CWJ

I've just enjoyed reading this thread after you commented on my garage layout thread. Wish I had a double garage to play with, it would make the layout plan so much easier! I like the way you've planned for nice deep baseboards to put the railway in amongst the scenery rather than fill the baseboard with track. I'm also impressed with the general construction work; it's like a heavy-duty (and neater) version of mine! Cheers, Will

Why didn't I think of this??? D'oh!

Keep up the good work Ian - goodness knows how you have managed to build three units in exactly the same time it's taking me to build just one! Cheers, Will

Fantastic pullmans Jon! Re. 'Vera', I've got a similar livery dilemma... keep Hornby's lovely neat lining or hand-paint it in the correct shade? Heavy weathering is easy to do badly, but your 'Mona' is superb. Your photos look like the real thing standing in a big white room Cheers, Will

Wives always keep a helpful comment like this in the back of their mind, ready to spring on you at just the right moment. I sometimes think mine has been taking lessons from Sybil Fawlty. Seriously, it's looking good at the moment! You must have a lot of patience to produce so many multiple parts (e.g. buffer stops). I believe Heljan 58s can be had quite reasonably from the likes of Hattons at the moment, but I couldn't say whether they have any in the livery you need. Keep up the good work! Cheers, Will

I can answer that one - a few early photos show snowploughs fitted to some units (No. 325001 for example) but they were soon removed, hence the bolt holes. It's possible that they got in the shunter's way when coupling two units together... can't think of any other reason to remove them! Ah, I knew I'd forgotten something... where's that microstrip? Cheers, Will

Hi Ian, Hope this helps: Taken of the mock-up in the NRM, but as far as I can tell it's identical to the production units. Heard about 325010 - glad I took some snaps of it before disposal! Cheers, Will

Bachmann did a limited edition KWVR-liveried model of No. 41241 (the KWVR's Ivatt 2-6-2T) so you never know! I doubt very much that the brown and silver livery would go down well with the majority of modellers as well as it might with KWVR supporters Cheers, Will

An excellent pattern there, Redgate. My toner never transferred as completely as yours has, so you must be more talented with the iron! On one hand it's very depressing that your first attempt is better than all of mine put together (!), but on the other hand I can console myself with the dubious logic that my fumblings may have led to you setting off on the right foot... Congratulations on the Model Rail article, by the way, an excellent read. Cheers, Will

What with this and the Heljan Railbus my list of 'they'll never make a RTR model of that in a thousand years' requirements is rapidly diminishing! Thanks, in advance, to Dapol for saving me from the horror of building another white metal kit Cheers, Will

What he said! Thanks for all your comments, unfortunately RMWeb crashed during my last post and I lost the enthusiasm to write it out again, hence the lack of detail! The paper I used was from an A4 sheet of sticky paper labels made by 'niceday', but I imagine any paper with the same waxy finish would work. Others on internet forums have used pages from glossy magazines with good effect. The printer was one of the huge types used by offices, not that I would dream of using company resoures for my personal hobbies, you understand... Seriously, the important thing is that it's a laser printer. Inkjet printing would just smudge, and wouldn't transfer to the brass. Redgate, if you get time to report back on your progress I'd be interested to hear how you get on! Remember to read the Nigel Lawton website and follow his advice. One more tip from me - after ironing, let the toner cool completely before attempting to peel back the paper. If, when you start to peel the paper away, some of the toner is still stuck to the paper, iron it again. But beware, if you iron for too long, or press down too hard, the toner will be smudged. Cheers, Will

Thanks Peter! They have certainly come out at the right size and in reasonable quality, and you can follow my Class 325 thread if you're interested in how they look on the finished model (first link in Post No. 1 of this thread). Cheers, Will

I've just gone through the heart-wrenching experience of watching a long and carefully-composed post disappear into the information super-highway as RMWeb threw a wobbly, so apologies if this replacement entry is a bit abrupt! After four goes at etching, I have found it better to use the waxed backing paper on which sticky labels are supplied as a means of carrying the printer toner to the brass. It 'lets go' of the toner much more readily than the acetate transparencies I had been using. Here is the first etch resist patter done this way: The only significant issue is that the paper, when ironed, tries to wrinkle a little, resulting in the rough areas on the cab doors (top left of photo). And again after a generous amount of touching-up using a 'Sharpie' permanent marker: After thirty-odd minutes of etching, here is the resulting fret: I'm very happy with this - it isn't perfect (remember the photo is about twice the size of the real thing though!) but the parts are better than anything I could ever make using hand tools. For interest, here are the parts after folding, soldering and cleaning-up: I'm glad I had a go, as it's very satisfying removing the metal from the etching tank and cleaning it up to reveal a nice shiny fret. This process might not give you a perfect crisp etch, but it can clearly produce decent results for a fraction of the cost of a professional service. That's all from me for the time being, please feel free to use this thread to post your own experiences of home etching, or to ask any questions. I probably won't know the answer but someone on here will! Cheers, Will

