Ravenser

Thanks for your comment Mikkel ( Which seems to have done something to flush out the bug. At least the post is now visible vin the main page.)

While I'm about it, I should add that I washed the sprue in warm water with a drop of detergent and a dash of vinegar , as som e plastic kit modellers seem to recommend in order to remove any remaining mould release coating before painting. Using detergent goes a little counter to what I've always understood to be good practice in a railway modelling context, but we'll see how it goes

I'm intending to pre-paint much of the upper wings as well. Painting before even starting construction feels counter-intuitive, but I can't see any good way to achieve a sharp even dividing line between the upper and lower wing colours , apart from painting the components seperately before assembly

just a remote possibility - but were either of the two target locos called up for WD service in WW2?

4 hours ago, scratcher said:

I'm about to embark on the same conversion, the idea being to have X7 & X8 from Parkside kits and X9 from HD/Ratio u/f. I'd love to see a picture of the finished article please, if possible?

 

Steve

Here you are. At the back -  best shot I have on file

The corridor connections work

Try POW Sides . \their range should cover nearly everything

A smooth floor without planking sounds more like Slaters than Ratio

22 minutes ago, andyman7 said:

One of the saving graces of the Margate Ringfield mechanism is that the traction tyred geared wheel is matched by a non-traction tyred geared wheel on the trailing bogie. For project locos using original chassis, I swap one traction tyred geared wheel on the motor bogie with a non-tyred wheel from my magic pile of spares and fit an extra pickup on that side. The trailing bogie gets all wheel pickups, and hey presto, 7 out of 8 wheels collect current. As long as the motor is cleaned, lubricated and nit hopelessly worn, they work remarkably well with a bit of extra weight - not obviously up to modern Bachmann/Heljan/Hornby full fat level but a very cheap supplement.

A useful idea.

I'm toying with the idea of ordering an Ultrascale double motor rewheeling pack and using that to rewheel the motor bogies of both the NBL 21 and the Baby Deltic. However before I commit, I need to get the 29 I reworked and rewheeled years ago up and running on DCC. I can then be quite sure that the finer Ultrascale wheels won't cause any problems on my pointwork before I splash the cash.

Obviously there will then be a wait of some months before I actually get my order, but it's not an urgent job - the locos already run. And having had to press a tyre back on a wheel centre last time , it may prove necessary anyway. The thought also occurs that I would get a better quality final drive gear, and it would be designed to mesh properly at the wider back to back

5 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

As mentioned above, I'm not tempted to do anything prototypical with the 0-4-2 and its coaches, so thoughts have been meandering in

somewhat whimsical directions, with a view to what could be accommodate on a single small-ish board (say 4 x 2 or thereabouts) with

a continuous run.

 

Among the ideas that have come up (none original!): are:

 

A garden centre with a narrow gauge railway.

 

A zoo.

 

A seaside narrow gauge railway, going around a boating lake, duck pond etc. I wondered

about modifying the loco and coaches to make them work in 7mm or 10mm, suggesting

a proper miniature railway. 

 

Portmeirion - essence of "the Village" with Italianate architecture, locos numbered 1, 2

and 6 etc - the PMSL (Port Meirion Steam Line).

 

 

My reaction would be, in order of attraction:

4.  2.  1. 3.

Scenario 4 seems strangely plausible. The structure work could be a lot of fun, and the walk from the Festinog to the Village is rather long as I recall . Groundle Glen also comes to mind in this connection

You are a little too modest about your efforts to make an honest model out of Hornby's "lithographed" clerestory...  One of the great OO misfires turned into something good

3 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

I have enjoyed reading about Blacklade since it’s inception and am very glad it’s still kicking! Thank you for this wonderful  log entry, fascinating stuff.

 

I’m finding a bit of a quandary in my layout setting - steam era ops seem so much more fascinating but you clearly have survived with DMUs! What’s the secret??

