anything ready-to-run or even a simple kit with a plastic base with thread on components would be most welcome. The Lima modular system also looked most interesting. One thing that annoys me about C&L plain BH track is the thin underscale sleeper height - I believe it's like this so as to be compatible with copper clad turnouts. It makes it difficult to ballast and the web becomes very prominent (almost to the top of the sleeper) meaning you have to cut it out as ballasting over it brings the ballast too high to the rail and you lose the tell-tale open look that's typical of BH track. I think SMP may be thicker but also still underscale. So this is something I'd like see rectified in any new system and it would also help with robustness. Another thought is that (I think) the Tillig turnouts have a degree of in-built flexibility allowing some curvature of straight turnouts. Is this something that could be incorporated into our proposal?

Another wish for the J50 in OO here please. Also nice would be a J6 or C12 and GNR coaches. I'd also be tempted by anything NER, especially a Q6. And if you want a big ticket era/region transcending glamour loco a la Hornby, how about the Hush-Hush?