I couldn't really improve on the etch-resist pattern achieved in the second photo of Post No.5, so I decided to take the plunge and have a go at etching with something of this quality. Any faults in the toner were touched in with a permanent marker until the everything looked as neat as possible. I said I would describe the safety measures I'm taking. Ferric Chloride is corrosive, so it's important to make sure that it can't come into contact with any part of your body or any other property which you don't want to damage! I wore eye protection (plastic goggles), old clothing with full-length sleeves and latex gloves. The area was covered in an old sheet to catch any drips and the etching tank was placed on a large plastic tray so even if I knocked the whole thing over it wouldn't be a disaster. Here is the etching in progress: As you can see, my brass fret isn't completely submerged - this was an oversight on my part; I hadn't taken into account the space taken up by the bubble tube at the bottom of the tank. Once the bottom part was etched, I had to turn it around and dunk the un-etched part in afterwards. This led to a region on the boundary of the two parts which was over-etched. This is the etch fresh out of the tank: Apologies for the poor photo but this was taken hastily at a busy moment. It looks messy at this point but I was delighted that the etching process has basically worked! Next is how it looked after cleaning up: There are two main faults with this. Firstly, the area which got etched twice has been over-done (see the cab doors and part of the bogie frame). Secondly, the etchant has got under the etch-resist in some areas and left a rough surface. The first defect is not acceptable so I'll need to ensure the whole thing fits in the etch tank next time, but the second one isn't as bad as it looks and doesn't matter on these parts. It would obviously be a problem if I were making something cosmetic such as nameplates. Here are the parts removed from the fret, quickly folded into shape but not yet soldered or glued: And finally, the bogie frame shown with one of the cosmetic sideframes: I didn't think that went too badly for a first attempt - I hope to be a bit neater with the next etch but I have a feeling that future etching requirements will be more easily done using a commercial supplier! Cheers, Will

David - you might want to try my tip above (Post No. 228, second bullet point): I found that the lurching is caused by one of the two gearboxes, and by removing one gear the lurching is eliminated. This means that only one axle is driven, but the railbus still runs perfectly.

I've printed out a few more copies of my artwork on transparencies, photo paper and normal printer paper. Hopefully at least one of them will yield good results when tried tomorrow night! Cheers, Will

Sorry, I meant to say "if you've already got one and it isn't running properly, return it for professional servicing". By attempting a home repair without damaging the model (and in most cases it would be just that - an attempt!) you may reduce the chances of your model shop exchanging your model or giving you a refund. I hate to talk like this about a model which, in my view, is 90% perfect; but it really is a nightmare to get into! I'm glad that yours runs well, Kenton, and I hope that those of us who've had trouble are in a minority. Cheers, Will