The layout was designed with joining and splitting of DMUs in mind. I'm only just getting to the point where I have the resources to do that more extensively : the 128 isn't finished but it is a runner , and that can now be consisted with the 101 or 108 while still fitting in the platform . 153s are very useful in this respect - I've got three of them - but other second generation units suitable for use with them have been slow to come. Big Bachmann centre motor drives aren't really compatible with the Limby motor bogie - when I tried 153 + 150 they pulled apart and glided down the layout at rather different speeds. The Pacer will be a valuable addition when I actually get it sorted out.

And in the Blue Period I run rather more loco-hauled than you might expect. The Loco-Hauled Substitute is a key component , meaning two moderate-sized locos and a set of 2 coaches operating Minories-style, and the locos also cover two daily parcels trains in and out , plus an engineer's train . Those run round in the station , and there's a 4 wheel parcels van which comes in on the back of a DMU and goes out on the parcels train (or vice versa in the evening) which is shunted by whatever traction works the parcels (the 128 can be treated as a kind of loco). Finally there's a requirement to bring fuel into the fuelling point - so if there's no TTA on the fuelling point one needs to be brought in, and if there is, it needs to be worked out empty.

Operationally Blacklade runs on the same principle as those solitaire puzzles with 8 numbered tiles in a 3 x 3 frame leaving one vacant slot... In my case there are 7 roads (3 platforms , 3 FY roads, and the fuelling point) so with 6 trains on the layout there is just one vacant road, and the question becomes what will you move there? recognising also that certain things can only go in certain places, and some moves conflict.

So only the back platform and the front fiddle yard road are long enough to take the loco-hauled set (or a 3 car DMU formation) . Only the centre platform has access to the run- round loop - but one end of that loop is the front fiddle yard road, and if the loco-hauled set is in there, there's no room to run round... So you have to keep thinking several moves ahead to avoid getting locked up, while still running a balanced train service

One reason for this particular project is that I've spent a lot of time in recent years building five 2-car sets of coaches for the kettles, but the most intensively used set of all, the Blue Period loco-hauled substitute, has been existing on two weathered Bachmann RTR coaches for about 7 years, despite a large pile of unstarted coach projects.

I'm currently finding that my efforts to glaze the Lima TSO are going to be some distance short of the crisp neatness of a Bachmann Mk1 . It will be flush glaze, and perfectly reasonable at "normal viewing distance" but I think the difference will be noticeable if it's coupled to a Bachmann BSK.  So the Hornby Mk2 BFK will have to be sorted out to run with it in the medium term, and I'm rapidly coming to the view that I will have to build the Kitmaster kit as a better partner for the Bachmann BSK. The kit comes with proper flush-glazing, so provided I can paint the thing well it should be much more compatible with the BSK. An order has gone in to MJT for more rigid bogie etches....

just out of interest - what chassis (kit) are you using?

2 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Those photos of stock on Blacklade made me go visit the layout's dedicated blog.  I remember seeing it before but had forgotten how effective it is despite the fairly narrow depth on some sections. Great stuff.

Thanks . I must admit I routinely forget just how slender it is in certain areas. Stability on the legs can be a minor irritant, but scenically it has just never become an issue....

Thee is actually a 3 road fiddle yard behind that retaining wall

On 11/02/2021 at 20:02, Kris said:

Life has not been easy over the past few months has it. I have found myself in a similar situation to yourself and have been modelling hard to help me through it. It is great to see that you have also managed to keep yourself busy. 

Its been an awkward time and I admit I've probably done less modelling than I could. But it is very sobering to see how much can be done simply out of the accumulated stuff in the cupboard with minimal extra purchases - and even more sobering to see how small a dent it has made in the pile of stuff in the cupboard

It's a comfort to know that it's not just me - and that these are recognised issues. Also worth bringing them to people's attention, so the next poor bloke doesn't spend a week scratching his head

These ringfield motor bogies are never going to be in the same league as a modern centre-motor mechanism with drive to both bogies. That said, a reasonable performance can be extracted from them and there are no realistic readily available alternatives for a project like this, unless you can manage to source a Hornby Railroad motor bogie or possibly a Bull-Ant - if they are still available. Even those are going to be a step down from a modern diesel mechanism

Some of the EM modellers still seem to use ringfields (see Canada Wharf/Hornsey Broadway) but I think they have the advantage of rewheeling with Ultrascales - meaning full conductivity, an upgrade to the gear train, and the replacement final gears being professionally designed to mesh properly at the revised back to back.

