Sasquatch

There are some Ian Kirk injection molded kits in a box here somewhere that are getting on for 30 years old and some of the smaller parts are a little brittle. The plastics obviously have lower melting tempratures than brass. The melting point of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene varies according to its chemical make up but is generally higher that styrene. Styrene becomes brittle when exposed to sun light and is not as good an electrical insulator. Some paints will attack styrene making it brittle and no doubt some lubricants will too. Other than that, avoiding a hot motor would be the only real caution. The trade has used ABS for decades and on older RTR models the ABS parts have always been attached with screws or clips. Perhaps it hasn't been a viable modelling medium untill recently because of the availablity of suitable glue! I am putting some ABS sheet at the top of my modelling budget prioity list. Shaun

This is great stuff!! Would never have thought of using plastic card for a chassi. You have opened up a whole new future, now I just need to work out where to scrounge more time! Regards Sasquatch.....over here in the North West but firmly in the North East when it comes to trains!

Nice one Clay! Not much going on here on the modelling front except that we have completed the garage rewiring and are half way done with the insulation. In the house we decided to remodel the living room and after removing the old knotty pine T&G it has turned into a structural nightmare. The window had to come out and the roof may need to come off due to bad window installation in which no proper sil was installed and no header causing the roof to sag and at some point leak leading to black mould and rot! (We knew what we were getting into with an older house)!! The repairs are hard work but fun non-the-less. So no model rail show this year. Sasquatch......seen wearing a tool belt recently

This 009 project sounds really cool and I must admit to being quite envious not having any time for modelling at present. Oh to have Allans energy!

I like the point rodding! Is the pub a Skaledale item? It looks fab! Regards Shaun

Hats off to you Chris, that's quite an achievement, a working life spent doing what you love! Regards Shaun. Edit: I beg to differ about including drawings in magazines, without them we're just encouraging the chineese to do the modelling for us!

Boat house is looking great! I shouldn't wonder that there are more Goathlands doing exhibitions over here than over there Clay. Mine has been requested for the Rouge Valley show on thanksgiving weekend. So I'd better get down to the storage unit and drag it out so as to get working on it. Regards Shaun

They are those cheep chineese ones 20 for $10 here-on-eBay . You can't put the full 12V through them though and I had to guess the wattage and used two 1A transformers from old Bachmann train sets for $5 each from the junk store. They are dimmable by means of the speed controll and wired up in pairs so as to reduce voltage by half and prolong thier life. One circuit for the lamp posts and one for the building interiors. Each bulb is connected to a 2 gang choc connector under the board for easy replacement. Each interior bulb is supported in a styrene tube so as to not come into contact with the building. Click on these images for the full atmospheric effect. You can't see her in this view but the seated Dapol lady has fallen over backwards on her Ratio chair and there is a cheese cake in that pie case. Edit: Actually you can, her feet are sticking up in the right door window. Goathland station master waiting for the evening train. The fillament lamp wire is visable under the footbridge veranders but too fine to be noticed in this pic. This telephone box outside the Birch Hall Inn is a Busch HO product.

! Lubing up all the axle points will help a lot too. The guys use graphite over here, they reccon it won't collect dirt as much as liquid lubricants.

Learnt about it the hard way with a huge headache the first time I cut it!!

I've seen 3mm MDF in craft stores but haven't tried it yet as I always buy 5mm foam board and get 50% off on all the damaged ones!! I build everything out of it now as it's so easy to cut just need a sharp stanley blade and PVA!

Yes masonite is known as hard board in the UK. Polystyrene extruded foam board insulated sheathing is fine if used with eye protection and the correct mask. We're spoilt over here having work shops with shop vacs and pick ups with 8' beds etc. I couldn't imagine trying that pink stuff in my old cramped loft I had back in England.Let alone trying to get two sheets of it home on the back rack of my vespa!

That looks like Norwegen den due to the fact that it is pale where you have cut it on the ramps and the small knots, a very soft wood and prone to shrink as it grows quickly during the short summers. It will be fine if you do as above!

Kals totally right, I don't use wood for any modeling or baseboard construction. Only ply and MDF. We once made the most fantastic living room for a race horse breader who lived outside Brussels. It was elm, very expensive and had square pegs set diagon alley in every joint. His wife came back from Dubai and turned the heating up so high all the joints shrank and split arround the square pegs. My boss lost a weeks worth of sleep before the customer returned and telephoned my boss congratulating him and asking how he'd managed to make it look so old!! Magic.

Remove that foam from underneath your wood and drill and countersink 3/16",(5mm) pairs of clearence holes for number 6 screws 3/4", (18mm) in from the edges back and front. Spot glue the platroms before screwing them down. Then you could use good old hard board glued on top and sanded to fit as the surfaces which should be primed before painting. The hard board will compensate in lack of height from removing the foam, hide the screws and give a nice surface for painting. Any descrepences arround the buildings can be built up with thin card. The platforms can be put upside down on the hard board as templates. Edited with metric.

Yep! What type of wood did you use and how wide is it. Some wood has a high shrinkage rate and some cuts can curl.

Here is the tricky part. The station seat was made by cutting the platform and setting it straight with blocks and nails so that the building didn't lean. The office got sanded on a belt sander which you can see in this pic along with a close up of the platform.

Love all the questions!!! The platforms where a bit tricky on account of the curve and slope. The edge is strips of slaters OO paving stuck down with contact cement ( PVA doesn't stick styrene very well) the suface is card probably from a shredded wheat box. The walls are long thin rips of MDF with Peco LK-40 stone sheet gaps filled with plaster coloured with........ you guessed it.... crafters acrylic ! I'm not happy with my platforms as they are too low on account of not allowing for the cork track bed at the woodwork stage.

Crafters Acrylic paint mix with fine sand and maybe some PVA. I use only water based products because you can mix anything to any consistancy, clean up easy, it's non toxic and usually dries very fast! Oh and you get 10 times for your money.Tried humbrol acrylic once it cost a fortune for 3 brush loads and dried on the brush while I was trying to use it.

late 1950s-early 1960s with B1 and A8 double heading mainline gresley stock. Note the gents roof is open which kind of shows the weigh bridge house as a seperate structure and there appears to be a greenhouse at the entrance to the goods yard.

48624 looking fab in crimson, something outta the ordinary is always great. 73129, so powerful when compared to 78019 below. Great selection.

Its a quick sketch up in paint but you get the gist of it. The bottom configuration is for exhibition and I hope to have veiwing from both sides in my new layout building. (new wiring finished, insulation and drywall next by order of SWMBO). For comparison Here you can see where most of the compression happened!

Mmmmm! You have a point. Too much cant will tip a lenghty train, tight curves will also my son wanted to see how many he could get behind his super D and that gave out on the tight curve. That was a 16' mineral train. The gradients on Goathland are 1 in 50 with very gentle curves. 5 or 6 is my limit for a passenger train, there are some engines which are only happy with 2! Bachmann class 4 mogul comes to mind. I laid a lenght of string under the outside of the sleepers to achieve my cant which is easily removed! Good luck with this. regards Shaun

I will draw one up when I get 5 minutes. My plan uses live frog turnouts. It is double track oval with passing loops on the fiddle yard side and the only difference to the track layout in the station is that I used a double slip under cowarth bridge instead of a single. There is a 1 in 50 gradient through the station and one going down over the viaduct. The simple fiddle yard can hold 16 trains and is seen here in use on Dunster.