I ran my two railbuses (one is E79964 with the 'large yellow panel', the other E79962 with speed whiskers) and noticed some interesting results which others may find of use: No. 62 ran considerably slower than 64, even after a good ten minutes of running-in. I stopped after that, fearing that the motor may burn out if, as others have found, the flywheels were restricted by excessive grease. Upon inspection, both railbuses had grease smeared all over the flywheel and bearings - when removed they ran much more freely and at the speed you would expect. Both railbuses suffered from a slight rhythmic 'lurching' action, as if one of the gear wheels was slightly out-of-true. I removed the final drive gears from one axle, and then from the other axle, giving the railbus a test run each time. Each railbus had one axle which was causing the lurching action and one axle running smoothly. I simply removed the final drive gears from the dodgy axle as the vehicle performs fine with one powered axle (this may not apply if you have gradients or very tight curves!). No. 62 had a brass gear wheel meshing with the gear on the axle, whereas on No. 64 this component was plastic. I didn't notice any difference in performance or noise levels. No. 62 had a plastic restraining piece to hold the PCB in position within the roof, but No.64's PCB was floating loose (although held in about the right position by other components). On most fronts this model scores very highly in my opinion - it looks spot-on, performs well (after the above clean-up) and has a lot of features for its size. Being fair to Heljan it must have been a real challenge to design. However, on 'maintainability' it scores very poorly indeed. They seem to have used 100 components where 10 would do - each LED has its own circuit board even though some of them are right next to the main PCB - all connected by fragile wiring looms. To access the moving parts, where most maintenance is necessary, the model must be completely stripped down (and, boy, is that fiddly!) - I can't think of another model locomotive like this. Add to this the fragile nature of many of the details and you have a model which is virtually impossible not to damage when undertaking even the most basic maintenance (e.g. lubrication or decoder-fitting). From my two models I managed to break off an air reservoir, an axle guard moulding, two sandpipes, a couple of brake hoses, and don't get me started on those handrails! My advice - only buy this model from a shop who can test-run it for you before you buy, and make sure you don't have to whack the controller up to full power to get it to move: the motor will be struggling against all that grease. If you've already got one, return it for professional servicing by the manufacturer. Cheers, Will Oh, and the destination blinds have weird places where it should say 'Keighley' and 'Oxenhope'

Thanks chaps, all good advice and much appreciated. A common theme is that a constant supply of fresh etchant needs to be flowing over the metal, by whatever means possible. Have had several more goes at transferring the toner to the brass, and not managed to get anything better than the photos above. I'm going to have to try a different type of transparency or even the photo paper method... the difficulty with the latter will be lining up the two patterns for the front and rear of the sheet. This is easy with a transparency because you can add some alignment crosshairs to the print-out (see Nigel Lawton's website) and one pattern can be seen through the other. Mrs. CWJ suggested that if I was using paper I might be able to align the sheets by poking a pin through both sheets. Watch this space! Cheers, Will

Thanks for the suggestions chaps. I have already got some ferric chloride granules but the Maplin product is very (unusually for Maplin...) reasonable. As for the second suggestion, this sounds much easier although I dread to think what the acid does to the sponge! You must have to check that the sponge is resistant to the acid before starting. I've printed out a few more copies of my artwork today, so I'll have another go at transferring it to the brass tonight or tomorrow. Making progress is frustrating at the moment as I'm working away from home a lot, but I'll get there eventually... Cheers, Will

Thanks for all your responses! Now I know so many people are watching, I'd better get a move on Thanks Phil, you're absolutely right. I have only used the stuff once in the past and I vividly remember everything in the vicinity becoming brown. I will try to show the safety precautions I take as I go along. For a start, one of my photos above shows my etching tank sitting on a large plastic tray to contain any spillages. Thanks for the tip-off, I'll look out for old copies of MRJ! Thanks Ian! If (or should that be when?) I get fed up with experimentation, which I never expect to produce professional results, it is very helpful to know that there are affordable suppliers out there. For anyone who's interested, this is the website that Ian recommends: http://www.ppdltd.com/ There is very some useful information on there. Hello N15, you might not have much choice unless you know of a local etching firm! Remember this is pretty much the same process as PCB manufacture so an electronics supplier may be flexible enough to etch metal parts for you. You won't know until you try, Redgate! I guess PCBs would be slightly easier than solid metal parts, too. Alternatively, there are many mail-order companies who will etch PCBs for you in return for the graphics in their preferred format (and some money, of course!); I once had some 2-sided PCBs made by an American firm who did a fantastic job with printed labels and protective varnish. These luxuries aren't essential for model railway use though. Cheers, Will

4. Etching the Metal in Ferric Chloride Following Nigel Lawton's guidance I have knocked up a basic bubble etch tank, where air is blown through the acid to agitate it in a more consistent way then stirring. Everything must be made from plastic or glass; metal and other materials will be corroded by the ferric chloride. Here is the general set-up: An old air compressor (pump) from a fish tank is connected to a short hose leading to my etching tank, which is in fact a food container with clip- on lid so I can use it to store the horrible stuff safely. The hose will be taken out and stored in clean water. At the bottom of the tank is a 'bubble curtain' - a piece of hose with lots of tiny holes in it. This was supplied (from an aquarium shop) with clip-on suckers which are useful for attaching it to the tank. The tank was filled with water to test the bubbles. Very pretty! When I finally get the etch-resist (toner) correctly printed onto the brass, I'll be ready to start etching. Cheers, Will

Judging by my photos above, I could do with your assistance Coachmann!