Conductive traction tyres would be good, but I'm not sure how you'd do it. Carbon or graphite would conduct, but how you would come up with a traction tyre that wasn't hard or lubricated but would still conduct is an interesting question. Some sort of carbon paste used to infill the grove round the wheel???

Ratio & Son...

I think the business passed through two generations of the Webster family before Peco bought it

It's a long time since I dabbled with stamp collecting as a boy - but I think a pre-decimal version of the current "definitive" stamps was issued, probably around 1968-9. So with a stamp from the original EIIR definitive set your kit really can't be later than about 1968

Put another way - I cannot ever remember seeing a stamp like that "in real life" , so that pushes it back to the 1960s ; and Ratio were certainly in Dorset by 1975-6. The coke wagon and the Tube C had gone from the range by then - probably several years gone. If the Coke wagon kit was "new" - it had to go through its entire production life by the early 70s.

It's a sobering thought that our current basic stamp design has been with us for over 50 years - longer than even the Victorian "penny red"

The extension planks above ("raves") make the coke wagon de facto an 8 planker - the gaps probably make it roughly equivalent to 9 plank . So it isn't really a 5 planker. I assume that this was done a] to lighten the overall structure and reduce the centre of gravity and b] to enable the wagon to be converted down to a 5 planker (commonly used by small coal merchants, rather than major collieries and big users)

I have an unbuilt Ratio coke wagon in the cupboard (second -hand : I'm not that old)

Just to warn you - it's not just the rear splashers : the middle splasher is slightly out too. My eye says by about half as much. This may be a rounding down error, somehow

As you are committed to a reprint.... The trial prints have been a useful exercise.

You're finding that sharp radius curves are not a great idea, especially where big steam locos are concerned - never mind how they look. An 8-coupled loco like the 47xx is probably your worst case , so you could use that as a test loco - if the 47xx is happy, then you're safe

The traditional "rule of thumb" is that 2' radius is the minimum for "scale" OO with mainline steam. Streamline small radius are about equivalent to 2' radius - Setrack points are sharp and nasty and best avoided. It's worth remembering that reverse curves are much more demanding than simple curves - and reverse curves are what you get through a crossover of two points back to back. So if possible use the next size up in pointwork where a crossover is involved. 4th radius should be close to 24"/2' radius

The NSWGR horseboxes are covered in an article in Australian Model Railway Magazine issue 98, Sept/Oct 79. 76 were built between 1855 and 1881and the last one was withdrawn in 1925. Final stock code DKG. Original livery is quoted as varnished wood , vehicles being built from either teak or cedar

I thought I recognised that odd lopsided shape from long, long ago...

Effective modelling and a useful post for others (though I'm personally pretty limited in what I can do on buffer beams as I use Kadees)

Looking forward to your forthcoming layout based on Birmingham Curzon St...

Superb. A loco rendered con Brio....

A substantial improvement can be made by fitting replacement etched walkways/ladders. AI Models used to do them - I suspect someone like Shawplan might also. Brass Oleo buffers are a useful upgrade as well 

I tried a black facia and a friend who dabbled in art told me it was too dark, so it was repainted to a muddy brown. Distinct improvement. 

So - yes, your instinct is right, the facia is too light , but black would be too dark. Maybe something more in the olive green range ?

It's good to see someone's vintage scratchbuild being finished and being given life and purpose

Quote

The pin of the peco point motors is just a smidge bigger than the hole in a Hornby point and the small plastic bit that holds the moving rails together just popped off as the pin came through, followed in quick succession by the spring! While i'm sure a better man could repair them seamlessly, my efforts didn't work. Before i realized what had happened i had destroyed 2 perfectly good LH points.

Invest in a set of broaches. These are fine square bars of ascending sizes, slightly tapers. They are a cutting tool - you insert, turn and they enlarge the hole. When you're down to the handle, you insert the next size up. 

They're a rather cool tool for enlarging holes and making them perfectly round. If you don't have the right drill size, a broach should sort it out.

And a set of broaches should cost less than a point...