Skinnylinny

I'm choosing to blame Gary ( @BlueLightning ) for getting me back into doing some of my personal (i.e. not work-related!) CAD. Quite some time back, I *mostly* finished an LSWR open carriage truck and 16' horsebox, but I've not been having much luck with my own printer. Well, I'm travelling down south for the Bluebell Railway terrier gala at the end of the month, and knowing that he has a rather nice printer in the shop, I got around to finishing the CAD for these. At 16' long, the horsebox is rather small, slightly under half the length of a BR Mk1 horsebox (at 34')! The horsebox has already come off the printer, and the carriage truck is mid-print. I also discovered a half-completed LCDR open wagon in my "unfinished projects" virtual drawer, so I've spent a pleasant half-a-day bringing that up to this point: (And yes, I know the internal bolt-heads are hugely overscale, but when combined with a weathering wash on the interior they should appear clearly enough, hopefully). I hope to have this one finished shortly so that it, too, can be printed before my trip! It still needs ribbing adding to the buffers, brake gear, and the NEM pockets, but there's not much more to be done to it.

Not much to report this time - I've acquired some gold lettering transfers from the US (with surprisingly low shipping costs) which I've been trying out on shop fronts. The J. MacVicar butcher's shop I misjudged the spacing on, slightly, but used the new transfers. I'm rather pleased with the typeface ("Railroad Roman"), and they offer Roman letters in various widths so I may add the condensed ones to my next order. LeLacheur's groceries was lettered using black-shaded white letters intended for private-owner wagons. I would have preferred to use red-shaded letters on the dark green, but I couldn't find a suitable smaller-sized "e" with red shading, so black shading had to do! Burton's boots and shoes used some leftover gold lettering from a Fox Transfers set intended for the West Highland Line "Hebridean" coaches, which I had originally bought for the fine black lining in the set! Chopping and changing the letters from the (very Scottish) carriage names gave me the name I needed, although the sign needs a coat of varnish. I've also been away from home, and while away I have been working on a Keil Kraft kit of an Edinburgh standard tram, which has been keeping me busy for a week or two now. There's still a lot to be done, but I've been extremely impressed by the fit of the parts, especially the windows. These are all individual panes, with very slightly bevelled edges which fit perfectly in the bevelled edges of their respective frames, leaving no "lip" on the inside. A light touch of Plastic Weld near each corner is drawn along the join by capillary action, and the result is a neat window... as long as you don't slip with the brush as I did at one point. About half of the body is assembled and painted so far, and I've been working on the interior. There is the possibility that this may end up being motorised, but I'm loathe to lose the interior detail, so I don't really want to carve it up to fit the motor bogie which was in the box. Then again, judicious addition of passengers would probably hide most of the necessary sins...

Sorry, that wasn't my intention! I just wanted to reassure you that we are doing a "proper" Titfield interior, with bar. The roof will also be clipped on, so will be removable to add passengers and additional detail, if you wish. To quote Seth from the film: "When I do a job, I like to do it proper!"

Images taken from the Rapido newsletter, showing renders from the final CAD files. I can confirm that I did add the bar when designing the Titfield version! There are a couple of other detail variations that are Titfield-specific, too. A couple of overall views: And the underside detail: And finally the livery mock-up:

A little over a week ago I attended the Perth exhibition with the Edinburgh & Lothians MRC. It was great to bump into some familiar faces, and there was some fantastic modelling on show. I fell in love with this P4 Highland Railway "Yankee Tank"... And then saw a rather more utilitarian livery on a gorgeous 2mm finescale model while chatting with @Caley Jim at the 2mm FS Society stand: There was plenty of lovely pre-grouping modelling to be seen about the show, and I had my eye drawn to a lovely ochre locomotive, thinking it might be a Stroudley-liveried Craven tender engine... only to discover it was a North British single belonging to the Burntisland 1883 P4 group: I picked up a building for Linton Town (the first RTP building to make it onto the layout) - a Bachmann low-relief brick Victorian school, which I've fancied for a while, and when offered at £20 (half RRP!) was too good a bargain to miss. Finally, I spent a fair amount of time watching Bridgwater, modelled in 7mm and set in 1904. Some absolutely stunning locos and stock (including plenty of local PO wagons), set in a lovely, spacious station and yard. With DCC Sound, the layout won a well-deserved award at the show. Anyone would think I had a thing for small blue Victorian locomotives and carriages scuttling about!