3. Transferring the Printed Graphics to the Brass Sheet Right, that's the easy bit sorted - now the fun and games start! The brass is slotted between the folded transparency so that the graphics are aligned with each side of the sheet, but there are two ways of heating everything up so the toner transfers to the brass. Nigel Lawton recommends a domestic iron, but another source used a laminating machine as these have a hot roller. The latter sounded easier, so I tried it, but unfortunately even after two or three passes it became apparent that the acetate was not going to part with its toner. I then got the iron out and set it to a medium heat. It took quite a long time for the toner to transfer to the brass, and I had to apply a lot of pressure to all parts of the sheet. This left the acetate stuck to the brass, so I had to carefully peel it away. The results are as below: Not bad for a first attempt, I suppose, but it isn't good enough to use. There are a lot of 'bubbles' where the toner hasn't stuck to the brass, but what you can't see on this photo is how the edges are not very well defined - it looks as if the toner has completely melted so the graphics are not sharp enough. Small details such as rivets aren't visible at all, and neither are some of the half-etched fold lines. I attempted to tackle these problems in two ways. To get the toner to 'stick' I rubbed down the brass with 200 grit wet and dry so it wasn't as polished as the first attempt, and to improve the 'sharpness' I decided that one short burst of heat might be better than messing about with the laminator and medium iron. I therefore set the iron to just below full power and had another go: This is much better - all the fold lines are visible, and even the tiny screw heads along the bottom of the cab doors. Most of the imperfections could be touched in with a marker pen or even paint, but unfortunately this would be impossible on some of the smaller details, which were worse on the other side of the brass than this side. I had printed three copies of the artwork, so I had one more chance to get it right this afternoon... ...oh well! The third attempt was not quite as good as the second, with a lot of toner missing around the cab doors and slightly smudged edges where I must have let things get too hot. I had dispensed with the tea towel I was previously using to protect the acetate from the direct heat of the iron, so perhaps it would be best to re-instate this. That's as far as I've got at the moment, but I'll keep trying until I get it right. It may be that a different type of transparency will 'let go' of the toner more readily. Cheers, Will

1. Producing the Artwork A very useful guide is available from Hollywood Foundry (http://www.hollywood...and%20Rules.pdf) which tells you everything you need to know about designing artwork for metal etching, and wider guidance is also available from the same website. I used this, along with some other online guidance from commercial etching firms, to make myself a brief set of 'rules' as follows, where 'T' is the thickness of the metal to be etched: General Compensation for Cusping (Double-Sided Etch) = 0.2 x T (note: for a hole or slot, double this to account for cusping on both sides of the hole or slot) General Compensation for Cusping (Single Through-Etched) = 0.4 x T (note: for a hole or slot, double this to account for cusping on both sides of the hole or slot) Minimum Diameter of Hole = T Minimum Rivet Diameter = 1.4 x T (for best definition of half-etched rivets) Dimple Diameter for Punched Rivets = T Minimum Width of Raised or Sunken Line = 0.8 x T 90 Degree Fold Line Width = T* (etched on inner face of fold) 180 Degree Fold Line Width = 1.5 x T* (etched on outer face of fold) Gap Around Etched Parts = 2 x T Fret Tag Width = 1.5 x T * to be added to overall dims of material, not just drawn on The design was drawn up in Microsoft Powerpoint, as I found this had the least amount of irritating automation (MS Word was the worst ). This was converted to a PDF file as I needed to take the file to work to print on the laser printer, and I didn't trust Microsoft to keep the drawing identical when opened on a different computer. Please see attached file if you're interested in the etch, but unless you're into EMUs this is unlikely! It includes a bogie frame (with fold-up brackets for the axle bearings, brake cylinders and square flaps to represent the traction motors), a pair of cab doors, an NRN radio aerial and roof bracket. Note that the artwork is in two mirrored parts; these will be folded around the brass so that each part is transferred to one side of the brass. Where the two parts are different, only one side of the brass will be etched (i.e. half-etched). As mentioned above, this was printed onto overhead projector acetate transparencies using a laser printer, scaled to actual size. I added a 200mm line to check that the print-out was correctly scaled. Cheers, Will Class 325 Detail Etch.pdf