I considered it, but I reckon that laser-cut acrylic parts will have a much smoother surface finish and should slide over each other much more easily than 3D printed parts, even resin ones.

Very much a mix of the old and the new!

It's been a heck of a month, but things are progressing slowly. Very slowly. Work has been keeping me busy, and after being knocked for six by a rather nasty few days of illness, I'm back on the go again. A chance eBay spot resulted in the acquisition of two rather nice scratch-built lever frames (in need of some TLC to return them to working order, but basically complete) which I've been "tarting up". In order to use them on the layout I needed to work out the layout of levers in the 'box, which I've now done. I'm also looking at mechanical interlocking. The points and signals will still be operated electronically by servos, but the one thing that bugged me about the DCC Concepts Cobalt lever switches was that they couldn't be interlocked. I actually asked one of their staff at the Glasgow show this year about interlocking, and they very kindly sent me a lever which had been returned (electrically faulty, but mechanically fine!) to see if it could be linked up to interlocking, but unfortunately the way it's all laid out inside prevents that. As the frames arrived, they looked something like this: They'd clearly been used to mechanically operate points and signals, as they came connected to rods and cranks, and in the case of signals, tiny chains going around pulleys before being attached to cord running to the signal (note: This photo shows an additional frame that came with the other two, this one not having catch handles) A fair bit of fettling, re-soldering, and painting later, and with the addition of the etched number plates available from DCC Concepts, they're starting to look fit for service. From the handle of lever 1, you can see that I tried polishing up the handle to see how it would look, but I'm not very keen on the brass look, so they'll probably get a coat of some hard-wearing silver paint. The variations in lever height aren't very noticeable in person, especially looking down on the frame, but they do hint at the rather scratch-built nature of the thing. The planning of the interlocking is still in-progress, and about 70% complete (with lots of reference to Railway Signal Engineering in the Mechanical Era by L. P. Lewis. Then the next step will be to build a test version, possibly out of Lego (!) to ensure I've got everything right before making up the final locking tray. This will most likely be laser-cut, with a clear panel allowing viewing of the mechanism.

It looks like the gates to the fields either side, when opened, actually create a route across that parallel crossing (which has a cattle grid either side of it, unlike the road part). Effectively an occupation crossing, but sharing a signaller phone with the normal road one?

Wines and spirits first!

All we need now is a GER liveried tram loco to haul them! Meanwhile, for those of us no longer using the Julian calendar (don't give that straw-mop in Westminster ideas!), we have now entered June, which is Pride Month. As such, it felt appropriate to add Pride flags to my On30 Mogul, in place of the more usual classification flags. The flags were produced last year by Corbs at Railway Mania to raise funds for an LGBTQ+ homelessness charity.

Not for my layout, but technically pre-grouping (and I daresay they will appear on a Linton Town at some point, even if not prototypical!). A pair of renders of the forthcoming Rapido Wisbech & Upwell tramcars, shown here representing no. 7 & 8 in GER condition. Up until now I believe all the public renders have either shown an assortment of detail variations, or the Titfield version specifically. The renders and any further updates can of course be seen on the thread in the Rapido section of the forum.

Ah, go on, we'll share some updated ones...

I thought so, but "Burtons of Linton" doesn't feel right with one! The greengrocer is next door... And yes, those upstairs windows will get a coat of something that is not gloss white at some point!

Well, some actual layout work has been carried out. Not much, but it's a start! Readers may remember a while back that I built a Fair Price Models shop kit, with the intention of it becoming a shoe shop. Well, the window display has finally been painted, assembled and glued into place: The display shelves and shoes are from a Dornaplas kit, and the "Shoes" and "Boots" lettering were part of the shop sign included in said kit (although I didn't want to use the main shop name, so some lettering from the transfers box was pressed into service. The main sign still looks a bit empty and I'll want to find some more small gold lettering to fill out the spaces either side of "BURTONS" (Should this have an apostrophe? I'm not sure... Maybe it's run by a married couple). I think this window display really brings the shop to life though, and I had a lot of fun assembling it!

Right you are, I somehow missed that one!

And those PC models 56-footer models aren't light or very free running! That said, I think the picture might show two 4-sets, rather than a 9-carriage train.

If I'm going to try it with 9 bogies on, I'm going to need a bigger layout!

A haulage test has now been carried out. With only a little slipping on starting, the A12 will haul 5 bogie carriages, two 6-wheelers and three 4-wheelers, on the straight and level. This is far more than I ever expected or hoped!

Oh, but they're beautiful, quite beautiful! Very much looking forward to seeing how the 4mm LSWR 6-wheelers turn out, although I may have a vested interest there. Your scumbling on the teak livery is *gorgeous*!

IT LIVES! Camp horror movie villain laughter ensues Apologies for the background noise, the incorrect coaching stock, and the non-functioning upper quadrant signal (it was the layout's first exhibition and there are still some bits to finish!) . But it lives! It runs! (and much less lumpy than it was)

Well, the front running board pilot beam has been added, which is a really awkward shape (especially without any top views!), and work has started on the tender. As built, the loco was handbraked on the rear bogie truck of the tender only, before gaining a Westinghouse pump on the right-hand-side of the loco (but still no loco brakes, at least in preservation!). I'm slightly torn on how to model the loco (with or without the Westinghouse pump), but as this is to be a one-off project, I think I'd like to model the loco as built, meaning no Westinghouse pump. The pilot ("cowcatcher" itself is also an awkward shape to model - this loco, rather than the traditional all-wooden construction that springs to mind with an American 4-4-0, has one made up of angle iron, in an odd shape that defies verbal explanation! That will require some thoughts as to how to model it. This screenshot from the game Railroads Online shows the shapes at the front of the loco which I have to contend with!

I agree that some level of liveliness would be prototypical, but the amount of slop in the wheel-rail interface in On30 is likely to lead to a lot of liveliness! That said, at least the loco has a relatively long coupled wheelbase for a 4-4-0, but the front bogie sticks out a long way too! By the time the pilot/cowcatcher is added, more than half the loco length will be in front of the leading axle. I suspect some wire springing will solve the issue, but it's still something I am aware of as a potential issue.

I could... if I were using threaded crankpins! And yes, I have used nail polish as a threadlock, as well as a brushable insulation coat (it's rather harder-wearing than paint, in my experience). It's a very versatile addition to the dressing table workbench!

That's a handy tip, thank you! I'll remember that one... (Plus it'll mean the crankpin washers will end up a silvery colour rather than brass, always an advantage!) Work's been continuing on the Baldwin, which now has wheels, coupling and connecting rods. Unfortunately the pilot (the part which sticks out in front of the smokebox) has a complicated shape when viewed from the top... and I haven't been able to get any top-down photographs or drawings! So that part will have to wait. I've also virtually test-fitted the same motor-gearbox combination I've used in the A12, which fits neatly between the frames and the widely-spaced driving wheels. This would leave nearly the entire firebox volume open for weight, which would help balance things, as there's a lot of overhang at the front. I've not yet decided exactly how to handle bogie swing on this loco either - I imagine that with the amount of slop in H0 wheel standards, there could be a propensity to waddle, which would be very visible at the front. I suspect some form of bogie springing will be required. I suspect that the driving wheels are going to have to have 3D printed centres, fitted to turned tyres which I'll have to source from somewhere. I've intentionally drawn the tyres thicker than I expect them to be, as CAD-wise, it's easier to thicken the rim of the wheel centre later than to try to shorten all the spokes.